Berlin was a soldier off duty. Batteries of steel guns rolled by at
any time, obedient to their bugles. Squadrons of Uhlans in uniforms of
green and red, the pennons fluttering from the ends of their lances,
rode up to salute the king. Each day at noon, through the roar of
the streets, swelled the finest martial music; first a grand sound of
trumpets, then a deafening roll from a score of brazen drums. A heavy
detachment of infantry wheeled out from some barracks, ranks of strong
brown-haired young men stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, neat in
every thread and accoutrement, with the German gift for music all, as
the stride told with which they beat out upon the pavement the rhythm
of the march, dropping sections at intervals to do the unbroken guard
duty at the various posts. Frequently whole army corps gathered to
manoeuvre at the vast parade-ground by the Kreuzberg in the outskirts.
On Unter den Linden is a strong square building, erected, after the
model of a Roman fortress, to be the quarters of the main guard. The
officers on duty at Berlin came here daily at noon to hear military
music and for a half-hour's talk. They came always in full uniform, a
collection of the most brilliant colours, hussars in red, blue, green,
and black, the king's body-guard in white with braid of yellow and
silver, in helmets that flashed as if made from burnished gold,
crested with an eagle with out-spread wings. The men themselves
were the handsomest one can see; figures of the finest symmetry and
stature, trained by every athletic exercise, and the faces often so
young and beautiful! Counts and barons were there from Pomerania and
old Brandenburg, where the Prussian spirit is most intense, and no
nobility is nobler or prouder. They were blue-eyed and fair-haired
descendants perhaps of the chieftains that helped Herman overcome
Varus, and whose names may be found five hundred years back among the
Deutsch Ritters that conquered Northern Europe from heathendom, and
thence all the way down to now, occurring in martial and princely