clever.
Besides this, her individuality is so strong, her intellectual gifts
so great, and the part which she has played in German politics so
important that she really deserves separate treatment.

If I link her name with that of her daughter-in-law, Empress
Augusta-Victoria, it is because the latter's influence on German
affairs has been even still more weighty, though she is far less
brilliant and clever than her husband's mother. Indeed my readers
after perusing this chapter may feel disposed to ask themselves
whether ordinary intelligence in high places does not work more
successfully than genius.

It is difficult to describe Empress Frederick as anything else than
a genius. Certainly I have never known a more gifted woman. The
diversity, the scope, and the depth of her knowledge are simply
amazing. In conversation it is difficult to broach any subject, no
matter what it is, that she has not mastered. Her acquaintance with
the mediaeval, Renaissance and modern schools of painting, and with
every form and work of art industry is unsurpassed even by those men
who have devoted their entire lives to these studies. I have on one
and the same evening heard her converse on Venetian art with Ludovic
Passini, proving herself his equal in her astounding knowledge of
Venice, past and present; talk with a distinguished physician, who was
amazed by the theoretical knowledge which she displayed of the throat
and breathing organs, and who declared that if she had only had
practical experience, she would have been the finest throat specialist
in the world; and discuss literature with a celebrated Englishman of
letters, chiding him upon his admitting his inability to cap a passage
from Pope, which she quoted! The late Sir Richard Wallace, than whom
no one possessed a more profound knowledge of the masterpieces of the
painters, goldsmiths, jewelers and potters of bygone centuries, was
wont to declare that Empress Frederick surpassed him as an expert,
although, with unlimited wealth at his disposal, he had devoted more
than half a century of his life to the collection of "chefs d'oeuvre"
in all parts of the world.

The depth of her researches into chemical science exceeds that of Lord
Salisbury, who is her most intimate personal friend in England, and
at whose Elizabethan country seat she invariably visits when in her
native country, most of her time while under his roof being spent with
him in his laboratory. But it is particula