bed by modern political theories, but were
contented, as in old days, to be governed by the King. It was a
religious society; among the peasants and the nobles, if not among the
clergy, there still lingered something of the simple but profound faith
of German Protestantism; they were scarcely touched by the rationalism
of the eighteenth or by the liberalism of the nineteenth century; there
was little pomp and ceremony of worship in the village church, but the
natural periods of human life--birth, marriage, death--called for the
blessing of the Church, and once or twice a year came the solemn
confession and the sacrament. Religious belief and political faith were
closely joined, for the Church was but a department of the State; the
King was chief bishop, as he was general of the army, and the sanctity
of the Church was transferred to the Crown; to the nobles and peasants,
criticism of, or opposition to, the King had in it something of
sacrilege; the words "by the Grace of God" added to the royal title were
more than an empty phrase. Society was still organised on the old
patriarchal basis: at the bottom was the peasant; above him was the
_gnaediger Herr_; above him, _Unser allergnaedigste Herr_, the King, who
lived in Berlin; and above him, the _Herr Gott_ in Heaven.

To the inhabitants of South Germany, and the men of the towns, these
nobles of Further Pomerania, the _Junker_ as they were called, with
their feudal life, their medieval beliefs, their simple monarchism, were
the incarnation of political folly; to them liberalism seemed another
form of atheism, but in this solitude and fresh air of the great plain
was reared a race of men who would always be ready, as their fathers had
been, to draw their sword and go out to conquer new provinces for their
King to govern.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY LIFE.

1821-1847.

Of the boy's early life we know little. His mother was ambitious for her
sons; Otto from his early years she designed for the Diplomatic Service;
she seems to have been one of those women who was willing to sacrifice
the present happiness of her children for their future advancement. When
only six years old the boy was sent away from home to a school in
Berlin. He was not happy there; he pined for the free life of the
country, the fields and woods and animals; when he saw a plough he would
burst into tears, for it reminded him of his home. The discipline of the
school was hard, not with the healthy and