were more or less titular, and he had all the leisure which he
required for the researches into the affairs of modern and ancient
Greece, which have won for him celebrity as one of the most erudite
Hellenists of the present time. He was surrounded by a congenial
circle of friends possessed of the same disposition as himself, and
had access to some of the finest libraries and museums in the world,
while his still charming wife was the most conspicuous figure in a
circle composed of all that was most elegant, witty, brilliant and
clever in the so-called "_Athens on the Spree_" Indeed, her palace
in the Thiergarten was the centre of everything that was eclectic and
brilliant, and her salons were the rendezvous of all that was best in
Berlin society.

Imagine, therefore, a prince and princess with tastes and dispositions
such as these compelled to close up their lovely home, to bid adieu to
all their friends, and to take up their residence in the dullest,
most uninteresting and provincial of cities, situated in the least
picturesque portion of the empire; where the only society consists
of bureaucrats of the most starchy description, with no ideas
beyond their office, or of impoverished landowners, belonging to the
district, whose nobiliary pretensions can only be compared with the
paucity of their resources, and whose conversation and even intellect
is restricted to mangelwurzels, potatoes, and the different grades of
fertilizers.

Breslau, to say the whole truth, is a city utterly without any
attractions, either social or intellectual; the only other royal
personage in the place is an eccentric Wurtemberg princess, a cousin
of the now reigning King of Wurtemberg. This lady sacrificed her royal
rank and prerogatives in order to marry a physician of the name of