The Emperor of Germany has been well received at Kiel,
where he has been present at the ceremony of christening a new iron- clad, and has given it the name of Frederick the Great.' The Emperor must have a larger faith in the power of mere words than the master of so many legions usually cherishes, if he really said, as he is reported to have said at the banquet, that the Navy had gained both by the construction of the new ship Friedrich der Grosse,' "and by the name which had been bestowed upon it." "Words are living things,—have hands and feet," said Luther ; but the German Emperor seems to propound a greater paradox, and to suggest that words are rams, big guns, and iron- platings. Perhaps, however, after all, he only meant what Luther meant,—that words have a sort of life of their own, and when livingly used, can pour life into others. And this may be true even of the name of Frederick the Great.' It may really put a new life into the big machine, that its officers should be conscious that it answers to that historic name.
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