X INTRODUCTION 



spend the interval in Germany, the choice being 

 determined, I think, from the accident that a friend 

 in similar case was going there. I had hardly been 

 out of Scotland before ; a trip to Oxford for a scholar- 

 ship examination and a week-end in London were 

 my materials for knowledge of the great world. I 

 knew such history as was forced on reluctant boys 

 in a Scottish provincial school of which classics were 

 the ideal, but I had read for my own pleasure Claren- 

 don's History of the Great Rebellion, Carlyle's Frederick 

 the Great, and Justin MacCarthy's History of our Own 

 Times. Goethe I knew, and a few of the poets in 

 translation ; Schopenhauer had bored me, and Kant 

 had beaten me, but the shining, fragile net thrown 

 by Hegel over the universe had enchanted me, and 

 I was deep-read in Stirling's Secret of Hegel and in 

 Wallace's Logic and Prolegomena. All this to show 

 that for me Germany was not a Power among other 

 European Powers. Old philosophy and young life 

 were all I cared for. If I had any notion of patriotism 

 it was as of an accident of locality, like a Scotch 

 accent, to be worn bravely, but to be rubbed off as 

 quickly as might be. 



Berlin was the first great city in which I had lived, 

 and the days passed quickly. We read German in 

 the morning, dined at four as paying guests in a 

 German family, and supped in a beer-garden. 

 Berlin was then a dowdy provincial town, the capital 

 of a province rather than of an empire, and I recall 

 chiefly the gracious presence of trees, the trees of 

 Unter den Linden, the trees of the beer-gardens, the 

 trees round every corner, the forest coming up to 

 peer through the Brandenburger Gate, not yet 



