AS AMBASSADOR TO GERMANY- 1897-1903 155 



me one of the very few Germans who really understood 

 the United States. He had visited America more than 

 once, and had remained long enough to get in touch with 

 various leaders of American thought, and to penetrate be 

 low the mere surface of public affairs. Devoted as he was 

 to his own fatherland, he seemed to feel intuitively the 

 importance to both countries of accentuating permanent 

 points of agreement rather than transient points of differ 

 ence; hence it was that in his paper he steadily did us 

 justice, and in Parliament was sure to repel any unmer 

 ited assault upon our national character and policy. He 

 was clear and forcible, with, at times, a most effectively 

 caustic utterance against unreason. 



While the whole parliamentary body is suggestive to an 

 American, the Parliament building is especially sugges 

 tive to a New-Yorker. This great edifice at Berlin is con 

 siderably larger on the ground than is the State Capitol 

 at Albany. It is built of a very beautiful and durable 

 stone, and, in spite of sundry criticisms on the dome in the 

 center and the pavilions at the corners, is vastly superior, 

 as a whole, to the Albany building. It is enriched in all 

 parts, without and within, with sculpture recalling the 

 historical glories of all parts of the empire and calculated 

 to stir patriotic pride; it is beautified by paintings on a 

 great scale by eminent artists ; its interior fittings, in stone, 

 marble, steel, bronze, and oak, are as beautiful and per 

 fect as the art of the period has been able to make them ; 

 and the whole, despite minor architectural faults, is 

 worthy of the nation. The building was completed and in 

 use within ten years from the time of its beginning. The 

 construction of the State-house at Albany, a building not 

 so large, and containing to-day no work of art either in 

 painting or sculpture worthy of notice, has dragged along 

 during thirty years, and cost nearly four times as much as 

 the Berlin edifice ; the latter having demanded an outlay 

 of a trifle over five million dollars, and the former consid 

 erably over twenty millions. 



The German Parliament House, apart from slight de- 



