time and attention for several
weeks. He spent hours with the great authority on Assyriology,
Professor Friedrich Delitzsch, going over reliefs and plans taken from
the Kaiser Friedrich Museum or borrowed from museums in Paris, London,
and Vienna, decided on the costumes and designed the war-chariots to
be used in the ballet. The notion was to rehabilitate the reputation
of Asurbanipal, the second-last King of Assyria, whom the Greeks
called "Sardanapalus," who reigned in Nineveh six hundred years before
Christ, over Ethiopia, Babylon and Egypt, and whom Lord Byron,
accepting the Greek story, represented as the most effeminate and
debauched monarch the world had ever known.

Professor Delitzsch, with a wealth of recondite learning, showed, on
the contrary, that Sardanapalus was a wise and liberal-minded monarch,
who, rather than fall into the hands of the Medes, built himself a
pyre in a chamber of his palace and perished on it with his wives, his
children, and his treasure. The whole four acts, with the various
ballets, gave a perfectly faithful representation of the period as
described by Diodorus and Herodotus, and as plastically shown on the
reliefs discovered at Nineveh by Sir Henry Layard and subsequently by
German excavators. Over L10,000 was spent upon the production, and the
public were worked up to a great pitch of curiosity concerning it. But
it was a complete failure as far as the public were concerned.
"Heavens!" exclaimed one critic, "what a bore!" This, however, was not
the fault of the Emperor, but was due to want of interest on the part
of a public whose enthusiasm for the events and characters of times so
remote could only be kindled by a genius, and a dramatic one. The
Emperor is no such genius, nor had he one at command.

XI.

THE NEW CENTURY (_continued_)

1902-1904

King George V has hardly been sufficiently long on the English throne
for a contemporary to judge of the personal relations that exist
between his Majesty and the Emperor as chief representatives of their
respective nations. The King of England was, until June, 1913,
hindered by various circumstances from paying a visit to the Court of
Berlin, and rumours were current that relations between the two rulers
were not as friendly as they might and should be. There is now every
indication that though the relations of people to people and
Government to Government vary in degrees of coolness or warmth, the
two monarchs are