Frankfort, could not save him. A new duke was elected, and a constitution proclaimed in Brunswick on the 12th October, 1832.

signal more than enough to throw all the bureaucratists of Berlin into a series of fits of conservative activity, which issued in throwing some of the finest spirits of Germany into the fortress of Spandau, in In Hesse-Cassel, Saxony, and Hanover banishing others to Paris and New York, liberal triumphs of a similar nature were and in putting a violent extinguisher on achieved; but a foolish popular outbreak all liberal and constitutional movements at Frankfort, in the spring of 1831, served for an indefinite period. Of freedom of no purpose but to give the wily Metternich the press, of course, no more was heard; a just text for preaching his favorite gospel, and as for the unity of Germany, it was that all liberalism means mob government, soon discovered that the Diet was not a and mob government, of course, means machinery in any way calculated to usher anarchy and ruin and chaos. In Prussia any such new political entity into exist- affairs remained quiet. Personally the ence. Practically, the board did not, and, | king was much respected, and there were as political nature is constituted could no abuses in the routine of government not, represent Germany at all, but either so glaring as to vex the eyes of the comPrussia or Austria; and during this period of old wives, informers, policemen, and red tape, it practically represented Austria. For fifteen years, till 1830, the whole of that cumbrous and dilatory machine was twirled round the little finger of that archobscurantist Metternich, with a dexterity and a persistency that must command the admiration even of those who have the utmost abhorrence of the cause in which it was exercised; for the children of this world, we read, are wiser in their generation than the children of light.

IV.

THE French Revolution of 1830 sent, as French revolutions generally do, an electric shock through the whole of Europe, and not least through Germany, where much combustible matter had been accumulated, and curses, not loud but deep, against princedom and policedom, were eager for a vent.

The first explosion of this popular discontent took place in the trim little metropolis of Brunswick, where Duke Charles, hastening home from the French capital, planted himself before his angry burghers with the air of a man who was born to do something. But his calibre was by no means equal to his conceit. He no doubt doubled his body-guard, and planted sixteen pieces of cannon in front of his palace, with an attitude that looked heroic enough. But it was all in vain. The people rose in revolt; and the palace rose in flames; and the mighty duke was carried off in the smoke like a scroll of paper, and wafted where the wind might carry him. He was a mere braggadocio with a crown or whatever dukes wear - on his head; a declared incapable pilot in such tempestuous times; so that even Metternich, in whose school he had been trained, pulling the wires of the Diet at

mon spectators into open revolt. Only people felt a strong desire to move their own legs, and their own arms, and their own tongues freely, which under a "paternal government " had hitherto been denied them. It was also a sad humiliation to intellectual and Protestant Prussia to be kept playing second fiddle to the great and proverbially stupid obscurantist people of the south. It was not and it could not be right, that the independence and political unity of the German people, as represented in the Diet, should mean only the subordination of Prussia to Austria, and of both to the pope. Some consolation for this sore affront was afforded by the regula tions for freedom of trade among the German States, which Prussia introduced under the name of Zoll-Verein. A certain social and economical preponderance was thus given to Prussia which, under favorable circumstances, might lead to a thorough undermining of the political weight of Austria in the Diet.

In the year 1840 Frederick William III., the royal bearer of the great memories of 1813, died; and with his successor, Frederick William IV., a new era was expected to be inaugurated. The long-promised constitution, with freedom of the press, and other freedoms comprehended under the familiar term liberalism, would now surely at last make its epiphany in Berlin. But the new king, though a man of uncommon accomplishments, and fitted to adorn either a throne or an armchair in quiet times, was not a man to put a commanding bit into the mouth of the stout democracy of the nineteenth century. His ideas of governmental power were borrowed rather from the Middle Ages than from any existing government, whether in England or France. "No power on earth," he declared, "shall ever succeed in persuading me to change the natural

relation between king and people into a conventional and constitutional one; and never more will I yield to the demand that, between our Lord God in heaven and this country, a written paper shall interpose itself to take the place of the old sacred ties of loyalty by which people and prince are bound together." So the piece of written paper, called the Acts of the Congress of Vienna, and the vows that accompanied it, were trampled under foot by a second Frederick William; and the Prussian people were obliged to content themselves with the institution of provincial or local parliaments, and the shadow of a sort of national assembly called der Vereinigte Landtag, instituted in 1847, all under the sacred thumb of the old military and bureaucratic absolutism.

breaking down the unkindly wall of partition that at present separated the people of Germany from the princes; and in obedience to this bold patriotic summons, the 18th of May saw three hundred and twenty deputies from all parts of Germany assembled in the Paul's Kirche at Frankfort, to deliberate on the political state of the Fatherland, and, out of the ruins of petty princedom, to re-create the splendid medieval empire of the Othos and the Barbarossas. And no doubt if mere German ideas and German patriotic talk could have produced a new German order of things, a German empire would have leapt into existence at the word of command in those days. But these things are not done by mere ideas, however just, and by mere debates, however eloquent. Frankfort Chambers drew up a constitution for the new German empire, appointed a chancellor, the Archduke John of Austria, for the nonce; but when the articles of the constitution came to be realized it was found there was no power willing to enforce the decrees; and so the stentorian giant of German liberalism stood powerless in the old imperial city, a helpless trunk, without either legs to stand on or arms to strike with. The Frankfort Parliament, after oceans of wise talk, dwindled into a rump, and the rump, true to the destiny of all rumps, was dispersed into a nonentity by a Stuttgart minister named Roemer, who had a head hard enough and a hand firm enough to do it.

The

But matters could not continue in this state. The air of Europe was electric with liberalism; even aristocratic old England had had her Reform Bill; and grown-up men, rejoicing to stand on their own legs, would not be forever treated as minors. In 1848 another French revolution broke out, accompanied with the usual portents of fugitive kings and floating coronets, and altogether in a much more startling and explosive style than in the previous affair of 1832. Then only a little duke of Brunswick was blown into smoke; but now the mighty Metternich himself was exploded, and from his firm seat in Vienna, where he had controlled the whole diplomacy of Europe for half a century, wafted over the seas to England, Meanwhile, at Berlin, a notable tragithe general house of refuge for the dem- comedy had been enacted. Mobs of ocratic and oligarchic destitute from all people had started up before the palace quarters. The sweet-blooded Viennese in the Schlossplatz, brandishing knives were fevered with a strange astonishment and ropes in red revolutionary fashion; when they saw on one fine morning a mob barricades were erected in the Königs of students flaming with wild notions, and Strasse, and grape-shot had been set to troops of tatterdemalion artisans, march- rake the citizens. Then suddenly repening through the streets, braying about lib-tance seized the heart of the monarch; erty, and sitting on the seat of government for a year and a day.

But it could not last long: the firm front of Prince Windischgrätz's cannon, and the fair promise of a new kaiser on the 7th March, 1849, brought back the liberal chaos into the old conservative order. In middle and northern Germany outbreaks of the epidemic of democracy equally violent took place. At Baden, where German liberalism had long had its chief seat, even before the outbreak of republicanism in France, Bassermann, a distinguished deputy of the liberal party, had brought in a bill in the Chambers for summoning a general German Parliament in Frankfort, to consider the best means of

and he was seen riding up the Linden with the imperial tricolor of black, red, and gold, and proclaiming with a loud voice,

Von jetzt an geht Preussen in Deutschland auf" (From this moment Prussia is swallowed up in Germany). But this was a rhetorical phrase which any word-monger, actor, or poet, or master of elocution, could use; to do the thing at that moment was possible only to a real king of men; and such Frederick William IV. was not. In the face of this grand speech, he afterwards (28th March, 1849) refused to accept of the imperial crown, when offered to him by the men of the Paul's Kirche in Frankfort.

Nevertheless, the Berlin insurrection

remained not without fruit. A constitution, based on the democratic principle, was granted on the 3rd December, 1848; and since that period, Prussia ranks now historically-not, indeed, after John Bull's present ideal, but still in the eye of political philosophy de facto - as one of the great limited monarchies, whose existence forms one of the distinctive contrasts between the social organization of ancient and modern times.

V.

a great Germany could be made only by a strong Prussia; (4) to give to Prussia a strong and a well-defensible boundary, wherever possible, by the absorption of the petty principalities; (5) to keep a sharp eye on the machinations, and a strong arm ready to strike against the ambitious encroachments of France. And all these points he had made up his mind to carry out, if not in the most scrupulous, certainly in the shortest and most effective way, not by talking or by the votes of majorities, according to the now fashionable democratic style, but by a firm will, a shrewd policy, and, when necessary, by blood and iron.”

WE now wind up this great political drama by a short sketch of the fifth act, which we have designated "Nationality" and Empire."

And here, as in many similar cases, the Frederick William IV., with all his fine old adage found itself true, that "fortune speeches and romantic sentiments, died in favors the brave." The policy of blood the year 1861; and his successor, the and iron effected more for the German present King William, being a soldier to cause in half-a-dozen years than any the backbone according to old Prussian amount of talk and convocation would traditions, soon fell into a position of pain- have done in as many centuries. The deful conflict with his Parliament, about the tachment of Holstein from the Danish period of military service, and the equip- monarchy, which followed naturally by ment thereto belonging. According to the law of succession, just as Hanover his view of what the defence of the country fell off from England, to prevent which required, he could not yield; and, accord- Denmark drew the sword, and Great ing to their view of what liberal policy Britain the pen, afforded Bismarck the and economical retrenchment required, desired opportunity at once of humbling they could not yield. So affairs came to Austria, strengthening the boundaries of a dead-lock; and the king, in 1862, found Prussia, and blowing the Diet into smoke. himself in the same position that, about Schleswig-Holstein was taken possession two centuries before, had cost England a of jointly in the name of the German civil war and the loss of a king's head. Diet by Austria and Prussia; but here But Prussia was not England; and, at the the formal right ended and despotic exvery moment when the plot of the political pediency commenced. What any man, drama seemed most perplexed, a god ap- acquainted with the traditional policy of peared on the scene, worthy in every way Prussia, and the maxims of politicians to untie the knot. This god was Bis- generally, might have predicted, took place. marck, who, with a firm will and a strong Holstein was not given to its rightful hand, and the aid of favoring circum-duke, in whose interest the war was ostenstances. piloted his sovereign triumphantly sibly carried on; but Austria and Prussia, through the troubled seas of Parliamentary finding their interests in that quarter irrecconflict, carrying on the government of the country on the budget of the previous years without asking Parliament for an annual vote. Bismarck boldly sketched out a line of policy, the success of which will be accepted as the best guarantee of its wisdom. It may be shortly summed in the following five points: (1) to destroy Austrian predominance in the Diet as prejudicial to the interests of Germany, and antagonistic to the spirit of social progress in the nineteenth century; (2) to kick the Diet from off the political stage altogether as an incumbrance and a sham; (3) to give political unity to Germany in the only practical way, by throwing the political and military guidance of the whole German people into the hands of Prussia VOL. XVIII. 887

LIVING AGE.

oncilable, quarrelled about the plunder, divided the whole of Germany into two parties, and went to war. This was exactly what Bismarck wanted, and wisely wanted, as absolutely necessary for the double purpose of diverting the mind of the Prussian people from the stiff struggle between the crown and the Parliament, and as the only feasible way of at once abolishing the cumbrous machinery of the Bund, and placing Austria altogether outside of the great German game. This splendid double stroke Bismarck delivered in the campaign which ended with the battle of Sadowa, 3rd February, and the peace of Prague, 23rd August, 1866, — a campaign made possible, next to his own bold design and firm will, by the military

dents may have been largely in favor of the Germans, yet the main causes of the wonderful campaign, which turned what might have been a bloody defence into a brilliant invasion, were the physical, intellectual, and moral forces on the German side, which, with wise accumulation, did not fail to reap their natural reward.

The completed Prusso-French war of 1870-1 stands now before the world as at once the most brilliant and solid achieve

stoutly asserted herself as the natural head of Germany; German unity has been achieved after centuries of unhappy division by the willing submission to a Prussian hegemony; and Germany now stands firmly in the centre of the European political system, a massive bulwark against the encroachments of Russia on the east, and the aggression of France on the west. And this mighty change will be recorded for posterity as the fruit indirectly of the regenerative policy of the Baron von Stein, but directly of the far-sighted intelligence, manly purpose, firm will, strong hand, and astute management of Prince von Bis

JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

genius of Count Moltke on the one side, | leonic ambition would have fallen to pieces, and on the other by the inactivity of the like a castle of cards, so suddenly. But it emperor of France, whose energy had did fall; and though the chapter of accialready begun to be lamed by the difficulties, which never fail, sooner or later, to grow up in the path of an usurper. Austria was now humbled, and Prussian pride, in the matter of national position in the Fatherland, gratified to the full. But there remained still the internal difficulty of coming to a compromise with the Parliament, whose beard Bismarck had plucked so rudely, not to mention the soothing of the thousands of fretful spirits in the provinces which the red hand of war had soment of modern history. Prussia has rudely appropriated in the affair of 1866. Out of these difficulties Bismarck and the king were triumphantly helped by the folly of the French, who, with a display of vaporing gasconade unexampled in recent history, insisted on dictating to Germany in a matter of Spanish concern with which they had nothing to do. This insolent dictation arose naturally out of the national vanity of the French people, fostered by the ambition of the great Napoleon, and the soreness which they felt at the territorial aggrandizement of Prussia, as fixed by the peace of Prague. The breach with France, however, was so manifestly in the interest of Bismarck, and so much in har-marck. mony with his declared policy of "blood and iron," that French partisans were not slow to endeavor to lay on his shoulders the guilt of the bloody struggle. But it was not so. Bismarck knew that the ambition of the French emperor, the irritation of French politicians, and the vanity "THE English are just, but not amiable." of the French people, equally pointed to a A well-bred Frenchman, who has recently war with Germany, for the realization of travelled in India, and who has published their favorite dream of the Rhine boun- in the Revue des deux Mondes an indary. He knew well, also, that a war with teresting account of what he saw and heard France, if successful, would tell in his there, ends with this criticism. It conveys, favor with even more force than his re- he says, as to the English and their rule, cent triumph over Austria; but he was the real mind of the best-informed and too wise a politician, and I believe, also, most intelligent of the natives of India too good a man, to throw himself rashly with whom he conversed. They admitted into the risk of so terrible a struggle. The the great superiority of the English rule main points of his German policy had in India to every other which had preceded been already achieved; and, so far as it. They admitted the good intentions of France was concerned, his only duty was the English rule they admitted its activto keep out a habit-and-repute burglar ity, energy, incorruptibility, justice. Still, from the German home. Though not, the final impression was this: something however, seeking war, he was always pre- wanting in the English, something which pared for it; and in the moment of alarm they were not. Les Anglais sont justes, he pounced upon the burglar in a style mais pas bons. "The English are just, which astonished Europe, and himself too, but not kind and good." we may well imagine, not a little. For there are always chances in war; and though Bismarck knew France and the emperor well, he never could have predicted that the splendid edifice of Napo

From The Nineteenth Century. FALKLAND.

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It is proposed to raise, on the field of Newbury, a monument to a famous Englishman who was amiable. A meeting has been held at Newbury to launch the project, and Lord Carnarvon made there