skilful questions with the same keen attention that he bestowed on mine,
and the gift of comprehension peculiar to him enabled him to rapidly
shape what he heard into a distinctly outlined picture. Therefore he
must have seemed to laymen a very compendium of science, yet he never
used this faculty to dazzle others or give himself the appearance of
erudition.

"Man cannot be God," he wrote--I am quoting from a letter received the
day after his visit--"yet 'to be like unto God' need not remain a mere
theological phrase to the aspirant. Omniscience is certainly one of the
noblest attributes of the Most High, and the nearer man approaches it the
more surely he gains at least the shadow of a quality to which he cannot
aspire."

Finally he discussed his gardening work in the park at Branitz, and I
regret having noted only the main outlines of what he said, for it was as
interesting as it was admirable. I can only cite the following sentence
from a letter addressed to Blasewitz: "What was I to do? A prince
without a country, like myself, wishes at least to be ruler in one
domain, and that I am, as creator of a park. The subjects over whom I
reign obey me better than the Russians, who still retain a trace of free
will, submit to their Czar. My trees and bushes obey only me and the
eternal laws implanted in their nature, and which I know. Should they
swerve from them even a finger's breadth they would no longer be
themselves. It is pleasant to reign over such subjects, and I would
rather be a despot over vegetable organisms than a constitutional king
and executor of the will of the 'images of God,' as men call the
sovereign people."

He talked most delightfully of the Viceroy of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, and