signs of distinction on the dresses of lackeys.  Even that beautiful, colored livery which indicates with us military rank is, in England, anything but a sign of honor, and, as an actor after a play hastens to wash off the rouge, so an English officer hastens, when the hours of active duty are over, to strip off his red coat and again appear like a gentleman, in the plain garb of a gentleman.  Only at the theatre of St. James are those decorations and costumes, which were raked from the off-scourings of the Middle Ages, of any avail.  There we may see the ribbons of orders of nobility; there the stars glitter, silk knee-breeches and satin trains rustle, golden spurs and old-fashioned French styles of expression clatter; there the knight struts and the lady spreads herself.  But what does a free Englishman care for the Court comedy of St. James, so long as it does not trouble him, and so long as no one interferes when he plays comedy in like manner in his own house, making his lackeys kneel before him, or plays with the garter of a pretty cook-maid? ’Honi soit qui mal y pense!’

“As for the Germans, they need neither freedom nor equality.  They are a speculative race, ideologists, prophets, and sages, dreamers who live only in the past and in the future, and who have no present.  Englishmen and Frenchmen have a present; with them every day has its field of action, its struggle against enemies, its history.  The German has nothing for which to battle, and when he began to realize that there might be things worth striving for, his philosophizing wiseacres taught him to doubt the existence of such things.  It cannot be denied that the Germans love liberty, but it is in a different manner from other people.  The Englishman loves liberty as his lawful wife, and, even if he does not treat her with remarkable tenderness, he is still ready in case of need to defend her like a man, and woe to the red-coated rascal who forces his way to her bedroom—­let him do so as a gallant or as a catchpoll.  The Frenchman loves liberty as his bride.  He burns for her; he is a flame; he casts himself at her feet with the most extravagant protestations; he will fight for her to the death; he commits for her sake a thousand follies.  The German loves liberty as though she were his old grandmother.”

Men are strange beings!  We grumble in our Fatherland; every stupid thing, every contrary trifle, vexes us there; like boys, we are always longing to rush forth into the wide world, and, when we finally find ourselves there, we find it too wide, and often yearn in secret for the narrow stupidities and contrarieties of home.  Yes, we would fain be again in the old chamber, sitting behind the familiar stove, making for ourselves, as it were, a “cubby-house” near it, and, nestling there, read the German General Advertiser.  So it was with me in my journey to England.  Scarcely had I lost sight of the German shore ere there awoke in me a curious after-love for the German nightcaps