William of Germany

cords clearly show, the loyal sentiments of a Cardinal Wolsey towards his royal master, even though that master had cast him off,

a monarch in the bright court of heaven, and his great antagonist, Satan, who stands for the king of evil, is enthroned by it amid the shades of hell. The fiction that courts are a species of earthly paradise is still kept up for the entertainment of children; while the adult, whom the annals of all countries has m

y are occupied with a more public and less selfish order of considerations. The Court of the Emperor is, so far as can be known to a lynx-eyed and not always charitably thinking public, singularly free from the vices and failings the atmosphere of former courts was wont to foster. There is at all times, no doubt, the competition of politicians for influence and power acting and reacting on the Court and its frequenters,

leasantly combining fact with fiction, aim at elevating, not at debasing, the mind of the reader. A second valuable source of information on the topic are the memoirs of those who have set down their observations and recorded experiences made in the courts to which they had access. Among this class, however, are to be found unscrupulous as well as conscientious authors, the former obviously cherishing some personal grievance or as obviously actuated by malice, while the latter are usually moved by an honest desire to tell the world things that are important for it to know, and at the same time, it is not ill-natured to suspect, enhance their own r

uently became Imperial Chancellor in succession to General von Caprivi. These works, with the collections of the Emperor's speeches and the speeches and interviews of Chancellor Prince von Bülow, may be ranked in the category of serious and authentic contributions to the Court history of the period they cover. Then there are several German descriptions of the Court, reliable enough in their way which is a dull one, to those who are not impassioned monarchists or hide-bound bureaucrats. In the category of works by unscrupulous writers that entitled "The Private L

ghter's Uniform," "The Amiable Grandfather," "The Emperor as Husband," "The Emperor as Card Player," "How the Emperor's Family is Photographed," "What does the Emperor's Kitchen Look Like," "Adieu, Auguste" ("Auguste" is the Empress), "The English Lord and the Emperor's Cigarettes," "When My Wife Makes You a Sandwich," "What the Emperor Reads," "The Emperor's Handwriting," "Can the Emperor V

ct that the Court is independent of the Empire as regards its administration and finance. It is a state within a state, an imperium in imperio. In all that pertains to it the Emperor is absolute ruler and his executive is a special Ministry. At the same time it is almost needless t

of its relations to the people. In England a great portion of the popular attention is concentrated on Parliament and the fortunes of its two great political parties. The attention given to the Court and its doings is not of the same general and permanent charac

ments after the English pattern, that is by two chambers elected by popular vote, yet in many important respects widely differing from it, were demanded by the people or finally established. Up to comparatively recent times the monarch in Prussia was an absolute ruler. Frederick William IV, after the events of 1848, was compelled to grant Prussia a Constitution which explicitly defined the respective rights of the Crown and the people in the sphere of politics; and the Imperi

of all Prussian court offices. The second deals with the personal affairs of the Emperor and his sons, the domestic administration of the palace, the management of the Crown estates and castles, and is the tribunal that decides all Hohenzollern differences and disputes that are not subject to the ordinary legal tribunals. Connected with this Ministry are the Herald's office and the Court Archives office. The chief Court officials include, beside the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Household, a

ominten, Korfu (the "Achilleion"), Wiesbaden, Koenigsberg, etc., to the number of thirty or more. The Empress has her own Court officials, including a Mistress of the Robes and Ladies of the Bedchamber, also with the title of Excellency, the Ladie

lishment, having several departments and a staff of half a hundred councillors and clerks. The Naval Cabinet, on the other hand, is composed of only three upper officials and five clerks. The Emperor's "civil list" is returned in the Budget as ￡860,000 roughly. His entire annual revenue does not exceed ￡1,000,000. Out of this he has to pay the expenses of his married sons' households a

ces Ministers or other visitors to the Emperor, telegraphs to say that His Majesty has an hour or an hour and a half at his disposal at such-and-such a time, or intimates that an audience of half an hour can be given in the train between two given points. They act as living memorandum books, knock at the Emperor's door to announce that it is time for him to go to this or that appointment, remind him that a congratulatory telegram on s

rmer belongs members of houses that were ruling when the modern Empire was established, and, while excluding the Emperor, who stands above them, includes sovereign houses and mediatized houses. Some of the ancient privileges of the nobility, such as exemption from taxation, and the right to certain high offices, have been abolished, but in practice the nobility still occupy the most important charges in the administration and in the army. The privileges of the mediatized princes consist of exemption from conscription, the enjoyment of the Principle called "equality of birth," which prevents the burgher wife of a noble acquiring her husband's rank, and the right to have their own "house law" for the regulation of family disputes and family affairs generally. No increase to the high nobility of Germany can accrue a

, like Prince Fürstenberg, Prince Hohenlohe, Count Henkel-Donnersmarck and some others engage successfully in commerce; many are practical farmers and have done a good deal for agriculture; several are deputies to Parliament;

or as defence against a possibly angry populace, and a sentry-box at each of its two lofty wrought-iron gates. It may be, as Baedeker informs us it is, a "handsome example of the German renaissance," but to the foreigner it can as equally suggest a large and grimy barracks as the five-hundred-years-old palace of a long line of kings and emperors. And yet, to any one acquainted with the blood-stained annals of Prussian history, who knows something of the

not travelling, being his more permanent residence, and the latter only claiming his presence during the winter season and for periods of a day or so at other parts of the year, when occasion requires it. It is only during the six or eight weeks of the winter season that the Empress and her daughter, Pri

by his attendants"; that the present Emperor, then Prince William, lived here with his young wife when he was still only a lieutenant. He will drive to the New Palace-now old, for it was built by Frederick the Great in 1769, during the Seven Years' War, at a cost of nearly half a million sterling-and gaze with interest at the summer residence of the Emperor. If he is an American he may think of his multi-millionaire fellow-citizen, Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, when driving up to call on his erstwhile imperial schoolfellow and friend, was nearly shot at by a sentry for whom the name Vanderbilt was no "Open Sesame." He will see before him a main building, seven hundred feet in length, three stories high, with the central portion surmounted by a dome, its chief fa?ade looking towards a park. The whole, of course-for Baedeker is talking-forms an "imposing pile," with "mediocre sculptures, but the effect of the weathered sandstone figures against the red brick is very pleasing." Here the Emperor's father, Frederick III, was born, lived as Crown Prince, reigned for ninety-nine days, and died. Here, too, are more "apartments of Frederick the Great," with pictures by Rubens, including an "Adoration of the Magi," a good example of Watteau and a portrait of Voltaire drawn b

e's elbow with the facts) he will mark was built in 1796 by Frederick William II, who died here, was complete

ut wholly mistaken efforts of the "Society for the Promotion of Tourist Traffic," which seeks to lure the moneyed and reluctant foreigner to the German capital. Our foreigner enters the Park of Sans Souci and his spirit is at rest. Now he knows where he really is-not in the wonderful new German Empire, not in modern Berlin with its splendid and to him unspeaking streets, its garish "night-life," its faultily-faultless municipal propriety, not in Potsdam, "the true cradle of the Prussian army," as Baedeker, deviatin

i itself. The building is only one story high, not large, reminding one somewhat of the Trianon at Versailles, though lacking the Trianon's finished lightness and elegance, yet with its semicircular colonnade distinctly French, and impressive by its elevated situation. The chief, the enduring, the magical impression, however, begins to form as our foreigner commences his pilgrimage through the rooms in which Frederick passed most of his later years. As he pauses in the Voltaire Chamber he imagines the two great figures, seated in stiff-backed chairs a

opaedists, with Diderot and d'Alembert in the van, were holding council in France, mobilizing the intellects of the time, and, like Bacon, taking all knowledge for their province, for a fierce attack on the old philosophy, the old statecraft, the old art, and the old religion. Are such topics and such men to deal with them to be fo

ert-room with the clock which Frederick was in the habit of winding up, and which "is said to have stopped at the precise moment of his death, 2.20 a.m., August 17th, 1786"; the death-chamber with its eloquent and pathetic statue, Magnussen's "Last Moments of Frederick the Great"; the library and picture gallery. Strangely enough, Baedeker has no mention of a female subject portrayed in the concert-room in all sorts of attitudes and in all sorts and no sort of costume. Yet every one

For such a man it seems poor and mean, but probably Frederick himself did not wish for better. He must have known that his real monument would be his reputation with posterity. In fact the chroniclers agree, and the noble statue of Ma

ere one or many men are dependent for their living on the favour or caprice of another. On the other hand, let it not be forgotten that this innate tendency of human nature is at times replaced by another which has frequently the same outward manifestations, but is not the same feeling, the sentiment, namely, of embarrassment arising from the fear of being servile, and the equally frequent embarrassment arising from that principle which is always at work in the mind, the association of ideas, which in the case of a monarch presents him to the ordinary mortal as embodying ideas of grandeur, power, might, and intellect to which the latter is unaccustomed. Education, economic changes, and the art of manners have done much to conceal, if not e

k on German civilization Professor Richard tells of some Silesian peasants who knelt down when presenting a petition to Frederick William I, and were promptly told to get up, as "such an attitude was unworthy of a human being." Only on one occasion in the reign has an action of the Emperor's afforded ground for the suspicion that he was for a

ad the growing influence of industrialism, and are members of the Landlords' Association: types of a dying feudalism, disposed to believe nothing advantageous to the community if it conflicts with any privilege of their class. Under the name of Junker, the Conservative landowners of the region of Prussia east of the Elbe, they have become everywhere a byword for pride, selfishness, in a word-reaction. They and men of their kidney are to be distinguished from the German "people" in the English sense, and hold themselves vastly superior to the burghertum, the vast middle class. They dislike the "academic freedom" of the university professor, would limit the liberty of the press and restrain the right of public meeting, and increase rather than curtail the powers of the police. On the other hand, if they are a powerful drag on the Emperor's Liberal tendencies-Liberal, that is, in the Prussian sense-towards a comprehensive and well-organized social policy, they a