The court of the German Emperor in this connexion need not fear
comparison with any court described in history. True, courts all over
the world have improved wonderfully of recent years. Their monarchs
are more enlightened, they are frequented by a very different type of
man and woman from the courts of former times, their morale and
working are more closely scrutinized and more generally subjected to
criticism, and they are occupied with a more public and less selfish
order of considerations. The Court of the Emperor is, so far as can be
known to a lynx-eyed and not always charitably thinking public,
singularly free from the vices and failings the atmosphere of former
courts was wont to foster. There is at all times, no doubt, the
competition of politicians for influence and power acting and reacting
on the Court and its frequenters, but of scandal at the Court of
Berlin there has been none that could be fairly said to involve the
Emperor or his family. Dame Gossip, of course, busied herself with the
Emperor in his youth, but whatever truth she then uttered--and it is
probably extremely little--on this head, there is no question that
from the day he mounted the throne his Court and that of the Empress
has been a model for all institutions of the kind.

The life of courts, the personages who play leading parts in them,
their wealth and luxury, and the currents of social, amorous, and
political intrigue which are supposed to course through them have in
all countries and in all ages strongly appealed to writers, fanciful
and serious. Perhaps one-third of the prose and poetic literature of
every country deals, directly or indirectly, with the subject, and
determines in no small degree the character of its rising generations.
The great architects of romance, depicting for us life in high places,
and often nobly idealizing it, or working the facts of history into
the web of their imaginings and thus pleasantly combining fact with
fiction, aim at elevating, not at debasing, the mind of the reader. A
second valuable source of information on the topic are the memoirs of
those who have set down their observations and recorded experiences
made in the courts to which they had access. Among this class,
however, are to be found unscrupulous as well as conscientious
authors, the former obviously cherishing some personal grievance or as
obviously actuated by malice, while the latter are usually moved by an
honest desire to tell the w