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ing throughout a period of some months an English "navvy" who had command of a gang of Germans engaged upon some

seen." Evelina promised, and the imprudent maiden returned at once to the ballroom. But lo! next day the story, with various embroideries, was circulating waterworks. Abuse flowed freely from through all the Kaffees, and behold, the day after, the ardent lieutenant summoned to an irate general's presence. Young man," said his stern Vorgesetzter, glooming down upon him in grim regulation wrath, "you are transferred to depot duty on the frontier; there you will have ample time to reflect on your indiscretion. ("Es ist Ihnen nicht erlaubt jungen Damen aus den höheren Ständen zu compromittiren !") And forth, like ball from the cannon's mouth, behold our gay young militaire shot over the frontier! Hear this, gallant young English gentlemen, horse, foot, and dragoons; hear it, too, young English maidens inclining tender ears to manly pleadings, and be thankful that your bosom-friends are not spies, nor, as a rule, the colonels of our regiments martinets in matters of the affections. Resistance in any shape is hopeless; it will be put down, in whatever form or in whatever rank it makes its sporadic appearance, with an iron hand. Beneath the drapery of that flowing white mantle, that reminds you of the crusaders of old, you may plainly perceive the steel gauntlet of armed despotism. "Whilst all the others were boasting," says Heine, "of how proudly the Prussian eagle soared towards the sun, I prudently kept my eyes fixed upon his claws.”

the lips of the stalwart Briton, and though he spoke an unknown tongue, the desired effect was produced; the instant, however, his attention was withdrawn, or his amenities ceased, the stolid crew abandoned all active labour, and became passive spectators of the general scene. I'd liever have one o' ourn nor five on 'em," said that British "navvy," in a tone of rueful indignation, one day to a sympathetic auditor who was watching the slow progress; even the stalwart frame, the loud voice of the man, and the free use of his choice vernacular had ceased to have its effect, and the gloom of despair hung heavy on his brow. Yet we know that two-thirds of the sugar-bakers, bakers, and tailors in London are German, and that America speaks largely the language of Hans Breitmann. It seems that the sight of incessant activity and untiring energy universally prevailing around is necessary to arouse the German, and make him shake off the lethargy that otherwise possesses him. Crimes of violence are of very rare occurrence in Germany; the German is not cruel, he does not murder, he does not assassinate, he does not beat his wife, or kick her with hobnailed shoes: he does not love blood. Bloodshed is distasteful to him, unless, as in the Franco-Prussian war, it be his duty to shed blood; then he consents to butcher and be butchered (as during the awful days of Gravelotte and Mars-laTour) with almost automatic endurance. But whilst we allow for the difference of temperament that distinguishes the Teuton from the Celt, we must concede that education_counts for something in this matter. Educate the masses, and they will not love, as the French lower orders do, to welter, when excited, in the blood of their fellow-men, to lick their lips in savage lust to lap it again. The German is generally rough, and sometimes brutal, but humanity, on the whole, prevails, and the brute in him is less than the man. Indeed, that sort of "sentiment," which is so marked a characteristic of the modern Teuton, is to be found even in the dramatis persone of the police reports.

The German makes a good colonist because he is frugal, patient, and hardy; but he seems to need a transplantation to another soil to shine forth in all the excellence that not unfrequently becomes his. The German workman at home is dilatory, unpunctual, slow, and often extremely "bungling" in his work. There is not the same competition as with us; if he do not choose to hurry himself, you must abide his pleasure; he is the obliger, you the obliged. You give him a model, and he executes his copy not amiss; it only falls short of supreme excellence; a little more finish, and it would have been absolutely well done. The German labourer is a marvel of heavy artfulness: he seems always to have something to do that interferes with continuous work; either he has to spit upon his hands, or to adjust his raiment, or to take a dram, or "It is characteristic," says a modern have a "crack" with a comrade, or pick a writer, speaking of his fellow-countrymen, quarrel with an enemy; in short, he is in- "that our German rascals have always a ventive in this respect to a degree that certain sentimentality sticking to them. his general stolidity would never lead you They are no cold-blooded knaves of cal to suspect. The writer remembers watch-culation, but are blackguards of senti

ment. They have Gemüth, and take the holding a double office about the court, warmest interest in the fates of those should not have had a first-class decorathey have robbed, so that one cannot be tion; another would weep that she whose quit of them. Even our distinguished family was of the ancient of the earth must chevaliers d' industrie are not mere ego- endure the slight of seeing her spouse reists who steal for themselves, but court ceive an order of the third class, while the coy mammon to do good with their ill- little pert upstart who had married the gotten gains." Oberstall-Meister pranced past her with In the old historic days of the small an ornament made of the diamonds picked Residenz-towns, the unwary stranger who out of the Grand Cross, that he, the masfound himself at court, was, if of unso-ter of the horse, ought never to have had ! phisticated mind, literally blinded and The infinite littleness of such a life was bewildered by the blaze of stars and deco- the fair butt of fermenting "patriots;" no rations that glittered in the firmament. wonder that radical writers brought what Awe-struck by the cloud of heroes and wit they could to bear on the subject, or veterans, he prepared, as though wander- that the reformers were great on fossil ing through the Walhalla of the universe, feudalism. For a people that had disto put off his mental shoes from off his covered gunpowder, printing, and the feet, in acknowledgment that he was critique of pure reason, such a spectacle standing on the holy ground of heroism. included almost every humiliation, and the But when, upon enquiring, he ascertained wonder to all lookers-on is not so much the truth of the matter, and learned that how, as by whom, that vast revolution every serenity, transparency, or impalpa- which is called imperialism has been bility passing by that way and dining at brought about. The united fatherland, the grand-ducal board, would have to the old dream of national unity, is realized, send, as a matter of mere routine, the but the very dreamers themselves must, "order" of his State to the court officials, one would think, be still rubbing incredufirst, second, or third class, each accord-lous eyes, seeing after what an unforeseen ing to his kind; when he learned that fashion they have awakened. this blazing star had been conferred on the occasion of the grandes chasses; that that noble order was bestowed on the duke's representative at the baptism of an archduchess, and the other resplendent decoration but the evidence of an imperial dinner-party, he would not unfrequently go his sardonic way, sneering the sneer of the cynic at the tinsel and frippery of such supreme sham. The writer of these lines remembers a most worthy, inoffensive man upon whom fate had most inappropriately conferred the combined offices of grand chambellan de la cour and Theater-Intendant. He had accompanied his royal master to every court in Europe, and his sovereign being of convivial turn and addicted to "dining" the princes who passed by his way, stars and garters continued to flow in upon the first official of the court. The wags were pleased to suggest all sorts of incongruous and incompatible positions for the "thick-coming" decorations, and it was feared that he would at last, however unwillingly, be forced, all the rest of his person being preoccupied, to sit upon the orders of the future.

Great were the envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, that fermented in female breasts on these occasions. The adjutants' wives had always a grievance; one would complain that her husband,

Yet Prussia has indisputably this one glory above all the other countries of Teutonia; that, whilst they have had gossipries, scandals, intrigues, nests of squabbles, and parish politics, she has a history. Her electors have been the elect, her kings have been the ken-ning men; they have known and they have done; abstract knowing could not help them, only concrete doing. Alert, restless, thorough; looking into everything, examining, proving; scant mercy, short justice; frugal, thrifty, hardy, sharing common perils with the common soldier, keeping kingly state when kingly state was demanded; rewarding, punishing, reprimanding, with here a genial act, and there a jovial word, the Landesvater, not the king alone, but the father of his people. Other knowers and doers looking upwards, not because of the mere kingship of their chief, but with fullest confidence in his power and will, both to know and to do, arose in their places, each in his Fach; the thing done varying according to time and circumstance, according to person and place; valuable chiefly, not for the magnitude of it, but for the reality of it.

The history of the house of Hohenzollern is the history of Prussia; nay, "if aught of prophecy" be ours, bids fair to prove the history of Germany. We have seen a gallant old king at the head of a

sorely tried army, enduring hardships | ceive handsome salaries; splendid emoluwith the courage of an adolescent; we ments rain down on the worthy; the day have seen the crown-prince sharing com- for small economies is over; the fathermon perils with the common soldier: we land has to be "represented," and the have seen all the available princes of the country of the milliards must show itself blood fighting, marching, watching, endur- great in all directions. ing, conquering, and dying side by side with the peasant; rained upon, snowed upon, hailed upon, stormed at by shot and shell, travelled - stained, blood - stained, mud-bespattered, war - betattered, not mere "men with muskets" but soldiers to the backbone, one and all, prince, peer, and peasant, willing to die for the fatherland.

We

It is little understood or realized in England that pomp and circumstance illustrate at Berlin the glories of the new empire after a brilliant fashion. There is, indeed, not one court, but many; not only the emperor and the prince imperial, but all the other princes of the house of Hohenzollern keep up official state, whereof the exponents are gorgeous uniforms, True valour, not rash daring, patient resplendent liveries, showy equipages, and endurance, not foolhardy escapades, brilliant entertainments. We may think steadfastness of heart and stability of how dull by comparison our deserted mind, inspired these men who stood up quasi-republican capital appears in the to fight for their belief, to die for what eyes that prize pomp and pageantry, and they thought the justice of their cause. how strange the utter absence of all offiNot the light Greek fire of inflammable cial glitter and grandeur to those accusenthusiasm, such as caught the boule- tomed to the presence of a court. vards one day in July, and set all Paris take our German friends to the Horse like straw blazing; but the deep volcanic Guards (all we have of magnificence to fire of conviction, long smouldering, dark-show), and point out the imposing appearly hidden, portentous, unquenchable, un- ance of our household troops. "Have less, indeed, by crimson seas yet to flow. It is supremely characteristic of the genius of the two nations, that whilst the French were hysterically shrieking "A Berlin! falling upon each other's necks, and vowing to celebrate their emperor's birthday in the palaces of Prussia, the Geman polished his arms, sang his "Watch on the Rhine," said no word of Paris, and before many months were over crowned his gallant old king em-likely to become a thorn in the flesh of peror in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. This is the history of the German army; all honour to it and to those who led it on to victory.

you ever seen our gardes du corps?" is the only comment; "splendid giants, mounted on huge chargers, wearing a classic silver helmet, crested with eagles' wings, a dazzling silver cuirass, and justeau-corps of white samite, mystic, wonderful'?" You perhaps say no. "Ah then, indeed!" replies your Prussian friend, as one who makes allowances for your ignorant worship. The modern German is

humanity at large, not because he is victorious, but because he is forever blowing the blast of his victories on the trumpet of fame. The braying of that brazen instruIn civil life, it was in old days the ment is, of necessity, not so sweet in his pride of the Prussian official that he neighbours' ears as in his own; yet should lived narrowly; that only by a close econ- you venture to remonstrate, he will fix a omy was he able to make those two pro- quarrel upon you, and you will have abverbial ends meet which is such a desir- jectly to ask him to continue his melodious able result in domestic economy. Parsi- strain. It is not enough that his country mony was his pride; his private econo- has become one of the great powers of mies went to enrich the coffers of the Europe, he wants you to say that it is the State, and his patriotism was of the type greatest. Success is so sweet to him, of which Virgil says, "The noblest mo- power so new, triumph so intoxicating, tive was the public good." For him a and the old radical dream of a united dinner of Spartan broth, and the mens fatherland realized, he himself hardly conscia recti therewith, was better than knows how, in Bismarcko-Imperialism is all the fleshpots of the fatherland unsea- such a bewildering experience, that he soned by the antique virtues. The Fa- stands on the highway, pistol in hand, and bricius type is, alas! extinct, gold-scorners exacts your admiration or your life. It is impossible, and the austerity of Cincin- not enough that you have at an earlier natus a thing of the past. Imperialism stage of the journey already paid your obliges, and ostentation is now the order tribute of admiration; you must pay it of the day. Representative officials re- again. You are to go on admiring; your LIVING AGE. VOL. XIII. 627

awe and your respect are to become vo- | future ages colossal, momentous, immorcal; if you are not loudly, consistently, tal. He, the greatest, comes home to the persistently with the fatherland, you are smallest, to men's business and bosoms in against it. It is by sufferance that your humble vehicle rolls along the emperor's highway; get out and grovel, then all shall be well with you; resist, and you shall be torn out of your coach, and the great jackboots will kick you ignominiously into space, and the big man will go his swaggering way with a grim smile behind his tawny moustache, as one who exterminates the lively pertinacious pulex irritans, otherwise sublimely big and indifferent.

The crumpled roseleaf on Germany's bed of glory is, that she cannot get every other nation to admire her as much as she admires herself; and in her present egotistical attitude would fain extract what she covets, if not otherwise, then à force d'armes.

a special manner; the likeness of him hangs in the humblest hut; but for him Hans and Michel had not laid down their lives in French mire and clay; but for him food were not so dear, nor widows so many, nor wives so few; but for him, taxes had not been so rigorous, nor money so scarce. Yet, he is the idol of the popu lace-of that populace which, erewhile, stoned, lampooned, caricatured, and reviled him; of that populace that was nothing more than mud-seas at his feet, on the vast field of the fatherland.

Now he reigns supreme; the contempt he once showed for them is become the enemy's portion; the people are grown his willing instruments; he has known how to read the signs of the times, to seize the chances of the moment, to wield It is this uneasy tone, this monopoly of and to weld; to mould the old order of adulation, this exacting, suspicious rest- things into a new order; to root out the lessness, that tells tales of the fever of republican rabies; to crush down the radambition pulsing through every vein of ical spirit; to grasp the national mind; to the new system. Fever has a false hold the nation's heart; to venture, to strength that looks to the sound man succeed, to dare, and to do. The national much like health; let him look again, and vanity, the popular pride, have been flatin the glare of the patient's eye he will tered by his miraculous successes; surely see evidences of the distempered blood, a grateful people will foster their hero. and will be careful to soothe rather than Their good old emperor is well enough, to irritate. When we speak of the one but even he had not been but for Bismarck. crumpled roseleaf in Prussia's bed, we He, gallant old gentleman, has scruples, speak hyperbolically. Hers is no rose- hesitations, tendernesses of conscience, strewn couch; on the contrary, it is, as regrets; is not much other than any prithose who know her best, best know, an vate man -him we do not specially care uneasy bed; a bed that will have to be to go out and greet. As for princes, made again and again, lucky if at last it clothed in soft raiment, dwelling in kings' become a place of rest. To leave meta-palaces, their name is legion; but this phor her extent of frontier is immense; man, der Einzige, the only one, unique; she will yet need all that is best in her his like not again to be seen this side of best men. At any moment Bavaria may break away. Hanover harbours resentment; Scandinavia hates her for her ruthless want of faith; it is known that the coming czar is intensely anti-Prussian, and that the long lists of German names filling distinguished positions in army and State are offensive, beyond any present possibility of expression, to a very large party in Russia. Alsace and Lorraine have, as Elsass and Lothringen, to be kept under, and increasing vigilance must inspire fear where no love is.

When we speak of the German of the present day, we have all of us, unconsciously, the grand modern prototype in our minds the man of blood and iron; the Hammer-man; the Thunderer; the Baresark; the Bismarck the great typical heroic figure, that will go down to

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eternity; a prophet, and more than a prophet-him we will worship, before him we will fall down. A gigantic mass of all that makes manhood, he carries a high look with him; fire and reality, as well as blood and iron, are in that great figure and big brain. He speaks, and it is as though the king of beasts sent his leonine roar before him through the forests of which he is lord. That orator, erst so eloquent, seems now but froth and fribble; the attempted epigram of the penultimate patriot dwindles into mere spite; prudence becomes pedantry; warning, the mumblings of blind senile leaders of the blind; threat, the mere futile squeak of peevish incompetence. The little sneers have struck too low, they fall unheeded at his feet; he will not stoop to notice them; let them lie: but from his height, god

like, dæmonic, he will pour forth his lava- | self "and the good-looking young vagastream of scathing eloquence, which, by bond connected with the press." mere attraction of gravitation, reaches its If there was one point upon which Kate destination in the infinite flats beneath Travers was more specially sensitive than him. This stinging tongue, this arrogant another it was on the respect she thought intellect, this ruthless will, this keen dar- she deserved. Naturally of a sunny dising, and restless ambition, what are they position and easy temper, loving pleasure, but the outcome of the age? In him you and luxury, and beauty with a certain see the typical German; the guerre-man, amount of graceful indolence, which in the war-man; the gar-man- the whole prosperous times entirely masked the man; nay, rather a demigod unfathoma- strong will and untiring energy stored up ble, terrible. There is, in all modern his- against the day of need, she never dreamed tory, no figure like this figure, no mind any one would suspect her of the fleshy like this mind, unless it be the brief ap- weaknesses to which others were liable; parition of a Mirabeau on a background she knew the childlike purity of her own of unaccomplished destiny. A man for life, and suspected that the long winter of men to fear; for women to love; for, such chilling circumstances as hers had beside that primeval titanic force, there been, might have had a hardening infludwells another man in him in strange and ence on her nature; but she shrank from striking contrast with the Briareus of the a disrespectful word as from a blow, and tribune a gentle, genial, human-hearted had her knowledge of men been equal to man; witty, winning; loving the soft her knowledge of books, she would no sound of women's voices, the beauty of doubt have resisted the temptation to play bright eyes, the prattle of children, the with the grave surprised admiration yellowing woods, the setting sun. A evinced by Galbraith lest it might lead to Triton, indeed, but not amongst minnows. unpleasant results. "No great general," says Froude, "ever arose out of a nation of cowards, no great statesman out of a nation of fools." That the mute Moltkes and bashful Bismarcks of the fatherland are many, we may be sure; but history is careful only of the type. Looking at such a man as this, surrounded by such men as these, we, who are but spectators of the drama, are almost tempted, since finite man cannot go on infinitely, to re-echo the prayer of Paracelsus, and cry: "Make no more giants, God, but elevate the race at once!"

From Temple Bar.

HER DEAREST FOE.

CHAPTER XX.

IT would not be easy to disentangle and define the mixed feelings which brought the bright colour to Kate Travers's cheek, and made her heart beat indignantly as she perused the foregoing effusion. She scarcely herself knew why Mr. Ford's pretensions were so peculiarly offensive, nor did she take the trouble of inquiring, but had that devoted friend been within reach he would have received a crushing rejoinder. The passage about Sir Hugh Galbraith annoyed and yet amused her. She had now grown tolerably familiar with his modes of thought and expression, and she could well picture the quiet profound scorn with which he had spoken of her

Now she could not draw back without a display of stiffness and a change of tone which might lead to awkward explanations, and as her enemy progressed towards complete recovery, she told herself that it did not matter, he would soon be gone, and not remember much about the adventure until she reopened the will-case and defeated him. Then, indeed, their present acquaintance might lead to his accepting some portion of the property he had so long considered his inheritance, for after the friendly intercourse they had held, she never could contemplate robbing him of everything.

These thoughts flitted through her brain in and out of her daily routine of answering inquiries and matching colours, finding patterns and making out bills. It had been a busy and a profitable day, but although the lengthening evenings tempted many to keep their shops open later, the shutters of the Berlin Bazaar were always up at seven. The sweet repose of the after-hours was too precious to be curtailed even for the chance of a trifle more profit. On this particular evening - the one following her first perusal of Ford's letter Mrs. Temple was considerably bored by a summons from Dr. Slade to speak to him in the best sitting-room, as tea was being laid in the shop-parlour.

"Well, Mrs. Temple, I suspect you will soon lose your tenant, and I dare say you will not regret him,” cried the doctor, who looked rather displeased as he stood by the