dies in their grand best clothes at the promenades--and the rattling
whirl of the roulette wheel--and I liked to wander in the glum old
gardens under the palace wall, and imagine the Sleeping Beauty within
there.

Some one persuaded us one day to break the charm, and see the interior
of the palace. I am sorry we did. There was no Sleeping Beauty in any
chamber that we saw; nor any fairies, good or malevolent. There was a
shabby set of clean old rooms, which looked as if they had belonged to
a prince hard put to it for money, and whose tin crown jewels would not
fetch more than King Stephen's pantaloons. A fugitive prince, a brave
prince struggling with the storms of fate, a prince in exile may
be poor; but a prince looking out of his own palace windows with a
dressing-gown out at elbows, and dunned by his subject washerwoman--I
say this is a painful object. When they get shabby they ought not to be
seen. "Don't you think so, Lady Kicklebury?" Lady Kicklebury evidently
had calculated the price of the carpets and hangings, and set them
justly down at a low figure. "These German princes," she said, "are not
to be put on a level with English noblemen." "Indeed," we answer, "there
is nothing so perfect as England: nothing so good as our aristocracy;
nothing so perfect as our institutions." "Nothing! NOTHING!" says Lady
K.

An English princess was once brought to reign here; and almost the whole
of the little court was kept upon her dowry. The people still regard
her name fondly; and they show, at the Schloss, the rooms which she
inhabited. Her old books are still there--her old furniture brought from
home; the presents and keepsakes sent by her family are as they were in
the princess's lifetime: the very clock has the name of a Windsor maker
on its face; and portraits of all her numerous race decorate the homely
walls of the now empty chambers. There is the benighted old king, his
beard hanging down to the star on his breast; and the first gentleman
of Europe--so lavish of his portrait everywhere, and so chary of showing
his royal person--all the stalwart brothers of the now all but extinct
generation are there; their quarrels and their pleasures, their glories
and disgraces, enemies, flatterers, detractors, admirers--all now
buried. Is it not curious to think that the King of Trumps now virtually
reigns in this place, and has deposed the other dynasty?

Very early one morning, wishing to have a sketch of the White Tower