at the Belgian Court. A definitive successor was then appointed in the person of von Bülow of Mecklenburg, who (I am also writing for the lay public), as Minister of State and Excellency, must not be confounded with his namesake mentioned above. Count Bismarck-Bohlen and Baron von Gundlach only put in an appearance here occasionally. The former, a cousin of the Chancellor’s, was a lieutenant in the Dragoon Guards and a Councillor of Embassy, and had charge of all sorts of personal affairs of the Chief, principally such as were of little importance. He was also the medium for the Minister’s communications with the Literary Bureau in the Ministry of State, and with Stieber, the chief of the Berlin detective force. Naturally good-natured he was addicted to bragging, played the heathen and the _roué_ on a small scale, and indulged in jokes and puns which were not always bad; but he never carried weight with any one, even the Secretaries upon whom he occasionally tried to shift some of his work shrugging their shoulders at him. All that is to be said of Gundlach, a lean and sickly gentleman, who afterwards died at Lisbon as Chargé d’Affaires, is that he put in an appearance daily for half, or sometimes a whole, hour, glanced at the _Journal des Debats_, _The Times_, &c., chatted for a while, coughed a little, chatted again, and for these labours drew an allowance of six thalers a day. For some time after the war Count Wartensleben, a young and amiable nobleman, who was preparing himself for the diplomatic service, in which he died of cancer in 1880, and Count Solms-Sonnenwalde, who had previously been attached to the Embassy in Paris, and who afterwards acted as Minister first in Brazil, then in Dresden, and finally in Madrid,[2] passed in and out amongst us for a time.