If the boy is to have a tutor, or the girl a governess, the appointment cannot be made by the parents without their previously obtaining the permission of the sovereign, and he has it in his power to reject their nominee, and to assign some candidate of his own, who may possibly be regarded as most objectionable to the unfortunate parents, for the duty of taking charge of the education of the young people in question.  The royal or imperial mother, indeed, may esteem herself fortunate if the sovereign does not insist on personally selecting the nurses of her infants:  when the present kaiser was born, not merely the late Empress Augusta, but likewise all the other members of the reigning house of Prussia, and of the Court of Berlin, thought it quite right and natural that the old Emperor William should exercise his authority for the purpose of prohibiting the young mother from herself nursing her baby; on the ground that it was contrary to the traditions of the House of Hohenzollern, and a quite undignified proceeding.  Fortunately, the late Emperor Frederick, who had spent much of his time at the court of his mother-in-law, Queen Victoria, and who was aware that she had nursed every one of her numerous children herself, without permitting this motherly duty to interfere with the arduous official business of the State, expostulated with his father, and persuaded him to withdraw his prohibition, much to the horror of the courtiers, and greatly to the satisfaction of the royal lady, who is now Empress Frederick.

In Austria one of the principal sources of the domestic unhappiness of the lamented Empress of Austria, was the small voice that she was allowed by the sovereign—­her husband—­to have in the management and the control of her own children, as long as her mother-in-law, the late Archduchess Sophia, was alive.  It was only after the demise of the archduchess that Empress Elizabeth first realized in their full measure the joys of motherhood.

While on the subject of Austria, I may cite the case of the widowed Crown Princess Stephanie as another illustration of the extent to which royal parents are deprived of all authority over their children.  Thus when Crown Prince Rudolph died at Mayerling, his little daughter, at that time barely six years of age, was assigned to the guardianship, not of her widowed mother, but of her grandfather.  A very general belief prevails that this arrangement about the care of the little Archduchess Elizabeth, was due to a piece of animosity on the part of the ill-fated crown prince against his wife, and I have seen it stated in print that he had left a will confiding his only child to his father, and directing that its mother should be allowed no voice in its education.  There is no official authority for any such statement, but no matter whether the crown prince expressed any such testamentary wish or not, the fact remains that at his death his child was bound by the statutes of the House of Hapsburg, to become the ward of the sovereign,