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  • 1912
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who were then in prison. Bonner carried a lamb, at which he rolled his eyes and gnashed his teeth. A dog brought up the rear, carrying the Host in his mouth. What further was to follow no one can say. The queen, who was never more than half a Protestant, and clung to the mass all the more devoutly because she was obliged to resign so much, filled the air with her indignation. She swore good round oaths, we may be sure, and left the room in a rage. The lights were put out, and the students made off in the dark as they could.

The history of the drama at Oxford has episodes of equal interest. The visitor who goes through the lovely Christ Church meadows to the Isis to see the boats, returning, will be sure to visit the refectory of Christ Church. The room is very fine in its proportions and decoration, and hung with the portraits of the multitude of brilliant men who in their young days were Christ Church men. During all the centuries that the rich dark stain has been gathering upon the carved oak in the ceiling and wainscot, it has been the scene of banquets and pageants without number, at which the most illustrious characters of English history have figured. I doubt, however, if any of its associations are finer than those connected with the student plays that have been performed here. Passing over occasions of this kind of less interest of which I find mention, in 1566 Elizabeth visited Oxford, to do honour to whom in this great hall of Christ Church plays were given. Oxford was determined not to be outdone by what had happened at Cambridge two years before. From the accounts, the delight of the hearty queen must have been intense; and as she was never afraid to testify most frankly her genuine feelings, we may be sure the Oxford authorities and their pupils must have presented their entertainments with extraordinary pomp. The plays, as at Cambridge, were of various character, but the one that gave especial pleasure was an English piece having the same subject as the _Knighte’s Tale of Chaucer_, and called _Palamon and Arcite_. It would be pleasant to know that the poet followed as far as possible the words of Chaucer. There is a fine incident narrated connected with the performance. In the scene of the chase, when

“Theseus, with alle joye and blys,
With his Ypolite, the faire queene, And Emelye, clothed al in greene,
On hontyng be they riden ryally,”

a “cry of hounds” was counterfeited under the windows in the quadrangle. The students present thought it was a real chase, and were seized with a sudden transport to join the hunters. At this, the delighted queen, sitting in stiff ruff and farthingale among her maids of honour, burst out above all the tumult with “Oh, excellent! These boys, in very truth, are ready to leap out of the windows to follow the hounds!” When the play was over, the queen called up the poet, who was present, and the actors, and loaded them with thanks and compliments.

When, forty years after, in 1605, the dull James came to Oxford, the poor boys had a harder time. A thing very noteworthy happened when the king entered the city in his progress from Woodstock. If Warton’s notion is correct, scarcely the iron cross in the pavement that marks the spot where the bishops were burned, or the solemn chamber in which they were tried, yea, scarcely Guy Fawkes’s lantern, which they show you at the Bodleian, or the Brazen Nose itself, are memorials as interesting as the archway leading into the quadrangle of St. John’s College, under whose carving, quaint and graceful, one now gets the lovely glimpse into the green and bloom of the gardens at the back. At this gate, three youths dressed like witches met the king, declaring they were the same that once met Macbeth and Banquo, prophesying a kingdom to one and to the other a generation of monarchs, that they now appeared to show the confirmation of the prediction. Warton’s conjecture is that Shakespeare heard of this, or perhaps was himself in the crowd that watched the boys as they came whirling out in their weird dance, and that then and there was conceived what was to become so mighty a product of the human brain,–Macbeth.

King James, however, received it all coldly. The University, kindled by the traditions of Elizabeth’s visit, did its best. Leland gives a glimpse of the stage arrangements in Christ Church Hall. Towards the end “was a scene like a wall, painted and adorned by stately pillars, which pillars would turn about, by reason whereof, with the help of other painted cloths, their stage did vary three times.” But the king liked the scholastic hair-splitting with which he was elsewhere entertained better than the plays. In Christ Church Hall he yawned and even went to sleep, saying it was all mere childish amusement. In fact, the poor boys had to put up with even a worse rebuff; the king spoke many words of dislike, and when, in one of the plays, a pastoral, certain characters came in somewhat scantily attired, the queen and maids of honour took great offence, in which the king, who was not ordinarily over-delicate, concurred.

The practice of acting plays prevailed in the schools as well. The visitor to Windsor will remember in what peace, as seen from the great tower, beyond the smooth, dark Thames, the buildings of Eton lie among the trees. Crossing into the old town and entering the school precincts, where the stone stairways are worn by so many generations of young feet, and where on the play-ground the old elms shadow turf where so many soldiers and statesmen have been trained to struggle in larger fields, there is nothing after all finer than the great hall. In every age since the wars of the Roses, it has buzzed with the boisterous life of the privileged boys of England, who have come up afterward by the hundred to be historic men. There are still the fireplaces with the monogram of Henry VI., the old stained glass, the superb wood carving, the dais at the end. If there were no other memory connected with the magnificent hall, it would be enough that here, about 1550, was performed by the Eton boys, _Ralph Roister Bolster_, the first proper English comedy, written by Nicholas Udal, then head-master, for the Christmas holidays. He had the name of being a stern master, because old Tusser has left it on record that Udal whipped him,–

“for fault but small,
or none at all.”

But the student of our old literature, reading the jolly play, will feel that, though he could handle the birch upon occasion, there was in him a fine genial vein. This was the first English comedy. The first English tragedy, too, _Gorboduc_, was acted first by students,–this time students of law of the Inner Temple,–and the place of performance was close at hand to what one still goes to see in the black centre of the heart of London, those blossoming gardens of the Temple, verdant to-day as when the red-cross knights walked in them, or the fateful red and white roses were plucked there, or the voices of the young declaimers were heard from them, rolling out the turgid lines of Sackville’s piece, the somewhat unpromising day-spring which a glorious sun-burst was to succeed. From Lincoln’s Inn, in 1613, when the Princess Elizabeth married the elector-palatine and went off to Heidelberg Castle, the students came to the palace with a piece written by Chapman, and the performance cost a thousand pounds.

A famed contemporary of Udal was Richard Mulcaster, head-master of St. Paul’s school, and afterward of Merchant Taylors’, concerning whom we have, from delightful old Fuller, this quaint and naive description:

In a morning he would exactly and plainly construe and parse the lesson to his scholars, which done, he slept his hour (custom made him critical to proportion it) in his desk in the school; but woe be to the scholar that slept the while. Awaking, he heard them accurately; and Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him just as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their offending children.

The name of this Rhadamanthus of the birch occurs twice in entries of Elizabeth’s paymaster, as receiving money for plays acted before her; and a certain proficiency as actors possessed by students of St. John’s College at Oxford is ascribed to training given by old Mulcaster at the Merchant Taylors’ school.

But no one of the great English public schools has enjoyed so long a fame in this regard as Westminster. According to Staunton, in his _Great schools of England_, Elizabeth desired to have plays acted by the boys, “Quo juventus turn actioni tum pronunciationi decenti melius se assuescat,” that the youth might be better trained in proper bearing and pronunciation. The noted Bishop Atterbury wrote to a friend, Trelawney, Bishop of Winchester, concerning a performance here of Trelawney’s son: “I had written to your lordship again on Saturday, but that I spent the evening in seeing _Phormio_ acted in the college chamber, where, in good truth, my lord, Mr. Trelawney played Antipho extremely well, and some parts he performed admirably.” In 1695, Dryden’s play of Cleomens was acted. Archbishop Markham, head-master one hundred years ago, gave a set of scenes designed by Garrick. In our own day, Dr. Williamson, head-master in 1828, drew attention in a pamphlet to the proper costuming of the performers; and when, in 1847, there was a talk of abolishing the plays, a memorial signed by six hundred old “Westminsters” was sent in, stating it as their “firm and deliberate belief, founded on experience and reflection, that the abolition of the Westminster play cannot fail to prove prejudicial to the interests and prosperity of the school.” At the present time the best plays of Plautus and Terence are performed at Christmas in the school dormitory.

It all became excessive, and in Cromwell’s time, with the accession of the Puritans to power, like a hundred other brilliant traits of the old English life from whose abuse had grown riot, it was purged away. Ben Jonson, in _The Staple of Newes_, puts into the mouth of a sour character a complaint which no doubt was becoming common in that day, and was probably well enough justified.

“They make all their schollers play-boyes! Is’t not a fine sight to see all our children made enterluders? Doe we pay our money for this? Wee send them to learne their grammar and their Terence and they learne their play-bookes. Well they talk we shall have no more parliaments, God blesse us! But an we have, I hope Zeale-of-the-land Buzzy, and my gossip Rabby Trouble-Truth, will start up and see we have painfull good ministers to keepe schoole, and catechise our youth; and not teach ’em to speake plays and act fables of false newes.”

Studying this rather unexplored subject, one gets many a glimpse of famous characters in interesting relations. Erasmus says that Sir Thomas More, “adolescens, comoediolas et scripsit et egit,” and while a page with Archbishop Moreton, as plays were going on in the palace during the Christmas holidays, he would often, showing his schoolboy accomplishment, step on the stage without previous notice, and exhibit a part of his own which gave more satisfaction than the whole performance besides.

In Leland’s report of the theatricals where King James behaved so ungraciously, “the machinery of the plays,” he says, “was chiefly conducted by Mr. Jones, who undertook to furnish them with rare devices, but performed very little to what was expected.” This is believed to have been Inigo Jones, who soon was to gain great fame as manager of the Court masques. The entertainment was probably ingenious and splendid enough, but every one took his cue from the king’s pettishness, and poor “Mr. Jones” had to bear his share of the ill-humour.

In 1629 a Latin play was performed at Cambridge before the French ambassador. Among the student spectators sat a youth of twenty, with long locks parted in the middle falling upon his doublet, and the brow and eyes of the god Apollo, who curled his lip in scorn, and signalised himself by his stormy discontent. Here is his own description of his conduct: “I was a spectator; they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools; they made sport, and I laughed; they mispronounced, and I misliked; and to make up the Atticism, they were out and I hissed.” It was the young Milton, in the year in which he wrote the _Hymn on the Nativity._

Do I need to cite other precedents for the procedure at the Sweetbrier? I grant you it cannot be done from the practice of American colleges. The strictest form of Puritanism stamped itself too powerfully upon our New England institutions at their foundation, and has affected too deeply the newer seminaries elsewhere in the country, to make it possible that the drama should be anything but an outlaw here. Nevertheless, at Harvard, Yale, and probably every considerable college of the country, the drama has for a long time led a clandestine life in secret student societies, persecuted or at best ignored by the college government,–an unwholesome weed that deserved no tending, if it was not to be at once uprooted.

I do not advocate, Fastidiosus, a return to the ancient state of things, which I doubt not was connected with many evils; but is there not reason to think a partial revival of the old customs would be worth while? It was not for mirth merely that the old professors and teachers countenanced the drama. To the editors of _David’s Harp_ I have sent this passage from Milton, noblest among the Puritans, and have besought them to lay it before their consistory: “Whether eloquent and graceful incitements, instructing and bettering the nation at all opportunities, not only in pulpits, but after another persuasive method, in theatres, porches, or whatever place or way, may not win upon the people to receive both recreation and instruction, let them in authority consult.” The German schoolmasters and professors superintended their boys in the representation of religious plays to instruct them in the theology which they thought all-important; in the performance of Aristophanes and Lucian, Plautus and Terence, mainly in the hope of improving them in Greek and Latin: and when the plays were in the vernacular, it was often to train their taste, manners, and elocution. Erasmus and the Oxford and Cambridge authorities certainly had the same ideas as the Continental scholars. So the English schoolmasters in general, who also managed in the plays to give useful hints in all ways. For instance, Nicholas Udal, in the ingenious letter in _Ralph Roister Doister_, which is either loving or insulting according to the position of a few commas or periods, must have meant to enforce the doctrine of Chaucer’s couplet:

“He that pointeth ill,
A good sentence may oft spill.”

Madame de Maintenon was persuaded that amusements of this sort have a value, “imparting grace, teaching a polite pronunciation, and cultivating the memory”; and Racine commends the management of St. Cyr, where “the hours of recreation, so to speak, are put to profit by making the pupils recite the finest passages of the best poets.” Here is the dramatic instinct, almost universal among young people, and which has almost no chance to exercise itself, except in the performance of the farces to which we are treated in “private theatricals.” Can it not be put to a better use? It would be a cumbrous matter to represent or listen to the _Aulularia_, or the _Miles Gloriosus_, or the [Greek: Eirhene], in which Dr. Dee and his Scarabeus figured so successfully. The world is turned away from that[1]; but here is the magnificent wealth of our own old dramatic literature, in which is contained the richest poetry of our language. It was never intended to be read, but to be heard in living presentment. For the most part it lies almost unknown, except in the case of Shakespeare, and him the world knows far too little. Who does not feel what a treasure in the memory are passages of fine poetry committed early in life?

[Footnote 1: The developments of the last forty years show this judgment to be erroneous.]

Who can doubt the value to the bearing, the fine address, the literary culture of a youth of either sex that might come from the careful study and the attempt to render adequately a fine conception of some golden writer of our golden age, earnestly made, if only partially successful?

I say only partially successful, but can you doubt the capacity of our young people to render in a creditable way the conceptions of a great poet? Let us look at the precedents again. When Mademoiselle de Caylus, in her account of St. Cyr, speaks of the representation of _Andromaque_, she writes, “It was only too well done.” And prim Madame de Maintenon wrote to Racine: “Our young girls have played it so well they shall play it no more”; begging him to write some moral or historic poem. Hence came the beautiful masterpiece _Esther_, to which the young ladies seem to have done the fullest justice, for listen to the testimony. The brilliant Madame de Lafayette wrote: “There was no one, great or small, that did not want to go, and this mere drama of a convent became the most serious affair of the court.” That the admiration was not merely feigned because it was the fashion, here is the testimony of a woman of the finest taste, Madame de Sevigne, given in her intimate letters to her daughter, who, in these confidences, spared no one who deserved criticism:

The king and all the Court are charmed with _Esther_. The prince has wept over it. I cannot tell you how delightful the piece is. There is so perfect a relation between the music, the verses, the songs, and the personages, that one seeks nothing more. The airs set to the words have a beauty which cannot be borne without tears, and according to one’s taste is the measure of approbation given to the piece. The king addressed me and said, “Madame, I am sure you have been pleased.” I, without being astonished, answered, “Sire, I am charmed. What I feel is beyond words.” The king said to me, “Racine has much genius.” I said to him, “Sire, he has much, but in truth these young girls have much too; they enter into the subject as if they had done nothing else.” “Ah! as to that,” said he, “it is true.” And then his Majesty went away and left me the object of envy.

Racine himself says in the Preface to _Esther_:

The young ladies have declaimed and sung this work with so much modesty and piety, it has not been possible to keep it shut up in the secrecy of the institution; so that a diversion of young people has become a subject of interest for all the Court;

and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once the _Athalie_, “la chef d’oeuvre de la poesie francaise,” in the judgment of the French critics, to be rendered by the some young tyros. When, in 1556, in Christ Church Hall, _Palamon and Arcite_ was finished, outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared “that Palamon must have been in love indeed. Arcite was a right martial knight, having a swart and manly countenance, yet like a Venus clad in armour.” To the son of the dean of Christ Church, the boy of fourteen, who played Emilie in the dress of a princess, her compliment was still higher. It was a present of eight guineas,–for the penurious sovereign, perhaps, the most emphatic expression of approval possible.

Shall I admit for a moment that our American young folks have less grace and sensibility than the French girls, and the Oxford youths who pleased Elizabeth? Your face now, Fastidiosus, wears a frown like that of Rhadamanthus; but I remember our Hasty-Pudding days, when you played the part of a queen, and behaved in your disguise like Thor, in the old saga, when he went to Riesenheim in the garb of Freya, and honest giants, like Thrym, were frightened back the whole width of the hall. Well, I do not censure it, and I do not believe you recall it with a sigh; and the reminiscence emboldens me to ask you whether it would not be still better if our dear Harvard, say (the steam of the pudding infects me through twenty years), among the many new wrinkles she in her old age so appropriately contracts, should devote an evening of Commencement-time to a performance, by the students, under the sanction and direction of professors, of some fine old masterpiece?

At our little Sweetbrier we have young men and young women together, as at Oberlin, Antioch, and Massachusetts normal schools. I have no doubt our Hermione, when we gave the _Winter’s Tale_, had all the charm of Mademoiselle de Veillanne, who played Esther at St. Cyr. I have no doubt our Portia, in the _Merchant of Venice_, in the trial scene, her fine stature and figure robed in the doctor’s long silk gown, which fell to her feet, and her abundant hair gathered out of sight into an ample velvet cap, so that she looked like a most wise and fair young judge, recited

“The quality of mercy is not strained,”

in a voice as thrilling as that in which Mademoiselle de Glapion gave the part of Mordecai. I am sure Queen Elizabeth would think our young cavaliers, well-knit and brown from the baseball-field, “right martial knights, having swart and manly countenances.” If she could have seen our Antoninus, when we gave the act from Massinger’s most sweet and tender tragedy of the _Virgin Martyr_, or the noble Caesar, in our selections from Beaumont and Fletcher’s _False One_, she would have been as ready with the guineas as she was in the case of the son of the dean of Christ Church.

Our play at the last Commencement was _Much Ado about Nothing_. It was selected six months before, and studied with the material in mind, the students in the literature class, available for the different parts. What is there, thought I, in Beatrice–sprightliness covering intense womanly feeling–that our vivacious, healthful Ruth Brown cannot master; and what in Benedick, her masculine counterpart, beyond the power of Moore to conceive and render? It is chiefly girlish beauty and simple sweetness that Hero requires, so she shall be Edith Grey. Claudio, Leonato, Don John, Pedro,–we have clean-limbed, presentable fellows that will look and speak them all well; and as for lumbering Dogberry, Abbot, with his fine sense of the ludicrous, will carry it out in the best manner. A dash of the pencil here and there through the lines where Shakespeare was suiting his own time, and not the world as it was to be after three hundred refining years, and the marking out of a few scenes that could be spared from the action, and the play was ready; trimmed a little, but with not a whit taken from its sparkle or pathos, and all its lovelier poetry untouched.

Then came long weeks of drill. In the passage,

“O my lord,
When you went onward to this ended action, I looked upon her with a soldier’s eye,” etc.,

Claudio caught the fervour and softness at last, and seemed (it would have pleased Queen Bess better than Madame de Main tenon) like Palamon, in love indeed. Ursula and Hero rose easily to the delicate poetry of the passages that begin,

“The pleasantest angling is to see the fish Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,”

and

“Look where Beatrice like a lapwing runs.”

Pedro got to perfection his turn and gesture in

“The wolves have preyed; and look, the gentle day, Before the wheels of Phoebus, round about Dapples the drowsy east with spots of gray.”

With the rough comedy of Dogberry and the watchmen, that foils so well the sad tragedy of poor Hero’s heart-breaking, and contrasts in its blunders with the diamond-cut-diamond dialogue of Benedick and Beatrice, there was less difficulty. From first to last, it was engrossing labour, as hard for the trainer as the trained, yet still delightful work; for what is a conscientious manager, but an artist striving to perfect a beautiful dramatic picture? The different personages are the pieces for his mosaic, who, in emphasis, tone, gesture, by-play, must be carved and filed until there are no flaws in the joining, and the shading is perfect. But all was ready at last, from the roar of Dogberry at the speech of Conrade,

“Away! you’re an ass! you’re an ass!”

to the scarcely articulate agony of Hero when she sinks to the earth at her lover’s sudden accusation,

“O Heavens! how am I beset!
What kind of catechising call you this?”

I fancy you ask, rather sneeringly, as to our scenery and stage adjuncts. Once, in the great court theatre at Munich, I saw Wagner’s _Rheingold._ The king was present, and all was done for splendour that could be done in that centre of art. When the curtain rose, the whole great river Rhine seemed to be flowing before you across the stage, into the side of whose flood you looked as one looks through the glass side of an aquarium. At the bottom were rocks in picturesque piles; and, looking up through the tide to the top, as a diver might, the spectator saw the surface of the river, with the current rippling forward upon it, and the sunlight just touching the waves. Through the flood swam the daughters of the Rhine, sweeping fair arms backward as they floated, their drapery trailing heavy behind them, darting straight as arrows, or winding sinuously, from bottom to top, from side to side, singing wildly as the Lorelei. The scene changed, and it was the depths of the earth, red-glowing and full of gnomes. And a third time, after a change, you saw from mountain-tops the city which the giants had built in the heavens for the gods,–a glittering dome or pinnacle now and then breaking the line of white palaces, now and then a superb cloud floating before it, until, at last, a mist seemed to rise from valleys below, wrapping it little by little, till all became invisible in soft gradations of vapoury gloom. I shall never again see anything like that, where an art-loving court subsidises heavily scene-painter and machinist; but for all that, is it wise to have only sneers for what can be brought to pass with more modest means? Our hall at Sweetbrier is as large as the Christ Church refectory, and handsomely proportioned and decorated. A wide stage runs across the end. We found some ample curtains of crimson, set off with a heavy yellow silken border of quite rich material, which had been used to drape a window that had disappeared in the course of repairs. This, stretched from side to side, made a wall of brilliant colour against the gray tint of the room; and possibly Roger Ascham, seeing our audience-room before and after the hanging of it, might have had a thought of Antwerp. The stage is the one thing in the world privileged to deceive. The most devoted reader of Ruskin can tolerate shams here. The costumes were devised with constant reference to Charles Knight, and, to the eye, were of the gayest silk, satin, and velvet. There was, moreover, a profusion of jewels, which, for all one could see, sparkled with all the lustre of the great Florentine diamond, as you see it suspended above the imperial crowns in the Austrian Schatz-Kammer at Vienna. The contrasts of tint were well attended to. Pedro was in white and gold, Claudio in blue and silver, Leonato in red; while our handsome Benedick, a youth of dark Italian favour, in doublet of orange, a broad black velvet sash, and scarlet cloak, shone like a bird of paradise.

There was a garden-scene, in the foreground of which, where the eyes of the spectators were near enough to discriminate, were rustic baskets with geraniums, fuchsias, and cactuses, to give a southern air. In the middle distance, armfuls of honeysuckle in full bloom were brought in and twined about white pilasters. There was an arbour overhung with heavy masses of the trumpet-creeper. A tall column or two surmounted with graceful garden-vases were covered about with raspberry-vines, the stems of brilliant scarlet showing among the green. A thick clump of dogwood, whose large white blossoms could easily pass for magnolias, gave background. The green was lit with showy colour of every sort,–handfuls of nasturtiums, now and then a peony, larkspurs for blue, patches of poppies, and in the garden-vases high on the pillars (the imposition!) clusters of pink hollyhocks which were meant to pass for oleander-blossoms, and did, still, wet with the drops of the afternoon shower, which had not dried away when all was in place. When it comes to rain and dewdrops, dear Dr. Holmes, a “fresh-water college” has an advantage. First, it was given under gas; then, the hall being darkened, a magnesium-light gave a moon-like radiance, in which the dew on the buds glistened, and the mignonette seemed to exhale a double perfume, and a dreamy melody of Mendelssohn sung by two sweet girl-voices floated out about the “pleached bower,” like a song of nightingales. Then toward the end came the scene of the chapel and Hero’s tomb. No lovelier form was ever sculptured than that of the beautiful Queen Louisa of Prussia, as she lies in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, carved by Rauch, asleep on the tomb in white purity. To the eye, our Hero’s tomb was just such a block of spotless marble seen against a background of black, with just such a fair figure recumbent upon it, whose palms and lids and draping the chisel of an artist seemed to have folded and closed and hung,–all idealised again by the magic of the magnesium-light. As the crimson curtain was drawn apart, an organ sounded, and a far-away choir sent into the hush the _Ave Verum_ of Mozart, low-breathed and solemn.

It was not Munich, Fastidiosus. They were American young men and young women, with no resources but those of a rural college, and such as their own taste and the woods and gardens could furnish; but the young men were shapely and intelligent, and the young women had grace and brightness; their hearts were in it, and in the result surely there was a measure of “sweetness and light” for them and those who beheld.

You fear it may beget in young minds a taste for the theatre, now hopelessly given over in great part to abominations. Why not a taste that will lift them above the abominations? Old Joachim Greff, schoolmaster at Dessau in 1545, who has a place in the history of German poetry, has left it on record that he trained his scholars to render noble dramas in the conscientious hope “that a little spark of art might be kept alive in the schools under the ashes of barbarism.” “And this little spark,” says Gervinus, “did these bold men, indeed, through two hundred years, keep honestly until it could again break out into flame.” Instead of fearing the evil result, rather would I welcome a revival of what Warton calls “this very liberal exercise.” Were Joachim Greffs masters in our high schools and in the English chairs in our colleges, we might now and then catch a glimpse of precious things at present hidden away in never-opened store-houses, and see something done toward the development of a taste that should drive out the _opera-bouffe_.

Here, at the end, Fastidiosus, is what I now shape in mind. Hippolyte Taine, in one of his rich descriptions, thus pictures the performance of a masque:

The _elite_ of the kingdom is there upon the stage, the ladies of the court, the great lords, the queen, in all the splendour of their rank and their pride, in diamonds, earnest to display their luxury so that all the brilliant features of the nation’s life are concentrated in the price they give, like gems in a casket. What adornment! What profusion of magnificence! What variety! What metamorphoses! Gold sparkles, jewels emit light, the purple draping imprisons within its rich folds the radiance of the lustres. The light is reflected from shining silk. Threads of pearl are spread in rows upon brocades sewed with thread of silver. Golden embroideries intertwine in capricious arabesques, costumes, jewels, appointments so extraordinarily rich that the stage seems a mine of glory.

The fashionable world of our time has little taste for such pleasures. This old splendour we cannot produce; but the words which the magnificent lords and ladies spoke to one another as they blazed, were those that make up the Poetry of Fletcher’s _Faithful Shepherdess_, Ben Jonson’s _Sad Shepherd_, and, finest of all, the _Comus_ of Milton. They are the most matchless frames of language in which sweet thoughts and fancies were ever set. After all, before this higher beauty, royal pomp even seems only a coarse excrescence, and all would be better if the accessories of the rendering were very simple. Already in my mind is the grove for _Comus_ designed; the mass of green which shall stand in the centre, the blasted trunk that shall rise for contrast to one side, and the vine that shall half conceal the splintered summit, the banks of wild-flowers that shall be transferred, the light the laboratory shall yield us to make all seem as if seen through enchanter’s incense. I have in mind the sweet-voiced girl who shall be the lost lady and sing the invocation to Sabrina; the swart youth who shall be the magician and say the lines,

“At every fall, smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smiled”;

and the golden-haired maid who shall glide in and out in silvery attire, as the attendant spirit. Come, Fastidiosus,–I shall invite too the editors of _David’s Harp_,–and you shall all own the truth of Milton’s own words, “that sanctity and virtue and truth herself may in this wise be elegantly dressed,” when the attendant spirit recites:

“Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run
Quickly to the green earth’s end,
Where the bowed welkin low doth bend; And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals that would follow me,
Love virtue; she alone is free,
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.”

CHAPTER IV

THE GIANT IN THE SPIKED HELMET

In January of 1870, having decided to teach rather than preach, I embarked for Germany to enjoy a year of foreign study. Like Western professors in general (to borrow the witticism of President Eliot) I occupied not so much a chair as a sofa, and felt that I needed enlargement for the performance of my functions.

I think I saw a certain caricature first in Munich at the end of July, then in two or three Swiss cities, then in Paris at the end of August, then in Brussels and London; for it was popular, and the print-shops had it everywhere. It was a map of Europe where the different countries were represented by comical figures, each meant to hit off the peculiarities of the nation it stood for, according to popular apprehension. For Prussia there was an immense giant, one of whose knees was on the stomach of Austria represented as a lank figure utterly prostrate, while the other foot threatened to crush South-western Germany. One hand menaced France, whose outline the designer had managed to give rudely in the figure of a Zouave in a fierce attitude; and the other was thrust toward Russia, a huge colossus with Calmuck dress, and features. The most conspicuous thing in the giant’s dress was a helmet with a spike projecting from the top, much too large for the head of the wearer, and therefore falling over his eyes until they were almost blinded by it. The style of the helmet was that of the usual head-dress of the Prussian soldier. The caricature generally was not bad, and the hit at Prussia, half crushed and blinded under the big helmet, was particularly good. Throughout her whole history Prussia is either at war, or getting ready for war, or lying exhausted through wounds and recovering strength. In Prussia you found things of pugnacious suggestion always, and in the most incongruous connections. Study the schools, and there was something to call up the soldier. Study the church, and even there was a burly polemic quality which you can trace back from to-day to the time when the Prussian bishops were fighting knights. Study the people in their quietest moods, in their homes, among their recreations, indeed, among the graves of those they honour as the greatest heroes, and you found the same overhanging shadow of war. This predominant martial quality showed itself in ways sometimes brutal, sometimes absurd, sometimes sublime.

I visited Prussia at a time of entire peace, for at my departure I crossed the frontier (or that of the North German Confederation, the whole of which, for convenience’s sake, we will call Prussia) on the very day when King William was shouldering aside so roughly at Ems Benedetti and the famous French demands. The things to which I gave attention for the most part were the things which belong to peace; yet as I arrange my recollections I find that something military runs through the whole of them. As one’s letters when he has read them are filed away on the pointed wire standing on the desk, so as regards my Prussian experiences everything seems to have been filed away on the spike of a helmet.

Going out early one May morning to get my first sight of Berlin, I stood presently in a broad avenue. In the centre ran a wide promenade lined with tall, full-foliaged trees, with a crowded roadway on each side bordered by stately buildings. Close by me a colossal equestrian statue in bronze towered up till the head of the rider was on a level with the eaves of the houses. The rider was in cocked hat, booted and spurred, the eye turned sharp to the left as if reconnoitring, the attitude alert, life-like, as if he might dismount any moment if he chose. In the distance down the long perspective of trees was a lofty gate supported by columns, with a figure of Victory on the top in a chariot drawn by horses. Close at hand again, under the porch of a square strong structure, stood two straight sentinels. An officer passed in a carriage on the farther side of the avenue. Instantly the two sentinels stepped back in concert as if the same clock-work regulated their movements, brought their shining pieces with perfect precision to the “present,” stood for an instant as if hewn from stone, the spiked helmets above the blond faces inclining backward at the same angle, then precisely together fell into the old position. The street was “Unter den Linden.” The tall statue was the memorial of Frederick the Great. The gate down the long vista was the Brandenburger Thor, surmounted by the charioted Victory which Napoleon carried to Paris after Jena and which came back after Waterloo. The solid building was the palace of iron-grey old King William; and when the clock-work sentinels went through their salute, I got my first sight of that famous Prussian discipline, against which before the summer was through supple France was to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper that has incautiously bitten at a file.

There never was a place with aspect more military than Berlin even in peaceful times. In many quarters towered great barracks for the troops. The public memorials were almost exclusively in honour of great soldiers. There were tall columns, too, to commemorate victories or the crushing out of revolutionary spirit; rarely, indeed, in comparison, a statue to a man of scientific or literary or artistic eminence. Frederick sits among the tree-tops of Unter den Linden, and about his pedestal are life-size figures of the men of his age whom Prussia holds most worthy of honour. At the four corners ride the Duke of Brunswick and cunning Prince Heinrich, old Ziethen and fiery Seydlitz. Between are a score or more of soldiers of lesser note, only soldiers, spurred and sabre-girt,–except at the very back; and there, just where the tail of Frederick’s horse droops over, stand–whom think you?–no others than Leasing, critic and poet, most gifted and famous; and Kant, peer of Plato and Bacon, one of the most gifted brains of all time. Just standing room for them among the hoofs and uniforms at the tail of Frederick’s horse! Every third man one met in Berlin was a soldier off duty. Batteries of steel guns rolled by at any time, obedient to their bugles. Squadrons of Uhlans in uniforms of green and red, the pennons fluttering from the ends of their lances, rode up to salute the king. Each day at noon, through the roar of the streets, swelled the finest martial music; first a grand sound of trumpets, then a deafening roll from a score of brazen drums. A heavy detachment of infantry wheeled out from some barracks, ranks of strong brown-haired young men stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, neat in every thread and accoutrement, with the German gift for music all, as the stride told with which they beat out upon the pavement the rhythm of the march, dropping sections at intervals to do the unbroken guard duty at the various posts. Frequently whole army corps gathered to manoeuvre at the vast parade-ground by the Kreuzberg in the outskirts. On Unter den Linden is a strong square building, erected, after the model of a Roman fortress, to be the quarters of the main guard. The officers on duty at Berlin came here daily at noon to hear military music and for a half-hour’s talk. They came always in full uniform, a collection of the most brilliant colours, hussars in red, blue, green, and black, the king’s body-guard in white with braid of yellow and silver, in helmets that flashed as if made from burnished gold, crested with an eagle with out-spread wings. The men themselves were the handsomest one can see; figures of the finest symmetry and stature, trained by every athletic exercise, and the faces often so young and beautiful! Counts and barons were there from Pomerania and old Brandenburg, where the Prussian spirit is most intense, and no nobility is nobler or prouder. They were blue-eyed and fair-haired descendants perhaps of the chieftains that helped Herman overcome Varus, and whose names may be found five hundred years back among the Deutsch Ritters that conquered Northern Europe from heathendom, and thence all the way down to now, occurring in martial and princely connection. It was the acme of martial splendour.

“But how do you bear it all?” you say to your Prussian friend, with whom you stand looking on at the base of Billow’s statue. “Is not this enormous preparation for bloodshed something dreadful? Then the tax on the country to support it all, the withdrawing of such a multitude from the employments of peace.” Your friend, who had been a soldier himself, would answer: “We bear it because we must. It is the price of our existence, and we have got used to it; and, after all, with the hardship come great benefits. Every able-bodied young Prussian must serve as a soldier, be he noble or low-born, rich or poor. If he cannot read or write, he must learn. He must be punctual, neat, temperate, and so gets valuable habits. His body is trained to be strong and supple. Shoemaker and banker’s son, count, tailor, and farmer march together, and community of feeling comes about. The great traditions of Prussian history are the atmosphere they breathe, and they become patriotic. The soldier must put off marrying, perhaps half forget his trade, and come into life poor; for who can save on nine cents a day, with board and clothes? But it is a wonder if he is not a healthy, well-trained, patriotic man.” So talked your Prussian; and however much of a peace-man you might be, you could not help owning there was some truth in it. If you bought a suit of clothes, the tailor jumped up from his cross-legged position, prompt and full-chested, with tan on his face he got in campaigning; and it is hard to say he had lost more than he gained in his army training. If you went into a school, the teacher, with a close-clipped beard and vigorous gait, who had a scar on his face from Koeniggraetz, seemed none the worse for it, though he might have read a few books the less and lost his student pallor. At any rate, bad or good, so it was; and so, said the Prussian, it must be. Eternal vigilance and preparation! I went in one day to the arsenal. The flags which Prussian armies had taken from almost every nation in Europe were ranged against the walls by the hundred; shot-shattered rags of silk, white standards of Austria embroidered with gold, Bavaria’s blue checker, above all the great Napoleonic symbol, the N surrounded by its wreath. This was the memorable tapestry that hung the walls, and opposite glittered the waiting barrels and bayonets till one could almost believe them conscious, and burning to do as much as the flintlocks that won the standards. There was a needle-gun there or somewhere for every able-bodied man, and somewhere else uniform and equipments. When I landed in February on the bank of the Weser, the most prominent object was the redoubt with the North German flag. When in midsummer I crossed the Bavarian frontier among a softer people, the last marked object was the old stronghold of Coburg, battered by siege after siege for a thousand years. It was the spiked helmet at the entrance and again at the exit; and from entrance to exit, few places or times were free from some martial suggestion. It was a nation that had come to power mainly through war, and been schooled into the belief that its mailed fists alone could guarantee its life.

I visited a primary school. The little boys of six came with knapsacks strapped to their backs for their books and dinners, instead of satchels. At the tap of a bell they formed themselves into column and marched like little veterans to the schoolroom door. I visited a school for boys of thirteen or fourteen. Casting my eyes into the yard, I saw the spiked helmet in the shape of the half-military manoeuvres of a class which the teacher of gymnastics was training for the severer drill of five or six years later. I visited the “prima,” or upper class of a gymnasium, and here was the spiked helmet in a connection that seemed at first rather irreverent. After all, however, it was only thoroughly Prussian, and deserved to be looked upon as a comical incongruity rather than gravely blamed. A row of cheap pictures hung side by side upon the wall. First Luther, the rougher characteristics of the well-known portrait somewhat exaggerated. The shoulders were even larger than common. The bony buttresses of the forehead over the eyes, too, as they rose above the strong lower face, were emphasised, looking truly as though, if tongue and pen failed to make a way, the shoulders could push one, and, if worse came to worst, the head would butt one. Next to Luther was a head of Christ; then in the same line, with nothing in the position or quality of the pictures to indicate that the subjects were any less esteemed, a row of royal personages, whose military trappings were made particularly plain. It was all characteristic enough. The Reformer’s figure stood for the stalwart Protestantism of the Prussian character, still living and militant in a way hard for us to imagine; the portraits of the royal soldiers stood for its combative loyalty, ready to meet anything for king and fatherland; and the head of Christ for its zealous faith, which, however it may have cooled away among some classes of the people, was still intense in the nation at large. I visited the best school for girls in Berlin, and it was singular to find the spiked helmet, among those retiring maidens even, and this time not hung upon the wall nor outside in the yard. The teacher of the most interesting class I visited–a class in German literature–was a man of forty-five, of straight, soldierly bearing, a grey, martial moustache, and energetic eye. He told me, as we walked together in the hall, waiting for the exercise to commence, that he had been a soldier, and it so happened that among the ballads in the lesson for that day was one in honour of the Prussian troops at Rossbach. Over this the old soldier broke out into an animated lecture, which grew more and more earnest as he went forward; he showed how the idea of faithfulness to duty had become obscured, but was enforced again by the philosopher Kant in his teaching, and then brought into practice by the great Frederick. The veteran plainly thought there was no duty higher than that owed to the _schwarzer Adler_, the black eagle of Prussia. Then came an account of the French horse before Rossbach; how they rode out from Weimar, the troopers, before they went, ripping open the beds on which they had slept and scattering the feathers to the wind to plague the housewives,–a piece of ruthlessness that came home thoroughly to the young housekeepers; then how _der alte Fritz_, lying in wait behind Janus Hill, with General Seydlitz and Field-marshal Keith, suddenly rushed out and put them all to rout. The soldier was in a fever of patriotism and rage against the French before his description was finished, and the faces of the girls kindled in response. “They will some time,” I thought, “be lovers, wives, mothers of Prussian soldiers themselves, and this training will keep alive in the home the national fire.”

Admirable schools they all were, the presence of the spiked helmet notwithstanding, and crowning them in the great Prussian educational system came the famous universities. That at Berlin counted its students by thousands, its professors by hundreds. There was no branch of human knowledge without its teacher. One could study Egyptian hieroglyphics or the Assyrian arrow-head inscriptions. A new pimple could hardly break out on the blotched face of the moon, without a lecture from a professor next day to explain the theory of its development. The poor earthquakes were hardly left to shake in peace an out-of-the-way strip of South American coast or Calabrian plain, but a German professor violated their privacy, undertook to see whence they came and whither they went, and even tried to predict when they would go to shaking again. The vast building of the University stood on Unter den Linden, opposite the palace of the king. Large as it was, its halls were crowded at the end of every hour by the thousand or two of young men, who presently disappeared within the lecture-rooms. Here in past years had been Hegel and Fichte, the brothers Grimm, the brothers Humboldt, Niebuhr, and Carl Ritter. Here in my time, were Lepsius and Curtius, Virchow and Hoffman, Ranke and Mommsen,–the world’s first scholars in the past and present. The student selected his lecturers, then went day by day through the semester to the plain lecture-rooms, taking notes diligently at benches which had been whittled well by his predecessors, and where he too most likely carved his own autograph and perhaps the name of the dear girl he adored,–for Yankee boys have no monopoly of the jack-knife.

Where could one find the spiked helmet in the midst of the scholastic quiet and diligence of a German university? It was visible enough in more ways than one. Here was one manifestation. Run down the long list of professors and teachers in the _Anzeiger_, and you would find somewhere in the list the _Fechtmeister_, instructor in fighting, master of the sword exercise, and he was pretty sure to be one of the busiest men in the company. To most German students, a sword, or _Schlaeger_, was as necessary as pipe or beer-mug; not a slender fencing-foil, with a button on the point, and slight enough to snap with a vigorous thrust, but a stout blade of tempered steel, ground sharp. With these weapons the students perpetrated savageries, almost unrebuked, which struck an American with horror. Duels were of frequent occurrence, taking place sometimes at places and on days regularly set apart for the really bloody work. The fighters were partially protected by a sort of armour, and the wounds inflicted were generally more ghastly than dangerous; though a son of Bismarck was said to have been nearly killed at Bonn a few years before, and there was sometimes serious maiming. Perhaps one may say it was nothing but very rough play, but it was the play of young savages, whose sport was nothing to them without a dash of cruel rage. The practice dates from the time when the Germans wore wolf-skins, and were barbarians roaring in their woods. Perhaps the university authorities found it too inveterate a thing to be done away with; perhaps, too, they felt, thinking as it were under their spiked helmets, that after all it had a value, making the young men cool in danger and accustoming them to weapons. We, after all, cannot say too much. Often our young American students in Germany take to the _Schlaeger_ as gracefully and naturally as game-cocks to spurs. The most noted duellist at one of the universities that winter was a burly young Westerner, who had things at first all his own way. A still burlier Prussian from Tuebingen, however, appeared at last, and so carved our valiant borderer’s face, that thereafter with its criss-cross scars it looked like a well-frequented skating-ground. Football, too, in America probably kills and maims more in a year than all the German duels.

To crown all, the schools and University at Berlin were magnificently supplemented in the great Museum, a vast collection, where one might study the rise and progress of civilisation in every race of past ages that has had a history, the present condition of perhaps every people, civilised or wild, under the sun. In one great hall you were among the satin garments and lacquered furniture of China; in another there was the seal-skin work of the Esquimaux stitched with sinew. Now you sat in a Tartar tent, now among the war-clubs, the conch-shell trumpets, the drums covered with human skin of the Polynesians. Here it was the feathery finery of the Caribs, here the idols and trinkets of the negroes of Soudan. There too, in still other halls, was the history of our own race; the maces the Teutons and Norsemen fought with, the torcs of twisted gold they wore about their necks, the sacrificial knives that slew the victims on the altars of Odin; so, too, what our fathers have carved and spun, moulded, cast, and portrayed, until we took up the task of life. In another place you found the great collection made in Egypt by Lepsius. The visitor stood within the facsimile of a temple on the banks of the Nile. On the walls and lotus-shaped columns were processions of dark figures at the loom, at the work of irrigation, marching as soldiers, or mourners at funerals,–exact copies of the original delineations. There were sphinx and obelisk, coffins of kings, mummies of priest and chieftain, the fabrics they wore, the gems they cut, the scrolls they engrossed, the tomb in which they were buried. Stepping into another section, you were in Assyria, with the alabaster lions and plumed genii of the men of Nineveh and Babylon. The walls again were brilliant, now with the splendour of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar; the captives building temples, the chivalry sacking cities, the princes on their thrones. Here too was Etruria revealed in her sculpture and painted vases; and here too the whole story of Greece. Passing through these wonderful halls, you reviewed a thousand years and more, almost from the epoch of Cadmus, through the vicissitudes of empire and servitude, until Constantinople was sacked by the Turks. The rude Pelasgic altar, the sculptured god of Praxiteles, then down through the ages of decay to the ugly painting of the Byzantine monk in the Dark Ages. So too the whole history of Rome; the long heave of the wave from Romulus until it becomes crested with the might and beauty of the Augustan age; the sad subsidence from that summit to Goth and Hun. There was architecture which the eyes of the Tarquins saw, there were statues of the great consuls of the Republic, the luxury of the later Empire. You saw it not only in models, but sometimes in actual relics. One’s blood thrilled when he stood before a statue of Julius Caesar, whose sculptor, it is reasonable to believe, wrought from the life. It was broken and discoloured, as it came from the Italian ruin where it had lain since the barbarian raids. But the grace had not left the toga folded across the breast, nor was the fine Roman majesty gone from the head and face,–a head small, but high, with a full and ample brow, a nose with the true eagle curve, and thin, firm lips formed to command; a statue most subduing in its simple dignity and pathetic in its partial ruin. And all this was free to the world as the air of heaven almost. No fee for admission; the only requisitions, not to handle, orderly behaviour, and decent neatness in attire. Here I saw too, when I ascended the steps between the great bronze groups of statuary as I entered, and again the last thing as I left, the spiked helmet on the head of the stiff sentinel always posted at the door.

The German home was affectionate and genial. The American, properly introduced, was sure of a generous welcome, for it was hard to find a German who had not many relatives beyond the Atlantic. There were courteous observances which at first put one a little aback. Sneezing, for instance, was not a thing that could be done in a corner. If the family were a bit old-fashioned, you would be startled and abashed by hearing the “_prosits_” and “_Gesundheits_” from the company, wishes that it might be for your advantage and health sonorously given, with much friendly nodding in your direction. This is a curious survival of an old superstition that sneezing perhaps opened a passage through which an evil spirit might enter the body. As you rose from the table it was the old-fashioned way, too, to go through with a general hand-shaking, and a wish to every one that the supper might set well. The Germans are long-lived, and almost every domestic hearthstone supports the easy-chairs of grandparents. Grandfather was often fresh and cheerful, the oracle and comforter of the children, treated with deference by those grown up, and presented to the guest as the central figure of the home. As the younger ones dropped off to bed and things grew quieter, grandfather’s chair was apt to be the centre toward which all tended, and, of course, the old man talked about his youth. Here are the reminiscences I heard once at the end of a merry evening, and at other times I heard something not unlike: “Children and grandchildren and guest from over the sea, when I was a boy, Prussia was struggling with the first Napoleon; and when I was eighteen I marched myself under Bluecher beyond the Rhine. Sometimes we went on the run, sometimes we got lifts in relays of waggons, and so I have known the infantry even to make now and then fifty miles a day. Matters were pressing, you see (_sehen Sie ‘mal_). At last we crossed at Coblentz, and got from there into Belgium the first days of June. We met the French at Ligny,–a close, bitter fight,–and half my battalion were left behind there where they had stood. We were a few paces off, posted in a graveyard, when the French cavalry rode over old Marshal Vorwaerts, lying under his horse. I saw the rush of the French, then the countercharge of the Prussian troopers when missed the General and drove the enemy back till they found him again; though what it all meant we never knew till it was over. Then, after mighty little rest, we marched fast and far, with cannon-thunder in our ears in a constant mutter, always growing louder, until in the afternoon we came at a quickstep through a piece of woods out upon the plain by Waterloo, where they had been fighting all day. Our feet sucked in the damp ground, the wet grain brushed our knees, as our compact column spread out into more open order and went into fire. What a smoke there was about La Haye Sainte and Hougomont, with now lines of red infantry, or a column in dark blue, or a mass of flashing cuirassiers hidden for a moment, then reappearing! It was take and give, hot and heavy, for an hour or so about Planchenoit. A ball grazed my elbow and another went through my cap; but at sunset the French were broken, and we swept after the rout as well as we could through the litter, along the southward roads. We were at a halt for a minute, I remember, when a rider in a chapeau with a plume, and a hooked nose underneath, trotted up, wrapped in a military cloak, and somebody said it was Wellington.” Grandfather was sure to be at a white heat before he had finished, and so, too, his audience. The athletic student grandson, with a deep scar across his cheek from a _Schlaeger_ cut, rose and paced the room. The _Fraeulien_, his sister, to whom the retired grenadier has told the story of the feather-beds at Weimar, showed in her eves she remembered it all. “Yes, friend American!” breaks in the father of the family, “and it all must be done over again. Sooner or later it must come, a great struggle with France; the Latin race or the Teutonic, which shall be supreme in Europe? We are ready now; arsenals filled, horses waiting, equipments for everybody. Son Fritz there has his uniform ready, and somewhere there is one for me. _Donnerwetter_! If they get into Prussia, they’ll find a tough old _Landsturm_! Only let Vater Wilhelm turn his hand, and to-morrow close upon a million trained and well-armed troops could be stepping to the drum.” It was an evening at the end of June. Napoleon was having the finishing touches put to the new Opera House at Paris, thinking, so far as the world could tell, of nothing more important than how many imperial eagles it would do to put along the cornice. King William was packing for Ems, designing to be back at the peaceful unveiling of his father’s statue the first week in August. Bismarck was at his Pomeranian estate, in poor health, it was said, plotting nothing but to circumvent his bodily trouble. In less than a month full-armed Prussia was on the march. I could understand the readiness, when I thought of the spiked helmet I had seen in the Prussian home that quiet summer night.

The German _Friedhof_, or burying-ground, had never the extent or magnificence of some American cemeteries. Even near the cities it was small and quiet, showing, however, in the well-kept mounds and stones there was no want of care. Every old church, too, was floored with the memorial tablets of those buried beneath, and bare upon walls and columns monuments in the taste of the various ages that have come and gone since the church was built. Graves of famous men, here as everywhere, were places of pilgrimage, and here as everywhere to see which are the most honoured tombs, was no bad way of judging the character of the people. Among the scholars of Germany there have been no greater names than those of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, brothers not far apart in the cradle, not far apart in death, who lived and worked together their full threescore years and ten. They were two wonderful old men, with faces–as I saw them together in a photograph shown me by Hermann Grimm, the well-known son of Wilhelm–full of intellectual strength, and yet with the sweetness and innocence of children. They lie now side by side in the Matthaei Kirchhof at Berlin, in graves precisely similar, with a lovely rose-bush scattering petals impartially on the turf above both, and solid twin stones at their heads, meant to endure apparently as long as their fame. Hither come a large and various company of pilgrims,–children who love the brothers Grimm for their fairy-tales, young students who have been kindled by their example, and grey old scholars who respect their achievements as the most marvellous work of the marvellous German erudition. The little North German city, Weimar, is closely associated with the great literary men of the last hundred years. Here several of them accomplished their best work under the patronage of an enlightened duke, and finally found their graves. An atmosphere of reverend quiet seemed to hang over it as I walked through its shaded streets,–streets where there is never bustle, and which appear to be always remembering the great men who have walked in them. In the burying-ground in the outskirts I found the mausoleum of the ruling house, a decorated hall of marble with a crypt underneath in which are the coffins. The members of the Saxe-Weimar family for many generations are here; the warlike ancestor with his armour rusting on the dusty lid, grand-duke and duchess, and the child that died before it attained the coronet. But far more interesting than any of these are two large plain caskets of oak, lying side by side at the foot of the staircase by which you descend. In these are the bones of Goethe and Schiller. The heap of wreaths, some of them still fresh, which lay on the tops, the number on the coffin of Schiller being noticeably the larger, showed how green their memory had been kept in the heart of the nation. I was only one of a great multitude of pilgrims who are coming always, their chief errand being to see the graves of these famous dead within the quiet town. In the side of the Schloss Kirche, in the city of Wittenberg, is an old archway, with pillars carved as if twisted and with figures of saints overhead, the sharpness of the cutting being somewhat broken and worn away through time. It is the doorway which rang loud three hundred years ago to the sound of Luther’s hammer as he nailed up his ninety-five theses. Within the church, about midway toward the altar and near the wall, the guide lifts an oaken trap-door and shows you, beneath, the slab which covers Luther’s ashes. Just opposite, in a sepulchre precisely similar, lies Melancthon, and in the chancel near by, in tombs rather more stately, the electors of Saxony that befriended the reformers. A spot worthy indeed to be a place of pilgrimage! attracting not only those who bless the men, but those who curse them. Charles V. and Alva stood once on the pavement where the visitor now stands, and the Emperor commanded the stone to be removed from the grave of Luther. Did the body turn in its coffin at the violation? It might well have been so, for never was there fiercer hate. For three centuries the generations have trooped hitherward, more often drawn in reverence, but sometimes through very hatred, a multitude too mighty to be numbered. But there is a grave in Prussia, where, if I mistake not, the pilgrims are more numerous and the interest, for the average Prussian, deeper than scholar or poet or reformer call out. The garrison church at Potsdam has a plain name and is a plain edifice, when one thinks of the sepulchre it holds. Hung upon the walls are dusty trophies; there are few embellishments besides. You make your way through the aisles among the pews where the regiments sit at service, marching from their barracks close by, then through a door beneath the pulpit enter a vault lighted by tapers along the wall. Two heavy coffins stand on the stone floor,–the older one that of Frederick William I., that despot, partially insane, perhaps, who yet accomplished great things for Prussia; the other that of his famous son, Frederick the Great, whose sword cut the path by which Prussia advanced to her vast power. On the copper lid formerly lay that sword, until the great Napoleon when he stood there, feeling a twinge of jealousy perhaps over the dead leader’s fame, carried it away with him. Father and son lie quietly enough now side by side, though their relations in life were stormy. About the great soldier’s sleep every hour rolls the drumbeat from the garrison close by. The tramp of the columns as they come in to worship jar the warrior’s ashes. The dusky standards captured in the Seven Years’ War droop about him. The hundred intervening years have blackened them, already singed in the fire of Zorndorf, Leuthen, and Torgau. The moth makes still larger the rent where the volleys passed. The spiked helmet is even here among the tombs; and schooled as the Prussians are among the din of trumpets and smoke of wars, no other among the mighty graves in their land holds dust, in their thought, so heroic.

Seven hundred years ago Frederick’s ancestor Conrad, the younger son of a family of some rank, but quite undistinguished, riding down from the little stronghold of Hohenzollern in Swabia, with nothing but a good head and arm, won favour with the Emperor Barbarossa and became at last Burggraf of Nuremberg. I saw the old castle in which this Conrad lived and his line after him for several generations. It rises among fortifications the plan for which Albert Duerer drew, with narrow windows in the thick masonry of the towers, the battlements worn by the pacing to and fro of sentinels in armour, and an ancient linden in the court-yard, planted by an empress a thousand years ago it is said, with as green a canopy to throw over the tourist to-day as it threw over those old Hohenzollerns. Conrad transmitted to his descendants his good head and strong arm, until at length becoming masters of Baireuth and Anspach, they were Margraves and ranked among important princes. Their seat now was at Culmbach, in the great castle of the Plessenburg. I saw one May morning the grey walls of the old nest high on its cliff at the junction of the red and white Main, threatening still, for it is now a Bavarian prison. The power of the house grew slowly. In one age it got Brandenburg, in another the great districts of Ost and West Preussen; now it was possessions in Silesia, now again territory on the Rhine. Power came sometimes through imperial gift, sometimes through marriage, sometimes through purchase or diplomacy or blows. From poor soldiers of fortune to counts, from counts to princes, from princes to electors, and at last kings. Sometimes they are unscrupulous, sometimes feeble, sometimes nobly heroic and faithful; more often strong than weak in brain and hand. The Hohenzollern tortoise keeps creeping forward in its history, surpassing many a swift hare that once despised it in the race. I believe it is the oldest princely line in Europe. There is certainly none whose history on the whole is better. Margraf George of Anspach-Baireuth was perhaps the finest character among the Protestant princes of the Reformation, without whom the good fight could not have been fought. When Charles V. besieged Metz in the winter (which, with Lorraine, had just been torn from Germany by the French), and was compelled by the cold to withdraw, it was a Hohenzollern prince, one of the first soldiers of the time, who led the rear-guard over ground which another Hohenzollern, Prince Frederick Charles, has again made famous. Later, in Frederick the Great, the house furnished one of the firmest hands that ever held a royal sceptre. His successors have been men of power.

They are good types of their stock, and Prussia is worthy of the leadership to which she is advancing. In the cathedral of Speyer stand the statues of the mighty German Kaisers, who six hundred years ago wore the purple, and, after their wild battle with the elements of disorder about them, were buried at last in its crypts. They are majestic figures for the most part, idealised by the sculptor, and yet probably not far beyond nature; for the imperial dignity was not hereditary, but given to the man chosen for it, and the choice was often a worthy one. They were leaders in character as well as station, and it is right to give their images the bearing of men strong in war and council. I felt that if the ancient dignity was to be revived in our own day, and the sceptre of Barbarossa and Rudolph of Hapsburg to be extended again over a united Germany, there had been few princes more worthy to hold it than the modern Hohenzollern.

In speaking of this great people so as to give the best idea of them in a short space, I have seized on what seemed to me in those days the most salient thing, and described various phases of their life as pervaded by it. The fighting spirit was bred in their bones. They were a nation of warriors almost as much as the Spartans, and stood ready on the instant to obey the tap of the drum calling to arms. Such constant suggestions of war were painful. The spiked helmet is never an amiable head-dress; “but,” said the representative Prussian, “there is no help for it. We have been a weak people wedged in between powerful unscrupulous neighbours, and have had a life-and-death struggle to wage almost constantly with one or the other of these, or all at once. And in what way is our situation different now? Is Russia less ambitious? How many swords has France beaten into ploughshares? What pruning-hooks have been made from the spears of Austria? Let us know on what conditions we can live other than wearing our spiked helmets, and we will embrace them.” It was not an easy matter to argue down your resolute Prussian when he turned to you warmly, after you had been crying peace to him.

As I pondered, I thought perhaps it is a necessity, since the world is what it is, that Europe should still be a place of discord. America, however, is practically one, not a jarring company of nations repeating the protracted agony of the Old World. We have no question of the “balance of power” coming up in every generation, settled only to be unsettled amid devastation and slaughter. We can grow forward unhindered, with hardly more than a feather’s weight of energy taken for fighting from the employments of peace. America stands indeed a nation blessed of God; and there is nothing better worth her while to pray for than that a happier time may come to her giant brother over the sea; that the strength of such an arm may not always waste itself wielding the sword; that the sensibilities of such a heart may not be crushed or brutalised in carnage that forever repeats itself; that the noble head may some time exchange the spiked helmet for the olive chaplet of peace.

CHAPTER V

A STUDENT’S EXPERIENCE IN THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR

We rememberers lie under certain suspicion. “Uncle Mose,” said an inquirer, his intonation betraying scepticism, “they say you remember General Washington.” “Yaas, Boss,” replied Uncle Mose, “I used to ‘member Gen’l Washington, but sence I jined de church I done forgot.” Not having joined Uncle Mose’s church, my memory has not experienced the ecclesiastical discouragement that befell him. I humbly trust, however, it needs no chastening, and aver that I do not go for my facts to my imagination. I am now in foreign parts dealing with personages of especial dignity and splendour and must establish my memory firmly in the reader’s confidence.

I was a student in Germany in 1870. In the spring at Berlin, passing by the not very conspicuous royal palace on Unter den Linden, one day I studied the front with some interest. The two sentinels stood in the door saluting with clock-work precision the officers who frequently passed. A watchful policeman was on the corner, but there was little other sign that an important personage was within the walls. With some shock I suddenly caught sight, in a window close at hand, of a tall, robust figure with a rugged but not ungenial face surmounted by grizzled hair, in uniform with decorations hanging upon the broad breast, who, as I glanced up, saluted me with an unlooked-for nod. I knew at once it was the King of Prussia, who before the year was ended was to be crowned as Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse at Versailles. I was thoroughly scared, as I did not know that it was the habit of the King to stand in the window and good-naturedly greet the passer-by.

That was my first sight of a real king. But there is another figure which I contemplate with more interest. The 31st of May of 1870 was a day sent from heaven, brilliant sunshine after a period of cloud; the spring lording it in the air, the trees and grass in their freshest luxuriance. I was at Potsdam that day; in the wide-stretching gardens that surround the New Palace. As I walked, I came to a cord drawn across the path, indicating that visitors were to go no farther. Close by stood a tall young grenadier on duty as a sentinel, but willing to chat. Looking beyond the cord into the reserved space I presently saw coming up from a secluded path, a low carriage drawn by a pony led by a groom in which was seated a lady dressed in white. She was not of distinguished appearance but my grenadier told me that it was the Crown Princess of Prussia, the daughter of the Queen of England. From the screen of the bush I watched her with natural interest. The carriage paused and a group of little boys and girls came running out from the thicket attended by a governess or two and a tutor. The little girls had their hands full of flowers, which, running forward, they threw into the carriage. The boys, too, ran up with pretty demonstrations, and a straight little fellow of ten years or so hurried to the groom and began to pat the pony’s nose. These, I learned, were the princes and princesses of the royal family. The little fellow patting the pony’s nose was the eldest and destined to emerge into history as Kaiser Wilhelm the Second.

And now, from a door of the palace, not far distant, came striding a notable figure, tall and stalwart, in the undress uniform of a Prussian General. Under his fatigue cap the blond hair was abundant; a wave of brown beard swept flown upon his breast. The face was full of intelligence and authority, but at that moment most kindly as his blue eyes sought the group that stood in the foreground. It was the Crown Prince of Prussia, destined at length to be the Emperor Friedrich. The carriage passed on, the Crown Prince walking, with his hand on the side, while the Princess held her parasol over his head, laughing at the idea evidently, that so sturdy a soldier needed that kind of a screen.

The Crown Prince Friedrich was unpopular in those days as too domestic, standing too much withdrawn from the bustling world, but there was no failure when the stress came. Only a few weeks passed before the stout soldier, whom I had seen throwing lilies and sheltered from the sun by his wife’s parasol, was at the head of a great army corps, crushing the power of France at Worth and Weissembourg; but the report was that he had said, “I do not like war, and if I am ever King I shall never make war.”

A few weeks after the Potsdam incident I was in the city of Vienna. One morning, like thunder out of a clear sky, news came of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war. I read the paper, but, not feeling that the news need interfere with my sight-seeing, went to the Hofbourg, the old palace, in the heart of the city, of the Imperial family of Austria. The building is extensive; the streets of the city at that time running under it here and there in tunnels. I visited the _Schatz_ Kammer, the treasure-room, and saw men go almost demented at the spectacle of the gold and jewels heaped up in the cases. The sight of the splendour, the heaped-up jewels, the batons, the faded, and sometimes bloody, garments, the trinkets and decorations, associated with towering personalities of the past, attuned my spirit for some adventure above the commonplace. As I came down into the street, narrow and overhung by the confining arch, a soldier passed me on the run into an open space just beyond, where instantly a battalion hurried out to stand at present. Then in the distance I heard galloping of horses and an open carriage rapidly approached, in which were seated four figures, protected from the light rain by grey overcoats, wearing the chapeaux which have come down from Napoleonic times. The carriage passed so near that I was obliged to press back against the wall to save my feet from the wheels, and a figure on the back seat, who, for the moment, was within arm’s reach, I recognised as Francis Joseph.

He was then a man in his best years, a strong, sensible if not impressive face, and a well-knit frame. He had driven in from Schoenbrunn to attend a council meeting, and the day for him was no doubt a most critical one. War had come. It was only four years after Koeniggraetz. His old enemy, Prussia, was about to hurl herself, with who could tell what allies, against France. What stand should Austria take? If the Kaiser was agitated, his face did not show it; it was significant of quiet, cool poise. Excitement was repressed, while good sense weighed and determined. Few sovereigns have been obliged to face so often situations of the utmost difficulty. I can believe that with similar imperturbability Francis Joseph has confronted the series of perplexities which make up the tangled story of his long career, and I count it good fortune that I witnessed, in a moment of supreme embarrassment, the balance and resolution with which the good ruler went to his task. Austria, as the world knows, decided that day to be neutral in the Franco-Prussian quarrel.

The disorder in the land made me feel that I must get nearer to my base, so I hurriedly left Vienna for Munich, which I found seething with agitation, for, like Austria, Bavaria had only a few years before been Prussia’s enemy, and so far as the populace was concerned all was in doubt as to what course would now be taken. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with 150,000 men, and was marching to interpose between Northern and Southern Germany.

At the Ober-Pollinger I heard in the inn, amid the stormy discussion of the crisis, something quite out of harmony with the spirit of the hour. The first performance was to be given in the Royal Opera House of a work of Richard Wagner, the _Rheingold_. Wagner in those days had not attained his great fame, and, to a man like me, who had no especial interest in music, was a name almost unknown, but I went with the crowd, thinking to help out a dreary evening rather than to enjoy a masterpiece. The house was crowded. In the centre before the stage an ample space was occupied by the royal box, richly carved and draped. Presently the King entered, a slender, graceful figure in a dress suit, his dark rather melancholy face looking handsome in the gorgeous setting of the theatre. The crowded audience rose to their feet in a tumult of enthusiasm. The air resounded with “Hoch! Hoch!” the German cheer, and handkerchiefs waved like a snow-storm. The King bowed right and left in acknowledgment of the plaudits, and the performance of the evening was kept long in waiting. The line of Bavarian kings has perhaps little title to our respect. The Ludwig of fifty years ago was a voluptuary, vacillating, like another Louis Quinze, between debauchery and a weak pietism. He probably merited the cuts of the relentless scourge of Heine than which no instrument of chastisement was ever more unsparing, and which in his case was put to its most merciless use; but he loved art and lavished his revenues upon pictures, statues, and churches, which the world admires, imparting a benefit, though his subjects groaned. His successor, whom I saw, was a man morbid and without force, who early came to a sorrowful end. His redeeming quality was a fine aesthetic taste, which he had no doubt through heredity, together with a sad burden of disease. The world remembers kindly that he was a prodigal patron of art.

I went to Heidelberg in February, 1870, bent upon a quiet year of study in Germany and France. Fate had a different programme for me. My plans were badly interfered with but to see Europe in such a turmoil was an experience well worth having. Heidelberg that spring was very peaceful. The ice in the Neckar on which skaters were disporting on my arrival passed out in due course of time to the Rhine, the foliage broke forth in glory on the noble hills and the nightingales came back to sing in the ivy about the storied ruins. There was no suggestion in the air of cannon thunder. At Berlin, however, as I have described, I found things wearing a warlike air. I was eager to perfect my German and sought chances to talk with all whom I met, and often had pleasant converse with the young soldiers who when off duty numerously flocked to the gardens and street corners. I recall in particular three young soldiers whose subsequent fate I should like to know. The first was a handsome young grenadier who had talked with me affably as we stood together screened by the bush in the garden of the New Palace at Potsdam watching the family of the Crown Prince, that beautiful forenoon in May…. When I told him I had myself _mitgemacht_ the Civil War in America he at once accorded me respect as a veteran. I think he was a _Freiwilliger_, one of the class, who, having reached a high status in the Gymnasium, enjoyed the privilege of a shorter term of service. He had the bearing of a cultivated gentleman and there was strength in his firm young face which I have no doubt made him a good soldier in the time of stress. We shook hands at last in the friendliest way and I saw him no more. A few days later the train in which I was riding stopped at Erfurt and among the groups at the station was one that interested me much. In the centre stood a sturdy young Uhlan gaudy in full dress which I fancied he had only lately assumed, his stature was increased by his lofty horse-hair plume and he wore his corselet over a uniform in which there was many a dye. A bevy of pretty girls thronged around him, freshly beautiful after the German type, blond and blue-eyed in attractive summer draperies, and I speculated pleasantly as to which among them were sisters and which sweethearts. As the train departed the young Uhlan climbed into my compartment and we sat vis-a-vis as we rode on through the country. He was a frank ingenuous boy of twenty with eyes that danced with life, and a mobile play of features. My claim that I had seen service in the tented field again served me in good stead as an introduction; it was a passport to his confidence and I had a pleasant hour or two with him until he left me at length at his rendezvous.

Best of all I remember a third encounter. When I stepped from my car at Weimar I asked a direction from a young grenadier off duty who stood at hand on the platform. He too possessed the usual Teutonic vigour and strength. A conversation sprang up in which I explained that I was an American and desired to see as well as I could in a few hours the interesting things in that little city so quiet and renowned. I had found out by this time that my small veteranship was a good asset and paraded it for all it was worth and as usual it told. He was off duty for a few hours and had never visited the shrines of Weimar, and if I had no objection he would like to go with me on my tour of inspection, so together we walked through those shadowed streets, which seemed to be haunted even in that bright sunshine by the ghosts of the great men who have walked in them. We saw the homes of Goethe and Schiller, the noble statues of the _Dichter-Paar_, and the old theatre behind it in which were first performed the masterpieces of the German drama. We went together to the cemetery and descending into the crypt of the mausoleum stood by the coffins of Goethe and Schiller, the men most illustrious in German letters. It was a memorable day of my life, the outward conditions perfect, the June sunshine, the wealth of lovely foliage, the bird songs, and right at hand the homes and haunts of the inspired singers whom I especially reverenced. I was most fortunate in my companionship, the bearing of the youth was marked by no flippancy, he venerated as I did the lofty spirits into whose retreats we had penetrated. He was familiar with their masterpieces and we felt for them a like appreciation. His soldierly garb accorded perhaps ill with the peaceful suggestions of the hour and place, but in his mind plainly the sentiment lay deep, a warm recognition of what gave his country its best title to greatness. We took thought too of Wieland and looked in silence at the fine statue of Herder standing before the church in which he long ministered; but the supreme personages for us were Goethe and Schiller. What became of my sympathetic young soldier I have never known. If he escaped from Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte and Sedan I am sure that he must have matured into a high-souled man.

I had an opportunity, during a visit to Strassburg in the spring, to see the soldiery of France. At the time the prestige of the Second Empire was at its height, Magenta and Solferino were considerable battles and the French had won them. Turcos and Zouaves had long passed in the world as soldiers of the best type and in our Civil War we had copied zealously their fantastic apparel and drill. When the Franco-Prussian War broke out the world felt that Germany had the hardest of nuts to crack and in many a mind the forecast was that France would be the victor, but even to my limited judgment the shortcomings of the French troops were plain. They were inferior in physique, lacking in trimness and even in cleanliness, and imperfectly disciplined. I wondered if the rather slovenly ill-trained battalions of small pale men could stand up against the prompt rigid alignment of the broad-shouldered six-footers I had seen manoeuvring on the other side of the Rhine.

I had received word in the spring from my bankers in Paris that my letter of credit was not in regular shape and they advised me to draw at Berlin a sum of money sufficient for present needs and transmit the letter to them, promising to adjust the matter in such a way that both they and I would be relieved of some inconvenience. In June I drew a small sum and sent my letter to Paris in accordance with their instructions, the agreement being that I was to call a month or so later on the correspondents at Munich of the Paris bankers and receive from them the corrected letter. I then travelled as far as Vienna where all unforeseen the news startled me of the outbreak of the war. I hurried to Munich, my little store of money being by that time much depleted. At the banking house I learned to my consternation that they had heard nothing of me or my letter of credit. Still worse, there was no prospect of hearing, communication with Paris was completely broken off. The rumour was that McMahon had crossed the Rhine at Strassburg with one hundred and fifty thousand men on the march to interpose between Southern and Northern Germany. The house had not heard from Paris and could not expect to hear. Acting on their advice I sent a distressful telegram roundabout through Switzerland to Paris. There was a possibility that such a message might go through; otherwise there was no hope. I then spent at Munich one of the most anxious weeks of my life. I was nearer the pavement than I have ever been before or since. There was a charming German family at the inn at which I stopped, gentle, courteous people, father, mother, and a little blue-eyed daughter. When the little girl found I was from America I can now see her innocent wide-open eyes as she asked me if I had ever seen an Indian. I could tell her some good stories of Indians for in boyhood I had lived near a reservation of Senecas, at that time to a large extent, in their primitive state. When I ventured one day to tell the polite father of my present embarrassment I at once noticed a sudden cooling off. The little girl no longer came to talk with me and the family held aloof. Plainly I had become an object of suspicion, I was now penniless, my story might be true or perhaps I was paving the way for asking a loan. How could he tell that I was not a dead-beat? I was really in a strait. The Americans had very generally left the city in consequence of the turmoil. I could hear of no one excepting our Consul who was still at his post. Calling upon him and telling my story, I found him cool to the point of rudeness. I had excellent letters from Bancroft and others which I showed him and which ought to have secured me a respectful hearing. I asked only for sympathy and counsel but I received neither, and could not have been treated worse if I had been a proved swindler. The Consul afterwards wrote a book in which he told of experiences with inconvenient countrymen who had recourse to him in their straits, and possibly I myself may have figured as one of his examples. My feeling is that he was a man not fit for his place, for in the circumstances he might certainly have shown some kindness. My few pieces of silver jingled drearily in my pocket; perhaps my best course would be to enlist in the German army. I thought the cause a just one for the atmosphere had made me a good German, and as a soldier I might at least earn my bread. To my joy, however, in one of my daily visits to the banking house the courteous young partner told me that a telegram had come in some roundabout way from Paris and they were prepared to pay me the full amount on my letter of credit. I clutched the money, two pretty cylinders of gold coin done up in white paper, which I sewed securely into the waist-band of my trousers and felt an instant strengthening of nerve and self-respect.

I departed then for Switzerland where I enjoyed a delightful fortnight. The rebound from my depression imparted a fine _morale_. Switzerland was practically deserted, no French or Germans were there for they had enough to do with the war; the English for the most part stayed at home, for Europe could only be crossed with difficulty, and the crowd from America too was deterred by the danger. Instead of the throngs at the great points of interest, the visitors counted by twos and threes. The guides and landlords were obsequious. We few strangers had the Alps to ourselves and they were as lavish of their splendours to the handful as to the multitude. At Geneva at last I found letters from home which caused me anxiety; I was referred for later news to letters which were to be sent to Paris; so there was nothing for it but for me to cross France, though by that time France had become a camp. Fortunately I had met in Switzerland an American friend who was proficient in French as I was not and who likewise found it necessary to go to Paris, and we two started together. After crossing the frontier we found no regular trains; those that ran were taken up for the most part by the multitudes of conscripts hurrying into armies that were undergoing disaster in the neighbourhood of Metz. The case of two American strangers was a precarious one involved in such a mass, with food even very uncertain and the likelihood of being side-tracked at any station, but we were both strong and light-hearted and I felt at my waist-band the comfortable contact of my bright yellow Napoleons which would pull us through. Constantly we beheld scenes of the greatest interest. The August landscape smiled its best about us, we passed Dijon and many another old storied city famous in former wars, and now again humming with the military life with which they had been so many times familiar. The _Mobiles_ came thronging to every depot from the vineyards and fields and the remoter villages. As yet they were usually in picturesque peasant attire, young farmers in blouses or with _bretelles_ crossing in odd fashion the queer shirts they wore. Careless happy-go-lucky boys chattering in the excitement of the new life which they were entering, only half-informed as to the catastrophes which were taking place, but the mothers and sisters, plain country women in short skirts, quaint bodices and caps, looked upon their departure with anxious faces. I was familiar enough with such scenes in our own Civil War; thousands of those boys were never to return.

Reaching Paris we found an atmosphere of depression. A week or two before the streets had resounded with the _Marseillaise_ and echoed with the fierce cry, “A Berlin! A Berlin!” That confidence had all passed, I heard the _Marseillaise_ sung only once, and that in disheartened perfunctory fashion, perhaps by order of the authorities in a futile attempt to stimulate courage that was waning. Rage and mortification over the fast-accumulating German successes possessed the hearts of men. In the squares companies of civilians were industriously drilling, often in the public places men wearing hospital badges extended salvers to the passers-by asking for contributions, “Pour les blesses, monsieur, pour les blesses!” Now and then well-disciplined divisions crossed the Place de la Concorde, the regiments stacking arms for a brief halt. I studied them close at hand; these at least looked as might have looked the soldiers of the First Empire, strong and resolute, with an evident capacity for taking care of themselves even in the small matter of cooking their soup, and providing for their needs there on the asphalt. Their officers were soldierly figures on horseback, dressed for rough work, and the gaitered legs, with the stout shoes below dusty already from long marching, were plainly capable of much more. There was a pathos about it all, however, a marked absence of _elan_ and enthusiasm, the faces under the _kepis_ were firm and strong enough but they had little hope. Nothing so paralyses a soldier as want of confidence in the leadership and these poor fellows had lost that. The regiments passed on in turn, the sunlight glittering on their arms. Through the vista of the boulevard the eagles of the Second Empire rose above, the grave colonels were conspicuous at the head, and the drum-beats, choked by the towering buildings, sounded a melancholy muffled march that was befitting. It was the scene pictured by Detaille in _Le Regiment qui Passe_. Could he have been with us on the curbstone making his studies? It was indeed for them a funeral march, for they were on they way to Sedan. The Prussians, it was said, were within four days’ march of the city, and the barrier at Metz had been completely broken down.

In most minds Paris is associated with gayety, my Paris, on the other hand, is a solemn spot darkened by an impending shadow of calamity. The theatres were closed. No one was admitted to the Invalides, so that I could not see the tomb of Napoleon. The Madeleine was open for service, but deep silence prevailed. In the great spaces of the temple the robed priests bowed before the altar and noiseless groups of worshippers knelt on the pavement. It was a time for earnest prayers. The Louvre was still open and I was fortunate enough to see the Venus of Milo, though a day or two after I believe it was taken from its pedestal and carefully concealed. The expectation was of something dreadful and still the city did not take in the sorrow which lay before it. “Do you think the Prussians will bombard Paris?” I heard a man exclaim, his voice and manner indicating that such a thing was incredible, but the Prussian cannon were close at hand. For our part, my companion and I thought we were in no especial danger. We quartered ourselves comfortably at a pension, walked freely about the streets, and saw what could be seen with the usual zest of healthy young travellers. The little steamboats were still plying on the Seine and we took one at last for the trip that opens to one so much that is beautiful and interesting in architecture and history. It was a lovely afternoon even for summer and we passed in and out under the superb arches of the bridges, beholding the noble apse of Notre Dame with the twin towers rising beyond, structures associated with grim events of the Revolution, the masonry of the quays and the master work of Haussmann who was then putting a new face upon the old city. Now all was bright and no thought of danger entered our minds as we revelled in the pleasures of such an excursion. At length as we stood on the deck we became aware that we were undergoing careful scrutiny from a considerable group who for the most part made up our fellow-passengers. We had had no thought of ourselves as especially marked. My clothes, however, had been made in Germany and had peculiarities no doubt which indicated as much. I was fairly well grounded in French but had no practice in speaking. In trying to talk French, my tongue in spite of me ran into German, which I had been speaking constantly for six months. This was particularly the case if I was at all embarrassed; my face and figure, moreover, were plainly Teutonic and not Latin. The French ascribed their disasters largely to the fact that German spies were everywhere prying into the conditions, and reporting every assailable point and element of weakness. This belief was well grounded; the Germans probably knew France better than the French themselves and skilfully adapted their attacks to the lacks and negligences which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of _ouvriers_ and _ouvrieres_, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots, with heads bare or surmounted by conical caps. They belonged to the proletariat, the class out of which had come in the Reign of Terror the sans-culottes of evil memory and the _tricoteuses_ who had sat knitting about the _guillotine_, the class which, within a few months, was again to set the world aghast as the mob of _La Commune_. As we stood disconcerted by their intent gaze, they put their heads together and talked in low and rapid tones; then their spokesman approached us, a man of polite bearing but ominously stern. He was not a clumsy fellow, but darkly forceful and direct, a man capable of a quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was the grim tiger in their eyes and from the soft paw the swift protrusion of the cruel claw. One thought of the wild revolutionary song, “Ca ca, ca ira, les aristocrats a la lanterne!” They were the children of the mob that had sung that song. With a bow, the spokesman said: “Messieurs, we think you are Germans and we wish to know if we are right.” We protested that we were Americans, but the spokesman said he was unconvinced, and as he pressed for further evidence I gave way to my companion whose readier French could deal better with the situation. He demanded to see our passports with which fortunately we were both provided; I had not thought of a passport as a necessity, and almost by chance had procured one the week before from our Minister in Switzerland, a careful description, vouching for my American citizenship, signed and sealed by the United States official. This perhaps saved my life. We surrendered our passports to our interrogator; he carried them back to the throng behind him who were now glowering angrily at us, as they chattered among themselves. Half-amused and half-alarmed, we waited while the documents were passed from hand to hand, carefully conned and inspected. We could not believe that we were in danger, here in the bright day in beautiful Paris, with the sacred towers of Notre Dame soaring close at hand. There were no _gendarmes_ on the boat or on the quays, but how could it he that we needed protection? After a quarter of an hour’s suspense, during which there had been a voluble counselling among the group, the spokesman came forth again with our passports in hand carefully folded, these he returned to us, touching his hat with a stiff and formal bow. “We have persuaded ourselves,” said he, “that you are what you claim to be, Americans, and it is fortunate for you that it is so, for we had intended to throw you into the Seine as Prussian spies.” Here was a surprise indeed! The group then dispersed about the boat apparently satisfied. Still rather amused than alarmed we pocketed our passports. Under the arch of one of the stately bridges close by, the Seine flowed in heavy shadows on its way, and we looked down upon the dark waters. Throbbing with life as we were, could it be possible that we had just escaped a grave in its watery embrace? Presently we landed light-hearted, and were again in the streets, but in days that followed immediately my heart was often in my throat, as I read in the papers of the corpses of men taken out of the river who undoubtedly had been thrown in under suspicion of being German spies. After a sojourn of not quite a week in Paris we made up our minds it was no place for us. My plans for study were quite broken up, it was scarcely possible to get back to Germany and nothing could be done in France. I had letters which in a time of peace would have opened the way for me to many a pleasant circle. My intention had been to study for some time in France, but under the circumstances it would be a comfortable thing to have the Atlantic rolling between me and Europe, and therefore, I prepared to depart for home. At the _pension_, on the day I had fixed for departure, while coming down the staircase waxed and highly polished, I slipped and fell heavily, so bruising my knee that I was nearly crippled. Fortunately no bones were broken and with much pain I managed to hobble to the official from whom I must obtain a pass to leave the city. I set out for the North, on almost the last train that left the city, at the end of August. The sights were gloomy, the towns which we passed seemed associated with ancient bloodshed. We touched St. Quentin and crossed the field of Malplaquet, and finally near Mons passed the Belgian frontier. Marlborough and the names associated with former wars were suggested to my thoughts by these historic spots. I was heartily glad when at length in cheerful Brussels I was beyond danger. On the fateful day when the Second Empire went down at Sedan, I was on the field of Waterloo where half a century before the First Empire had perished. The news of the morning made it plain that on that day the great _debacle_ was to culminate. We listened all day for cannon thunder; under certain conditions of the atmosphere the sound of heavy guns may reverberate as far perhaps, as from Sedan to Waterloo. That day, however, there was no ominous grumble from the eastward, the sky was cloudless, the flowers bloomed about the Chateau d’Hougomont, and the birds twittered in peace at the point before La Haie-Sainte to which the First Napoleon advanced in the evening and where for the last time he heard the shout then so long familiar but forever after unheard, “Vive l’Empereur!” Humiliation now after half a century had overwhelmed in turn his unhappy successor.

CHAPTER VI

AMERICAN HISTORIANS

As a Harvard undergraduate I roomed for a time in Hollis 8, a room occupied in turn by William H. Prescott and James Schouler, and perhaps I may attribute to some contagion caught as a _transmittendum_ in that apartment, an itch for writing history which has brought some trouble to me and to the rather limited circle of readers whom I have reached. I remember debating, as a boy, whether the more desirable fame fell to the hero in a conflict or to the scribe who told the story. Whose place would one rather have? That of Timoleon and Nicias or of Plutarch and Thucydides their celebrants? But the celebrants, no doubt, seemed to their contemporaries very insignificant figures compared to the champions whose fame they perpetuated. The historians of America are a goodly company, scarcely less worthy than the champions whose deeds they have chronicled. With most men who, during the last seventy-five years, have written history in America, I have had contact, sometimes a mere glimpse, sometimes intimacy. Washington Irving and Prescott I never saw, though as to the latter I have just been making him responsible to some extent for my own little proclivity, Parkman, I only saw sitting with his handsome Grecian face relieved against a dignified background as he sat on the stage among the Corporation of Harvard University. Motley I have only seen as he stood with iron-grey curls over a ruddy, strenuous countenance topping a figure of vigorous symmetry as he spoke with animation at a scholars’ dinner. But George Bancroft, Justin Winsor, and John Fiske I knew well, the last being in particular one of my best friends. I could tell stories too, of the living lights, but am concerned here with the ghosts and not with men still red-blooded.

I first saw George Bancroft when he was Minister at Berlin. He had read a little book of mine, The Color Guard, my diary as a Corporal of the Nineteenth Army Corps, scribbled off on my cap-top, my gun-stock, or indeed my shoe-sole, or whatever desk I could extemporise as we marched and fought. That book gave me some claim to his notice, but a better claim was that his wife was Elizabeth Davis, whom more than a hundred years ago my grandfather of the ancient First Parish in Plymouth had baptised and who as a girl had been my mother’s playmate in gardens near Plymouth Rock. I did not presume upon such credentials as these to obtrude myself, and was pleasantly surprised one day by a note inviting me to the Embassy. It was a retired house near the Thiergarten. I found Mr. Bancroft embarrassed with duties which in those days gave trouble. German emigrants returning after prosperous years to the Fatherland were often pounced upon, the validity of their American citizenship denied, and taxes and military service demanded. It was tough work to straighten out such knots and the Minister was in the midst of such a tangle. But his high, broad forehead smoothed presently, and his grey eyes grew genial, while the vivacious features spoke with the very cordial impulse with which he greeted one who had heard the bullets of the Civil War whistle and was the son of his wife’s old friend. Another tie was that his father, Dr. Aaron Bancroft of Worcester, and my grandfather, had stood shoulder to shoulder in the controversy of a century ago which rent apart New England Congregationalism. Presently we sat down to lunch, a party of three, for the board was graced by the presence of Mrs. Bancroft, a woman of fine accomplishments polished through contact with high society in many lands, and a gifted talker. Many readers have found her published letters charming. The talk was largely of the Civil War and Bancroft’s words were in the best sense patriotic. During and before that period his course had been much disapproved. He had been Collector of Boston under Democratic auspices and had served under Polk as Secretary of the Navy, where he laid the country lastingly under debt by establishing the Naval Academy at Annapolis. I do not approve or condemn, but I felt him wisely and warmly patriotic, deeply concerned that the outcome of our long national agony should be worthy of the sacrifice. The breath of a pleasant spring day pervaded the elegant apartment while the birds sang in the tall trees stretching out toward the forest of the Thiergarten. I especially associate with the Bancrofts their beautiful outdoor environment. Another day I drove with the Minister, our companions in the carriage being the wife and the daughter of Ernst Curtius, to visit the rose gardens about Berlin. I have met few men readier or more agreeable in conversation. With a pleasant smile and intonation he touched gracefully on this and that, sometimes in reminiscence. I remember in particular a vivid setting forth of an interview with Goethe which he had enjoyed as a boy fifty years before. Sometimes his talk was of poetry in general and I was much struck with his frequent happy application of quotations to the little events of the drive and phases of feeling that came up as the day went on. The sun set gloriously, “_So stirbt ein Held_,” said Bancroft, as he burst with feeling into the beautiful lyric of which these words are a line. The best German poetry seemed to be at his tongue’s end and he recited it with sympathy and accuracy which called out much admiration from the cultivated German ladies with whom we were driving. Most interesting of all was Bancroft’s evident passion for roses. The gardeners, as we stopped, were plainly surprised at his knowledge of their varieties and the best methods of cultivation. He was so well versed in the lore of the rose and so devoted to its cultivation one might well have thought it his horse and not his hobby. He possessed at Newport a rose garden far famed for the number of its varieties and the perfection of the flowers, and it was an interesting sight at Washington to see Bancroft, even when nearing ninety, busy in his garden in H Street, one attendant shielding his light figure with a sun umbrella, while another held at hand, hoe, shears, and twine, the implements to train and cull. Is there a subtle connection between roses and history? Parkman wrote an elaborate book upon rose culture which I believe is still of authority, and John Fiske had a conservatory opening out of his library and the rose of all flowers was the one he prized. Here is a neat turn of McMaster. At a dinner given in his honour a big bunch of American Beauties was opposite to him as he sat. It fell to me to make a welcoming speech. Catching at the occasion, I suggested a connection between roses and history and referred to McMaster close behind his American Beauties as an instance in point, at the same time expressing with earnestness my strong admiration of that good writer’s work. McMaster rose, his face glowing in response to my emphatic compliment. His speech consisted of only one sentence, “I have one bond with the rose, I blush.”

I owe many favours to Bancroft; the greatest perhaps that he allowed me to consult to my heart’s content the papers of Samuel Adams, a priceless collection which he possessed. For this he gave me _carte blanche_ to use his library in Washington, though he himself was absent, a favour which he said he had never accorded to an investigator before. It was an inspiring place for a student, the shelves burdened with treasures in manuscript as well as print. The most interesting portrait of Bancroft presents him as a nonagenarian, against this impressive background, at work to the last. The critics of our day minimise Bancroft and his school. History in that time walked in garments quite too flowing, it is said, and with an overdisplay of the Horatian purple patch. Our grandsons may feel that the history of our time walks in garments too sad-coloured and scant. Research and accuracy are, of course, primary requisites in this field, but there should be some employment of the picturesque. The world was beautiful in the old days and human life was vivid. Ought we to deny to all this a warm and graphic setting forth? If we do we shall do it to our cost. Is it the proper attitude of the historian simply to write, without thought of anything so irrelevant as a reader? Bancroft was a pioneer, breaking the way ponderously perhaps, but he delved faithfully. If the orotund rolls too sonorously in his periods it was an excess in which his age upheld him. He was a good path-breaker and ought not to be lightly esteemed by those who now go to and fro with ease through the roads he opened.

My first touch with Justin Winsor was in my Freshman year at Cambridge. We both had rooms under the roof of an uncle of mine. His room was afterwards occupied, I believe, by Theodore Roosevelt. It had been rubbed into me by many snubs that a vast gulf interposed between the Freshman and upper-class man. I used to pass his door with reverence, for the story went that, even as a boy, he had written a history of Duxbury, Massachusetts. Once during his temporary absence, his door standing open, I dared to step into the apartment and surveyed with awe the well-filled shelves and scribbled papers; but in later years when I had won some small title to notice I found him most kind and approachable. The abundance of the Harvard Library and still better the rich accumulations in the cells of his own memory he held for general use. He loaned me once for months at St. Louis a rarely precious seventeenth-century book, which had belonged to Carlyle, and whose margins were sometimes filled with Carlyle’s notes. He imparted freely from his own vast information and it was pleasant indeed to hold a chair for an hour or two in his hospitable home. In our last interview the prose and the solemn romance of life were strangely blended. We had just heard the burial service in Appleton Chapel read by Phillips Brooks over the coffin of James Russell Lowell; then we rode together on the crowded platform of a street-car to the grave at Mount Auburn; a rough and jostling company on the platform, and in my mind a throng of deep and melancholy thoughts. I never saw him again. In his calling he was a master of research extracting with unlimited toil the last fragment of evidence from the blindest scribblings of earlier times. These results, painfully accumulated, he set down with absolute faithfulness; his bibliographies supplementing his own contributions and also those of the many writers whom he inspired and guided in like labours are exhaustive. Rarely is there a wisp to be gleaned where Winsor has garnered. If he was deficient in the power of vivid and picturesque presentment, it is only that like all men he had his limitations.

John Fiske I met soon after his graduation at Cambridge. It is odd to recall him when one thinks of his later physique, as a youth with fresh ruddy face, tall and not broad, a rather slender pillar of a man, corniced with an abundant pompadour of brown hair. He was just then making fame for himself in the domain of philosophy, contributing to the New York World papers well charged with revolutionary ideas which were then causing consternation, so lucidly and attractively formulated that they interested the most cursory reader. Perhaps John Fiske ought always to have kept to philosophy. Mrs. Mary Hemenway, that princess among Ladies Bountiful, told me once the story of his change. He made to her a frank statement of his situation. He was conscious of power to do service; he was married, had children, and was embarrassed with care about their bread, butter, and education after the usual fashion of the scholar. John Fiske said in those days the difficult problem of his life was to get enough corn-beef for dinner to have hash for breakfast the next day. Must he descend to desk and courtroom work to make a way, or could a way be found by which he might do his proper task and at the same time be a bread-winner? “Write American history,” said Mrs. Hemenway, “and I will stand behind you.” She was inspired with the idea of making America in the high sense American and saw in the young genius a good ally. The chance was embraced and John Fiske after that dipped only fitfully into philosophical themes, writing, however, _The Destiny of Man, The Idea of God, Cosmic Roots of Loveland Self-sacrifice_, and _Life Everlasting_. He gave his main strength, to a thing worth while, the establishment in America of Anglo-Saxon freedom. Would he have served the world better had he adhered to profound speculations? As the patriarch in a household into which have been born a dozen children and grandchildren, I have had good opportunity for study. What so feeble as the feebleness of the babe! It depends upon its mother for its sustenance, almost for its breath and its heart-beats. The sheltering arms and the loving breast must always be at hand as the very conditions of its existence. I have watched in wife and daughters, as what grandsire has not, the persistent sleepless care which alone kept the baby alive, and noted the sweet effusion of affection which the need and constant care made to flow abundantly, nor do the care and consequent outflow of love cease with babyhood. The child must ever be fed, clothed, trained, and counselled; and the youth, too, of which the baby is father, must be watchfully guided till the stature is completed. The rod of Moses smiting the rock evoked the beneficent water, the unremitting parent-care striking the indifferent heart evokes the beautiful mother and father love which grows abroad. We cannot love children well without loving others, their companions, and at last the great worldly environment in which they and we all are placed. Hence, from the extension of infancy, through a period of long years, proceeds at last from the hearts which are subjected to its influence the noble thing which we call altruism: love for others than ourselves and the other high spiritual instincts which are the crown of human nature. The recognition of the extension of infancy as the source from which in our slow evolution comes the brightest thing in the universe belongs to our own time. It is perhaps the climax of our philosophic speculation. What more feeble than the snowflakes! But accumulated and compressed they become the glacier which may carapace an entire zone and determine its configuration into mountain and valley. What more feeble than the feebleness of the babe! And yet that multiplied by the million through aeons of time and over continents of space fashions humanity after the sublime pattern shown on the Mount. If to John Fiske belongs the credit of first recognising in the scheme of evolution the significance of this mighty factor, the extension of infancy (he himself so believed and I do not think it can be questioned that he was the first to recognise it), what philosophic thinker has to a greater extent laid the world in debt? This I shall not further discuss. I am touching in these papers only upon light and exterior things, nor am I competent to deal with philosophical problems and controversies. John Fiske gave his strength to the writing of history, where, too, there are controversies into which I do not propose to enter. I will only say that I resent the account of him which makes him to have been a mere populariser whose merit lies solely or for the most part in the fact that, while appropriating materials accumulated by others, he had only Goldsmith’s faculty of making them graceful and attractive to the mass of readers. His philosophical instinct, on the other hand, discovered, as few writers have done, the subtle links through which in history facts are related to facts and are weighed wisely, in the protagonists, the motives and qualities which make them foremost figures. He saw unerringly where emphasis should be put, what should be salient, what subordinate. Too many writers, German especially, perhaps, have the fault of “writing a subject to its dregs,” giving to the unimportant undue place. In Fiske’s estimation of facts there is no failure of proper proportion, the great thing is always in the foreground, the trifle in shadow or quite unnoticed. To do this accurately is a fine power. He delved more deeply himself perhaps than many of his critics have been willing to acknowledge, but I incline to say that his main service to history was in detecting with unusual insight the subtle relations of cause and effect, links which other and sometimes very able men failed adequately to recognise. In a high sense he was indeed a populariser. He wore upon himself like an ample garment a splendid erudition under which he moved, however, not at all oppressed or trammelled. Much of the lore of Greece, Rome, the Orient, and also of modern peoples was as familiar to him as the contents of the morning papers. With acumen he selected and his memory retained; the cells of his capacious brain somehow held it ready for instant use. With good discrimination he