on on
unjust invasion. Both Spain and Germany repaid the injuries they had
endured, but with a characteristic difference of spirit. In the one case
it was the desultory attacks of savage guerillas, animated by the love
of plunder as much as by patriotism; in the other, the rising of a
great people to defend their homes and altars, presented the glorious
spectacle of a nation going forth to the fight. The wild notes of
the Basque bugle rang not out with such soul-stirring effects as
the beautiful songs of Koerner, heard beside the watch-fire or at the
peasant's hearth. The conduct of their own princes might have debased
the national spirit of any other people; but the German's attachment to
Fatherland is not a thing of courtly rule nor conventional agreement.
He loves the land and the literature of his fathers; he is proud of
the good faith and honesty which are the acknowledged traits of Saxon
character; he holds to the 'sittliche Leben,' the orderly domestic
habits of his country; and as he wages not a war of aggression on
others, he resists the spoliation of an enemy on the fields of his
native country.

When the French revolution fire broke out, the students were amongst
its most ardent admirers; the destruction of the Bastile was celebrated
among the secret festivals of the Burschenschaft; and although the fever
was a brief one, and never extended among the more thinking portion
of the nation, to that same enthusiasm for liberty was owing the great
burst of national energy which in 1813 convulsed the land from the
Baltic to the Tyrol, and made Leipsic the compensation for Jena.

With all his grandeur of intellect, Napoleon never understood the
national character--perhaps he may have despised it. One of his most
fatal errors, undoubtedly, was the little importance he attached to
the traits which distinguish one country from another, and the
seeming indifference with which he propounded notions of government
diametrically opposed to all the traditions and prejudices of those
for whom they were intended. The great desire for centralisation; the
ambition to make France the heart of Europe, through whose impulse the
life-blood should circulate over the entire Continent; to merge all
distinctions of race and origin, and make Frenchmen of one quarter
of the globe--was a stupendous idea, and if nations were enrolled in
armies, might not be impossible. The effort to effect it, however, cost
him the greatest throne of Chris