In the second place, the Emperor is an exceedingly intelligent and highly cultivated man. His mental processes are swift, but they go also very deep. He is a searching inquirer, and questions and listens more than he talks. His fund of knowledge is immense and sometimes astonishing. He manifests interest in everything, even to the smallest detail, which can have any bearing upon human improvement. I remember a half hour's conversation with him once over a cupping glass, which he had gotten from an excavation in the Roman ruin called the Saalburg, near Homburg. He always appeared to me most deeply concerned with the arts of peace. I have never heard him speak much of war, and then always with abhorrence, nor much of military matters, but improved agriculture, invention, and manufacture, and especially commerce and education in all their ramifications, were the chief subjects of his thought and conversation. I have had the privilege of association with many highly intelligent and profoundly learned men, but I have never acquired as much knowledge, in the same time, from any man whom I have ever met, as from the German Emperor.

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