declared itself for Parliament and People, and the Royalist officers were arrested at the demand of the soldiers themselves.

It was at a moment when all this confusion was not yet quite over, that we tried in vain to penetrate into the fortress in which we had suffered so much. After we had again parleyed at the closed gate for admission during more than another hour, two members of the Landes-Ausschuss, Rehmann and Happel, arrived by train. At their suggestion we travelled to Baden-Baden to have an interview with Dr. Brentano. He was to be asked to place himself openly at the head of the Revolution. We found him in bed-very unwell, so he said—and in a wavering mood. From his tone I quickly gathered that he was trimming. So I asked him point-blank:

'What do you think about a new Ministry, such as the mass meeting at Offenburg has indicated?'

This meant his own appointment as Premier under the Grand Duke. He slowly, and with a perplexed voice, answered, whilst uneasily turning about in his bed:

'Well; if we could get that, it might not be so very bad!'

I knew now how matters stood with him, and said no more. He then rose, and his illness appeared suddenly to have gone. Leaving the room with Struve, I said to that friend:

'He cannot be counted upon any longer. His name may be necessary; but he will have to be closely watched!'

With Brentano we travelled, nevertheless, as far as Oos, where we parted. There we set about, in all haste, to organise a body of militia men, whom we wished to take with us to the capital. Bornstedt, who had recovered to some extent from the impression the nocturnal patrol scene had made upon his mind, was also engaged at Oos in the task of collecting armed men.

But now an unexpected and deplorable spectacle came before our eyes. At the station from where we were about to travel northwards again to reach the capital, a southward-bound train brought a small number of soldiers who went, without leave, to their highland homes in the Black Forest. They had no guns; only side-arms. These Black Forest lads were known to be always much subject to home-sickness. The bonds of discipline being broken, they did not think, for the moment, of anything else but the pleasure of seeing again their native villages, their parents, and perhaps their lasses, in the beautiful fir-clad Uplands. Some of them were eager to spread personally the gladdening news of the successful rising in the cause of freedom in that Black

Forest, where sympathy with our former attempt was so strong. Whole South-western Germany being in a ferment, they thought it would not matter if they were absent for a few days.

In vain did I harangue them, standing on the steps of a carriage. 'They would come back soon enough!' they cheerily said. No indignant reproach was of any avail. As the train steamed away, some of our men, quite enraged, fired a few shots after them.

Meanwhile, events had followed each other with lightning rapidity. In revolutions, hours are pregnant with a nation's fate. A few minutes sometimes are decisive. In thinking now about bygone tumultuous occurrences of that kind, hours appear like days; days like weeks; weeks like months. No wonder, minds lacking firmness are often unhinged in such troublous times, when danger of death is all round.

At Karlsruhe, the majority of the garrison, together with the insurgent people, had risen in the night, in defence of the German Parliament. They fought against a reactionary body of the Civic Guard who defended the Arsenal. In this decisive affair my brother Valentin, who served in the artillery, had played his part. The victory finally remained with the champions of the National and Democratic cause. Among the soldiers, cheers were given for the new German Constitution; but not a few also for Hecker, the leader of the first Republican rising, and for a German Commonwealth. Some officers at Karlsruhe, as well as in other parts of the country, fell before the wrath of their own men, being shot or cut down when forcibly trying to stem the current of the movement.

In the midst of this nocturnal combat, the royal family fled from the Castle through the Hardt Forest. The half-witted Crown Prince-who was afterwards superseded, as insane, by his younger brother, the present Grand Duke-was put in a coach together with the Grand Duchess. Her husband and some members of the Court had to sit on a gun-carriage. A little troop of about fifty soldiers accompanied them in their hurried flight through the dark woods. General Hoffmann, our adversary in the September rising, escaped with the terrified princely family.

When the struggle in the town was over, the garrison tore the Royal insignia from their headgear, and the crown from their banners. These were the troops whom, in the year before, officers had nearly induced, by lying statements, to massacre us as 'brigands,' when we had been made prisoners of war,

I may mention here that at the great meeting in Offenburg, which had demanded our deliverance from prison, a soldier, speaking in the name of the military deputation from Rastatt, declared, amidst the deep emotion of the masses, that the blood spilt by the Army in fighting against the risings led by Hecker, Struve, and myself, was now atoned for. That soldier brought to mind the murder of the innocent village musicians who, during the action at Staufen, had played patriotic airs, and the day after the storming of the town were dragged from a hiding-place and barbarously shot, without trial, in the street.

'We want to have our consciences quieted,' the soldier exclaimed. Our old parents will, I trust, henceforth no longer curse us, but, as I hope, indulge us now with pardon and mercy for what we then had done.'

'The impression of this speech was a deep one. There were tears in the eyes of many old peasants, and the storm of applause was almost endless, people embracing each other.' So wrote Franz Raveaux, who had been sent from Frankfurt to Offenburg as Imperial Commissioner by Archduke Johann and the head of his Ministry, Freiherr Heinrich von Gagern. It will give an idea of the then state of things in Germany when I add that, a few days later, Raveaux himself went over to our side. He, too, saw at last that faithless princes were bent upon destroying the German Parliament and the Constitution framed by it, and that the freedom and the unity of the nation were thus in imminent danger of being undone.

Arrived at Karlsruhe, we were met by an enthusiastic mass of people, and an armed body of sympathisers at the station. Uttering cries of delight and cheers, they triumphantly accompanied the carriage which brought Struve and me to the Town Hall. Among the most jubilant in the crowd I recognised an old schoolfellow and university friend, Hermann Goll. He seemed beside himself from ecstasy. Fourteen months before, I had been a captive in the Tower of that same Town Hall, under a suspicion of having planned a rising for the establishment of a German Commonwealth. Though nipped in the bud by the treachery of the spy whom I had mistrusted at once, it had certainly been the first attempt of that kind-two days before the outbreak of the great national upheaval.

Mittheilungen über die Badische Revolution.

Now, after we had gone through exile, battle, and renewed captivity, the Town Council of Karlsruhe itself, though mainly composed of adherents of the Court, had invited the LandesAusschuss to come in-the whole reigning family having fled. With two battalions of infantry, a detachment of artillery, and three squadrons of dragoons, the members of that popular Executive drove into Karlsruhe. So the National and Democratic party was now established in power, by the army itself, at the very seat of government.

These thrilling events, which were soon followed by the last gory act of the German Revolutionary Drama, first led to my connection with the new Government, as the head of its Chancellerie. Afterwards there came my appointment, together with a deputy of the National Parliament at Frankfurt, as a member of the combined Embassy of Baden and Rhenish Bavaria at Paris.

During our stay there, a rising against Louis Bonaparte, the President of the Republic, took place, headed by Ledru-Rollin and a number of members of the Legislative Assembly. It constituted a protest against the lawless attack made by the French army upon the Roman Republic, then governed by the triumvirate of Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini. The armed overthrow of Ledru-Rollin's attempt, and the proclamation of a state of siege, brought me, in violation of the law of nations, renewed captivity in La Force, and finally a second proscription even from France.

In the meantime a war, extending over two months, was carried on in Rhenish Bavaria and Baden against the invading Royalist armies, led by the Prince of Prussia, the later King and German Emperor. After many battles, the capitulation of Rastatt, and the retreat of the remnant of our forces into Switzerland, a Reign of Terror was established by the victor. During three months many champions of German freedom and unity breathed their last under court-martial bullets, whilst hundreds of thousands filled the dungeons or had to tread the weary ways of exile.

But though our movement was drowned in blood, its spirit could not be quenched. It was still 'marching on.' When, some twenty years later, a life-and-death struggle had to be fought out with France, that very spirit of nationality and freedom had once more to be evoked; and whatever degree of unity and liberties our country now possesses, it owes to the noble traditions of 1848-49. KARL BLIND.

GEORGIAN GOSSIPS1

It was the evening of June 19, 1887. All day festivities had been raging in the Rectory grounds. Churchman and Dissenter, Conservative and Radical, had prayed, and sung, and feasted in company; and now in a lull before the final triumph of bonfire and 'sky-rocket,' the lion and the lamb were lying down together, well-filled, in perfect good-fellowship. Only the youngest of the flock still skipped to the strains of the village band, who wore new caps in honour of the occasion, and were seemingly proof against fatigue; at intervals the bells clashed from the old round tower; and in the summer breeze the paper lanterns, as yet unlighted, bobbed up and down gaily in long lines across the avenue, like rows of bathers hand in hand.

But the interest of the day centred in a little group of armchairs in which were seated three old men and two old women, all of whom had witnessed the celebrations of the incoming century in 1800. Why, lawk! I mind it right well, for I went to dine along o' my grandmother, who was born in 1706 and was 104 when she died. She was rarely childish, pore old lady, and used to sit up in bed and play with a doll; but I know there was a frolic, and I had a piece of beef given to me.' It was James Bullock, the parish clerk, who spoke. His voice was harsh, his long hair raven-black, and notwithstanding his ninety odd years, he could still find the way about his well-thumbed prayer-book without the aid of spectacles. It was only when the unforeseen, in the shape of special psalms, occurred, that his responses sounded an uncertain note.

A slight superiority of education, coupled with a really marvellous memory, which enabled him unhesitatingly to place bygone events in their proper calendar sequence, independently of such trivial domestic incidents as assist weaker minds, gave him the whip-hand over the other village veterans, upon whom he looked down with undisguised contempt. Mr. Campling, a mild old man with a fringe of white hair encircling a sheep-like face, and Mr. Marsham, an ancient windbag with a tongue like a

All the interlocutors in this little sketch are genuine characters, and chapter and verse could be given for every one of their sayings