Since the days of the canonized rulers of Hungary, Bohemia, Russia, and France, there have been no sovereigns of the Old World who have been so distinguished for their piety and for the fervor of their religious belief as the present Emperors of Germany and Austria, for they both take very seriously to heart their official and liturgical designation as the Anointed of the Lord.

It is no mere cant or hypocrisy in their case, but a profound belief in the teachings of the Scripture in which they truly believe is to be found the most powerful bulwark of the throne against the ever rising tide of democracy, and the fundamental basis of the entire monarchical system. Save for this, their manifestations of Christianity may be said to differ.

Francis-Joseph, now in the eventide of a singularly sad and stormy life, and of a reign that was inaugurated by a most sanguinary civil war, reminds one, in spite of the hereditary title of “Apostolic Majesty” conferred upon his forbears by the Papacy, of nothing so much as of the publican of the parable going up to the temple to pray, so deep and unaffected is the humility with which he approaches the altar or kneels at the priedieu in the chapel of his palace, or beside the tombs of those most near and dear to him.

Emperor William’s piety, while equally fervent, does not give one the same idea of self-abasement in the sight of the Almighty. It would be unfair to compare him to that other personage of the parable, namely, the Pharisee, for the latter was obviously lacking in sincerity; but at the same time, William in his moments of religious fervor, invariably recalls to mind that pretty story told by the late Alphonse Daudet, entitled the “Dauphin’s Deathbed,” in which the little boy-prince, on the eve of his departure for a happier world, responds to the exhortations of his chaplain with the exclamation: “But one thing consoles me, M. l’Abbe, and that is that up there in the Paradise of the stars I shall still be the Dauphin. I know that the good God is my cousin, and cannot fail to treat me according to my rank!”

Emperor Francis-Joseph will be prepared, in, a future existence, to take his place among the very humblest of his subjects, realizing that in the eyes of the Divinity all human creatures are equal, whereas Emperor William, on the other hand, in his heart of hearts, is certainly convinced that there will be a special place reserved for him above a place in keeping with his rank here on earth. True, he has never actually said this in so many words, but he has assuredly indicated this belief both by his utterances and his actions. He makes no attempt to conceal his conviction that personages of royal birth, and, in particular, reigning sovereigns, are fashioned by the Almighty with clay of a quality vastly superior to that employed for the composition of ordinary human creatures.

Notwithstanding all the Spartan rigor and severity to which he was subjected in his youth, for the purpose of dispelling exaggerated pride of birth and station, he feels assured that the rights and privileges which he enjoys above his fellow-men are of Divine origin. Although a constitutional sovereign, he is never tired of declaring that he is responsible for the performance of his duties as ruler of Germany to the Almighty alone, and that God alone is able to appreciate and to pass judgment upon his actions.

That Emperor William considers himself to be far nearer to the throne of God, and in an infinitely closer degree of communion with the Almighty than any ordinary being, is apparent from many of his public utterances. In fact, the amazing intimacy which he professes with his Maker, and the strange manner in which he implies that he and the Creator have interests in common, and joint understandings that are beyond the comprehension of ordinary mankind, would savor of downright blasphemy, were it not for the undeniable sincerity of his Teutonic majesty, who really regards himself as a Divine instrument. Indeed, there is no doubt that it is this belief which he honestly entertains that has served to keep his private life, since he ascended the throne, so thoroughly blameless. For there is no doubt that William does his utmost to live up to the teachings of his faith, to order every phase of his existence in conformity with the precepts of Christianity, and to avoid everything that could tend to impair his status as a vice-regent of Providence in the eyes of the devout.

Few are the incidents and events of his reign to which he does not impart a religious flavor. Thus it was only last summer, on the completion of a new fort at Metz, that he insisted on its inauguration taking place with much religious pomp and ceremony, and he himself christened the fortress in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, thus calling down the blessing of the Trinity on a stronghold, the guns of which are pointed against France, and the success of which can only consist in the destruction of innumerable French foes!

It is he, too, who has originated the practice of christening with religious ceremonies the great guns furnished by Krupp for use afloat and ashore against Germany’s enemies; and on the blades of the swords which he has presented to his elder sons, and to his favorite generals and officers, there is invariably inscribed on the one side, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” and on the other, averse from the Bible, surmounted by the imperial cypher.

William has even gone to the length of drawing up an extraordinary argument in defence of duelling based upon quotations taken from the Bible. The emperor takes as the text of his argument that verse of the writings of St. Paul, in which the Apostle declares that he would rather die than that anyone should rob him of his good name. William infers from this that the most eloquent and forcible of all the fathers of the Church was prepared to fight to the death for the honor of his name.

“Nowhere in the Bible,” adds his majesty, “is there any prohibition of duelling, not even in the New Testament, which, unlike the Old Testament, is not a book of law. Indeed, every attempt to use the New Testament as the basis for a new code of law has resulted in failure.”

With regard to the use made by the opponents of duelling of that law in the Old Testament which proclaims, “Thou shalt not kill,” the emperor draws attention to another portion of the Old Testament, wherein is mentioned that the sword shall not be carried in vain. Then invoking St. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, in which the Apostle exclaims: “Oh! ye foolish Galatians. This only would I learn of you. Received ye the spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of the faith? Are ye so foolish, having begun in the spirit, that ye wish to perfect yourselves in the flesh?”

The emperor declares that to twist the Word of God into a prohibition of duelling is nothing else than to perfect one’s self by the flesh that is to say to attribute an altogether material and common-place interpretation to what is meant spiritually. He adds that this is just as reprehensible in the eyes of the Almighty as the attempts by the Pharisees to adapt the Mosaic law to their own convenience, attempts which were so bitterly denounced by Christ.

Finally, the emperor generally concludes this extraordinary exposition of his views by the following exordium:

“He who after careful self-examination finds himself compelled to fight a duel, and whose conscience is clear of sentiments of hatred and of vengeance, may do so in the conviction that he is in no wise acting contrary to the Word of God, to the obligations of honor, or to the accepted customs of society. As in battle, so also in the duel, which has been forced upon him in one way or another, he may say to himself: If we live, we live in the Lord, and if we die, we die in the Lord, Amen.”

It must be borne in mind that Emperor William delivered himself of these utterances, not merely in his capacity of Emperor of Germany, King of Prussia, and commander-in-chief of the entire German army, but also in his self-assumed rôle of Summus-Episcopus, or spiritual as well as temporal chief of the Lutheran Church throughout the empire. Such a speech was delivered on the occasion of the endeavor made by certain members of the court circles to induce the Lutheran synod to institute disciplinary measures against the Potsdam pastor who had declined to accord the rites of Christian burial to Baron von Schrader, killed in a duel by Baron Kotze, the encounter being the outcome of the anonymous letter scandal already described. The synod, however, thoroughly endorsed the attitude of the Lutheran minister in question, and availed itself of the opportunity to pass a resolution to the effect that no person killed in a combat of this kind, or even dying from wounds received in a duel, could be regarded as having met his death as a Christian, and as such entitled to Christian burial.

Curiously enough this view was endorsed by the gallant old General Bronsart von Schellendorf, at that time minister of war, who, in expressing his approval of the resolution, called upon the emperor as commander-in-chief to take more radical steps for checking the phenomenal growth of the practice of duelling.

William, however, declined to comply with the request, dismissed the general shortly afterwards from office, and, on the contrary, proceeded to condemn both the action of the synod and of the Potsdam pastor who had declined to officiate at Baron Schrader’s obsequies, giving as the reason for his position in the matter the argument from which I have just given some extracts.

This was by no means the first time that William found himself in conflict with the provincial synods of the Lutheran Church in his dominions. On one occasion the consistory of the Lutheran Church of the Province of East Prussia, in which the imperial game preserves of Rominten are situated, passed a unanimous vote of censure upon the kaiser for having desecrated the Sabbath, and violated the secular laws with regard to its observance, by giving a big hunting-party on Sunday at Rominten. It was understood at the time that the consistory would have abstained from taking this extreme step had it not been for the comment excited throughout Germany by the somewhat malicious juxtaposition in most of the newspapers of two articles, one of which gave an elaborate description of the Sunday shooting-party of the emperor at Rominten, while in a parallel column was a proclamation just issued by the civil governor of the province of Westphalia, calling attention to the lax observance of the Sunday laws, and reiterating the pains and penalties that are prescribed by statute for those who shoot, sing, dance, play skittles or indulge in any recreation, whether in public or in private, that is inconsistent with repose on Sunday.

Of course, the vote of the consistory of Eastern Prussia was eventually quashed, and its members disciplined. But the publicity given to the affair served to call the attention of the people at large to the emperor’s disregard of the laws which he himself had caused to be enacted. Previous to his reign, Sunday had been looked upon as a day of recreation, revelry, and festivity throughout Germany.

In the days of the old emperor all the finest performances of the court theatres were reserved for Sunday, the principal state banquets took place on that day, as well as the imperial hunting parties and battues. Among the bourgeoisie, dances, balls and picnics were the order of the Lord’s Day, while the lower classes thronged the beer gardens and the beer halls that constitute so important a feature of German life. Regattas, parades, race-meetings, and popular entertainments and festivals of one kind or another, were, in fact, all reserved for Sunday.

All this was changed when the emperor came to the throne, and among the earliest laws enacted on his initiative, were those to which the Governor of Westphalia called attention in the proclamation just described, and which prohibited every form of revelry on the Sabbath. For instance, a few months after William’s accession he was invited by the Berlin Yacht Club to attend the annual regatta, which was to take place on the following Sunday morning, but he declined on the ground that it would prevent his going to church, and when the committee offered to postpone the races until the afternoon he declared that his principles would not permit him to regard Sunday as a day to be devoted to regattas, and analogous forms of popular entertainment. It must be explained that he was at the time strongly imbued with the evangelistic views which he had derived from his wife’s aunt, the American Countess of Waldersee, and from her protege, ex-Court Chaplain Stoecker, who combined with his strict and Puritanical views on the subject of the Sabbath, the most intense animosity towards the Jews, and a virulent hatred for the late Emperor Frederick.

This strange divine, so famous for many years as the leader of the so-called “Juedenhetz” movement, is one of the most displeasing figures in German public life, and Emperor William, who has long since turned his back upon him, and dismissed him from his court chaplaincy, must bitterly regret that he ever accorded him any favor or intimacy, and permitted himself to be influenced by his views. How is it possible to speak with any patience of a minister of the Church who, in a weekly paper, “The Ecclesiastical Review,” of December 10, 1887, actually had the audacity to write in an editorial article signed with his name the following cruel sentence? “Let us pray every day and every hour for our royal family, and in particular for the Old Man (the old kaiser) and for the Young Man (the present emperor) of this race of heroes. May God in His mercy grant that the terrible punishment which has overtaken the sick Prince Frederick (the late Emperor Frederick) bear fruit, and may it bring resignation to his mind, and peace to his conscience.”

At the moment when the article appeared, in which it was publicly intimated that the crown prince’s malady was a just and well-merited punishment for his sins, the imperial patient, so sorely afflicted, whose life had been so blameless, was at death’s door, a fact over which the court chaplain openly rejoiced, proclaiming that “a brilliant future is about to open up before us.”

Since William has cut himself adrift from Pastor Stoecker, the strictness of his views with regard to the observance of Sunday, has undergone a change. At any rate, he has modified them in so far as he himself is concerned, and while he is very regular in his attendance at church on Sunday morning, he no longer seems to consider it a sin to go out sailing, shooting or hunting on Sunday afternoons, or to attend theatrical performances or other kinds of entertainment in the evening. Inasmuch as the Sunday Observance Laws have not been repealed, one can only take it for granted that he considers himself and his consort as being above the law of the land, and in no wise bound thereby. Yet neither of their majesties has a legal right to any such immunity. According to the terms of the Prussian constitution the emperor and empress are just as amenable to the laws that figure in the statute book, and equally required to obey them as any ordinary German citizen. The only advantage that the emperor enjoys is that he possesses certain prerogatives in connection with the giving of evidence, and with the punishment of offences that are directed against his person and his honor.

In this obligation to submit to the laws of the land he differs from his grandmother Queen Victoria, and from his ally, Emperor Francis-Joseph, the tenure of whose thrones was originally based on what in olden times was known as the Divine right of kings. Thus, in England, as in Austria, and even in Spain and Portugal, the mediaeval theory still prevails that “the king can do no wrong!” Queen Victoria, for instance, is not below the law like Emperor William, but above it. No court has jurisdiction over her, and legally speaking there is no jurisdiction upon earth to try her in a civil or criminal way, much less to condemn her to punishment.

Of all the prerogatives enjoyed by Queen Victoria, the one, however, of which the kaiser is the most envious is her supremacy of the state Church of England. His ambition is to acquire the same position with regard to the whole Lutheran Church as she enjoys over the Anglican denomination. This dream, difficult of execution for reasons which I will proceed to explain, originated with his great-grandfather, King Frederick-William III., who first conceived the idea of a species of Lutheran Kaliphate, with its headquarters at Berlin, and its Mecca at Jerusalem.

His successor, King Frederick-William IV., took up the notion with all the enthusiasm natural to his mystic character, and kept one of his most trusted statesmen and confidants busily employed for years in endeavoring to federate all the Reformed Churches, with the exception of that of England, under the protectorate and supremacy of the Hohenzollerns. Emperor William goes still further. He aspires to become, not merely the temporal head of the Lutheran Church throughout the world, but likewise its spiritual chief, its pontiff, in fact, in the same manner that the czar is the chief ecclesiastical dignitary and the duly consecrated spiritual head of the national Church of Russia. William bases his claims to the dignity of a summus-episcopus on the fact that he is a titular bishop and archbishop, some nineteen times over, for his ancestors, when annexing the various petty states and sovereignties in bygone times, always made a point of getting the mitre with the crown, and the crozier with the purple and ermine. Many of the petty states of Germany in mediaeval days were ruled, not by temporal rulers, but by archbishops possessing the rank of sovereign and the title of prince.

The ecclesiastical dignity was, in fact, inherent, and part and parcel of the sovereignty. Consequently, when Emperor William’s ancestors acquired the one, they likewise secured possession of the other, and thus among his many ecclesiastical titles is that of Prince Archbishop of Silesia, and it is in his ecclesiastical capacity that he has conferred canonries and deaneries upon the military and civil members of his household.

Of course, the difficulty in the way of the emperor’s recognition as the supreme head of the Lutheran Church is the fact that the Lutheran faith is by no means confined to his dominions. Lutherans constitute the major part of the population in Wuertemberg, Saxony and Baden, as well as in all the other non-Prussian states of the Confederation, save Bavaria. Besides this, there are millions of Lutherans in Austro-Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia, who could not recognize his supremacy without disloyalty to their own rulers, all of whom, with the exception of the king of Saxony, the Czar and the Austrian emperor, are, like himself, members of the Reformed Church.

His celebrated pilgrimage to Jerusalem a year ago, the first pilgrimage of a German emperor to the Holy Land since the days of the Crusades, clearly showed the trend of the kaiser’s aspirations. He had invited all his fellow-Protestant monarchs to accompany him to Jerusalem, either in person or to send one of the princes of their houses as their representatives, and to ride in his train when he made his entry into the Holy City of Christendom. But not one of the sovereigns thus invited responded to the invitation tendered, and William had no German or foreign prince with him during this memorable pilgrimage.

It was the most extraordinary thing of the kind that has ever been seen, the strangeness of the affair being intensified by that same mixture of the mediaeval with the intensely modern and up-to-date ways which constitutes so peculiar a phase of William’s character. The emperor rode into Jerusalem by the same route as that followed by the Founder of Christianity on the first Palm Sunday, wearing a flowing white mantle, and mounted on a milk-white steed. He prayed at dusk with the members of his suite in the Garden of Gethsemane, piously kneeling on the ground, pronounced a religious discourse on the Mount of Olives, received the Holy Communion in the Coenaculum, that is to say, the house in which, according to tradition, Christ celebrated the Last Supper, nay, he even preached a full-fledged sermon on the occasion of the dedication of the Church of the Saviour at Jerusalem, and traveled by road from Jerusalem to Damascus! And yet, destroying all the romance and old-time glamor that might otherwise have surrounded this imperial crusade, was the fact that he was a “personally conducted” Cook’s tourist, that his meals were prepared by French chefs, that champagne was the ordinary beverage at his table, and that, while tramcars were used to go about Damascus, the railroad was selected by him to get back from Jerusalem to Jaffa!

Emperor William has a weakness for preaching, and it must be confessed that he does it well. He possesses a very ready gift of speech, and his fervent religious belief seems to serve as a species of inspiration to his eloquence. Thus on board the Hohenzollern, during his annual yachting cruise along the coast of Norway, he invariably conducts divine service on Sunday morning, taking his place in front of an altar erected on deck, upon which the German war-flag is spread, in lieu of an altar-cloth. Luther’s hymns, accompanied by the trombones of the band, are sung. Then the emperor reads the epistle and the gospel with great feeling, and recites the liturgical prayers with considerable fervor. Next he preaches a sermon, which, as a rule, is of his own composition, and extemporary, though occasionally he will read the sermon of some well-known pulpit orator.

It has been observed that he is always much more indulgent in cases of inattention on the part of the congregation when he reads a sermon than when he preaches one of his own. Any sailor who has the misfortune to fall asleep during the discourse is disciplined, and his name figures, of course, on the punishment roll on the following morning, when the day’s report is presented to the emperor as the commanding officer of the ship. If the sermon has been one of his majesty’s own composition, as a rule he allows the punishment to stand. But if the discourse happens to have been of less illustrious origin, he will almost invariably order the penalty to be remitted, adding, with a smile of indulgence, that “the sermon was rather dreary, wasn’t it?”

At Berlin and at Potsdam the kaiser keeps his court chaplains under very strict discipline, and they expose themselves to a stern reprimand if they presume to extend their pulpit orations beyond the term of ten or, at the most, fifteen minutes. Emperor William very justly takes the ground that if they are sufficiently concise in their remarks, they can say all that they have to say within that space of time, and if their discourse is prolonged beyond the stipulated period it loses its force and its power of retaining the interest and the attention of the congregation.

The emperor does not hesitate to call the divines to account when they enunciate doctrines of which he does not approve, and whereas in former reigns a court chaplaincy was regarded in the light of an office for life, it is now considered as a merely temporary appointment, so frequent are the dismissals.

At the Dome at Berlin, and at the Garrison Church at Potsdam, the emperor follows the service with an air of mingled devotion and authority that is rather amusing. While most devout and fervent in his prayers, and joining in the hymns in such a manner that his ringing baritone voice is easily discernible above the rest, his eyes wander in a stern fashion around the church, quick to note any member of the congregation who is not behaving with proper decorum and reverence. He conveys the impression that he considers it to be his duty to keep the congregation in proper order, and if he finds that either he, or the imperial party is being stared at with any degree of persistency or curiosity, he at once sends off one of his officers to sharply warn the offenders. Indeed, he has more than once caused it to be made known through official communications to the press that he thoroughly disapproves of being stared at when attending church, and engaged in his devotions.

Like William, Francis-Joseph has made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, but it was without any fuss or pomp. In fact, there are few persons, save those connected with the Court of Austria, who are aware that Austria’s ruler ever visited the Holy Land. He went there in 1869, traveling in the strictest incognito, and attended only by two of his gentlemen-in-waiting and two servants, after the inauguration of the Suez Canal, at which he had been present. There was no solemn entry on horseback into the city that witnessed the foundation of Christianity, and while he prayed at the Holy Places like Emperor William, he did so quietly and unobtrusively, without attracting any attention. His pilgrimage was characterized by the same unaffected humility that distinguishes his religion from that of his brother monarch at Berlin.

William’s faith still retains the enthusiasm and, if I may use the word, the exuberance of youth, whereas that of Francis-Joseph, though even more fervent, is chastened, humbled and mellowed by the experience of many a cruel sorrow and many a hard blow. To some of these he would have succumbed had it not been for his religious belief. There have been at least three different occasions during his fifty years’ reign when he would have abandoned his throne, and abdicated his crown had it not been pointed out to him by his spiritual adviser that it was his duty his religious duty to remain at his post, and to bear with bravery the trials with which he was overwhelmed.

The first of these occasions was at the close of the disastrous wars of 1866, when the march of the Prussians on Vienna was only stayed within a few hours’ distance of the capital by the ignominious peace of Nicolsburg. The second time was when he lost his only son by the frightful tragedy of Mayerling, and he saw his boy’s body refused even Christian rites of burial by the church, until he had been able to convince the kindly old pontiff at Rome that the poor lad’s mind was unbalanced at the time that he took his life. The third occasion was when his lovely consort, to whom, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, he was so deeply devoted, was taken from him by the hand of an assassin in a foreign land, and under peculiarly heartrending circumstances.

Moreover, he saw the body of his brother Maximilian brought home from the Mexican plain of Queretaro, where he had been shot down by a file of soldiers as if a vulgar criminal; he stood by the deathbed of a favorite niece, burnt to death before his eyes in the palace of Schoenbrunn, when her dress had caught fire from a lighted cigarette which she was endeavoring to conceal from him and from her father; he followed to the grave another favorite of his, a nephew, accidentally killed while out shooting. Indeed, there is no end to the tragedies which have gone to sadden the life of this now septuagenarian monarch, and while on ordinary occasions, especially when engaged in military inspections or in great court functions, he appears to retain the elasticity, vigor and temperament of a man still in his prime, yet when in church or chapel, attending divine service, and so wrapped up in his devotions that he becomes oblivious to his surroundings, the restraint which he puts upon his feelings at other times disappears, and one is able to realize the extent of his sufferings, and how supreme is the consolation that he finds in his religion.

Vienna is the only capital in the world where one can see a full-fledged monarch kneeling bareheaded in the streets, and offering up prayers in the most fervent manner, the spectacle exciting not ridicule, but sentiments of profound reverence and sympathy on the part of the people Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans from Herzegovina and Bosnia who throng the thoroughfares of the beautiful city on the Danube. The sight is witnessed each year, on the occasion of the Corpus Christi procession. This glorious procession starts out from the Cathedral of St. Stephen at an early hour in the morning, and the entire route through the various streets which it traverses Is kid with boards, over which grass is strewn. At various points along the way there are altars, or so-called reposoirs, where the Sacred Host is placed for a few moments, the emperor and the great personages with him kneeling piously on the ground and offering up prayers.

The procession is opened by choristers, then come priests and monks with hands crossed upon their breasts, next the rectors of the various metropolitan parishes, displaying their distinctive banners like the knights of old. The municipal authorities, the officers of the imperial household, the Knights Grand Cross of the various orders, the cabinet ministers, and the principal dignitaries of the army, of the navy, and of the crown. Finally, comes a magnificent canopy borne by generals, under which walks the tall and stately Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, carrying the Host, to which the troops lining the route bend the knee while presenting arms, the civilians behind them baring their heads, while the women cross themselves. Immediately behind the Host, bareheaded and alone, with a lighted candle in his hand, and wearing the full uniform of an Austrian field marshal, a snow-white cloth tunic with scarlet and gold facings, strides the aged emperor, still erect as a dart, with all the slender, shapely elegance of a man of thirty, in spite of his three-score years and ten. He is followed by the archdukes, conspicuous among them the gigantic Archduke Eugene, grand master of the Teutonic Order, in the semi-ecclesiastical habits of his rank, while the procession is brought to a close by escorts of the superbly arrayed Archer and Hungarian Body Guards.

The spectacle is impressive, and the silence along the route, save for the chanting of the choristers, and the recitation of prayers in an undertone by the clergy, adds to the solemnity of the occasion. In days gone by, the murdered empress used to figure in the procession in full court dress and followed by her ladies, but now women take no part therein.

Another remarkable religious ceremony in which the emperor plays the leading part, and which is only to be witnessed nowadays at the Court of Vienna, is the washing of the feet of twelve aged men on the Thursday of Holy Week, in memory of the washing of the feet of the twelve apostles on the first Holy Thursday by the Founder of Christianity. The ceremony takes place at the imperial palace, in the presence of the entire court. The twelve old men, each carefully dressed for the occasion, who have been brought from their homes to the palace in imperial carriages, are seated in a row, and, after a brief religious service celebrated by the cardinal archbishop, the emperor kneels in front of each, and washes his feet in a golden basin filled with rose water, the ewer being carried by the heir to the throne, while the prelate who holds the office of court chaplain hands to his majesty the gold-embroidered towel with which the feet are dried after having been washed. When the emperor has reached the end of the line there are more prayers, and the blessing; then a banquet is served to the old men, at which they are waited on in person by the emperor, the various dishes being handed to him by the archdukes and princes of the blood. The old people are finally sent home, each with a purse containing gold pieces, and a large hamper, wherein are placed several bottles of fine wine and the remains of the various dishes and gastronomical masterpieces which have figured on the table during the banquet. As a rule, the old men dispose of these for considerable sums of money to wealthy Viennese, who are only too delighted to purchase them, and thus to be able to boast of having partaken of the emperor’s hospitality!

Brought up by parents who axe renowned for their religious bigotry, in the absolutist school of the great Prince Metternich, Emperor Francis-Joseph has experienced the utmost difficulty in reconciling his religions belief with his obligations as a constitutional monarch, for he has been repeatedly obliged to give his sanction as a sovereign to reforms enacted by the legislature of Austria, and particularly of Hungary, which were strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, fiercely denounced by the clergy, and condemned by the Vatican. That he should in matters such as these have sacrificed his religious prejudices and conscientious scruples to what he conceived to be his duty as a constitutional monarch, speaks volumes for his strength of character, and for his uprightness as a ruler. There is only one thing that he has declined to do, in spite of all the pressure brought to bear upon him by his ministers and by his allies: he has absolutely declined to visit Rome so long as the Pope remains deprived of his temporal sovereignty. Ordinarily the most chivalrous and courteous of monarchs, and extremely punctilious in the fulfilment of all the obligations imposed by etiquette, he has up to the present moment refrained from returning the visit paid to his court at Vienna by King Humbert and Queen Marguerite nearly twenty years ago. Leo XIII., like his predecessor, has intimated that he would regard any visit paid to the King of Italy in the former Papal Palace of the Quirinal at Rome, by a Catholic sovereign, as a cruel affront to the occupant of the chair of St. Peter. The only Catholic ruler who has visited King Humbert at the Quirinal, in spite of this papal protest, is Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who was at the time subject to the ban of the church, in consequence of the conversion of his little son from Catholicism to the Greek orthodox rite, in order to insure his own (Ferdinand’s) recognition by Russia as ruler of Bulgaria. But Francis-Joseph has never consented to set his foot in Rome, although it has been pointed out to him that the existence of the triple alliance was imperilled by this slight placed upon King Humbert and Queen Marguerite. He did not hesitate to declare that he would rather forego the alliance than affront the Pope by visiting Rome under the present circumstances.

One little scene, in conclusion, which I witnessed at Vienna, has always remained impressed upon my mind, illustrating as it does the democracy of the Catholic Church, if I may use that expression, and demonstrating the good old emperor’s belief, so different from that of Emperor William, that in the eyes of the Almighty all men are equal.

It transpired at the funeral of Cardinal Gangelbauer, the popular and universally venerated Archbishop of Vienna. The obsequies took place in the ancient Cathedral of St. Stephen. Military and ecclesiastical pomp were combined with the magnificent ceremonial of the Austrian court for the purpose of rendering the last honors to the dead prelate. The entire metropolitan garrison was under arms, and lined the streets through which the funeral procession passed. The bells of all the churches in the metropolis were tolling throughout the ceremony, and added to the solemnity of the occasion. The stately Papal Nuncio performed the funeral service in the most impressive manner, and when he stood on the step of the high altar, and raised his hands aloft to pronounce the absolution, the whole of the vast assemblage bowed down, the wintry sunlight streaming through the rich stained glass windows, falling alike upon the reverently bent head of the monarch, and those of the peasant mourners who stood by his side at the head of the bier. For the dead cardinal was the son of an old farmer, and his brothers, his sisters, and his nephews, all of them plain, humble peasants of Upper Austria, were kneeling there in their peasant garb with the emperor in their midst, and surrounded by the glittering uniforms of the archdukes, the princes, the generals, cabinet ministers and ambassadors assembled around the coffin. There was no undue exaltation or timidity on the part of the peasants, no undue condescension or contempt on the part either of emperor or dignitaries for the lowly rank of their fellow mourners. All seemed thoroughly to realize that they were equal in the face of death, and in the presence of their Creator.

It is only in a metaphorical sense that William can be described as an Anointed of the Lord. For whereas Francis-Joseph was both anointed and crowned as King of Hungary in 1867, Emperor William has never been the object of either of these ceremonies. The fact of the matter is that there is a good deal of difference of opinion concerning the dignity of a German emperor; for while William claims that it is identical with the status of the emperors of Austria and Russia, the non-Prussian states of Germany insist that it is merely titular, inasmuch as he has no control or jurisdiction in the various federal states which constitute the empire, such as Bavaria, Saxony and Wuertemberg, each of which has an independent king in nowise subject, but merely allied to the Prussian monarch.

It is only in time of war, and for the sake of successful co-operation that the supreme command of the united German military forces is by special agreement vested in the hands of the German emperor a tribute to the superiority and pre-eminence of the Prussian military reorganizations. It is true that Prussia has since then, by degrees, endeavored to encroach upon the independence of the federal states. But this is strongly resented, to-day more than ever, and William is constantly being reminded by the non-Prussian press, by the non-Prussian governments, and even by the non-Prussian reigning dynasties that they are not vassals, but allies of Prussia.

The German emperor has no crown as such, nor any civil list, and with the solitary exception of his eldest son, all the members of his family figure merely as royal Prussian, not imperial German princes. Thus, for instance, Prince Henry, the brother of the emperor, is addressed not as imperial highness, but only as royal highness.

Had William attempted to have himself crowned as German emperor, it would merely have had the effect of attracting public attention to the difference existing between his own status as emperor and that of his fellow-sovereigns of Austria and Russia, besides which it would have raised all sorts of troublesome questions with the non-Prussian courts, and intensified their sensibilities and prejudices. If, on the other hand, he had caused himself to be crowned king of Prussia in the ancient city of Koenigsberg, where all Prussian kings have been crowned, the ceremony would have had the effect of impressing upon the world at large the fact that the only real crown to which William can lay claim, and which he is entitled to wear, is the crown of the kings of Prussia.

That is why he has never been either crowned or anointed, differing in this respect from Francis-Joseph, Emperor Nicholas and Queen Victoria, all of whom have experienced both ceremonies, which by the masses of Europe, especially among the uneducated and ignorant, are considered indispensable to endow the majesty of the sovereign with a sacred character. The Hungarians did not consider Francis-Joseph as entitled to their allegiance and loyalty until he had been crowned at Pesth with the crown of St. Stephen, and anointed with the sacred oil, and there is no doubt that the Bohemians would be transformed from the most turbulent, malcontent, and troublesome of his subjects into his most devoted lièges, were he to comply with their demands, and have himself anointed and crowned as King of Bohemia, with the crown of Saint Wenceslaus.

Nor was Emperor Nicholas of Russia considered a full-fledged Czar of Russia, nor his consort a czarina, until he had been anointed and crowned at Moscow, nearly two years after his accession to the throne. In fact, until the time of his coronation, his mother, the dowager empress, enjoyed precedence of his wife on all official occasions, on the ground that she was the widow of a crowned czar, and had herself been solemnly crowned as the consort of Alexander III., by her imperial husband, whereas her daughter-in-law, the younger empress, had enjoyed no such advantage up to that time.

Only those who know William well can realize how deeply he feels this difference which exists between himself and the rulers of more ancient dynasties, or how glad he would be to find some means of being crowned and anointed, not as a mere titular German emperor, but as Emperor of Germany. It is difficult to see how this ambition of his could be fulfilled so long as the Austrian empire remains in existence. The dignity of Emperor of Germany belonged for centuries to the house of Hapsburg, in relation to the head of which the chief of the Hohenzollern family ranked merely as a cup-bearer, being compelled to stand behind the chair of the Hapsburg monarch at all state banquets, and to keep his cup supplied with wine. The whole of the ancient insignia of the former Emperors of Germany, including the sceptre, the orb, and the sword of state, are in the possession of Emperor Francis-Joseph at Vienna, and are comprised in the imperial Austrian regalia. Indeed, at the time when King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor at the palace of Versailles, in 1871, the Emperor of Austria wrote to the then widowed Queen Marie of Bavaria, that he protested, “from the very bottom of his heart, against the dignity and crown of his father being vested in persons without a shadow of right thereto, and that he had placed his rights in the hands of Providence.” Although he entertains the friendliest sentiments towards Emperor William, there is no reason to believe that either he or the members of his house have modified their resentment in connection with this quasi-usurpation of the dignity of Emperor of Germany by the Prussian family of Hohenzollern.