Chapter III: Part 3

The Sunday services of this enterprise are now held in an edifice belonging to a German Methodist church, which can be had for one service only, at an hour which will not interfere with the uses which have a prior claim. The Sunday evenings, when a goodly congregation might be gathered if a suitable audience-room could be had, are times of loneliness and homesickness to many American youth and others far from home and friends. Dr. and Mrs. Stückenberg have generously opened their own pleasant home at 18 Bülow Strasse for Sunday-evening receptions to Americans. Their large and beautiful apartments were much too small to accommodate all who would gladly have gathered there. But in the course of the season there were few Americans attending the morning service who were not to be met, one Sunday evening or another, in the parlors of the pastor and his wife; and many others, students, were nearly always there. A half-hour was given on these occasions to social greetings; then followed familiar hymns, led by the piano and a volunteer choir of young people, after which an informal lecture was given by the pastor. Dr. Stückenberg emigrated with his parents to America in early childhood, but has studied in the Universities of Halle, Göttingen, Berlin, and Tübingen. His large acquaintance with German scholars enabled him to give most interesting reminiscences of the teaching and personality of some of these, his teachers and friends. Among the talks which we remember vividly were those on Tholuck, Dörner, and Von Ranke. At another time Dr. Stückenberg gave a series of lectures on Socialism,--a theme whose manifold aspects he has studied profoundly, and which, in Germany as elsewhere, is the question of the hour, the day, and the century, and perhaps of the next century too. After the lecture there generally followed prayer and another hymn, and always slight refreshments,--tea and sandwiches, or little cakes,--over which all chatted and were free to go when they would. Many were the occasions when, in these gatherings, every heart seemed to partake of the gladness radiated by the magnetic host and hostess; and all Europe seemed brighter because of these homelike, social, Christian Sunday evenings which lighted up the sojourn in Berlin. The effort now being made to build a permanent and commodious church edifice for Americans in Berlin is a pressing necessity.

Dr. Christlieb, the eminent Professor of Theology and University Preacher in Bonn, asserts that the number of American students in Berlin is now by far the largest congregated in any one place in Germany. The number, as stated in 1888 by Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, was about four hundred, besides the numerous American travellers there every year for a longer or shorter time. Seventeen denominations have been represented in this church in a single year, and any evangelical minister in good standing in his own church is eligible to election as its pastor. From the beginning these union services have been entirely harmonious; and Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, and Episcopalians have been chiefly active in promoting them.

The churches of the royal suburb of Potsdam possess an interest quite equal to that of those in Berlin. The Potsdam Garrison Church, in general interior outlines, reminds one of some quaint New England meeting-house of the early part of the eighteenth century. But here the resemblance ceases. The ancient arrangement of windows and galleries impresses one only at the moment of entering, attention being presently diverted to the flags clustered on the gallery pillars and on either side the pulpit, in two rows,--the lower captured from the French in the wars with the First Napoleon, the upper taken in the late contests with Austria and with Napoleon III. Altar-cloths and other furnishings are heavily embroidered with the handiwork of vanished queens. But the chief interest centres in the vault under the handsome marble pulpit. In this vault, on the left, are the mortal remains of the old Prussian King, Frederick William I.,--father of Frederick the Great,--a character hard to understand, and interpreted differently as one surveys him in the light of Macaulay's genius or that of Carlyle. But one cannot help hoping that the final verdict will be with the latter; and as we stand in this solemn place, memory recalls the day--the midnight, rather--when this same oak coffin, long before the death of the King made ready by his orders in the old Palace of Potsdam close at hand, at last received its burden, and was borne in Spartan simplicity to this place, the torch-lighted band playing his favorite dirge,--

"Oh, Sacred Head, now wounded!"

On the right, separated from the coffin of his father only by the short aisle, is that of Frederick the Great. Three wreaths were lying upon it,--placed there by the Emperor and by the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess on the hundredth anniversary of the death of this founder of Prussia's greatness, August 17, 1886. Fortunate is the visitor to Potsdam who does not altogether overlook this Garrison Church, misled by the brief mention usually accorded to it in the guide-books.

The Friedenskirche, near the entrance to the park of Sans Souci, has a detached high clock-tower adjoining, and cloisters beautiful, even in winter, with the myrtle and ivy and evergreens of the protected court which they surround. In the inner court is a copy of Thorwaldsen's celebrated statue of Christ (the original at Copenhagen); also, Rauch's original "Moses, supported by Aaron and Hur," and a beautiful _Pieta_ is in the opposite colonnade. The church is in the form of the ancient basilica, which is not favorable to much adornment. A crucifix of _lapis lazuli_ under a canopy resting on jasper columns--a present from the Czar Nicholas--stands on the marble altar. A beautiful angel in Carrara marble adorns the space before the chancel, above the burial-slabs of King Frederick William IV., founder of the church, and his queen; and the apse is lined with a rare old Venetian mosaic. But the chief interest of this "Church of Peace" will henceforth centre around it as the burial-place of the Emperor Frederick III. In an apartment not formerly shown to the public, his young son, Waldemar, was laid to rest at the age of eleven years, deeply mourned by the Crown Prince, the Crown Princess, and their family. Here in this church, beside his sons Waldemar and Sigismund, who died in infancy, it was the wish of the dying father to lie buried. Here the quiet military funeral service was held; here the last look of that noble face was taken amid the tears of those who loved him well, while the sunlight, suddenly streaming through an upper window, illuminated as with an electric light that face at rest, as the Court-preacher Koëgel uttered the words of solemn trust,--

"What God doeth is well done."

Fitting it is that in this "Church of Peace" should rest all that was mortal of the immortal Prince who could say, as he entered Paris in the flush of victory: "Gentlemen, I do not like war. If I should reign, I would never make it."

V.

MUSEUMS.

The chief art treasures of Berlin are found in the Royal Museums, Old and New, and in the National Gallery. There are few more characteristic and inspiring sights in Europe than that which greets the eye in a walk on a sunny afternoon in winter from the palace of Kaiser Wilhelm I. through the Operahaus Platz and the Zeughaus Platz, across the Schloss Brücke and the Lustgarten, to the peerless building of the Old Museum,--with the grand equipages, the brilliant uniforms, and the busy but not overcrowded life which throng the vast spaces of these handsome thoroughfares. The Old Museum is not so rich in masterpieces as some other and older art galleries, but there are many fine original works. The Friezes from the Altar of Zeus, excavated within a few years at Pergamus, are extremely interesting, and are exhibited with all the adjuncts which the most thorough German scholarship can supply for their elucidation. The celebrated Raphael tapestry, woven for Henry VIII. from the cartoons now in the South Kensington Museum, and long the foremost ornament of the palace of Whitehall, hangs in the great upper rotunda, which is a setting not unworthy of its fame. Michael Angelo's "John the Baptist as a Boy," one of his early works, is quite unlike most of this master's work, in conception and execution, and is interesting especially on this account. The "Altar-piece of the Mystic Lamb" is remarkable for its merits and because it is reputed to be the first picture ever painted in oils. Murillo's "Ecstasy of Saint Anthony" is a picture of rare sweetness and power. In one room are five of Raphael's Madonnas, but only one of them is in his better style. "The collection of pictures in the Old Museum," wrote George Eliot in 1855, "has three gems which remain in the imagination,--'Titian's Daughter,' Correggio's 'Jupiter and Io,' and his 'Head of Christ on a Handkerchief.' I was pleased, also, to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steem which Goethe describes in the 'Wahlverwandschaften' as the model of a _tableau vivant_ presented by Lucian and her friends. It is the daughter being reproved by her father, while the mother empties her wine-glass."

The department of the Museum known as the Antiquarium has its treasures. Here is the original silver table service, supposed to be that of a Roman General, dug up in 1868 near the old German mediæval town of Hildesheim. A handsome copy of this service is among the beginnings of Chicago's Art collections. Here are the exquisite terra-cotta statuettes from the ancient Grecian Colony of Tanagra, which no modern work of plastic art can imitate in grace of form and delicacy of color,--dating three or four hundred years before the Christian era; and in other rooms, a fabulous collection of jewels, and numberless precious vases, illustrating especially the progress of Ancient Grecian Art.

The New Museum, connected by a colonnade with the Old, is not, like it, remarkable for architectural beauty; but its vast collections, especially in marble, already need and are to have a new building. The masterpieces of ancient sculpture gathered at Munich, Vienna, Paris, Rome, Naples, and elsewhere, are here reproduced in casts, making up a collection said to be, in its way, unrivalled in the world. The collection of originals in Renaissance sculpture is also extensive and valuable.

Referring to sculpture in Berlin, George Eliot wrote: "We went again and again to look at the Parthenon Sculptures, and registered a vow that we would go to feast on the originals [in the British Museum] the first day we could spare in London." At the date before mentioned, her opinion was that "the first work of art really worth looking at that one sees in Berlin is the 'Horse-Tamers' in front of the [Old] palace. It is by a sculptor [Baron Clodt, of St. Petersburg] who made horses his especial study; and certainly, to us, they eclipsed the famous Colossi at Monte Cavallo, casts of which are in [before] the New Museum."

The Department of Coins has 200,000 specimens, many very old and rare; and that of Northern Antiquities illustrates with great fulness the prehistoric and Roman periods. The Cabinet of Engravings is extremely interesting, and has some specimens of very great value; but it is open to the general public for a few hours on Sunday only, and even then the greater part of its collections is reserved to art students, who have the entire monopoly of its treasures on other days of the week. It well repays persistent effort, however, to make a few quiet visits to this rare cabinet. Some of the finest works are hung on the walls of the pleasant rooms.

The famous mural paintings by Kaulbach adorning the upper staircase walls of the New Museum are widely admired, but critics differ in the estimate of their place as works of art. The upper saloons reached by this staircase show the cartoons of Cornelius, and foreshadow a grandeur in German art not yet realized.

The third building in the group which holds the chief art treasures of Berlin is the National Gallery, its pictures partaking, as such a collection should, strongly of the German spirit as shown in modern German art. The paintings are of various degrees of merit, many being of value chiefly as reflecting the national life. A fine portrait of Mommsen arrested me, on one visit; a striking picture, "Christ healing a Sick Child in its Mother's Arms," by Gabriel Max, was a continual favorite; and many others were among those to which we went frequently and before which we lingered long.

The crowning excellence of all the Royal Art Collections is their singular method and completeness. The Old Museum, especially, in its arrangement and illustration of the history of painting in all schools, is without a peer, and it is particularly rich in the early Italian masters. The National Gallery in London has been compared in arrangement with the Berlin Museum, but our observation showed nowhere else in Europe so great facility for systematic study of art as here.

Quite recently, a writer in the "London Art Journal," in comparing European art galleries, characterizes the Italian galleries, except the Pitti, as mere storehouses of pictures, so great have been the accessions, in late years, of altar-pieces from suppressed convents; while, on the other hand, the Louvre, and the galleries of Munich, Dresden, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Madrid still retain their original characteristics as collections made by persons of taste and discrimination. "The Berlin Gallery," says this writer, "is neither a storehouse nor a collection. It stands on a footing of its own. The studious and organizing Prussian mind soon handed over the management of all its collections to a body of specialists, trained to study the objects in their keeping and to arrange them not so much for the delight as for the information of a studious public. The Berlin Gallery has been thus arranged, and its additions have been purchased under the direction of scholars and historians rather than artists and _dilettanti_. Historical sequence and historical completeness have been aimed at. The collection is intended to exemplify the development of the art of painting in mediæval and renascence Europe. It is impossible to enter the Museum gallery and not be struck with this fact. The visitor finds himself turned into a student of the history of painting, as he wanders from room to room. The ordering of the pictures, the information contained in the catalogue,--everything points in the same direction. So clearly has the Museum come to be understood at Berlin as a kind of art-history branch of a university, that a portion of the funds devoted to it is annually spent upon the publication of a periodical universally recognized as the leading magazine in the world devoted to the history of art. By means of it, students in all countries are informed from year to year of the new acquisitions and discoveries made by the staff of the Museum, or by the leading authors and students of the subject, of all nationalities. The Berlin collection has thus won for itself a place as the historical collection _par excellence_."

The Museums are under the care of a Director-General, with nine or more Directors of Departments. Dr. Julius Meyer, Director of the Picture-Gallery, is said to be probably unequalled by any living writer for a wide and philosophic grasp of the whole subject of Art History, to which his life has been devoted; while the names of distinguished scholars and professors at the head of the other departments are guaranties of similar excellence. A series of four illustrated volumes is now in process of publication, which will present, in photographs and engravings, large or small, every picture of importance in the gallery. The text of these volumes, by Drs. Meyer and Bode, will be extremely valuable, and the whole will doubtless stand foremost among publications designed as exponents of European galleries.

The fine and massive building of the Arsenal, opposite the palace of the late Crown Prince, dates from the time of Frederick I., last of the Electors and first of the Prussian Kings. The grand sculptures of the German artist Schlüter, who was afterwards called to the aid of Peter the Great in the creation of St. Petersburg, adorn the exterior of the edifice. Any chance walk along the Linden will arrest the attention to this building, with the remarkable heads of dying warriors carved in the keystones of its window arches. In the renovation of the Arsenal a few years since, no improvement was made on the exterior, except to remove the accumulations of smoke and dust which a hundred and seventy years had deposited there. After the close of the Franco-Prussian War, it was the thought of the aged Emperor to make this Arsenal, already crowded with an immense collection of arms, armor, and trophies, into a kind of Walhalla,--a National Hall of Fame. This was fully carried out. In rooms on the ground floor one may read the whole history of ordnance, old and new, including the famous Armstrong and Krupp guns. A portion of this floor is devoted to models of fortresses, plans of battles, and captured flags. There is a war library; and the celebrated pictures of the Giant Grenadiers, painted with his own hand by Frederick William I., father of Frederick the Great, are also to be seen.

A magnificent double staircase under a glass roof leads to the second floor (in Germany called the first), where one portion is devoted to an interesting collection of arms, which is, however, inferior to those of one or two other European cities. The chief attraction to the visitor, as well as a permanent magnet to the patriotic Berlinese, who come hither in whole families, is the "Hall of Fame," consisting of three sections, all splendid in mosaic floors and massive marble pillars, and adorned with sculpture and fine historical frescos. One of the latter represents the Coronation of the first King of Prussia at Königsberg, and another has for its subject the Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles. The Central Hall is adorned with bronze statues of the Great Elector, of the Fredericks and Frederick-Williams of the Prussian royal line, and of the Emperor William I. The "Halls of the Generals," on either side of this "Hall of the Rulers," have busts of the military leaders, including a fine one of the Crown Prince. Here are also several historical paintings; prominent among which are "The Battle of Turin," "The Emperor William and the Crown Prince at Königgrätz," and "The Capitulation at Sedan."

Perhaps no collection, among many more which might be mentioned, better illustrates the practical working of the German mind than the Royal Post Museum in the Leipziger Strasse. Here is shown everything of interest connected with the transmission of intelligence, and poetry as well as prose has entered into the heart of this Government exhibit. On the walls of the first saloon entered by the visitor are copies in stone of Assyrian bas-reliefs showing a warrior with chariot and arrows. This suggests to us a scene in the lives of David and Jonathan; but communication by means of arrows is probably much older than the time of David. Earlier than even the Assyrian stone must have been the model for the Egyptian wicker and wooden post-chariot. In this room, under a glass case, is an exquisite marble statuette, found at Tanagra, of a Grecian girl seated, and writing on a tablet; and not far away is a Roman warrior, carrying his message. Entering the next hall, we pass a beautiful bronze statue of Philip, the Grecian soldier, bearing a laurel spray, stretching his athletic limbs in breathless strides as he goes toward the capital to announce the battle of Marathon, and to fall dead on his entrance to the city, with the single word "Victory!" on his lips. Here on the walls are four emblematic pictures: "The Land-Post," representing a knight with a sealed missive in his hand, standing beside and curbing his fiery steeds; "The Sea-Post," showing a mail-carrier on the back of a dolphin in the midst of stormy waves far out at sea; "The Telegraph," with Jove and his lightnings as its central figure: and "The _Rohrpost_,"--a maiden, blowing into an orifice with "the breath of all the winds." This last is emblematic of that postal arrangement in Berlin by which letters and postal cards are sent with great speed through pneumatic tubes from which the air is exhausted by means of pumps, and which makes it possible to receive a written message from a distant part of the city within a few minutes after it is written.

Among the ancient representations are models of the boats in which the old Norsemen sailed the seas, and of those by which our Anglo-Saxon ancestors invaded England from Germany. These are strikingly contrasted, in their simplicity and clumsiness, with a fully equipped model, from four to six feet long, of a modern North German Lloyd Atlantic mail steamship, than which no better equipped boat sails the main. One goes on, past a Gobelin tapestry representing a mail-scene at Nüremberg in the Middle Ages, through long halls and corridors where are hundreds of models of post-office buildings of the most convenient and approved plans, in all parts of the world. These are of every variety of architecture, from the great general post-office in London, the handsome Hanover post-office building, those of the central and district post-offices in Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, Heidelberg, and many others in South Germany, to the modern edifices which adorn, and yet seem strangely out of keeping with, the picturesque old North German towns. These models are miniature copies of the exteriors of post-office buildings, varying in length from one and a half to six or eight feet, and of corresponding height. One most interesting model shows the interior of a modern post-office, each floor showing an exact copy of its department of the service, with all appliances and conveniences.

In another room are miniature mail-coaches of different kinds. In the centre of this apartment stands a life-size figure of a mail-carrier in Germany of four hundred years ago. He is a wild-looking official, reminding one by his bronzed features and general appearance of some trusty Indian scout, as he holds his gun in an attitude of suspicion and menace, while a bear-cub opens a capacious mouth at his feet.

Model mail and post-office cars occupy the side of another large room; but this exhibit is so vast and varied that the memory refuses to retain its classification, and holds side by side Alaskan sledges drawn by dogs, Russian post-chaises with reindeer teams, mail-boats on Norwegian fiords, carrier-pigeons and balloons, camels and elephants, and the model mail-coach of the lightning express of the New York Central Railroad. The working appliance used in America for catching off a mail-bag without stopping the train attracts much attention. There is a complete set of the weights and measures used in British post-offices, and two glass cases show the forms of horseshoes best adapted to the speed of horses carrying mails. Tablets, pens, and pencils have cases to themselves, as well as parchments, ancient rolls and ink-horns, reeds and papyrus. Here are the primitive postal arrangements of some of the East Indies; there is the yellow satin missive with a scarlet seal which carries the royal mandates of Siam. Pictures and models of mail-carrying elephants come next, their gay saddle-cloths filled with pockets and parchment rolls. A model of a Japanese post-office is finished in all its interior with the perfection of detail and delicacy of execution which characterize the best Japanese work. A framed engraving of the International Postal Congress at Berne in 1874 hangs near one of the Congress at Paris in 1878. There is a room devoted to the exhibition of postal stamps, cards, and envelopes of every kind, and there are several rooms where models of the most approved kinds of telegraphic apparatus are shown. In a corridor are all varieties of submarine cables, with the ore and the Bessemer steel of which they are spun. In one of the rooms a small crowd is collected about an operator who speaks through a telephone, records the sound of his own voice on strips of foil, which he tears into fragments and distributes to those who eagerly reach for them. In the centre of this room there is a tiny circular railway, with a coach, but no locomotive, standing on the track. By turning the wheel of an electro-magnet the official produces an electric light at the extremity of a model burner; then, applying the same power to the little railway, propels the coach at a rapid rate by means of the invisible agent. One goes forth into the street, past wax figures of armed and mounted mail-messengers in the Middle Ages, past the model street mail-boxes and carriages which help to make so wonderful the Berlin postal arrangements, in a maze at what may here be seen in a single half-hour of the history of mail-carrying in all lands and ages. The originator of this "Post Museum" is Dr. Stephan, the inventor of the postal card and the chief promoter of the International Postal Union. His is the "power behind the throne" which has made the German postal system a marvel of efficiency, unsurpassed, if not unrivalled, in the world.

Less known to travellers than many others far inferior in interest, is the Hohenzollern Museum, occupying the Monbijou Palace in the heart of Berlin. This palace, of so much interest to the readers of Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," has been transformed into a repository for the personal belongings and memorials of the kings and queens of Prussia. One or more rooms devoted to each sovereign in historical succession make up a fascinating picture of the royal customs of the kingdom for two hundred years. Our attention was called to this museum by an English resident, but its interest far exceeded our expectations. Here are the laces, jewels, and often the entire wardrobes of the Hohenzollern queens, with their writing desks and tablets, jewel-cases, embroidery, work-baskets, mirrors, beds, and other furniture; and the kings have each their own apartment likewise, tenanted by their "counterfeit presentments" in wax, sitting or standing in the very clothes they wore, and surrounded by visible mementos of the life they used to live. The glittering eyes and mundane expression of Frederick William I., father of Frederick the Great, give one a strange feeling, and the chairs and table of his "Tobacco College" must have a vivid interest for every reader of Carlyle's "Frederick." But when we entered the rooms containing the many mementos of the Great Frederick himself, from his effigy in the cradle and his baby shoes, and threaded all the vicissitudes of that strangely fascinating life by the help of its visible surroundings, and finally stood before the glass case containing a mask of his dead face and hand surrounded by its laurel wreath, the spell of the past was at its height. It was a bright sunny afternoon, and the golden light came in long slanting lines through windows opening on Monbijou gardens, beautiful even in winter, and lay upon the tessellated floors of the corridors in patterns of shining glory. The chat and laughter of young companions floated from adjoining rooms, and the foot of the guard fell softly in the marble halls. But a kind of awe born of that wonderful past had taken possession of me. I was alone with the spirit of the Great Monarch, and it was more than could be borne. We hurried away from the spot, as when children we fled from fancied ghosts. To one in search of a genuine sensation, we recommend the reading (with judicious skipping) of Carlyle's "Frederick the Great," and a visit, alone or with a single companion, to the Hohenzollern Museum.

Upwards of twenty years ago, German trade was falling behind in the best markets of the world, because the products of German industry were largely poor in quality and deficient in artistic value. With the Duke of Ratisbon, President of the Herrenhaus, as chairman of a committee appointed to consider the subject, a few leading minds combined in a movement which issued in the establishment of the Industrial Art Museum. The Crown Prince and the Crown Princess were much interested in the subject, and gave the plan their hearty support. Less than ten years since, the fine new building in Zimmer Strasse near Königgrätzer was opened on the birthday of the Crown Princess, to receive the vast treasures accumulated, by gift, loan, and purchase, for the permanent exhibition. A cursory visit, though most interesting, is sometimes bewildering from the extent and variety of the collection. The centre of the edifice consists of a large court, roofed with glass and surrounded by two galleries. This is the place reserved for loan exhibitions, and several of importance have already been held here. One of the earlier was of some of the treasures of the South Kensington Museum, loaned by Queen Victoria. Opening upon these arcades are numerous halls on the lower floor, devoted to the permanent exhibition. The classification of the objects exhibited, if not loose, is very general, seeming to us inferior to the method which makes the South Kensington a delight, whether one has hours or months in which to visit it. On the ground floor of this Berlin Museum are "objects in the making of which fire is not used." This includes domestic and ecclesiastical furniture of different countries and historical periods, musical instruments, tapestries, carvings in ivory and wood, and many other objects widely separated in thought. A fine exhibit is made of articles in amber wrought by workmen of rich old Dantzic, for which Baltic Germany furnishes the raw material. The ancient Italian carved bridal-chests brought vividly to mind our childhood's favorite story of Ginevra, by chance imprisoned in such a chest on the day which was to have witnessed her marriage.

The upper floor, with an arrangement similar to that of the lower, shows "objects in the manufacture of which fire is necessary." The very extensive collection of pottery and porcelain was surpassed, in our observation, only by that at Sèvres; and there are many rare and valuable specimens of work in glass and metals. The ancient municipal silver service of the city of Lüneberg, bought at a cost of $165,000, deserves the attention it attracts; and the work of German mediæval goldsmiths--particularly of the famous Augsburg artisans--is a revelation of the possibilities of human handiwork. Stained glass, of much historic and artistic value, fills the windows of the entire building. The specimens of textile fabrics, in completeness and extent, are matchless, and are so arranged as to afford the utmost facility to students of the history of this important subject, as well as great pleasure to the favored visitor who has the opportunity to inspect them.

This "Künstgewerbe Museum" is open to the public without charge on three days of the week, and for a small fee on the remaining days; while its valuable industrial library may be freely consulted on four week-day evenings. Its influence is already strongly felt along the lines of trade and industry throughout the Empire.

The great Ethnographical Museum adjoining, on the corner of Königgrätzer Strasse, has the kind and variety of objects usually found in such exhibitions, including those connected with several races of American Indians. The other departments were, to us, eclipsed in interest by the Schliemann exhibition of Trojan remains on the ground floor. Here we found, on the walls, framed pencil or India ink sketches of the localities where the earlier excavations were made, plans of the work, sections of the unearthed portions, and the precious old Trojan antiquities themselves, deposited here for inspection and safe keeping.

The Märkische Museum, in the Fisch Markt, a centre of Old Berlin, illustrates the history and the prehistoric times of the Mark of Brandenburg, including an interesting department of curiosities from the lake-dwellings and tumuli. There are also ancient coins and other objects picked up at different times within the province. One of the later treasures of this unique museum is the box from which the monk Tetzel sold the indulgences which fanned into a flame the rising fires of the Reformation.

VI.

THE GERMAN REICHSTAG AND THE PRUSSIAN PARLIAMENT.

The Reichstag, or Imperial Diet of the German Empire, was, during our stay in Berlin, a focus for the eyes of all Europe and America. The Government, professedly actuated by a fear of war, asked for an appropriation, largely to increase the army annually for a term of seven years. This House of Deputies, elected by the people and numbering nearly four hundred members, contained a considerable element of opposition to the Government. The debate over the Army Bill brought Chancellor Bismarck up from his distant country-seat, where he had spent several previous months, to a participation in the contest which was anticipated on both sides with eagerness and solicitude.

The building on Leipziger Strasse, as severe in inner details as in the sombre gray of its outer walls, was hastily constructed in 1871 for the accommodation of the newly consolidated German Empire, and has long been inadequate to the need. A single gallery surrounds three sides of the hall, and is occupied on the right by boxes for the Imperial household, the diplomatic corps, and high officials. The left is appropriated to English and American visitors; and the centre, immediately above the desk of the presiding officer and the elevated seats of the Chancellor and members of the Bundesrath, is alone left for the general public. When the new building near the Thiergarten shall be occupied, it is hoped that greatly improved acoustics and ventilation may be secured, and the accommodations for visitors such that it may not be said that there are Germans in Berlin who have for years desired visitors' tickets of admission without having been able to secure them.

By a singular good fortune, our tickets gave us seats for this debate in full view of the leaders of each of the great parties. On the first day the Prime Minister made his great speech, and on the second day thereafter, Richter, the leader of the progressive party, took up the speech point by point, and with bold and vigorous oratory for two hours held the attention of all to his own opposing views. A man of robust physique, still in the prime of life, Richter's dark complexion and facial expression give the impression of "staying qualities" formidable as lasting. The session opened at eleven o'clock A.M., and the veteran General and Field-Marshal Von Moltke was the first speaker. His rising was the signal for a general hush, and for about a quarter of an hour all listened in breathless silence. Half the width of the hall from the observer, his more than eighty years seemed to sit lightly on "the great taciturnist;" and his fair complexion, fine brow, thin face, and singular firmness of mouth have the fascination of genius. Later, during the long and sometimes denunciatory speech of Richter, he seemed wearied. Rising from his seat in the front rank of the Conservatives on the extreme right, he moved to the rear, stood in the aisle, took a vacant seat,--resting by various changes for fifteen or twenty minutes; but when, between one and two o'clock, the time for Bismarck's entrance approached, he returned to his own seat and thenceforth listened attentively. Like the aged Emperor, Von Moltke's age was most apparent in his movements. Sitting or standing, he was the graceful, well-bred gentleman, as well as the dignified chief of the German army. In walking, his movement is slow, and lacking vigor to a marked degree. The offer of the Opposition to vote for the bill with a term of one, two, or even three years, while declaring that they could not vote for seven, was haughtily received by the Prime Minister, who had already given his reasons, supported by the Emperor, by Von Moltke, and other eminent military authority, for adhering to the longer term. "I will not abate a hair's breadth of the septenate," said he. "If you do not vote it, I prefer to deal with another Reichstag." This on the second day of the debate. On the third day Bismarck replied to some of the positions of the Opposition, in a speech of three quarters of an hour, immediately following his opponent, Richter. The latter, and the members on the left included in the three great divisions of the Liberal party, retired from the hall at the conclusion of Richter's two hours' speech; but the centre, or Catholic party, among whom were several priests and a number of very keen and watchful physiognomies, remained in their seats, as well as the Conservatives of both grades. Soon Richter was back, though without his supporters. Fumbling a moment at his desk for pencil and paper, he stepped forward in the aisle, so as not to lose the sentences of Bismarck (occasionally somewhat indistinct), and refusing to be diverted for more than an instant by the communications of friends and officials. Cries of _Ja wohl! Ja wohl!_ and _Bravo!_ were heard from the right during the speech of Bismarck, with now and again a general ripple of laughter at some pleasantry accessible to the German mind; but these were much outdone in heartiness by the applause which frequently interrupted Richter when speaking. There is a massiveness about this scene which rises up in memory with a vividness greater, if possible, than the reality made on our excited and wearied endurance during the hours we spent there. Later, Windhorst, the leader of the Roman Catholic party, made a memorable speech. The dozen great electric lights depending from the ceiling were extinguished when the early afternoon sun faintly struggled with the clouds for entrance through the skylight which forms the entire roof of the room, except those left burning near the seats of Bismarck and Von Moltke, which brought these foremost figures into strong relief. Prince William--now Emperor--and the gentlemen of his party were in gay uniforms in the Imperial box, and the diplomatic box was lighted mainly by the diamonds of the ladies who sat there; while the crowded ranks of the other galleries were in dim twilight. It was a picture to remain in history. The bill was lost. In less than twenty-four hours after we left the Reichstag, Bismarck had read his summary dissolution of the Diet, and before another sunset the hall was closed and silent. The Iron Chancellor had made his appeal to the country. The war-cloud was heavy over Europe, and great was the excitement in Berlin. Under fear of a bolt which might strike at any moment, the elections for a new Chamber were held, and Bismarck had his will.

The Reichstag is the representative body of the whole German Empire, with its four kingdoms, six grand duchies, and sixteen lesser principalities and powers united under one emperor. Prussia is a kingdom which forms but one, though the most important, of these constituent parts. The Reichstag is a kind of Upper and Lower House in one; the Bundesrath or Federal Council, with somewhat arbitrary powers, has its private Council-room; but the Chancellor of the Empire is its presiding officer, and, with the members of this Council, occupies the elevated platform at the right of the President of the Reichstag. The chief function of the latter as a legal Chamber of Deputies is to check the power of the Bundesrath. It can thus reject bills and refuse appropriations, but has no power to bring about a change of administration.

The Prussian Diet is composed of two separate houses. The building of the Lower House--the Abgeordnetenhaus--is near the eastern extremity of the Leipziger Strasse, and the House of Lords--Herrenhaus--is adjacent to the Reichstag-Gebaude. The Prussian Lower House is somewhat larger in numbers than the Reichstag, and is of course an elective body. It contained a number of eminent men,--as Herr Windhorst, also the leader of the Catholic party in the Reichstag, and Professor Virchow. On the day of our visit no business of special importance was before the assembly, and visitors' tickets were obtained with an ease in pleasing contrast to the most difficult feat of obtaining entrance to the Reichstag on a great occasion.

The House of Lords is reputed a dull place, and is seldom visited. In a dwelling formerly occupying this site (No. 3 Leipziger Strasse), and of which some memorials remain, Felix Mendelssohn spent, with his parents and sister Fanny, several years of his wonderful youth; and the "Gartenhaus" of this estate witnessed the memorable private performance of the work which first revealed his greatness to the world,--the "Overture to the Midsummer Night's Dream."

VII.

PROMINENT PERSONAGES.

"I love my Emperor," said "our little Fräulein," laying her hand on her heart, one day when we were talking of him.

It was on our first day in Germany that we, returning from church a little after noon, were kindly greeted by an American lady who saw that we were strangers. "The Emperor lives on this street," she said; "and if we hasten, we may see him when he comes to the window to review his Guards." Soon we were before the palace on Unter den Linden, a substantial-looking building facing the north, with an eastern exposure. The Imperial standard was floating over the palace, denoting the presence of his Majesty. The room on the ground floor, northeast corner, of the palace is the one used by Emperor William I. as his study; and one back of this was his bedroom, containing the simple iron cot which was the companion of his soldier days, and which remained the couch of his choice to the end of life. At "the historic window" we often saw him. Every day at noon, and sometimes long before, the crowd began to gather in the street opposite this window, for a sight of his Majesty when he came for a moment to review his Guards at a quarter to one. It was touching to see the devotion of the people, standing patiently in all weathers; mothers and fathers holding up their children that they might catch a sight of the idolized Kaiser. Rarely did he disappoint them. As the military music of the guard drew near, and the tramp of the soldiers fell on the pavement before the palace, the aged man would appear at the window in full uniform of dark blue with scarlet trimmings and silver epaulettes, returning the salutations of the guard, and bowing and waving his white-gloved hand to the people, then retiring within the shadow of the lace curtains. Sometimes the cheering broke forth anew as he was lost to sight, and the welkin was made to ring with the Kaiser-song, or some hymn of Fatherland, until he indulgently appeared again, bowing his bald head, his kindly face lighted up with a smile. In full-front view he did not look like a man in his ninetieth year. Many a man of sixty-five or seventy looks older. When he turned, the side view revealed that his form was not erect; but only when he walked with a slow movement could one realize that this soldier of perfect drill--this courtly gentleman--was one who had seen almost a century of life. His earliest memories were of privation and hardship. In his young boyhood the First Napoleon held Berlin in his grasp, and the family of the King, Frederick William III., fled to Königsberg. The beautiful and noble Queen Louise and her two little boys, afterwards Frederick William IV. and William I., wandered at one time in the forests, and made their food of wild berries. They amused themselves by making wreaths of _cornblumen_,--blue flowers answering closely to our "bachelors' buttons,"--which grow wild everywhere in Germany. Thenceforward the _cornblumen_ were dear to the young princes, and they were "the Emperor's flowers" to the end of his Imperial life. So devoted was he to the memory of his mother, that when in his later years he saw a young girl whose striking beauty of face and form reminded him of Queen Louise, he persuaded her to allow her portrait to be taken, that it might remind him of the mother whom he remembered in her youth. This beautiful portrait is bought, by many Germans even, as that of Queen Louise, and may be known by a star over the forehead. The finest actual portrait of this Queen which we saw was, at the time of our visit, in the Old Schloss at Berlin, and showed a mature and lovely woman, every inch a queen. The exquisite reposing statue, by Rauch, in the Mausoleum at Charlottenburg, over her grave, is well known by copies.

The life led by the aged Emperor was simple and methodical to the last. Rising at half-past seven, he breakfasted, looked over his letters and papers, and was ready by nine or half-past nine to begin his reception of officials or other callers, which lasted till after midday. After lunch, he usually drove for an hour or so in the afternoon, often accompanied by a single aid, bowing right and left to the populace, who thronged for a look and a smile. His plain military cloak enveloped him in cold or rainy weather, and his was often one of the plainest equipages on the brilliant street. "I do not think," said General Grant, after having visited the Emperor, "that I ever saw a more perfect type of a soldier and a man. His Majesty went off into military affairs. I was anxious to change the subject, as I had no interest in the technical matters of war. But the Emperor held me to the one theme, and we spoke of nothing else. I fancied Bismarck sympathized with me, and would have gladly gone off on other subjects, but it was of no use. The manner of Bismarck toward the Emperor was beautiful,--absolute devotion and respect. This was my one long talk with the Emperor. I should call him the embodiment of courage, candor, dignity, and simplicity; a strikingly handsome man."

Sometimes the Kaiser would hold up to the palace window his eldest great-grandson, now Crown Prince, then a beautiful child of four or five years; and the little fellow would go through his military salute of the passing guard with great gravity and propriety, while the huzzas of the crowd burst forth with renewed zeal. This child was the favorite of the aged Emperor, and sometimes took liberties with his great-grandsire which would hardly have been tolerated from any one else. If it was touching to see the devotion of the people to their Emperor, it was no less so to see how he trusted himself with them. He could remember when, with the revolutionary spirit of 1848, the mob in the streets of Berlin had so insulted him, a prince, that he had fled for a time from his country. But that he had forgiven and they had forgotten long ago. The times had "changed all that." Now he lived daily in sight of the people, with only a pane of glass for a shield. He loved his people, and they worshipped him with no temporary oblations. One of the last occasions in which we saw him in public was that of the spring manoeuvres in the last May-time of his long life.

Some distance south of the Halle gate, the large and finely situated "Tempelhofer Feld" extends to the suburban village of Tempelhof, which was once the property of the Knights of Malta, and which still bears their cross and inscription on its church bells. The intervening ground has been devoted to the annual parades of the Berlin garrison for more than a hundred years. It has ample room for evolutions of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, but a comparatively small space is devoted to the accommodation of spectators. Only about three hundred carriages can be admitted, and these are distributed among royal personages, officials, and a limited number of distinguished or fortunate visitors. Our application for a carriage place was duly filed with the chief of the Berlin police a month or six weeks in advance of the parade, but, after long waiting, word came that there was no room. By the courtesy and special thoughtfulness of Secretary Crosby, of the United States Legation, a carriage ticket was placed at our disposal, after all hope of obtaining the coveted privilege had been abandoned.

The German Emperor can place, if need be, nearly three million trained soldiers in the field. All able-bodied Germans are liable to service, with few exceptions, from the age of twenty to that of thirty-two, and can in exceptional circumstances be called out up to the age of forty-two. But the German youth spends only the first three years, of his twelve of liability, with the colors, the remaining nine being spent in different branches of the reserve forces. The effective force in time of peace is about half a million, which is distributed through the Empire in seventeen army corps, of which the Third has its headquarters at Berlin. The ordinary strength of an army corps is about thirty thousand, including infantry, cavalry, and artillery; but the garrison of Berlin and various extra and unattached troops bring the number up to fifty thousand or more, stationed mostly in Berlin and Potsdam. These have their spring manoeuvres at Berlin; and the special parade, for which every day for two months beforehand seemed parade-day in the streets of Berlin, was that for which we were so fortunate as to receive tickets. Nearly every day for a week previous, his Majesty was to be seen, in his low two-horse carriage, passing through the Unter den Linden and south through Friedrich Strasse, to the parade-ground. On this grand and final parade-day the three hundred carriages of the privileged spectators were in good time on the ground assigned them, prepared to welcome the Emperor and the Imperial party as loyally as the soldiers themselves. A deafening hurrah burst from the throats of all, as his Majesty appeared in a carriage and drove to his post of observation. Many of his princely retinue, both ladies and gentlemen, were on horseback; and it was formerly his custom to review the troops, mounted on his black war-horse. In spite of a piercing wind which swept over the wide Brandenburg plains, we hugged our warm wraps, and stood in our carriages, like all the rest, in eager watchfulness and admiration, as the evolutions of the most perfectly drilled troops in the world went forward. The infantry marched and countermarched; plumes of all colors waved in the sunlight and kept time to the music; uniforms and men seemed but part of one grand incomprehensible automatic movement; battle-flags scarred with the history of all the wars fluttered their tattered shreds in the wind, waking memories of irrepressible pathos and joy; the artillery rumbled and thundered; the evolutions of the cavalry were like systematic whirlwinds; and the scarlet Zouaves, the blue Dragoons, the white-uniformed and gilt-helmeted Cuirassiers, and the dark Uhlands with lances ten feet long poised in air above their prancing horses, commingled the "pomp and circumstance of war" without its pain. Now the infantry come on at double quick, in the step with which they entered Paris; now the artillery is lumbered across a vast stretch of the field with a rapidity and precision which almost take away one's breath; and anon the cavalry seem to burst in orderly confusion upon the scene, flying in competition, across, around, athwart, until the cheers and huzzas burst forth anew with, "Hail to the Kaiser!" "Long live the Fatherland!" It was with joy that the soldiers received the commendations of their Imperial chieftain on that field-day, and it was to us a fitting place and moment of farewell to the great military Emperor.

"King, the Saxon Konnig," says Carlyle,--"the man who CAN." And Emperor William I. was the man who _could_.

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