The students did not enter the Marble Palace on the banks of the lake. In the water are several miniature vessels and a little steamer, all of them for the amusement and instruction of the little folks. Passing the Russian village, which contains eleven houses like those to be found in Russia, belonging to the better class in the country, built by a party sent here by Nicholas, the sight-seers arrived at the gardens of Sans Souci. They are rather stiffly laid out, with plenty of fountains, statues, fish-ponds, and other ornaments. On a hill, with a very long flight of steps leading down to the principal avenue of the garden, is the Palace of Sans Souci,--"without care,"--built by Frederick the Great in 1745. At the end of the terrace are the graves of his favorite dogs, and of the horse he rode in many of his battles. In his will he directed that he should be buried among them, but his request was not heeded. In the palace the room where he breathed his last is shown. A clock, which he always wound up himself, stopped at the instant of his death, and still indicates the time--twenty minutes past two.
On the hill near the palace is the historic windmill of Sans Souci, separated from it only by a road. Frederick the Great wished to extend his grounds in the direction of the mill, but the miller refused to sell it. In a lawsuit with the owner the king was defeated, and submitted to the decision. He was so well pleased with Prussian justice, that he pulled down the original mill, which was a very small one, and erected for the miller the present one, on a much larger scale. In the reign of Frederick William IV., the miller who owned it, doubtless a descendant of the one who defeated the monarch at law, became embarrassed, and offered to sell it; but the king settled on him a sum sufficient to extricate him from his difficulties, declaring that the mill was a national monument, and belonged to Prussian history.
Not far from the mill is the orangery of the palace, and the Raphael Saloon. The New Palace is the one built by Frederick the Great at the close of the Seven Years' War, to prove that his funds were not exhausted. It contains seventy-two apartments, many of them very gaudy. Some have walls and floors of fantastic marble mosaics. There is a hall whose walls are all composed of shells, and in one various kinds of minerals are inlaid on the sides. Some relics of the great monarch are shown. In the library is a copy of his works, with notes and criticisms by Voltaire, whom Frederick admired and invited to his palace. The New Palace is now one of the residences of the crown prince, Frederick, who married the Princess Royal of England. In the Antique Temple, near it, is a statue of Queen Louisa, the work of Rauch, who labored fifteen years upon it, and it is regarded as even superior to the one on her tomb.