and to the manner used, for this is the duke to
whom Prince Alfred of England is next heir.

The yellow pamphlet was brought to life in
consequence of a sketch of the duke by Herr
Eduard Schmidt-Weissenfels, who wrote, after
a stay in Gotha—during which he learnt
himself to appreciate the duke, and observed how
little he was appreciated by his people— his
skefch of the duke, in the Leipziger Sonntagsblatt,
a journal widely read in Thuringia, and taken
in by many of the wise men of Gotha. It was
a frank sketch, of which the friendliness might
excuse the impertinence. Fetching the duke
so far out of his privacy that we are almost told
in it where he gets his cigars, the article does
him a large measure of justice, while it very
boldly and plainly sets forth the fact, and the
assigned causes, of his unpopularity, within his
own domain. Only a German who talks in his
preface like M. Schmidt-Weissenfels, about his
highness's objectivity and subjectivity, would
think of anatomising that or any other living
highness with so curious a scalpel. The
peculiarly frank and friendly character of the prince
given over to this sort of friendly vivisection,
could alone make such an operation possible.
The design of the duke's friend was to smoke
a pipe of peace over the duke, while cutting
him up to show his subjects particularly as well
as Germany generally, what was in him, and to
increase good will by the establishment of better
understanding. The duke not only submitted
kindly to the knife, but, taking up a scalpel of
his own, magnanimously has assisted with his
own hand in dissection of himself.

Schmidt-Weissenfels, as demonstrator of
ducal anatomy, thus makes his first incision in
the outer tissue of his subject.—When you leave
the solitary Gotha railway station, a broad road
leads between some ploughed fields to a noble
avenue of trees, with elegant and pleasant villas
set in gardens, and a few even palatial houses
upon either side. This is the entrance to the
pleasant ducal town of Gotha, second capital
of Thuringia, the town itself being here
concealed from view behind the park, with its great
pines, beeches, oaks, and chesnut-trees, high
above whose tops rises the imposing structure
of the ducal residence, built in the days of the
Thirty Years' War by Duke Ernest the Pious.
The black slate roof and the two towering wings
of this Friedenstein are to be seen from far
away upon the fields and mountains of
Thuringia.

Right and left of the town is a level cultivated
plain, but on the other side of the railway begins
the upward swell into the Thuringian forest-
covered mountain chain, with the Inselsberg
high above all. Pleasant Gotha, with its little
white houses, gardens, and villas, lies in its
smiling plain near to the mighty hills, and at the
feet of the great residence surrounded by its
park. It is a much cozier town than Weimar,
and its sixteen thousand inhabitants are only too
well disposed to enjoy themselves, letting the
world run as it will. A few elegant shops, and
the abundance of crinoline, testify to the fact
that Gotha is a ducal residence, but the Gotha
tradesmen and mechanics do not work very
hard, and are given to long gossip over the beer-
jug after their day's work is done.

Gotha is strictly a ducal residence only from
New Year to Easter. The rest of the year the
duke gives to Coburg, his other capital, and
Reinhardsbrunn, his autumn hunting-box, for
the Duke Ernest is one of the most vigorous of
sportsmen, and has half the Thuringian forest
—much of it bought at high price from unwilling
sellers—for his game preserve.

Where the duke is, the theatre is: at Gotha
from New Year to Easter; at Coburg the rest
of the year, except in the months from July to
September. It is a court theatre, of course,
and the duke's taste for theatrical amusement,
but especially for music, in which he has a
special genius of his own, causes it to be
remarkably well cared for. The Gotha Theatre,
with an imposing front and bad interior, is
excelled by not more than two theatres of Germany
in the completeness of its scenery, machinery,
and stage appointments. It is open four nights
a week, twice for plays, and twice for operas.
The duke himself is present at nearly all the
performances—not in the great state box, which
he leaves to his courtiers, but in a little stage
box, where he gossips with his wife, watches
closely all that is good, applauds as heartily as
any man all that he likes, and can slip out now
and then between the acts, by a side door, to
the stage, to compliment and to give personal
directions as the manager-in-chief. One of his
councillors, who has written patriotic plays, is
now his stage director. The Gotha people want
their theatre. Every one who can subscribes
for the season. The house holds sixteen
hundred, and the town only holds sixteen thousand,
yet the house is always full.

Another circumstance attendant on the duke's
presence in Gotha, is the great court ball in
January. Five or six hundred of the Gotha
people are invited. Then between the ancestral
portraits in the corridor, and in the state saloons
of Friedenstein, low pitched, but highly
ornamented in rococo, are all the officials in gold
and silver uniforms, blazing into darkness the
score of military officers who represent the chiefs
of the Gotha contingent to the Prussian army.
These gold and silver gentlemen are comfortable,
easy folk, too lazy by far for the work of dancing.
The duke himself, in the gay uniform of a
Prussian cuirassier, does dance; he does make
plunges out of the knot of court ladies and
gentlemen, into the flock of daughters of the
burgesses, nearly all arrayed in white, who
huddle together and wait patiently for partners.
He is ready to dance with the prettiest, to talk
with those whom he knows, and in little Gotha
everybody knows everybody, though everybody
except only the duke, does belong to a small
and particular clique that knows nobody outside
its own limits. The duchess, too, an unaffected
and kind-hearted woman, enters with hospitable
smiles and friendly words among that flock,
towards which her great ladies deign scarcely a