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,