Frederic von Raumer was sent by the central power to Paris, General Cavaignac told him that France would never tolerate the unity of Germany. Napoleon the Third was constantly interfering in German affairs. When in 1854 a new Russian loan was admitted at the Hamburg Exchange, the French foreign secretary, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, imperiously demanded that this should be forbidden, although England, his ally, acknowledged that the admission was perfectly in accordance with strict neutrality. The Emperor intervened after Prussia's great victories in Bohemia, enforced the line of the Mein, and asked for compensations on the Rhine, although he had taken no part in the war. During the following years of 1866-70 the French were clamouring for 'revanche pour Sadowa,' as if they had been beaten, simply because they thought their prestige as the first military power tarnished. In the summer of 1868 I visited the late distinguished writer Prévost-Paradol; although bitterly opposed to the Emperor's policy, he told me that the war between France and Prussia was unavoidable, because it was necessary for re-establishing the authority of his country, which, he was quite sure, would be victorious. My question, What made him so certain of success, he answered by saying: 'I grant you have better generals, but it will be the French soldier who conquers.' When the unfortunate man, who had believed in Ollivier's liberal transformation of the Empire and had accepted the post of French minister at Washington, saw, after the great defeats of 1870, that he had been utterly mistaken, he cut his throat. I must acknowledge that Thiers, whom I saw on the same day, and who still in 1865, when I was with him at Schlangenbad, had scarcely disguised his wish for that 'délicieux pays du Rhin,' held at that time different language. You know,' he said, 'how much opposed I have been to all that has passed by the Emperor's fault in Italy and Germany; but now the thing is done and cannot be mended, and I assure you that I am sincerely for peace. For of two things, one: either we should be beaten, which is quite possible, and that would be an immense misfortune for France; or we should be victorious, and that would be the maintenance of despotism for ever.' Consequently Thiers was against the insane declaration of war in 1870, but he was hooted for his warning by his colleagues in the Corps Législatif, and no sincere Frenchman will deny that, if the fate of the campaign had been different, they would have taken the left bank of the Rhine. Yet after the fall of the Empire Jules Favre told Count Bismarck that it was against the honour of France to cede an inch of territory; upon which the Chancellor replied that French honour was not made of different stuff from that of other nations, and that he demanded Alsace because Strasburg and the frontier of the Vosges were imperiously necessary for the military safety of Germany. It is true that, as my late friend Baron Nothomb wrote to me in May 1871, the peace of Frankfort reversed the whole French policy since Richelieu; but that policy in itself was a grievous wrong, because it based the greatness of France upon the claim of keeping the neighbouring countries in a state of division and weakness. As to the war indemnity of five milliards, it was certainly an enormous sum, yet it did not reach a three-years' revenue of France, whilst Napoleon from 1806 to 1813 had extorted from Prussia more than thirteen years' income. The indemnity, which at first appeared fabulous, was paid with comparative ease; already in 1876 the French budget was balanced, and if the finances have since become bad the people have to thank for it their leaders, who made the war of Tonkin, rushed into an immense outlay for unprofitable public works, and raised the expenditure for the internal administration by three hundred millions. It is in no invidious spirit of retaliation that I have tried to present a summary balance of what Germany has suffered from the French for 350 years; it is only to show how utterly unfounded is the cry for revenge, and that we inflicted upon the French in 1814-15 and 1870-71 not the hundredth part of what they have imposed upon us. As to the last war, no one denies that certain outrages did occur; but, in opposition to the foolish stories of the French press about clock-stealing, &c., we can appeal to unimpeachable French authorities, who acknowledge that, on the whole, German discipline was strictly kept up; no art treasures were taken away, as was the custom under Napoleon the First; the pictures of Versailles which glorified German defeats remained untouched; the King took quarters in a private house, whilst the castle was reserved to the wounded Germans and French; and the only revenge of history during the occupation of Versailles was that the Empire was proclaimed in the same Salle des glaces from which Louis the Fourteenth had launched his declarations of war. M. St.-Genest is right-the accounts of the two nations are settled by the peace of Frankfort. Germany only wishes for peace and a good understanding with her Western neighbour, nor do the French people at large desire war; but they must learn to control their noisy demagogues, and not allow themselves to be led again into a struggle by which they certainly would suffer most. F. HEINR. GEFFCKEN. WOOL-GATHERINGS. I. A DAY SO splendid, and work to be done! What work can be done? Here, indeed, is all the apparatus gathered in a snug little closet full of books-orderly, but not too orderly. Silence without, broken only by the chirping of birds, which are many, a deep susurration of leaves, and one sweet little voice shouting a song of its own composing in a distant garden. Silence within-the quiet of contentment nearly perfect that reigns all through the house, and may even be seen for a moment, like a spirit surprised, when you enter this or that room with nobody in it. Visible in the atmosphere' is the common way of describing whatever it may be that greets our senses when we come into a place where grief or happiness abides. Nobody has found a better word for it than atmosphere, though it is evidently not the right one; and yet some Dutch painters clever at interiors have contrived by the very means of what artists call atmosphere to fill their dim, low, lattice-windowed rooms with the spirit of contentment that I gratefully perceive to haunt and harbour in mine. It is present here in my snug little closet, where the day's work is to be done. On a table near the window, with its bow-pots to look up to, fair sheets of paper are spread, pens like unto the Horse of Swiftness invite to a gallop, and there is no lack of tobacco to lift wit into the saddle and keep it steady there. But the day being so beautiful, is it possible that any work can be done? What wit there may be hereabout goes rambling off to join the bird-boy in the cornfield; and finding it too soon for him, wanders away down the sloping hedgerow, views the red roofs of the village afar off, listens to the chiming of hone upon scythe in the fields of aftermath, and then flies off to soar with the daws round Harlech Castle or roam in the heathy solitudes of Egton Moor. 'Home!' cries Industry to the truant, and blows a smut from the waiting foolscap. 'Home!' cries Necessity, and, just as you may see the cottage housewife strew barley-grains at the door to call in her chickens, sheds to the ground a multitude of little bills. In comes the wanderer accordingly, and will really settle down to business; but when the needful cigarette is comfortably burning, falls to counting the pears on the pear-tree, and in five minutes more is at loose and at large in Gwynant Vale. No one would be a butterfly. In spite of the pretty, profound resemblances which the poets have drawn from the history of this creature and its re-creations, in spite of its beauty and its associations with the delights of summer, nobody, even in his idlest moments, ever wished to be a butterfly. The sleeping in the chrysalis—that is all very well. But the crawlings of the caterpillarthey, by the remembrance of them, keep the desire at a distance. The bee is different. If only one could do his work as the bee does-all day long in the humming sunshine, all day long in garden and meadow and the high free common land-how good it would be! Actual transmigration into the body of one of those insect industriels for a year, what in this world could be wished for more by a man of thought who loves to spend his summer days in country wanderings? If accommodation could be provided near the honey-bag for another little pouch, and if some slight physiological alteration admitted an occasional pinch of Latakia into the end of the proboscis (which seems partly designed to serve the uses of a tobacco pipe), the single addition of retaining a human mind would make all complete. ་ Think what a day of such a life would be. Not too much oppressed with wonder, you wake one bright June morning about three to find yourself a 'denizen of the hive,' with a good twelve months before you to learn all about it. Therefore you are in no hurry to inquire. A light breakfast of bee-bread, not too thinly spread with honey-(a little later you will naturally introduce the art of brewing metheglin) and away you sail upon the fresh morning wind. Away you sail apart, as the others do; and there you are, alone-free to speed hither and thither in the airy wilderness, to the uplands, to the lowlands; to rise and fall, to wheel and turn, your wings humming a loud accompaniment to your delight, and all your numerous eyes about you. What do those eyes behold as, ceasing from the joys of flight, you pore on this and that? Is the rose a thousand roses when you look upon it? Do you ravish a thousand lilies in one? A beam of light, the motes in the beam, what are they to vision such as yours? What pedestrian joys are there, unknown to the Alpine Club, in wearying six legs instead of two? Colours! perfumes and what new harmonies of little noises rising from the populous roots of the summer grasses? Wallace in the Amazonian forests had no such opportunities as yours, and no such regions of freshness and sweetness, as well as brightness and beauty, to roam in. You roam and roam-it is ten o'clock; you roam and roam-it is eleven o'clock. At every moment you gather observation like the gleaner in the field, and yet meanwhile you do your morning's work (would that I could get to mine!)-which is such a balm to conscience when noon declares the day half done. It is one o'clock, the sun sheds down its fiercest beams; the shadows shorten; the flowers droop and are not to be got at so conveniently; wherefore you seek a shady corner in a hedgerow, and, clapping one leg behind you, draw forth that other little pouch. Your proboscis is carefully filled; fire is not far to seek where every flint-scale is a burning-glass; and, reclining on your back or whatever may answer to your elbow, you brood to purpose over the glories and wonders of the day, as your beeship blows a peaceful cloud. But the winter! Yes, the winter: and then, as long as you keep awake, what opportunity for completing the study of a purely socialistic system, and considering its adaptabilities to a very different race, which insists upon having individual families and yet dreams of becoming socialistic too! I fancy Mr. Herbert Spencer so transmogrified, and humming and bumming all over the county of Surrey in the course of the season; or Sir John Lubbock; or the gentlehearted Huxley, who has far more of the poet in him than the readers of reviews know anything about; and yet none of these eminent persons would enjoy the outdoor part of it as I should, though they might be much more worthy students of the hive. Of what use are you?' asked some forgotten Persian, scornfully addressing Hafiz. Of what use is the rose?' was the questioning reply. The rose?-the rose is good to smell!' And I,' said the poet, am good to smell it!' 'To work! To your task! Call home your wandering wits, haul down the window blind, and begin.' It shall be done, and your behest obeyed, sweet Inner Voice. Here goes in earnest. THE BARRENNESS OF CULTURE. YOMMENTING on the latter portion of the Phaedrus, pierces through the difference of times and countries into |