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THE RECREATIONS OF OLIVER CROMWELL.

THE LORD PROTECTOR ON HORSERACING. WHEN Ladas won the Derby he rendered at least one good service to the British public. In the controversy which ensued about the Prime Minister and the turf, Lord Rosebery referred to the precedent of the Lord Protector's racing stud, and that again has led to the publication in Macmillan's Magazine of an admirable paper by Mr. C. H. Firth upon Sport." The attitude maintained by the Puritans and "Cromwell's View of their great leader towards rational amusements has so persistently been misrepresented by the Royalists, who confounded liberty with license, and amusement with immorality, that Mr. Firth's article will come to many people as a surprise. For that reason it is all the more necessary that it should be written and the widest possible circulation secured for it. From this paper we learn that Cromwell-instead of being the narrow pinched fanatic who looked askance at every form of recreation, and who did his best to suppress all manly sport-was in reality a country gentleman who was devoted to all kinds of outdoor sport. Mr. Firth says that although he suppressed cock-fighting and bear-baiting, he was thoroughgoing sportsman, devoted to horses and hounds, passionately fond of hawking, delighting in a game of bowls, and who was famous from his youth up as an athlete.

"LAUDABLE RECREATIONS."

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Cromwell's attitude to all kinds of amusements is indicated in a letter which he wrote to representations that his son Richard was unable to live within his allowance chiefly owing to his love of sport:

"I desire to be understood," was Cromwell's answer, "that I grudge him not laudable recreations, nor an honourable carriage of himself in them; nor is any matter of charge like to fall to my share a stick with me. heart to allow him not only a sufficiency, but more, for his Truly I can find in my good. But if pleasure and self-satisfaction be made the business of a man's life, and so much cost laid out upon it, so much time spent on it, as rather answers appetite than the will of God, or is comely before his saints,-I scruple to feed this humour; and God forbid that his being my son should be his allowance to live not pleasingly to our heavenly Father, who hath raised me out of the dust to be what I am."

That letter exactly expresses Cromwell's sentiments. His constant desire was to live pleasingly to his Heavenly Father, but he never grudged "laudable recreation."

THE RACEHORSE CONTROVERSY.

races

Mr. Firth, however, is not satisfied with the evidence that the Lord Protector ever kept racehorses. He says:A modern biographer. Mr. Waylen, boldly asserts that " continued in Hyde Park during the Protectorate; and Dick Pace, the owner of divers horses who live in racing chronicles, was the Protector's stud-groom." But he gives no authority for these statements, and neither of them is confirmed by contemporary evidence. Towards public amusements in general, Cromwell was (in theory, at all events) more liberal than is usually supposed. The policy of Cromwell and his government is perfectly clear. Certain amusements are suppressed,

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not as sinful or inherently unlawful, but because under existing
conditions they are dangerous to the public peace or the public
morals. This is the line taken by Cromwell in defending his
policy to his Parliament. He complains of the "folly " of the
nation which could not endure to be deprived of its amusements
even for a moment.
that we cannot have our horse-racings, cock-fighting, and the
A great deal of grudging in the nation
like. I do not think these unlawful, but to make them recrea-
tions that they will not endure to be abridged of them." The
sentence is unfinished, and the words "is folly" or "is unlaw-
ful" must be supplied. In 1655 the Majors-General established

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by Cromwell to secure the peace of the nation were instructed
"to permit no horse-races, cock-fightings, bear-baitings, stage-
plays, or any unlawful assemblies within their respective pro-
vinces; forasmuch as treason and rebellion is usually hatched
and contrived against the State upon such occasions, and much
evil and wickedness committed."
against cock-fighting was confirmed and made a permanent
But while the ordinance
Act by the Parliament of 1656, the prohibition of horse-races
was never more than a temporary police measure. They were
again prohibited for six months on February 24th, 1655, were
suppressed by the Majors-General during 1656, and their pro-
hibition was recommended by the council in April, 1658.

FOR BOWLS, BUT AGAINST BETTING.

There is no doubt, however, that if horseracing had existed as it does to-day, the Lord Protector would have made short work of that feature of the modern turf upon which its existence practically depends. That he would have permitted horseracing as a sport while suppressing betting as a profession seems to be clear from the following extract from Mr. Firth's article:-

After August 1st, 1657, any person who "by playing at cards, dice, tables, tennis, bowls or shovel-board, cock-fighting or horse-races, or any game or games, or by bearing any part in the adventure or by betting on the hands or sides of such as do or shall play as aforesaid," should win any sum of money or "any other thing valuable whatsoever," was to forfeit twice the value of his winnings. When this Bill was under discussion, one member thought it forbade bowls altogether. "Many honest men use the game," he protested. "My Lord Protector himself uses it. I would have some gentlemen added to the Committee that are more favourers of lawful recreations."

HIS LOVE FOR EXERCISE.

From this it will be seen that Cromwell personally enjoyed sport. Mr. Firth says:—

The real Cromwell was by no himself or averse to amusements. means afraid to enjoy officers observes, "loved an innocent jest," and especially a "Oliver," as one of his practical jest. Under the cuirass of the General or the royal robe of the Protector he was always an athletic country gentleman of sporting tastes. His Royalist biographers make his early taste for athletics one of their charges against him. "He learnt little at Cambridge," says “Carrion" Heath, “and was more famous for his exercises in the fields than the schools, being one of the chief match-makers and players of football, cudgels, or any other boisterous sport or game." He "was soon cloyed with studies," adds Bates, "delighting more in horses, and in pastimes abroad in the fields.". We hear occasionally of his hunting at Hampton Court or elsewhere, but nothing beyond the bare fact is recorded. Marvell has a brief allusion to the subject in his elegy on Cromwell's death, where

he writes:

All, all is gone of ours or his delight

In horses fierce, wild deer, or armour bright. Queen Christina of Sweden collected a small herd of reindeer which she meant to present to Cromwell, but some were eaten by wolves, and the rest died before they could be transported to England.

HIS PASSION FOR HORSES.

But Cromwell's chief delight was in horses. Had he not loved his horses, it is doubtful whether he would have risen to be Lord Protector of England. His famous Ironsides owed their success, not merely to the Godfearing spirit which he infused into their ranks, but also to the sedulous care with which he looked after the horses. 66 Cromwell used them," says a contemporary chronicler, "daily to look after, feed and dress their horses, and when it was needful to lie together on the ground.' Twice during the Civil War Cromwell protested against proposals to engage, not because he was slow to fight, but because the horses were so worn and spent that they were not capable of service. After the King lost his head,

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Cromwell appeared in public in more than regal state with six gallant Flanders mares of reddish-grey. Six years later, he drove with a coach of six white horses, of which, says the chronicler, it is certain none of the English kings had ever any such. One function of English diplomatists during the Protectorate was to buy horses for Cromwell. They were acquired from Naples, Tripoli, Aleppo, and elsewhere. It was alleged against Cromwell by his enemies, that on one occasion when the parliamentary deputation waited on him to urge his acceptance of the crown, he kept them two hours waiting in order to inspect a Barbary steed in the garden at Whitehall.

HIS ACCIDENT IN HYDE PARK.

Cromwell loved not only to ride but to drive spirited horses. This on one occasion nearly cost him his life. In 1654 the Count of Oldenburg sent him a present of six horses, and it was while trying them in Hyde Park that he nearly lost his life :

On Friday, September 29th, he went with Secretary Thurloe and some of his gentlemen to take the air in the Park, ordered. the six horses to be harnessed to his coach, put Thurloe inside it, and undertook to drive himself. "His Highness," says a letter from the Dutch ambassadors, "drove pretty handsomely for some time; but at last provoking those horses too much with the whip, they grew unruly, and ran so fast that the postillion could not hold them in; whereby his Highness was Alung out of the coach-box upon the pole, upon which he lay `with his body, and afterwards fell upon the ground. His foot getting hold in the tackling, he was carried away a good while in that posture, during which a pistol went off in his pocket; but at last he got his foot clear, and so came to escape, the coach passing away without hurting him."

HIS LOVE FOR HAWKING.

Another amusement of which he was very fond was hawking. He and several of his officers went out of their way to go hawking a few days after the crowning mercy of Worcester, and some years later when he was hawking on Hounslow Heath he made such friends with the Royalist Sir John Long, who was an expert at the sport, as to cause great scandal to Sir John's Royalist friends. Such is the picture which Mr. Firth gives us of the greatest of English rulers. Nothing can be more opposed to the popular caricature of the great Puritan, who in Macaulay's malignant sarcasm suppressed bear-baiting,` not so much because it gave pain to the bear as because it gave pleasure to the people.

A PLEA FOR JOHN CHINAMAN.

MR. EDMUND MITCHELL publishes in the Nineteenth Century an article upon "The Chinaman Abroad." Mr. Mitchell is evidently of opinion that the Chinese are the salt of the earth. Seldom has the heathen Chinee found a more enthusiastic and uncompromising champion.

HATED NOT FOR VICES BUT FOR VIRTUES.

His paper, in fact, is little more than a demonstration that the Chinese are hated more for their virtues than their vices, and in their vices even they compare very favourably with the English-speaking populations in the midst of which they dwell. He says:

His

My plea for the Chinaman in new countries such as California or Queensland amounts to this-that for the development of these regions his presence in certain force cannot but prove one of the grandest factors conducing to success. total exclusion is a most short-sighted and mistaken line of policy; his deportation is little less than a national crime, for it puts back the clock of progress and renders useless a large amount of necessary and arduous pioneer work. Furthermore, I say unhesitatingly that both the Australian colonies and the

Western States of America could take thousands more Chinamen than they at present have, to the advantage of the whole community in each and every case.

CHINESE GAMBLING.

After minimising the evils of the use of opium, and declaring that Chinese gambling does not approach in mischief to that of our racecourses, or the ordinary American gambling hell, he mentions a curious circumstance in extenuation of the Chinese addiction to games of chance:

Untiring industry, patience, and perseverance, extreme thrift, the inborn habit and faculty of saving a little day by day, however scanty his earnings-these are the very qualities that have turned against him the hands of men belonging to a less industrious, less frugal, and less provident race. The Chinaman, although proverbially meek and mild, is a man of dauntless courage and unflinching fortitude. The Chinaman abroad invariably provides for his own poor, and his games are voluntarily and cheerfully taxed for the purposes of charity. Can his Caucasian detractors in America and Australia say the same thing of their gambling saloons and race meetings?

He then draws a picture of a Chinaman creating an oasis in the great wilderness of Australia, and a companion picture of another Chinaman washing the tailing in a gold field :

Where the Caucasian has admitted himself to be played out, the Mongolian is saving gold! Here is an alchemist who can find the precious metal in the dirt-wash from the battery in which every appliance that money can purchase and man's ingenuity devise is in operation.

THE CHINESE AS COOKS.

The accusation that the Chinese are blacklegs and undersell white labour is a favourite excuse for the attacks which are made upon them, but when Chinese are employed as cooks in hotels they are paid the same wages as white cooks, but that circumstance in no way lessens the antipathy with which they are regarded. Mr. Mitchell says:

Their great disqualification in the eyes of their enemies lies in the fact that they make their employers' interests identical with their own. "John" the cook is absolutely reliable. He never goes on strike for an eight-hours' day, and never by any chance touches a drop of liquor. Yet many an hotel in the colonies has been burned to the ground for no other reason than that the owner employed a Chinese cook. The disabilities of the Jews in medieval Europe sink into nothingness when compared with the disabilities of the Chinese in modern Australia.

AN APPEAL TO CHRISTIAN CHIVALRY.

Occasionally we get a glimpse of what the race might achieve were these disabilities removed. Thus in Melbourne, two or three years ago, a Chinese boy in attendance at the premier high school in the city beat everyone in the senior class, and came out first in Latin, Greek, French, mathematics, English literature, and each and every subject in the curriculum. But he was the son of a christianised Chinese missionary, and so had avenues opened to him that are barred to all other Chinese children in the land. The average working Chinaman, as I have shown, has to bear the burden of contumely, and has to live the life of the leper outside the gates. Yet he braces himself to the cruel and unequal struggle, and in the end achieves a quiet triumph in the face of every difficulty. Has chivalry died out among the Caucasian race that honour should be denied to such achievement?

THE Gesellschaft for September gives a sketch of E. Humperdinck, whose children's opera, "Hänsel und Gretel," has made his name famous. There is also a study of the opera, which seems to be founded on a Grimm fairy tale, has leading motives, witch scenes, and other things to attract.

THE ESSENTIAL INFERIORITY OF WOMAN.

ACCORDING TO MR. HALL CAINE.

IN the Young Woman an interviewer writes an account of the author of "The Manxman," in the course of which that popular novelist delivers himself of certain oracular obiter dicta concerning what he is pleased to describe" the fundamental and natural inferiority of women as a sex." Mr. Caine says:

There is an absolute inequality, an inequality that began in the Garden of Eden, and will go on till the last woman is born. It is not an inequality of intellect, but of sex. How can we escape from the belief that woman is the subject creature? Once a woman marries she becomes conscious of this, willy nilly. There is no getting

over the essential inequality of sex.

The new woman will find it somewhat difficult to argue with a dogmatist so decided as Mr. Hall Caine. She may, however, be permitted to remind him that if he will go back to the Garden of Eden, to the Garden of Eden he shall go, and that the domination of the male is not the most conspicuous element in that sacred narrative. The man was certainly not the party of the initiative, and almost his only articulate utterance in the Garden was to throw the blame upon his wife in a fashion which seemed to imply that he had not yet found out the fundamental and natural inferiority of her sex. Mr. Hall Caine, however, goes gaily on to make an assertion which is quite as extraordinary as the story from the Garden of Eden :

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note of the new woman movement. His interviewer reports his observations on this subject as follows:

"I cannot resist the feeling that there is among the leaders of what is called the New Womanhood an erroneous idea of the lives that men live. I have travelled a good deal, lived much among men, and claim to know my own sex, and I say confidently that by far the larger proportion of men live clean and wholesome lives." In another part of the conversation Mr. Caine told me that when in a smoking-room chat he made the same remark to Dr. Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes fully endorsed it. "At the same time," my host added deliberatively, "I am conscious that many men live impurely, and that there is danger that women be thrust in ignorance into purely conventional marriages, which, if they

The male is of necessity the dominant creature. Nature tells us so in a thousand voices; we with our own eyes that on the average the offspring partakes more of the character of the male than of the female. This great truth was recognised in the Garden of Eden, it has been recognised in all history, and must be recognised to the end. Can we think that a group of women at the end of the nineteenth century are going to alter all this, to reverse the order of all the ages and all the climes, and change the laws of nature?

(From a photograph by Martin and Sallnow.)

Summing up, Mr. Hall Caine asserted that "because the New Womanhood is not making its reckoning with the fundamental and natural inferiority of women as a sex, it cannot permanently succeed. The woman movement is doing some good, and a great deal of harm. It is true that woman has been basely treated in all secondary matters, and all that we are changing; but the primary inequality must remain so long as men are men and women are women. pathetic tragedy based on natural law."

It is a

Notwithstanding this, there will be many who will be glad to read what Mr. Caine has to say as to the dominant

Hall Caine

knew more, they would shrink from in horror. My position"-decisively- "is this: that a woman should marry for love; that in order to marry for love she should be free to love only where her judgment approves, and that a judgment based on ignorance may be dangerously unsound. Therefore I am forced to the conclusion that all women should know certain facts about the world in which they live. To tell girls the kind of life that some men live might have the effect of rubbing the bloom off their modesty, but even that is better than that their happiness should be wrecked through ignorance. The first generation of the emancipated always have to pay for their emancipation, and so, maybe, girls of the present day will have to pay the price of knowledge. But all this will amend itself; men's lives will become purer when women demand that they shall be pure; so that in a generation or two we shall get back for woman that sweetness and bloom that is half her charm, and that freedom in the choice of a life-partner which is her inalienable right."

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A USEFUL INVENTION. -Mr. W. Webber, of 6, Saltram Place, Plymouth, sends me for review, not a book, but an ingenious contrivance called the Memonitor. It is a wooden box of peculiar construction, intended to stand on the writing-desk for the reception of letters of engagements or any papers relating to business under negotiation, and required ready at hand for easy reference, instead of having to search the permanent files of the office. Letters or papers requiring attention on any particular date are placed in the divisions as represented by the numbers. When the particular business is concluded the papers relating thereto should be passed out of the Memonitor to the permanent files of the office. In this way all the business in hand is kept in proper order. Papers required for reference under name or subject-matter can be placed in the division represented by the alphabetical letter, where they will remain until required."

THE SEVEN LORD ROSEBERYS.

MR. ST. LOE STRACHEY has an article in the Nineteenth Century bearing the above title. It is a smart article, flippant and shallow. Mr. Strachey professes to have discovered in the present Prime Minister no fewer than seven different personalities. They are as follows:—

1. The Home Rule Lord Rosebery.

2. The Unionist Lord Rosebery.

3. The Democratic, Socialist, Labour-Radical Lord Rosebery. 4. Lord Rosebery the Political Boss.

5. Lord Rosebery the man above party. 6. Lord Rosebery the Sphinx.

7. The Newmarket Lord Rosebery.

Of course this method of dealing with a political opponent is very easy, and it would be just as easy to discover twenty Mr. Gladstones as it is to find seven Lord Roseberys. After Lord Rosebery has been a little longer in office Mr. Strachey's seven will probably have increased to seventeen. Lord Rosebery has many sides to his character, but that surely cannot be regarded as a serious charge against him. To be a many-sided man used to be regarded, not so long ago, as one of the highest compliments which could be paid to any one. But Mr. Strachey professes to doubt whether there is any Lord Rosebery at all :

Thackeray, in his Georges, describes a Royal Prince who wore a wilderness of waistcoats one over the other. These in fact made up his Royal Highness. You stripped one off and there was another below; but if you persisted until the very end, you found that beneath the last waistcoat there was nothing. The Prince was an affair of waistcoats. Possibly Lord Rosebery is an affair of aliases and atmospheres, and no real Lord Rosebery exists. No doubt it is also possible that there is an irreducible element, an archetypal Lord Rosebery, though one not discoverable by the imperfect analytical apparatus at our command. In any case, I have no option but to treat Lord Rosebery as if he were nothing but a bundle of seven aliases, for that is all I can find in him.

That may be so, but the fault may be not that of Lord Rosebery, but that of his critic. I am more inclined to believe this to be the case, owing to the folly of such an obiter dictum as this:

Lord Rosebery's want of definite objects, whether real or assumed, is the source of his ineptitude as a politician-the reason why he has been so brilliant a failure as Prime Minister.

Mr. Strachey assumes that Lord Rosebery has been incpt, and that it is justifiable to write off as a failure a Prime Minister who has not been in office more than six months. This is like the jibe of a petulant child rather than the opinion of a serious politician. Ineptitude is surely the last word which should be applied to a politician whose elevation to the first position implied almost miraculous gifts in the management of men; and as for his failure as a Prime Minister, it would have been interesting had Mr. Strachey stated how any heaven-sent Minister could have achieved more of a success than Lord Rosebery did last session. When he took office, it was almost the universal opinion of his opponents that his Administration would go to pieces before the end of the session. So far from this being the case, his tact, his self-suppression, his capacity for the management of men, enabled him to surmount the dangers; and when the prorogation came, he could say that his Ministry was much more firmly seated in office than it had been six months before.

This is what Mr. Strachey calls a "brilliant failure." The brilliance is certainly more conspicuous than the failure. Another sample of Mr. Strachey's criticism is the statement that:

Lord Rosebery, indeed, should be described as a great political melodrama rather than as a statesman,

a remark which escapes criticism owing to the impossibility of understanding what it means. Mr. Strachey is severe upon what he calls the policy of excessive reserve:The man may have no enemies, but he has no hearty band of co-operators-men who feel the strengthening bond of a He has shrouded his purposes and stands

commor cause.

alone.

When the crisis of his fate comes Lord Rosebery will know what it is to have no true followers.

But surely Lord Rosebery was quite as reserved, and stood quite as much alone, before Mr. Gladstone retired as he does to-day. Yet, as Mr. Strachey's own narrative shows, the heartiness with which men of all shades co-operated to place him in office is almost beyond belief. If his followers stood him in such good stead at that crisis of his fate, why should they fail him at the next or the next after that? Oh, but says Mr. Strachey :

Could a man have shown a greater want of nerve and fibre than Lord Rosebery did here? No wonder that all heart and hope has gone out of the agitation against the Lords, and that the Leeds Conference fell as flat and dead as a piece of putty.

What would Mr. Strachey have Lord Rosebery do? He is not so inept as to run his head against a stone wall and to have commenced upon a revolutionary campaign against the Lords merely because they gave expression to the views of the predominant partner"; this would not have been "brilliant failure" but desperate suicide.

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PRINCE BISMARCK AT HOME.

MR. W. H. DAWSON, in the Young Man, describes a visit which he recently paid to Friedrichsruhe. How long ago it was is not stated, but he seems to have had a good time, although it is to be hoped that he took fuller notes of the Prince's conversation than those which he gives to the readers of the Young Man. All the members of the Prince's family were present. Bismarck sat at the table in a long black cloak, closed at the neck with a white tie fastened in a bow in the old style. The official stiffness of his bearing was unbent, and he seems to have been genial and communicative as he sat between his two great hounds. He was the autocrat of his own breakfast table, for every one present seemed anxious to listen and to learn. Mr. Dawson thinks that they were repaid, for his conversation is simply a succession of sententious utterances. Mr. Dawson had often wondered whether or not Bismarck had gone to school of Oliver Cromwell, especially as an orator, for Bismarck's speeches have a great similarity to the pointed, abrupt speeches of Cromwell. Bismarck, however, told him that he had never read any of Cromwell's speeches, or any of Carlyle's books except those relating to Prussia. Talking of English literature, Bismarck said that in his youth he had spent his fancy upon Byron and then had sobered down to Thomas Moore. The conversation lasted for several hours. After breakfast the family withdrew, and Bismarck and Mr. Dawson talked freely upon many subjects, from the position of England in Egypt to old age pension schemes:

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While expressing himself as dissatisfied with the principle of universal suffrage, upon which the German Imperial Parliament is elected, he allowed that the constitutional arrangements in vogue in the various German states are transitional. Doubtless," he said, "we shall have to go through the same stages which you in England have passed through-though with variations and modifications incidental to time and place. But in any case it will be a slow process, and no one can foresee the direction which developments will take.”

As Bismarck sat there, talking affably in his hospitable room, large pipe in hand, with the mild afternoon sunshine coming through the windows, he looked the very beau ideal of the veteran thinker and fighter, who, having done a life's hard work, has earned rest and is enjoying it.

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THE GERMAN EMPRESS AT HOME.

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THE PATRON SAINT OF THE THREE K's.

"My dear one may not be the loveliest woman in the world, but she certainly has the most beautiful arms," so wrote the present German Emperor to his mother when he was in the first bliss of courting his "briar as he called Augusta Victoria of Schleswig Holstein, whom he afterwards made his wife. The Kaiser was only twenty years of age when he wooed and won his wife with scant regard for the wishes of his grandfather. She is a woman-according to Mr. Arthur Warren, who is the author of the sketch in the Woman at Home, from which these quotations are made who entirely fulfils the Kaiser's ideal of what a woman should be. William II. has patience with the new woman or any of the emancipated of her sex.

AN IDEAL HAUSFRAU.

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He has declared more than once that he prefers a wife who can make jam to one who can discuss a constitution. The Empress fills that bill exactly; she can make jam, and cares nothing whatever about political constitutions. Another saying of the Emperor's is, that he could wish nothing better for the welfare of his nation than that the girls of Germany should follow the example of the Empress and devote their lives, as she does, to the cultivation of the three K's-Kirche, Kinder, and Küche.

A LOVE MATCH.

A very pretty story is told by Mr. Warren as to the first meeting of the Imperial pair. The Emperor, then a young man of twenty, was shooting at Prinkenau, her father's shooting-box. One day he lost his way in the park, and came upon a rustic rose-covered summerhouse, where a pretty girl of his own age was sleeping in a hammock. He did not disturb her, but went on his way, thinking of a little German poem known as the "Briar Rose." Later in the day he met the girl in the castle, and saying, "Here is my briar rose again," he introduced himself, and fell in love offhand. They were married on his twenty-second birthday. Since that time she has set herself to realise the German ideal of a devoted hausfrau.

THE MOTHER AT HOME.

She goes to bed at half-past ten, and rises at six. She begins the day by making her husband's coffee. They dine at one, and take a simple supper at eight. She is now the mother of six boys and one girl, and looks after them assiduously both at work and at play. The boys are passionately fond of pony racing. They ride ponies given them by the Sultan, and their mother officiates as judge, decorating the winner with a blue ribbon. The boys learned to fish when they were at Felixstowe, and pursue the sport of angling with great eagerness. They also like cycling, but their great delight at present is in a miniature fort which has been erected in the palace gardens for their amusement. They have many pets, the favourites, after the ponies, being small dogs, some of whom on one occasion entered the Emperor's study and tore to pieces the best part of a treaty, and rent a rescript which was waiting the Imperial signature.

AN ENFANT TERRIBLE.

The eldest boy, the Crown Prince, is a little bit of an enfant terrible:

One day the little Crown Prince was being laboriously catechised by the chaplain, who continually impressed upon him the doctrine that all men are sinners. "Well!"

exclaimed the boy impatiently, being wearied of these admonitions, "father may be a sinner, but I know mother isn't!" It was the same lad who said to the Emperor on the day after Bismarck's dismissal: "Father, they say that you will now tell the people what to do all by yourself. You'll enjoy that, won't you?" The conversation was not prolonged.

The little princes are dressed English fashion, and taught English games and sports. They speak English exceedingly well. The Empress is said to prefer English gowns to German ones. Although she wears very modest low-cut gowns, some priests recently made a commotion in Berlin by commanding the members of their congregations to remove from their dwellings all portraits of the Empress in low-necked dress, conduct on their part which greatly roused the ire of the Kaiser.

A DEVOTED HUSBAND.

Mr. Warren gives a pleasant picture of life in the royal palace:

When the Emperor is away from home he makes a point of sending daily messages and gifts to his wife and children. Whenever he attends a banquet he will select a plateful of bon-bons to send home to the boys, and a box of flowers for the Empress. If he goes on a yachting or a naval cruise he sends a messenger ashore in the launch at the first practical point each day, with a telegram or a letter for the home circle.

The Empress Augusta Victoria, being a model housewife, can mend and sew, and knit and darn, and bake and brew as well as any woman in the empire. Of course she has done very little of that sort of thing since her marriage, but before that these things were part of her systematic training. Often in her maiden days she made her gowns and trimmed her hats, and they say at Court that even now she takes the whole charge of the Emperor's linen, replaces his lost buttons, and mends his socks. They say that English socks are most in favour with the family, and the story has long been current that Prince Henry, the Emperor's brother, being reproved by his wife with an unpatriotic partiality for English-made hosiery, exclaimed: "Patriotism is all very well, my dear, but it must not be allowed to dye one's legs." The British haberdashers may glean from this tribute some consolation for depressed trade.

THE EMPRESS ON SERVANT GIRLS.

Every Monday night the Empress gathers round her a group of young ladies belonging to the Court families, and they do needlework for the poor. Her servants are devoted to her, and one of the few articulate utterances of Her Majesty which are on record relates to the servant girl question

-:

"To my mind, the unsatisfactory condition of our servants is due to the fact that their mistresses fail to take sufficient interest in their welfare. The chief complaints of domestic servants are that they have too many hours of work and too little personal freedom. But if we were to allow them more freedom, we might expose them to serious temptation. We should, therefore, do all in our power to make our servants' leisure hours as attractive as possible within doors, particularly by giving them nice, cheerful bedrooms, which, I fear, is often far from being the case. I sincerely hope that architects will bear this in mind when designing houses. Besides, we ought, in various parts of the town, to establish Homes for Servants where they can meet of an evening, and more particularly on Sunday afternoons, in order to discuss subjects of common interest, and, if possible, receive instruction in their domestic duties. But the chief question with regard to our female servants is their moral character, for who can exercise greater influence on our young children than servants who are daily in their company?"

Mr. Warren concludes his paper by telling us that every night an hour before going to bed the Empress enters up her diary. No one is allowed to read it except the Emperor, and it is always kept in a safe. That book ought to supply much information for future historians.

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