I recently read an anecdote concerning the King of Ashantee, which illustrates in a very amusing manner this weakness of human nature. When Major Bowditch was despatched by the English Governor of the Cape of Good Hope as resident ambassador to the court of that powerful African monarch, he sought to ingratiate himself with the courtiers, especially with the court-ladies, by taking their portraits. The king, who was astonished at the accuracy of the likenesses, requested that he also might be painted, and had already had several sittings, when the artist noticed in the features of the king, who had often sprung up to observe the progress of the picture, the peculiar restlessness and embarrassment of one who has a request on the tip of his tongue and yet hesitates to express it. The painter pressed his majesty to tell his wish, until at last the poor African king inquired, in a low voice, if he could not be painted white. And so it is. The swarthy negro king wishes to be painted white. But do not laugh at the poor African: every human being is such another negro king, and all of us would like to appear before the public in a different colour from that which fate has given us. Fully realising this, I took heed not to draw my own portrait in my review of the Romantic school. But in the following pages I shall have ample occasion to speak of myself, and this will to a certain extent fill up the gap caused by the lacking portrait; for I have here undertaken to describe, for the reader's benefit and enlightenment, the philosophical and religious changes which have taken place in the author's mind since my book on Germany was written. Fear not that I shall paint myself too white and my fellow-beings too black. I shall always give my own colours with exact fidelity, so that it may be known how far my judgment is to be trusted when I draw the portraits of others. ...Madame de Staël's hate of the Emperor is the soul of her book, _De l'Allemagne_, and, although his name is nowhere mentioned, one can see at every line how the writer squints at the Tuilleries. I doubt not that the book annoyed the Emperor more than the most direct attack; for nothing so much irritates a man as a woman's petty needle-pricks. We are prepared for great sabre-strokes, and instead we are tickled at the most sensitive spots.