n these declarations, which might be said to have
descended from heaven on the wings of the angel of death. Bismarck
went to and fro among the doctors, who naturally refused to declare
the terrible disease mortal, and prepared to vanquish the moribund
will of Frederick and the British notions of his widow, fearing that
when the last breath of the imperial life had ceased the whole policy
of Germany would have to be changed, as a scene in a theatre must be
changed if it has been hissed. It was certain that there was as great
a difference between the ideas of the Emperor William I. and those of
Frederick III., separated by so brief a space, as between those of the
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and those of the Emperor Frederick II.,
his successor, after the long period of two hundred years had changed
the capital features of the Middle Ages; the first was an unalloyed
Catholic, notwithstanding his dissidences with the Guelph cities, and
even with the Pope a stern Caesar, like the good Roman Caesars in time
of war and defence, a veritable orthodox crusader, whose piety was
concealed as in a colossal mountain whence he awaited the reconquest
of outraged Jerusalem by the Christians; whereas the second was an
almost Pantheistic poet and philosopher, whose Catholicity was mingled
with Orientalism, who was equally given to the discussion of
theological and of scientific questions, who followed the crusades in
fulfilment of an hereditary tradition, who penetrated into the
Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre by virtue of an extraordinary covenant
with the infidel, and whose own beliefs were so cosmopolitan that they
brought down a sentence of excommunication upon himself and of
interdiction upon his kingdom. To Pope Innocent III., the former
typified the Catholic emperor of the Middle Ages; Frederick II.
appeared to him very much the same as in our days the Lutheran emperor
appeared to Prince Bismarck, who took every possible precaution
against the humanitarianism and parliamentarism of his dying pupil,
and at the same time impelled his eldest son, the next heir to the
crown, with all his influence and advice towards absolutist principles
and reactionary propensities. No upright mind can ever forget the
terrible desecration committed when, a few days before the death of
his father, young William spoke of the empire as of a possession which
it was to be understood he had already entered upon, and awarded the
arm and head of his iron Chan