He is just back from the Berlin Congress, bringing "Peace with Honor." The Continent has stood a-tiptoe to see the wonderful English Earl pass and repass. He has been the lion of a congress that included Bismarck. The laurels and the Oriental palm placed by his landlord on the hotel-balcony have but faintly typified the feeling of Europe. His feverous reception in England, from Dover pier onwards, has recalled an earlier, a more romantic world. Fathers have brought their little ones to imprint upon their memories the mortal features of this immortal figure, who passes through a rain of flowers to his throne in Downing Street. The London press, with scarce an exception, is in the dust at his feet--with the proud English nobles and all that has ever flouted or assailed him. The sunshine comes floridly through the stained-glass windows, and lies upon the austere crucifix. III By what devious ways has he wandered hither--from that warm old Portuguese synagogue in Bevis Marks, whence his father withdrew under the smart of a fine from "the gentlemen of the Mahamad?" But hark! The parson--as paradoxically--is reading a Jewish psalm. "'_The Lord said unto my lord: Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of thy power out of Zion: be thou ruler in the midst of thine enemies. In the day of thy power shall the people offer thee freewill offerings with a holy worship: the dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning._'" The Earl remains impassive. "Half Christendom worships a Jewess, and the other half a Jew." Whom does he worship? "Sensible men never tell." IV Yet in that facial mask I seem to read all the tale of the long years of desperate waiting, only half sweetened by premature triumphs of pen and person; all the rancorous energies of political strife. And as I gaze, a sense of something shoddy oppresses me, of tinsel and glitter and flamboyance: a feeling that here is no true greatness, no sphinx-like sublimity. A shadow of the world and the flesh falls across the brooding figure, a Napoleonic vulgarity coarsens the features, there is a Mephistophelian wrinkle in the corner of the lips.