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                       (etext transcriber's note)




                         THE EMPRESS FREDERICK

                             [Illustration]




                                  The
                           Empress Frederick

                                A MEMOIR

                          _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

                             [Illustration]

                                NEW YORK
                         Dodd, Mead and Company
                                  1914

                            COPYRIGHT, 1913,
                       BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY




PREFACE


Memoirs of Royal personages form not the least interesting part of the
whole vast field of biography, in spite of the fact that such memoirs
differ from the lives of most persons in a private station because of
the reticence and discretion which are necessary, especially in regard
to affairs of State and political characters. It is often not until a
whole generation has passed that it is possible to publish a full
biography of a member of a Royal House, and in the meantime the exalted
rank of the subject operates both to enhance and to diminish the
interest of the memoir.

This is also true in a modified degree of statesmen, of whom full and
frank biographies are seldom possible until their political associates
and rivals have alike disappeared from the scene. This necessary delay
is a test of the subject's greatness, for it has sometimes happened that
by the time a full memoir can be published the public interest in the
individual has waned.

By heredity, by training, by all the circumstances of