when out deer or pheasant shooting. These gentlemen belong to what is called the cortège, and take their places immediately behind the throne and close to it on either side. After them come the King and the royal princes, his brothers and cousins. His Majesty enters uncovered, but, after mounting the raised dais and bowing to the assembly, he looks round him with a royal air, puts on his cocked hat, and, taking it off again, seats himself on the throne with his relations beside him, at the same time commanding the members of both Chambers to be seated.
The King, still seated, then proceeded to read his speech, when at the same moment all the members rose, though they had just before been told to be seated. In reality they ought not to have risen; but deference to royalty is so part and parcel of a German’s nature that, although not required or expected to get up, they unanimously stood while the sovereign read his address. At its conclusion there was a pause; when the President of the first Chamber proposed that they should all give three cheers for his Majesty the King of Bavaria; and three cheers were accordingly given, the President directing the operation.
It was a cold affair, and, in spite of uniforms and stars and decorations, not at all imposing. There was nothing whatever to remind you of the council-chamber of a nation where important discussions are carried on, and issues determined that decide the weal or woe of thousands. The room itself was indeed a magnificent reception-room. It was a cheerful festal place, calling up visions of levees and fêtes and fair women. In no way was it connected in your mind with earnest political endeavours; there was not that association of ideas which alone invests a spot with serious interest.
It is, after all, a strange notion to have an inaugurating ceremony otherwhere than at the place connected with such ceremony. It would have been rather absurd, for example, if the opening of the Great Exhibition had taken place at Windsor Castle instead of at Brompton. And to an Englishman it would be an incomprehensible act if the Queen were to summon the council of the nation to Buckingham Palace, there to read her speech and announce to them that Parliament was now opened. Such a thing would be so foreign to English feeling, that we doubt very much if the Queen herself would consent to do it.
The fact that the Sovereign goes down to the House has doubtless its meaning; and it is just this very meaning which continental potentates are desirous to ignore.
In our judgment on such questions, however, we must take into account the different feeling of the different people on these and similar matters. To the forms in which the Englishman would see the representation of a right jealously to be guarded and carefully maintained, the Bavarian perhaps would be indifferent. Indeed in most cases the German is ready to bow to any act of those in authority. As an instance of this indifference we may add that, on remarking to several Munich citizens on the anomaly of opening the Chambers elsewhere than in the Chamber itself, the answer invariably was: “Yes, it is true: but then, if the throne-room were not made use of for that purpose and for prorogations, the King would never be able to make use of it at all.” And that consideration satisfied every one. That the ceremony proved an occasion for throwing open the hall was ample reason for the Chamber to dispense with a privilege, which definitively stamped the character of the popular assembly, and marked the position in which it stood to the crown.
But rulers act otherwise. For them no acquisition, real or only apparent, is too insignificant to be retained. Like the present King of Prussia, who, at the coronation, took the crown “from the table of the Lord,” and crowned himself, they all well know the value of a “mere form.” They are aware of its influence, and know that it may possibly, at a well-chosen moment, serve as a point of departure for new conquests; and that thus eventually, by slow degrees, the lost autocratic power may be recovered.
A “FIRST-CLASS” STORY; OR, THE PERILS OF TRAVELLING ALONE.
CHAPTER I. IN WHICH THE TRAVELLER CONSULTS HER FRIENDS.
The table d’hôte at the “Halbe Mond” (Half Moon) Hotel in the little town of Eisenach, which, though no bigger than Hampstead, is one of the principal “Residenz” cities belonging to the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and famous for the neighbouring Castle of the Wartburg, where Martin Luther wrote his translation of the Bible, while secreted within its walls under the disguise of “Younker George,”—the table d’hôte, we say, at the best hotel of this tiny Saxon capital is an agreeable scene at all times of the year. It is agreeable enough in the season when visitors swarm thither like swallows from other climes; some to gape at the frescoes on the walls of the “Singers’ Hall” at the Wartburg, while others make a special trip to the town on purpose to feast their eyes with the sight of the quaint little “Luther chamber” in the old cottage-like “Knight’s-house” adjoining the castle. Others, again, are there, not to see merely the artificial “lions” of the place, but to enjoy the natural beauty of the exquisite mountain and forest scenery in the neighbourhood. Indeed all manner of tourist folk are here to be met with in the tour-making season, and a more motley cosmopolitan group can hardly be seen even at the great fair of Leipzig. There are Jews and Gentiles, Poles, Russians, dark Italians, and fair-haired Swedes, dandy Frenchmen and burly Netherlanders, long-haired artists on a sketching tour, and bright-coloured “muffin-capped” students making a walking “partie” through the Thuringian forest, sedate untidy-looking professors, and expensively “got-up” Berlin tailors; be-ringed, be-chained, and be-studded commercial travellers, who have left their little square parcel of samples in the lobby; and stolid, untalkative Englishmen, costumed for the tour in suits of raspberry-cream-coloured tweed, and who saunter into the dining-hall with their opera-glass slung in a patent leather pouch at their side.
