you have a beautiful view of the _Kreuzberg_--a convent situated
on the top of a hill. The _Siebengebirge_ (seven mountains) you
also see, but the view of them is a good deal built up."

This visiting together the ground once so familiar to the Prince
formed an era in two lives. It was the fulfilment of a beautiful,
brilliant expectation which had been half dim and vague when the
ardent lad was a quiet, diligent student, living simply, almost
frugally, like the other students at the university on the Rhine, and
his little cousin across the German Ocean, from whom he had parted in
the homely red-brick palace of Kensington, had been proclaimed Queen
of a great country. The prospect of their union was still very
uncertain in those days, and yet it must sometimes have crossed his
mind as he built air-castles in the middle of his reading; or strolled
with a comrade along those old-fashioned streets, among their
population of "wild-looking students," with long fair hair, pipes
between their lips, and the scars of many a sword-duel on forehead and
cheek; or penetrated into the country, where the brown peasant women,
"with curious caps and handkerchiefs," came bearing their burden of
sticks from the forest, like figures in old fairy tales. He must have
told himself that the time might come when something like the
transformation of a fairy-tale would be effected on his account; the
plain living and high-thinking and college discipline of Bonn be
exchanged for the dignity and influence of an English sovereign's
consort. Then, perhaps, he would bring his bride to the dear old
"fatherland," and show her where he had dreamt about her among his
books.

At the banquet in the afternoon the accomplished King gave the Queen's
health in a speech fit for a poet. He referred to a word sweet alike