The court of the German Emperor in this connexion need not fear comparison with any court described in history.  True, courts all over the world have improved wonderfully of recent years.  Their monarchs are more enlightened, they are frequented by a very different type of man and woman from the courts of former times, their morale and working are more closely scrutinized and more generally subjected to criticism, and they are occupied with a more public and less selfish order of considerations.  The Court of the Emperor is, so far as can be known to a lynx-eyed and not always charitably thinking public, singularly free from the vices and failings the atmosphere of former courts was wont to foster.  There is at all times, no doubt, the competition of politicians for influence and power acting and reacting on the Court and its frequenters, but of scandal at the Court of Berlin there has been none that could be fairly said to involve the Emperor or his family.  Dame Gossip, of course, busied herself with the Emperor in his youth, but whatever truth she then uttered—­and it is probably extremely little—­on this head, there is no question that from the day he mounted the throne his Court and that of the Empress has been a model for all institutions of the kind.

The life of courts, the personages who play leading parts in them, their wealth and luxury, and the currents of social, amorous, and political intrigue which are supposed to course through them have in all countries and in all ages strongly appealed to writers, fanciful and serious.  Perhaps one-third of the prose and poetic literature of every country deals, directly or indirectly, with the subject, and determines in no small degree the character of its rising generations.  The great architects of romance, depicting for us life in high places, and often nobly idealizing it, or working the facts of history into the web of their imaginings and thus pleasantly combining fact with fiction, aim at elevating, not at debasing, the mind of the reader.  A second valuable source of information on the topic are the memoirs of those who have set down their observations and recorded experiences made in the courts to which they had access.  Among this class, however, are to be found unscrupulous as well as conscientious authors, the former obviously cherishing some personal grievance or as obviously actuated by malice, while the latter are usually moved by an honest desire to tell the world things that are important for it to know, and at the same time, it is not ill-natured to suspect, enhance their own reputation with their contemporaries or with posterity.  The multitudinous tribe of anecdote inventors and retailers must also be taken into account.  In our own day there is still another source of information, which, agreeably or odiously according to the temperament of the reader, keeps us in touch with courts and what goes on there—­the periodical press; while afar off in the future one can imagine the historian bent over his desk, surrounded by books and knee-deep in newspapers, selecting and weighing events, studying characters, developing personalities, and passing what he hopes may be a final judgment on the court and period he is considering.