Chapter 9

While the children were marching, another procession was also passing, composed of the magistrates and city officials, going to the Nicolai Kirche (the oldest church in Berlin) for a similar service. Every one was astir early, and before ten o'clock a dense crowd filled the streets. Horses, omnibuses, and tram-cars were garlanded and decorated with flags, and the house fronts were bewildering in color and decorations. The double-headed eagle, signifying in the heraldry of Germany the Empire of Charlemagne and that of the Cæsars, was everywhere intermingled with the German tri-color of red, white, and black, with the black and white of Prussia, the green of Saxony, the blue of Bavaria, and the orange, purple, and other colors of the various principalities and powers of the German Empire; hardly a house lacking some brilliant flutter of symbolic colors. Only an American in a foreign land can know how welcome was the sight of "the stars and stripes" floating majestically from two or three points on the route; though in one case it was flanked by the crescent and star of the Turkish Empire, and in another contrasted with the blue dragon on a yellow ground which formed the triangular flag of China. Miles of business thoroughfares showed glittering and artistic arrangements in the shop windows; nearly every one having its picture, bust, or statue of the Emperor,--some with most elaborate and expensive designs. Between ten and eleven A.M. the deputations from the Universities passed through Unter den Linden, making a daylight parade but little inferior to that of the evening before. The dense throng immediately closed in after the procession, but by great efforts the mounted police cleared a passage for the State carriages to the palace of the Emperor. At eleven o'clock a magnificent royal carriage drew up at the palace of the Crown Prince, who entered it, accompanied by the Crown Princess and two daughters. They proceeded to the presence of the Emperor, to offer the first congratulations. Next came a carriage whose splendid accompaniments eclipsed all others. Preceded by a mounted herald in scarlet and silver, on a mettled and caparisoned steed, and by other outriders in the same glittering fashion, came the carriage, surmounted by silver crowns, drawn by six horses; carriage, steeds, coachman, and footmen in shining livery and flowing plumes. At the door of the Crown Prince's palace the stout figure of the Prince of Wales, in comparatively plain attire, stepped into this coach; a lady was handed in after him, and the splendid equipage rolled toward the Emperor's palace, amid the cheers of the multitude. From the Old Schloss, a succession of royal carriages passed in the same direction, all glittering in silver and gold and flowing with plumes, many with four or six horses; until fully fifty State carriages had deposited their occupants at the palace of the Kaiser, and awaited, in the fine open spaces around the famous equestrian statue of Frederick the Great, the return of royalty from its congratulations to the venerable object of all this attention. Many of the royal visitors were known by sight to the crowd, as Berlin sees much of royalty; but many were not. The cheering was not enthusiastic, except in special cases. "Who is that?" said one near me, as a splendid carriage passed. "I do not know," replied another man; "it is only one of those kings." But when the Crown Prince Frederick returned from his call, "This is something else," said the proud German heart; and the cheers were deafening. The greatest enthusiasm of the day was shown when Prince William and his family passed, in the most striking equipage of all, except that of the Prince of Wales. It was a State carriage of the time of Frederick the Great, its decorations of gold on a dark body; a large, low vehicle whose glass windows revealed the occupants on every side. Six Pomeranian brown steeds of high mettle were guided by the skilful driver, horses and outriders being splendidly caparisoned in light blue and silver. Rudolph, Crown Prince of Austria, solitary in his carriage, received his share of attention, as did the Russian Grand Dukes and Grand Duchess, the fine-looking King and Queen of Saxony, the Prince-Regent of Bavaria with his two sons of ten and twelve, and the Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, venerable sister of the Emperor. The Queen of Roumania bowed to the throng with utmost grace, smiling and showing her brilliant teeth; but whether the special huzzas were a tribute to the beauty of the Queen, or to the poetry of Carmen Sylva, we could not determine. All things have an end; and so did this dazzling State pageant, at which all Europe assisted and where all Europe was looking on; but not until Bismarck's carriage had conveyed the Chancellor to his chief, followed by General Von Moltke, who had the good taste to drive up simply, with two horses and an open carriage that interposed not even plate-glass between the great soldier and the loyal multitude. A few moments after their entrance, the Emperor appeared at the palace window, Bismarck on his right and Von Moltke on his left, and the hurrahs of the crowd burst forth anew.

Later in the day the Crown Prince and Crown Princess entertained the royal guests at dinner; and Prince Bismarck, as usual on the Emperor's birthday, gave a dinner to the Diplomatic Corps. A drizzling rain set in suddenly in the afternoon, sending dismay to the hearts of all; for the most brilliant part of the celebration was still in reserve for the evening. The rain fell in occasional light showers up to a late hour, but it dampened only the outer garb, not the hearts, of the undiminished multitude, which at night-fall, on foot or in carriages, thronged the streets of the brilliant capital, whose myriad lights showed to better advantage under the reflecting clouds than they would have done under starlight. The carriages numbered scores of thousands, and the people on foot hundreds of thousands; but so complete were the arrangements of the police and so obedient the concourse, that all proceeded in nearly perfect order. Our coachman fortunately drove through Old Berlin and Köln, as a preliminary to the evening's sight-seeing. Long arcades filled with Jews' shops were worthy the pen of Dickens. This festal day made this most ancient portion of the city also one of the most picturesque. Houses with quaint dormer windows roofed by "eyelids," of an architecture dating back two or three hundred years, gleamed with candles in every window. Almost no house or shop was so poor as to dispense with its share of the universal illumination. At least three horizontal lines of lighted candles threaded both sides of every street of this city of a million and a half inhabitants. Many private as well as public buildings in the old part showed by colored lights the picturesque, quaint streets and nooks, as no light of day can ever do. We were passing the Rath-haus, or City Hall,--a modern and imposing edifice,--at the time when its great tower was being lighted up. Three hundred feet above the pavement floated the flags grouped in the centre and at the corners of the square tower. Invisible red fires illuminated them, the shafts of crimson light rising to the clouds above, the outlines of the remainder of the building dimly reposing in darkness. An immense electric light, guided by a reflector in another tower, shot a bridge of white light high in air across the river, and fell, like a circumscribed space of noonday amid black darkness, on the fine equestrian statue of the Great Elector by the bridge behind the Old Castle, with an effect almost indescribable. As we entered Unter den Linden by the Lustgarten, the beautiful square and its historic edifices, which form an ideal sight even by daylight, glowed and gleamed with jets of light from every point. The Old Schloss showed continuous lines of illumination in the windows of its four stories, along its front of six hundred and fifty feet, while the majestic dome caught and reflected rays of light from every point of the horizon. On the opposite side of the Lustgarten, the Doric portico of the National Gallery glowed with rose-colored light from massive Grecian lamps, while the arched entrance beneath its superb staircase gleamed with a pale sea-green radiance like the entrance to some ocean cave. The incomparable architecture of the Old Museum was set in strong relief by white light, which flooded its immense Ionic colonnade and brought out the high colors of the colossal frescos along the three hundred feet of its magnificent portico. The front of the palace of the Crown Prince was thrown, by innumerable jets, into a blaze of crimson. The Roman Catholic Church of St. Hedwig, with its dome in imitation of the Pantheon, its Latin cross and window arches beaming in pale yellow, made a fine background for the only unilluminated building, the palace of the Emperor. From the Opera House, the Arsenal, and the University, crowns and elaborate designs were burning, yet unconsumed. Most elaborately decorated of all Berlin buildings was the Academy of Arts and Sciences, opposite the Imperial Palace, with colossal warriors in bronze keeping guard at its portals, and the Angel of Peace laying a laurel wreath on the altar of Fatherland as its decorative centre-piece. No high meaning of all its symbols was more touching and significant than the appropriate texts of Scripture written for the Kaiser's eye, underneath its elaborate frescos. But of what avail would be an attempt to describe two miles of most beautiful decorations along Unter den Linden, each one a study in itself, and having nothing in common with the others, except the eagles and the Emperor's monogram; and the innumerable points of light, massed in a world of various forms, and in all the colors of the rainbow! This glow of splendor surrounded by the dense darkness covered the city, and the dazzling coronals of its lofty towers and domes and spires must have been visible to a great distance across the plains of Brandenburg.

Slowly the triple line of carriages and the surging throng pressed onward, past the palaces and diplomatic residences of the Pariser Platz; some diverging down the Wilhelm Strasse, where streaming flags and blazing illuminations made noonday brightness and gayety about the palace of the Chancellor, but most passing through the Brandenburg Gate. The massive Doric columns of this impressive structure were in darkness, but the Chariot of Victory with its fine bronze horses, surmounting the gate, was weird with the scarlet light of Bengal fires burning on the entablature.

As the artist rests his eyes by the spot of neutral gray which he keeps for the purpose on wall or palette, so brain and eye were prepared for sleep at the close of this long day, by sitting in our carriages, safe sheltered from the soft-falling rain, outside the great gate which divided the splendor from the darkness, for three quarters of an hour, in an inextricable tangle of carriages, until the perturbed coachmen and the sorely vexed police could evolve order from the temporary confusion, and set the hindered procession again on its homeward way.

Meantime the day was not over for the much-enduring Emperor and his royal guests. In the famous White Saloon of the Old Schloss an entertainment was going forward. Blinding coronets and necklaces on royal ladies made the interior of this ancient palace more brilliant than its shining exterior on this birth-night. The Empress Augusta, leaning on the arm of her grandson, Prince William, was attired in a lace-trimmed robe of pale green, her diamonds a mass of sparkling light; the Crown Princess was in silver-gray, the wife of the English Ambassador in pale mauve, the Princess Christian in turquoise blue; and the Grand Duchess Vladimir of Russia wore a magnificent robe of pink satin trimmed with sable, with a tiara of diamonds and a stomacher of diamonds and emeralds. From the neck and forehead of the Queen of Roumania flashed a thousand prismatic hues; and the Green Vault of Dresden sent some of its most precious treasures to keep company with the fair Queen of Saxony in adding brilliance to the scene.

Our reverie led from this starry point in history back to the time when, as on this memorable day, the royal salute of Berlin artillery shook the city, to announce the birth of a prince ninety years ago. A rapid, almost a chance recall of the years shows us Washington then living on his estate at Mount Vernon, Lafayette a young man of forty, Clay a stripling of twenty, Webster a boy of fifteen. The Directory in France had not yet made way for the First Republic; the younger Pitt and Canning held England; Metternich and O'Connell were in their youth, and Robert Peel was a child of nine. Napoleon Bonaparte was in the flush of youthful success, soon to become the idol of France and the terror of Europe, before whom the boy, now Kaiser Wilhelm, and his royal family fled to Königsberg by the Baltic, while the conqueror held Berlin and reduced Prussia to a second-rate province. To this boy the flames of burning Moscow were a transient aurora-borealis under the pole-star; and Nelson and Wellington were unknown to the stories of his childhood, for as yet their fame was not. Goethe and Schiller were in the prime of early manhood; Kant and Klopstock elderly, but with years yet to live; Scott was just laying down his poet's pen and preparing to take up the immortal quill with which he wrote his first "Waverley;" Moore was singing his sweet melodies; Wordsworth had yet to lay the foundations of the "Lake Poetry;" and the fair boy, Byron, was chanting his early songs, not yet for many a year to die at Missolonghi.

This wonderful old man of ninety, gayly stooping to kiss the hand of a lady to-night in his hospitable palace, like the young man that he is, has a memory stretching from the battle of Austerlitz across the gigantic struggles of the century to the battle of Sedan,--all of which he has seen, and a part of which he has been!

IX.

STREETS, PARKS, CEMETERIES, AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS.

For a hundred years the picturesque Brandenburg Gate has guarded the entrance to Unter den Linden from the Thiergarten. It is a monument of the reversion of royal taste from the devotion to French style, which characterized Frederick the Great, to the purely classical. It is nearly two hundred feet in width, its five openings being guarded by six massive Doric columns about forty-five feet in height. To foot-passengers, riders, and ordinary vehicles the two outer spaces on each side are devoted respectively, while the wide central passage is traversed only by the royal carriages. The celebrated quadriga with the figure of Victory, on the entablature, was first placed with the face toward the Park. When the First Napoleon robbed Berlin, along with other cities, for the adornment of Paris, he carried off this masterpiece in bronze and set it up in the Place du Carrousel under the shadow of the Tuileries. Upon Napoleon's downfall in 1814, this group was restored to its original place, but was set facing the Unter den Linden, making of the Brandenburger Thor a triumphal arch marking the victory of Prussia in the long contest.

The famous Unter den Linden, nearly two hundred feet wide and three fourths of a mile in length, with a double line of lime-trees enclosing an area of greensward along the centre, would be accounted anywhere a handsome street, with the palaces of the Pariser Platz at one end, the Imperial palaces, the Arsenal, the Academy, and the University at the other, and brilliant shop-windows lining both sides of the whole length, while the Brandenburg Gate and the great equestrian statue of Frederick the Great at either extremity close the fine vista. Leaving out of view, however, these two noble features which mark its termini, the street seemed not handsome enough to justify its fame. Perhaps this was because we found the famous lime-trees, for which the street is named, quite ordinary young trees, not to be compared with the magnificent elms which line the streets of New Haven and the Mall of Boston Common.

The characteristic part of Berlin is, to our view, the great space east of Unter den Linden, surrounded by the palaces, the royal Guard House, the Arsenal, the University, and the Academy of Arts and Sciences. These fine buildings and the ornamented open spaces around and between them, on a sunny afternoon in midwinter, show a brilliant and unique scene which has hardly its parallel in Europe. The Champs Élysées is finer at night; Hyde Park, St. James, the Parliament buildings, and Westminster Abbey far finer on a sunny morning; but the third city in Europe has no need to be ashamed of its royal buildings and the scene before them, in the season when the Court is in Berlin, and the slant rays of an early afternoon sun light up the gay throng of soldiers in uniform, State carriages, pedestrians, and vehicles which surge to and fro without crowding the vast spaces.

The Lustgarten is fine; but of the buildings around it, the Old Museum alone meets the eye with architectural satisfaction. In all lights that building is beautiful in design and proportions. The Old Schloss is impressive mainly by its massiveness and its august dome. A most picturesque view by moonlight is to be had from the east end of the Lange or Kürfürsten Brücke, southeast of the old palace. Here the water-front of the old castle is in full view, with the fortified part unaltered since the early occupation by the Hohenzollerns. This mediæval building, shaded by a few ancient trees, with here and there a light reflected from the upper windows at evening, and with tower and turret duplicated on the surface of the darkly flowing river at its foot, shares with one the feeling of ancient times, as no other place in Berlin can do. In the centre of this bridge is the equestrian statue of the Great Elector, superior as a work of art to any other of its date. This grand figure is fabled to descend from his horse and stalk through the streets on New Year's eve, for the chastisement of evil-doers.

The Wilhelm Strasse, running from a point near the Pariser Platz south from Unter den Linden, has many palaces and public buildings; but its chief interest centres about No. 77, the palace of Prince Bismarck. The front looks eastward, and is built around three sides of a garden filled with shrubbery and threaded by walks, and shut off from the street by great iron gates and a high open iron fence. The study, where the Chancellor spends much time when in Berlin, looks upon a garden, and is furnished with the same simplicity which characterizes the private apartments of General Von Moltke. Among the few pictures which adorn the study of Bismarck is one of General Grant. Here it was that the famous Berlin Congress met in 1878 for the settlement of the Eastern Question.

The palace of Prince Albert of Prussia, now Military Governor of Brunswick, is situated in a magnificent private park, acres in extent, in the heart of the city. It opens from the Wilhelm Strasse at the head of Koch. This palace was built in the early part of the eighteenth century by a French nobleman, with wealth gained in the great speculations of the Mississippi Scheme, upon which all France entered in hope of retrieving the bankruptcy entailed by Louis XIV. Its fine colonnade, its great park, and its position, adjoining the park of the War Department, between two great railroad stations and surrounded by tramways, render it one of the most prominent features of Central Berlin.

The small and elaborately laid-out square of the Wilhelm Strasse, known as the Wilhelms Platz, with its pretty fountains, shrubs, and flowers, has bronze statues of six generals of Frederick the Great,--heroes of the Seven Years' War. Here it is easy to sit and dream of the olden time, in reverie which not even the Kaiserhof diplomats nor the Wilhelm-Street autocrats, within a stone's-throw on either side, nor the throng and glitter of the Berlin of to-day, can disturb. Here, surrounded by the figures and the faces of the men with whom Carlyle has made us acquainted, we recall the wonderful story which he, as none other, has written. How masterly is the way in which he has portrayed for us this Prussian history whose memorials stand around us! With feeling how deep and true for the real and the eternal as against the false, the seeming, and the transient! What a picture is the history! What a poem is the picture!

At the northeast corner of the Wilhelms Platz is the palace of Prince Friedrich Karl, one of the leaders of the Franco-Prussian War. It was once the temple of the Order of the Knights of Malta, but its sumptuous interior has now for many years been devoted to residence on the upper floor, and to the famous art and _bric-à-brac_ collections of the late prince, on the ground floor. It is not difficult to gain, from the steward, the requisite permission to visit this interesting palace.

Many private houses, interesting for their associations, might be found by the sojourner in Berlin who cares to search them out; but intelligent residents only, and not the guide-books, can facilitate this search. In the Margrafen Strasse, near the Royal Library, is the house where Neander lived and studied and wrote. Near the Dreifaltische Kirche, behind the Kaiserhof, is the old-fashioned parsonage which was the home of Schleiermacher, and in the Oranienburger Strasse is the house in which lived Alexander von Humboldt.

Of the many beautiful parks, the Thiergarten overshadows all the rest, both because of its commanding location, close to Unter den Linden and other busy streets, and its great extent. A combination of park and wild forest, with streams, ponds, bridges, and miles of shaded avenues and riding-paths in perfect condition, its six hundred acres form one of the largest, most beautiful and useful parks in Europe. The elaborate and towering monument to commemorate the victories of recent Prussian and German wars is the centre of a system of grand avenues in the northeastern part. This monument was originally intended to commemorate the Schleswig-Holstein conquest; later, the victories over Austria in 1866 were to be included; and when the Franco-Prussian War was happily ended, it was decided to make of it also a fitting memorial of united Germany. On the third anniversary of the Capitulation of Sedan, Emperor William I. unveiled the colossal statue of Victory on the summit of the monument, which commemorates the chief events of his august reign.

Immense bas-reliefs on the pedestal represent, on one side, events in the Danish campaign; on another is shown the Decoration of the Crown Prince by the Emperor on the field of Sadowa, with Prince Friedrich Karl, Von Moltke, and Bismarck standing by; the third side shows the French General Reille, handing Louis Napoleon's letter of capitulation at Sedan; and the fourth, the triumphal entry of German soldiers into Paris through the Arc de Triomphe. There is also a representation of the scene, on that day when all Berlin went wild with joy and exultation over the return of the Kaiser and his troops from Paris, of their reception at the Brandenburg Gate.