This was shown by the chorus of unfavourable criticism which the speech to the sculptors drew forth.  No one questioned the sincerity of the Emperor or the magnanimity of his aims, nor was the criticism wholly caused by the suspicion that it savoured of the “personal regiment” under which the people were growing impatient; but many thought he was pushing the dynastic principle too far and unduly interfering with liberty of thought and judgment, and that there was something Oriental as well as selfish in occupying with a gallery of his ancestors, the majority of whom were, after all, very ordinary people, one of the fairest spots in the capital.  Perhaps, however, what was most objected to was his trying to drive the art of the nation into a groove, the direction given by himself:  in trying to inspire it with a particular spirit and that an ancient not a modern spirit, when he ought to let the spirit come of its own accord out of the mind of the people—­the mind of many millions, not the mind of one man, however high his rank.  Politics and government might be things in which he had a right to an authoritative voice, but art, like religion, the people considered to be a matter for individual taste and judgment.

Yet something may be advanced in favour of the Emperor.  His recommendation, for in fact it was and could be only that, was quite in keeping with the traditions of his office and the people’s own view of royal government.  The speech, as was admitted, was suggested by no mere dilettante’s vanity, but, as is evident from his words at the Art Museum, by the conviction that just as it is the imperial duty to provide an efficient army and navy, so it is the imperial duty to use every personal and private, as well as every public and official, effort to provide the people with an art as efficient, as honest, and as clean; and it was inevitable that the art the Emperor recommended was that which he believed, and still believes, to be in conformity with the ideals, as he interprets them, or would have them to be, of the Germanic race.

The speech itself is interesting as showing the Emperor’s attitude towards art and artists and his personal conception of art and its nature.  His attitude is evidently that of the art-loving prince of whom he speaks in the address, a royal Maecenas or di Medici, who gathers artists round him; but he means to use them, not so much perhaps for art’s sake, as for the instruction and elevation of his folk.  A very laudable aim; only, as it happens, the folk in this matter desire themselves to decide what is improving and elevating for them and what is not.  They are not willing to leave the exclusive choice to the Emperor.

The Emperor, again, would give the artist the freedom to put into his work “that from himself which any artist must, if he is to give the work the stamp of his own individuality.”  This attitude, too, is admirable, but on the other hand lies the danger, such is poor human nature, that the individuality will be that which the Emperor wishes it to be, not the artist’s independent individuality To the foreign eye all the Hohenzollern statues in the Siegesallee, with the exception possibly of two or three, seem to have much the same individuality, though that again may be due to the nature of the subject and the foreigner’s inherent and ineradicable predispositions.