The terms of the treaty of peace are moderate; but it should be

understood that what Austria loses is very inadequately expressed by

these terms, and what Prussia gains not at all; and what Prussia gains

at the expense of Austria, important as it is, is less important than

what she has gained from France. From Austria she has taken the first

place in Germany; from France, the first place in Europe, which is the

same thing as the first place in Christendom, or the world,--meaning by

the world that portion of mankind which has power and influence and

leadership, because of its knowledge, culture, and wealth. The moral

blow falls with greater severity on France than on Austria. Austria had

no right whatever to the first place in Germany. There was something

monstrous, something highly offensive, in the Germanic primacy of an

empire made up of Magyars, Poles, Bohemians, Italians, Slavonians,

Croats, Illyrians, and other races, and not above a fourth of whose

inhabitants were Germans. Prussia had in June last twice as many Germans

as Austria, though her entire population was not much more than half as

large as that of her rival;[48] and when she turned Austria out of

Germany at the point of the needle-gun, she simply asserted her own

right to the leadership of Germany. But no one will say that there can

be anything offensive in a French primacy of Christendom. Objection may

be made to any primacy; but if primacy there must be, as mostly there

has been, France has the best claim to it of any country. England might

dispute the post with her, and England alone; for they are the two

nations of modern times to which the world is most indebted. But England

has, all but in direct terms, resigned all pretensions to it. Prussia,

therefore, by conquering for herself the first place in the estimation

of mankind, who always respect the longest and sharpest sword, unhorsed

France. Napoleon III. lost more at Sadowa than was lost by Francis

Joseph; and we cannot see how he will be able to recover his loss,

should Prussia succeed in her purpose to create a powerful Germanic

empire,--and all things point to her success. A new force would be

introduced into the European system, of which we can only say, that, if

its mere anticipation has been sufficient to curb France on the side of

the Rhine, its realization ought to be sufficient to prevent France from

extending her dominion in any direction--say over Belgium--which such

extension is inclined to take.

Thus has a great revolution been effected, and effected, too with

something of the speed of light. On the 14th of June, France, in the

estimation of the civilized world, was the first of nations, the head of

the Pentarchy. On the 4th of July, she had already been deposed, though

the change was not immediately recognizable. On the 14th of June,

Prussia's place, though respectable, was not to be named with that of

France; it was at the tail of the Pentarchy. On the 4th of July she had

conquered for herself the headship of that powerful brotherhood. It was

the prize of her sword, and it is on the sword that the French Emperor's

power mainly rests. He obtained his place by a free use of the military

arm, in December, 1851; he confirmed it by the use of the sword in the

Russian and Italian wars; and he purposed making a yet further use of

the weapon, had circumstances favored his plans, at the time he allowed

the Germano-Italian war to begin. Is he who took the sword to perish by

it? Is the Prussian sovereign that stronger man of whose coming

Croesus, that type of all prosperous sovereigns, was warned? Who shall

say? But as Napoleon's ascendency rested, the sword apart, upon opinion,

and not upon prescription, it is difficult to see how he can submit to a

surrender of that ascendency, and make way for one who but yesterday was

his inferior, and who, in all probability, was then ready to buy his aid

at a high price. The Emperor is old and sickly. His life seems to have

been in danger at the very time he was making his demand for an increase

of imperial territory. Years and infirmities may indispose him to enter

on a mighty war; but he thinks more of his dynasty than of himself, his

ambition being to found a reigning house. This must lead him to respect

French opinion, on his son's account; and opinion in France is anything

but friendly to Prussia. Almost all Frenchmen, from _Reds_ to

_Whites_,--Republicans, Imperialists, Orleanists, and Legitimists,--seem

to be of one mind on this point. They all agree that Prussian supremacy

is unendurable. They could have seen their country make way for England,

or Russia, or even Austria, without losing their temper altogether; but

for France to be displaced by Prussia is something that it is beyond

their philosophy to contemplate with patience. The very successes of the

Emperor tell against him under existing circumstances. He has raised

France so high, from a low condition, that a fall is unbearable to his

subjects. He has triumphed, in various ways, over nations that appeared

to be so much greater than Prussia, that to surrender the golden palm to

her is the very nadir of degradation. His loss of moral power is as

great at home as his loss of material power abroad. He has become

ridiculous, as having been outwitted by Germans, whom the French have

ever been disposed to look upon as the dullest of mankind. Ridicule may

not be so powerful an agency in France to-day as it was in former times,

but still it has there a sharp sting. The Emperor may be led into war by

the force of French opinion; and he would have all Germany to contend

against, with the exception of that portion of it which belongs to the

house of Austria. The Austrians would gladly renew the war, with France

for their ally. They would forgive Solferino, to obtain vengeance for

Sadowa. What occurred among the Austrians when they heard of the French

demand for a rectification of their frontier shows how readily they

would come into any project for the humiliation of Prussia that France

might form. They supposed the French demand would be pushed, and they

evinced the utmost willingness to support it,--a fact that proves how

little they care for Germany, and also how deeply they feel their own

fall. They would have renewed the war immediately, had France given the

word. But the Emperor did not give the word. He may have hesitated

because he preferred to have Italy as an ally, or to see her occupy the

position of a neutral; whereas, had he attacked Prussia before the

conclusion of the late war, she must have adhered to the Prussian

alliance, which would have led to the deduction of a large force from

the armies of Austria and France that he would desire to have

concentrated in Germany. Or he may have been fearful of even one of the

consequences of victory; for would it not be a source of danger to him

and his family were one of his marshals so to distinguish himself in a

great war as to become the first man in France? The general of a

legitimate sovereign can never aspire to his master's throne; but the

French throne is fair prize for any man who should be able to conquer

the conquerors of Sadowa. The Emperor's health would not permit him to

lead his army in person, as he did in the Italian campaign; and that one

of his lieutenants who should, by a repetition of the Jena business,

avenge Waterloo, and regain for France, with additions, the rank she

held five months ago, would probably prove a greater enemy to the house

of Bonaparte than he had been to the house of Hohenzollern. The part of

Hazael is always abhorred in advance as much as Hazael himself abhorred

it; but Benhadad is sure to perish, and Hazael reigns in his stead.

The nation by which this great change has been wrought in Europe--a

change as extraordinary in itself as it is wonderful in its modes, and

likely to lead to something far more important--is one of the most

respectable members of the European commonwealth, though standing

somewhat below the first rank, even while acting on terms of apparent

equality with the other great powers. The kingdom of Prussia is of

origin so comparatively recent, that there are those now living who can

remember others who were old enough to note its creation, in 1700. The

arrangements for the conversion of the electorate of Brandenburg into

the kingdom of Prussia were completed on the 16th of November, 1700, and

the coronation of Frederick I. took place on the 18th of January, 1701,

two hundred and eighty-four years less three months after his family's

connection with the country began; for it was on the 18th of April,

1417, that the Emperor Sigismund, last member of the Luxemburg family,

made Frederick, Burgrave of Nürnberg, Elector of Brandenburg,--the

investiture taking place in the marketplace of Constance. The

transaction was in the nature of a job, as Frederick was a relative of

the Emperor, to whom he had advanced money, besides rendering him

assistance in other ways. Frederick was of a very old family, and in

this respect, as in some others, the house destined to become so great

in the North bore a close resemblance to that other house destined to

reign in the South, that of Savoy, which became regal not long after the

elevation of descendants of the Burgrave of Nürnberg to royal rank. He

was a man adapted to the place he received; and the family has seldom

failed to produce able men and women in every generation, some of them

being of the highest intellectual force, while others have been

remarkable for eccentricities that at times bore considerable

resemblance to insanity. Yet there was not much in the history of the

new electoral house that promised its future greatness, for more than

two centuries.

It is surprising to look back over the history of Germany, and note how

differently matters have turned out, in respect to families and

countries, from what observers of old times would have predicted. When

Charles V. fled before Maurice of Saxony, he may have thought,

considering the great part Saxony had had in the Reformation, that from

that country danger might come to the house of Austria in yet greater

measure; but he would have smiled at the prophet who should have told

him not only that no such danger would come, but that Saxony would be

ruined because of its adherence to the house of Austria, when assailed

by a descendant of the then insignificant Elector of Brandenburg. Yet

the prophet would have been right, for Saxony suffered so much from her

connection with the Austrians in Frederick the Great's time that she

never recovered therefrom; and in the late contest she was lost before a

shot was fired, and her troops, after fighting valiantly in Bohemia,

shared the disasters of the power upon which she had relied for

protection. Bavaria was another German country that seemed more likely

to rise to greatness than Brandenburg; but, though her progress has been

respectable, it must be pronounced insignificant if compared with that

of Prussia. The house of Wittelsbach was great before that of

Hohenzollern had risen to general fame; but the latter has passed it, as

if Fortune had taken the Hohenzollerns under its special protection, and

we should not be in the least surprised were they to take all its

territory ere the twentieth century shall have fairly dawned upon the

world.

The first of the great Prussian rulers was the Elector Frederick

William, who reigned from 1640 to 1688, and who is known as the Great

Elector,--a title of which he was every way worthy, and not the less

that there was just a suspicion of the tyrant in his composition. He had

not a little of that "justness of insight, toughness of character, and

general strength of bridle-hand," which Mr. Carlyle attributes to

Rudolph of Hapsburg. He was a man of the times, and a man for the times.

He came to the throne just as the Thirty Years' War was well advanced in

its last decade, and he had a ruined country for his inheritance; but he

raised that country to a high place in Europe, and was connected with

many of the principal events of the age of Louis XIV. He freed Prussia

from her connection with Poland. He created that Prussian army which has

done such wonderful things in the greatest of wars in the last two

centuries. He it was who won the battle of Fehrbellin, June 18, 1675, at

the expense of the Swedes, who were still living on the mighty

reputation won under Gustavus Adolphus, almost half a century earlier,

and maintained by the splendid soldiers trained in his school. The calm

and philosophic Rankè warms into something like eloquence when summing

up the work of the Great Elector. "Frederick William," he says, "cannot

be placed in the same category with those few great men who have

discovered new conditions for the development of the human race; but he

may unhesitatingly be ranked with those famous princes who have saved

their countries in the hour of danger, and have succeeded in

re-establishing order,--with an Alfred, a Charles VII., a Gustavus Vasa.

He followed the path trodden by the German territorial princes of old;

but among them all there was not one who, finding his state reduced to

such a miserable condition, so successfully raised it to independence

and power. He instilled into his subjects a spirit of enterprise,--the

mainspring of a state. He took measures which secured to his country an

increase of power and prosperity. What the world most admired, and

indeed what he himself most valued, was the condition of his army. It

contained at the time of his death one hundred and seventy-five

companies of foot, and seventy-six of cavalry; the artillery had

recently been increased in proportion, and the Elector's attention had

been constantly directed to its improvement. The whole strength of the

army was about twenty-eight thousand men. There was nothing that he

recommended so earnestly to his successor as the preservation of this

instrument of power. By this it was that he had made room for himself

among his neighbors, and had won for the Protestant cause of North

Germany the respect that was its due."[49]

Nor did he neglect that naval arm which has been of so great service to

many countries. Prussia's desire to have a navy has raised many smiles,

and caused much laughter, in this century, as if it were something new;

whereas it is an ancient aspiration, and one which all Prussian

sovereigns and statesmen have experienced for two hundred years, though

not strongly. The Great Czar, who came upon the stage just after the

Great Elector left it, did not long more for a good sea-coast than that

Elector had longed for it. Frederick William could not effect so much as

Peter effected, but he did something toward the creation of a navy for

Prussia. His reluctance in parting with a portion of Pomerania was owing

to his commercial and maritime aspirations. "Of all the princes of the

house of Brandenburg," says Rankè, "he is the only one who ever showed a

strong predilection for maritime life and maritime power. It was the

dream of his youth that he would one day sail along shores obedient to

his will, all the way from Custrin, out by the mouths of the Oder,

across to the coast of Prussia. His sojourn in the Netherlands had

strengthened, though it had not inspired, his love of the sea. The best

proof how painful this cession was to the Elector is the fact that he

shortly afterward offered to the crown of Sweden, not alone the three

sees of Halberstadt, Minden, and Magdeburg, but a sum of two millions of

thalers in addition, for the possession of Pomerania." The same writer

says of the Great Elector elsewhere, that "his mind had a wide grasp; to

us it may seem almost too wide, when we call to mind that he brought the

coast of Guinea into direct communication with Brandenburg, and ventured

to compete with Spain on the ocean." When he died, the population of his

dominions amounted to one million five hundred thousand.

His successor was his son Frederick, who added to the territory of

Prussia, and who, as before stated, became king in November, 1700, a few

days after the extinction, in the person of Charles II., of the Spanish

branch of the house of Austria. One royal house had gone out, and

another came in. Prince Eugene of Savoy, the ablest man that ever served

the house of Austria, plainly told the German Emperor that his ministers

deserved the gallows for advising him to consent to the creation of the

new kingdom, and all subsequent German history seems to show that he was

right. But that house needed all the aid it could beg, buy, or borrow,

to press its claim to the Spanish crowns; and, thanks to the exertions

of the Great Elector, Brandenburg had an army, the aid of which was well

worth purchasing at what Leopold may have thought to be a nominal price,

after all. So well balanced were the parties to the war of the Spanish

Succession, at least in its earlier years, that the mere absence of the

Prussian contingent from the armies of the Grand Alliance might have

thrown victory into the French scale. What would have been the effect

had the army and the influence of Brandenburg been placed at the

disposal of Louis XIV.? What would have been the fate of the house of

Austria, had the Elector been actively employed on the French side,

like the Elector of Bavaria, in the campaign of Blenheim, instead of

being one of the stoutest supporters of the Austrians? Even Eugene

himself might never have won most of those victories which have made his

name immortal, had his policy prevailed at Vienna in 1700, and the

Emperor refused to convert the Elector of Brandenburg into King of

Prussia. At Blenheim, the Prussians behaved in the noblest manner, and

won the highest praise from Eugene, who commanded in that part of the

field where they were stationed; and he spoke particularly of their

"undaunted resolution" in withstanding the enemy's attacks, and of their

activity at a later period of the battle. It is curious to observe that

he notes the steadiness and strength of their fire,--a peculiarity that

has distinguished the Prussian infantry from the beginning of its

existence, and which, from the introduction of the iron ramrod into the

service, had much to do with the successes of Frederick the Great, and,

from the use of the needle-gun, quite as much with the successes of

Prince Frederick Charles and the Crown Prince. In the time of Frederick

I., the Prussian troops were employed in Germany and Italy, in France

and Flanders. They also served against the Turks. It may be said, that,

if the Great Elector created the Prussian army, it received the baptism

of fire in full from his son, Frederick I., the first Prussian king.

Frederick I. died in 1713. If it be true--as we think it is--that the

great enterprise of William of Orange for the deliverance of England

could not have been undertaken but for the aid he gave that prince,

Englishmen and Americans ought to hold his name in especial remembrance.

He was succeeded by his son Frederick William I., who is counted a brute

by most persons, but whom Mr. Carlyle would have us believe to have been

a man of remarkable worth. He had talents, and he increased the

territory of his kingdom. When he died, in 1740, he left to his son a

kingdom containing 2,500,000 souls, a treasury containing $6,000,000,

and an army more than thirty thousand strong, and which was the first

force in Europe because of its high state of discipline and of the

superiority of its infantry weapon. The introduction of the iron ramrod

was a greater improvement, relatively, in 1740, than was the

introduction of the needle-gun in the present generation. Nothing but

the use of that ramrod saved the Prussians from destruction in the first

of Frederick II.'s wars. That gave them superiority, which they well

knew how to keep. "The main thing," as Rankè observes, "was a regular

step and rapid firing; or, as the king once expressed it, 'Load quickly,

advance in close column, present well, take aim well,--all in profound

silence.'" The whole business of infantry in the field is summed up in

the royal sentence, though some may think that line would be a better

word than column; and the Prussian system did favor the linear rather

than the columnar arrangement of troops, as it "presented a wide front,

less exposed to the fire of the artillery, and more efficient from the

force of its musketry."

Frederick William I. died in 1740. His successor was Frederick II.,

commonly called the Great. His history has been so much discussed of

late years that it would be useless to mention its details. He raised

Prussia to the first rank in Europe. Russia was coming in as a European

power, and Spain was then as great as France or England, partly because

of her former greatness, but as much from the sagacity of her sovereign

and the talents of her statesmen. Louis XV. had lessened the weight of

France, and George III. had degraded England. The Austrian house had

suffered from its failure before Frederick. All things combined to make

of Prussia the most formidable of European nations during the last half

of Frederick's reign. When he died, in 1786, the Prussian population

amounted to six millions,--the increase being chiefly due to the

acquisition of Silesia, which was taken from Austria, and to

Frederick's share in the first partition of Poland. He left $50,000,000,

and his army contained 220,000 men.

Frederick William II., a weak sovereign, reigned till 1797. He took part

in the first coalition against revolutionary France, and in the second

and third partitions of Poland. Frederick William III. reigned from 1797

to 1840, during which time Prussia experienced every vicissitude of

fortune. The first war with imperial France, in 1806-7, led to the

reduction of her territory and population one half; and what was left of

country and people was most mercilessly treated by Napoleon I., who

should either have restored her altogether, or have annihilated her. But

the great Emperor was partial to half-measures,--a folly that had much

to do with his fall. The misery that Prussia then experienced was the

cause of her subsequent greatness; and if she has wrested European

supremacy from Napoleon III., she should thank Napoleon I. for enabling

her to accomplish so great a feat of arms. The Prussian government had

to undertake the task of reform, to save itself and the country from

perishing. The chief man in this great work was the celebrated Baron von

Stein, whose name is of infrequent mention in popular histories of the

Napoleonic age, but who had more to do with the overthrow of the Man of

Destiny than any other person. It is one of those strange facts which

are so constantly meeting us in history, that it was by Napoleon's

advice that Stein was employed by the Prussian king. "Take the Baron von

Stein," said the Emperor, when the king at Tilsit spoke of the misery of

his situation; "he is a man of sense." Eighteen months later, Napoleon

actually outlawed Stein, the decree of outlawry dating from Madrid. The

language of the decree was of the most insulting character. "One Stein"

(_le nommé Stein_), it was said, was endeavoring to create troubles in

Germany, and therefore he was denounced as an enemy of France and of the

Rhenish Confederacy. The property he held in French or confederate

territory was confiscated, and the troops of France and her allies were

ordered to arrest him, wherever he could be found. Had he been taken,

quite likely he would have been as summarily dealt with as Palm had

been.

Stein fled into Bohemia, where he resided three years, when Alexander I.

invited him to Russia, and employed him in the most important affairs.

He kept up Alexander's courage during the darkest days of 1812, and

advised, with success, against yielding to the French, though it is

probable the Czar might have had his own terms from Napoleon, after the

latter had reached Moscow. It is said that the American Minister in

Russia, the late Mr. J. Q. Adams, was not less energetic than Stein on

the same side. It may well be doubted if their advice was such as a

Russian sovereign should have followed, though it was excellent for

Germany and for all nations that feared Napoleon. If the American

Minister did what was attributed to him, he actually acted in behalf of

the very nation against which his own country had just declared war! The

war between the United States and England began at the same time that

active operations against Russia were entered upon by the French; and

England was the only powerful nation upon which Russia could rely for

assistance.

Stein had done his work before he was made to leave Prussia. He was the

creator of the Prussian people. His reforms would be pronounced agrarian

measures in England or America. An imitation of them in England might

not be amiss; but in America, where land is a drug, and where possession

of it does not give half the consideration that proceeds from the

ownership of "stocks" or funds, it would be as much out of place as a

mixture for blackening negroes, or a machine for converting New England

soil into rocks. "Stein's main idea," says Vehse, "was, 'the burgher

must become noble.' With this view, he tried to call forth a strong

feeling of nationality and a new spirit in the people. His first step in

introducing his new system of administration was the abolition of

vassalage, and the change of the titles of seignorial property. This was

done by the edict dated Memel, October 9, 1807, which did away with the

monopoly until then claimed by the nobles holding such estates, which

were now allowed to be acquired also by burghers and peasants. It

moreover abolished all the feudal burdens of tenure. In this great law,

Frederick William III. laid down the principle: 'After St. Martin's day,

1810, there will be throughout my dominions none but free people.' This

edict first created in Prussia a _free_ peasantry. Free burghers, on the

other hand, were created by the municipal law from Königsberg, November

19, 1808, which restored to the burgesses their ancient municipal rights

of freely electing their magistrates and deputies, and of

self-government within their own civic sphere.... Stein tried in every

way to secure to the burgher his independence, and to protect him

against the despotism of the men in office. With equal energy he tried

to develop the spirit of the people."[50] For five years most of the

Prussian ministers labored in the same spirit. A military force was

created, chiefly by the labors of Scharnhorst, and the limitation of the

Prussian army by Napoleon was in great part evaded. Everything was done

to create a people, and to have ready the moral and material means from

which to create an army, should circumstances arise under which Prussia

might think it safe for her to act. Hardenberg did not go so far as

Stein would have gone, but it is probable that he acted wisely; for very

strong measures might have brought Napoleon's hand upon him. As it was,

the Emperor could not complain of measures that breathed the very spirit

of the French Revolution, of which he was the impersonation and the

champion,--or claimed to be.

But all the labors of Stein, and those other Prussian patriots who acted

with him or followed in his footsteps, would have been of no avail, had

not Napoleon afforded them an opportunity to turn their labors to

account. They might have elevated the people, have accumulated money,

have massed munitions, and have drilled the entire male population to

the business and work of war, till they should have surpassed all that

is told of Roman discipline and efficiency; but all such exertions would

have been utterly thrown away had the French Emperor behaved like a

rational being, and not sought to illustrate his famous dogma, that the

impossible has no existence, by seeking to achieve impossibilities. At

the beginning of 1812, Napoleon was literally invincible. He was master

of all Continental Europe, from the Atlantic to the Niemen, and from

Cape North to Reggio. There was not a sovereign in that part of the

world, from the kings of Sweden and Denmark to the Emperor of Austria

and the Turkish Sultan, who did not wear crowns and wield sceptres only

because the sometime General Bonaparte was willing they should wear and

wield the emblems of imperial or royal power. He was at war only with

Great Britain, and Spain, Portugal, and Sicily; and Great Britain was

the sole enemy he was bound to respect. All the more enlightened

Spaniards were all but ready to acknowledge the rule of his brother

Joseph, and would have done so but for French failure in the Russian

war. England's army could have been driven from the Peninsula with ease,

had a third of the men who were worse than wasted in Russia been

directed thither in the early spring of 1812. The Bourbons of Sicily

hated their English protectors so bitterly, that they were ready to

unite with the French to get up a modern imitation of the Sicilian

Vespers at their expense. The war might soon have been confined to the

ocean, and there it would have been fought for France principally by

Americans, as the United States were soon to declare war against

England. Never before was man so strong as Napoleon on New-Year's day,

1812; and in less than four years he was living in lodgings, and bad

lodgings too, in St. Helena! What hope could the Prussians have, a month

before the march to Moscow was resolved upon? None that could encourage

them. Some of the more sanguine spirits, supported by general sentiment,

were still of opinion that something could be effected; but the larger

number of intelligent men were very despondent, and not a few of them

began to think of the world beyond the Atlantic, as English patriots had

thought almost two centuries earlier, when, that "blood and iron man,"

Wentworth (Strafford), was developing his system of _Thorough_ with a

precision and an energy that even Count Bismark has never surpassed. The

bolder Prussians, when their country had to choose between resistance to

Napoleon and an alliance with him against Russia, were for resistance,

and would have placed their country right across the Emperor's path, and

fought out the battle with him, and abided the consequences, which would

have been the annihilation of Prussia in a sixth part of the time that

Mr. Seward allotted for the duration of the Secession war. The Prussian

war party would have had the Russians advance into their country, and

thus have staked the issue on just such a contest as occurred in 1806-7.

Napoleon, it is at least believed, was desirous that Prussia should join

Russia, as that would have enabled him to defeat his enemies without

crossing the Russian frontier, and have afforded him an excuse for

destroying Prussia. To prevent so untimely a display of resistance to

French ascendency was the aim of a few Prussians, headed by the king

himself, who became very unpopular in consequence. Fortunately for

Prussia, they were successful, and the means employed deceived not only

the patriotic party, but even Napoleon, who was completely imposed upon

by the report of the Baron von dem Knesebeck against a war between

Russia and France. The story belongs to the romance of history; but it

is too long, because involving many facts, to be told here.

Prussia was prevented from "throwing herself into the arms of Russia,"

much to the disgust of Scharnhorst and his friends. She even assisted

Napoleon in his war against Alexander, and sent a contingent to the

Grand Army, which formed the tenth corps of that memorable force, and

was commanded by Marshal Macdonald. It consisted of twenty-six thousand

men, including one French infantry division,--the Prussians being

generally estimated at twenty thousand men. This corps did very little

during the campaign, and soon after the failure of the French it went

over to the Russians, taking the first step in that course which made

Prussia so formidable a member of the Grand Alliance of 1813-15. But

even so late as the close of May, 1813, Prussia was in danger of

annihilation, and would have been annihilated had not Napoleon proffered

an armistice, which was accepted,--the greatest blunder of his career,

according to some eminent critics, as well political as military.

The leading part which Prussia had in the Liberation War and in the

first overthrow of Napoleon caused her to be reconstructed by the

Congress of Vienna; and her part in the war of 1815 confirmed the

impression she had made on the world. Waterloo was as much a Prussian as

an English victory,--the loss of the Prussians in that action being

about as great as the purely English loss.[51] She became one of the

Five Powers which by common consent were rulers of Europe. Down to 1830

she had more influence than France, and from 1830 to the

re-establishment of the Napoleonic dynasty, she was France's equal; and

even after Napoleon III. had replaced France at the head of Europe,

Prussia was the only member of the Pentarchy which had not been

humiliated by his blows, or yet more by his assistance. England has

suffered from her connection with him,--a connection difficult on many

occasions to distinguish from inferiority and subserviency; and in war

the old superiority of the French armies to those of Russia and Austria

has been asserted in the Crimea and in Italy. Prussia alone has not

stooped before the avenger of the man whom she had so vindictive a part

in overthrowing, and whom her military chief purposed having slain on

the very spot where the Duc d'Enghien had been put to death by his

(Napoleon's) orders. Of all the enemies of Napoleon and France in 1815,

Prussia was the most malignant, or rather she was the only member of the

Alliance which exhibited malignity.[52] She would have had France

partitioned; and failed in her design only because openly opposed by

Russia and England, while Austria, fearing to offend German opinion,

secretly supported the Czar and Wellington. Blücher, an earnest man, was

never more in earnest than when he purposed to shoot Napoleon in the

ditch of Vincennes; and it required all Wellington's influence to

dissuade him from so barbarous a proceeding. Yet Napoleon III. has never

been able to avenge these injuries and insults,--to say nothing of

Waterloo, and of the massacre of the flying French in the night after

the battle, or of the shocking conduct of the Prussians in France in

1815; and the events of the current year would seem to favor, and that

strongly, the opinion of those persons who say that France never will be

able to obtain her long-thought-of revenge. Certainly, if _Prussia_ was

safe, Prussia with most of Germany to back her cannot be in any serious

danger of being forced to drink of that cup of humiliation which

Napoleon III. has commended to so many countries.

After the settlement of Europe, in 1815, Prussia did not show much of

that encroaching character which is attributed to her, but was one of

the most quiet of nations. This was in great measure due to the

character of the king. He was of the class of heavy men, and the first

part of his reign had been marked by the occurrence of troubles so

numerous and so great that his original dislike of change increased to

fanaticism. He was one of the framers of the Holy Alliance, which grew

out of the thorough fright which he and his friend the Czar felt during

the saddest days of 1813. Alexander told a Prussian clergyman, named

Egbert, in 1818, that, during one of their flights before

Napoleon,--probably on that doleful day when they had to retreat from

Dresden, amid wind and rain, and before the French reverse at Kulm had

put a good face on the affairs of the Alliance,--Frederick William III.

said to him: "Things cannot go on so! we are in the direction of the

east, and it is toward the west that we ought to march, that we must

march. We shall, God willing, arrive there. And if, as I trust, he

should bless our united efforts, we will proclaim in the face of Heaven

our conviction that to Him alone belongs the honor." Thereupon,

continued the Czar, "We promised, and exchanged a pressure of hands upon

it with sincerity." Both monarchs evidently thought they had succeeded

in bribing Heaven; for Alexander told his reverend hearer that great

victories soon came; "and," said he, "when we had arrived in Paris, we

had reached the end of our painful course. The king of Prussia reminded

me of the holy resolution of which he had entertained the first idea;

and Francis II., who had shared our views, our opinions, and our

tendencies, entered willingly into the association." Such was

Alexander's account of the origin of that famous league which so

perplexed and alarmed our fathers. It differs from the commonly received

belief as to its origin, which is, that it was the work of Alexander

himself, who was inspired by Madame de Krudener, who, having "played the

devil and written a novel,"--she was unfaithful to her marriage vow, and

wrote "Valerio,"--naturally became devout as old age approached. It

makes somewhat against the Czar's story, that the Holy Alliance was not

formed till the autumn of 1815, and that he and Frederick William

arrived at Paris in the spring of 1814; and that in the interval he and

Francis II. came very near going to war on the Polish question.

Alexander was crack-brained, and a mystic, and it is far more likely

that he should have originated the Holy Alliance than that the idea

should have proceeded from so wooden-headed a personage as the Prussian

king, who had about as much sentiment as a Memel log. Alexander was

always haunted by the thought that he had consented to the death of his

father,--that, as a Greek would have said, he was pursued by the Furies;

and he was constantly thinking of expiation, and seeking to propitiate

the Deity, and that by means not much different in spirit from those to

which savages have resort. There was much of that Tartar in him which,

according to Napoleon, you will always find when you scratch a Russian.

Whether Frederick William III. suggested the Holy Alliance may be

doubted; but there can be no doubt that he lived thoroughly up to its

spirit, which was the spirit of intense absolutism. He broke every

promise he had made to his people when he needed their aid to keep his

kingdom out of the grasp of Napoleon. He became the vindictive

persecutor of the men who had led his subjects in the war to rush to

arms, without counting the odds they had to encounter at first. He was a

despot of the old pattern, as far as a sovereign of the nineteenth

century could be one. It does not appear that he acted thus from love of

power for its own sake, to which so much of tyrannical action is due. In

most respects he was rather a favorable specimen of the despot. His

action was the consequence of circumstances, the effect of experience.

He had had two or three thorough frights, and twice he had been in

danger of losing his crown, and of seeing the extinction of that nation

which his ancestors had been at such pains to create. If exertions of

his could prevent the recurrence of such evils, they should not be

wanting. As Charles II., after the Restoration of 1660, had firmly

resolved on one thing, namely, that, come what would, he would not again

go upon his travels, so had Frederick William III., after the

restoration of his kingdom, firmly resolved that, happen what might, he

would have no more wars, and that, if he could, he would keep out of

politics. So he maintained peace, and kept down the politicians. Prussia

flourished marvellously during the last twenty-five years of his reign;

and, judging from results, his government could not have been a bad one.

Under it was created that people whose recent action has astonished the

world, and produced for it a new sensation. A comprehensive system of

education opened the paths to knowledge to every one; and a not less

comprehensive military system made every healthy man's services

available to the state. There never before took the field so highly

educated a force as that which has just reduced Count Bismark's policy

to practice,--not even in America. There may have been as intelligent

armies in the Union's service during our civil conflict as those which

obeyed Prince Frederick Charles and the Crown Prince of Prussia, but as

highly educated most certainly they were not.

When Friedrich von Raumer was in England, in 1835, he, at an English

dinner, gave this toast: "The King of Prussia, the greatest and best

reformer in Europe." That he was the "best reformer in Europe," we will

not insist upon,--but that he was the greatest reformer there, we have

no doubt whatever. That he was a reformer at heart, originally, no one

would pretend who knows his history. He was made one by stress of

circumstances. But having become a reformer, he did a great work, as

contemporary history shows. He would have been content to live, and

reign, and die, sovereign of just such a Prussia as he found in 1797;

but, in spite of himself, he was made to effect a mightier revolution

than even a French revolutionist of 1793 would have deemed it possible

to accomplish. His career is the liveliest illustration that we know of

the doctrine that men are the sport of circumstances.

Frederick William III. died in 1840. His son and successor, Frederick

William IV., was a man of considerable ability and a rare scholar; but

he was not up to his work, the more so that the age of revolutions

appeared again early in his reign. He might have made himself master of

all Germany in 1848, but had not the courage to act as a Prussian

sovereign should have acted. He was elected Emperor by the revolutionary

Diet at Frankfort, but refused the crown. A little later, under the

inspiration of General Radowitz, he took up such a position as we have

seen his successor fill so effectively. War with Austria seemed close at

hand, and the unity of Germany might have been brought about sixteen

years since had the Prussian monarch been equal to the crisis. As it

was, he "backed down," and Radowitz, who was a too-early Bismark, left

his place, and died at the close of 1853. The king lost his mind in

1857; and his brother William became Regent, and succeeded to the throne

in 1861, on the death of Frederick William IV.

The reign of William I. will be regarded as one of the most remarkable

in Prussian history. Though an old man when he took the crown, William

I. has advanced the greatness of Prussia even more than it was advanced

by Frederick II. His course with regard to the Danish Duchies has called

forth many indignant remarks; but it is no worse than that of most other

sovereigns, and stones cannot fairly be cast at him by many ruling

hands. Count Bismark has been the chief minister of Prussia under

William I., and to him must be attributed that policy which has carried

his country, _per saltum_, to the highest place among the nations. He

long since came to the conclusion that nothing could be done for

Germany, by Germany and in Germany, till Austria should be thrust out of

Germany. He was right; and he has labored to accomplish the dismissal of

Austria, with a perseverance and a persistency that it would be

difficult to parallel. He alone has done the deed. Had he died last May,

there would have been no war in Europe this year; for nothing less than

his redoubtable courage and iron will could have overcome the obstacles

that existed to the commencement of the conflict.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] Exactly what it was Napoleon III. asked of Prussia we never have

seen stated by any authority that we can quite trust. The London Times,

which is likely to be well informed on the subject, assumes, in its

issue of August 11th, that the Emperor asked of Prussia the restoration

of the French frontier of 1814,--meaning the French frontier as it was

fixed by the Treaty of Paris, on the 30th of May, immediately after the

fall of Napoleon I. If this is the correct interpretation of Napoleon's

demand, he asked for very little. The Treaty of Paris took from France

nearly all the conquests made by the Republic and the Empire, leaving

her only a few places on the side of Germany, a little territory near

Geneva, portions of Savoy, and the Venaissin. After the second conquest

of France, most of these remnants of her conquests were taken from her.

Napoleon III. has regained what was then lost of Savoy, and he seems to

have sought from Prussia the restoration of that which was lost on the

side of Germany, most of which was given to Bavaria and Belgium, and the

remainder to Prussia herself. What Prussia holds, he supposed she could

cede to France; and as to Bavaria, he may have argued that Prussia was

in such position with regard to that kingdom as to make her will law to

its government. But how could she get possession of what Belgium holds?

Since the failure of his attempt, the French Emperor has been at

peculiar pains to assure the King of the Belgians that he has no designs

on his territory; and therefore we must suppose he had none when he

propounded his demand to Prussia. It may be added, that the cession of

the Prussian portion of the spoil of 1815 had been a subject of

speculation, and of something like negotiation, long before war between

Prussia and Austria was supposed to be possible.

[46] There has been as much noise made over the needle-gun as by that

famous and fascinating slaughter weapon; yet it is by no means an arm of

tender years. It had been known thirty years when the recent war began,

and it had been amply tested in action seventeen years before it was

first directed against the Austrians, not to mention the free use that

had been made of it in the Danish war. Much that has been said of its

character and capabilities since last June was said in 1849, and can be

found in publications of that year. The world had forgotten it, and also

that Prussia could fight. Nicholas von Dreyse, inventor of the

needle-gun, is now living, at the age of seventy-eight. The thought of

the invention occurred to him the day after the battle of Jena, in 1806.

Some six or seven years since, we read, in an English work, an elaborate

argument to show that, in a great war, Prussia must be beaten, because

she had no experienced commanders!--like Benedek and Clam-Gallas, for

example.

[47] The entire force of the Allies at Leipzig is generally stated to

have been 290,000 men; that of the French at 175,000,--making a total of

465,000, or about 45,000 more than were present at Sadowa. So the excess

at Leipzig was not so very great. At Leipzig the Allies alone had more

guns than both armies had at Sadowa,--but what were the cannon of those

days compared to those of these times? The great force assembled in and

around Leipzig was taken from almost all Europe, as there were

Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Italians, Poles,

Swedes, Dutchmen, and even Englishmen, present in the two armies;

whereas at Sadowa the armies were drawn only from Austria, Prussia, and

Saxony. The battle of Sadowa lasted only one day; that of Leipzig four

days, a large part of the Allied armies taking part only in the fighting

of the third and fourth days. The French lost 68,000 men at Leipzig, the

Allies, 42,640,--total, 110,640. But 30,000 of the French were

prisoners, reducing the number of killed and wounded to 80,640,--which

was even a good four days' work. Probably a third of these were killed

or mortally wounded, as artillery was freely used in the battle. War is

a great manufacturer of _pabulum Acheruntis_,--grave-meat, that is to

say.

[48] It is impossible to speak with precision of the number of the

population of Prussia. The highest number mentioned by a respectable

authority is 19,000,000; but that is given in "round numbers," and is

not meant to be taken literally. But if it be 19,000,000, but little

more than half as large as that of Austria as it was when the war began,

not much above a fourth as large as that of Russia, many millions below

that of the British Islands, a few million less than that of Italy as it

stood before the cession of Venetia by Austria, and a few millions more

than that of Spain. The populations of Prussia and Italy when the war

began were a little above 40,000,000. The populations of Austria and the

German states that sided with her may have been about 50,000,000; and

Austria had as much assistance from her German allies as Prussia had

from the Italians,--the Saxons helping her much, showing the highest

military qualities in the brief but bloody war. Had all the lesser

German states preserved a strict neutrality, so that the entire Prussian

force could have been directed against Austria, the Prussians would have

been before Vienna, and probably in that city, in ten days from the date

of Sadowa. Prussia brought out 730,000 men, or about one twenty-sixth

part of her entire population.

[49] Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, and History of Prussia during

the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Vol. I. pp. 91, 92.

[50] Stein was one of those eminent men who have acted as if they

thought coarseness bordering upon brutality an evidence of independence

of spirit and greatness of soul. He was uncivil to those beneath him,

not civil to those above him, and insulting to his equals. He addressed

the King of Prussia in language that no gentleman ever employs, and he

berated his underlings in a style that even President Johnson might

despair of equalling. He hated the Duke of Dalberg, on both public and

private accounts; and when the Duke was one of the French Ambassadors at

Vienna, in time of the Congress, he offered to call on the Baron. "Tell

him," said Stein, "that, if he visits me as French Ambassador, he shall

be well received; but if he comes as a private person, he shall be

kicked down stairs." Niebuhr, the historian, once told him that he

(Stein) hated a certain personage. "Hate him? No," said Stein; "but I

would spit in his face were I to meet him on the street." This readiness

to convert the human face into a spittoon shows that he was qualified to

represent a Southern district in our Congress; for what Stein said he

would do was done by Mr. Plummer of Mississippi, who spat in the face of

Mr. Slade of Vermont,--the American democrat, who probably never had

heard of his grandfather, getting a little beyond the German aristocrat,

who could trace his ancestors back through six or seven centuries. Thus

do extremes meet. In talents, in energy, in audacity, in arrogance, in

firmness of will, and in unbending devotion to one great and leading

purpose, Count von Bismark bears a strong resemblance to Baron von

Stein, upon whom he seems to have modelled himself,--while Austrian

ascendency in Germany was to him what French ascendency in that country

was to his prototype, only not so productive of furious hatred, because

the supremacy of Austria was offensive politically, and not personally

annoying, like that of France; but Bismark, though sufficiently

demonstrative in the expression of his sentiments, has never outraged

propriety to the extent that it was outraged by Stein. Stein died in

1831, having lived long enough to see the in French Revolution of 1830

that a portion of his work had been done in vain. His Prussian work will

endure forever, and be felt throughout the world.

[51] The Prussian loss in the battle of Waterloo was 6,998; the

_British_ loss, 6,935;--but this does not include the Germans, Dutch,

and Belgians who fell on the field or were put down among the missing.

Wellington's total loss was about 16,000. The number of Prussians

present in the battle was much more than twice the number of Britons.

The number of the latter was 23,991, with 78 guns; of the former,

51,944, with 104 guns. Almost 16,000 of the Prussians were engaged some

hours before the event of the battle was decided; almost 30,000 two

hours before that decision; and the remainder an hour before the Allied

victory was secured. It shows how seriously the French were damaged by

Prussian intervention, that Napoleon had to detach, from the army that

he had intended to employ against Wellington only, 27 battalions of

infantry (including 11 battalions of the Guard), 18 squadrons of

cavalry, and 66 guns, making a total of about 18,000 men, or about a

fourth part of his force and almost a third of his artillery. This

subtraction from the army that ought to have been used in fighting

Wellington would alone have suffered gravely to compromise the French;

and it is well known that Napoleon felt the want of men to send against

the English long before the conflict was over; and this want was the

consequence of the pressure of the Prussians on his right flank,

threatening to establish themselves in his rear. But this was not all

the aid derived by Wellington from the Prussian advance. It was the

arrival of a portion of Zieten's corps on the field of Waterloo that

enabled the British commander to withdraw from his left the

comparatively untouched cavalry brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur, and to

station them in or near the centre of his line, where they were of the

greatest use at the very "crisis" of the battle,--Vivian, in particular,

doing as much as was done by any one of Wellington's officers to secure

victory for his commander. The Prussians followed the flying French for

hours, and had the satisfaction of giving the final blow to Napoleonism

for that time. It has risen again.

[52] No one who is not familiar with the correspondence of the Allied

commanders in 1815 can form an adequate idea of the ferocity which then

characterized the Prussian officers. On the 27th of June General von

Gneisenau, writing for Blücher, declared that Napoleon must be delivered

over to the Prussians, "with a view to his execution." That, he argued,

was what eternal justice demanded, and what the Declaration of March

13th decided,--alluding to the Declaration against Napoleon published by

the Congress of Vienna, which, he said, and fairly enough too, put him

under outlawry by the Allied powers. Doing the Duke of Wellington the

justice to suppose he would be averse to hangman's work, Gneisenau, who

stood next to Blücher in the Prussian service as well as in Prussian

estimation, expressed his leader's readiness to free him from all

responsibility in the matter by taking possession of Napoleon's person

himself, and detailing the intended assassins from his own army.

Wellington was astonished at such language from gentlemen, and so

exerted himself that Blücher changed his mind; whereupon Gneisenau wrote

that it had been Blücher's "intention to execute [murder?] Bonaparte on

the spot where the Duc d'Enghien was shot; that out of deference,

however, to the Duke's wishes, he will abstain from this measure; but

that the Duke must take on himself the responsibility of its

non-enforcement." In another letter he wrote: "When the Duke of

Wellington declares himself against the execution of Bonaparte, he

thinks and acts in the matter as a Briton. Great Britain is under

weightier obligations to no mortal man than to this very villain; for,

by the occurrences whereof he is the author, her greatness, prosperity,

and wealth have attained their present elevation. The English are the

masters of the seas, and have no longer to fear any rivalry, either in

this dominion or the commerce of the world. It is quite otherwise with

us Prussians. We have been impoverished by him. Our nobility will never

be able to right itself again." There is much of the _perfide Albion_

nonsense in this. In a letter which Gneisenau, in 1817, wrote to Sir

Hudson Lowe, then Governor of St. Helena, he said: "Mille et mille fois

j'ai porté mes souvenirs dans cette vaste solitude de l'océan, et sur ce

rocher interessant sur lequel vous êtes le gardien du repos public de

l'Europe. De votre vigilance et de votre force de caractère dépend notre

salut; dès que vous vous relâchez de vos mesures de rigueur contre _le

plus rusé scélérat du monde_, dès que vous permettriez à vos subalternes

de lui accorder par une pitié mal entendue des faveurs, notre repos

serait compromis, et les honnêtes gens en Europe s'abandonneraient à

leurs anciennes inquiétudes." An amusing instance of his prejudice

occurs in another part of the same letter, where he says: "Le fameux

manuscrit de Ste. Hélène a fait une sensation scandaleuse et dangereuse

en Europe, surtout en France, où, quóiqu'il ait été supprimé, il a été

lu dans toutes les coteries de Paris, et où même les femmes, au lieu

nuits à le copier." Gneisenau was in this country in his youth,--one of

those Hessians who were bought by George III. to murder Americans who

would not submit to his crazy tyranny. That was an excellent school in

which to learn the creed of assassins; for there was not a Hessian in

the British service who was not as much a bravo as any ruffian in Italy

who ever sold his stiletto's service to some cowardly vengeance-seeker.

It ought, in justice, to be added, that Sir Walter Scott states that in

1816 "there existed a considerable party in Britain who were of opinion

that the British government would best have discharged their duty to

France and Europe by delivering up Napoleon to Louis XVIII.'s

government, to be treated as he himself had treated the Duc d'Enghien."

So that the Continent did not monopolize the assassins of that time.

THE SONG SPARROW.

Can you hear the sparrow in the lane

Singing above the graves? she said.

He knows my gladness, he knows my pain,

Though spring be over and summer be dead.

His note hath a chime all cannot hear,

And none can love him better than I;

For he sings to me when the land is drear,

And makes it cheerful even to die.

'T is beautiful on this odorous morn,

When grasses are waving in every wind,

To know my bird is not forlorn,

That summer to him is also kind;--

But sweeter, when grasses no longer stir,

And every lilac-leaf is shed,

To know that my voiceful worshipper

Is singing above my voiceless dead.

INVALIDISM.

One of the first tendencies of sickness is to centralization. Every

invalid at least begins by being pivotal in the household. But with the

earliest hint that the case is chronic, things recoil to their own

centres again; people begin to come and go in the gayest way; they laugh

and eat immensely, and fly through the halls asking if one couldn't take

a bit of stuffed veal. And while one still sinks lower, failing down to

the verge of the grave, it is only to hear of the most cherished friends

in another town leading the whirl with tableaux and private theatricals.

Finally is realized the dire _denouément_, that, though one lay with

breath flickering away, the daily grocer would come driving up without

any velvet on his wheels or any softness in his voice, and that the

whole routine of affairs is to proceed, whoever goes or stays. This

cold-heartedness it seems will kill one at any rate. Rather the universe

should sigh and be darkened. To pass unheeded is worse than to die. Just

now it is impossible to compass even the satirical mood of Pope, who

declared himself not at all uneasy that many men for whom he never had

any esteem were likely to enjoy the world after him. But before one has

time to die, the absent friends write such a kind, sorry letter, in

which they do not say anything about private theatricals, and, as Thad

Stevens said of that speech, one knows of course that it was all a hoax!

Then the people who eat stuffed veal repent themselves, and send in a

delicate broth or a bit of tenderloin, hovering softly in a sudden

regard, and at length a healthier thought is born. It is to arise with

desperate will, put a fresh rose in the bonnet and a delusive veil over

the face, creeping down to the street with what steadiness can be

summoned. There one meets friends, and is pretty well, with thanks, and

is congratulated. Affairs grow brilliant, but the veil never comes up;

underneath there is some one forty years old and an invalid. Having thus

moved against the enemy's works, it is best to retire upon what spirit

there is left. It is after this sally that, when the landlady hears a

hammering of a Sunday, she comes directly to the room of this robust

person, who is obliged to confess that, even if so inclined, she has not

strength enough to break the Sabbath.

But the anxiety of every one to show some friendliness to a sufferer is

only equalled by the usual inability. We all read of that Union soldier

in the hospital visited by an elderly woman bound to do something when

there was nothing to be done, and who finally succeeded in bathing the

patient's face, while he, poor fellow, still struggling in the folds of

the towel, was heard to exclaim, "That's the fourteenth time I've had my

face washed to-day!"

Far more unobtrusive is the benevolence which goes into one's kitchen,

sending thence to the sick-room those dainties which, after all, are so

much too good to be eaten. It seems to be taken for granted that sick

persons eat a great deal, and that most of them might share the

experiment of Matthews, who began the diary of an invalid and ended with

that of a gourmand. I fear that these kindly geniuses would sometimes

feel a twinge of chagrin at seeing their elaborate delicacies in process

of being devoured by the most rubicund people in the house. But it

matters not; it is the sending and getting that are the dainties. Amid

all these niceties, however, the office of nurse might certainly be made

a sinecure; and just at this point her labors are really quite arduous;

for any invalid blessed with many favoring friends soon would sink under

the care of crockery and baskets to be properly delivered, while to

attend to the accompanying napkins is little less than to preside over a

small laundry. And then, as every one tastefully sends her choicest

wares to enhance their contents, the invalid also finds that she is the

keeper of all the best dishes of the best families.

There is nothing like a well-fought resistance in the early stages of

invalidism. Keep up the will, and if need be the temper. There are times

when to grow heavenly is fatal,--when one is to let the soul run loose,

and to gather up the gritty determination of Sarah, Duchess of

Marlborough, who, when told that she must be blistered or die,

exclaimed, "I won't be blistered, and I won't die!" Indeed, it is often

necessary to reverse the decision of the doctor who gives one up, and

simply end by giving him up. The numbers are untold who have died solely

from being given up,--I do not mean of the doctors. Poor, timid mortals!

they only heard the words, and meekly folded their hands and went. On

the other side, there is no end to the people who have been given up all

through their lives, and who have utterly refused to depart. They have a

kind of useless toughness which prevents them from dying, without

endowing them to live. These animated relics often show no special

fitness for either world, and they are not even ornamental.

I have somewhere seen the invalid enjoined to talk as if well, but treat

himself as if ill. And to certain temperaments a little of this

diplomacy, or secretiveness, is often very important. Once an admitted

invalid, and the dikes are down. Then begin to pour in all sorts of

worthy, but alarming and indiscreet persons,--they who accost one in the

street declaring one is so changed, and doesn't look fit to be

out,--they who invidiously inquire if you take any solid food, as if one

walked the world on water-gruel,--they who come to try to make you

comfortable while you _do_ live. All these are very kind, but to a

sanguine person they are crushing.

We are all aware that there is no surer way to produce a given state of

mind or body, than to constantly address the victim as if he were in

that state. It is a familiar fact that a stout yeoman once went home

pale and discomfited from a little conspiracy of several wags remarking

how very ill he looked; and that another, who was blindfolded, having

water poured over his arm as if being bled, finally died from loss of

blood without losing a drop; and Sir Humphrey Davy mentions one wishing

to take nitrous oxide gas, to whom common atmospheric air was given,

with the result of syncope. And if the well can be thus wrought on, what

can be expected of the weak? This habit of depressing remark comes

possibly from the feeling that invalids like to magnify their woes,

ailments being regarded as their "sensation," or stock in trade. True,

there is now and then one made happier by hearing that he seems

exceedingly miserable; but it is more natural to brighten with pleasant

words, and a morning compliment of good looks will often set one up for

the day. Indeed, we fancy that most persons, knowing their disease, in

their own minds, prefer that it should chiefly rest there. To discuss

seems only to define it more sharply, and to be greatly condoled is only

debilitating. Montaigne, to avoid death-bed sympathies, desired to die

on horseback; while against the eternal repeating of these ills for

pity, he says that "the man who makes himself dead when living is likely

to be held as though alive when he is dying."

Likewise the friendliness which keeps reminding one of the fatal end

serves none. It is both impolitic and impolite; as if there were an

unsightly mole upon the face, and every visitor remarked, as he entered,

"Ah, I see you still have that ugly mole!" With all these comforters it

is finally better to do without their devotions than to be subjected to

their discouragements. How much Pope resented this rude style of

criticism may be seen from his tart exclamation, "They all say 't is

pity I am so sickly, and I think 't is pity they are so healthy."

Yet that incurable sufferer, Harriet Martineau, testifies that when a

friend said to her, with the face of an angel, "Why should we be bent

upon your being better, and make up a bright prospect for you? I see no

brightness in it; and the time seems past for expecting you ever to be

well,"--her spirits rose at once with the sturdy recognition of the

truth. And Dr. Henry, with the same directness, wrote to his friend,

"Come out to me next week; I have got something important to do,--I have

got to die."

This must surely be called the heroic treatment; but for those who are

not equal to such, it is good to have a physician of tact, who shall not

doom them regularly every day. Plato said that physicians were the only

men who might lie at pleasure, since our health depends upon the vanity

and falsity of their promises. And yet one is not usually deceived by

this flattery; but it is vastly more comfortable to hear pleasant things

instead of gloomy, and the sick would rather prefer a dance to a dirge.

Of this amiable sort must have been the attendant who caused Pope to

say, "Ah, my dear friend, I am dying every day of a hundred good

symptoms"; and still more charming the adviser chosen by Molière, who,

when asked by Louis XIV., himself a slave to medicine, what he did about

a doctor, said, "O sire, when I am ill, I send for him. He comes; we

have a chat and enjoy ourselves. He prescribes; I don't take it,--I am

cured."

Perhaps few are aware of the various heroisms of the chronic patient. It

must have been prophetic that the Mexicans of olden time thus saluted

their new-born babes: "Child, thou art come into the world to endure,

suffer, and say nothing." It is grand to be upborne by a spirit

unperturbed, although flesh and nerve may strike through the best soul

for a moment; even as the great and equable Longinus, on his way to

execution, is said to have turned pale and halted for an instant; while

we all know, that, after the Stuart rebellion, the rough old Duke

Balmoral, a lesser man, never faltered, but, with boisterous courage,

cried out for the fatal axe to be carried by his side.

We had been used to think Andrew Jackson an iron-built conqueror, who

never knew a pain, until Parton told of the violent cramp which would

seize him while marching at the head of his army, when he simply threw

himself over a bent sapling in the forest till the spasm subsided, and

marched on. The same endurance nerved him to the end. For many of his

last years not free for one hour from pain, he still sat at the White

House, never intermitting any duty, although the mere signing of his

name drew its witness of suffering from every pore. It is with sorrow,

too, that we have lately read that the beloved Florence Nightingale has

been held by disease, not only to her room, but to a single position in

it, for a whole year. And one of our own poets, even dearer to his

friends for the sainthood of suffering, still ever is pressing on with

tuneful courage. Hear him singing,

"Who hath not learned in hours of faith

The truth, to flesh and sense unknown,

That Life is ever lord of Death,

And Love can never lose its own?"

Named among the valiant, yet more sad than heroic, was poor Heine on his

"mattress-grave." Most pathetically did he lay himself down, this

"soldier in the war for the liberation of humanity." Of the last time

that Heine left the house before yielding to disease, he says: "With

difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre, and almost sank down as I

entered the magnificent hall where the ever-blessed goddess of beauty,

our beloved Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal. At her feet I lay

long, and wept so bitterly that a stone must have pitied me. The goddess

looked compassionately on me, but at the same time disconsolately, as if

she would say, 'Dost thou not see that I have no arms, and thus cannot

help thee?'"

Not less touching was the pathos of Tom Hood, in his long years of

consumption; but the tone was gayer than the gayest. See him write to a

friend: "My dear Johnny, aren't you glad to hear now that I've only been

ill and spitting blood three times since I left you, instead of being

very dead indeed?" To this he adds: "But wasn't I in luck, after

spitting blood and being bled, to catch the rheumatism in going down

stairs!"

One long struggle was his against prostration and over-work; but always

the same buoyant wit,--writing the cheeriest things with an ebbing life;

the hero fighting against fatal odds, but always under a light

mask,--and ridiculing himself most of all;--

"I'm sick of gruel and the dietetics;

I'm sick of pills and sicker of emetics;

I'm sick of pulse's tardiness or quickness;

I'm sick of blood, its thinness or its thickness;

In short, within a word, I'm sick of sickness."

And others there be, not heroes, who yet have simulated heroism in their

blithe indifference to fate;--Lord Buckhurst, who is said to have

"stuttered more wit in dying than most people have in their best

health"; Wycherley, who took a young bride just before death, and was

"neither afraid of dying nor ashamed of marrying"; Chesterfield, who in

his last days, when going out for a London drive, used smilingly to say,

"I must go and rehearse my funeral"; Pope, who was the victim of

incessant disease, which yet never subdued his rhetoric; Scarron, a

paralytic and a monstrosity, the merriest man in France, for whom the

nation never gave any tears but those of laughter;--all these, down to

the easy-minded old Dr. Garth, who died simply because he was tired of

life,--"tired of having his shoes pulled on and off."

Strong persons go swinging securely up and down; they are the people of

affairs, their nerves are not shaken by anything less than cholera

reports; saving these, they should belong to the Great Unterrified of

the earth. To them it is hardly given to understand those minute

annoyances that beset nerves which are in an abnormal state, especially

when one is the prisoner of a single room. Then one is eternally busy

with the dust and small disorders around,--the film on the mirror, the

lint-drifts under the stove, the huge cobwebs flying from the corners,

the knickknacks awry on the mantel-piece; then one finds the wall-paper

is not hung true, and gazes at flaws in the ceiling till they grow into

dancing-jacks, and hears the doors that slam, like the shock of a

cannon. These are torments so minute that there seems no virtue even in

bearing them. Ah! to mount to execution for an idea,--that were glorious

and sustaining; but to endure the daily burden of these petty

tortures,--one never hears the music play then.

Among the articles to be desired of science is a false hand, or a

spectral arm, that shall reach miraculously about,--not a fruit-picker

or a carpet-sweeper, but something working with the fineness of an

elephant's trunk,--thus to end the discomfort of those orange-seeds

spilled on the far side of the room, while, lying inactive, one reaches,

reaches, with a patient power which, if transformed into the practical,

would push an army through Austria.

Another thing that the invalid has to endure is from the thoughtlessness

of visitors. How often, when summoned from the sick-room for any

purpose, do they briskly remark, in Tom Thumb style, "I'll be back in a

very few minutes!" Hence one lies awake by force, keeping several

errands to be despatched on the return, changing variously all the

little plans for the next hour or two, and waits. My experience

generally is that they have not come back yet.

But the commonest experience is when life itself seems to hang on the

arrival of the doctor. Indeed, it is safe to say that never have lovers

been so waited for as the doctor. Wasn't that his carriage at the door?

Medicine is out! new symptoms appear! it is only an hour to bedtime!

and, oh! will the doctor come, do you think? One listens more intently;

but now there are no carriages. There are express-wagons, late

ice-carts, out-of-town stages, or here and there a light rolling buggy,

that seems running on to the end of the world. There are but few

foot-passengers either, and they all go by without halting, and there is

no indication in the steps of any man of them that he would be the

doctor if he could. Thus one wears through the night uncomforted, yet

one does not usually die. I have also seen the doctors sitting in their

offices expectant, and probably quite as much distressed that everyone

went by without stopping. So the balances are kept.

The foregoing grievances are often put among the foolish humors of

invalids, but they are quite reasonable compared with many of the droll

fancies on record. Take the instance of the elderly man who had been

dying suddenly for twenty years; whose last moments would probably

amount to a calendar month, and his farewell words to an octavo volume.

His physician he pronounced a clever man, but added, pitifully, "I only

wish he would agree to my going suddenly; I should not die a bit sooner

for his giving me over." It is evident the physician had not the

shrewdest insight, or he would have granted this heady maniac his way.

"Ah!" would exclaim the constantly departing patient, "all one's

nourishment goes for nothing if once sudden death has got insidiously

into the system!" More famous were Johnson with his inevitable dried

orange-peel, and Byron with his salts. Goethe, too, after renouncing his

Lotte, coquetted with the idea of death, every night placing a very

handsome dagger by his bed and making sundry attempts to push the point

a couple of inches into his breast. Not being able to do this

comfortably, he concluded to live. Years after, when he sat assured on

his grand poet throne, he must have smiled at it, as with Karl August he

"talked of lovely things that conquer death." And still more refined and

genuine was the vapor of the imaginative young girl who died of love for

the Apollo Belvedere.

Yet it is but fair to mention that the laugh is not all on this side. It

is an historical fact that the public has its medical freaks, without

being called an invalid, and that whole nations "go daft" on the

shallowest impositions. At one time the English were made to believe

that all diseases were caused by the contraction of one small muscle of

the body; at another, Parliament itself helped make up the five thousand

pounds given by the aristocracy to one Joanna Stephens for an omnipotent

powder, decoction, and pills, composed chiefly of egg-shells and

snail-shells; at another time every one drank snail-water for

everything, or to prevent it, and then tar-water became the rage. In

Paris the Royal Academy once procured the prohibition of the sale of

antimony, on penalty of death, and in a year or two prescribed it as the

great panacea. Pliny reports that the Arcadians cured all manner of ills

with the milk of a cow (one would like to see them manage the bilious

colic).

Mesmer, who was luminous for a while, did not fail to dupe the people.

When asked why he ordered bathing in river instead of spring water, he

said, "Because it is warmed by the sun."

"True, yet not so much but it has to be warmed still more."

Not posed in the least, Mesmer replied, "The reason why the water which

is exposed to the rays of the sun is superior to all other water is

because it is magnetized. I myself magnetized the sun some twenty years

ago!"

Yet the name of Mesmer has founded a system, while that of Dumoulin,

who, with simple wisdom, observed, on dying, that he left behind him two

great physicians, Regimen and River-water, has gained but a scanty fame.

Says Boswell, "At least be well if you are not ill"; but the dear public

is always ill. In our own country, with an apparently healthy pulse, it

has drank the worth of a marble palace in sarsaparilla, and has built a

hotel out of Brandreth's pills. It has fairly reeled on Schiedam

Schnapps; and even the infant has his little popularities, having passed

from catnip and caraway to Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup. There is never

a time when the public will not declare upon any well-advertised remedy

its belief in the motto of the German doctors, "We do cure everything

but death."

It is often interesting to note the various phases which invalidism

takes on. Sometimes one seems folded in a dense dream,--has gone away

almost beyond one's own pity, and has not been heard from for months. It

is to be hoped that friends who hunt "the greyhound and turtle-dove"

will meet the missing, and duly report. Meantime one resides in a

mummified state,--a dim thinkingness that may be discovered when another

coming in says with vigor the thing one had long thought without quite

knowing it; in this demi-semi-consciousness it had never pecked through

the shell. This looks very imbecile, and is charitably treated to be

only called invalid.

Is it mere helplessness that one lies so remote from all but surface

sensation, day after day gazing at the address of letters that come,

with a passive wonder of how soon she is to vacate her name? Also a

friend calls to say that to-morrow he travels afar. It seems then that

he will be too much missed, and the parting has its share of unutterable

longing. But by the morrow it is not the one left who is sorry. The new

sun shines on an earth miles off from yesterday. The night has given

many windings more in the folds of this resigned mummy, that now lies

securely as an insect in a leaf. Given the beloved hand, and all things

may go as they will.

"Our hands in one, we will not shrink

From life's severest due;

Our hands in one, we will not blink

The terrible and true."

And sometimes one bounds to the other side of sensation,--has a terrible

rubbed-the-wrong-wayedness, and is as much alive as Mimosa herself. This

is often on those easterly days which all well-regulated invalids

shudder at, when the very marrow congeals and the nerves are

sharp-whetted. Then, Prometheus-like, one "gnaws the heart with

meditation"; then, too, always fall out various domestic disasters, and

it is not easy to see why the curtain-string should be tied in a hard

knot that must be cut at night, or why the servants can't be thorough,

deft-handed, and immaculate. One has indigestion, scowls fiercely, tries

to swallow large lumps of inamiability, and fears she is not sublime.

It is a saying of Jean Paul, that "the most painful part of corporeal

pain is the uncorporeal, namely, our impatience and disappointment that

it continues." Whether this be true or not, what with the worry and

constant pressure, these physical disabilities often appear to sink into

the deepest centre of the being. Hence, if one have had a cough for a

very long time, it would seem that the soul must keep on coughing in the

next world. If so, this gives a subtile sense to the despatches of

departed spiritualists, who telegraph back in a few weeks that their

pain is _nearly_ gone,--as if the soul were not immediately rid of the

bad habits of the body.

But most demoralized in æsthetic sense must be that invalid who does not

constantly look to the splendid robustness of health. Sickness has been

termed an early old age; far worse, it is often a tossing nightmare in

which the noble ideal of fairer days is only recalled with reproachful

pain. Towards this vision of vigor the victim seems to move and move,

but never draw near. Well might Heine weep, even before the stricken

Lady of Milo. An old proverb says, that "the gods have health in

essence, sickness only in intelligence." Blessed are the gods! One can

quite understand the reckless exulting of some wild character, who,

baffled with this miserable mendicancy everywhere, at length discovered

the idea that God was not an invalid. He was probably too much excited

to perfect his rhyme, and so tore out these ragged lines:--

"Iterate, iterate,

Snatch it from the hells,

Circulate and meditate

That God is well.

"Get the singers to sing it,

Put it in the mouths of bells,

Pay the ringers to ring it,

That God is well."

Therefore make a valiant stand against that ugly thing, disease. By all

Nature's remedies, hasten to be out of it. Fight it off as long as

possible, defy it when you can, and refuse "to hang up your hat on the

everlasting peg." Be reinforced in all honorable ways. If not too ill,

read the dailies; know the last measure of Congress, the price of gold,

and the news by the foreign steamer. Disabuse the world for once of its

traditional invalid, who sits mewed up in blankets, and never goes where

other people go, because it might hurt him. Be out among the activities;

don't let the world get ahead, but keep along with the life of things.

Then, if invalidism is to be accepted, meet it bravely and serenely as

may be; and if death, then approach it loftily, for no one dies with his

work undone, and no just-minded person can wish to survive his service.

None should aspire to say, with the antiquated Chesterfield, "Tyrawley

and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it

known."

But happy they on whom the deep blight has not fallen, and who day by

day restore themselves to the grand perfection of manly and womanly

estate; happy again to "feel one's self alive" and

"Lord of the senses five";

happy again to "excel in animation and relish of existence"; happy to

have gathered so much strength and hope, that, when begins the melody of

the morning birds, again shall the joy of the new dawn, with all the

possible adventure and enterprise of the coming day, thrill through the

heart.

GRIFFITH GAUNT; OR, JEALOUSY.