messengers. We must own, that the ceremonials of the Prussian Court
departed in a certain measure from the ordinary mild usage of humanity;
but we attributed this to nothing more, than the excitement of a youthful
Emperor, or the irrepressible agitation of German officials. But if these
events should find a place in history, or if the annals of the Kings of
Prussia should be judged worth reading by a distant Age; who could blame
an historian for saying, that these precautions were not required for the
peaceful and innocent devolution of the crown from a father to his son.
Would not our historian be justified, if he referred to the tumults and
intrigues of a Praetorian election; if he compared these events to the
darkest pages in Suetonius, or reminded his readers of the most criminal
narratives in the authors of the "Augustan History"? From Sejanus and the
Emperor William, I return once more to Tiberius; from the present
_Kaiser_, to a genuine Caesar.

It is not my purpose here to abridge Tacitus, to mangle his translator,
nor to try and say what is better said in the body of the volume: but when
my readers have made themselves acquainted with Tiberius, they may be glad
to find some discussion about him, as he is presented to us in "The
Annals"; and among all the personages of history, I doubt if there be a
more various or more debated character. Mr. Matthew Arnold thus describes
him:

_Cruel, but composed and bland,
Dumb, inscrutable and grand;
So Tiberius might have sat,
Had Tiberius been a cat._

And these verses express the popular belief, with great felicity: I must
leave my readers, to make their own final judgment for themselves. Whether