Three years of authority have worked such a change in him--or, perhaps better, have brought to the top so many strong and admirable qualities in him which had been dwarfed and obscured by adverse circumstances--that the world has insensibly come to alter its opinion of his character. We think of him no longer as a firebrand. He preserves enough of the eccentricities of a nervous and impetuous individuality, it is true, to still impart to public scrutiny of his words and deeds an element of apprehension. One still instinctively reads the reports of his speeches with an eye cast ahead for wild or thoughtless utterances--and only too often, as in the case of the “salamander” remarks to the Borussian Students’ Corps at Bonn the other day, finds what was anticipated. But even in this matter of an over-hasty and unrestrained tongue three years have wrought an important improvement, and in almost all other respects he is unquestionably a better man and a better ruler than the world took it for granted he would be. Doubtless as time goes on we shall come to regard him in a still more altered light. At present what can be fairly said is that he stands out with clearness from among European sovereigns as a living and genuine personality--a young man of imagination, of great activity and executive ability, taking gravely serious views of his duties and responsibilities, keenly anxious to do what he believes to be right, and increasingly disposed to look to wise and elevated sources of judgment for suggestions as to what is right. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Emperor, William II of Germany, by Harold Frederic