Ewig Dein treuer Freund,

Wilhelm.

London, d. 29. 4. 48.

I was at that time in London, and often with Bunsen at the Prussian Legation in Carlton House Terrace. There was a constant succession of couriers bringing letters from Berlin. On one occasion a sub-editor from The Times office rushed in and said: “Well, another one is gone, the King of Bavaria!” He did not see that the Bavarian minister, Baron Cetto, was in the room, and thus received this very informal notification of his sovereign’s fate. It was known that the King had remained at his palace, but that the Prince of Prussia had left Berlin. For several days no one knew where he was. I was quietly sitting on the sofa with Bunsen (27th March, 1848, 8 A.M.) discussing some question of Vedic mythology, when a servant came in and whispered something in Bunsen’s ear. Bunsen rose, took me by the arm and said: “Make haste, run away.” I did so, and as I ran out of the door I rushed against the Prince of Prussia. I hardly knew him at first, for he was not in uniform, and had no moustache. In fact, I saw him as few people have ever seen him. He stayed in London for many weeks at the Prussian Legation, where I met him several times, and, honest and hardworking as he was all through life, he did not waste the time in Bunsen’s house, nor did Bunsen lose the opportunity of showing the Prince how well a free and popular form of government could be carried on with due respect for order and law, and with love and devotion to the throne. This London episode of the Prince’s life has borne ample fruit in the hey-dey of the German Empire, and he by whom the seed was sown has but seldom been remembered, or thanked for the good work he did then for his sovereign and for his country.

There was no sovereign more constitutional than the King of Prussia at the beginning of his reign. He surrounded himself with enlightened and liberal-minded ministers, and never interfered with their work. Having been brought up to look upon his brother as a great genius, he was very humble about his own qualifications, and he even thought for a time of abdicating in favour of his son. This, however, would not have suited Bismarck’s hand. When the Prince of Prussia came to the throne, he stipulated one thing only with his ministers: they must give him a free hand to strengthen the army; for all the rest he would follow their advice. And so he did for several years. But when they failed to keep their promise, and to get Parliament to pass the necessary military budget, he parted with them and invited Bismarck to form a new ministry in 1862. This was the beginning of the political drama which ended at Sedan, if indeed it ended then.

I had heard much from my friends Roggenbach, Schlœzer, and E. Curtius about the Princess of Prussia (afterwards the Queen of Prussia, and the first German Empress), and my expectations were not deceived when I was presented to her during her stay in England in the spring of 1851. She was grand’ dame, highly gifted, highly cultivated. She wanted to see everything and know everybody worth knowing in England. It was she who went to Eton to see a cricket match played. She had heard much about it, and was most anxious to watch it. After the game had been going on for a good quarter of an hour, she turned impatiently to the Provost, and asked: “When are the boys going to begin?” She had evidently expected some kind of fight or skirmish, and was rather disappointed at the quiet and business-like way in which the boys, who were on their best behaviour, threw the ball and hit it back. However, at that time everything English, even the games, was perfect in the eyes of the Germans, and nothing more perfect than the Princess Royal, when she had been won by the young Prince of Prussia in 1857. The Princess of Prussia never forgot people whom she had once taken an interest in, and I had several interesting interviews with her later on—at Coblentz in 1863, at Baden in 1872. I confess I was somewhat taken aback when, after dinner, the Empress took me by the hand, and stepped forward, addressing the whole company present, and giving the ladies and gentlemen a full account of what this Oxford professor had done for Germany during the Franco-German war by defending their cause in The Times. All I could reply was that I had done little enough, and that I could not help saying what I had said in The Times, and that I was proud of having been well abused for having spoken the truth.

Whatever disappointments she may have had in life, she lived long enough to see the fulfilment of her patriotic dreams; she wore the Imperial crown of Germany, and she saw in the Crown Prince Frederick the fulfilment of all that a mother can dream of for her son. One wishes that she had died a year sooner, so as to be spared the terrible tragedy of her son’s illness and death in 1888.

That son, our Princeps juventutis, had been educated by my friend Ernst Curtius, and was on most friendly terms with many of my German friends. I made his acquaintance when he came to Oxford as a very young man in 1857. He brought George Bunsen and two friends with him, and I took rooms for them at the Angel Hotel, which stood where the Examination School, the so-called Chamber of Horrors, now stands. For several days I took the Prince to all the Colleges and to some of the lectures, even to one of the public examinations. No one knew him, and we preserved the strictest incognito. He quickly perceived the advantages of the English university system, particularly of the college life and the tutorial teaching. But he saw that it would be hopeless to attempt to introduce that system into Germany. Though at that time everything English was admired in Germany, he was clear-sighted enough to see that it is better to learn than simply to copy. The weak point in the German university system is that, unless an undergraduate is personally known to a professor, he receives very little guidance. He generally arrives from school, where he has been under very strict guidance, without any choice as to what he really wishes to learn. He then suddenly finds himself independent, and free to choose from an immense menu (Index lectionum) whatever tempts his appetite. Most German students, when they leave school, have not only a natural curiosity, but a real thirst for learning. They have also a feeling of great reverence for the professors, particularly for the most famous professors in each university. They often select their university in order to hear the lectures of a certain professor, and if he is moved to another university they migrate with him. In the strictly professional faculties of medicine, law, and theology, there is no doubt a certain routine, and students know by a kind of tradition what lectures they should attend in each semester. But in the philosophical faculty there is little, if any, tradition, and looking at my book of lectures, attested by the various professors at Leipzig, I am perfectly amazed at the variety of incongruous subjects on which I attended professorial classes. Unless they were all properly entered and attested in my book I could not believe that at that time (1840–41), when I was only seventeen years of age, I had really attended lectures on so many heterogeneous subjects. In this respect, in preventing waste, the college or tutorial system has, no doubt, many advantages, but the young Prince saw very clearly that what is called in Germany academic freedom cannot be touched, that the universities could not be changed into schools, if for no other reason, because it would be impossible to find the necessary funds to inaugurate the college system by the side of the professorial system. All that could possibly be done would be to establish a closer relation between professors and undergraduates, to increase, in fact, the number of seminaries and societies, and to make it obligatory on each professor to have some personal intercourse with the students who attend his lectures.

The Prince’s incognito was carefully preserved at Oxford, though it was not always easy to persuade his attendants not to bow and take off their hats whenever they met the Prince. The very last day, however, and just before I asked for the bill at the hotel, one of his A.D.C.’s forgot himself, bowed very low before the door of the hotel, and stood bareheaded before the Prince. The hotel-keeper smiled and came to me with a very knowing look, telling me of the discovery he had made. He was very proud of his perspicacity; but I am sorry to say that the discovery had its painful influence on the bill also, which, under the circumstances, could not be helped.

What struck the Prince most at Oxford was the historical continuity of the University. I reminded him of the remark which Frederick William IV. made when at Oxford:—