226 IN THE DIPLOMATIC SERVICE-XIX 



of the imperial chapel at the great anniversaries there 

 celebrated is nowhere excelled. For operatic music of the 

 usual sort he seemed to care little. If a gala opera was to 

 be given, the chances were that he would order the per 

 formance of some piece of more historical than musical 

 interest. Hence, doubtless, it was that during my whole 

 stay the opera at Dresden surpassed decidedly that at 

 Berlin, while in the higher realms of music Berlin re 

 mained unequaled. 



Dramatic art is another field in which he takes an en 

 lightened interest : he has great reason for doing so, both 

 as a statesman and as a man. 



As a result of observation and reflection during a long 

 life which has touched public men and measures in wide 

 variety, I would desire for my country three things above 

 all others, to supplement our existing American civiliza 

 tion: from Great Britain her administration of criminal 

 justice ; from Germany her theater ; and from any Euro 

 pean country, save Eussia, Spain, and Turkey, its gov 

 ernment of cities. 



As to the second of these desired contributions, ten 

 years in Germany at various periods during an epoch 

 covering now nearly half a century have convinced me that 

 her theater, next after her religious inheritance, gives the 

 best stimulus and sustenance to the better aspirations of 

 her people. Through it, and above all by Schiller, the 

 Kantian ethics have been brought into the thinking of 

 the average man and woman; and not only Schiller, but 

 Lessing, Goethe, Gutzkow, and a long line of others have 

 given an atmosphere in which ennobling ideals bloom for 

 the German youth, during season after season, as if in 

 the regular course of nature. The dramatic presentation, 

 even in the smallest towns, is, as a rule, good ; the theater 

 and its surroundings are, in the main, free from the abuses 

 and miseries of the stage in English-speaking lands, and, 

 above all, from that all-pervading lubricity and porno 

 graphic stench which have made the French theater of the 

 last half of the nineteenth century a main cause in the 



