210 PROP. p. P. ROGET, ON FREDERTC GODET^ SWISS DIYINE, 



We shall not say that the young prince never kicked over 

 the traces. He had his bad days, fits of temper and unruly 

 outbursts. But by nature he was full of consideration for 

 others, tender-hearted, reposing easily his confidence in those 

 about him. He could be slow and dreamy over his work, even 

 absent-minded, his well-developed gift of imagination enticing 

 him away from his desk to the realms of fancy. The tutor 

 would then say: "Where are you, prince?" and the prince 

 would answer : " At Weimar," or wherever his memory, 

 reminiscent of brilliant scenes of pleasure or of solemn 

 functions of State, had dragged his mind away from his 

 lesson. 



He had a natural leaning to piety, was of a practical dis- 

 position, with no particular partiality to learning, his judgmeut 

 was calm and sound, and he showed much self-possession. A 

 lively imagination and a cool reasoning power, much gentleness 

 overlaying, as it were, much latent energy, an unswerving sense 

 of duty, would complete a description of his character as a boy. 



When he grew into a man he developed a character of great 

 energy in the constant will to do right, which dominated his 

 career from childhood to his last and supreme hour. 



" He served God," says Godet, " under the form of the good 

 which could be done on every occasion." 



The religion of the Crown Prince, like that of Godet, was 

 the religion of moral obligation in the sight of God. This 

 afiinity between their natures explains the friendship of forty- 

 four years' duration which followed upon the termination of 

 Godot's tutorship at the Court. 



Godet confesses that he twice felt called upon to apply the 

 rod to his pupil, driven to that extremity by one of those 

 instances of rebellion when a young tutor is at a loss to know 

 the right thing to do. As the use of violence was expressly 

 forbidden him by the father, Godet felt he must at once report 

 himself, with all particulars. He was granted a bill of 

 indemnity. Godet admits that he misread the cause of the 

 child's rebellion, which was not directed against him. The 

 whipping brought on tears, and all was made right by this 

 solvent. But, under the circumstances, the child's passion 

 might have been fired with a sense of injustice and then the 

 rasii tutor would have found that he had gambled away his 

 pupil's affection. 



And yet this is the man whose watchward was patience, who 

 said that to know how to wait is, perhaps, more important than 

 to know how to do. " A steady flame amid embers is worth 



