eagerly inquisitive on that head. As was natural: but it is not in
the Crown-Prince's mind, it is in the Tobacco-Parliament, and the
Royal breast as influenced there, that the thing must be decided.
Who in the world will it be, then? Crown-Prince himself hears now
of this party, now of that. England is quite over, and the
Princess Amelia sunk below the horizon. Friedrich himself appears
a little piqued that Hotham carried his nose so high; that the
English would not, in those life-and-death circumstances, abate
the least from their "Both marriages or none,"--thinks they should
have saved Wilhelmina, and taken his word of honor for the rest.
England is now out of his head;--all romance is too sorrowfully
swept out: and instead of the "sacred air-cities of hope" in this
high section of his history, the young man is looking into the
"mean clay hamlets of reality," with an eye well recognizing them
for real. With an eye and heart already tempered to the due
hardness for them. Not a fortunate result, though it was an
inevitable one. We saw him flirting with the beautiful wedded
Wreech; talking to Lieutenant-General Schulenburg about marriage,
in a way which shook the pipe-clay of that virtuous man. He knows
he would not get his choice, if he had one; strives not to care.
Nor does he, in fact, much care; the romance being all out of it.
He looks mainly to outward advantages; to personal appearance,
temper, good manners; to "religious principle," sometimes rather
in the reverse way (fearing an OVERPLUS rather);--but always to
likelihood of moneys by the match, as a very direct item.
Ready command of money, he feels, will be extremely desirable in a
Wife; desirable and almost indispensable, in present straitened
circumstances. These are the notions of this ill-situated Coelebs.

The parties proposed first and last, and rumored of in Newspapers