exceptions. He did not, like young Bismarck, drink huge flagons of beer at a sitting, day after day. He was not followed everywhere by a boar-hound. He fought no student's duels—though a secret performance of the kind is mentioned as a probability in the chronicles—or go about looking for trouble generally as the swashbuckling Junker, Bismarck, did; for in the first place his royal rank would not allow of his taking part in the bloody amusement of the Mensur, and his natural disposition, if it was quick and lively, was not choleric enough to involve him in serious quarrel. His studies were to some extent interrupted by military calls to Berlin, for after being appointed second lieutenant in the First Regiment of Foot Guards at Potsdam on his tenth birthday, the Hohenzollern age for entering the army, he was promoted to first lieutenant in the same regiment on leaving Cassel.

For the most part the university lectures he attended were the courses in law and philosophy, and he is not reported to have shown any particular enthusiasm for either subject. The differences between an English and a German university are of a fundamental kind, perhaps the greatest being that the German university does not aim at influencing conduct and character in the same measure as the English, but is rather for the supply of knowledge of all sorts, as a monster warehouse is for the supply of miscellaneous goods. Again, the German university, which, like all American universities except Princetown, has more resemblance to the Scottish universities than to those at Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, is not residential nor divided into colleges, but is departmentalized into "faculties," each with its own professors and privat docentes, or official lecturers, mostly young savants, who have not the rank or title of professor, but have obtained only the venia legendi from the university. The lectures, as a rule of admirable learning and thoroughness, invariably laying great and prosy stress on "development," are delivered in large halls and may be subscribed for in as many faculties as the student chooses, the cost being about thirty shillings or there-abouts per term for each lecture "heard." Outside the university the student enjoys complete independence, which is a privilege highly (and sometimes violently) cherished, especially by non-studious undergraduates, under the name "academic freedom." The German preparing for one or other of the learned professions will probably spend a year or two at each of three, or maybe four, universities, according to the special faculty he adopts and for which the university has a reputation. There are plenty of hard-working students of course; nowadays probably the great majority are of this kind; but to a large proportion also the university period is still a pleasant, free, and easy halting-place between the severe discipline and work of the school and the stern struggle of the working world.

The social life of the English university is paralleled in Germany by associations of students in student "Corps," with theatrical uniforms for their Chargierte or officers, special caps, sometimes of extraordinary shape, swords, leather gauntlets, Wellington boots, and other distinguishing gaudy insignia. The Corps are more or less select, the most exclusive of all being the Corps Borussia, which at every university only admits members of an upper class of society, though on rare occasions receiving in its ranks an exceptionally aristocratic, popular, or wealthy foreigner. To this Corps, the name of which is the old form of "Prussia," the Emperor belonged when at Bonn, and in one or two of his speeches he has since spoken of the agreeable memories he retains in connexion with it and the practices observed by it.

Common to all university associations in Germany—whether Corps, Landsmannschaft, Burschenschaft, or Turnerschaft—is the practice of the Mensur, or student duel. It is not a duel in the sense usually given to the word in England, for it lacks the feature of personal hostility, hate, or injury, but is a particularly sanguinary form of the English "single-stick," in which swords take the place of sticks. These swords (Schläger), called, curiously enough, rapiere, are long and thin in the blade, and their weight is such that at every duel students are told off on whose shoulders the combatants can rest their outstretched sword-arm in the pauses of the combat caused by the duellists getting out of breath; consequently, an undersized student is usually chosen for this considerate office. The heads and faces of the duellists are swathed in bandages—no small incentive to perspiration, the vital parts of their bodies are well protected against a fatal prick or blow, and the pricks or slashes must be delivered with the hand and wrist raised head-high above the shoulder. It is considered disgraceful to move the head, to shrink in the smallest degree before the adversary, or even to show feeling when the medical student who acts as surgeon in an adjoining room staunches the flow of blood or sews up the scars caused by the swords. The duel of a more serious kind—that with pistols or the French rapier, or with the bare-pointed sabre and unprotected bodies—is punishable by law, and is growing rarer each year.

Take a sabre duel—"heavy sabre duel" is the German name for it—arising out of a quarrel in a cafe or beer-house, and in which one of the opponents may be a foreigner affiliated to some Corps or Burschenschaft. Cards are exchanged, and the challenger chooses a second whom he sends to the opponent. The latter, if he accepts the challenge, also appoints a second; the seconds then meet and arrange for the holding of a court of honour. The court will probably consist of old Corps students—lawyer, a doctor, and two or three other members of the Corps or Burschenschaft. The court summons the opponents before it and hears their account of the quarrel; the seconds produce evidence, for example the bills at the cafe or beer-hall, showing how much liquor has been consumed; also as to age, marriage or otherwise, and so on. Then the court decides whether there shall be a duel, or not, and if so, in what form it shall be fought.

The duel may be fixed to take place at any time within six months, and meanwhile the opponents industriously practise. The scene of the duel is usually the back room of some beer-hall, with locked doors between the duellists and the police. The latter know very well what is going on, but shut their eyes to it. The opponents take their places at about a yard and a half distance from advanced foot to advanced foot, and a chalk line is drawn between them. Close behind each opponent is his second with outstretched sword, ready to knock up the duellists' weapons in case of too dangerous an impetuosity in the onset. The umpire (Unparteiischer), unarmed, stands a little distance from the duellists. The latter are naked to the waist, but wear a leather apron like that of a drayman, covering the lower half of the chest, and another piece of leather, like a stock, protecting their necks and jugular veins. The duel may last a couple of hours, and any number of rounds up to as many as two hundred may be fought. The rounds consist of three or four blows, and last about twenty seconds each, when the seconds, who have been watching behind their men in the attitude of a wicket-keeper, with their sword-points on the ground, jump in and knock up the duellists' weapons. When one duellist is disabled by skin wounds—there are rarely any others—or by want of breath, palpitation or the like, the duel is over, and the duellists shake hands. This description, with some slight modifications, applies to the ordinary Corps Mensuren, which are simply a bloody species of gymnastic exercise.

On one occasion early in the reign the Emperor spoke of the Corps system with great enthusiasm, and especially endorsed the practice of the Mensur. "I