"A huge crag-platform, smooth as burnish'd brass I chose. The ranged ramparts bright From level meadow-bases of deep grass Suddenly scaled the light. "Thereon I built it firm. Of ledge or shelf The rock rose clear, or winding stair. My soul would live alone unto herself In her high palace there." The life of the King of Bavaria, sublimely serene in its independence, is a long series of tranquil omissions. There may be a wedding-feast in one of his palaces, but such an occurrence only seems to him the best of all reasons why he should be in another. He escapes from the pleasures and interests of daily life, making himself an earthly paradise of architecture, music, and gardens, and lost in his long dream, assuredly one of the most poetical figures in the biographies of kings, and one of the most interesting, but how remote from men! This remoteness is due, in great part, to a sincerity of disposition which declines amusements that do not amuse, and desires only those real pleasures which are in perfect harmony with one's own nature and constitution. We like the sociability, the ready human sympathy, of the Prince of Wales; we think that in his position it is well for him to be able to keep all that endless series of engagements, but has not King Louis some claim upon our indulgence even in his eccentricity? He has refused the weary round of false amusements and made his choice of ideal pleasure. If he condescended to excuse himself, his _Apologia pro vitâ sua_ might take a form somewhat resembling this. He might say, "I was born to a great fortune and only ask leave to enjoy it in my own way. The world's amusements are an infliction that I consider myself at liberty to avoid. I love musical or silent solitude, and the enchantments of a fair garden and a lofty dwelling amidst the glorious Bavarian mountains. Let the noisy world go its way with its bitter wranglings, its dishonest politics, its sanguinary wars! I set up no tyranny. I leave my subjects to enjoy their brief human existence in their own fashion, and they let me dream my dream." These are not the world's ways nor the world's view. The world considers it essential to the character of a prince that he should be at least apparently happy in those pleasures which are enjoyed in society, that he should seem to enjoy them along with others to show his fellow-feeling with common men, and not sit by himself, like King Louis in his theatre, when "Tannhauser" is performed for the royal ears alone.