betray in an unguarded moment the feeling which nestled in the breast of many a learned German.

Fortunately after 1860 a decided reaction commenced against this national arrogance-a reaction which was the more remarkable as it originated with the best minds. I need only mention among so many D. F. Strauss, H. Hettner, Julian Schmidt, and K. Justi. It was well for Germany that in the moment of victory, and just after it, the voices of our first writers were raised so bravely to warn us against over-estimating our capabilities or our achievements, that the German generals gave such a rare example of modesty and dignified tact, and that so many enlightened and impartial observers endeavoured to do justice to the good sides of the enemy's character. Otherwise the great mass of the half-cultured middle-class would soon have learned to rest and be thankful on the summit of the "German virtues.”

Whoever has lived long amongst the French-that is, whoever has known them, not in cafés and theatres, but in their family life and in their official and professional occupations-will gladly allow that our neighbours too have their virtues, though not always those which appeal most directly to our hearts, nor indeed all which they were so fond of imagining they possessed in the days of their splendour; he will gladly allow that at bottom they deserve "ni cet excès d'honneur, ni cette indignité."

It can hardly be considered a matter of surprise, still less of blame, that a nation which in the eighteenth century exercised such a predominant influence over the culture of Europe, as England, Spain, and Italy had done over that of preceding periods, should have lived on in

the belief that they still retained the first place even after they had lost it, particularly when they saw that their political ideas were everywhere gaining ground among the masses on the Continent. It beseems us, who for fifty years stood at the head of the intellectual republic of Europe, either to maintain our position or to perceive and recognise the insignia of supremacy as soon as they are displayed by another people: at all events, it does not become us to look down with contempt upon those whom we may for the moment have excelled. Above all things, we must beware of insisting upon the moral corruption of our neighbours, because they happen to be passing through a period of intellectual languor and political weakness. Neither morally nor materially, neither politically nor intellectually, can there be any thought of such a decline in the French nation as that of Germany, for instance, about the year 1648, when not only the fact, but the very idea of a country was lost to us, and nothing was to be found in all the length and breadth of the Empire but brutality and wretchedness, corruptibility, ignorance, servility, lust, and gluttony. Nay, we need not cast our eyes upon a period so remote in order to find facts which may tend to moderate the pride of our virtue, and to shake our belief in the inborn superiorities of race. Is it, then, so long ago since, under Wöllner and Bischoffswerder, a sickly pietism and a cynical disbelief united to stifle every truly religious sentiment? Where was our German sense of duty, our German chastity, and our vaunted family feeling in the days of Gentz and Wiesel, not to mention the more purely literary circles of the Romantic School? And

what patriot can remember without shame and loathing the picture of the corruptibility, the favouritism, and the looseness of every kind in the South German official class during the period of the Rhine Confederation and the Restoration, which Ritter Lang has displayed in his memoirs? What a condition of things prevailed only forty years ago in some of the small residencies and in the States which had formerly been subject to ecclesiastical rule, we ourselves have "shuddered to behold." In comparison with these things, the "corruption of the Second Empire," of which we hear so much, is hardly worth mentioning. Indeed, only to speak of "the moral decline" of a nation which has thrice in the course of the last three centuries-during the religious wars, under the Regency, and at the time of the Directory-sunk far lower than it is at present, shows that he who employs such language is either ignorant of history or has forgotten it. One has only to compare the dates of Barras's orgies and of Napoleon's victories to see that a nation may grow healthy and strong enough in the midst of such a "decline."

A great deal has been said about the ignorance the French betray of foreign countries, and the superficiality with which they speak of everything that concerns them, when they consider it at all worthy of their study or attention; and there is some truth in this charge. Few of the numerous French books and periodicals that refer to other countries really enter into the spirit of the intellectual and social life which they treat. But do matters stand much better with us nowadays? Are the German writers who couple the names of Mérimée and Sue, or

Thierry and Cassefigue, so much better than the French who speak of Ranke and Duller, or of Lenau and Redwitz, as if they were twins?

To take a single instance. I remember that a German doctor of philosophy, some twenty-seven years of age, an excellent philologer and a thoroughly good teacher, who had even spent some years abroad, once asked me whether Paul or Alfred de Musset were the greater poet. He knew nothing of either, except that one of them had written the "Chanson du Rhin." It would hardly be possible to find a boy on the higher forms of a French grammar-school who was equally ignorant of Heine; and yet, quite independently of his great poetical merit, the historical importance of Musset for France is as great as that of Heine for Germany.

What a different knowledge our grandfathers possessed of France and England! In reading the letters of Wieland, Herder, Goethe, and Merck, we meet foreign names on every page. From Justi's excellent book we may learn how carefully Winckelmann read the French authors though he disliked them, and a single glance at the "Dramaturgie" is enough to show how intimate was Lessing's knowledge of them. Our ancestors lived, so to speak, on familiar terms with Voltaire and Rousseau, they had a command over the language similar to that which every educated Russian still possesses, and so Paris and Leipzig were then in truth hundreds of miles nearer to each other than they are in our days of railways and telegraphs. There can be no doubt that the change was inevitable. So great an intimacy with foreign literatures is only possible to a people which possesses no literature

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of its own; but has not the alienation gone too far? It is well that our children should continue to learn the verses of Schiller rather than those of Corneille by heart; it is well that our youth should make Kant rather than Condillac the basis of their philosophical culture; well, above all, that Goethe should retain his place as our dearest friend and companion in every period of our lives. But ought this to prevent us from keeping an open eye and an open heart for the excellences of other nations. Should we not rather endeavour to follow the example of the sage and poet, who even in his old age was not contented with merely glancing over the pages of Byron and Manzoni, of Mérimée and Victor Hugo, but who entered into their inmost spirit and accepted them into his heart. It is a good thing to live in the daily company of one's wife, one's children, and the friends of one's youth, but it is not hospitality alone that prompts us to keep a seat at our table sometimes open to a stranger: an enlightened selfishness teaches us that our conversation does not lose in vivacity, grace, and variety by the occasional admittance of foreign elements.

What strikes an impartial observer of French history more than anything else is the number of contradictions he meets with in it. As the national mood is at one time that of "boundless exultation," at another is "sad even unto death," so its history either dazzles us or excites our pity. French public life shows a rapid alternation of passionate interest in politics and hopeless indifference, of enthusiasm and scepticism, of a spirit of blind routine and a desire of innovation, of impulsive self-sacrifice and selfish individualism, of longing for freedom and a con