in drill were concerned, seldom failed to observe faults in this direction, and for this reason was very much feared by the officers. The so-called Kaiser-Parade' of the Vienna garrison, which was held every spring on the 'Schmelz' parade-ground, cast many an ominous shadow before it. Not infrequently, on such occasions, an imperial storm burst over the head of one or other of the regimental commanders; but it should be added that, as a rule, these outbreaks had no further consequences for the victims.

It was not therefore lack of temperament, as might be supposed, which caused Kaiser Franz Josef to refrain from such expressions of opinion as were often uttered by Kaiser Wilhelm; but he always had his temperament so well under control that it never played him any tricks. Indeed his excessive reserve in speech and manner alienated many people, and even in Austria Kaiser Wilhelm was held to be by far the more distinguished monarch; this was especially the case in German nationalist circles and among the Magyars. There were indeed plenty of people who were not a little impressed by Kaiser Wilhelm's pompous manner and loud-sounding phrases, and who, because he spoke on every imaginable subject, considered him to be gifted both as man and ruler, which was in fact very far from the truth. Beside this loud and glaring personality, Kaiser Franz Josef, from whose lips a notable word was never heard to fall and whose sphere of interest was so much more restricted, did indeed appear pale, impersonal, even insignificant, quite apart from the fact that the great difference in age was to his disadvantage. Those, however, who did not permit themselves to be dazzled by Kaiser Wilhelm's versatility and excessive self-assertion, had to admit that he was something of a braggart, whereas Kaiser Franz Josef had a genuine individuality and was certainly the better and wiser ruler of the two.

It is indeed incontestable that he was lacking in originality; his was a more conventional nature which travelled along the well-worn grooves of tradition and carefully avoided any divergence from that path. Nevertheless, it would seem that, in his youth the Kaiser had a more definite personality, which was worn down and obliterated in the course of time by the many experiences,

mostly unhappy, of his long reign, so that the distinct colours which were perhaps there at first had faded more and more and gradually vanished. But this much is certain and cannot be denied, that his sphere of intellectual interests had always been a very narrow one. He never cared much for science or art, with the exception of painting; and it has never been reported of him that he expressed sympathy with this or the other poet. As a matter of fact, he had one favourite pursuit onlyhunting, to which he remained faithful to the end of his life. Apart from this, he sought in the society of his friend Frau Schratt the relief and recreation in which his great sense of duty only permitted him to indulge to a limited extent.

His relations with this lady were an open secret, which no one took amiss, with the exception of the clergy. He himself made no mystery of it, and during his summer residence at Ischl he used to spend every afternoon at his friend's villa. An indication of the unusual nature of this relation was given by the fact that his wife knew of it and gave evidence of a real feeling of sympathy with Frau Schratt; that the Empress went so far as to present this lady with her portrait was surely by no means an ordinary occurrence. The people begrudged the Kaiser this relief all the less because it was well known how unhappy he was in his family life. His marriage with Princess Elizabeth of Bavaria had been a love-match on his part, which is not surprising in view of her extraordinary charm. But her independent and self-willed nature, which had developed in comparative freedom, could not feel at home amid the Spanish ceremonial of the Viennese Court, and put her out of sympathy with her husband, so that a feeling of coldness and estrangement arose between them, which led, in the course of time, to an actual though not official separation. They led their own lives apart and met but seldom. If the Kaiser was in any way to blame for this state of affairs it was certainly much against his will, for, just because he had at other times always to be the 'Kaiser,' he occasionally felt the necessity of being human also; and, as he could not satisfy this need at home, he sought to do so elsewhere and found what he sought in the company of Frau Schratt.

In spite of this estrangement, he felt the tragic death of his wife very deeply; perhaps, as a man, he felt it even more deeply than that of his only son Rudolf. The effect on him of the news of Archduke Rudolf's death is said to have been terrible; but here it was doubtless rather the monarch who found himself bereft of his sole heir than the father who had lost an insubordinate and troublesome son; for the relations between father and son had been very unhappy. Like his mother, whose nature he had apparently inherited, Rudolf felt ill at ease in the strict, narrow-minded atmosphere of the Court; and in his rebellion against it he turned to a far worse extreme—a deliberate contempt and scorn of those considerations which were due to his position. Such behaviour was especially calculated to offend and embitter the Kaiser, who set such store by dignity and the duties of royalty, so that a gulf stretched between them which grew ever wider and deeper. The Kaiser, however, cannot be altogether absolved from blame for this unhappy estrangement, for, by the very fact that he jealously kept his son apart from affairs of State, he naturally helped, though unintentionally, to drive him deeper and deeper into the wild Don Juan-like paths which led to so tragic a conclusion. It was the ugly and painful circumstances attending the Crown-Prince's death that probably caused his father the bitterest suffering of his life, suffering more bitter than could have been caused by his death alone. For how deeply must the Kaiser have suffered with his proud nature, his dignified reserve, his horror of anything which might excite scandal-through the enormous sensation caused by this death, which stirred the whole world with its bloodstained eroticism, and unloosed a perfect deluge of the most revolting type of sensational journalism.

Of the population of his kingdom, numbering over fifty millions, there can, indeed, be but few who have experienced such an abundance of tragedy within their own family circle. His brother Maximilian, executed as Emperor of Mexico; his wife killed by the hand of an assassin; his nephew and heir also; added to these, other painful events in his family, not to speak of the heavy blows dealt him by fate in his capacity of ruler. The whole constituted such an immense tragedy that it would

not have been wonderful if he had collapsed beneath it. The wonder was that he did not collapse-a miracle to be explained not only by the extraordinary elasticity of his physical constitution, but doubtless also by the selfsufficiency and calmness of his nature which gave him a spiritual equilibrium that even the most terrible blows of fate could not permanently injure. This tragedy helped, moreover, to gain for him, through pity, feelings of sympathy which would otherwise probably not have been accorded him to such an extensive degree. People saw a crown of thorns upon his grey head, from which a radiance emanated. This radiance added a warmer tone to the frigid halo which had encircled him, and thus increased his popularity. For popularity he enjoyed, however far removed from the people his nature essentially was. In the early days, indeed, especially at the time when he was under the evil influence of General Count Grünne, there were few signs of popular favour. It only became evident in the course of years, and was perhaps mainly due to the force of habit. His people had become used to regarding him as their ruler; three generations, from childhood to age, had known no other Kaiser; and they could scarcely imagine that there would ever be any other Kaiser in Austria than this kindly old gentleman with the characteristic white whiskers, who had suffered so many misfortunes and still had to endure so much as sovereign, owing to the difficulties of his position. Thus custom and pity wove about him a species of popularity which his own personality would scarcely have won.

II. ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND.

ALTHOUGH Archduke Franz Ferdinand never came to the Habsburg throne, nevertheless in considering the last of the Habsburgs he must not be omitted; for, in spite of the fact that Franz Josef's jealous love of power limited his sphere of action, he succeeded, as heir apparent, in making his influence felt very effectively, and would have been destined to play an important part on the political stage. To the public, Franz Ferdinand appeared as a sort of shrouded figure like that of Sais, whose veils their fingers were always itching to lift.

But these veils were never to be completely raised, this curiosity was never to be entirely satisfied, for Franz Ferdinand passed into the great darkness before the chiaroscuro in which he was hidden during his lifetime could be illuminated. Those, however, who were closely connected with him, or who had any opportunity of considering him attentively and impartially, even if it were through the veils which shrouded him from publicity, were able to perceive the outlines of his personality so clearly that for them it had no mystery, and they realised that his individuality was the most remarkable produced by the House of Habsburg since the Emperor Josef II.

The tragic death of the Crown Prince Rudolf on Jan. 30, 1889, caused Archduke Franz Ferdinand to take a prominent place before the world. Although the next heir to the throne would, in fact, have been the Emperor's brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, it was taken for granted that the latter would resign his right to the throne in favour of his eldest son, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, especially since, in view of the Emperor's vigorous constitution, he would not have succeeded until he was well advanced in years. The public knew little of Franz Ferdinand, and that little was not calculated to excite sympathy for him or to cause any great hopes to be set on him; for rumour attributed to him, as to his younger brother Otto, all manner of frivolous escapades in which he had played no very creditable rôle. When it became known that he was suffering from tuberculosis, a disease which he had inherited from his mother, who had died while still in her youth, and that on this account he was obliged to go south, it was generally believed that there was no question of his succeeding, even if he survived the Emperor; and his younger brother Otto, who was married and had sons, was regarded as the future sovereign. But this belief was, before long, seen to have been erroneous, for Franz Ferdinand soon let it be known that he was not prepared to renounce the throne to which, after the death of his father, he had become the immediate heir.

The first time that he courted publicity was when he accepted the patronage (Protektorat) of the Catholic Schulverein and, on this occasion, let fall a significant