land; Metternich and O'Connell were in their
youth, and Robert Peel was a child of nine. Napoleon Bonaparte was in
the flush of youthful success, soon to become the idol of France and
the terror of Europe, before whom the boy, now Kaiser Wilhelm, and
his royal family fled to Koenigsberg by the Baltic, while the conqueror
held Berlin and reduced Prussia to a second-rate province. To this boy
the flames of burning Moscow were a transient aurora-borealis under
the pole-star; and Nelson and Wellington were unknown to the stories
of his childhood, for as yet their fame was not. Goethe and Schiller
were in the prime of early manhood; Kant and Klopstock elderly, but
with years yet to live; Scott was just laying down his poet's pen and
preparing to take up the immortal quill with which he wrote his first
"Waverley;" Moore was singing his sweet melodies; Wordsworth had yet
to lay the foundations of the "Lake Poetry;" and the fair boy, Byron,
was chanting his early songs, not yet for many a year to die at
Missolonghi.

This wonderful old man of ninety, gayly stooping to kiss the hand of a
lady to-night in his hospitable palace, like the young man that he is,
has a memory stretching from the battle of Austerlitz across the
gigantic struggles of the century to the battle of Sedan,--all of
which he has seen, and a part of which he has been!

IX.

STREETS, PARKS, CEMETERIES, AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS.

For a hundred years the picturesque Brandenburg Gate has guarded the
entrance to Unter den Linden from the Thiergarten. It is a monument of
the reversion of royal taste from the devotion to French style, which
characterized Frederick the Great, to the purely classical. It is
nearly two hundred feet in width, its five openings being guarded by
six massive Doric columns about forty-five feet in height. To
foot-passengers, riders, and ordinary vehicles the two outer spaces on
each side are devoted respectively, while the wide central passage is
traversed only by the royal carriages. The celebrated quadriga with
the figure of Victory, on the entablature, was first placed with the
face toward the Park. When the First Napoleon robbed Berlin, along
with other cities, for the adornment of Paris, he carried off this
masterpiece in bronze and set it up in the Place du Carrousel under
the shadow of the Tuileries. Upon Napoleon's downfall in 1814, this
group was restored to its original place, but was set facing the Unter
den Linden, makin