could not keep their armies inactive lest volunteers should be raised in Germany, and then at last Great Britain took the final step. She agreed that with her allies she would make the revocation of the Constitution matter of treaty right, and thus, if Denmark refused to yield, give her up to compulsion as a clear and manifest breaker of the public

any violation of the great principle of non- | parliamentary vote, and that concession also intervention between sovereigns and their failed. The Austrian and Prussian ministers subjects. Admit that the Schleswigers are pleaded with a cynical contempt for right hostile to Denmark, that they are even ready hardly to be paralleled in history, that they to rise in insurrection, and still Germany, which does not even pretend that Schleswig is German, has no right to intervene. If we give up that principle, we give up also the right to resist if Russia marches into Prussia to put down freedom, or to complain if France invades Ireland to realize the dreams of Smith O'Brien. And lastly, it is never for our interest that the advice of Great law of Europe. Every German demand was Britain when given in the interest of peace thus satisfied, and then Denmark having, on and justice and right should be regarded as the advice of her august friend, conceded idle words, or that she should, by abstaining everything, and given up even her own right from continental politics, lower the tone of of free internal legislation, the Germans, in her people down to the parochial standard. contempt alike of her and her ally, crossed A Marylebone of thirty millions might be her frontier by force of cannon. If that pervery comfortable, but it would be no abode sistent protection does not involve an honorafor men with hearts, or brains, or consciences, ble pledge, what line of conduct would? The or the sense that man, despite that misun- big boy declares the child in the right if only derstood politician Cain, is responsible for his he will surrender the toy; the child surrenbrother. Englishmen are not prepared to ders it, the other boy thrashes him for yieldstand by and see murder done, and call that ing, and the adviser is to put his hands in his cowardly crime a policy; and not being so, pockets and look on the brutality whistling. they must, if they would avoid endless war, There never was policy more utterly base and make their voice when clearly uttered as ef- selfish, more clearly dictated by the dread of fective as cannon shot. If they do not, if the national consequences of doing right. All they allow the idea to spread that England over Europe the nations are sneering at the will never fight except for pence, they will value of England's friendship, the worthlessone day be compelled to dispel the error they ness of England's menace, and sneering with themselves have fostered by a war to which a reason which may make honorable men the defence of Denmark would be a military gnash their teeth with shame and vexation. promenade, to defend Italy against Germany, It was bad enough to surrender Poland to or to sustain German nationality against France and Russia united. The policy of abstention is intelligible but degrading, the policy of interference without meaning is degrading without being intelligible.

These are general considerations, but there ie in this matter of Denmark one which will come closer to the conscience and heart and pride of every Englishman. England has in this matter interfered, and interfered by a steady, long-continued course of action which, like a long-continued habit of dealing without written bonds, amounts to an honorable pledge. She has stood forward for twelve years as the protectress of the integrity of Denmark. She framed the treaty of 1852, morally coercing the Danes, who detested the arrangement and twice refused to sanction it, into a final vote of acceptance. When the present quarrel broke out she advised Deninark to evacuate Holstein, which was under the treaty King Christian's own territory, and Holstein was evacuated. That was a step in foreign politics; but that failing, the Cabinet went further, and advised an internal change the revocation of the common Constitution for all Denmark within the Eider. That advice also was accepted, subject to a

the executioner, but at least Earl Russell told Poland that he had no aid to give beyond some irritating words. He has not told Denmark that, for, though he gave no promise, and as a constitutional minister guaranteed no aid, he did, nevertheless, guarantee that Denmark should surrender without battle all her enemies had demanded. Is Denmark, having sanctioned that promise, to lose yet more? Are the dishonest statesmen of Prussia and the despotic ministers of Austria to be permitted with impunity to kill thousands of men in order that they may, at the best, carry out the provisions of a treaty expressly designed and signed by them in order to avert that slaughter? They say that even when victorious they will keep that agreement and are, therefore, slaughtering Danes without a pretext or an object, except, indeed, the preservation of their own rotten thrones. It may be well to wait, though we doubt it, till the Rigsraad has formally executed all the promises of King Frederick, but to have advised so much, and to have been obeyed so readily, and then at last to skulk,-we call on the country homesteads to command that this disgrace shall not be.

Oh, the dreary days behind us, behind us, behind Vanished before a Nation's pain;

Oh, is there naught beyond us, beyond us, be- What Prelate deems thy grave his loss?

SHORT ARTICLES.-Brain Spectres, 492. Bed-gowns and Night-dresses, 492. St. Clemcnt at Rome, 492. Morganatic Marriages, 524. Preservation of Corn, 524.

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Sometimes it is an over-active or over-forecasting sovereign, who drops a púngent expression to an ambassador, or makes a troublesome suggestion to his parliament, that originates the uneasiness and the storm. But what with Sir John Bowring and the Arrow; what with Captain Wilkes and the Trent; what with General Harney and the "Island of San Juan; " what with Sir Hamilton Seymore and the "sick man; " what with the King of Denmark's death, and the King of Greece's dismissal; what with Louis Napoleon's New-year's-day words to the Austrian minister, and his Congress letter of a few years' later date,-there is no rest for the politician on this side of the grave.

From The National Review. THE STATE OF EUROPE.-NAPOLEON III. Le Moniteur, 1863. Emperor's Letter proposing the Congress. Paris, 1863. TRANQUILLITY can never be the lot of those who rule nations. Glory they may have; the praise of men; the approbation of their own consciences; the happiness which springs from the full occupation of every faculty and every hour; the intense interest with which dealing with great affairs vivifies the whole of existence; the supreme felicity of all allotted to men-that of feeling that they have lived the life and may die the death of the truest benefactors of their race. All these rewards they may aspire to; but repose, a sense of enduring security, comfortable and Just now the appearance of the world is confident relaxation of nerve, attention, and one of singular disturbance. It is a seething. exertion, that conviction of "having at- caldron. In the extreme West a civil war tained," of being safe in port, of everything is raging with almost unexampled ferocity, being made snug," which enables a man to and on a quite unexampled scale; a civil war say to his soul," Soul, thou hast much peace with which, thank God, we have nothing to laid up for many years: eat, drink, be merry, do except to watch it, to suffer from it, and and sleep; "these blessings are not for ei- to deplore it. In the extreme East a civil ther sovereigns or statesmen, at least not war appears imminent in Japan, of which we, for those of Europe in modern days. "A if not the causa causans, are certainly the causa murmur of the restless deep" is ever at hand sine quâ non; and a civil war has raged for to disturb even the briefest slumber. No years in China, in which we have begun disooner is one war ended than another is be-rectly to take an active part. Greece has gun. No sooner is one quarrel, which taxed just got her new sovereign-who does not the resources and menaced the existence of seem anxious to pay his predecessor's debts. great nations, quenched in utter exhaustion Mexico is waiting for her new emperor; and or settled after infinite intrigue, than some the emperor appears to be waiting till she little insignificant question—a cloud at first definitively knows her own mind, and wishes sight no bigger than a man's hand-arises in her to be off with the old love before she is on some other quarter, swells into unexpected with the new. The new King of Denmark magnitude, and threatens the direst results. seems likely to inherit a war by the same tiNot a day passes which does not bring to the tle by which he inherits a throne; and two bureau of the minister for foreign affairs of of the great powers who guaranteed to him every great state despatches pregnant with both his sceptre and his dominions are now the fate of empires and of peoples, in- marching hostile troops into a part of his terchoate "difficulties" which either slovenly ritory, on a plea which no outside politician neglect or judicious culture may nurse into is at all able to comprehend. It seems by no mighty conflicts. Sometimes it is an op- means improbable that a European war may pressed" nationality " whose cup of misery arise out of a local dispute so complicated as is full, and which can keep silence and endure to defy unravelling, and to our eyes so comno longer. Sometimes it is a second or third paratively unimportant as to make us even rate monarch who catches cold or falls from more impatient and indignant than we are hie horse, and dies mal àpropos. Sometimes it alarmed. Italy still suffers from two irritatis an intemperate sea-captain who insults our ing sores which forbid all political comfort or flag. Sometimes it is a savage tribe who mur-security; while the barbarities of the Russian ders our ambassador. Sometimes it is a weak and vain consul, or envoy, or chargé d'affaires who makes a mountain out of a molehill, and gets up a wholly gratuitous row of his own.

troops and officials in Poland have excited almost to the war-pitch the languid and dormant sympathies of Europe on behalf of that unfortunate and unsatisfactory race.

And