as refrained from decorating. Timur, Akbar, Attila, Julius
Caesar, Elizabeth, Victoria, Napoleon have no epithets, and need none.
However, it is clear that a verdict on the Emperor's deserts is
premature. Suppose him at the bar of history. The case is still
proceeding, the evidence is not complete, counsel have not been heard,
and--most obvious defect of any--the jury has not been impanelled.

More than half a century has passed since the Emperor was born. How
time flies!

"Alas, alas, O Postumus, Postumus,
The years glide by and are lost to us, lost to us."

But not the memories they enshrine. It is, let us imagine, the night
of the Emperor's Jubilee, and he lies in the old Schloss, still awake,
reflecting on the past. What a multitude of happenings, gay and grave,
throng to his recollection, what a glorious and crowded canvas unrolls
itself before his mental vision! The toy steamer on the Havel; the
games in the palace corridors, with the grim features of the Great
Elector betrayed, one is tempted to think, into a half-smile as he
watches the innocent gaiety of the romping children from the old
wainscoted walls; the irksome but disciplinary hours in the Cassel
schoolroom; the youthful escapades with those carefree Borussian
comrades at the university on the broad bosom of Father Rhine; the
excursions and picnics among the Seven Hills; the visits to England,
its crowded and bustling capital, its country seats with their
pleasant lawns and stately oaks; the war-ships in the Solent, with
their black mass and frowning guns, as they towered, like Milton's
Leviathan, above his head.

What a good time it was, and how rich in manifold and picturesque
impressions!

The canvas continues to unroll and a literary period opens--that age
between youth and manhood, of all ages most passionate and ideal, when
we are enthralled and moved by what we read--by those studies which

"_adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res
ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent, delectant
domi, non impediunt foris; pernoctant nobiscum,
peregrinantur, rusticantur_."

It was the Lohengrin period, when, filled with the ardour and
imaginativeness of high-souled youth, the future Emperor was dimly
thinking of all he would do in the days to come for the happiness and
prosperity of his people, nay, of all mankind.

Another tableau presents itself. Life has now become real and the
Emperor's soldier