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power, and then, since "what must be must," never reveals to his soldiers any fear of the issue. Before it comes to the fight, it is mapping and planning. When the fight begins, it is "Forwards, and St George!"

An old poet, Lord Brook, has two striking lines, which I will quote and then qualify

"For power is proud till it look down on fear,

Though only safe by ever looking there." No! not safe by ever looking there, but by looking there-at the right

moment.

Before you commence anything, provide as if all hope were against you. When you must set about it, act as if there were not such a thing as fear. When you have taken all precautions as to skill in the circumstances against which you can provide, dismiss from consideration all circumstances dependent on luck which you cannot control. When you can't choose your ground, it is 66 Forwards, and St George! look for no help from St George unless you have taken the same pains he did in training his horses and his dogs before he fought with the dragon. In short, hope warps judgment in council, but quickens energy in action.

But

There is a quality in man often mistaken for a hopeful temperament, though in fact it is the normal acquisition of that experience which is hope's sternest corrective the quality of self-confidence.

As we advance in years, hope diminishes and self-confidence increases. Trials have taught us what we can do, and trained us to calculate with serene accuracy on the probable results. Hope, which has so

much to do with gaming, has nothing to do with arithmetic. And as we live on, we find that for all which really belongs to the insurance against loss, we had better consult the actuary than stake against the croupier.

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Fortune," saith a fine Latin proverb, "lends much at interest, but gives a fee-simple to none.' According to the security you offer to her, Fortune makes her loans easy or ruinous.

Self-confidence is not hope; it is the self-judgment of your own internal forces, in their relation to the world without, which results from the failure of many hopes, and the non-realisation of many fears. For the two classes of things that most rarely happen to us, are the things we hoped for and the things we dreaded. But there is one form of hope which is never unwise, and which certainly does not diminish with the increase of knowledge. In that form it changes its name, and we call it patience. "Patience," says Vauvenargues, "is only hope prolonged." It is that kind of hope which belongs to the highest order of mind, and is so essential to the enterprises of genius, that Buffon calls genius itself "a long patience"-as Helvetius calls it "a sustained attention." Patience, indeed, is the soul of speculation, "and the scope of all speculation is the performance of some action or thing to be done."* This is the true form of Hope that remained at the bottom of Pandora's Box; the more restless images or simulacra of the consolatory sustainer must have flown away among the earliest pinions that dispersed into air at the opening of the lid.

* Hobbes.

GERMANY, AND HER PROSPECTS.

IT can hardly have escaped the notice of any one who has this year been travelling on the Continent, and who has been using his eyes and ears for other purposes than those of mere sight-seeing and enjoyment, that in almost every country there prevails a certain feeling of insecurity-a vague foreboding of political changes which may have the effect of producing extensive convulsion and disorder. When we proceed to analyse and examine that feeling, with the view of ascertaining its primary cause, we can trace it in a great measure, though not perhaps altogether, to a widespread apprehension that France, under the guidance of the Emperor Napoleon, cherishes schemes of aggrandisement little consonant with that policy of peace and internal improvement which was proclaimed as the object of the Empire, and is ready to avail herself of the first tempting opportunity, either to extend her frontier, to gain possession of some remoter territory in Europe, or to establish vassal sovereignties which shall be entirely under her direction and control. A considerable period has now elapsed since the people of Britain manifested, in their own practical way, the peculiar significance which they attached to the unusual and exorbitant military and naval preparations undertaken with so much energy by France. These could not be justified or explained on the plea that any rival power had assumed an attitude of menace; for, since the conclusion of the Crimean war, Russia had fallen into a state of collapse, Austria was plunged in difficulties, and Prussia had neither the power nor the inclination to show herself in any way aggressive. As for ourselves, we were quite conscious that it was not only our interest but our most earnest desire to be on terms of amity with France; so that, after diligently

scanning the political horizon, we could nowhere discover even the remotest symptoms of an approaching storm, against the advent of which it might have been reasonable and judicious for our neighbours to prepare. The conclusion, therefore, at which we necessarily arrived was, that France was arming, not for defence, but for aggression, though we could not positively divine what might be the precise nature of her schemes; and under such circumstances it became a positive duty for us to provide against contingencies, and to see that we did not, through over-confidence, negligence, or unwise reliance upon mere assertion, display so unguarded a front as to excite the cupidity or ambition of our volatile and restless neighbours. The consequence was the spontaneous organisation of the force of Volunteers-a movement the importance of which it is impossible to overrate, since it effectually dispelled the delusion which had become prevalent on the Continent, that the people of Great Britain were so absorbed in commercial pursuits and money-making, as to have lost all relish for martial exercises; and that they had degenerated into a race of burghers, who would rather submit to insult, contumely, and aggression than draw the sword in defence of their rights, their liberties, and their homes. For that contemptuous estimate of our national character, which, as we have said, was pretty generally entertained abroad, we are indebted to the pernicious and inexpiable folly of Messrs Cobden, Bright, and the other leaders of the Peace party," as they insolently chose to style themselves, whose language and writings could not be interpreted otherwise than as an abnegation of the reliance of Britain, under the help of Providence, on her own resources and might, and as a direct intimation that she

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would never more engage in war, and was prepared to surrender her once proud title of Mistress of the Seas.

The apparition of the gigantic force of Volunteers starting up in arms-which more than realised the ancient fable of Cadmus-was an intimation, not only to the French but to all the world beside, that the British people were as ready as of yore to hold and to maintain their own. Nor were our Ministers wanting in their duty; for, despite the grumblings of the economists, they demanded from Parliament such supplies as would enable them to keep pace with the extraordinary exertions which were being made on the other side of the Channel. By acting thus-though, as is generally understood, in opposition to the opinions of his wrong-headed Chancellor of the Exchequer-Lord Palmerston has greatly increased his own popularity, and has so far conciliated the Opposition that they have refrained from any step to disturb his tenure of office. That is the true explanation of the recent lull in British politics. Had the Premier succumbed to the remonstrances of the economists-who are neither more nor less than the "Peace party" acting under another name -he would long ere this have been swept from power by the whirlwind of popular indignation, and the star of Whiggery would have set without much chance of its appearing again, at least for a long time, in the ascendant.

But while we thus secured ourselves, so far as a people can do, against the risk of violent aggression, other nations, differently situated, and with less means at their command, were still left the prey of apprehension. The Parisian press, notoriously subservient to the will of the Emperor, and so gagged and restricted as to be unable to utter an independent voice, now began to throw out hints as to the propriety of a readjustment, or, adopting a more jesuitical phrase, a rectification, of the frontier. That simply

meant a resumption by France of all the states and provinces which she had once gained through robbery, and held until the united force of exasperated Europe forced them from her reluctant grasp. Germany, as the nearest neighbour, had evidently the most reason to be alarmed; but as, according to the Imperial scheme, the Napoleonic ideas are hereditary and too sacred to be slighted, the nephew selected for his first aggressive field the ground which had been already trodden by the uncle when striding onward to his earlier victories; and the state of Italy seemed to afford a fair pretext for interference.

In Italy, indeed, the French had already gained a footing. They occupied Rome in the character of defenders of the Pope against revolutionary violence, and "the eldest child of the Church," as the Emperor of the French piously claims to be, has never yet withdrawn them, probably deeming it indecorous that the protection of the Holy Father should be delegated to inferior hands. Events crowd upon each other in our days with such miraculous rapidity, that it may be necessary to recall the fact that Garibaldi, then one of the selfstyled triumvirs, was driven by the French from Rome. That circumstance serves to explain much that followed, and may afford a key to events which are now taking place, or which may hereafter be enacted. The French land in Italy, besiege and enter Rome, as the champions of absolute power-Garibaldi takes to flight as a broken and desperate insurgent.

Years roll on, and still the tramp of the French patrol is audible in the streets of Rome. They are there, however, as protectors, nor do they in any way belie that character. Meanwhile Sardinia begins to see that it may be possible for her, by playing a bold and dexterous game, to attain such a position as will give her the mastery of the whole peninsula. Britain and France are at war with Russia to

frustrate the scheme of the wholesale spoliation of Turkey which had been devised by the Czar; and Sardinia, though then only a third-rate power, which had no shadow of a pretext for interfering in the quarrel, makes common cause with the Western nations, and sends troops to the Crimea. But for the hopes of materially advancing her own interest, this step on the part of Sardinia would have been a more Quixotic undertaking than the world has witnessed since the days of the earlier crusades; for although the Sardinian contingent was unquestionably well appointed, it was by far too insignificant to have had the slightest effect in determining the issue of the war. It was despatched, not because Cavour and his friends were hotheaded enough to fancy that this was a religious war, but because Austria, remembering how much she had recently been indebted to the Russians for assistance in the hour of her darkest distress, hung back from the Western alliance. Austria was then, under the sanction of the Treaty of Vienna, in possession of Lombardy and Venice; and when the Sardinians attempted, under the leadership of Charles Albert, father of the present King, to invade her vested rights, had proved her military superiority in the campaign which was terminated by the decisive victory of Novara.

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Gratitude, according to a quaint old adage, is defined as a vivid sense of favours to come." Certainly, up to that time, Sardinia owed no gratitude to France for favours actually received-nay, it would have been natural enough for her to have regarded with an eye of extreme jealousy a neighbour so very strong as to be able at any moment to sweep across the frontier, notwithstanding the apparent difficulties of the mountain-range of separation. But that very sense of lack of internal power suggest ed new ideas to Sardinia. Singlehanded she could do nothing against either France or Austria; but if

she could induce France, under any pretext or for any bribe, to lend her material assistance, she might yet, under the convenient pretext of the re-establishment of Italian unity, achieve the conquest of Lombardy.

The result is now matter of history. Through the co-operation of the French, Sardinia acquired not only Lombardy, but the duchies of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma, besides the Marches; but these she did not gain without a price. The Emperor Napoleon, though professing originally to go to war for an idea, insisted upon his pound of flesh; and Sardinia, to her eternal dishonour, was compelled to surrender Savoy, the most ancient hereditary possession of her King, and Nice, which gave the French direct access into Italy. Such was the first act in the drama of Italian unity, and a stranger one was never yet exhibited under the canopy of heaven. Unity inaugurated by separation! In the next act, Garibaldi, the old Roman gladiator, plays a most conspicuous part, and fairly eclipses the renown of all previous Condottieri. Virtually unacknowledged by the Sardinian authorities, who, however, wink at his proceedings if they do not go a little further, he excites the flame of insurrection in Sicily, marches upon Naples, and reduces the King to such an extremity, that the Sardinians have no difficulty whatever in making conquest of the remainder of the peninsula. The third act is still in dependence. Austria has retired behind the Quadrilateral lines, still retaining possession of Venice, a state of matters which France seems to have no intention of disturbing. The insane attempt of Garibaldi to carry Rome by means of an Italian revolt has been signally put down; the French still occupy the holy city; and the Emperor shows not the slightest symptom of wishing further to interfere with Austria. It is to him a great triumph, independent of what future advantages he may expect to acquire,

that already he has reduced Italy to the position of a vassal state. The King of Sardinia-for so, for the sake of perspicuity, we term himdares not stir one foot without his sanction. Turin lies open to the French; and from the present state of the political game, it would appear that the Emperor will give no countenance to any attempt upon Venice. His interest now clearly is to cultivate friendly relations with Austria. The reason is apparent. In Germany, Austria and Prussia are rivals; but the former has no direct frontier interest, whereas the latter is contiguous to France, and has territories upon the left bank of the Rhine. Prussia took no steps to aid Austria when that power was battling for the retention of Lombardy. That cannot be forgotten: and the Emperor of the French, whose head is unmatched for shrewdness, is perfectly aware of the bitter feeling and grudge thereby engendered, and will lose no opportunity, should such occur, of turning to his own advantage that element of discord and disunion. Besides, he is, to all intents and purposes, at one with Austria as regards Italian policy. He holds Rome-Austria holds Venice. If the Italians should make a resolute effort, sanctioned by their present Government, to gain possession of Rome, he has but to give the signal, and Austria, issuing from her almost impregnable lines, can make easy reconquest of Lombardy. Is it to be supposed that a man who is master of such a situation, and whose whole career has shown that he is not encumbered by any kind of scruple, will abandon it out of regard to so dubious a project as the entire unity of Italy? Were he to do so, he would throw up the cards which he presently holds in his hand, and which doubtless give him the prospect of still greater extension of his power.

But the acquisition by France of Savoy and Nice has excited throughout Europe a widespread

feeling of alarm. Revolutionary changes were capable of explanation; and even those who thought that we dealt scurvily with the King of the Netherlands by countenancing the separation of Belgium, were forced to admit that the voice of the people had been raised in favour of that disruption. But Savoy and Nice were handed over to France under a pretext so miserable, that we almost wonder how the Emperor of the French could have permitted it to appear upon the register. It was manoeuvred by means of a ballot, previously arranged and dictated than which no meaner or more deceptive title could possibly be devised; and really it seems inconsistent with Imperial dignity to vindicate, under colour of a sharper's trick, a serious and deliberate aggression. The imposition is perfectly transparent. No one believes that the people of Savoy wished to become subjects of France; and the perpetration of such a juggle is but another proof, if more were needed, of the unscrupulous character of Napoleon. Switzerland now found herself brought into juxtaposition with the dangerous power which was crawling eastward, like a serpent lengthening its coils. But the Switzers were undismayed. Animated by the noble spirit of their forefathers, they swore that they would rather perish than yield a single foot of territory; and they called upon other nations to espouse their cause if they should be assailed. Ambitious and reckless as he is of the rights of others, Napoleon cannot yet afford to commit an outrage so gross as an attack upon an unoffending people. He has not even the shadow of a pretext for doing so; besides, he is too well read in history to be ignorant that it would be no easy matter to conquer Switzerland, even though she were left to struggle without extraneous assistance. Yet it is remarkable that the Parisian journals have, ever since the annexation of Savoy, been at vast

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