als backs away from
the imperial palace, and saves itself too soon from plunging over the
border of a canal behind it, not far from Rauch's great statue of the
great Frederic. To come to it from the simplicity and quiet of that noble
work is like passing from some exquisite masterpiece of naturalistic
acting to the rant and uproar of melodrama; and the Marches stood stunned
and bewildered by its wild explosions.

When they could escape they found themselves so convenient to the
imperial palace that they judged best to discharge at once the obligation
to visit it which must otherwise weigh upon them. They entered the court
without opposition from the sentinel, and joined other strangers
straggling instinctively toward a waiting-room in one corner of the
building, where after they had increased to some thirty, a custodian took
charge of them, and led them up a series of inclined plains of brick to
the state apartments. In the antechamber they found a provision of
immense felt over-shoes which they were expected to put on for their
passage over the waxed marquetry of the halls. These roomy slippers were
designed for the accommodation of the native boots; and upon the mixed
company of foreigners the effect was in the last degree humiliating. The
women's skirts some what hid their disgrace, but the men were openly put
to shame, and they shuffled forward with their bodies at a convenient
incline like a company of snow-shoers. In the depths of his own abasement
March heard a female voice behind him sighing in American accents, "To
think I should be polishing up these imperial floors with my republican
feet!"

The protest expressed the rebellion which he felt mounting in his own
heart as they advanced through the heavily splendid rooms, in the
historical order of the family portraits recording the rise of the
Prussian sovereigns from Margraves to Emperors. He began to realize here
the fact which grew open him more and more that imperial Germany is not
the effect of a popular impulse but of a dynastic propensity. There is
nothing original in the imperial palace, nothing national; it embodies
and proclaims a powerful personal will, and in its adaptations of French
art it appeals to no emotion in the German witness nobler than his pride
in the German triumph over the French in war. March found it tiresome
beyond the tiresome wont of palaces, and he gladly shook off the sense of
it with his felt shoes. "Well," he confided to his w