Princess Henry is probably the least favored, both as to beauty and brilliancy of intellect, of the daughters of the late Grand Duke of Hesse, and of his consort, Princess Alice, second daughter of Queen Victoria.  Her three sisters, the Grand Duchess Sergius of Russia, Princess Louis of Battenberg, and the young czarina, are renowned for their loveliness and their cleverness, the latter inherited from their talented mother; whereas Princess Irene and her brother, the reigning Grand Duke of Hesse, take far more after their father.  Princess Irene was born in 1866, during the Seven Weeks’ War, when her father was called upon to fight his own brothers in the Prussian army, and his brother-in-law, the late Emperor Frederick, then Crown Prince of Prussia.  Her baptismal sponsors were the officers and men belonging to the two cavalry regiments under her father’s special command during that war:—­there is no other princess in Europe who has ever had two entire regiments of cavalry for godfathers!  The name of Irene was bestowed upon her by way of gratitude for the restoration of peace, and she used always to be known in her young days at Darmstadt as the “Friedenskind,” or “child of peace.”  After her mother’s death from diphtheria, it was the latter’s eldest sister, the now widowed Empress Frederick, who endeavored, as far as possible, to look after the children, and it was perhaps this that led to Prince Henry’s falling in love with his cousin.  The match was strongly opposed by Prince Bismarck, partly upon the ground of the close relationship of the parties, but mainly on account of his hatred for the reigning house of Hesse.  But when Prince Henry declared that he would remain single all his life unless he were allowed to marry Princess Irene, consent was given, and the wedding took place at Charlottenburg in the presence of the dying Emperor Frederick, this being the last public ceremony at which he was present.  One of the saddest of sights, indeed, was that presented by “Unser Fritz,” almost too weak to stand, giving his voiceless blessing after the ceremony to his favorite son, and to his new daughter-in-law, who, having been born in a time of war and misery, was entering upon her new life as a wife at a time when the whole nation was once more sorrowing.  While Princess Irene is perhaps less attractive than her sisters, she is more interested in philanthropic movements than any other member of her family, and at Kiel, where she makes her home, she is greatly liked, especially by the poor.  She is a magnificent equestrienne, and a very clever shot, being infinitely more successful in this respect than her husband, who is so devoted to her that he bears this superiority with the greatest equanimity.