of the
forehead over the eyes, too, as they rose above the strong lower face,
were emphasised, looking truly as though, if tongue and pen failed to
make a way, the shoulders could push one, and, if worse came to worst,
the head would butt one. Next to Luther was a head of Christ; then in
the same line, with nothing in the position or quality of the pictures
to indicate that the subjects were any less esteemed, a row of royal
personages, whose military trappings were made particularly plain.
It was all characteristic enough. The Reformer's figure stood for the
stalwart Protestantism of the Prussian character, still living and
militant in a way hard for us to imagine; the portraits of the royal
soldiers stood for its combative loyalty, ready to meet anything for
king and fatherland; and the head of Christ for its zealous faith,
which, however it may have cooled away among some classes of the
people, was still intense in the nation at large. I visited the best
school for girls in Berlin, and it was singular to find the spiked
helmet, among those retiring maidens even, and this time not hung upon
the wall nor outside in the yard. The teacher of the most interesting
class I visited--a class in German literature--was a man of
forty-five, of straight, soldierly bearing, a grey, martial moustache,
and energetic eye. He told me, as we walked together in the hall,
waiting for the exercise to commence, that he had been a soldier, and
it so happened that among the ballads in the lesson for that day was
one in honour of the Prussian troops at Rossbach. Over this the old
soldier broke out into an animated lecture, which grew more and more
earnest as he went forward; he showed how the idea of faithfulness to
duty had become obscured, but was enforced again by the philosopher
Kant in his teaching, and then brought into practice by the great
Frederick. The veteran plainly thought there was no duty higher than
that owed to the _schwarzer Adler_, the black eagle of Prussia.
Then came an account of the French horse before Rossbach; how they
rode out from Weimar, the troopers, before they went, ripping open the
beds on which they had slept and scattering the feathers to the wind
to plague the housewives,--a piece of ruthlessness that came home
thoroughly to the young housekeepers; then how _der alte
Fritz_, lying in wait behind Janus Hill, with General Seydlitz and
Field-marshal Keith, suddenly rushed out and put them all to rout.
The soldi