Conversation, both in England and Germany, sometimes turns on the question whether or not the Emperor will be known to future generations as William "the Great." It is agreed on all sides that he will not take a place among the mediocrities or sink into oblivion. We have, though only negatively and indirectly, his own view of the matter, if, that is, it may be deduced from the fact that he has more than once tried to attach this epitheton ornans to the memory of his grandfather. At Hamburg in 1891 he desired a statue to the Emperor William I to bear the inscription "William the Great." The cool common sense of the cautious Hamburgers refused to anticipate the decision of posterity and placed on the pedestal the simple words "William the First." In deference to the Emperor's well-known wishes, if not at his request, the Hamburg-Amerika line of steamers christened one of their ocean greyhounds Wilhelm der Grosse. The mere fact that people discuss the question in his lifetime is of happy augury for the Emperor. Perhaps some other epithet will be found for him. "Puffing Billy" is one of his titles among English officers, taken from the name given locally to Stephenson's first locomotive. But history has many ranks in her peerage and many epithets at her disposal—great, good, fair, lionhearted, silent—that the Emperor will not have—and a host more. Maybe the greatest rulers were those whom history, as though in despair of finding a single term with which to do them justice, has refrained from decorating. Timur, Akbar, Attila, Julius Cæsar, Elizabeth, Victoria, Napoleon have no epithets, and need none. However, it is clear that a verdict on the Emperor's deserts is premature. Suppose him at the bar of history. The case is still proceeding, the evidence is not complete, counsel have not been heard, and—most obvious defect of any—the jury has not been impanelled.
More than half a century has passed since the Emperor was born. How time flies!
"Alas, alas, O Postumus, Postumus,
The years glide by and are lost to us, lost to us."
But not the memories they enshrine. It is, let us imagine, the night of the Emperor's Jubilee, and he lies in the old Schloss, still awake, reflecting on the past. What a multitude of happenings, gay and grave, throng to his recollection, what a glorious and crowded canvas unrolls itself before his mental vision! The toy steamer on the Havel; the games in the palace corridors, with the grim features of the Great Elector betrayed, one is tempted to think, into a half-smile as he watches the innocent gaiety of the romping children from the old wainscoted walls; the irksome but disciplinary hours in the Cassel schoolroom; the youthful escapades with those carefree Borussian comrades at the university on the broad bosom of Father Rhine; the excursions and picnics among the Seven Hills; the visits to England, its crowded and bustling capital, its country seats with their pleasant lawns and stately oaks; the war-ships in the Solent, with their black mass and frowning guns, as they towered, like Milton's Leviathan, above his head.
What a good time it was, and how rich in manifold and picturesque impressions!
The canvas continues to unroll and a literary period opens—that age between youth and manhood, of all ages most passionate and ideal, when we are enthralled and moved by what we read—by those studies which
"adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris; pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur."
It was the Lohengrin period, when, filled with the ardour and imaginativeness of high-souled youth, the future Emperor was dimly thinking of all he would do in the days to come for the happiness and prosperity of his people, nay, of all mankind.
Another tableau presents itself. Life has now become real and the Emperor's soldiering days have begun—never to conclude! His regiment is his world; parades and drills, the orderly-room and the barrack square occupy his time; and would seem monotonous and hard but for the little Eden with its Eve close beside them.
The Emperor turns uneasily, for his thoughts recur to the painful circumstances of his accession; but calmness soon succeeds as the curtain rises on the splendid panorama of the reign. He sees himself, a young and hitherto unknown actor, leaving the wings and taking the very centre of the stage, while the vast audience sits silent and attentive, as yet hardly grasping the significance of his words and gestures, emphatic though they are. And then he recalls the years of Sturm und Drang, the growth of Empire in spite of grudging rivals and of fellow-countrymen as yet not wholly conscious of their destinies, which one can now see constituted a whole drama in themselves, fraught with great consequences to the world.