MY RECOLLECTIONS OF WILLIAM 11-1879-1903 223 



ster. The whole narrative was so managed that the young 

 prince who had just come to the German throne seemed 

 the exact counterpart of the youthful Roman monarch 

 down to the cruel stage of his career; that was left to 

 anticipation. The parallels and resemblances between the 

 two were arranged with consummate skill, and whenever 

 there was a passage which seemed to present an exact 

 chronicle of some well-known saying or doing of the mod 

 ern ruler there would follow an asterisk with a reference 

 to a passage in Tacitus or Suetonius or Dion Cassius or 

 other eminent authority exactly warranting the statement. 

 This piece of historical jugglery ran speedily through 

 thirty editions, while from all parts of Germany came ref 

 utations and counter-refutations by scores, all tending to 

 increase its notoriety. Making a short tour through 

 Germany at that period, and stopping in a bookseller s 

 shop at Munich to get a copy of this treatise, I was 

 shown a pile of pamphlets which it had called out, 

 at least a foot high. Comically enough, its author could 

 not be held responsible for it, since the name of the 

 young Emperor William was never mentioned; all it 

 claimed to give or did give was the life of Caligula, 

 and certainly there was no crime in writing a condem 

 natory history of him or any other imperial miscreant 

 who died nearly two thousand years ago. In the Ameri 

 can colleges and universities this tractate doubtless made 

 good friends of Germany uneasy, and it even shocked 

 some excellent men who knew much of Eoman history 

 and little of mankind; but gradually common sense re 

 sumed its sway. As men began to think they began to 

 realize that the modern German Empire resembles in no 

 particular that debased and corrupt mass with which the 

 imperial Roman wretches had to do, and that the new 

 German sovereign, in all his characteristics and tenden 

 cies is radically a different being from any one of the crazy 

 beasts of prey who held the imperial power during the de 

 cline of Rome. 



Sundry epigrams had also come over to us; among 



