et into
Prussia, they'll find a tough old _Landsturm_! Only let Vater
Wilhelm turn his hand, and to-morrow close upon a million trained and
well-armed troops could be stepping to the drum." It was an evening at
the end of June. Napoleon was having the finishing touches put to the
new Opera House at Paris, thinking, so far as the world could tell,
of nothing more important than how many imperial eagles it would do to
put along the cornice. King William was packing for Ems, designing
to be back at the peaceful unveiling of his father's statue the first
week in August. Bismarck was at his Pomeranian estate, in poor health,
it was said, plotting nothing but to circumvent his bodily trouble.
In less than a month full-armed Prussia was on the march. I could
understand the readiness, when I thought of the spiked helmet I had
seen in the Prussian home that quiet summer night.

The German _Friedhof_, or burying-ground, had never the extent or
magnificence of some American cemeteries. Even near the cities it was
small and quiet, showing, however, in the well-kept mounds and stones
there was no want of care. Every old church, too, was floored with
the memorial tablets of those buried beneath, and bare upon walls and
columns monuments in the taste of the various ages that have come
and gone since the church was built. Graves of famous men, here as
everywhere, were places of pilgrimage, and here as everywhere to
see which are the most honoured tombs, was no bad way of judging the
character of the people. Among the scholars of Germany there have been
no greater names than those of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, brothers not
far apart in the cradle, not far apart in death, who lived and worked
together their full threescore years and ten. They were two wonderful
old men, with faces--as I saw them together in a photograph shown me
by Hermann Grimm, the well-known son of Wilhelm--full of intellectual
strength, and yet with the sweetness and innocence of children. They
lie now side by side in the Matthaei Kirchhof at Berlin, in graves
precisely similar, with a lovely rose-bush scattering petals
impartially on the turf above both, and solid twin stones at their
heads, meant to endure apparently as long as their fame. Hither come a
large and various company of pilgrims,--children who love the brothers
Grimm for their fairy-tales, young students who have been kindled by
their example, and grey old scholars who respect their achievements
as the m