communion, and partake of the eucharistic body of Poland. Had he been
such a Bible reader as the Dissenter doubtless thought him, he might
haply have foreseen the vengeance of humanity upon his house. He might
have known what Poland was and was yet to be; he might have known that
he ate and drank to his damnation, discerning not the body of God.

Whether the placing of the present German Emperor in charge of one of
these wayside public-houses would be a jest after _his_ own heart
possibly remains to be seen. But it would be much more melodious and
fitting an end than any of the sublime euthanasias which his enemies
provide for him. That old sign creaking above him as he sat on the bench
outside his home of exile would be a much more genuine memory of the
real greatness of his race than the modern and almost gimcrack stars and
garters that were pulled in Windsor Chapel. From modern knighthood has
departed all shadow of chivalry; how far we have travelled from it can
easily be tested by the mere suggestion that Sir Thomas Lipton, let us
say, should wear his lady's sleeve round his hat or should watch his
armour in the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The giving and
receiving of the Garter among despots and diplomatists is now only part
of that sort of pottering mutual politeness which keeps the peace in an
insecure and insincere state of society. But that old blackened wooden
sign is at least and after all the sign of something; the sign of the
time when one solitary Hohenzollern did not only set fire to fields and
cities, but did truly set on fire the minds of men, even though it were
fire from hell.

Everything was young once, even Frederick the Great. It was an
appropriate preface to the terrible epic of Prussia that it began with
an unnatural tragedy of the loss of youth. That blind and narrow savage
who was the boy's father had just sufficient difficulty in stamping out