[8] The full height of this statue (also the work of Rauch) is, inclusive of the pedestal, somewhat over forty-two feet from the ground. One of the bas-relief tablets which flank the pedestal represents the Apotheosis of the monarch. The visitor to Berlin may recall August Kiss's bronze group, representing the combat of an Amazon with a tiger, on the right side of the Old Museum steps; and Holbein's portrait of George Gyzen, a merchant of London, is No. 586 in the picture galleries of the Museum. It is described by Mr. Ruskin in his article on "Sir Joshua and Holbein" in the _Cornhill Magazine_ of March, 1860, and also in Wornum's "Life and Works of Holbein," p. 260 (London, 1867). [From "The Scotsman," August 6, 1859.] _THE ITALIAN QUESTION._ SCHAFFHAUSEN, _August_ 1, 1859. _Letter to the Editor_ (_of "The Scotsman"_). SIR: I have just received the number of the _Scotsman_ containing my second letter from Berlin, in which there is rather an awkward misprint of "royals" for "rogues," which must have puzzled some of your readers, no less than the general tone of the letter, written as it was for publication at another time, and as one of a series begun in another journal. I am obliged by the admission of the letter into your columns; and I should have been glad to continue in those columns the series I intended, had not the refusal of this letter by the _Witness_[9] shown me the liability to misapprehension under which I should be writing. I had thought that, seeing for these twenty years I have been more or less conversant with Italy and the Italians, a few familiar letters written to a personal friend, at such times as I could win from my own work, might not have been uninteresting to Scottish readers, even though my opinions might occasionally differ sharply from theirs, or be expressed in such rough way as strong opinions must be, when one has no time to polish them into more pleasing presentability. The refusal of the letter by the _Witness_ showed me that this was not so; and as I have no leisure to take up the subject methodically, I must leave what I have written in its present imperfect form. It is indeed not mainly a question of time, which I would spend gladly, though to handle the subject of the present state of Italy with any completeness would involve a total abandonment of other work for some weeks. But I feel too deeply in this matter to allow myself to think of it continuously. To me, the state of the modern political mind, which hangs the slaughter of twenty thousand men, and the destinies of twenty myriads of human souls, on the trick that transforms a Ministry, or the chances of an enlarged or diminished interest in trade, is something so horrible that I find no utterance wherewith to characterize it--nor any courage wherewith to face the continued thought of it, unless I had clear expectation of doing good by the effort--expectation which the mere existence of the fact forbids.