at times dismiss the whole British Empire with
a puzzled, if reverent, sigh. Not out of them are the shows of history
erected: the world would be a grey, bloodless place were it composed
entirely of Miss Schlegels. But the world being what it is, perhaps they
shine out in it like stars.

A word on their origin. They were not "English to the back-bone," as
their aunt had piously asserted. But, on the other hand, they were not
"Germans of the dreadful sort." Their father had belonged to a type that
was more prominent in Germany fifty years ago than now. He was not the
aggressive German, so dear to the English journalist, nor the domestic
German, so dear to the English wit. If one classed him at all it would
be as the countryman of Hegel and Kant, as the idealist, inclined to be
dreamy, whose Imperialism was the Imperialism of the air. Not that
his life had been inactive. He had fought like blazes against Denmark,
Austria, France. But he had fought without visualising the results of
victory. A hint of the truth broke on him after Sedan, when he saw the
dyed moustaches of Napoleon going grey; another when he entered Paris,
and saw the smashed windows of the Tuileries. Peace came--it was all
very immense, one had turned into an Empire--but he knew that some
quality had vanished for which not all Alsace-Lorraine could compensate
him. Germany a commercial Power, Germany a naval Power, Germany with
colonies here and a Forward Policy there, and legitimate aspirations in
the other place, might appeal to others, and be fitly served by
them; for his own part, he abstained from the fruits of victory, and
naturalised himself in England. The more earnest members of his family
never forgave him, and knew that his children, though scarcely English
of the dreadful sort, would never be German to the back-bone. He had
obtained work in one of our provincial universities, and there married
Poor Emily (or Die Englanderin, as the case may be), and as she had
money, they proceeded to London, and came to know a good many people.
But his gaze was always fixed beyond the sea. It was his hope that the
clouds of materialism obscuring the Fatherland would part in time, and
the mild intellectual light re-emerge. "Do you imply that we Germans are
stupid, Uncle Ernst?" exclaimed a haughty and magnificent nephew. Uncle
Ernst replied, "To my mind. You use the intellect, but you no longer
care about it. That I call stupidity." As the haughty nephew did not