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been in force since 1813, and it is a well-known fact,
brought prominently forward in the work before us, that,
notwithstanding the immense sacrifice it requires, it is enthusiastically
cherished by the nation as a school of manly discipline, and as
exercising a most beneficial influence on all classes of society. This
institution it is which gives that high standard of order, duty, and
military honor, and that mutual confidence between officers and men,
which at the first glance distinguishes the Prussian, not only from the
Russian, but the Austrian soldier. This high feeling of confidence in the
national defenses is indeed peculiar to Prussia beyond the other
German nations, and may be at once recognized in the manly and
dignified bearing, even of the lowest classes, alike in town and country.

This spirit is depicted to the life in the striking episode of the troubles
in the year 1848. Even in the wildest months of that year, when the
German minority were left entirely to their own resources, this spirit of
order and mutual confidence continued undisturbed. Our patriotic
author has never needed to draw upon his imagination for facts, though
he has depicted with consummate skill the actual reality. We feel that it
has been to him a labor of love to console himself and his
fellow-countrymen under so many disappointments and shattered hopes,
to cherish and to strengthen that sense of independence, without which
no people can stand erect among the nations.
The Prusso-German population feel it to be a mission in the cause of
civilization to press forward in occupation of the Sarmatian territory--a
sacred duty, which, however, can only be fulfilled by honest means, by
privations and self-sacrificing exertions of every kind. In such a spirit
must the work be carried forward; this is the suggestive thought with
which our author's narrative concludes. It is not without a meaning, we
believe, that the zealous German hero of the book is furnished with the
money necessary for carrying out his schemes by a fellow-countryman
and friend, who had returned to his fatherland with a fortune acquired
beyond the Atlantic. Our talented author has certainly not lost sight of
the fact that Germany, as a whole, has as little recovered from the
devastation of the Thirty Years' War as the eastern districts of Prussia
have recovered from the effects of the war with France in the present
century. Let the faults and failings of our national German character be
what they may (and we should like to know what nation has endured
and survived similar spoliation and partition), the greatest sin of
Germany during the last two hundred years, especially in the
less-favored north, has always been its poverty--the condition of all
classes, with few exceptions. National poverty, however, becomes
indeed a political sin when a people, by its cultivation, has become
constitutionally fit for freedom.
In the background of the whole picture of the disordered and sickly
condition of our social circumstances here so vividly presented, the
author has plainly discerned Dante's noble proverb--

"Di libertà indipendenza è primo grado."
The existence of independent citizen-families qualified and ready for
every public service, though beyond the need of such employment--this
is the fundamental condition of a healthy development of political
freedom, alike impregnable by revolution and reaction; this is the only
sure ground and basis on which a constitutional form of government
can be reared and administered with advantage to every class,
repressing alike successfully absolutism and democracy.
And now we have reached the point where we are enabled to gather up,
and to express to the reader, without desiring to forestall his own
judgment, or to load him with axioms and formulas beyond his
comprehension, the beautiful fundamental idea of the book, clearly and
simply.
We would express it thus: The future of all European states depends
mainly on three propositions, and the politics of every statesman of our
period are determined by the way in which he views them.
These propositions are,
1st. The fusion of the educated classes, and the total abolition of
bureaucracy, and all social barriers between the ancient nobility and the
educated classes in the nation, especially the industrial and mercantile
population.
2d. The just and Christian bearing of this united body toward the
working-classes, especially in towns.
3d. The recognition of the mighty fact that the educated middle classes
of all nations, but especially of those of Germany, are perfectly aware
that even the present, but still more the near future, is their own, if they
advance along the legal path to a perfect constitutional monarchy,
resisting all temptations to the right hand or to the left, not with
imbittered feelings, but in the cheerful temper of a moral
self-confidence.

* * * * *
It is faith in truths such as these