Of course he could not bear the strain of this constant activity if he were not endowed with two great gifts--prodigious physical vitality and imagination. Mere strength alone, mated with dulness of mind, would be broken down and destroyed by the wear and tear of such a life. William is, physically and mentally, the heir of the best things which European royalty has to offer. He inherits the bodily force and resolution of the Hohenzollerns, the _savoir faire_ and comeliness of the Guelphs, the intellectual acuteness and philosophical tastes of the Coburgs, and the romantic mediaeval Ascanien strain which Catherine II took to Russia and her granddaughter brought back again to Weimar--a leaven half divine half daemonic, which swings between genius and madness. The product of these marriages might be expected to be what he is--by far the most striking personality in the whole gallery of contemporary kings. What other dynasty in Western Europe does not envy William his six handsome, sturdy, and superbly healthy little sons? Seeing them with their shining, bright-eyed faces and ordinary well-worn clothes, one cannot but reflect upon the contrast afforded at Vienna, where the great rival house of Hapsburg is dying miserably out in pallid epileptics and vicious dullards. These six fine boys, the oldest of whom is now in his tenth year, are reared in the Spartan traditions of the Hohenzollerns. Winter and summer they are up at six o’clock and into their cold tubs with merciless punctuality. As a rule they breakfast with their father half an hour later, and throughout the meal he talks with them alone. They salute him on entering, and again on leaving, in military fashion; even at this tender age a considerable portion of their education is upon martial subjects. The Emperor, in his recent speech at Bonn, indicated an intention of having the Crown Prince eventually matriculate there, but for the present, as soon as the lads outgrow their private tutors it is understood that they are to go to the great cadet school at Lichterfelde, just outside Berlin. Evidently the _gymnasium_ has no part in the plans for their education.