d-will in the governments. Germany,
also, had no such aristocracy as France. The lesser nobles, in spite of
their prejudices and errors, lived, on the whole, in a homely way in
the midst of the people; and just at this time they counted in their
ranks many leaders of the enlightenment. What most oppressed the
cultivated minds of Germany was not so much the vices of the old feudal
state as their own political insignificance, the clumsiness of the
constitution of the Empire, the feeling that the Germans, by this
much-divided rule, had become _Philisters_.

It was then, also, far from Paris to Germany; the characters which
there contended against each other, the ultimate aim of parties, the
evil and the good, were much less known than would be the case in our
time. The larger newspapers only appeared three times a week; they gave
dry notices, seldom a long correspondence, still less often an
independent judgment. The flying sheets alone were active; even their
judgment was moderate; they wished well to the movement, but were
bolder in the discussion of home matters.

Therefore, though in Paris there were massacres in the streets, and the
guillotine was incessantly at work, in Germany the French revolution
had no effect in banding political parties against one another. And
when the account came that the King had been imprisoned, ill-treated,
and executed, forebodings, even among the least timid, became general.

Thus it was possible that German officers, even the _gardes du corps_
at Potsdam, good-humouredly allowed the _ca ira_ to be played, whilst
the street boys sang to it a rude translation of the text. The ladies
of the German aristocracy wore tricolour ribbons, and head dresses _a
la carmagnole_. Curiosity collected the people in a circle round some
patriot prisoners of war--dismal tattered figures--whilst they danced
their wild dances, and accompanied them by pantomime, which expressed
washing their hands in the blood of the aristocrats; and some
innocently bought from them the playthings which they had made on the
march, little wooden guillotines. But it was a morbid simplicity in the
educated.

There is another thing which appears still stranger to us. Whilst the
storm raged convulsively in France, and the flood rolled its waves more
wildly every year over Germany; the eyes and hearts of all men of
intellect were fixed on a little Principality in the middle of Germany,
where, amid the deepest tranquillity, the