far, and was not very certain of the road home. I asked my way of a good-humoured looking, bluff-faced Austrian peasant; and, as my path turned out to be his, I fell into conversation with him. He related to me stories of the different inhabitants of the neighbourhood; and, amongst others, entered into some details concerning an individual's house he showed me, and who had grown rich no one quite knew how, and ended by buying up all the land around him.

"Pfiffiger Kerl !" said my informant, with a shake of the head, that was anything but affirmative of the scrupulousness of the person in question-" Pfiffiger Kerl!" and then he proceeded to relate some few circumstances in which the acquirement of wealth might have been prevented (but was not so) by a too great delicacy of conscience.

When he had ended his tale, he came to a pause; and then, with an expression I shall not easily forget, and which seemed to say, "Now I am going to make all clear to your comprehension :"

*The only possible translation is an Americanism : "tarnation 'cute."

"Der wara' Preuss!"* said he,

Austrian accent, and he fell into a fit

tation.

with his

of medi

He's from Gotha,”—“ I'm from Nassau," "He's a Bavarian,"-" Der war ein Preuss!"— There lie the elements of German unity; make out of them what you can.

"He was a Prussian!"

CHAPTER II.

BADEN AND THE REPUBLICANS.

“Pigrum quinimmo et iners videtur sudore adquirere, quod possis sanguine parare?"

THE wits of the other side of the Rhine have published a political map of Germany, called "Portrait of a Patient in the Year 1849," which is in the shape of a sick man in his night-cap. All the places where revolution has been more than usually sanguinary, are marked by a red blotch; so that Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Prague and Breslau, bloom forth upon chin and cheek, in purpurine carbuncles; whilst upon the nose, which is scarlet as "ancient Pistol's," is inscribed the word Baden, with Kandern* at its extremest and reddest tip. The "notice" in the corner,

* The place where General Gagern was killed by the insurgents.

says: "Baden, a spot in which, owing to inflammatory influences, the evil has spread to such a degree, that the Patient is threatened with a general gangrene of the entire part."

And this is true. The Grand Duchy of Baden is, of all the Rhine lands, the most revolutionary and the worst; the spot where, surely enough, the gangrene did threaten to become general. Everything is more or less to wrongs here: religion is not dreamt of; morality is banished from all classes, upper as well as lower, and even the one great element of hope and moral amelioration, almost everywhere else, is vitiated here: the women are, if anything, worse than the men, and I fear that one day the officers of the Prince of Prussia's army of occupation may discover, to their cost, how perniciously will have acted upon their troops an influence it lies out of their power to combat. The upper ranks have, in Baden, for many years set the worst possible example to the lower, and noble and peasant have been alike demoralized by their next-door neighbourFrance. Added to this, there is, in some other respects, no race along the Rhine more fitted for "deeds of high emprize." They are bold, brave, adventurous, ready to despise their rulers, eager for change, and have in their nature much less of

the slowness of the Germans than of the volatility of the French. They have taken to vice easily, and without much effort, which, be it remarked, en passant, has produced no small respect for them in the breasts of the French sans culottes ; this inaptitude of at once descending to the same level of degradation with themselves, forming one of the principal reasons of the sovereign contempt, with which these disciples of Marat regard their "brethren" of other nations. To have made anything tolerable of the Badeners, they should have had a despot at their head, and the prospect of a war before their eyes, and then, I have no doubt, they would have been a distinguished people. Instead of this, they were ruled by one of the most excellent and timid men alive. The unfortunate Grand Duke Leopold-more unfortunate still in having been "restored," than in having been driven to fly from his faithful subjects was one of those Princes who, in the tranquil periods of history, pass unnoticed from their cradle to their grave, often occupied during life by some innocent mania, and forgotten ere they die; but who, when troublous times come, are the inevitable victims of their best qualities,

VOL. I.

D