does think more of the Hohenzollerns as a sacred caste than of his own
particular place in it. In such families the old boast and motto of
hereditary kingship has a horrible and degenerate truth. The king never
dies; he only decays for ever.

If it were a matter of the smallest importance what happened to the
Emperor William when once his house had been disarmed, I should satisfy
my fancy with another picture of his declining years; a conclusion that
would be peaceful, humane, harmonious, and forgiving.

In various parts of the lanes and villages of South England the
pedestrian will come upon an old and quiet public-house, decorated with
a dark and faded portrait in a cocked hat and the singular inscription,
"The King of Prussia." These inn signs probably commemorate the visit of
the Allies after 1815, though a great part of the English middle classes
may well have connected them with the time when Frederick II. was
earning his title of the Great, along with a number of other territorial
titles to which he had considerably less claim. Sincere and
simple-hearted Dissenting ministers would dismount before that sign (for
in those days Dissenters drank beer like Christians, and indeed
manufactured most of it) and would pledge the old valour and the old
victory of him whom they called the Protestant Hero. We should be using
every word with literal exactitude if we said that he was really
something devilish like a hero. Whether he was a Protestant hero or not
can be decided best by those who have read the correspondence of a
writer calling himself Voltaire, who was quite shocked at Frederick's
utter lack of religion of any kind. But the little Dissenter drank his
beer in all innocence and rode on. And the great blasphemer of Potsdam
would have laughed had he known; it was a jest after his own heart. Such
was the jest he made when he called upon the emperors to come to