that may have been because his left hand was leaning on his sword-hilt.  Captain H——­ told me he could not put on his overcoat without assistance, and that the hand is so weak he can do very little with it.  There was nothing of a Hohenzollern hanging under-lip.”

The following judgment was formed a year or two ago by an American diplomatist:  “I have often met him,” the diplomatist said,

“and only speak of the impression he made on me.  I would describe him as intelligent rather than intellectual.  He appreciates men of learning and of philosophic mind, and while not learned and philosophic himself, enjoys seeing the learned and philosophic at work, and gladly recognizes their merit when their labours are thorough and well done.  His mind is marvellously quick, but it does not dwell on anything for long at a time.  It takes in everything presented to it in, so to speak, a hop, skip, and jump.

“In company he is never at rest, and surprises one by his lively play of features and the entirely natural and unaffected expression of his thoughts.  He is sitting at a lecture, perhaps, when a notion occurs to him, and forthwith indicates it by a humorous grimace or wink to some one sitting far away from him.  He is always saying unexpected things.  On the whole, he is a right good fellow, and I can imagine that, though he can come down hard on one with a heavy hand and stern look, he does not do so by the instinct of a despot, but acting under a sense of duty.”

Another diplomatist has remarked the Emperor’s habit in conversation of tapping the person he is talking to on the shoulder and of scrutinizing him all over—­“ears, nose, clothes, until it makes one feel quite uncomfortable.”

The next sketch of him is as he may be seen any day during the yachting week in June at Kiel:—­

“The Emperor is in the smoking-room of the Yacht Club, dressed in a blue lounge suit with a white peaked cap.  He is sitting carelessly on the side of a table, dangling his legs and discussing with fellow-members and foreign yachtsmen the experience of the day, now speaking English, now French, now German.  He seems quite in his element as sportsman, and puts every one at ease round him.  His expression is animated and his voice hearty, if a little strident to foreign ears.  His right hand and arm are in ceaseless movement, emphasizing and enforcing everything he says.  He asks many questions and often invites opinion, and when it differs from his own, as sometimes happens, he takes it quite good-humouredly.”

To-day the Emperor is outwardly much the same as he has just been described.  He is perhaps slightly more inclined to stoutness.  His features, though they speak of cleverness and manliness, are forgotten as one looks into the keen and quickly moving grey eyes with their peculiar dash of yellow.  He is well set up, as is proper for a soldier ever actively engaged in military duties, and his stride continues firm and elastic.  He is still constantly in the saddle.  His hair, still abundant, is yet beginning to show the first touches of the coming frost of age, and the reddish brown moustache, once famous for its haughtily upturned ends, has taken, either naturally or by the aid of Herr Haby, the Court barber, who attends him daily, a nearly level form.