It takes all sorts of art to make an artistic world, as it takes all sorts of people to make the human world: a world with only classic art in it would be as uninteresting and unthinkable as a world in which every one was of the same character, occupation, and dress. But it is time to consider the Emperor a little more in detail in relation to his connexion with the arts. If he were not a first-rate monarch he would probably be a first-rate artist. He said once that if he were to be an artist, he would be a sculptor. But if he is not a professional artist he is a connoisseur, a dilettante in the right sense, a lover of the arts, an art-loving prince. The painter Salzmann tells us how he used to go to the Villa Liegnitz in Potsdam to give Prince William lessons, and how the Empress, then Princess William, used to sit with the pupil and his teacher, discussing technical and art questions. A result of the teaching, in addition to the pictures mentioned elsewhere, was an oil-painting, a sea-fight, which still hangs in the Ravene Gallery in Berlin. In the spring of 1886 the Prince sent his teacher a sketch for criticism. Salzmann wired his opinion to Potsdam, and a telegram came back, "What does 'wind too anxious' mean? is it so stormily painted that you shuddered at it, or is it not stormy enough?" Salzmann is also authority for the statement that the Prince sent in a sea-piece to the annual Berlin Art Exhibition. It was placed ready to be judged, but suddenly disappeared. The Emperor William, it appeared, had decided that it would not do for a future Emperor to compete with professional artists or run the risk of sarcastic public criticism. Naturally since he came to the throne the Emperor has never had time to cultivate his talent as a painter, but has always fed his eyes and mind on the best kind of painting, and brings his sense of form and colour to bear on everything he does or has a voice in. That the Emperor's own taste in painting is of a "classical" kind in a very catholic sense was shown by the personal interest he took in getting together and having brought to Berlin the exhibition of old English masters in 1908. At his request the English owners of many of these treasures agreed to lend them for exhibition in Germany, submitting thereby to the risk of loss or damage, displaying an unselfish disposition to aid in elevating the taste of a foreign people, and at the same time giving Germans a better and more tangible idea of the nation which could produce artists of such nobility of feeling and marvellous technical capacity. The Emperor paid several visits to the exhibition and thousands of Berlin folk followed his example, so that the beauty of the works of Gainsborough, Raeburn, Lawrence, Hoppner, and Romney was for months a topic of enthusiastic conversation in the capital.