Auld Lang Syne

LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS IV

Authors complain, and in many cases complain justly, of the large number of letters and visits which they receive from unknown friends and distant admirers. I myself, though the subjects on which I write are not exactly popular, have been sitting at the receipt of such custom for many years. It is difficult to know what to do. To answer all the letters, even to acknowledge all the books that are sent to me from India, Australia, New Zealand, from every new sphere of influence in Africa, from America, North and South, and from the principal countries of Europe, would be physically impossible. A simple knowledge of arithmetic would teach my friends that if I were only to glance at a book in order to give an opinion, or say something pleasant about it, one hour at least of my time in the morning would certainly be consumed by every single book. Every writer imagines that he is the only one who writes a letter, asks a question, or sends a book; but he forgets 165that in this respect everybody has as much right as everybody else, and claims it too, unmindful of the rights of others, and quite unconscious that the sum total of such interruptions would swallow up the whole of a man’s working day. And there is this further danger: however guarded one may be in expressing one’s gratitude or one’s opinion of the merits of a book, one’s letter is apt to appear in advertisements, if only far away in India or the Colonies; nay, we often find that the copy of a book was not even sent us by the author himself, but with the author’s compliments, that is, by an enterprising publisher.

However, there is a compensation in all things, and I gladly confess that I have occasionally derived great advantage from the letters of my unknown friends. They have sent me valuable corrections and useful remarks for my books, they have made me presents of MSS. and local publications difficult to get even at the Bodleian and the British Museum, and I feel sure that they have not been offended even though I could not enter into a long correspondence with every one of my epistolary friends on the origin of language or the home of the Aryan race. My worst friends are those who send me their own writings and wish me to give an opinion, or to find a publisher for them. Had I attempted to comply with one half 166of these requests, I could have done nothing else in life. What would become of me if everybody who cannot find a publisher were to write to me! The introduction of postcards has proved, no doubt, a great blessing to all who are supposed to be oracles, but even an oracular response takes time. Speaking for myself, I may truly say that I often feel tempted to write to a man who is an authority on a special subject on which I want information. I know he could answer my question in five minutes, and yet I hardly ever venture to make the appeal, but go to a library, where I have to waste hours and hours in finding the right book, and afterwards the right passage in it. Why should not others do the same?

And what applies to letters applies to personal visits also. I do sometimes get impatient when perfect strangers call on me without any kind of introduction, sometimes even without a visiting card, and then sit down to propound some theory of their own. Still, taking all in all, I must not complain of my visitors. They do not come in shoals like letters and books, and very often they are interesting and even delightful. Many of them come from America, and the mere fact that they want to see me is a compliment which I appreciate. They have read my books, that is another compliment which I always value; and they 167often speak to me of things that years ago I have said in some article of mine, and which I myself have often quite forgotten.

It strikes me that Americans possess in a very high degree the gift of sight-seeing. They possess what at school was called pace. They travel over England in a fortnight, but at the end they seem to have seen all that is, and all who are, worth seeing. We wonder how they can enjoy anything. But they do enjoy what they see, and they carry away a great many photographs, not only in their albums but in their memory also. The fact is that they generally come well prepared, and know beforehand what they want to see; and, after all, there are limits to everything. If we have only a quarter of an hour to look at the Madonna di San Sisto, may not that short exposure give us an excellent negative in our memory, if only our brain is sensitive, and the lens of our eyes clear and strong? The Americans, knowing that their time is limited, make certainly an excellent use of it, and seem to carry away more than many travellers who stand for hours with open mouths before a Raphael, and in the end know no more of the picture than of the frame. It requires sharp eyes and a strong will to see much in a short time. Some portrait painters, for instance, catch a likeness in a few minutes; others sit and sit, and stare and stare, and alter 168and alter, and never perceive the real characteristic points in a face.

It is the same with the American interviewer. I do not like him, and I think he ought at all events to tell us that we are being interviewed. Even ancient statues are protected now against snap-shots in the museums of antiquities. But with all that I cannot help admiring him. His skill, in the cases where I have been under his scalpel or before his brush, has certainly been extraordinary, and several of them seem to have seen in my house, in my garden, in my library, and in my face, what I myself had never detected there, and all that in about half an hour. I remember one visit, however, which was rather humiliating. An American gentleman (I did not know that he was interviewing me) had been sitting with me for a long time, asking all sorts of questions and making evidently a trigonometrical survey of myself and my surroundings. At last I had to tell him that I was sorry I had to go, as I had to deliver a lecture. As he seemed so interested in my work I naturally expected he would ask me to allow him to hear my lecture. Nothing of the kind! “I am sorry,” he said, “but you don’t mind my sitting here in your library till you come back?” And, true enough, there I found him when I came home after an hour, and he was delighted to see me 169again. Some months after I had my reward in a most charming account of an interview with Professor Max Müller, published in an American journal. This power of observation which these interviewers, and to a certain extent most American travellers, seem to possess, is highly valuable, and as most of us cannot hope to have more than a few hours to see such monuments as St. Peter or Santa Sophia, or such giants as Tennyson or Browning, we ought to take a leaf out of the book of our American friends, and try to acquire some of their pace and go.

And then, America does not send us interviewers only, but nearly all their most eminent men and their most charming women pay us the compliment of coming over to the old country. They generally cannot give us more than a few days, or it may be a few hours only; and in that short space we also have to learn how to measure them, how to appreciate and love them. It has to be done quickly, or not at all. Living at Oxford, I have had the good fortune of receiving visits from Emerson, Dr. Wendell Holmes, and Lowell, to speak of the brightest stars only. Each of them stayed at our house for several days, so that I could take them in at leisure, while others had to be taken at one gulp, often between one train and the next. Oxford has a great attraction for all 170Americans, and it is a pleasure to see how completely at home they feel in the memories of the place. The days when Emerson, Wendell Holmes, and Lowell were staying with us, the breakfasts and luncheons, the teas and dinners, and the delightful walks through college halls, chapels and gardens are possessions for ever.

Emerson, I am grieved to say, when during his last visit to England he spent some days with us, accompanied and watched over by his devoted daughter, was already on the brink of that misfortune which overtook him in his old age. His memory often failed him, but as through a mist the bright and warm sun of his mind was always shining, and many of his questions and answers have remained engraved in my memory, weak and shaky as that too begins to be. I had forgotten that Emerson had ceased to be an active preacher, and I told him that I rather envied him the opportunity of speaking now and then to his friends and neighbours on subjects on which we can seldom speak except in church. He then told me not only what he had told others, that “he had had enough of it,” but he referred to an episode in his life, or rather in that of his brother, which struck me as very significant at the time. “There was an ecclesiastical leaven in our family,” he said. “My brother and I were both meant for the ministry 171in the Unitarian community. My brother was sent by my father to Germany (I believe to Göttingen), and after a thorough study of theology was returning to America. On the voyage home the ship was caught in a violent gale, and all hope of saving the ship and the lives of the passengers was given up. At that time my brother said his prayers, and made a vow that if his life should be spared he would never preach again, but give up theology altogether and earn an honest living in some other way. The ship weathered the storm, my brother’s life was saved, and, in spite of all entreaties, he kept his vow. Something of the same kind may have influenced me,” he added: “anyhow, I felt that there was better work for me to do than to preach from the pulpit.” And so, no doubt, there was for this wonderfully gifted man, particularly at the time and in the place where he lived. A few years’ study at Göttingen might have been useful to the younger Emerson by showing him the track followed by other explorers of the unknown seas of religion and philosophy, but he felt in himself the force to grapple with the great problems of the world without going first to school to learn how others before him had grappled with them. And this was perhaps the best for him and for us. His freshness and his courage remained undamped by the failures of others, 172and the directness of his judgment and poetical intuition had freer scope in his rhapsodies than it would have had in learned treatises. I do not wonder that philosophers by profession had at first nothing to say to his essays because they did not seem to advance their favourite inquiries beyond the point they had reached before. But there were many people, particularly in America, to whom these rhapsodies did more good than any learned disquisitions or carefully arranged sermons. There is in them what attracts us so much in the ancients, freshness, directness, self-confidence, unswerving loyalty to truth, as far as they could see it. He had no one to fear, no one to please. Socrates or Plato, if suddenly brought to life again in America, might have spoken like Emerson, and the effect produced by Emerson was certainly like that produced by Socrates in olden times.

What Emerson’s personal charm must have been in earlier life we can only conjecture from the rapturous praises bestowed on him by his friends, even during his lifetime. A friend of his who had watched Emerson and his work and his ever-increasing influence, declares without hesitation that “the American nation is more indebted to his teaching than to any other person who has spoken or written on his themes during the last twenty years.” He calls his genius “the measure and 173present expansion of the American mind.” And his influence was not confined to the American mind. I have watched it growing in England. I still remember the time when even experienced literary judges spoke of his essays as mere declamations, as poetical rhapsodies, as poor imitations of Carlyle. Then gradually one man after another found something in Emerson which was not to be found in Carlyle, particularly his loving heart, his tolerant spirit, his comprehensive sympathy with all that was or was meant to be good and true, even though to his own mind it was neither the one nor the other.

After a time some more searching critics were amazed at sentences which spoke volumes, and showed that Emerson, though he had never written a systematic treatise on philosophy, stood on a firm foundation of the accumulated philosophic thought of centuries. Let us take such a sentence as “Generalisation is always a new influx of divinity into the mind—hence the thrill that attends.” To the ordinary reader such a sentence can convey very little; it might seem, in fact, a mere exaggeration. But to those who know the long history of thought connected with the question of the origin of conceptual thought as the result of ceaseless generalisation, Emerson’s words convey the outcome of profound thought. They show that he 174had recognised in general ideas, which are to us merely the result of a never-ceasing synthesis, the original thoughts or logoi underlying the immense variety of created things; that he had traced them back to their only possible source, the Divine Mind, and that he saw how the human mind, by rising from particulars to the general, was in reality approaching the source of those divine thoughts, and thus becoming conscious, as it were, of the influx of divinity. Other philosophers have expressed similar thoughts by saying that induction is the light that leads us up, deduction the light that leads us down. Mill thought that generalisation is a mere process of mother-wit, of the shrewd and untaught intelligence; and that, from one narrow point of view, it is so, has been fully proved since by an analysis of language. Every word is a generalisation, and contains in itself a general idea, the so-called root. These first generalisations are, no doubt, at first the work of mother-wit and untaught intelligence only, and hence the necessity of constantly correcting them, whether by experience or by philosophy. But these words are nevertheless the foundation of all later thought, and if they have not reached as yet the fulness of the Divine Logoi, they represent at least the advancing steps by which alone the human mind could reach, and will reach at last, the ideas of the Divine Mind.

175Thus one pregnant sentence of Emerson’s shows, when we examine it more closely, that he had seen deeper into the mysteries of nature, and of the human mind, than thousands of philosophers, call them evolutionists (realists) or nominalists. Evolutionists imagine that they have explained everything that requires explanation in nature if they have shown a more or less continuous development from the moneres to man, from the thrills of the moneres to the thoughts of man. Nominalists again think that by ascending from the single to the general, and by comprehending the single under a general name, they have solved all the questions involved in nature, that is, in our comprehension of nature. They never seem to remember that there was a time when all that we call either single or general, but particularly all that is general, had for the first time to be conceived or created. Before there was a single tree, some one must have thought the tree or treehood. Before there was a single ape, or a single man, some one must have thought that apehood or that manhood which we see realised in every ape and in every man, unless we can bring ourselves to believe in a thoughtless world. If that first thought was the concept of a mere moneres, still in that thought there must have been the distant perspective of ape or man, and it is that first thought alone 176which to the present day keeps the ape an ape, and a man a man. Divine is hardly a name good enough for that first Thinker of Thoughts. Still, it is that Divinity which Emerson meant when he said that generalisation is always a new influx of divinity into the mind because it reveals to the mind the first thoughts, the Divine Logoi, of the universe. The thrill of which he speaks is the thrill arising from the nearness of the Divine, the sense of the presence of those Divine Logoi, or that Divine Logos, which in the beginning was with God, and without which not anything was made that was made. Evolution can never be more than the second act; the first act is the Volition or the Thought of the universe, unless we hold that there can be effect without a cause, or a Kosmos without a Logos.

Such utterances, lost almost in the exuberance of Emerson’s thoughts, mark the distinction between a thoughtful and a shallow writer, between a scarred veteran and a smooth recruit. They will give permanence to Emerson’s influence both at home and abroad, and place him in the ranks of those who have not lived or thought in vain. When he left my house, I knew, of course, that we should never meet again in this life, but I felt that I had gained something that could never be taken from me.

177Another eminent American who often honoured my quiet home at Oxford was James Russell Lowell, for a time United States Minister in England. He was a Professor and at the same time a politician and a man of the world. Few essays are so brimful of interesting facts and original reflections as his essays entitled “Among my Books.” His “Biglow Papers,” which made him one of the leading men in the United States, appeal naturally to American rather than to Cosmopolitan readers. But in society he was at home in England as much as in America, in Spain as well as in Holland.

I came to know him first as a sparkling correspondent, and then as a delightful friend.

Here is the letter which began our intimacy:—

I read with great satisfaction what you wrote about jade.^[12] One is tempted to cry out, with Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, “How now, ye pampered jades of Asia!” One thing in the discussion has struck me a good deal, and that is, the 178crude notion which intelligent men have of the migration of tribes. I think most men’s conception of distance is very much a creature of maps—which make Crim Tartary and England not more than a foot apart, so that the feat of the old rhyme—“to dance out of Ireland into France,” looks easy. They seem to think that the shifting of habitation was accomplished like a modern journey by rail, and that the emigrants wouldn’t need tools by the way or would buy them at the nearest shop after their arrival. There is nothing the ignorant and the poor cling to so tenaciously as their familiar household utensils. Incredible things are brought every day to America in the luggage of emigrants—things often most cumbrous to carry and utterly useless in the new home. Families that went from our seaboard to the West a century ago, through an almost impenetrable wilderness, carried with them all their domestic pots and pans—even those, I should be willing to wager, that needed the tinker. I remember very well the starting of an expedition from my native town of Cambridge in 1831, for Oregon, under the lead of a captain of great energy and resource. They started in waggons ingeniously contrived so as to be taken to pieces, the body forming a boat for crossing rivers. They carried everything they could think of with them, and got safely to the other side of the continent, as hard a job, I fancy, as our Aryan ancestors had to do. There is hardly a family of English descent in New England that doesn’t cherish, as an heirloom, something brought over by the first ancestors two hundred and fifty years ago. And besides the motive of utility there is that also of sentiment—particularly strong in the case of an old tool.

179Lowell’s conversation was inexhaustible, his information astonishing. Pleasant as he was, even as an antagonist, he would occasionally lose his temper and use very emphatic language. I was once sitting next to him when I heard him stagger his neighbour, a young lady, by bursting out with: “But, madam, I do not accept your major premiss!”

Poor thing, she evidently was not accustomed to such language, and not acquainted with that terrible term. She collapsed, evidently quite at a loss as to what gift on her part Mr. Lowell declined to accept.

Sometimes even the most harmless remark about America would call forth very sharp replies from him. Everybody knows that the salaries paid by America to her diplomatic staff are insufficient, and no one knew it better than he himself. But when the remark was made in his presence that the United States treated their diplomatic representatives stingily, he fired up, and discoursed most eloquently on the advantages of high thoughts and humble living. His cleverness and readiness in writing occasional verses have become proverbial, and I am glad to be able to add two more to the many jeux d’esprit of this brilliant and amiable guest.

Abundant as was his wit in the true sense of that word, his kindness was equally so. After he had written the above verses for my wife, my young daughter Beatrice (now Mrs. Colyer Fergusson) asked him, as young ladies are wont to do, for a few lines for herself. He at once resumed his pen and wrote:—

24th June, 1886.

I lost the pleasure of shaking hands with Longfellow during his stay in England. Though I have been more of a fixture at Oxford than most professors, I was away during the vacation when he paid his visit to our University, and thus lost seeing a poet to whom I felt strongly attracted, not only by the general spirit of his poetry, which was steeped in German thought, but as the translator of several of my father’s poems.

I was more fortunate with Dr. Wendell Holmes. His arrival in England had been proclaimed beforehand, and one naturally remained at home in order to be allowed to receive him. His hundred days in England were one uninterrupted triumphal progress. When he arrived at Liverpool he found about three hundred invitations waiting for him. Though he was accompanied by a most active 182and efficient daughter, he had at once to engage a secretary to answer this deluge of letters. And though he was past eighty, he never spared himself, and was always ready to see and to be seen. He was not only an old, but a ripe and mellow man.

There was no subject on which one could touch which was not familiar to the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. His thoughts and his words were ready, and one felt that it was not for the first time that the subject had been carefully thought out and talked out by him. That he should have been able to stand all the fatigue of his journey and the constant claims on his ready wit seemed to me marvellous. I had the pleasure of showing him the old buildings of Oxford. He seemed to know them all, and had something to ask and to say about every one.

When we came to Magdalen College, he wanted to see and to measure the elms. He was very proud of some elms in America, and he had actually brought some string with which he had measured the largest tree he knew in his own country. He proceeded to measure one of our finest elms in Magdalen College, and when he found that it was larger than his American giant, he stood before it admiring it, without a single word of envy or disappointment.

183I had, however, a great fright while he was staying at our house. He had evidently done too much, and after our first dinner party he had feverish shivering fits, and the doctor whom I sent for declared at once that he must keep perfectly quiet in bed, and attend no more parties of any kind. This was a great disappointment to myself and to many of my friends. But at his time of life the doctor’s warning could not be disregarded, and I had, at all events, the satisfaction of sending him off to Cambridge safe and sound. I had him several days quite to myself, and there were few subjects which we did not discuss. We mostly agreed, but even where we did not, it was a real pleasure to differ from him. We discussed the greatest and the smallest questions, and on every one he had some wise and telling remarks to pour out. I remember one long conversation while we were sitting in an old wainscoted room at All Souls’, ornamented with the arms of former fellows. It had been at first the library of the college, then one of the fellows’ rooms, and lastly a lecture-room. We were deep in the old question of the true relation between the Divine and the Human in man, and here again, as on all other questions, everything seemed to be clear and evident to his mind. Perhaps I ought not to repeat what he said to me when we parted: “I have had much talk 184with people in England; with you I have had a real conversation.” We understood each other, and wondered how it was that men so often misunderstood one another. I told him that it was the badness of our language, he thought it was the badness of our tempers. Perhaps we were both right. With him again good-bye was good-bye for life, and at such moments one wonders indeed how kindred souls became separated, and one feels startled and repelled at the thought that, such as they were on earth, they can never meet again. And yet there is continuity in the world, there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what has been will surely be again, though how it will be we cannot know, and if only we trust in the Wisdom that pervades and overshadows the whole Universe, we need not know.

Were I to write down my more or less casual meetings with men of literary eminence, I should have much more to say, much that was of deep interest and value to myself, but would hardly be of interest to others. I felt greatly flattered, for instance, when years ago Macaulay invited me to see him at the Albany, and to discuss with him the new regulations for the Indian Civil Service. This must have been in about 1854. I was quite a young and unknown man at the time, but I had already made his acquaintance at Bunsen’s house, 185where he had been asked to meet Herr von Radowitz, for a short time Prime Minister in Prussia, and the most famous talker in Germany. It was indeed a tournament to watch, but as it was in English, which Radowitz spoke well, yet not well enough for such a contest, Macaulay carried the day, though Radowitz excelled in repartee, in anecdotes, and in a certain elegance more telling in French than in English.

I went to call on Macaulay in London, well provided as I thought with facts and arguments in support of the necessity of Oriental studies, which I knew he had always discouraged, in the preparation and examination of candidates for the Indian Civil Service. He began by telling me that he knew nothing of Indian languages and literature, and that he wanted to know all I had to say on the real advantages to be derived by young civilians from a study of Sanskrit. I had already published several letters in The Times on the subject, and had carried on a long controversy with Sir Charles Trevelyan, afterwards published in a pamphlet, entitled “Correspondence relating to the Establishment of an Oriental College in London.”

Macaulay, after sitting down, asked me a number of questions, but before I had time to answer any one of them, he began to relate his own experiences in India, dilating on the difference between a 186scholar and a man of business, giving a full account of his controversy, while in India, with men like Professor Wilson and others, who maintained that English would never become the language of India, expressing his own strong conviction to the contrary, and relating a number of anecdotes, showing that the natives learnt English far more easily than the English could ever learn Hindustani or Sanskrit. Then he branched off into some disparaging remarks about Sanskrit literature, particularly about their legal literature, entering minutely into the question of what authority could be assigned to the Laws of Manu, and of what possible use they could be in determining lawsuits between natives, ending up with the usual diatribes about the untruthfulness of the natives of India, and their untrustworthiness as witnesses in a court of law.

This went on for nearly an hour and was very pleasant to listen to, but most disappointing to a young man who had come well primed with facts to meet all these arguments, and who tried in vain to find a chance to put in a single word. At the end of this so-called conversation Macaulay thanked me for the useful information I had given him, and I went back to Oxford a sadder and I hope a wiser man. What I had chiefly wished to impress on him was that Haileybury should not be suppressed, but should be improved, should not be ended, but 187mended. But it was easier and more popular to suppress it, and suppressed it was, so that in England, which has the largest Oriental Empire in the world, there is now not a single school or seminary for the teaching of Oriental languages, whereas France, Italy, Prussia, Austria and Russia have all found it expedient to have such establishments and to support them by liberal grants. Everybody now begins to see that these governments are reaping their rewards, but in England the old argument remains the same: “We can always find interpreters if we pay them well, and if we only speak loud enough the natives never fail to understand what we mean.”

This is no doubt much the same as what Mr. Layard meant when he explained to me how he managed to keep his diggers in order: “I speak English to them; if they do not understand I shout at them,” he said; “if they won’t obey, I knock them down; and if they show fight, I shoot them down.” No doubt this was an exaggeration, but it certainly does not prove the uselessness of a thorough knowledge of Oriental languages for those who are sent to the East to govern millions, and not to shout at them, or to knock them down.

Another true friend of mine was Arthur Helps, the author of “Friends in Council,” and for a long time clerk to the Privy Council. He often paid 188us a visit on his way to or from Blenheim, where he used to stay with the then Duke of Marlborough. He had a very high opinion of the Duke’s ability as President of the Council, and considered his personal influence most important. “At the time of a change of Ministry, you should see the members of the Cabinet,” he said. “People imagine they are miserable and disheartened. The fact is they are like a pack of schoolboys going home for their holidays, and scrambling out of the Council Chamber as fast as ever they can.”

Once when he came to stay with us on his return from Blenheim, he told me how the Duke had left the day before for London, and that on that very day the emu had laid an egg. The Duke had taken the greatest interest in his emus and had long looked forward to this event. A telegram was sent to the Duke, which, when shown to Mr. Helps, ran as follows: “The emu has laid an egg, and, in the absence of your Grace, we have taken the largest goose we could find to hatch it.”

Helps was a most sensible and thoroughly honest man; yet the last years of his life were dreadfully embittered by some ill-advised speculations of his which brought severe losses not only on himself, but, what he felt far more keenly, on several of his friends whom he had induced to share in his undertaking.

189I missed the pleasure of knowing Lord Lytton. But this illustrious writer, Lord Lytton, or in earlier days, Sir Lytton Bulwer Lytton, whose “Last Days of Pompeii” had been the delight of my youth, paid me a great and quite undeserved compliment by dedicating to me one of his last, if not his very last work, “The Coming Race,” 1871. The book was published anonymously, and as it was dedicated to me, I tried very hard to discover the author of it, but in vain. It was only after his death that Lord Lytton’s authorship became known. The book itself could hardly be called a novel, nor was there anything very striking or sensational in it. Yet, to the honour of the English public be it said, it was discovered at once that it could not be the work of an ordinary writer. It went through edition after edition, and, to the great delight of the anonymous author, was received with universal applause. Vril was the name given by the author to the fluid which in the hands of a Vrilya was raised into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It destroyed like the flash of lightning, yet, differently applied, it replenished or invigorated life. With it a way could be rent through the most solid substances, and from it a light was extracted, steadier, softer, and healthier than from all other inflammable materials. The fire lodged in 190the hollow of a reed, and directed by the hand of a child, could shatter the strongest fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. All this reads almost like a prophecy of the electric fluid in its application to engines of war and engines of peace, but its name now survives chiefly in the powerful and invigorating fluid extracted from beef, and advertised on every wall as Bo-vril—unless I am quite mistaken in my etymology.

There are many more of the most eminent men in England from whom I have received kindness, and with whom, even as a young man, I had some interesting intercourse. But I become more and more doubtful whether I can trust my memory, and whether, in writing down my recollections, I am doing my friends full justice. When I gave my first lectures at the Royal Institution (in 1861), I came into frequent contact with Faraday. He was then what I thought an old man, and though it was quite beyond my power to estimate his greatness, he was one of those men who at once gave one the impression that they are really great. There was dignity and composure in his conversation, and at the same time a kindly welcome in his dark bright eyes which made one feel at home with him from the very first meeting. Though the subject I had to lecture on was quite new to 191him, he took the liveliest interest in my lectures. I told him how disappointed his assistant had been—I believe his name was Anderson or Robertson—when he offered me his services for my lectures, and I had to tell him that I wanted nothing, no gas, no light, no magnets, that there would be no experiments, not even diagrams to pull up and down. “O yes,” said Faraday, “I know how he tells his friends that he does all the hard work at my lectures, all the experiments, but that he lets me do the talking.” He seemed much amused when I told him that I had had just the same experience, and that one of my compositors was fully convinced that he was really responsible for my books, and told his fellow-compositors that I could not have brought out a single book without him.

Faraday sat patiently through most, if not all of my lectures, and it was a pleasure to look at his face beaming with intelligence. When I lectured for the first time on the Science of Language, I had in the beginning to clear the ground of many prejudices, and amongst the rest, to dispose of what was then almost an article of faith—namely, that all the languages of the world were derived from Hebrew. I gave a whole lecture to this question, and when it was over, an imposing old lady came up to shake hands with me and to thank me for the beautiful lecture I had delivered. “How 192delightful it is to know,” she continued, “that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew in Paradise, and that all the other languages of the world, English not excepted, have come out of Hebrew and out of Paradise.” I really felt very much humiliated, and when Faraday came up I told him what had happened. “Oh, you must not be discouraged,” he said, “I hardly ever lecture on chemistry without an old dowager coming up to me with an incredulous smile and saying: ‘Now, Mr. Faraday, you don’t really mean to say that the water I drink is nothing but what you call oxygen and hydrogen?’ Go on,” he said, “something will always stick.”

I certainly had splendid audiences; all the best men of the town were there. But brilliant as my audiences were—they included A. P. Stanley, Fredk. Maurice, Dean Milman, Bishop Thirlwall, Mill, Lady Stanley, even royalty honoured me several times—the old habitués of the Royal Institution were not easy to please. The front row was generally occupied by old men with hearing-trumpets, old Indians, old generals, old clergymen, etc. A number of ladies came in with their newspaper and unfolded it before the lecture began, and seemed to read it with their eyes while their ears were supposed to follow my arguments. One’s self-conceit is sometimes very much tried. After 193one of my lectures I saw one of the old East Indians led out by his son or nephew, who shouted in a loud voice into his father’s ear, “That was a splendid lecture, was it not?” “Yes,” said the old man in a still louder voice, “very interesting—very; didn’t understand a single word of it.” Such is reputation. On another occasion the same deaf and loud-voiced gentleman was heard to tell his neighbour who I was and what I had done. “Yes,” he shouted, “I know him; he is a clever young man. And we have appointed him to do some work for us, to publish the old Bible of India. We have also made him our examiner for the Civil Service of India. A clever young man, I assure you.”

That is how I rose in the estimation of the London world, and how Albemarle Street became crowded with fashionable carriages, and people could hardly find places in order to hear all about Aryan roots and our Aryan ancestors, and our common Aryan home somewhere in Asia.

It was in the same Royal Institution that I first raised my voice against the thoughtless extravagances of the so-called Darwinian School, and this at a time when it required more courage to express a doubt on any Darwinian theories than to doubt the descent of all languages from Hebrew. As to Darwin himself, I had expressed my admiration of 194him in my very first course of lectures, and I had more particularly tried to show how the idea of evolution, or development, or growth, or whatever name we like to use instead of the name of history, had at all times been the guiding principle in the researches of the students of the “Science of Languages.” Our object had always been to discover how languages came to be what they are, to study the origin and growth, or more truly the history of language. If we spoke of the development or evolution of language (Entwickelung) it was simply in order to avoid the constant use of the same word. We comparative philologists had, in fact, been talking evolution for more than forty years, as M. Jourdain had been talking prose all his life, without being aware of it (sans que j’en susse rien). But we never went into raptures about that blessed word “evolution,” or about the passage from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous.

What I, from my own point of view, valued particularly in Darwin’s philosophy was the technical term of Natural Selection. Logically it was not quite correct, for, say what you like, selection presupposes a selector. Without a selector there is no selection, and unless we speak mythologically, we cannot speak of Nature as a selector. I should have preferred, therefore, Rational Elimination, 195looking upon Reason, or the Good of Plato, as the power that works for good or for fitness in all that survives or is not crowded out. But with this restriction Natural Selection was the very term we wanted to signify that process which is constantly going on in language—“excluding caprice as well as necessity, including individual exertion as well as general co-operation, applicable neither to the unconscious building of bees nor to the conscious architecture of human beings, yet combining within itself both these operations, and raising them to a higher conception.”^[14] Natural selection was the very term we wanted for a true insight into the so-called growth of language, and it was Darwin who gave it us, even though for our own purposes we had to define it more strictly.

I gave Darwin full credit for having discovered and popularised this new “category of thought,” but the constant hallelujahs that were raised over the discovery of Evolution showed surely an extraordinary ignorance of the history of philosophical thought in Europe. Darwin himself was the very last person to claim evolution as a discovery of his own; but is there a single paper that has not called him the discoverer of Evolution? He knew too well how, particularly in his own special field of study, the controversy whether each so-called 196genus or species had required a separate act of creation, had been raging for centuries. He remembered the famous controversy in 1830 at the French Institute, between Cuvier and Geoffray Saint-Hilaire, and Goethe’s equally famous remarks on the subject. It would seem as if Darwin himself had originally been under the spell of the old idea that every species, if not every individual, required a special act of creation, and he describes, if I remember rightly, the shock it gave him when he saw for the first time that this idea had to be surrendered. It was evidently considered to be the orthodox view of creation, though I do not know why; nay, it seems to be so still, if we remember how the present Archbishop of Canterbury was represented as unfit to wear a mitre because he believed in evolution; that is, as I should say, in his senses. I myself, on the contrary, was given to understand at the time by my unorthodox friends that my want of belief in evolution was but a survival of my orthodox opinions. I was much puzzled before I could understand why I was looked at askance, till in one of the reviews I was told in so many words that if I did not believe in evolution, I must believe in the theory of special creations, or in nothing at all. Even Tyndall, dear honest Tyndall, told me one day at the Royal Institution that it was no use my 197kicking against the pricks, and I then had an opportunity of telling him my mind. “When some substance is brought you,” I said, “don’t you first of all analyse it to find out what it consists of, before you use it for any further experiments? Well, that is really what a student of language does. When you bring him a word like evolution, the first thing he asks for is an analysis or definition. That may often seem very discourteous, but it cannot be otherwise in any decent laboratory of chemistry or thought. Now if evolution is meant for an action, you cannot have an action without an actor, whether his action is direct or indirect. Of course you will say that we all know that, that it is mere childish logic; but, if so, we should not imagine that we can neglect this childish logic with impunity, that we can have a successful experiment without first wiping our crucibles clean. If, on the contrary, evolution is to be taken in the sense of a process excluding an actor or evolver, this should be clearly stated, and in that case the more familiar word ‘growth’ would have been far preferable, because it would not have raised unfounded expectations. But even growth means very little unless it is authenticated by history step by step.

“If then you tell me that there is growth, not only from the sperm to men like you and me, not 198only from an egg to a caterpillar, from a caterpillar to a chrysalis, and from a chrysalis to a butterfly, but likewise from inorganic to organised matter, from plants to animals, from reptiles to birds, from apes to men, I have not a word to say against it. I know you to be an honest man, and if you can assure me that there are historical facts, real, visible facts, to support this transition from one species to another, or even from one genus to another, I trust you. It would be simple arrogance were I to doubt your word, within your own special sphere of study. You have seen the transition or connecting links, you know that it is not only possible, but real, and there is an end of it. Only allow me to say that from a philosophical point of view there is nothing new in this concept of growth, or, as you call it, evolution. You would never say that Lamarck had been the discoverer of growth in nature, neither has it any definite meaning to me when you say that Darwin was the discoverer of evolution. I can understand enough of Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ to enable me to admire his power of observation and his true genius of combination. I can see how he has reduced the number of unnecessary species, and of unnecessary acts of so-called special creation; and that possibly he has traced back the whole of the animal and vegetable kingdoms to four beginnings, 199and in the end to one Creator. Darwin did not go beyond this, he required four beginnings and one Creator. It was left to his followers to carry out his principles, as they thought, by eliminating the Creator, and reducing the four beginnings to one. If you think that all this rests on well ascertained facts, I have nothing to say except to express my surprise that some men of great learning and undoubted honesty are not so positive as to these facts as you are. But with the exception of a Creator, that is, a subjective Author of the universe, all this is really outside my special province, and I could afford to be silent. Only when Darwin maintains the transition from some highly developed animal into a human being, I say, Stop! Here the student of language has a word to say, and I say that language is something that, even in its most rudimentary form, puts an impassable barrier between beast and man.”

Soon after, when I had been asked to give a new course of lectures at the Royal Institution, I had selected this very point, the barrier which language forms between man and brute, for my subject, and as Darwin’s “Descent of Man” was then occupying the thoughts of philosophers, I promised to give a course of lectures on “Darwin’s Philosophy of Language.” Entertaining, as 200I did, a sincere admiration for Darwin, I felt that it would have been even discourteous to attempt to be courteous to such a man by passing over in silence what he had said on language. This kind of courtesy is most offensive to a true man of science. Otherwise nothing would have been easier than to find antagonists for my purpose, beginning with Epicurus and ending with Mr. H. Wedgwood’s “Etymological Dictionary of the English Language” (second edition, 1872). It so happened that the author of that dictionary was a friend of Darwin’s, and had easily persuaded him that interjections and imitations of natural sounds formed the material elements of all human speech, and that, as certain animals barked, and mocking birds and parrots imitated sounds which they heard, there seemed to be no reason whatever why animals in a few millions of years should not have invented a language of their own. This naturally fell in with Darwin’s own views and wishes, and though he always spoke with great reserve on the subject of language, yet he would have been more than human if he had surrendered his conviction of the descent of man from some kind of animal on account of this, as his friend had assured him, so easily removable barrier of language. Given a sufficient number of years, he thought, and why should not bow-wow and pooh-pooh have evolved 201into “I bark” and “I despise”? The fact that no animal had ever evolved such words could not be denied, but it could be ignored, or explained away by evidence clearly showing that animals communicated with each other; as if to communicate were the same as to speak. My object in my lectures (published at the time in Longman’s Magazine) was to show that no such transition from pooh-pooh to I despise is possible; nay, that even the first step, the formation of roots, that is, of general concepts out of single sounds, that is, single percepts, is beyond the power of any animal, except the human animal. Even now it is only the human baby or puppy that can learn to imitate human language, and what is the mere learning of a language, compared with the creation of language, which was the real task of those human animals that became men? In all the arguments which I used in support of my theory—a theory no longer controverted, I believe, by any competent and independent scholar and thinker—I never used a single disrespectful word about Mr. Darwin. But for all that I was supposed to have blasphemed, again not by Mr. Darwin himself, but by those who called themselves his bulldogs. I was actually suspected of having written that notorious article in The Quarterly Review which gave such just offence to Darwin. Darwin himself was 202above all this, and I have his letter in which he writes, 5th January, 1875:—

I have just read the few first pages of your article in The Contemporary Review, and I hope that you will permit me to say that neither I, nor my son, ever supposed that you were the author of the review in the Quarterly. You are about the last man in England to whom I should have attributed such a review. I know it was written by Mr. M., and the utterly false and base statements contained in it are worthy of the man.

But what was better still, Mr. Darwin gave me an opportunity of discussing the facts and arguments which stood between him and me in a personal interview. Sir John Lubbock took me to see the old philosopher at his place, Down, Beckenham, Kent, and there are few episodes in my life which I value more. I need not describe the simplicity of his house, and the grandeur of the man who had lived and worked in it for so many years. Darwin gave me a hearty welcome, showed me his garden and his flowers, and then took me into his study, and standing leaning against his desk began to examine me. He said at once that personally he was quite ignorant of the science of language, and had taken his facts and opinions chiefly from his friend, Mr. Wedgwood. I had been warned that Darwin could not carry on a 203serious discussion for more than about ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, as it always brought on his life-long complaint of sickness. I therefore put before him in the shortest way possible the difficulties which prevented me from accepting the theory of animals forming a language out of interjections and sounds of nature. I laid stress on the fact that no animal, except the human animal, had ever made a step towards generalisation of percepts, and towards roots, the real elements of all languages, as signs of such generalised percepts, and I gave him a few illustrations of how our words for one to ten, for father, mother, sun and moon had really and historically been evolved. That man thus formed a real anomaly in the growth of the animal kingdom, as conceived by him, I fully admitted; but it was impossible for me to ignore facts, and language in its true meaning has always been to my mind a fact that could not be wiped away by argument, as little as the Himalayas could be wiped away with a silk handkerchief even in millions of years. He listened most attentively without making any objections, but before he shook hands and left me, he said in the kindest way, “You are a dangerous man.” I ventured to reply, “There can be no danger in our search for truth,” and he left the room.

He was exactly the man I had imagined, massive 204in his forehead, kind in his smile, and hardly bent under the burden of his knowledge or the burden of his years. I must give one more of his letters, because my late friend Romanes, who saw it in my album, seems to have entirely misapprehended its meaning. He saw in it a proof of Mr. Darwin’s extraordinary humility. I do not deny his humility, it was extraordinary, and, what is more, it was genuine. All great men know how little they know in comparison with what they do not know. They are humble, they do not only wish to appear so. But I see in Darwin’s letter far more of humour than of humility. I see him chuckling while he wrote it, and though I value it as a treasure, I never looked upon it as a trophy.

My Dear Sir,

I am greatly obliged to you for so kindly sending me your essay, which I am sure will interest me much. With respect to our differences, though some of your remarks have been rather stinging, they have all been made so gracefully, I declare that I am like the man in the story who boasted that he had been soundly horsewhipped by a Duke.

RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES I

By royal I do not mean kings and emperors only, or queens and empresses. I should have very little to tell of them. But royal, as is well known, has a wider meaning. The families of all reigning sovereigns, whether grand dukes, dukes, princes, landgraves, electors, etc., are royalty, nay even certain mediatised families, families that have ceased to be reigning, and which are very numerous on the continent, claim the same status, and may therefore intermarry with royal princes and princesses. Princes and princesses may also marry persons who are not royalty, but in that case the marriage is morganatic—a perfectly good and legal form of marriage both from an ecclesiastical and civil point of view, only that the children of such marriages, though perfectly legitimate, cannot succeed to the throne: in many cases no great loss to them. It has been my good fortune to see a good deal of royalty during the whole of my life. I say 206good fortune on purpose, for, with all the drawbacks inherent in Court life, royal persons enjoy some great advantages. Their position is assured and well defined. It requires no kind of self-assertion, and wherever they appear, they have no equals, no rivals, and hardly any enviers. They know that their presence always gives pleasure, and that every kind word or look from them is highly appreciated. They seldom have any inducement to try to appear different from what they are, or to disguise what they think or feel. What is the use of being a bishop, Stanley used to say, except that you can speak your own mind! The same applies to crowned heads, and if some of them, and it may be some bishops also, do not avail themselves of this privilege, it is surely their own fault. No doubt, if a bishop wants to become an archbishop, he has to think twice about what he may and what he may not say. But a king or a prince does not generally want to become anything else, and as they want nothing from anybody, they are not likely to scheme, to flatter, or to deceive. Whatever people may say of the atmosphere of courts and the insincerity of courtiers, the sovereign himself, if only left to himself, if only seen in his own private cabinet, is generally above the vitiated atmosphere that pervades his palace, nor does he, as a rule, while speaking with 207perfect freedom himself, dislike perfect freedom in others.

Of course there are differences among royalty as well as among commonalty. Some sovereigns have become so accustomed to the daily supply of the very cheapest flattery, that the slightest divergence from the tone of their courtiers is apt to startle or to offend them. Still most human beings like fresh air.

And have we not known persons who display their mitres and shake their crosiers before our faces, far more than kings their crowns and their sceptres? There is a whole class of people in ordinary life who have become something, and who seem always to be thanking God that they are not as other men are. They have ceased to be what they were, quite unaware that even in becoming something, there ought always to be or to remain something that becomes or has become. They seem to have been created afresh when they were created peers, temporal or spiritual.

But we must not be unfair to these new creations or creatures. I have known bishops, and archbishops too, in England, who, to their friends, always remained Thirlwalls or Thomsons, and in the second place only Bishops of St. David’s or Archbishops of York. My friend Arthur Stanley never became a dean. He was always Stanley; Dean of 208Westminster, if necessary. If he had been what he ought to have been, Archbishop of Canterbury, he would never have ceased to be A. P. Stanley, his chuckle would always have been just the same, and if his admirers had presented him with a mitre and crosier, he would probably have put the mitre on his head sideways, and said to his friends what another bishop is reported to have said on a similar occasion: “Thank you, my friends, but a new hat and an alpaca umbrella would have been far more useful than a mitre and a crosier.” With regard to royal personages, they have the great advantage that they are to their business born. They have not become, they were born royal. I was much struck by the extraordinary power of observation of a French friend of mine, who, when in 1855 the Queen and the Empress Eugénie entered the Grand Opera at Paris together, and were received with immense applause, turned to his neighbour, an Englishman, and said: “Look at the difference between your Queen and our Empress.” They had both bowed most graciously, and then sat down. “Did you not observe,” he continued, “how the Empress looked round to see if there was a chair for her before she sat down. But your Queen, a born Queen, sat down without looking. She knew a chair must be there, as surely as she is Queen of England.”

209There must be something to hedge a king. While most people have to move in a crowd, and hold their own even in a mob—and it is difficult to move with ease when you are hustled and pushed—royal persons are never in a crowd, and have never to adopt a position of self-defence or self-assertion. Still there is a difference between royal persons also. Some of them with all their dignity manage to hide their crown in everyday life; others seem always conscious that it is there, and that they must not condescend too low, lest it should tumble from their head.

My first acquaintance with royalty was at Dessau, my native town. Much has been written to ridicule the small German princes and their small Courts. And it cannot be denied that the etiquette kept up by the courtiers, and the nobility, in some of the small capitals of Germany is ludicrous in the extreme. But there is in the sovereigns themselves an inherited dignity, a sentiment of noblesse oblige, which demands respect. The reigning Duke of Anhalt-Dessau was to us boys a being by himself, and no wonder. Though the Duchy was so small that on one occasion a troublesome political agitator, who had been expelled from the Duchy, threatened to throw stones and break the Duke’s windows as soon as he had crossed the frontier, to us children Dessau was our world. 210When I was a child, the town of Dessau, the capital of the Duchy, contained not more than 10,000 or 12,000 inhabitants, but the Duke, Leopold Friedrich (1817–1871), was really the most independent sovereign in Europe. He was perfectly irresponsible, a constitution did not exist, and was never allowed to be mentioned. All appointments were made by the Duke, all salaries and pensions were paid from the Ducal chest, whatever existed in the whole Duchy belonged, or seemed to belong, to him. There was no appeal from him, at least not in practice, whatever it may have been in theory. If more money was wanted, the Dukes, I believe, had only to issue a new tax, and the money was forthcoming. And with all that one never, or hardly ever, heard of any act of injustice. The Duke was rich, nearly the whole of the Duchy belonged to him, and he had large landed property elsewhere also. Taxation was low, and during years of war and distress, taxes were actually remitted by the Dukes. The only public opinion there was, was represented by the Duke’s own permanent civil service, and certainly in it tradition was so strong that even the Duke, independent as he was, would have hesitated before going against it.

But the Duke himself was a splendid example of uprightness, fairness, and justice. He belonged to one of the oldest reigning families in Europe. 211The Hohenzollern, and even the Hohenstaufen, were but of yesterday compared with the glorious ancestors of the Ascanian princes. They did not actually claim descent from Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, nor from Askenas, the grandson of Japhet, though some crazy genealogists may have done so; but there is no flaw in their pedigree from the present Duke to Albrecht the Bear, Markgrave of Brandenburg in 1134. Some people would probably say that he belonged to a totemistic age. The Duke whom I knew, and who died in 1871, was the eighteenth successor of this Albrecht the Bear, and though his possessions had been much reduced in the course of centuries, he knew what was due from him to his name, and to the blood of his ancestors. He never forgot it. He was a tall and very handsome man, very quiet, very self-contained, particularly during the later part of his life, when his increasing deafness made any free intercourse between him and his friends and officials extremely difficult. He worked as hard as any of his ministers, and no wonder, considering that everything, whether important or not, had finally to be decided by him. As he had been much attached to my father, and as my grandfather was his president or prime minister, he took some interest in me when I was a boy at school in Dessau, and I can remember standing 212before him and looking up to him in his cabinet with fear and trembling, although nothing could be kinder than the handsome tall man with his deep voice and his slowly uttered words; he seemed to move in an atmosphere of his own, far removed from the life of his subjects. The ducal castle at Dessau was a grand old building, a quadrangle open in front, with turrets that held the staircases leading up to the reception rooms. Some of his ancestors had been highly cultivated men, who had travelled in Italy, France, and England, and had collected treasures of art, which were afterwards stored up in the old Palace (Schloss) at Dessau, and in several beautiful parks in the neighbourhood that had been laid out a hundred years ago after the model of English parks. The orange trees (Orangerie) in those parks and gardens were magnificent, and I do not remember having seen such an abundance of them anywhere else; but they suddenly began to wither and die, and even replanting them by their heads and letting the roots grow as new branches does not seem to have saved them.

The Duke and his highly cultivated Duchess were the little gods of Dessau. They seemed to live on their own Olympus. Everything depended on them; everything, such as theatre, concerts, or any public amusements, had to be provided out 213of their private purse. No wonder that the people looked up to them, and that whatever they did was considered right, whatever they said was repeated as gospel.

Scholars are just now writing learned essays as to whether the idea of the apotheosis of Augustus came to the Romans from Greece or from Egypt, or whether it may be a survival of fetishism. It may have had a much more homely origin, however. To the common people in the villages round Dessau, I feel sure that the Duke was little short of a god, provided always that they knew what was meant by a god. He might not have created the world, even Divus Augustus was not credited with that tour de force; but there was nothing else, I believe, that the peasants would have thought beyond the power of their Duke. To us children also, the Duke, the Duchess, and all the members of the Ducal family, were something quite different from the rest of the world, and some of these impressions of childhood often remain for life. When their carriage passed through the streets, everybody stood still, took off his hat, and remained bareheaded till they had passed. There was nothing servile in all this, as little as there is in a Frenchman signing himself Votre très-obéissant serviteur, for no one ever thought at that time that it could be otherwise. 214Nor am I at all certain that this outward respect for a sovereign is a mistake, for in honouring their sovereign, people after all but honour themselves. Whether he is supposed to be a sovereign by the grace of God, or by hereditary right, or by the voice of the people, he represents the country and the people; he is their duke, their king, their emperor, and if they wish to see him honoured by others, they must not fail to honour him themselves. When I saw the other day a king passing through the streets of his own capital, and no one touching his hat, I thought, “What a low opinion these people must have of themselves.” Even as boys at school we felt a pride in our Duke, and, though we knew scraps only of the glorious history of his ancestors, we knew how they had borne the brunt of the battle in all the greatest episodes of the history of Germany.

Little is said of these numerous small principalities in the history of Germany, but without them German history would often be quite unintelligible, and Germany would never have had so intense a vitality, would never have become what it is now. No doubt there was also an element of danger in them, particularly during the first half of this century, when as members of the German Confederation they could band together and support either Austria or Prussia in their fatal rivalry. 215They were the horses, as Bismarck said, harnessed to the chariot of Germany, some before and some behind, and pulling in different directions, so that it was impossible to advance. But that danger is past, thanks chiefly to Bismarck’s policy, and for the future the smaller principalities that have escaped from his grasp will form the most useful centres of intellectual life, nor are they likely now to be absorbed by Prussia, if well advised. There was a time during the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 when everybody expected that Anhalt, being almost an enclave of Prussia, would share the fate of Hanover, Nassau, and the Electorate of Hessia. The reigning Duke had the strongest sympathies for Austria. But he had a clever minister, who showed him that there were only two ways open to him under the circumstances, either to abdicate of his own free will, and make as advantageous an arrangement with Prussia as possible, or to say yes to whatever demand was made from Berlin. He chose the latter alternative, and it is reported that it was of him that Bismarck said: “I know what to do with my enemies, but what to do with my friends, I don’t.”

I cannot resist the temptation of giving here a short sketch of the really glorious history of the duchy and the Dukes of Anhalt, such as it was known to us as boys. Nor should it be supposed 216that I exaggerate the importance of my native duchy. I doubt, indeed, whether there is any reigning house now that can produce such a splendid record as Anhalt. If it has remained small and lost much of its former political influence, that is due chiefly to a law of inheritance which prevailed in the ducal family. Instead of making the eldest son the ruler of the whole duchy, it was the custom to divide the land among all the princes. Thus instead of one Duchy of Anhalt there were four duchies, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Cöthen, Anhalt-Zerbst, and Anhalt-Bernburg, some of them again subdivided. From time to time the duchies were reunited, and so they are at present, the last of the collateral branches having died out in 1863, when they were united once more into one duchy.

If we go slowly back into the past, and that seems to me the real task of the historian, we shall find that there is no critical epoch in the history of Germany, and of the history of the world, where we do not meet with some of the princes of the small Duchy of Anhalt, standing in the very front of the fight. I only wonder that no one has yet attempted to write a popular history of the four principalities of Anhalt, in order to show the share which they took in the historical development of Germany. I have tried to refresh 217my memory by reading a carefully written manual, “Anhalt’s Geschichte in Wort und Bild,” by Dr. Hermann Lorenz, 1893, but instead of quoting his opinion, or the opinions of any historians, as to the personal merits and the historical achievements of the princes of Anhalt, whether as warriors or as rulers, I shall try to quote, wherever it is possible, the judgments pronounced on them by some of their own contemporaries, whose names will carry greater weight.

The beginning of the nineteenth century was dominated by Napoleon’s invasion and almost annihilation of Germany. Dessau was then ruled by Prince Leopold Friedrich Franz (1740–1806). He had done an immense amount to raise both the material and the intellectual status of his people, and had well earned the name he is still known by, of “Father Franz.” Many of the princes of that time were far in advance of the people, and they met, as he did, with considerable difficulty in overcoming the resistance of those whom they wished to benefit by their reforms. The young prince of Dessau had travelled in Holland, England, and Italy. He avoided France, which he said was dangerous to young princes, and yet he was enlightened enough to erect a monument to Rousseau in his beautiful park at Wörlitz. He loved England. “In England,” he 218used to say, “one becomes a man.” Nor did he travel for pleasure only. While in England, he studied agriculture, architecture, gardening, brewing, and various other manufactures, in order to introduce as many improvements as possible among his own people. In Italy he studied art, both ancient and modern, under Winckelmann, and this great antiquarian was so delighted with the young prince and his companion that he spoke of their visit as the appearance of two young Greek gods. At that time it was still possible to buy old classical statues and old Italian pictures, and the young prince gladly availed himself of his opportunities as far as his financial resources would allow, and brought home to Dessau many valuable specimens of ancient and modern art. These he arranged in his various palaces and museums, all open to the people, and in the beautiful parks and gardens which he had created after English models in the neighbourhood of his capital. After a hundred years some of these parks, particularly that of Wörlitz, can vie with some of the finest parks in England. Like the neighbouring duchy of Weimar, Dessau soon attracted visitors from all parts of Germany. Goethe himself and his enlightened patron, the Duke Karl August, were often the guests of the Duke of Dessau, and Goethe has in several places spoken in rapturous terms of the 219beauties of Wörlitz, and the charm of the Duke’s society. Wieland, Lavater, Matthison, and other celebrities often passed happy days at Dessau as guests of the Duke.

But after Duke Franz had spent all his life in embellishing his land and inspiring his subjects with higher and nobler ideals, the Napoleonic thunder-cloud, which had long threatened Germany, burst over his head, and threatened to destroy everything that he had planted. After the battle of Jena in 1806 Prussia and the whole of Germany were at the mercy of the great French conqueror, and Napoleon, with his army of 100,000 men, who had to be lodged and fed in every town of Germany through which they passed, appeared at Dessau on 21st October, 1806. The old Prince had to receive him bareheaded at the foot of the staircase of his castle. My mother, then a child of six, remembered seeing her own grand and beautiful prince standing erect before the small and pale Corsican. The Prince, however, in his meeting with the Emperor, was not afraid to wear the Prussian order of the Black Eagle on his breast, and when he was asked by Napoleon whether he too had sent a contingent to the Prussian army, he said, “No, sir.” “Why not?” asked the Emperor. “Because I have not been asked,” was the answer. “But if you had been 220asked?” continued the Emperor. “Then I should certainly have sent my soldiers,” the Prince replied; and he added: “Your Majesty knows the right of the stronger.” This was a not very prudent remark to make, but the Emperor seems to have liked the outspoken old man. He invited him to inspect with him the bridge over the Elbe which had been burnt by the Prussians to cover their retreat. He demanded that it should be rebuilt at once, and on that condition he promised to grant neutrality to the duchy. Nay, before leaving Dessau in the morning he went so far as to ask his host whether he could do anything for him. “For myself,” the Prince replied, “I want nothing. I only ask for mercy for my people, for they are all to me like my children.”

The next critical period in the history of Germany is that of Frederick the Great, marked by the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and the establishment of Prussia as one of the great Powers of Europe.

Here again we find a prince of Anhalt as one of the principal actors. The instrument with which Frederick the Great won his victories was his well-drilled army, and the drill-master of that army had been Leopold, Fürst zu Anhalt, the Field-Marshal of Frederick’s father. At the head of his grenadiers and by the side of Prince Eugène, 221Prince Leopold of Dessau had won, or helped to win, the great battles of Höchstadt, Blindheim (corrupted to Blenheim), Turin, and Malplaquet in the War of the Spanish Succession, and had thus helped in establishing against the overweening ambition of Louis XIV. what was then called the political equilibrium of Europe. The Prussian Field-Marshal was known at the time all over Germany as the “Alte Dessauer,” and through Carlyle’s “Life of Frederick the Great” his memory has lately been revived in England also. Having completely reorganised the Prussian army and having led it ever so many times to brilliant victories, he was for Prussia in his time what Bismarck was in our own. But after the death of Frederick I. and Frederick William II., Frederick II., or the Great, disliked the old general’s tutelage and dismissed him: much as Bismarck has been dismissed in our own time. The young King wrote to the old Field-Marshal quite openly: “I shall not be such a fool as to neglect my most experienced officers, but this campaign (in Silesia) I reserve for myself lest the world should think that the Prussian King cannot go to war without his tutor.” His old tutor was very angry, but he did not rebel, and in a State like Prussia, Frederick the Great was probably as right as the present Emperor in saying “Let one 222be King.” However, after Frederick had once established his own position as a general, he recalled his old tutor, and in the second Silesian War it was the brave warrior who stormed the heights of Kesselsdorf at the head of his old grenadiers, and won one of the most difficult and most decisive victories for his King. The King after the battle took off his hat before his tutor and embraced him in the sight of the whole army. The inscription placed on the Field-Marshal’s monument at Berlin, probably composed by the King himself, is simple and true: “He led the Prussian auxiliary forces victoriously to the Rhine, the Danube, and the Po; he took Stralsund and the island of Rügen. The battle of Kesselsdorf crowned his military career. The Prussian army owes him its strict discipline and the improvement of its infantry.” The successors of Frederick the Great have never forgotten what they owe to the “Alte Dessauer,” and I doubt not they may be counted on in the future also as the stoutest friends and supporters of the illustrious house of Albrecht the Bear, the first Markgrave of Brandenburg.

If stronger testimony to the military genius of the Old Dessauer were wanted from the mouth of his own contemporaries, it might easily be quoted from the despatches of Prince Eugène. That 223great general freely admits that the Prince’s troops surpassed his own in courage and discipline; nay, he adds, “the Prince of Dessau has done wonders in the battle of Turin.” The Emperor of Austria endorsed this judgment, and added, “that he had earned immortal glory,” and he conferred on him the title of Serene Highness.

So much for the eighteenth century. If now we look back to the seventeenth, the century of the Thirty Years’ War, we find Anhalt the constant trysting-ground of the two parties, the Catholic and the Protestant Powers, and we see the princes of Anhalt again and again at the head of the Northern or Protestant armies. The Elbe often divided the two, and the bridge over the river near Dessau was contested then as it was during the Napoleonic wars. Well do I remember, when as a boy I went to the Schanzenhaus, a coffeehouse on the way to the new bridge over the Elbe, how it was explained to me that these Schanzen or fortifications were what was left of the works erected by Wallenstein: just as I learnt at a later time that my own house at Oxford called Park’s End, was so called not because it stood as it does now at the end of the Park, but because what is now called the Park was originally the Parks, i.e., the parks of artillery erected by Cromwell’s army against the walls of Oxford. The right name of 224my house should therefore have been not Park’s End, but Parks’ End. A more merciless war than the Thirty Years’ War was seldom waged; villages and whole towns vanished from the ground, and many tracts of cultivated land, particularly along the Elbe, were changed into deserts. Yet during all that time the Anhalt princes never wavered. When the Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick II., had been proclaimed King in Bohemia in 1619, his commander-in-chief was Prince Christian of Anhalt. When after years of slaughter Gustavus Adolphus came to the assistance of the Protestant Powers in Germany and won the decisive battle of Lützen, one of Prince Christian’s sons, Prince Ernest, fought at his side and died of his wounds soon after the battle. The memory of Gustavus Adolphus has been kept alive in Dessau to the present day. He has become the hero of popular romance, and as a schoolboy I heard several stories told by the common people of his adventures during the war. There stands a large red brick house which I often passed on my way from Dessau to Wörlitz, and which is simply called Gustavus Adolphus. The story goes that the Swedish king was in hiding there under a bridge while the enemy’s cavalry passed over it.

One more century back brings us to the time of the Reformation, and once more among the most 225prominent champions of the Protestant cause we see the princes of Anhalt. The very cradle of the Reformation, Wittenberg, was not far from Dessau, and the reigning family of Anhalt was closely connected by marriage with the Saxon princes of the house of Wettin, the chief protectors of the reforming movement in Germany. Prince Wolfgang of Anhalt was present at the Diet of Worms, in 1521, and again in 1529, at the Diet of Speier. He openly declared in favour of ecclesiastical reform, and he extended his patronage to Luther when he came to preach at Zerbst. This was at that time a most dangerous step to take, but the young prince was not to be frightened by Pope or Emperor, and at the Diet of Augsburg he was again one of the first princes to sign the Augsburg Confession. During the momentous years that followed, the Anhalt princes were willing, as they declared, to risk life and wealth, land and throne, for the Gospel. Nor was this a mere phrase, for Prince Wolfgang, when he found himself surrounded at Bernburg by the Imperial army, chiefly Spanish, had in good earnest to fly for his life and remain in hiding for some time. When he was able to return to his duchy, he devoted his remaining years to repairing, as much as possible, the ravages of the war, and he then retired into private life of his own free will, leaving the government 226to his three cousins, and ending his days as a simple citizen in the small town of Zerbst. Let me quote once more the judgment passed on him by the most eminent of his own contemporaries. Luther and Philip Melanchthon have spoken in no uncertain tone of the merits of the Anhalt princes during the most critical period of the Reformation. Of Prince Wolfgang Melanchthon said: “No one will come again, equal to him in authority among princes, in love towards churches and schools, in zeal to maintain peace and concord, and in readiness to give up his life for his faith.” Of Prince George, called the Gottselige, Luther is reported to have declared: “He is more pious than I am, and if he does not get into heaven, I too shall certainly have to remain outside.” Nay, even his antagonist, the Emperor Charles V., confessed that he knew no other person in the whole of his empire who could be compared in piety or ability to Prince George of Anhalt. Who knows of him now outside the limits of the Duchy of Dessau? but it is all the more the duty of his descendants to keep his memory fresh as one of that small band of men who have done their duty.

So much for the princes of the house of Anhalt during the period of the Reformation. No other reigning family could produce a brighter escutcheon 227during the troubles of the sixteenth century, and we saw how that escutcheon was preserved bright and brilliant during the centuries that followed, the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth. If the title of Grand Duke does not depend on the number of square miles, surely no family has deserved that title so well as the ducal family of Anhalt.

Beyond the sixteenth century, the history of Germany tells us little of the private character of the Anhalt princes, but we may look forward to new information which the Ducal Archives will yield if examined, as they have been of late by competent historians. Much useful work has been done during the last twenty-two years by a historical society established at Dessau. A Codex Anhaltinus has been published and much light has been thrown on transactions in which some princes of Anhalt had taken a prominent part. If during the time of the Crusades the names of the Ascanians are but seldom mentioned, there was a good reason for it. Bernhard of Clairvaux himself, wise man as he was with all his fanaticism, had persuaded them to turn their arms against the heathen on the eastern borders of Germany, rather than against the heathen who had conquered the Holy Land. Slavonic tribes, particularly the Wends and Sorbs, who were still heathen, were constantly threatening the eastern parts of the German Empire, the very ramparts of 228civilisation and Christianity, and it was felt to be absolutely necessary to drive them back, or to induce them to adopt a civilised and Christian mode of life. In 1134 Albrecht, commonly called Albrecht the Bear, had been invested by the Emperor Lothar with the Northern Mark, or the Mark Brandenburg, as his fief, in order to defend it as best he could against these Slavonic inroads. This Albrecht the Bear is the ancestor of the reigning Dukes of Anhalt, the present duke being his nineteenth successor. It was the same Mark Brandenburg which was afterwards to become the cradle of Prussia and indirectly of the German Empire. Albrecht’s influence was so great at the time that, after the death of the Emperor Lothar, he succeeded in carrying the election of the Emperor Konrad III., the Hohenstaufen, against the Welfic party, who wished to raise the Duke of Bavaria, Henry the Proud, to the Imperial throne of Germany. The Emperor rewarded Albrecht’s services by taking the Duchy of Saxony away from the Welfic Duke of Bavaria, and bestowing it on him. This led to a bloody war between the two claimants, and ended in the defeat of Albrecht. But though deprived again of his Saxon fief, Albrecht proved so successful in his own mark against the Sorbs and Wends that he received the title of Markgrave of Brandenburg, and as such became 229one of the Electors of the German Empire. All those fierce fights against the Slavonic races on the western frontier of Germany are now well-nigh forgotten, and only the names of towns and rivers remain to remind us how much of what is now German soil, between the Elbe and Oder, had for a long time been occupied by Slavonic tribes, uncivilised and pagan. Albrecht had really inherited this task of subduing and expelling these enemies from German soil from his father, Count Otto, who was the grandson of Count Esiko of Ballenstädt (1050). All these princes and their knights had to spend their lives in settling and defending the frontiers or marks of Germany, or of what had been German soil before the southward migrations of the German tribes began. They held their fiefs from the German Emperors, but were left free to do whatever they deemed necessary in the defence of their strongholds (burgs) and settlements. The first of the Saxon Emperors, Henry I. (919–936), was called the Burgenbauer, because he encouraged all over Germany the building of strongholds which afterwards grew into villages and towns, and thus led gradually to a more civilised life in the German Empire. Wherever it was possible churches were built, bishoprics were founded, monasteries and schools established and supported by liberal grants of land. A great share in this Eastern conquest 230fell to the Counts of Anhalt, and their achievements were richly rewarded by the great Saxon Emperors, Henry I. and Otto the Great. There can be no doubt that these bloody crusades of the German Markgraves against their pagan enemies in the East of Europe, though less famous, left more lasting and more substantial benefits to Germany than all the crusades against the Saracens.

I shall carry my historical retrospect no farther, but it may easily be imagined how this long and glorious history of the princes of the house of Anhalt made a deep impression on the minds of the young generation, and how even as boys we felt proud of our Duke. Though the belief in heredity was not then so strong as it is now—and I must confess that even now my own belief in acquired excellencies being inherited is very small—yet standing before our Ascanian^[15] 231Duke, the descendant and representative of so many glorious ancestors, one felt something like 232the awe which one feels when looking at an oak that has weathered many a storm, and still sends forth every year its rich green foliage. It was a just pride that made even the schoolboys lift their caps before their stately Duke and his noble Duchess, and I must confess that something of that feeling has remained with me for life, and the title of Serene Highness, which has since been changed to Royal Highness (Hoheit), has always sounded to my ears not as an empty title or as inferior to Royal Highness or even Majesty, but as the highest that could be bestowed on any sovereign, if he had deserved it by high ideals, and by true serenity of mind in the storms and battles of life.

As to myself, if as a boy I was not quite so much overawed by the inhabitants of the old stately palace at Dessau as my friends and schoolfellows, it was due perhaps to their personal kindness 233to our family, and likewise to a strange event that happened while I was still very young. The reigning Duke had three brothers and only one son, and in the absence of male heirs it was supposed that the duchy would have gone to Prussia. One of his brothers had married a Countess von Reina, and their children therefore could not succeed. The other brother was married to a Hessian princess, and they had no sons. But for that, they would possibly have succeeded to the throne of Denmark, as it was only due to the resignation of the elder in favour of her younger sister that this younger sister, the mother of the Princess of Wales, became Queen of Denmark, and her husband King. Both the ducal family and the whole country were anxious, therefore, that the only remaining brother of the Duke should marry and have children, when suddenly he announced to the world that he had fallen in love with a young lady at Dessau, a cousin of mine, and that no power on earth should prevent him from marrying her. There was a considerable flutter in the dovecotes of the Dessau nobility; there was also a very just feeling of regret among the people, who disliked the idea of a possible amalgamation with Prussia. Everything that could be thought of was done to prevent the marriage, but after waiting for several years the marriage was celebrated, and my cousin, 234as Baronne von Stolzenberg, became the Prince’s (morganatic) wife, and sister-in-law of the reigning Duke. The Prince was a handsome man, and extremely good-natured and kind, there was not an atom of pride in him. They lived very happily together, and after a few years they were received most cordially even by the old Duke and his relations. In this way the doings and sayings of the Duke and the ducal court became less hidden behind the mysterious veil that formerly shrouded Olympus, and one began to see that its inhabitants were not so very different after all from other human beings, but that they acted up to their sense of duty, did a great deal of good work unknown to the world at large, and were certainly in many respects far more cultivated and far more attractive than those who were inclined to sneer at the small German courts, and to agitate for their suppression.

What would Germany have been without her small courts? Without a Duke Charles Augustus of Weimar, there would probably have been no Wieland, no Herder, no Goethe, and no Schiller. It is not only plants that want sunshine, genius also requires light and warmth to bring it out, and the refining influence of a small court was nowhere so necessary as during the period of storm and stress in Germany. It cannot be denied that 235some of these small courts were hotbeds of corruption of every kind. I remember how in my younger days the small Duchy of Anhalt-Cöthen, for instance, suffered extremely from maladministration during the reign of the last Duke, who died without heirs, and had no scruples in impoverishing the country, and suppressing all opposition, however legitimate. He was a sovereign by divine rights, as much as the King of Prussia, and with the assistance of his ministers he could alienate and sell whatever he liked. He actually established a public gambling house on the railway station at Cöthen. In the third Duchy of Anhalt, that of Anhalt-Bernburg, the reigning Duke was for a time almost out of his mind, but no one had the power to restrain or to remove him. The ministers did all they could to prevent any public scandal, but it was not easy to prevent, if not a revolution—that would have been difficult on so small a scale—at least a complaint to the German Diet, and that might have become serious. Many were the stories told of the poor Duke and believed by the people. Like all court stories they went on growing and growing, and they were repeated “on the highest authority.” One day, it was said, the Duke of Bernburg had been reading the history of Napoleon, how he had decorated a sentinel, and made him an officer on the field of 236battle. The Duke, so we are told, carried away by his enthusiasm, rushed out of his room, embraced the sentinel, fastened some medal on his breast and said: “Thou art a captain.” The soldier, not losing his presence of mind, said to the Duke: “I thank your Serene Highness, but would you please give it me in writing?” The Duke did, and nothing remained for his ministers but to grant to the private the title and the pension of a captain, and to let him wear the small medal which the Duke had given him. I confess I could never come face to face with the fortunate captain or find out his whereabouts. Still to doubt the truth of the story would have been considered the extreme of historical scepticism. Another time the Duke’s enthusiasm was fired by reading an account of a wild-boar hunt in the neighbouring duchy of Anhalt-Dessau, which had been attended by a number of princes from all parts of Germany. He summoned his Prime Minister and told him, “I must have wild boars in my forests. Turn out a herd of pigs, they will do quite as well.” This command too had to be obeyed, and the extraordinary part of it was that in a few years these tame pigs had completely reverted to their wild state, probably not without some intermarriages with neighbouring wild boars, and the Duke of Bernburg could invite the Duke of Dessau and 237other princes to hunt wild boars in the Hartz mountains, as well as in the forest of Dessau. Again I cannot vouch for the truth of the story, but I have been assured by competent authorities that such a return from the tame to the savage state is by no means incredible. Very soon after this exploit, however, the ducal race of Bernburg became extinct, and the three duchies now form a happy union under the old name of Duchy of Anhalt.

The year 1848 came at last, and everything was changed. There were émeutes in the streets of Dessau, and when one of my uncles, the General commanding the ducal army, was telling his men that they would have to fire on the people, he received a message from some of them to say that they would willingly fire on anybody outside the town in the open, but not in the streets, because they might smash their own fathers’ windows. This respect for window-glass served, however, another good purpose. When my uncle, in default of a large enough prison, had to confine a number of people in the Duke’s hothouses, they were as quiet as lambs, because here too they were afraid of breaking the glass. In spite of this innate respect for glass and established authority, much mischief was done at Dessau in 1848. Splendid old oaks in the ducal forests were cut down, the 238game was killed by hundreds, and a new constitution was proclaimed. There was a chamber, I believe there was even a desire for a House of Peers, if Peers could be found; there were two responsible ministers, and the Duke had to be satisfied with a Civil List.

The Duke bore all this with wonderful serenity, but the Duchess died, I believe, from anxiety and nervous prostration. In 1848 even Dukes and Duchesses were hustled, and this was more than she could bear. She had done all that was in her power to make herself useful in her exalted position, and she deeply felt the ingratitude of those whom she had helped and befriended in former years, and who had joined the opposition. She told me herself that she had once to walk out on foot from her palace with an umbrella, because every one of her four carriages had been ordered by the Prime Minister, the Second Minister, the wife of the Prime, and some friend of the Second Minister. This Second Minister was a young man who had left the University not many years before, and was practising at Dessau as a lawyer. Of course, there was great joy among his former University friends; many were invited to Dessau, and as there was an abundance of old wine in the castle, the gates of the ducal cellar, so I was informed, were thrown open, and the thirsty young 239students soon reduced the store of wine to what they thought more reasonable dimensions. Some of the Rhenish wines in that cellar were more than a hundred years old, so old that but a few bottles were fit for drinking. A thick crust had formed inside the bottles, and only one or two glasses of wine were left. But what was left was considered so useful as medicine in certain illnesses that any doctor was allowed to prescribe and order bottles of it from the ducal cellars. My uncle, the Commander-in-chief of the small Anhalt army, had been through all the Napoleonic wars, had marched twice into Paris, and was such a Franzosenfresser, that, fond as he was of wine, he would never touch French wine, least of all French champagne. He lived to a very considerable age, he celebrated his silver, his golden, his diamond, and his iron (sixty-five years) wedding, and danced at his diamond wedding with his wife and one of the bridesmaids. He was my godfather, and as he had made the acquaintance of his wife at my christening, he never called me by any other name but “mein Wohlthäter,” my benefactor. As he had been at the battle of Jena (1806) with the Emperor William, then a mere cadet in the Prussian army, and afterwards through many campaigns, the Emperor treated him to the very end of his life as his personal friend. Once every year he had to go to 240Berlin to stay with the Emperor, and talk over old times. He was about five years older than the Emperor, and almost the last time he saw him the Emperor said to him: “Well, Stockmarr, we are both getting old, but as long as you march ahead, I shall follow.” “Yes, your Majesty,” Stockmarr replied, “and as long as you are behind to support me, I hope we shall get on and bring our shares up to par.” “Oh, Stockmarr,” the Emperor replied, “you are not a courtier. If you knew what the courtiers say to me, you would have said, ‘Oh, your Majesty, your Majesty, your shares will rise to at least 15 per cent. premium.’” General Stockmarr told me the story himself, and it gave me a new idea of the old Emperor’s humour, and his insight into the character of his surroundings.

Kind-hearted as the Duke of Dessau was, there were certain things that he could not stand. As his deafness grew upon him his chief amusement was shooting and driving about in his open carriage through the beautiful oak-forests that surround Dessau. There are long avenues through the old oak-forests like bowers formed by the lower branches of the trees, so that one can see the deer a mile off. Here the old Duke was to be seen almost every day. The common people had many endearing names for him, and when they 241saw his carriage from a distance they shouted Hä Kimmet, and the whole village was soon gathered to see their kind old Duke passing. He knew every tree, every stone, every road. In a wood not far from Dessau there was a large boulder, dropped there by a passing iceberg long before the time even of Albrecht the Bear and Count Esiko. One day, as he was passing by, the Duke missed the stone and drove straight to the next village to find out who had dared to move it. The Schulze of the village stood trembling before the Duke, and had to confess that as the road had had to be mended, the village commune had decided to blast the old useless stone and to break it up for that purpose. The Duke declared that it was his stone, that they had no right to touch it, and that they must replace it. That was, of course, an impossibility, without going back as far as the Glacial period. But the peasants had to go on searching all over the neighbourhood till at last they found two similar boulders, not quite so large as the original stone of offence, still, large enough to cause them much trouble and expense in transporting them to their village. This was their punishment, and from it there was no appeal. The two new stones may now be seen in a public park near Dessau, dedicated to the memory, one of Bismarck, the other of Moltke.

242The sound of the Duke’s carriage was well known, not only in the town, but, as the people said, even by the deer in the forest. Other carriages might pass and the deer would not budge, but as soon as the Duke’s carriage was heard approaching they would all scamper away. The fact was that no one was allowed to shoot in the large ducal preserves except the Duke himself. It was a very great favour if he allowed even his brothers or his best friends to accompany him now and then.

Some of his forests were stocked with wild boars. These animals were quite tame while they were being fed in winter, but in summer they would attack the horses of a carriage and become really dangerous. If they could break out by night, which happened not unfrequently, the peasants would find next morning whole fields of corn ploughed up, trampled down, and destroyed. Large damages had to be paid by the Duke, but he never demurred as long as he was unshackled by his two responsible ministers. After 1848, however, not only was the amount to be paid for damages considerably reduced by his ministers, but the Duke was told that this pig-preserving was a very expensive amusement, and that it might make him very unpopular. The Duke knew better. He knew the peasants liked his 243boars, and still more the ample damages which he paid, but he did not like the advice of his ministers. So whenever any mischief had been done by the boars, the peasants ran after his carriage in the forest and told him how much they had lost. In his good-nature he used to say: “I will pay it all, let me know how much it is; only do not tell my ministers.”

After a time things settled down again at Dessau, still the old state of things could never come back. The three duchies of Anhalt-Dessau, Cöthen, and Bernburg with its beautiful Hartz mountains, when united, formed a more considerable principality, and it was thought necessary to have a regular parliament to control its finances, and watch over its legislation. Everything assumed a grander air; the Duke, who since the days of the Old Dessauer had been Serene Highness (Durchlaucht), now became Highness (Hoheit), which is supposed to be a step higher than Serene Highness (Durchlaucht), though I cannot see how language could ever produce a finer title than Serene Highness. The railway, which as the Berlin jokers said, had led to the discovery of Dessau, brought it at all events close to Berlin, Leipzig, Magdeburg, and the great Continental net of railways. People from all parts of Germany came to settle in the quiet, beautiful town 244on the Mulde; the Elbe had been made navigable nearly as far as Dessau, and the port near the Walwitzberg became an important commercial centre for export and import.

Whenever I pay a visit to Dessau I find the town more and more enlarged and much improved. The old lamps that swung across the streets are gone, the gurgoyles frown no longer on large red and green umbrellas; there are gas lamps, and there are waterworks, and cabs, and tramways. The grass is no longer allowed to grow in the chinks of the pavement. The old Duke is gone, and the old people whom I knew as a boy are gone too. The wild boars are still there, but they are no longer allowed to break out of bounds. Old men and women are still seen sawing wood and cutting it up in the street, but I do not know their faces, nor the faces of the old women from whom I bought my apples. I look at every man and woman that passes me, there is not one whose face or name I know. It is only when I go to the old cemetery outside the town that old names greet me again, some very dear to me, others almost forgotten during my Wanderjahre. No doubt the present is better, and the future, let us trust, will be better still; but the past had its own charms; our grandfathers were as wise as their sons and grandsons, and possibly they were happier.

RECOLLECTIONS OF ROYALTIES II

My first and very pleasant contact with Royalty had taken place at Dessau, while I was a schoolboy. When afterwards I went to the University of Berlin, the Duchess of Dessau had given me an introduction to Alexander von Humboldt, and while I was in Paris, working at the then Bibliothèque Royale, Humboldt had used his powerful influence with the King, Frederick William IV., to help me in publishing my edition of the “Rig Veda” in Germany. Nothing, however, came of that plan; it proved too costly for any private publisher, even with Royal assistance. But when, after having published the first volume in England, under the patronage of the East India Company, I passed some weeks at Berlin, in 1850, collating some of the Vedic MSS. in the Royal Library there, I received a message from Humboldt that the King wished to see me.

Frederick William IV. was a man of exceptional 246talent, nay, a man of genius. I had heard much about him from Bunsen, who was a true friend and confidant of the King, ever since they had met at Rome. I had seen some of the King’s letters to Bunsen; some of them, if I remember rightly, signed, not by the King’s name, but by Congruentia Incongruentium, probably from his imagining that the different opinions and counsels of his various friends and advisers would find their solution in him. This idea, if it was entertained by the King, would account for the many conflicting sides of his character, and the frequent changes in his opinions. I presented my volume of the “Rig Veda” to him at a private audience. He knew all about it, and had so much to tell me about the oldest book of mankind, that I had hardly a chance to say anything myself. But it was impossible to listen to him without feeling that one was in the presence of a mind of very considerable grasp and of high and noble ideals.

A few days after this audience I received an invitation to dine with the King at Potsdam, and Humboldt wrote to me that he would take me in his carriage.

But a curious intermezzo happened. While I was quietly sitting in my room with my mother, a young lieutenant of police entered, and began to ask a number of extremely silly questions—why 247I had come to Berlin, when I meant to return to England, what had kept me so long at Berlin, etc. After I had fully explained to him that I was collating Sanskrit MSS. at the Royal Library, he became more peremptory, and informed me that the police authorities thought that a fortnight must be amply sufficient for that purpose (how I wished that it had been so), and that they requested me to leave Berlin in twenty-four hours. I produced my passport, perfectly en règle; I explained that I wanted but another week to finish my work. It was all of no avail, I was told that I must leave in twenty-four hours. I then collected my thoughts, and said very quietly to the young lieutenant, “Please to tell the police authorities that I shall, of course, obey orders, and leave Berlin at once, but that I must request them to inform His Majesty the King that I shall not be able to dine with him to-night at Potsdam.” The poor young man thought I was laughing at him, but when he saw that I was in earnest he looked thunderstruck, bowed, and went away. All this seems now almost incredible even to myself while I am writing it down, but so it was. Nor was the explanation far to seek. One of my friends, with whom I had been almost every day, was Dr. Goldstücker, a young Sanskrit scholar, who had been mixed up with political intrigues, 248and had long been under strict surveillance. I was evidently looked upon as an emissary from England, then considered the focus of all political conspiracies; possibly my name had been found in the Black Book as a dangerous man, who, when he was about eighteen, had belonged to a secret society, and had sung Arndt’s song, “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland,” before Bismarck sang it in his own way. It was not long, however, before another police official appeared, an elderly gentleman of very pleasant manners, who explained to me how sorry he was that the young lieutenant of police should have made so foolish a mistake. He begged me entirely to forget what had happened, as it would seriously injure the young lieutenant’s prospects if I lodged a complaint against him. I promised to forget, and, at all events, not to refer to what had happened in the Royal presence.

Humboldt and I drove to Potsdam, and I had a most delightful dinner and evening party. The King was extremely gracious, full of animated conversation, and evidently in the best of humours. While the Queen was speaking to me, he walked up to us, bowed to the Queen, and said to her, not to me, “S’il vous plait, monsieur.” With this sally he took her arm and walked into the dining-room. We followed and sat down, and during the whole dinner the King carried on a conversation 249in a voice so loud that no one else ventured to speak. I watched the King, and saw how his face became more and more flushed, while he hardly touched a drop of wine during the whole of dinner.

After dinner we all stood, and the King walked about from one to the other.

Humboldt, who was at that time an old man, about eighty, stood erect for several hours like all the rest. When we drove home it was very late, and I could not help remarking on the great sacrifice he was making of his valuable time in attending these court functions.

“Well,” he said, “the Hohenzollern have been very kind to me, and I know they like to show this old piece of furniture of theirs. So I go whenever they want me.” He went on to say how busy he was with his “Kosmos,” and how he could no longer work so many hours as in former years. “As I get old,” he said, “I want more sleep, four hours at least. When I was young,” he continued, “two hours of sleep were quite enough for me.” I ventured to express my doubts, apologising for differing from him on any physiological fact. “It is quite a mistake,” he said, “though it is very widely spread, that we want seven or eight hours of sleep. When I was your age, I simply lay down on the sofa, turned 250down my lamp, and after two hours’ sleep I was as fresh as ever.”

“Then,” I said, “your Excellency’s life has been double the life of other people, and this accounts for the immense amount of work you have been able to achieve.” Humboldt was never married and, I was told, had never been in love. But I did not tell him what was in my mind, that under such circumstances his life had really been four times that of ordinary mortals.

“Yes,” he said, “I have had a long span of life to work, but I have also been very much helped by my friends and colleagues. I know,” he continued, “I have been abused for not building my own stoves for making chemical experiments; but a general, in order to make great conquests, must have colonels, captains, lieutenants, and even privates under him.” And those who served under him and assisted him had certainly no cause to regret it. He helped them whenever he could, and his influence at that time was very great. To be mentioned in a note in his “Kosmos” was for a scholar what it was for a Greek city to be mentioned in the catalogue of ships in the “Iliad.” I could not resist telling him in strict confidence my little adventure with the police lieutenant, and he was highly amused. I hope he did not tell the King; anyhow, no names were 251mentioned and the poor lieutenant of police, who, of course, had only done what he was told, may, long ago I hope, have become a president of police, or some “grosses Thier.” When I left Humboldt I felt I should not see him again, and the old man was moved as much as I was in saying good-bye. These old heroes had very large and tender hearts. After all, I was only one out of hundreds of young men in whom he took an interest, and I happen to know that his interest was not only in words, but in deeds also. He was by no means what we should call a rich man, but I know that he sent young Brugsch, afterwards the great Egyptian scholar, Brugsch Pasha, a handsome sum of money to enable him to finish his studies at the University of Berlin, though no one at the time heard anything about it.

I did not see Humboldt again, nor Frederick William IV. Long before this time it had become clear that King William IV. was not what he imagined himself to be—the congruence of all the incongruent elements then fermenting in Prussia and Germany at large. There can be little doubt that towards the end of his life his mind, or rather his judgment, had given way. His mind, I believe, remained lively to the very end; but, in a State like Prussia, the Government without a 252clear-sighted King is like a runaway engine without its driver. It may keep to the rails for a time, but there is sure to be a smash at the end. The King had parted with one friend after another. His own brother, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards the first German Emperor, fell into disgrace, and had in the end to leave the country and take refuge in England. The name by which he was known in the family was not flattering. He was a soldier, clear-headed and straightforward. His whole heart was in the army, and when he afterwards came to the throne, he wisely left everything else to his responsible ministers, after he had once learnt to trust them. The army was the pride of his life, and to see that army ordered out of Berlin, and not allowed to restore order in the streets of the capital, had nearly broken his heart. He was intensely unpopular in 1848. His own palace was taken possession of, and, in order to preserve it from pillage, a large inscription was put on the walls, “National Property.” I was not in Germany that year, but I heard much from my friends there—v. Schlœzer, Ernst Curtius, and others—all personal friends of the Prince and Princess of Prussia. The Prince was not even allowed to command his own, the Prussian army, in the Schleswig-Holstein war, then just beginning; and the following letter, written in London, and 253addressed to one of his comrades, shows how deeply he felt it:—

Mit welchen Gefühlen habe ich gestern Euren Sieg bei Schleswig vernommen!!! Gott sei Dank dass unser alter Waffenruhm auch gegen einen ehrlichen Feind sich bewährt hat! Sage doch Deinen Untergebenen, wie glücklich ich wäre über diese Siegesnachricht: wie der Geist, der Euch zum Siege führte, der alte preussische war, der vor nichts zurückschreckt. Wie beneide ich Dir das Glück, diese Lorbeeren geerntet zu haben. Du weisst, wie nahe es daran war, dass ich sie mit Dir hätte theilen können. Wie wären dabei alle meine Wünsche in Erfüllung gegangen: Truppen meiner beiden lieben Corps geführt zu haben, im Ernst - Kampfe!—Es sollte nicht sein!—Aber ich kann es nicht verschmerzen, da die Möglichkeit vorhanden war! Nun, Gott wird es doch wohl noch einst so fügen, dem wir ja Alles anheim stellen müssen. Wer kann und muss es wohl mit mehr Resignation als ich! Er prüft mich schwer, aber mit einem reinen Gewissen erwarte ich den Tag der Wahrheit, damit ich dem neuen Preussen meine Kräfte widmen kann, wie dem alten, wenngleich das Herz trauern muss, über den Fall des alten Preussen, des Selbständigen. Lebe wohl! Gott schütze Dich ferner und erhalte Dich den Deinen, die sehr besorgt sein müssen. Ich kenne die Verluste noch nicht, mir bangt etwas vor ihnen.

I was at that time in London, and often with Bunsen at the Prussian Legation in Carlton 254House Terrace. There was a constant succession of couriers bringing letters from Berlin. On one occasion a sub-editor from The Times office rushed in and said: “Well, another one is gone, the King of Bavaria!” He did not see that the Bavarian minister, Baron Cetto, was in the room, and thus received this very informal notification of his sovereign’s fate. It was known that the King had remained at his palace, but that the Prince of Prussia had left Berlin. For several days no one knew where he was. I was quietly sitting on the sofa with Bunsen (27th March, 1848, 8 A.M.) discussing some question of Vedic mythology, when a servant came in and whispered something in Bunsen’s ear. Bunsen rose, took me by the arm and said: “Make haste, run away.” I did so, and as I ran out of the door I rushed against the Prince of Prussia. I hardly knew him at first, for he was not in uniform, and had no moustache. In fact, I saw him as few people have ever seen him. He stayed in London for many weeks at the Prussian Legation, where I met him several times, and, honest and hardworking as he was all through life, he did not waste the time in Bunsen’s house, nor did Bunsen lose the opportunity of showing the Prince how well a free and popular form of government could be carried on with due respect for order and law, and with love and 255devotion to the throne. This London episode of the Prince’s life has borne ample fruit in the hey-dey of the German Empire, and he by whom the seed was sown has but seldom been remembered, or thanked for the good work he did then for his sovereign and for his country.

There was no sovereign more constitutional than the King of Prussia at the beginning of his reign. He surrounded himself with enlightened and liberal-minded ministers, and never interfered with their work. Having been brought up to look upon his brother as a great genius, he was very humble about his own qualifications, and he even thought for a time of abdicating in favour of his son. This, however, would not have suited Bismarck’s hand. When the Prince of Prussia came to the throne, he stipulated one thing only with his ministers: they must give him a free hand to strengthen the army; for all the rest he would follow their advice. And so he did for several years. But when they failed to keep their promise, and to get Parliament to pass the necessary military budget, he parted with them and invited Bismarck to form a new ministry in 1862. This was the beginning of the political drama which ended at Sedan, if indeed it ended then.

I had heard much from my friends Roggenbach, Schlœzer, and E. Curtius about the Princess of 256Prussia (afterwards the Queen of Prussia, and the first German Empress), and my expectations were not deceived when I was presented to her during her stay in England in the spring of 1851. She was grand’ dame, highly gifted, highly cultivated. She wanted to see everything and know everybody worth knowing in England. It was she who went to Eton to see a cricket match played. She had heard much about it, and was most anxious to watch it. After the game had been going on for a good quarter of an hour, she turned impatiently to the Provost, and asked: “When are the boys going to begin?” She had evidently expected some kind of fight or skirmish, and was rather disappointed at the quiet and business-like way in which the boys, who were on their best behaviour, threw the ball and hit it back. However, at that time everything English, even the games, was perfect in the eyes of the Germans, and nothing more perfect than the Princess Royal, when she had been won by the young Prince of Prussia in 1857. The Princess of Prussia never forgot people whom she had once taken an interest in, and I had several interesting interviews with her later on—at Coblentz in 1863, at Baden in 1872. I confess I was somewhat taken aback when, after dinner, the Empress took me by the hand, and stepped forward, addressing the whole company present, and giving the ladies and 257gentlemen a full account of what this Oxford professor had done for Germany during the Franco-German war by defending their cause in The Times. All I could reply was that I had done little enough, and that I could not help saying what I had said in The Times, and that I was proud of having been well abused for having spoken the truth.

Whatever disappointments she may have had in life, she lived long enough to see the fulfilment of her patriotic dreams; she wore the Imperial crown of Germany, and she saw in the Crown Prince Frederick the fulfilment of all that a mother can dream of for her son. One wishes that she had died a year sooner, so as to be spared the terrible tragedy of her son’s illness and death in 1888.

That son, our Princeps juventutis, had been educated by my friend Ernst Curtius, and was on most friendly terms with many of my German friends. I made his acquaintance when he came to Oxford as a very young man in 1857. He brought George Bunsen and two friends with him, and I took rooms for them at the Angel Hotel, which stood where the Examination School, the so-called Chamber of Horrors, now stands. For several days I took the Prince to all the Colleges and to some of the lectures, even to one of the public examinations. No one knew him, and we preserved the strictest incognito. He quickly perceived the advantages of 258the English university system, particularly of the college life and the tutorial teaching. But he saw that it would be hopeless to attempt to introduce that system into Germany. Though at that time everything English was admired in Germany, he was clear-sighted enough to see that it is better to learn than simply to copy. The weak point in the German university system is that, unless an undergraduate is personally known to a professor, he receives very little guidance. He generally arrives from school, where he has been under very strict guidance, without any choice as to what he really wishes to learn. He then suddenly finds himself independent, and free to choose from an immense menu (Index lectionum) whatever tempts his appetite. Most German students, when they leave school, have not only a natural curiosity, but a real thirst for learning. They have also a feeling of great reverence for the professors, particularly for the most famous professors in each university. They often select their university in order to hear the lectures of a certain professor, and if he is moved to another university they migrate with him. In the strictly professional faculties of medicine, law, and theology, there is no doubt a certain routine, and students know by a kind of tradition what lectures they should attend in each semester. But in the philosophical faculty there is little, if any, tradition, 259and looking at my book of lectures, attested by the various professors at Leipzig, I am perfectly amazed at the variety of incongruous subjects on which I attended professorial classes. Unless they were all properly entered and attested in my book I could not believe that at that time (1840–41), when I was only seventeen years of age, I had really attended lectures on so many heterogeneous subjects. In this respect, in preventing waste, the college or tutorial system has, no doubt, many advantages, but the young Prince saw very clearly that what is called in Germany academic freedom cannot be touched, that the universities could not be changed into schools, if for no other reason, because it would be impossible to find the necessary funds to inaugurate the college system by the side of the professorial system. All that could possibly be done would be to establish a closer relation between professors and undergraduates, to increase, in fact, the number of seminaries and societies, and to make it obligatory on each professor to have some personal intercourse with the students who attend his lectures.

The Prince’s incognito was carefully preserved at Oxford, though it was not always easy to persuade his attendants not to bow and take off their hats whenever they met the Prince. The very last day, however, and just before I asked for the bill at the 260hotel, one of his A.D.C.’s forgot himself, bowed very low before the door of the hotel, and stood bareheaded before the Prince. The hotel-keeper smiled and came to me with a very knowing look, telling me of the discovery he had made. He was very proud of his perspicacity; but I am sorry to say that the discovery had its painful influence on the bill also, which, under the circumstances, could not be helped.

What struck the Prince most at Oxford was the historical continuity of the University. I reminded him of the remark which Frederick William IV. made when at Oxford:—

“Gentlemen,” he said, “in your University everything that is young is old, everything that is old is young.” “We cannot do everything,” the Prince used to say, “but we shall do our best in Germany.” Though the Prince was still very young, he could at times be very serious. There had actually been rumours, as I have said before, that his father, always one of the most humble-minded men, would abdicate in favour of his son, who was very popular, while the father at one time was not, and the thought that he might soon be called upon to rule the destinies of Prussia and of Germany was evidently not unfamiliar to him. How different was his destiny to be! What terrible events had happened before I saw much of the Prince 261again; for though I saw him in his own happy home life at the Neue Palais at Potsdam in 1863, it was not until after the Prusso-Austrian and Franco-German wars that I had again some real personal intercourse with the Prince at Ems in the year 1871. He had sent me a very kind letter immediately after his return to Berlin from Paris. Even Bismarck had sent me a message through his private secretary that he was proud of his new ally. I had defended the policy of the German Emperor in The Times, simply because I could not keep silent when the policy of Germany was misrepresented to the people of England.

Here is the Prince’s letter, which I received in May, 1871:—

Ich habe mit aufrichtigem Danke und ganz besonderem Interesse Ihre “Letters on the War” entgegengenommen, welche Sie die Freundlichkeit hatten, mir zu übersenden.

Mit der einmüthigen Hingebung unseres Volkes während der grossen Zeit die wir durchkämpft, steht im schönsten Einklang die patriotische Haltung welche unsere deutschen Brüder, oft unter den schwierigsten Verhältnissen und mit Opfer aller Art bewährt und durch die sie sich für immer einen Anspruch auf die Dankbarkeit des Vaterlandes erworben haben.

Dass die Erfahrungen, welche die Deutschen in England während unseres ruhmvollen Krieges gemacht, nicht immer erfreulich waren, ist mir freilich bekannt, Gründe der verschiedensten Art kamen zusammen um eine Verstimmung 262zu erzeugen, die hüben und drüben von allen einsichtigen und patriotischen Männern gleich schmerzlich empfunden ist.

Meine feste und zuversichtliche Hoffnung bleibt es aber dass dieselbe bald jenem herzlichen Einvernehmen wieder Platz machen wird, welches die Natur unserer gegenseitigen Beziehungen und Interessen verlangt. Dieses Ziel wollen wir verfolgen, unbeirrt durch Aufregungen und Eindrücke des Augenblicks, überzeugt, dass es für das Gedeihen beider Länder ebenso heilsam wie für den Frieden Europa’s unerlässlich ist.

Sie haben Ihrerseits niemals aufgehört in diesem Geiste thätig zu sein und es ist mir deshalb Bedürfniss, Ihnen meine dankbare Anerkennung für Ihr erfolgreiches Wirken hierdurch auszusprechen.

At Ems the Prince was the popular hero of the day, and wherever he showed himself he was enthusiastically greeted by the people. He sent me word that he wished to see me. When I arrived the antechambers were crowded with Highnesses, Excellencies, Generals, all covered with stars and ribands. I gave my card to an A. D. C. as simple Max Müller, and was told that I must wait, but I soon saw there was not the slightest chance of my having an audience that morning. I had no uniform, no order, no title. From time to time an officer called the name of Prince So-and-So, Count So-and-So, and people became very impatient. 263Suddenly the Prince himself opened the door, and called out in a loud voice, “Maximiliane, Maximiliane, kommen Sie herein!”

There was consternation in the crowd as I walked through, but I had a most pleasant half-hour with the Prince. Once when I began to bubble over and tried to express, as well as I could, my admiration for his splendid achievements in the war, he turned away rather angrily, and said, “Na, sind Sie denn auch unter die Schmeichler gegangen!” I wrote a sonnet at the time, which I find among my old papers:—

264This was followed by another sonnet at the time of his death:—

The old Emperor was at Ems at the same time, and so was the Emperor Alexander of Russia. It was a surprise to me to see these two Emperors walking together in the crowd, and fetching their glass of water at the spring, apparently without any protection. The people did not much crowd round them, but neither were they kept back by the police officers. I asked one of the higher officials how they managed to keep out any dangerous Poles 265or Frenchmen, who might have shot the two Emperors with a double-barrelled pistol at any moment. The place was swarming with people of every nationality; but he said that there was no one at Ems who was not known. I confess it was a riddle to me. The good old Emperor, who had heard of my presence, asked me to dine, and he also thanked me for my advocacy of Germany in The Times. What a change since I ran against him in Bunsen’s room! Abeken, who during the war had been Bismarck’s right hand, was there, and I learnt from him that the famous Ems telegram had been written by him, though, of course, inspired and approved of by Bismarck. This is now well known, and has become ancient history. Great as was the enthusiasm at Ems, it was heart-breaking to see the invalided soldiers, looking young and vigorous, but without arms or legs, their only wish being to catch a glimpse of the Emperor or the Crown Prince. Some of them had been blinded in the war; others walked about on crutches, some with both arms cut off, and using iron forks instead of hands and fingers. All was done that could be done for them, and the Emperor and the Crown Prince shook hands with as many of them, officers or privates, as they could. The Crown Prince had sent me word that he wished to see me once more; but his surroundings evidently thought that I had been favoured quite enough, and 266our meeting again was cleverly prevented. No doubt princes must be protected against intruders, but should they be thwarted in their own wishes? I had another happy glimpse, however, of the Crown Prince in his family circle, in 1876.

In the year 1879 the Crown Prince came once more to Oxford, this time with his young son, the present German Emperor, and accompanied by the Prince of Wales. He had not forgotten his former visit, when he was not much older than his son was then, and he reminded me of what had happened to us in the Examination Schools on his former visit. The Prince had preserved the strictest incognito, but when we entered the schools his appearance, and that of several foreign-looking gentlemen, had attracted some attention. However, we sat down and listened to the examination. It was in Divinity, and one of the young men had to translate a chapter in the Gospel of St. John. He translated very badly, and the Prince, not accustomed to the English pronunciation of Greek, could not follow. Suddenly there was a burst of laughter. The Prince did not perceive that it was due to a really atrocious mistranslation. He turned to me and said: “Let us go; they are laughing at us.” When we were outside I explained to him what had happened; but it was really so bad that I must not repeat it 267here. The passage was St. John, iv., 9: Λέγει οὔν αὐτῷ ἡ γυνὴ ἡ Σαμαρειτῖς.

The young Prince, the present Emperor, who was with his father, was very much pleased with what he saw of Oxford, of the river, and of the life of the young men. He would have liked to spend a term or two at Oxford, but there were objections. Fears of English influence had begun to show themselves at Berlin. Several young ladies tried their powers of persuasion on the young Prince, who told me at the time, in true academic German, “In all my life I have not been canvassed so much” (In meinem Leben bin ich noch nicht so gekeilt worden).

It is well known how warm an interest the young Prince, now the German Emperor, has always taken in the success of Oxford, and for how many years he has always sent his congratulations by telegram to the successful, and now almost charmed, Oxford crew.

When the Crown Prince with his son and the Prince of Wales honoured my College (All Souls’) with their presence at luncheon, I remember presenting to them three tumblers of the old ale that is brewed in the College, and is supposed to be the best in the University, very drinkable (süffig), but very strong. One year when several men from Cambridge were passing their long vacation at 268Oxford (one of them was Lightfoot, afterwards Bishop of Durham, another Augustus Vansittart), they were made free of all the common-rooms at Oxford, and constituted examiners of the beers brewed in the different Colleges. All Souls’ came out at the head of the tripos, but there was to be a new examination in the year following, and competitors were invited to send their essays to F. M. M., Professor of Comparative Palaeontology, at All Souls’. I took a tumbler of the old ale myself and drank to the health of “The three Emperors.” The Crown Prince did not see what I meant, and asked again and again, “But how so (Wie so)?” “The future German Emperor,” I said, “the future Emperor of India (the Prince of Wales), and, in the very distant future, the third Emperor of Germany.” The Crown Prince smiled, but an expression of seriousness or displeasure passed over his face, showing me that I touched a sensitive nerve. The Crown Prince was a curious mixture. In his intercourse with his friends he liked to forget that he was a Prince, he spoke most freely and unguardedly, and enjoyed a good laugh about a good joke. He allowed his friends to do the same, but suddenly, if any of his friends made a remark that did not quite please him, he drew back, and it took him some time to recover himself. He was a noble and loyal nature. He knew Bismarck, he 269knew his strong, and he knew his very weak, and more than weak, points; but such was his gratitude for what the old statesman had done for Prussia and Germany that he never said an unkind word against him. I believe he would never have parted with him, though he was quite aware of the danger of a major domus in the kingdom of Frederick the Great. History will have much to say about those years, and will teach us once more the old lesson—how small the great ones of the earth can be.

Once more I met the Prince at Venice, when he was enjoying himself with the Crown Princess and some of his daughters. He was then incognito, and he had the best cicerone in his learned and charming wife. They worked hard together from morning till evening. At last the people of Venice found out who he was, and crowded round him to that extent that he had to take refuge in the royal palace. What struck me at the time was a sadness and far greater reticence in the Prince. Still, at times, the old joyous smile broke out, as if he had forgotten how serious life had become to him.

Again some years passed. The accounts of the old Emperor’s health showed that his end was drawing near, but at the same time began the disquieting rumors about the Crown Prince’s health. The Prince sent for me shortly after his arrival 270in London, where he had come for the Queen’s Jubilee, 1887. He looked as grand as ever, and in his eyes there was the same light and life and love, but his voice had become almost a whisper. Nevertheless, he spoke hopefully, almost confidently, and went through all the festivities like a hero. Who will ever forget him on horseback in the white uniform of the Prussian Cuirassiers, in the midst of the sons and sons-in-law of the Queen? I saw him once more at Windsor, the day before he left for Germany. In the evening, after dinner, he walked up to me and spoke to me for a long time. His voice had regained its timbre, and I felt convinced like himself that the downward course of his malady was over, and that the uphill work was now to begin.

After he had spoken to me for nearly half an hour, one of his aides-de-camp came up to him, and said: “Not another word, your Royal Highness.” He shook my hand: I looked up to him full of hope; it was for the last time. He himself, I believe, retained his hopefulness to the very end. The Greeks said: “Those whom the gods love die young.” When the Prince Consort died, and when the Emperor Frederick died, one felt inclined to say: “Those whom all men love die young.” Five reigns have thus passed before my eyes, those of Frederick William III., 17971840; 271Frederick William IV., 1840–1861; Wilhelm I., 1861–1888; Frederick III., 1888; Wilhelm II., 1888; and if there is one lesson which their history teaches us, and which everybody should take to heart, it is that the wonderful work which they have achieved is due to the hard work, the determined purpose, and the persevering industry of these sovereigns. I did not know much of the personal work of Frederick William III., but, beginning with Frederick William IV. to the present Emperor, I have had occasional glimpses of their private life, enough to show that none of these men looked upon his place in life as a sinecure. In no case was their throne an easy chair. Their bed was in very truth a bed of iron, not a bed of roses. These sovereigns have been at work day and night; they have shared not only in the triumphs, but in the privations and sufferings of their army. I shall never forget, when I was at Ems in 1871, passing the house where the old Emperor resided; and there in the first storey, behind a green curtain, one could clearly see him standing at his desk, with a lamp by his side, reading and signing despatches, while everybody else enjoyed the cool air of the evening, nay, long after most people had gone to bed. The Emperor Frederick, before he was Emperor, was unhappy about one thing only, that he had not work enough 272to do, and if there is a sovereign indefatigable in the service of his country it is surely the present King of Prussia, the German Emperor. I must say no more, for I have made it a rule in these Recollections not to say anything about living persons, least of all royalties. Besides, through all my life I have tried to follow the rule that Ruskin lays down for himself: “In every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong; honour that; rejoice in it, and, as you can, try to imitate it.”

Though I did not see much of Prince Albert—I am thinking of the time when he was still called Prince Albert, and not yet the Prince Consort—I heard much about him, partly from Bunsen, who admired him greatly, partly through one of his private secretaries, my old friend Dr. Karl Meyer.^[16] By this time the world knows not only 273the nobility of the Prince’s character, but the strength of his intellect, his unceasing industry, and his loyal devotion to his queen and country. But there was a time when those who knew him felt indignant, nay, furious, at the treatment which he received in England. It would be well if that page could be torn out of the history of England, and as she who suffered most has long forgiven, if not forgotten, who has a right to renovare dolores? Apart from all personal considerations, it seemed a most extraordinary hallucination to imagine that he who was the consort of the Queen should exercise no influence on his wife. Human nature after all is superior even to the English constitution. One can imagine a political philosopher indulging in so Utopian a theory as a marriage without influence, but that practical men, men of the world, men of common sense, should have imagined such a possibility—that English statesmen should have imagined that a wife, because she was a Queen, would never be influenced by her husband, will hardly sound credible to future historians. I remember only one analogous case. When Lord John Russell was proposed as Secretary for Foreign Affairs, several members of the Cabinet objected, fearing Lady Russell’s influence, and pointing out the danger of Cabinet secrets oozing out through her indiscretion. Lord Palmerston listened 274for a long time, and then turned to his colleagues and said: “Well, I see one remedy only—one of us must always sleep with them.” When he saw blank consternation on the faces of his colleagues, “Well, well,” he said, “we shall take it by turns.” At a time when it was fully believed that Prince Albert had been taken to the Tower for high treason, no wonder that even a young German student who spent his days in the Bodleian Library should have been attacked as a spy. It was a passing madness, and the wonder is that it passed without more serious consequences.

Prince Albert took a most lively interest in a scheme which I had strongly advocated in The Times and elsewhere, namely, that there should be a school of Oriental languages in England, as in every other country that has political and commercial relations with the East. I pointed out that for years France had maintained its École des Langues Orientales vivantes; that Austria had its Oriental School for the diplomatic service and for the education of official interpreters; that, long before the Afghan disaster, there was a professor teaching the Afghan language in the University of St. Petersburg (and, I may add now, that Prussia has a flourishing Oriental seminary in which even African languages are taught by professors and native teachers); but no one would listen to me 275except Prince Albert. The different offices, Foreign Office, Horse Guards, Colonial Office, etc., declared that interpreters could always be had, and that the best way to secure their fidelity was to pay them well. That others might pay them better seemed never to have entered their minds. Prince Albert saw clearly the disadvantage under which England was labouring, nay, the danger that threatened her trade and her general influence in the East. He spoke to Lord Granville, and Lord Granville wrote to me to make further proposals. This I did; but beyond that I decided I would not go, for such was the feeling at that time, that the name of Prince Albert and my own, as that of a German scholar, would have been sufficient to wreck the whole scheme. I remember writing at the time to Prince Albert that we must wait till “Her Majesty, Public Opinion, became more favourable.” In the meantime, to speak of commercial interests only, how much has England lost by her unwillingness to incur an expense which other countries have readily incurred, which the people of England have a right to demand, and which would not have amounted to anything like the cost of a single man-of-war! The Prince of Wales took the same warm interest in the foundation of an Oriental school in London, as may be seen from the speech he delivered at the Royal 276Institution in 1890, when the scheme of a school of Oriental languages was taken up by the Imperial Institute, but even his persuasive eloquence has hitherto proved ineffectual to realise a wish that was so near his father’s heart, and of such enormous importance to English interests in the East.

As I think it right to abstain from recording my recollections of royal persons still alive, I must say nothing of the stay of the young Prince of Wales at Oxford; but, among the many things which I treasure in my memory, I may at least produce one small treasure, a sixpence, which I won from His Royal Highness at whist. I have always been a very bad whist player, but good luck would have it that I won a sixpence at Frewen Hall, the Prince’s residence at Oxford. The Prince maintained that I had calculated my points wrongly, but not being a courtier, I held my own, and actually appealed to General Bruce. When he decided in my favour, the Prince graciously handed me my sixpence, which I have kept ever since among my treasures. I may speak more fully of Prince Leopold, the late Duke of Albany, a deeply interesting character of whom much was expected, and in whom much has been lost. He was often a great sufferer while at Oxford, but when he was well, no one was so well as he was, no one looked 277more brilliant or more vigorous. His little dinner parties were charming. His tutor, Mr. (now Sir) R. Collins, knew how to collect his guests, and the Prince was the most excellent host. Whenever I had some distinguished man staying with me, a note was sure to come from the Prince, asking whether he might invite Emerson or Froude, or whoever it might be, and I well remember his adding: “You may tell Mr. Froude that I have read the whole of his ‘History.’” And so he had. Being often confined to his bed he had read a great deal, and was read to by his devoted tutor, Sir R. Collins. How many fond hopes centred in that life, and how anxious many of the best men that Oxford has produced were to inspire him with a love each of his own subject. Sanskrit, I soon perceived, had no chance. But for a time astronomy was in the ascendant, then history, then art. But there was always the danger to be guarded against of the young student becoming too much absorbed in any one subject, and losing that general sympathy with learning and art which is so desirable in a Prince. The Prince had a quick eye for small weaknesses, but his kindness was likewise extreme. I so well remember sitting by him at dinner, and enjoying the most exquisite real Johannisberger from the royal cellar. Prince Metternich used to send every year some of the 278best of his crue to the royalties represented at the Congress of Vienna, having received Johannisberg from that Congress. Prince Leopold knew how to appreciate the wines sent him from the royal cellar. “They like port better at Oxford,” he said to me, “but we shall keep to the Rheinwein.” It was really a quite exceptional wine, the aroma of it being perceptible even at the dinner-table. I quoted some of my father’s drinking songs, “Das Essen, nicht das Trinken, bracht’ uns um’s Paradies,” etc. Many delightful evenings were thus spent in the Prince’s drawing-room. I often played à quatre mains with him, fearing only to touch and hurt his fingers, which was always most painful to him. But to return to the Johannisberger. Long after the Prince had settled at Boyton, I was staying with him, and at dinner he said: “Now we must drink the health of the Princess of Wales; it is her birthday. I have one bottle left of the Oxford Rheinwein. I kept it for you. It has travelled about with me from place to place; but there will be no more of it, it is the last bottle.”

Once more the Prince was most kind to me under most trying circumstances. I was to dine at Windsor, and when I arrived my portmanteau was lost. I telegraphed and telegraphed, and at last the portmanteau was found at Oxford station, but 279there was no train to arrive at Windsor before 8.30. Prince Leopold, who was staying at Windsor, and to whom I went in my distress, took the matter in a most serious spirit. I thought I might send an excuse to say that I had had an accident and could not appear at table; but he said: “No, that is impossible. If the Queen asks you to dinner, you must be there.” He then sent all round the Castle to fit me out. Everybody seemed to have contributed some article of clothing—coat, waistcoat, tie, shorts, shoes and buckles. I looked a perfect guy, and I declared that I could not possibly appear before the Queen in that attire. I was actually penning a note when the 8.30 train arrived, and with it my luggage, which I tore open, dressed in a few minutes, and appeared at dinner as if nothing had happened.

Fortunately the Queen, who had been paying a visit, came in very late. Whether she had heard of my misfortunes I do not know. But I was very much impressed when I saw how, with all the devotion that the Prince felt for his mother, there was this feeling of respect, nay, almost of awe, that made it seem impossible for him to tell his own mother that I was prevented by an accident from obeying her command and appearing at dinner.

Oxford is an excellent place for seeing illustrious visitors from all parts of the world. It is the cynosure of all Americans, and it is strange to see how 280many travellers know all about the beauties of Oxford, and seem often to be quite unaware of the similar, nay, in some respects greater, beauties of Cambridge. There is only one drawback. Most travellers come to Oxford during the Long Vacation, and during the Long Vacation most professors naturally go away. In that way I have missed seeing some people whose acquaintance I should have highly valued. I thus lost the pleasure of showing the late Emperor of Brazil the historical sights of Oxford, being absent when he passed through. He saw everything in a marvellously short time, but then he was up sight-seeing at five in the morning. However, I made his acquaintance afterwards in Switzerland. We were staying at an out-of-the-way place at Gimmelwald, and one day about five in the morning there was a loud knock at my bedroom door. The whole wooden cottage trembled. When I got up to see what was the matter, I saw my friend Mr. Ralston, standing breathless on the staircase and saying, “The Emperor of Brazil wants to see you. He is staying at Interlaken, and has persuaded the Empress to stay another day to see you. But you must get up at once and take a carriage and drive to Interlaken.” I did so, and was with the Emperor and Empress soon after breakfast. The Empress and the gentlemen-in-waiting were not in the best of humours on account of this unexpected 281delay in their journey. We had a long and undisturbed talk in a private room. I was sorry the Emperor would speak French, though, having been at school in Switzerland, he spoke German quite as well. He was full of questions about Sanskrit literature and the Vedic religion. I was amazed at his knowledge, for he had actually begun to study Sanskrit, and was fully aware of all the difficulties that had to be met before we could hope to gain an insight into the heart of the ancient religion of the Vedic Rishis. He had a young German with him who acted as his tutor in Sanskrit, and likewise in Hebrew. It was very pleasant to be examined by a man who really knew what questions to ask, and who was bent on finding out by himself what the “Rig Veda,” the most ancient of all the books in the world, really contained. Like many others he seemed to expect too much, and I had to tell him he must not be disappointed, and that, though the Veda was certainly the oldest book in the proper sense of that word, which had been preserved to us in an almost miraculous manner, still it bore already traces of a long growth, nay, even of a long decay of religious thought. If the Vedic poets were different from what we expected them to be, it was our fault, not theirs. They showed us what the world was like in the second millennium B.C., and if we thought that there was 282in that millennium much that sounds childish and absurd to us, it was well that we should know that fact, and talk no longer of the mysterious or esoteric wisdom of the East. Like most students, the Emperor wished to know the exact date of the Veda, and I did not find it easy to explain to him that where we have no contemporaneous history we cannot expect an exact chronology. If some scholars placed the Veda 5000 or 10,000 B.C., we should find it difficult to refute them, but we should gain nothing, it would be like one of the distant dates in Egyptian and Babylonian chronology, a mere point in vacuo. He was surprised when I confessed to him that even the low date of about 1200 B.C., which I had fixed upon, seemed to me too high rather than too low, and that I should feel it a relief if anybody could establish a lower date for at least some of the Vedic hymns. I think the Emperor saw that in spite of this inevitable uncertainty, the “Rig Veda” would always maintain its unique position in the history of religion, nay, of literature, being without an equal anywhere, and allowing us an insight into the growth of thought, such as we find in no other literature. Whatever the antecedents of the Vedic religion may have been, however rudely its original features may have been effaced even before the beginning of the Brâhmana period, we can still see here and there in the Veda some germ ideas, some 283thoughts requiring no antecedents, and in that sense primitive, more primitive even than the thoughts of Egypt, Babylon, and Nineveh, whatever their merely chronological antiquity may have been. I do not know how it happened—that from discussing the ancient names of metals and the relative value of gold and silver, as fixed, we do not know how, in Egypt, Babylon, and afterwards in Greece, in Italy, and the rest of the civilised world at about 1 to 15—our conversation drifted away into financial questions. Here I must have been betrayed into uttering some financial heresy, possibly savouring of bimetallism, for I well remember the Emperor becoming rather impatient and saying: “I know all about that, and have studied the question for many years. Let us return to the Veda.”

After a very pleasant luncheon we parted, and soon after the Emperor lost his crown, as some would have it, because he had given too much thought and time to his studies instead of keeping in touch with the leaders of the different parties around his throne. However that may be, Brazil has not been long before regretting her learned Emperor. I heard afterwards that to the very end of his reign, and even when in exile, the Emperor kept his tutor and carried on his studies in Sanskrit and Hebrew. When at Stockholm in 1889, attending the International Oriental Congress, under 284the auspices of the King of Sweden, I received a letter from the Emperor of Brazil giving an account of his Sanskrit studies. I showed the letter to the King of Sweden, Oscar II., himself a man extremely well informed on Eastern literature, and full of the warmest sympathy for Oriental scholars and scholarship. He read the letter and sighed. “I have no leisure for Sanskrit,” he said. “The happy Emperor of Brazil has but one people to govern, I have two.”

I might go on for a long time with my royal recollections, but it is, of course, impossible to do so when living persons are concerned. Most of the royal persons with whom I was brought into contact were eminent among their peers, but were I to say what I think of them, I should at once be called ugly names—courtier, flatterer, etc. Such things cannot be helped, and the only excuse I could, perhaps, plead as a circonstance atténuante would be the reverence I imbibed with my mother’s milk for my own Duke and my own Duchess of Anhalt-Dessau.

There is only one more sovereign about whom I may say a few words, the late Queen of Holland, highly gifted as she was, and most charming in society. She frequently came to England; according to the newspapers, as a friend and advocate of the Emperor Napoleon. She was far too wise, however, 285to attempt to play such a part at the English court. But that she was much admired and won the hearts of many people in London is certainly true. She came to lunch with Stanley at the Deanery. She had asked him to invite a number of literary men—Tennyson, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Huxley, and several more. We were waiting and waiting, but Tennyson did not appear. Stanley suggested that we should not wait any longer, but the Queen refused to sit down before the great poet’s arrival. At last it was suggested that Tennyson might be mooning about in the Cloisters, and so he was. He was caught, and was placed next to the Queen. The Queen knew wonderfully how to hide her Crown, and put everybody at their ease. She took the conversation into her own hands, and kept the ball rolling during the whole luncheon. But she got nothing out of Tennyson. He was evidently in low spirits, and, sitting next to him, I could hear how to every question the Queen addressed to him he answered, “Yes, Ma’am,” “No, Ma’am,” and at last, by a great effort, “Ma’am, there is a good deal to be said on both sides of the question.” He then turned to me and said in a whisper, but a loud whisper: “I wish they had put some of you talking fellows next to Regina.”

While I am finishing these “Recollections of 286Royalties,” and sending the proof sheets to press, the last echoes of the greatest triumph that has ever been granted to royalty, which has ever been celebrated by royalty, are vanishing from our ears. May those royal recollections never vanish from our memories! We need not, nay, we cannot exaggerate their importance. Magnificent as the pageant has been of the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen of England, what was invisible in it was far greater than what was so brilliantly visible in the royal procession passing through the crowded streets of London. Has there ever been an empire like the British, not excluding the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, or the Roman empires? Sixty years of one reign is not a mere numerical expression; no, it means permanent vitality, unbroken continuity, sustained strength and vigour, such as, I believe, have never been witnessed in any reign during the whole history of the world.

And England is not only the greatest, it is also the freest, country in the world, so free that even republics may well envy it its fresh and pure air; and yet was there ever among the vast masses, rich and poor, a more universal outburst of hearty loyalty to the Throne, of personal love of the sovereign, than in the days of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee?

287It was said early in her reign by a royal and loyal thinker that constitutional government was then on its trial in England. So it was, but it has come out triumphant, and stronger than ever. Constitutional government under a royal protector will henceforth be recognised as the most perfect form of government which human ingenuity has been able to devise, after many centuries of patient and impatient search. Royalty has proved its right to exist, and that under the sceptre of a Queen who, if compared to other sovereigns, will be famous not only for much that she has done, but also for much that she has not done. Constitutional government has proved its superiority over any form of government by the triumph on 22nd June.

If the people have been loyal to the Queen, how loyal has the Queen been to her people; if her subjects have shared her joys and sorrows, how warmly has she taken the sufferings of her people to heart. Royalty has its dangers, and mankind has suffered much from kings and emperors, but the greatness of England during the last sixty years has chiefly been due to the mutual esteem and love of her people and their sovereign. The world will know henceforth one at least of the secret springs of England’s health and wealth and strength—namely, the true sympathy that for 288years has knitted ruler and ruled together. England has had great ministers and counsellors, but ask those ministers, who for years has been their truest and most trusted counsellor, and they will not hesitate in their answer. No wonder that England, celebrating the Sixty-years’ Jubilee of her Sovereign, should have roused the admiration—and it may be, the envy also—of other nations. Let us hope that the admiration, so ungrudgingly bestowed, may last, and that the envy, if any, may pass away. “Viel Ehr, viel Feind” is as true here as elsewhere. Let other nations blame and criticise, it is the highest compliment they can pay. But let them ponder what Europe would have been without England, what the world would have been without the sceptre of the wise and good Queen Victoria.

BEGGARS

Often when I had related to my friends some of my painful experiences with beggars and they laughed at me, “Wait,” I said, “I shall have my revenge; and when I am unfit to do anything else, I shall write a book about Beggars.” Now it has sometimes happened to me of late that, when I had sat down to do the work to which I have been accustomed for so many years, I could not get on at all, or if by a great effort of will I managed to do something, it was of no use, and had to be done again. I felt, therefore, that the time had come for rest, or at all events, for a change of occupation, and, though I had not yet sufficient time to spare for writing a whole book on beggars, I thought I might jot down a few of my experiences, not only as an amusement to myself, but possibly as a useful lesson to some of my friends. It seems to me that my experience has been large, larger than that of most of my acquaintances. Why, I cannot tell; but beggars, and extremely clever beggars too, have evidently singled me out as an easy prey. They seem to have imagined—in fact 290they told me so again and again—that I was a rich man, and could well afford to help a poor beggar. They little knew what a poor beggar I was myself, and how hard I have had to work through life to keep myself afloat, and to live as I was expected to live among my wealthy colleagues at Oxford. They would have smiled incredulously if I had told them how many hours, nay, how many weeks, a scholar has often to do the hardest drudgery without getting a penny for his work. He has often to be thankful if he can find a publisher for what is the outcome of years of hard labour. It is schoolbooks only that are remunerative, or novels and sermons, and novels he has to leave to his worldly, sermons to his unworldly, fellow-labourers.

Some of my beggar acquaintances were so clever and so well educated that they might easily have made a living for themselves; but, as one of them told me when I thought I had made him thoroughly ashamed of himself, and quite confidential, they preferred begging to any other kind of occupation. “Talk of shooting partridges or pheasants,” he said, “talk of racing or gambling, there is no sport like begging. There must always be risk in sport, and the risk in begging is very great. You are fighting,” my half-penitent informant said, “against tremendous odds. You ring 291at the door, and you must first of all face a servant, who generally scrutinises you with great suspicion, and declines to take your name or your card, unless you have a clean shirt and a decent pair of boots. Then, after you have been admitted to the presence, you have to watch every expression of your enemy or your friend, as the case may be. You have to face the cleverest people in the world, and you know all the time that the slightest mistake in your looks or in the tone of your voice may lead to ruin. You may be kicked out of the house, and if you meet with a high-minded and public-spirited gentleman, who does not mind trouble and expense, you may find yourself in the hands of the police for trying to obtain money under false pretences. No,” he concluded, “I have known in my time what hunting and shooting and gambling are; but I assure you there is no sport like begging.”

What is one to do with such a visitor—in appearance, in manners, and in language, quite a gentleman, or a ci-devant gentleman, a man who has been at a university, and who, when asked, will translate a page of Homer to you very fairly, who bears, of course, a noble name, and has friends, as he gives you to understand, in every university or at every court in Europe—what is one to do with him, if not to accelerate his departure 292by means of a small gift, for which he is generally very grateful? But that is really the worst one can do. For, on the strength of it, your noble sportsman will at once go to other covers, to all your friends, tell them that you have helped him, describe your generosity, your room, your dog, your cat, and thus among your unsuspecting friends secure a fresh bag, dearer to him, if you may believe him, than any number of pheasants and partridges.

The information which these beggars possess is quite astounding. They have stepped into my room, and given me the most minute information about my friends and relations in Germany, who live in a small and little-known town, describing their houses, their gardens, their dogs—everything, in fact, to show that they had been on the most familiar terms with them. This happened to me some years ago when the organisation among the foreign beggars in London was far more perfect than it is, or seems to be, at present. It may be, of course, that they know that an old fox who has been hunted again and again is difficult to catch. Anyhow, I have not of late heard of any such exploits as, unfortunately, I have had to suffer from in former years.

It was after the Schleswig-Holstein war, in about 1850, that one morning a young military-looking 293man stepped into my room. He limped, and told me he had still a ball in his leg, which must be removed. He presented himself as an officer in the Danish Army—the only officer who had joined the rebels, the Schleswig-Holsteiners—and had been taken prisoner at the battle of Idstedt in 1850. He described most graphically how he was confronted with his former Danish comrades, how his epaulettes were torn off, how his sword was broken, and he himself sent to a military prison, previous, as he thought, to being fusillé for high treason. All this naturally appealed to my sympathy, and then he went on telling me, in the most confidential way, that when at last sentence of death had been pronounced against him, he knew quite well that it would never be carried out, because the Queen of Denmark was his dearest friend, and would never have allowed such a thing. “Give me some paper,” he said; “I must write to my beloved Queen, and tell her I am safe in England. She will be in deep distress till she hears of me.” He sat down and wrote a letter, which he wished me to read. I only saw the beginning of it: that was quite enough; it was in a style which only the most devoted lover could have used. That letter was stamped—I supplied the stamps—dropped into the pillar-box, sent to Copenhagen, and must have 294been delivered to the Queen, though I doubt its being preserved in the royal archives. And that was not all. In a few days a letter came from Copenhagen, delivered by post, which again I was asked to read, but declined. I did not wish to pry into State or Court secrets. But all this showed, at all events, how cleverly the whole scheme had been laid, so that a confederate could send from Copenhagen a letter apparently written by the Queen, in answer to a letter despatched to her a few days before. I was completely taken in. The young officer went to London to have the ball extracted. I doubt now whether there was any ball to extract. There he made many acquaintances, and was helped by some very influential people. I remember one, who afterwards rose to the highest post in our Diplomatic Service, and was at that time known among his friends as never having a five-pound note in his possession. He gave him £10, and when I asked him: “But, my dear fellow, where in the world did you get that ten-pound note?” he used, as was his wont, very strong language, and said: “I borrowed it from the porter at my club.” This little comedy went on for some time. The man himself must have enjoyed his sport thoroughly, and he never lost his presence of mind. I still think that he must have been at one time in the Danish Service, 295as he possessed very accurate information about Danish officials and Danish affairs in general, though in what capacity he served his country and his Queen has never been found out. His ostensible correspondence with the Queen continued for some time. Even remittances arrived, as we were told from his royal patroness, but most of his funds were drawn, I am sorry to say, from English pockets, and might have served some better purpose. As far as I remember—for I am trying to recall events that happened nearly fifty years ago—a collection was made for our clever adventurer, and he left England uninjured to look for more dupes in the United States.

Though I might have learnt a lesson, I have to confess that hardly a month passed without something of the same kind happening to me. Few swindlers were so clever or had their schemes so beautifully prepared as my Danish friend, but I generally felt whenever I was taken in that I could hardly have acted differently. Nay, when I mustered courage to say “No,” I often regretted it. Let me give an instance. A gentleman steps into your room, tells you that he has been robbed, offers you his gold watch, and asks you to lend him a pound to pay his bill at the hotel. What are you to do? I declined to advance any money, particularly as my visitor behaved rather like a 296sturdy beggar, and what was the consequence? He broke out into violent abuse, mentioned a number of newspapers whose correspondent he professed to be, and told me I should rue the day when I had insulted him. And it was not a vain threat. From time to time I received extracts, not indeed from The Times or the Débats or the Augsburger Zeitung, but from some obscure local papers, with violent tirades against me as an ignoramus, as a Jesuit, as a German spy, as a hard-hearted miser, etc. For all I know, the man may have been in momentary distress, but was I to open a pawnbroker’s shop in my house?

There was a time, and it lasted for several years, when a man, though he never tried his hand on me, victimised a large number of my friends. He called himself my brother, evidently unaware of the fact that I never had a brother. He must have taken the “Clergy List,” for week after week came letters from my friends, mostly clergymen in London who had known me at Oxford and who had been swindled by my brother.

Twice The Times was kind enough to print a letter from me in large type to warn my friends. It was of no use. I seldom went to London without some friend coming up to me and asking after my brother, or expressing himself thoroughly ashamed of having allowed himself to be so stupidly 297victimised by a common impostor. One friend told me that he was so convinced that the man was a swindler that he had him turned out of the house. But then it struck him that after all the man might really be my brother, who only wanted a ticket to go to Oxford, so he rushed into the street after him, apologised, and pressed a sovereign into his hand. “There were telegraphs in those days, and why did you not telegraph to me?” I said. But my brother went on unabashed. He once called at the house of Lord W., telling the old story of having been robbed, and wanting a ticket to go to Oxford to see his dear brother. Lord W. was not to be taken in so easily, but Lady W., who came into the room and heard the story, said to the young man: “Perhaps you are not aware that you are speaking to a very near relation of your brother, who is the husband of my niece?” The man never flinched, but was rushing up to Lady W. to shake hands most affectionately and to embrace her, if she had not beaten a sudden retreat. Lord W. was quite convinced that the man was an impudent beggar, took him to the front door, and told him to be gone. “Would you tell your servant to call a cab for me,” he said, “to go to the station?” A servant, who was present, hailed a cab. “Please to give the man half a crown,” my brother said. The 298half-crown was given, and the man got away unharmed, having swindled one of the cleverest financial men in London out of half a crown. Only a few minutes after, my wife called at her aunt’s house, and regretted that she was just too late to make the long-desired personal acquaintance of my lost brother.

After carrying on this business for more than two years in England, and chiefly in London, the place seems to have become too hot at last. He vanished from the soil of England without ever having called on his brother at Oxford, and the next I heard of him was through some friends in New Zealand, who had suffered as others had suffered before in England.

The worst of such experiences is that they make us very hard-hearted. One believes nothing that a man tells one who comes begging to the door. And yet how much of real misery there is! It is a problem which really seems to admit of no solution. Of course we must not expect angels to come to us in the disguise of beggars. All beggars are more or less disreputable; not one of them would venture to tell the true story of his life. Yet they generally have something to say for themselves, and they hardly know the mischief they are doing by making it impossible for any one with any self-respect to believe the old, old 299stories which they are telling. They say: “What can we do? We must say something to appeal to your pity, and the unvarnished tale of our life is too long and too dry, and not likely to excite your sympathy.” All this is true, but what is to be done to alleviate or to cure this terrible evil of poverty and beggary? Nothing really seems to remain but to adopt the example of the Buddhists, and give to the beggar a recognised status in society. The Buddhists have no poor rates, but whoever is admitted to the brotherhood has a right to go round the village or town once or twice a day, to hold out his begging bowl, and to take home to his monastery whatever is given him. No householder likes these Bhikshus or beggars to depart from his house without having received a gift, however small, while the Bhikshu himself is not degraded, but enjoys, on the contrary, the same respect which the begging friars enjoyed during the middle ages. Even in later times we hear in Scotland of the Gaberlunzie men, and elsewhere of Bedesmen, Bluegowns, etc., all forming a kind of begging fraternity, and having a recognised position in society.

300All this is extinct now, but the beggar is not extinct, and never will be, as we are told. What then is to be done? for we are all more or less responsible for their existence. It seems to me that there is only one thing to be done, namely, to give up, every one of us, whatever quotum of our income we think right, and to hand it over to such societies as take the trouble to find out for us some not quite undeserving poor. Our Charity Organisation Society does no doubt much good, but it should have another branch, the members of which should be understood to give, say, a tenth part, or any other quotum of their annual income for charitable purposes. Such a society existed formerly. The members of it were not subjected to any inquisitorial questions. They simply declared that they would regularly devote a tenth of their income to the alleviation of poverty, and they were left perfectly free to do it each in his own way. What has become of that society? The organiser and leading spirit of it died, and no one seems to have taken it up again.

There is, however, one class of beggars and impostors more objectionable than any—people who do not beg for money, but borrow, and never mean to return either the money or any thanks. I have known of a good many cases where young men visiting Oxford and having made a few acquaintances 301among the undergraduates, were invited to dinner in college, and not only borrowed from their young companions, but, introduced by their young friends, ran up bills among the tradesmen of the town, and then quietly slipped away, leaving their friends to satisfy their creditors as best they could. All this goes on, and it seems impossible to stop it. Even if now and then these swindlers make a mistake, and place themselves within the clutches of the law, what satisfaction is it to keep them in prison for a month or two? No one knows their real names. They are boarded and fed at the expense of the country, and enjoy a little rest from their labours. That is all. They go in and come out of prison as if nothing had happened, and all they have learnt in prison is how to be more careful in future.

Who can doubt that there is much poverty and suffering, even undeserved suffering, among the poor, more particularly among poor foreigners in London? The Society for the Relief of Foreigners in Distress does much, but that much is but like a drop of milk in an ocean of salt water. The stories of the applicants printed each year, and carefully sifted by the committee, are simply heart-rending. And those who go to see for themselves often wish they had never crossed the thresholds of these hovels in which whole families live huddled up together, 302hungry, sick, dying, dead. One feels utterly hopeless and helpless at the sights one sees. One might as well jump into the Atlantic to save a sinking vessel and a drowning crew as attempt to rescue this drowning humanity.

And the men, after all, can help themselves. They can work, they may fight and beg, and even steal, and be sent to prison. But what is the fate of the poor unfortunate women!

There is one more class of beggars, though they would indignantly protest against such a name, who have given me great trouble. They are gentlemen who have something to sell and who are willing to sell it to you as a great favour. In Oxford these gentlemen have generally manuscripts to sell, ancient, valuable, unique. As I spent a good deal of my time at the Bodleian Library, and was there every day for several years as Oriental librarian, I made some curious acquaintances. After some time I never trusted a man who offered to sell scarce manuscripts or unique books to the library. My experiences were many, most of them painful. Perhaps the most interesting was when we received a visit from the famous forger, Simonides. Fortunately his fame had preceded him. There had been a full account of his doings and misdoings abroad, yet he arrived quite unabashed with a box full of Greek MSS. I had warned our librarian, 303the Rev. H. O. Coxe, and it was amusing to watch the two when their pourparlers began. Simonides—so called, not because he was a descendant of the poet Simonides, but (with a long î) because his ancestor was one Simon, a Jew—addressed the librarian half in ancient Greek, half in modern English. He knew both equally well. His manners were most engaging. The librarian was equally polite, and began to examine some of the Greek MSS. “These are of small value,” Simonides said, “they are modern. What century would you assign to them?” The librarian assigned the thirteenth century to them, and Simonides fully agreed. He then went on producing MS. after MS., but claiming for none of them more than the twelfth or tenth century. All went on most amicably until he produced some fragments of an uncial Greek MS. The librarian opened his eyes wide, and, examining them very carefully, put some of them aside for further consideration. Becoming more and more confidential, Simonides at last produced a real treasure. “This,” he said, “ought to repose nowhere but in the Bodleian Library. And what century would you assign to it, Mr. Librarian?” Simonides said with a smile and a respectful bow. Mr. Coxe turned over a few pages, and, looking very grave, though never quite without his usual twinkle, “The second half of the 304nineteenth century, sir,” he said, “and now pack up your MSS. and Apage (begone).”

Simonides did as he was told, and, with an injured expression, walked away. Next day he wrote a Greek letter to the librarian, bitterly complaining about the Apage, and offering some more MSS. for his inspection. But all was in vain; too much had been discovered about him in the meantime. He was certainly a most extraordinary man—a scholar who, if he had applied his ingenuity to editing instead of forging Greek MSS., might have held a very high position. His greatest achievement was, of course, the newly discovered Greek text of the history of ancient Egypt by Uranios. The man possessed a large quantity of later Greek MSS. It seems that in the Eastern monasteries, where he sold, he also acquired some Greek MSS., by what means we must not ask. He tried several of these MSS. with chemicals to see whether, as was the fashion during the middle ages, the parchment on which they were written had been used before, and the old writing scraped off in order to get writing material for some legends of Christian saints or other modern compositions. When that has been the case, chemical appliances bring out the old writing very clearly, and he knew that in this way some very old and valuable Greek texts had been recovered. In that 305case the old uncial writing comes out generally in a dark blue, and becomes quite legible as underlying the modern Greek text. As Simonides was not lucky enough to discover or recover an ancient Greek text, or what is called a Palimpsest MS., the thought struck him that he might manufacture such a treasure, which would have sold at a very high price. But even this did not satisfy his ambition. He might have taken the text of the Gospels and written it between the lines of one of his modern Greek MSS., adding some startling various readings. In that case detection would have seemed much more difficult. But he soared higher. He knew that a man of the name of Uranios had written a history of Egypt which was lost. Simonides made up his mind to write himself in ancient Greek a history of Egypt such as he thought Uranios might have written. And, deep and clever as he was, he chose Bunsen’s “Egypt” and Lepsius’ “Chronology” as the authorities which he faithfully followed. After he had finished his Greek text, he wrote it in dark blue ink and in ancient uncial Greek letters between the letters of a Greek MS. of about 1200 a.d. Anybody who knows the smallness of the letters in such a MS. can appreciate the enormous labour it must have been to insert, as it were, beneath and between these minute lines of each letter 306the supposed earlier writing of Uranios, so that the blue ink should never encroach on the small but true Greek letters. One single mistake would have been fatal, and such is the knowledge which antiquaries now possess of the exact changes of Greek letters in every century that here, too, one single mistake in the outline of the old uncial letters would have betrayed the forger.

When Simonides had finished his masterpiece, he boldly offered it to the highest tribunal, the Royal Berlin Academy. The best chemists of the time examined it microscopically, and could find no flaw. Lepsius, the great Egyptologist, went through the whole text, and declared that the book could not be a forgery, because no one except Uranios could have known the names of the ancient Egyptian kings and the right dates of the various dynasties, which were exactly such as he had settled them in his books. The thought that Simonides might have consulted these very books never entered anybody’s mind. Great was the excitement in the camp of the Egyptologists, and, though the price demanded by Simonides was shamefully extravagant, Bunsen persuaded the then King of Prussia, Frederick William IV., to pay it and to secure the treasure for Berlin. Dindorf, the famous Greek scholar, had been entrusted by Simonides with the editing of the text, 307and he had chosen the Clarendon Press at Oxford to publish the first specimen of it. In the meantime unfavourable reports of Simonides reached the German authorities, and during a new examination of the MS. some irregularities were detected in the shape of the uncial M, and at last one passage was discovered by a very strong microscope where the blue ink had run across the letters of the modern Greek text. No doubt could then remain that the whole MS. was a forgery. Part of it had actually been printed at the Clarendon Press, and I was able to secure six copies of Dindorf’s pamphlet, which was immediately destroyed, and has now become one of the scarcest books in any library. After I had secured my copy, I read on the first page κὰτ’ ἐμὴν ἰδέαν, which was intended for “According to my idea.” I went straight to the then Master of Balliol, Dr. Scott, of Greek Lexicon fame. I asked him whether he thought such an expression possible before the fifteenth century A.D. He took down his Stephanus, but after looking for some time and hesitating, he admitted at last that such an expression was certainly not quite classical. Simonides had, of course, to refund the money, and was sent to prison, never to appear again in the libraries of Europe. A number of his forgeries, however, exist in England, in public and 308private collections; among them portraits of the Virgin Mary and some of the Apostles painted by St. Luke, a copy of Homer with a dedication from Perikles to the tyrant of Syrakuse, other Greek MSS. written on paper made of human skin, etc. His forged MS. of Uranios was such a masterpiece that he was offered £100 for it, but he declined, and I have never been able to find out what has been the end of it.

Some years afterwards another forger of the name of Shapira offered to the British Museum some scrolls of parchment containing the text of the Pentateuch from the hand of Moses. They, too, were very closely criticised, and were exhibited for some time at the Museum; nay, a Commission was appointed to report on the MS., for which, very naturally, an enormous sum was demanded. It was perfectly well known, of course, among Semitic scholars that writing for literary purposes was unknown at the time of Moses, and that the very alphabet used by the forger belonged to a much later period. Poor Shapira, whose name had already become notorious as connected with the spurious Moabite antiquities, which he had sold at Berlin, professed to be so dejected when the fraud was discovered, a fraud, as he stated, not committed by himself, but practised on him by some Arabs, that he went to Belgium, and there, 309according to the newspapers, committed suicide; while some of his victims maintained that even then the newspaper paragraphs on his suicide were a forgery, and that he had retired from an ungrateful world under the veil of a new name.

It is extraordinary how low a man may sink who once takes to this kind of trade. A Greek gentleman whom I knew, and who moved in the very best society in London, who held a responsible position in a bank, where he was trusted with any amount of money, roused the suspicions of the authorities in the coin department of the British Museum. He possessed himself a very valuable collection of ancient coins, and was admitted to all the privileges of a special student of numismatics.

Nearly all the employees of the British Museum were his personal friends, and no one would have ventured to doubt his honour. However, some unique specimens of Greek coins disappeared, or rather were found to be replaced by inferior specimens. A trap was laid, and there remained little doubt that he had transferred the better specimens to his own collection, substituting inferior specimens in his possession. At first no one would believe it, but an English jury found him guilty, and he was condemned to five years’ penal servitude. Great efforts were made by some of the Foreign 310Ministers, and by the directors of the bank in which he had been employed, and a pardon was obtained for him on condition of his never returning to England. When, however, inquiries were made as to his behaviour in the hulks where he had been detained in the meantime, it turned out that this perfect gentleman had behaved there worse than the lowest criminal, so that it was quite out of the question to release him, and he was kept to serve his full sentence. What may have become of him afterwards, who knows? But it shows how scientific devotion can go hand in hand with moral degradation, nay, can blunt the conscience to such an extent that exchange seems no robbery, and even the abstraction of a book from a public or private library is looked upon as a venial offence. MSS. have again and again disappeared from libraries, and have been returned after the death of the scholar who took them, showing, at least, a late repentance. But I have also known of cases where MSS. seemed to have vanished and suspicion fell on scholars who had consulted them last, while after a time the MSS. turned up again, having been placed in a wrong place in the library; which, of course, in a large library is tantamount to throwing them out of window.

There was a well-known case in the same coin-room of the British Museum, where, during a visit 311of a number of gentlemen and ladies, it was observed that a very valuable and almost unique Sicilian coin had disappeared. All the gentlemen present in the room at the time had to be searched, and no one objected except one. He protested his innocence, but declared that nothing would induce him to allow his pockets to be searched. All the other visitors were allowed to go home, but he was detained while the coin-room was swept, and every corner searched once more. At last the missing coin was found in a chink of the floor.

Every apology was made to the suspected person, but he was asked why he had so strongly objected to being searched. He then produced from his pocket another specimen of the very same coin. “I came here,” he said, “to compare my specimen, which is very perfect, with the only other specimen which is thought to be superior to mine, and almost unique in the world. Now, suppose,” he added, “that you had not found your coin, and had found my specimen in my pocket, would anybody have believed in my innocence?”

Such cases will happen, though no doubt a man must have been born under a very unlucky star to come in for such a trial. In most museums unique specimens are now never shown except 312under precautions which make such accidents, as well as deliberate thefts, almost impossible.

After all the sad experiences which one has had, it is perhaps quite right that we should shut our ears and our house against all beggars, whether in rags or in the disguise of gentlemen. But even our servants have hearts, and though they have orders not to admit beggars, they often are, or imagine they are, better judges than ourselves. I know that they sometimes give something where their masters, rightly or wrongly, decline to do anything. Physical suffering appeals to them, though they also have learnt how beggars who ask for a crust of bread throw away what has been given them as soon as they leave the house.

I remember once my servant coming in and saying: “There is a poor man at the door, I believe he is dying, sir!” I confess I did not believe it, but I went to see him, and he looked so ill that the doctor had to be sent for. The doctor declared he was in the last stage of consumption, and I was glad to send him to the Infirmary.

He was a poor tailor, a German by birth, but who had lived many years in England and spoke English perfectly well. Being well taken care of, he got better for a time. I went to see him and tried to cheer him as well as I could. He was surprised to see me, and said with a frown: “Why 313do you come to see me?” I said that he seemed quite alone in the world, without any friends or relations in England.

“Friends and relations!” he said. “I have never had any in all my life.”

“You had father and mother?” I said.

“No,” he answered, “I never had. I never knew anybody that belonged to me. I was brought up at a Government school for poor children, was apprenticed to a tailor, and when I was quite young sent to England, where I have been working in different places for nearly twenty years. I have never begged, and have always been able to support myself.”

He told me the name of the tailor for whom he had been working in Oxford, and I received the most satisfactory account both from his employer and from the men with whom he had been working.

“Why do you come to see me?” he said again and again. “No one has ever been kind to me. I want to die; I have nothing to care for in this world. The few things that belong to me I wish to leave to the poor servant girl in the house where I have last been at work, the little money in my purse may go to the Infirmary. I know no one else; no one cares for me, or has ever cared for me.”

314Who can imagine such a life? Without father or mother, without friends, without the sense of belonging to anybody in the world, of ever being loved or pitied by a single human soul. Even the idea of a kind and loving Father in heaven had no meaning for him. His one wish was to have done with it all. It was no trouble to him to leave this world and to cease from stitching. He could not even express anything like gratitude. All he could say was that it was so strange that any one should care for him, and come to see him. He passed away without suffering, anyhow without a sound of complaint. Whatever he left was given to the poor servant girl, who was equally surprised that the poor tailor should have thought of her. What an empty, purposeless life it seemed to have been, and yet his, too, was a precious soul, and meant to be more on earth than a mere sewing machine.

Yes, now and then one can do a little good, even to professional beggars; but very, very seldom—and it is right that such cases should be known and remembered. The most difficult people to deal with are educated young foreigners, who always came to me with the same tale. Some of them were hardened sinners, and had to end their visits to Oxford and to the always open rooms of undergraduates in college, with a visit to our gaol. I 315have no doubt whatever that some of them belonged to good families, and had received an excellent education. Some of them had run away from home with a woman they had fallen in love with; others may have committed some crime, mostly while serving in the army, and had tried to escape punishment by deserting. But there were others who had come to England to learn English, hoping to support themselves by giving lessons, for as soon as a foreigner arrives in England he imagines that a dozen people are ready to learn his language, which in many cases he is quite unable to teach. I remember one of this class whom, by mere accident, I was able to help. He came to me in a ragged and very disreputable state. He told me he was starving, and wished me to find pupils for him at Oxford. Well, I managed with some effort to get hold of him and shake him. He showed that he knew Greek and Latin, and his German was that of an educated man. “My dear fellow,” I said, “how in the world did you sink so low?” He saw that I meant it, and, with tears in his eyes, told me his simple, and this time true, story. He had been a teacher in a well-known German watering-place, and, as he had several English pupils, he was anxious to perfect himself in English. He arrived in London without knowing anybody, and with but a small sum of money 316left. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said; “I must have had a very serious illness, and I was told that for weeks I was in a delirious fever. When I came to myself, I was in a miserable hovel occupied by a poor German family in Whitechapel. I know nothing about them, nor how I had fallen into their hands. But they had taken me in; they had nursed me, as I found out, for several weeks; and they now asked me to repay what they had spent on me. My money was gone; I knew no one who would have sent me any money from Germany. My Whitechapel friends were kind to me, and at last they advised me, as I knew Greek and Latin, to go to Oxford and Cambridge and beg. I did not like it at all; but what could I do? I owed them the money, and I had no means of earning anything in London. I was starving, and my friends had little to eat and drink themselves.” I believed his story, and this time I had no reason to regret it. The master of a school for boys near London had written to me to recommend a German teacher as a stop-gap. I wrote to him, giving him a full account of my man, and told him that he had experience in teaching, and wished to stay for a time in England to improve his knowledge of English. The master said he would give him a trial. I told the young man to get rid of every article of clothing he had on, and 317had him clothed as well as I could before I sent him off. He acquitted himself admirably at the school, and his first thought was to pay the poor Samaritans in Whitechapel for what they had done for him. After a time he went back to Germany to resume his work as a teacher of German at the fashionable watering-place he had come from; and for several years I regularly received letters of thanks from him, telling me how well he was getting on in the world, that he was happily married, and hoped that he would see me once more, though not in England, but at his watering-place in Germany. Here I had my reward.

During the first year I was in England I sometimes saw harrowing scenes among the poor German families stranded and wrecked in London. These poor people flocked to the Prussian Legation. Generally they could only see the porter. If they were lucky, they saw a secretary; and, if very lucky, the Minister himself, Bunsen, came to see them in the hall. Now and then I was sent to find out what might be true in the heart-rending stories they told. And often there was plenty of truth in them. Father, mother, and children had been tempted away from a small village in the Black Forest or the Erzgebirge. They had been told that England was made of gold and silver, and that they had only to scratch the soil to get 318as much as they wanted and bring it home. They believed it all, and when they saw the glistening white chalk cliffs near Dover, they thought they were all of silver. Then when they came to London, the misery began, and began very soon. They were hungry, the children were sickly, and there was nothing for them to do to earn an honest penny. Nothing remained but to earn dishonest pennies, and in this they were readily helped by all the people around them.

I cannot tell the harrowing scenes I saw. Those who care to know what is going on among the poor German families in London should go themselves, and they would see more than they would wish ever to have seen. One case I shall never forget, and it is perhaps as well that people should know these things. In one room on a miserable bed there lay a poor girl, quite young, who had given birth to a child. The child had fortunately died. The people about her had been kind to her, and done all they could be expected to do. But, oh! the sad, half-delirious face of the dying mother, for there could be no doubt that she was dying. And what was her story? As far as I could find out from the women about her, she was the daughter of a German clergyman. A young Englishman had come to their vicarage to learn German. He had fallen in love with his pretty German teacher, 319and the poor girl had fallen in love with him. He had promised her marriage, and when she could no longer hide her state from her parents she had been persuaded by her lover to follow him to England. In London he had left her with a small sum of money at a little German hotel, promising to come back as soon as possible after he had seen his father. When the money which he had left for her became low, she had been sent to a poor German family. She never believed that he whom she called her English husband had forsaken her. Something, she felt sure, had happened to prevent him from coming back to her. I hope she was right. However, he never came; she died, and died in agonies, calling for him, for her child, for her happy home in Germany, and with her last breath and her last tears for her mother! She never divulged any names. She died and was buried with her child.

Can society do nothing for these poor victims? Can we only call them hard names—some of them being the most gentle, the most loving, the most innocent creatures in the world! Have we not even some Pharisees left among us who will go out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto the last, instead of throwing a stone at her? Who is to solve this problem if not He who said: “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no 320more”? And she, the poor girl, was she really so great a sinner? She did not look so. And if she was, had she not expiated her sin and been purified by the most awful suffering? She looked so pure and innocent that Heine’s lines were constantly coming into my mind:—

Poor girl! I felt for her with all my heart, but I had but few words of comfort for her. How difficult it is to judge. Love, youth, nature, and ignorance have to be reckoned with in our judgments; and society, which no doubt has to enforce certain laws for its own protection, should distinguish at least between sins against society and sins against God, before whom one untrue and unkind word, written or spoken, may weigh heavier in the scales, for all we know, than the sin of many a heart-broken girl.

INDEX

• Abeken, 265
• Albany, Duke of, 276–280
• Albrecht the Bear, 211, 228–230
• Alliterative poetry, 44–47
• Americans, 167, 169
• Anhalt-Coethen, last Duke of, 235–237
• Anhalt-Dessau, Duke of, 230, 231
• Anhalt-Dessau, Duchess of, 78, 245
• Arndt, Moritz, 66, 67
• Arnold, Matthew, 86, 120,1 28–142
• Ascania, 230 n.
• Basedow, 6, 53
• Basedow, Adolf von, 68, 69
• Beck, Karl, 67
• Bedesmen, 299, 300
• Beethoven, 3, 4
• Begging, excitement of, 290–292
• Bennett, Sterndale, 30
• Bernhard of Clairvaux, 227
• Bhikshus, 299
• Bird, R. Mertyns, 87
• Bismarck, 248, 261, 269
• Bluegowns, 299
• Blum, Robert, 66, 69, 70
• Boeckh, 24
• Boetticher, Karl. See Lagarde.
• Brahms, 3
• Brazil, late Emperor of, 280–285
• Brother, M. M.’s, 296–299
• Browning, Robert, 41, 86, 120, 143, 159–162
• Brugsch Pasha, 251
• Bunsen, 306
• Burnouf, Eugène, 136
• Byron, 49
• Carlyle, 86, 102, 103
• Cetto, Baron, 254
• Charity Organization Society, 300
• Chorus = dance, 43, 44
• Christian, Prince of Anhalt, 224
• Church, Dean, 145
• Clough, 86, 127, 128
• Conservatoire, Paris, 15
• Coxe, Rev. H. O., 303
• 322Crown Prince (Emperor Frederick), 257–272
• Curtius, Ernst, 256
• Danish officer begging, 293–295
• Darwin, 86, 202–204
• Darwinian School, 194, 200–202
• David, 3, 13, 18
• Dessau, 5, 6
• Dickens, 126, 127
• Dindorf, 306, 308
• Donkin, Professor, 36
• Doyle, Sir F., 144
• Eckstein, Baron von, 72
• Emerson, 86, 148, 149, 170–177
• Eugénie, the Empress, 208
• Evolution, 194–200
• Faraday, 86, 191–193
• Feet in poetry, 42–45
• Fiske, John, 137
• Fontane, Theodor, 61
• Foreigners in distress, Society for relieving, 302
• Frederick the Great, 221, 222
• Frederick William IV., 245–247, 249, 251, 260, 270, 271
• Froude, J. A., 49, 86, 88–106, 138, 146
• Gaberlunzie men, 299
• Gaisford, Dean, 35
• George, Prince of Anhalt, 226
• German girl dying, 318
• German principalities, 215
• German tailor, poor, 312–315
• German teacher, poor, 315–317
• Gewandhaus Concerts, 13, 16, 27
• Gibbon, 98, 99, 146
• Goethe, 48, 52–54, 76, 137–139, 141, 142, 218, 234
• Goldstücker, 247
• Grant, Sir A., 145
• Granville, Lord, 275
• Greek coins, theft of, 309, 310
• Grote, 86, 146
• Gustavus Adolphus, 224, 225
• Haupt, Professor, 56
• Haydn, 3
• Heine, H., 41, 48, 57–62
• Helmholtz, 137
• Helps, Sir A., 86, 188
• Hensel, Fanny, 22–25, 27
• Herder, 234
• Herlossohn, 67
• Herodotus, 99
• Herwegh, 64–66
• Hiller, 13, 17, 30, 31
• Holland, late Queen of, 284, 285
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 86, 169, 181–184
• Hugo, Victor, 72, 158
• 323Humboldt, Alexander von, 245, 248–251
• Hummel, 21
• Hundred Greatest Men, 137
• Huxley, 86, 120
• Jellineck, 70
• Johnson, Manuel, 145
• Jowett, 145
• Jubilee, the Diamond, 285–288
• Kalliwoda, 14, 18
• Karl, August, Duke of Weimar, 219, 234
• Kerner, J., 54, 55
• Kingsley, Charles, 47, 86, 105–119
• Klingemann, 32
• Kühne, 67
• Lagarde, Paul de, 82
• Lamartine, 71–74
• Lamennais, 72
• Laube, 67
• Lavater, 219
• Leopold Friedrich, late Duke of Dessau, 210–215, 233, 237, 243
• Leopold Friedrich Franz, Duke of Dessau, 217–220
• Leopold, the old Dessauer, 220–223
• Lepsius, 305, 307
• Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, 268
• Lind, Jenny, 16, 34, 35
• Liszt, 16–21
• Livy, 99
• Longfellow, 181
• Lowell, 86, 170, 177–181
• Luther, 224–226
• Lyall, 86
• Lytton, Lord, 188–190
• Macaulay, 86, 99, 102, 185–187
• Martineau, Rev. Dr., 86
• Matthison, 219
• Maurice, Frederick, 86, 192
• Melody, 1, 27
• Mendelssohn, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 18, 19, 21–27, 31–33
• Metre, 42–45
• Meyer, Dr. Karl, 273 n.
• Mill, J. S., 192
• Milman, Dean, 192
• Morier, 145
• Moscheles, 21, 30
• Mozart, 3, 4, 8
• Müller, Wilhelm, 16, 48–55, 56, 84
• Napoleon, 219
• Natural selection, 195
• Neate, 125, 145
• Newman and Kingsley, 113–116
• Novello, Clara, 30
• 324Oriental languages, School of, 275, 276
• Orléans, Duchesse d’, 73, 74
• Ouseley, Sir F., 38
• Owen, Sir Richard, 86
• Palgrave, F., 144, 145
• Platen, 40–42
• Poetry, 139–143
• Porter, Noah, 137
• Prince Consort, 271, 272–275
• Prussia, Prince of, 252–256
• Prussia, Princess of, 256, 257
• Pusey and Kingsley, 116
• Raleigh, Sir Walter, 99
• Ranke, 100
• Renan, 137
• Rhyme, 40–48
• Roggenbach, Baron, 256
• Rosen, F., 32
• Royal Institution, 193
• Rückert, 42, 46, 75–85
• Ruskin, 86, 147–152
• Russell, Lord John, 274
• Sandars, 145
• Sand, George, 72
• Schiller, 234
• Schlœzer, 256
• Schneider, F., 8, 10, 12
• Schubert, 16, 49
• Schumann, 4, 18, 27–30
• Schwab, G., 54
• Sedgwick, 86
• Sellar, 145
• Sewell, Dr., 89
• “S. G. O.,” 88
• Shaftesburys, the three Lord, 130–133, 135
• Shairp, John, 144
• Shakespeare, 141
• Shapira, 308
• Simonides, 303–308
• Socialism, Christian, 111
• Stainer, Sir John, 37
• Stanley, Dean, 1, 34, 86, 107, 116, 137, 193, 208, 285
• Stanley, Lady, 193
• Stern, Daniel, 73
• Stockhausen, 16
• Stockmarr, General, 240
• Strophe, antistrophe, 43
• Stubbs, Dr., 104, 105
• Taine, H., 137
• Tennyson, 41, 47, 86, 152–159, 285
• Thackeray, 124–126
• Thalberg, 30
• Thirlwall, Bishop, 86, 192
• Thirty-nine Articles, 141
• Translations, 93, 97
• Trinity, doctrine of the, 130–135
• Trithen, Dr., 149
• Turner’s pictures, 151
• Tyndall, 120
• 325Uhland, 54, 56
• Uranios, Simonides’ forgery of, 304–308
• Versus, 43
• Vineta, 50
• Wagner, 4
• Wales, Prince of, at Oxford, 276
• Weber, C. M., 11
• Whewell, 86
• Wieck, Clara (Madame Schumann), 17, 21, 28, 29
• Wieland, 219, 234
• William I., 265, 272
• William II., 267
• Winckelmann, 218
• Wörlitz, 219, 225
• Wolfgang, Prince of Anhalt, 225
• Wolfsohn, 62
• Wolverton, Lord, 86