to receive a higher official title than his own. The most common case of this is giving the title of Imperial Councillor to merchants, especially to such as have seats in the Commercial Courts, agriculturists, and also to teachers, officials, &c., yet even this bears no proportion to the Prussian luxury in titles.

C. Decorations.

The matter of orders is one of those things which have attained such wonderful development as almost to touch the border of the ludicrous. There are in all the German States together 309 species of orders and decorations, if we count all their degrees and variations, decorations, and ribbons, and medals. Of these there are in Prussia 116 (there were once 121): viz., Order of the Black Eagle, 1 class, with 2 varieties; Order of the Red Eagle, 5 divisions with 7, 8, 14, 7, and 2 varieties respectively, and 8 more in ribbons; pour le mérite with 5 varieties; Order of the Crown, 4 classes with 8, 6, 4, and 3 varieties respectively; Order of House of Hohenzollern, with 21 varieties; Iron Cross, 3 classes; Order of Johannites, 2 classes; 9 tokens of honour; for women, the Order of Louise, with 6 varieties; Cross of Merit for women and girls. Besides these, the Prince of Hohenzollern can, under royal approval, bestow a cross of merit which has 5 variations.

In Bavaria there are 33: viz., 9 orders-Order of St. Hubert, Order of St. George, Military Order of Max Joseph, Order of Bavarian Crown, Order of St. Michael, Order of Maximilian for Art and Science, Order of Louis, Order of Military Merit, Cross of Merit. Four of these have respectively 3, 6, 5, 6 variations. Then there are medals and crosses of merit besides.

Kingdom of Saxony.-5 orders with 21 variations, and 1 medal, in all 22.

Kingdom of Wurtemberg.-4 orders with 15 variations, besides 8 medals, and tokens of good service.

Baden.-3 orders with 14 variations, besides 7 military orders and medals, and 2 Civil medals of merit.

Hesse.-3 orders with 15 variations, and 2 crosses; in all 17. SaxeWeimar-1 order with 5 variations, and 2 medals; in all 7. Mecklenburg-1 order with 6 divisions, of which one has 5 variations, 4 medals, and sometimes crosses of merit; in all 15. Anhalt-1 order with 7 variations, 1 medal; in all 8. Brunswick-1 order with 3 varieties. Lippe-1 order with 3 varieties, and 2 medals; in all 5. Oldenburg— 1 order with 7 variations, 3 medals, sometimes crosses of honour; in all 10. Reuss-2 orders with 3 variations each; in all 6. Saxon Duchies -1 order with 9 variations. Schwarzenberg-1 order with 4 varieties. Waldeck-1 order with 2 varieties, and 1 medal; in all 3.

All the remaining States of Europe, including the dominion of the Pope, have together 76 orders, with perhaps 170 variations. All the States of the world, excluding Germany, have between them 100 orders with, at most,

210 variations. Consequently, Germany does more alone in this article than all the rest of the world put together. And when we consider the number of persons decorated by their own Governments in proportion with population, not only Germany, but every single German State, does more than all the rest of Europe combined. In this respect also Prussia heads the list. How great is the number of orders given away every year may be learnt from the circumstance that the Budget for the General Orders Commission shows its expenses for 1875 to have been 214,633 marks; for 1876, 51,292 marks; for 1877, 188,286 marks; for 1878, 176,721 marks; for 1879, 171,922 marks. Of the last sum, 120,000 went for the purchase of decorations, &c. It must be understood, however, that every man who receives an order (unless it be a decoration in brilliants, the iron cross, or a medal for saving life) has to subscribe a deed binding himself to restore the decoration at his death. This is the case in most of the other German States also, and in Austria. Thus the number of decorations increases in an astonishing manner. In order to make it clear by example how the matter stands, we will extract from the latest "Hof und Staats Handbücher" the figures for some of the German States. Take Prussia for the year 1879. In the Foreign Office in that year, the Minister, every Councillor, and every other kind of official, had at least one Prussian order; the three heads and 17 councillors had between them 39. In the Finance Office, the chief and 23 directors and councillors had 29; in the office of the Ministry of Worship and Education, the chief and 31 directors and councillors had 40. It is the same in the other Ministerial offices, and in the Provincial Governments. It will be enough to specify the state of the matter in the Rhine province. In it the 124 members of the 5 sets of governing officials have 98 Prussian orders. At the University of Berlin the 66 ordinary professors have 75, at Bonn the 51 ordinary professors have 41, and at Göttingen 60 ordinary professors have 32. Exactly so is it in other branches of the State service likewise. Out of the 67 members of the Supreme Court, 59 have Prussian decorations, and they have 65 among them. Out of the 46 members of the Court of Appeal in Berlin, 25 have orders, and have 32 among them; 18 of the 3 in Cologne have 19 among them; 5 of the 8 at Arnsberg have 5; 16 of the 25 at Breslau have 21. If we turn to the lower officials, we see the same thing. One province will be enough to look at, for the circumstances of all are alike. In the Rhine province there are 62 councillors of the province (Landräthe), of whom 36 possess orders, and they have 53 between them; there are 63 district physicians, of whom 27 possess orders, and these have 29 among them; there are 29 rectors of gymnasia, and 10 of them have an order each. From these facts will be already apparent a certain inequality, which appears in all directions down to the smallest affairs. The Ministers take the best care for the councillors immediately about them. The functionaries of the Office for

The judicial func

the Interior receive the lion's share of the favours. tionaries receive less, and, if we except the Universities, the educational and medical staffs receive least of all. On the other hand, the subaltern functionaries are throughout very abundantly provided for. No further proof is needed, that it is a rare thing in Prussia for a functionary to be ten years in the service without possessing a decoration. If it is asked what are the occasions when orders or distinctions of any kind are bestowed, the answer is, that they are very manifold and various, that the distinction often assumes the character of drink-money, or takes the place of those presents of gold snuff-boxes or gold medals which used to be common in earlier times, and which, for that matter, are even yet frequent, and partly that there is no other reason for conferring the distinctions but the traditional custom of bestowing them.

The number of decorations and tokens of honour conferred every year on Prussian subjects is enormous. At the Ordensfest (18th January) several hundreds are bestowed every year, and sometimes as many as 1000. It is almost the exception when a number of the daily Official Gazette, the Staats Anzeiger, appears which contains no intimation of the bestowal of an order. In the year 1878 the number bestowed on the 18th of January was over 1000; in the first quarter of 1878 it amounted to nearly 1400; in the months of September, October, and the first fifteen days of November alone there were 1158, of which 352 were given to military men. It would be interesting to know the total number of Prussian orders and decorations of all kinds which Prussian subjects possess. One would hardly err if he set down the number of persons of both sexes, including the military, who have an order at 30,000 at least, and the total number of decorated persons at 100,000. In a population of, in round numbers, 26,000,000, there is certainly one knight of an order for every 90 inhabitants, and one decorated person for every 25, and that in such circumstances it should be rare when a man in any kind of good position has no order is as intelligible as the universal struggle in the same circumstances to obtain one. If we look now to the military, their advantage, as compared with the civil functionaries, is immense. It is a very exceptional thing for an officer who is not very young to want an order. This is easily explained from the more favoured position of the military in itself, as well as from the circumstance that everything bearing on the personnel of the army depends on the person of the king; that the army is his most peculiar domain, and that he comes to know its performances personally at manœuvres and reviews. It is perfectly intelligible that distinctions should be specially conferred on soldiers, who must put their lives to peril, on account of their achievements in war, and the officers who did not receive the Iron Cross, or some other order, after the war of 1870-71, are the rarest exceptions. But why, in time of peace, military exercise, good drill, good generalship, and the like, should count for more than solid judicial work, and the like, is not so easy to see.

In Baden, in 1876, there were, not counting members of the reigning family, 12 persons invested with the order of Fidelity (Treue), 191 with the military order of merit of Charles Frederick (4 Grand Crosses, 13 Commanders, 174 Knights), 1253 Badeners Badeners with the Lion of Zähringer (18 Grand Crosses, 43 Commanders of the 1st class, 85 of the 2nd class, 675 Knights of 1st class, 431 of 2nd); so that there is one possessor of this order for every 1203 souls in the country, and the order has, besides these, 709 other members who are Germans, but not Badeners (73 Grand Crosses, 64 Commanders of the 1st class, 75 of 2nd, 415 Knights of 1st class, 82 of 2nd). When we put all the orders together which Badeners possess, there is certainly one decorated person for every 800 or 900 inhabitants.

In Würtemberg there were in 1877, 2286 subjects who were invested with Würtemberg orders-viz., 628 with the order of the Crown of Würtemberg, whose decorations down to the rank of Knights of the 1st class confer personal nobility, and in this way make 441 persons noble, if they are not so by birth; 131 with the military order of merit, which involves a pension and personal nobility; 1154 with the order of Frederick; 373 with the order of Olga. There is thus one Knight of an order for every 822 inhabitants in the country, and if we take medals into account, then there is certainly one decorated person for every 500 inhabitants. The number of orders conferred on foreigners is about equally great with the number bestowed on subjects of the kingdom. The decoration of nobility which the landed proprietors of noble birth and the heads of old families possess, is a peculiarity.

In Bavaria, in 1879, there were 1941 Bavarian subjects decorated, of whom 51 had the order of George, 51 the military order of Max Joseph, 302 the order of merit of the Bavarian Crown, 1412 the order of Michael, 27 the order of Maximilian, 98 the Cross of Honour. The order of the Crown involves personal nobility, and so does that of Maximilian; and this explains why in Bavaria and Würtemberg almost all the higher State functionaries are noble. If they leave the country they still keep the nobility implied in the order they possess, and their wives and children also make use of it; so that it not infrequently occurs that a family acquires nobility for itself without having any right to it, simply by constantly writing "von" before their names. proportion of decorated persons to population is 1 in 2575.

The

From these facts, it is manifest that there is a much smaller thirst for crosses and titles in South Germany than in North. But there is one point in which the South, on the other hand, takes the pre-eminence, and that is the circumstance of personal nobility, which is unknown in North Germany and Austria. It is from this circumstance that it arises, that in South Germany-and the same custom prevails in Austria -it is bon ton to address every man as Herr von," and every woman as "Frau von," and that to neglect to do so is taken very ill.

In the matter of orders Austria shows itself to great advantage. It

:—

has five Knightly orders, viz. :-1. The order of the Golden Fleece, founded on 10th January, 1429, by Philip the Good of Burgundy. It has only one class, which is conferred only on Catholics, and mostly on persons belonging to the high nobility and reigning houses, and it has 38 Knights not belonging to sovereign houses. 2. The military order of Maria Theresa, with three classes (Grand Cross, Commander, Knight) and 48 Knights, who are Austrian residents, without belonging to the royal family. 3. Order of St. Stephen, founded 5th May, 1764, with three classes (Grand Cross, Commander, Knight), and 122 members who are Austrian subjects. 4. Order of Leopold, founded 6th January, 1808, with the same three classes and 752 members Austrian subjects. 5. Order of the Iron Crown, founded 1st January, 1816, with Knights of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd classes and 2109 members Austrian subjects. The Knights of the Iron Crown of Class III. and those of the order of Leopold are entitled, if they are Austrian subjects and do not already belong to the nobility, to claim by law their elevation to the hereditary Knighthood, which is then conferred on them by Imperial diploma. (The Austrian nobility has the following classes: Noble (Edler), Knight (Ritter), Baron (Freiherr), Count (Graf), Prince (Fürst.)) The Knights of the order of Maria Theresa and St. Stephen, the Knights of Class II. of the Iron Crown, and the Commanders of the order of Leopold, and of course in the same way the higher grades, can claim elevation to the rank of barons, if they are not so already. The Grand Crosses of these orders are on request granted the dignity of a Privy Councillor and the title of Excellency, if they do not possess these already. To the order of Maria Theresa pensions are also attached. 6. Order of Francis Joseph,

founded on 2nd December, 1849, with Grand Cross, Commander, Knight; it has 3150 Austrian subjects for members. The total number of Austrian subjects who possess orders (including those who were Austrians when they received them) is thus 6519.

Austria has something over 5,000,000 fewer inhabitants than the German Empire, and nearly 12,000,000 more than Prussia, more than seven times as many as Bavaria, nearly 18 times as many as Würtemberg, 25 times as many as Baden. Now, it has been shown above that in Baden, in 1876, nearly one-fourth as many Badeners had Badish orders that in Würtemberg, in 1877, more than one-third as many Würtembergers had Würtemberg orders-that in Bavaria, in 1879, nearly one-third as many Bavarians had Bavarian orders-as, in 1879, there were Austrians who had Austrian orders. The three States mentioned have not, taken together, a fourth part of the population of Austria, and yet the number of subjects in them who possess native orders is certainly greater than in Austria, Prussia, which sometimes gives to its subjects in a single year a third, or even half as many orders as Austrian subjects possess altogether, has certainly four or five times as many subjects wearing Prussian orders as Austria has subjects wearing Austrian ones. But there is another point that deserves attention.