274 VOICES FROM THE WOODLANDS. 



When the overwhelming miseries inflicted by Napoleon 

 had broken the heart of Prussia's queen, the mother of 

 her country, as she was universally termed, the King 

 caused the way which she took for the last time to be 

 turfed, and bordered with flowers. The gate through 

 which she passed was never again opened, but an inscription, 

 bearing the date of the twentieth of May, 1810, with the 

 initial of Louisa, was placed over it, and in the grotto, 

 shaded by the willow of which I have spoken, was inscribed 

 in gold letters, on the iron table, " Remember the absent," 

 that her children might ever be reminded of their mother. 



And as Prussia's queen loved the willow among kin- 

 dred trees, because of its sylvan beauty and associations with 

 domestic happiness, so was this tree selected as a symbol 

 of sorrow for her untimely death ; and nowhere, perhaps, 

 is the association of the willow with funereal architecture 

 more affecting than at the mausoleum of Charlottenburg. 



The mausoleum is approached by a long avenue of pine- 

 trees, leading to a grove of black firs, blended with cypress 



