a soldier off duty.  Batteries of steel guns rolled by at any time, obedient to their bugles.  Squadrons of Uhlans in uniforms of green and red, the pennons fluttering from the ends of their lances, rode up to salute the king.  Each day at noon, through the roar of the streets, swelled the finest martial music; first a grand sound of trumpets, then a deafening roll from a score of brazen drums.  A heavy detachment of infantry wheeled out from some barracks, ranks of strong brown-haired young men stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, neat in every thread and accoutrement, with the German gift for music all, as the stride told with which they beat out upon the pavement the rhythm of the march, dropping sections at intervals to do the unbroken guard duty at the various posts.  Frequently whole army corps gathered to manoeuvre at the vast parade-ground by the Kreuzberg in the outskirts.  On Unter den Linden is a strong square building, erected, after the model of a Roman fortress, to be the quarters of the main guard.  The officers on duty at Berlin came here daily at noon to hear military music and for a half-hour’s talk.  They came always in full uniform, a collection of the most brilliant colours, hussars in red, blue, green, and black, the king’s body-guard in white with braid of yellow and silver, in helmets that flashed as if made from burnished gold, crested with an eagle with out-spread wings.  The men themselves were the handsomest one can see; figures of the finest symmetry and stature, trained by every athletic exercise, and the faces often so young and beautiful!  Counts and barons were there from Pomerania and old Brandenburg, where the Prussian spirit is most intense, and no nobility is nobler or prouder.  They were blue-eyed and fair-haired descendants perhaps of the chieftains that helped Herman overcome Varus, and whose names may be found five hundred years back among the Deutsch Ritters that conquered Northern Europe from heathendom, and thence all the way down to now, occurring in martial and princely connection.  It was the acme of martial splendour.

“But how do you bear it all?” you say to your Prussian friend, with whom you stand looking on at the base of Billow’s statue.  “Is not this enormous preparation for bloodshed something dreadful?  Then the tax on the country to support it all, the withdrawing of such a multitude from the employments of peace.”  Your friend, who had been a soldier himself, would answer:  “We bear it because we must.  It is the price of our existence, and we have got used to it; and, after all, with the hardship come great benefits.  Every able-bodied young Prussian must serve as a soldier, be he noble or low-born, rich or poor.  If he cannot read or write, he must learn.  He must be punctual, neat, temperate, and so gets valuable habits.  His body is trained to be strong and supple.  Shoemaker and banker’s son, count, tailor, and farmer march together, and community of feeling comes about.  The great traditions of Prussian history