honest burghers.

His favorite recreations were chess, in which he excelled; music,
especially that of the school of Schubert and Mozart--he entertained
very decided opinions about the "music of the future"--and whist,
which he rarely missed playing after dinner, even when at the seat of
war. The count was an authority on the culture of roses, and at
Kreisau, where he spent most of his time after his retirement from
more active service, he possessed one of the finest and most unique
collections of roses in Germany, a fact which lends an additional
grace to the tribute of respect paid to the field-marshal's memory,
when, the day after his death, the empress visited the head-quarters
of the General Staff and placed a magnificent wreath of his favorite
flower upon the bed of the departed hero.

Had not his reputation as a military strategist overshadowed his other
gifts, the count would have gained distinction in the world of
letters. In the twenties, while engaged in the Topographical
Department, he wrote a pamphlet, published at Berlin, entitled
"Holland and Belgium," by H. von Moltke, in which he calls the
attention of Europe to the Belgian Revolution; this was followed, in
1845, by a critical military work of great merit, "The Russo-Turkish
Campaign of 1828-29 in European Turkey," which created a deep
impression in military circles, and proved of considerable service in
the Russo-Turkish campaign of 1877-78. Moltke's pithy and laconic
style was founded on the model of his chief, General von Mueffling, his
instructor in practical and theoretical tactics, in which the members
of the German General Staff are required to excel. He was a graphic
writer and shrewd observer of men and things, as his charming letters
from Russia, France, Turkey, and other places show. Especially
sagacious were his observations on the Turks, made to his sister,
married to Mr. John Burt, an Englishman settled at Holstein, in which
he affirms that the kingdom is rotten, that Turkey had fallen under a
ban, and that ban the Koran, which teaches so warped a doctrine that
its laws and decrees must of necessity oppose all social progress. His
views on Russia, as indicated in his letters written in the form of a
diary to his wife on the occasion of his visit in 1856, when
accompanying Prince Frederick William at the coronation of the Czar
Alexander II. at Moscow, show the same keen powers of observation. He
considered that Russia had a great future