The Imperial host and guests at Berlin must have been
more than usually inclined during the week of festivity to agree with the late Sir G. Cornewall Lewis that life would be very tolerable but for its enjoyments.' They had been embracing, toasting, reviewing, and conferring distinctions on each other and on each other's Ministers all the week, till even the telegrams became quite unreadable, and the details as bad as the late G. P. R. James's accounts of slashed doublets and velvet jerkins. As a grand cere- monial recognition of the new Emperor and Empire, the visit was undoubtedly a great success. Everything was harmonious and magnificent, but it is confidently,—very likely erroneously,— asserted that Prince Bismarck had looked for serious diplomatic results in which he has been disappointed. There seems to be a general consensus of testimony that no written agreements at all events, have resulted, or will result, from the triple meeting at Berlin, but we very much doubt whether anything of that kind was anticipated by the initiated. The most curious incident was the asserted appointment of the Austrian Emperor to the com- mand of the 16th Schleswig-Holstein Regiment of Hussars,— curious, that is, unless, indeed, Francis Joseph has requested and obtained from the Emperor of Germany a promise to carry out the Danish article of the Treaty of Prague, by which the purely Danish strip of Schleswig was to be given back to Denmark. If it be so, which is very improbable, we shall heartily rejoice. If it be not so, Francis Joseph's new uniform will, as the Debats says, be a sort of political Nessus shirt for the humbled and defeated signatary of the Convention of Gastein and the Treaty of Prague. It looks as though Emperor William had been pouring contempt on Emperor Francis—under the outward form of a compliment.
