Alongside the writing desk and its belongings stand two chairs covered like the sofa, in one of which the Prince is accustomed to sit on the appearance of a visitor, while he invites his guest to occupy the other. At work he uses the oak armchair, with a low open back, which stands behind the writing-table. On his right-hand side is an _etagère_, upon the top of which rests the bronze figure of a greyhound, and some writing paper and envelopes, lower down some leather portfolios with documents, and quite at the bottom four or five thick folio volumes. On the left of the writer is another stand, with some handbooks. On a visit which I paid to the room in 1873, I found among these books the thick volumes of the “List of Orders” from 1862 to 1868, a number of Petermann’s “Mittheilungen,” Marten’s “Guide Diplomatique,” a collection of Hymns, “Hymnarium, Bluethen lateinischer Kirchenpoesie” (Halle, 1868), Gottfried Cohn’s “Constitution and Procedure of the British Parliament,” Joel’s “Lessons in the Russian Language according to Ollendorff’s System,” and Schmidt’s “Small Russian and German Dictionary.” On the green baize cover of the writing-table usually lies a fold of red blotting paper on which the Chancellor writes. To the right of this under a glass shade we notice a gilt clock, on which a painter in Spanish costume sits with a pencil and drawing board. We also observe on the green cloth a plain white porcelain writing stand with a little gilding, four or five lead pencils of the largest variety, such as the Minister now principally uses, and half-a-dozen quill pens with the feathers cut short, which are prepared by the artistic hand of Hofrath Willisch, one of the decipherers, a paper knife, a seal, a couple of sticks of sealing wax, and a candlestick with two candles. In 1873 various additions were made: a paper-weight, with a piece of the famous colossal zinc lion that stood up to 1864 in the churchyard of Flensburg as a monument of the Danish victory at Idstedt, and which has now been added to the trophies in the Berlin Zeughaus, and two other paper-weights made of thick metal discs, one of which had been cast from an Austrian cannon captured in 1866, and the second from one of the French cannon taken in 1870; a pen-wiper in black, red, and white; two columnar cigar-cutters; an ash-tray, in the form of a large flower like a tulip, which, together with the two objects last mentioned, have now been removed, as the Prince has given up smoking for several years past on account of his health. Besides these, some old Roman bronze lamps with handles formed of green serpents, a terra-cotta pot with the figures of Massinissa and Sophonisba; and finally, at that time, a few books lay on the table: the red bound “Army List,” Hirth’s “Parlaments-almanach,” the Gotha handbooks, a railway guide, and Henry Wheaton’s “Commentaire du Droit international.”