e of just such puddles as Frederick William forced his family to
sit with their feet in, while they dined alfresco on pork and cabbage;
and they visited the room of the Smoking Parliament where he ruled his
convives with a rod of iron, and made them the victims of his bad jokes.
The measuring-board against which he took the stature of his tall
grenadiers is there, and one room is devoted to those masterpieces which
he used to paint in the agonies of gout. His chef d'oeuvre contains a
figure with two left feet, and there seemed no reason why it might not.
have had three. In another room is a small statue of Carlyle, who did so
much to rehabilitate the house which the daughter of it, Wilhelmina, did
so much to demolish in the regard of men.

The palace is now mostly kept for guests, and there is a chamber where
Napoleon slept, which is not likely to be occupied soon by any other
self-invited guest of his nation. It is perhaps to keep the princes of
Europe humble that hardly a palace on the Continent is without the
chamber of this adventurer, who, till he stooped to be like them, was
easily their master. Another democracy had here recorded its invasion in
the American stoves which the custodian pointed out in the corridor when
Mrs, March, with as little delay as possible, had proclaimed their
country. The custodian professed an added respect for them from the fact,
and if he did not feel it, no doubt he merited the drink money which they
lavished on him at parting.

Their driver also was a congenial spirit, and when he let them out of his
carriage at the station, he excused the rainy day to them. He was a merry
fellow beyond the wont of his nation, and he-laughed at the bad weather,
as if it had been a good joke on them.

His gayety, and the red sunset light, which shone on the stems of the
pines on the way back to Berlin, contributed to the content in which they
reviewed their visit to Potsdam. They agreed that the place was perfectly
charming, and that it was incomparably expressive of kingly will and
pride. These had done there on the grand scale what all the German
princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and emulation of
French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a historical growth as
at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius, in which there was
often the curious fascination of insanity.

They felt this strongly again amidst the futile monuments of the
Hohenzollern Museum, in Berlin, wh