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A handsome offer for the estate had been refused a few years before, in compliance with the wishes of Lucie, who loved Muskau even better than its master, and had appealed to the king to prevent the sale. But in 1845 came another offer from Count Hatzfeld of 1,700,000 thalers, which, in spite of Lucie's tears and entreaties, the prince decided to accept.

I hope the charming Lady Charlotte had better cause to be satisfied with him. Towards the end of December, his Highness's head-gardener, Rehde, a very important functionary at Muskau, arrived in London to be initiated into the mysteries of English landscape-gardening.

As these Letters were not written until the prince had passed his fortieth year, it will be necessary, before considering them in detail, to give a brief sketch of his previous career. Hermann Ludwig was the only son of Graf von Pueckler of Schloss Branitz, and of his wife, Clementine, born a Graefin von Gallenberg, and heiress to the vast estate of Muskau in Silesia.

The young widow resolved to marry him at the beginning of his term of imprisonment, so that she might be near him at Muskau with her loving assistance. To see my old friend under such favourable conditions was in itself a pleasure to me; I also experienced the liveliest satisfaction at finding there was no change in his former sympathetic attitude.

In this way I visited the beautiful Muskau, and still more frequently the lovely woodlands of the Spree, a richly watered region intersected by numerous arms of the river and countless canals, resting as quietly under dense masses of foliage as a child asleep at noontide beneath the shadow of a tree.

In England, however, except in a few diplomatic houses, you can go nowhere in the evening without a special invitation. The prince seems to have been bored at most of the parties he attended; partly, perhaps, out of pique at finding himself, so long accustomed to be the principal personage in his little kingdom of Muskau, eclipsed in influence and wealth by many a British commoner.

There were several good courses after hares, though her pursuers gave puss no fair play, firing at her before the dogs and heading her in every possible way. Rode to Kairwan. Few Christians arrive in this city. Prince Pückler Muskau was the fourth when he visited it in 1835. The town is clean, but many houses are in ruins. The greater part of a regiment of the Nitham are quartered here.

He had become accustomed to his elderly wife, who acted as his colleague and helper in all that concerned his idolised Muskau, and upon whose sympathy and advice he had learned to depend.

Muskau, he explains, is worth L4,000 a year, an income which in Germany is equivalent to three times as much in England. This missive was accompanied by a long letter, dated Nov. 1, 1827, to 'Miss Harriet, in which the suitor explains the circumstances of his former marriage, and of his divorce, the knowledge of which has rendered her uneasy.

Both families were of immense antiquity, the Puecklers claiming to trace their descent from Ruediger von Bechlarn, who figures in the Nibelungenlied. Our hero was born at Muskau in October 1785, and spent, according to his own account, a wretched and neglected childhood.