curious satires in human history. To all appearance it was simply
a biographical study of the young Roman emperor Caligula. It
displayed the advantages he had derived from a brave and pious
imperial ancestry, and especially from his devout and gifted
father; it showed his natural gifts and acquired graces, his
versatility, his growing restlessness, his manifold ambitions,
his contempt of wise counsel, the dismissal of his most eminent
minister, his carelessness of thoughtful opinion, his meddling in
anything and everything, his displays in the theater and in the
temples of the gods, his growth--until the world recognized him
simply as a beast of prey, a monster. The whole narrative was so
managed that the young prince who had just come to the German
throne seemed the exact counterpart of the youthful Roman
monarch--down to the cruel stage of his career; THAT was left to
anticipation. The parallels and resemblances between the two were
arranged with consummate skill, and whenever there was a passage
which seemed to present an exact chronicle of some well-known
saying or doing of the modern ruler there would follow an
asterisk with a reference to a passage in Tacitus or Suetonius or
Dion Cassius or other eminent authority exactly warranting the
statement. This piece of historical jugglery ran speedily through
thirty editions, while from all parts of Germany came refutations
and counter-refutations by scores, all tending to increase its
notoriety. Making a short tour through Germany at that period,
and stopping in a bookseller's shop at Munich to get a copy of
this treatise, I was shown a pile of pamphlets which it had
called out, at least a foot high. Comically enough, its author
could not be held responsible for it, since the name of the young
Emperor William was never mentioned; all it claimed to give or
did give was the life of Caligula, and certainly there was no