ess land by the German elms that look like ours and it was
sufficiently stocked with German statues, that look like no others. It
had a monument, too, of the sort with which German art has everywhere
disfigured the kindly fatherland since the war with France. These
monuments, though they are so very ugly, have a sort of pathos as
records of the only war in which Germany unaided has triumphed against
a foreign foe, but they are as tiresome as all such memorial pomps must
be. It is not for the victories of a people that any other people can
care. The wars come and go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad
wars, or what are comically called good wars, they are of one effect in
death and sorrow, and their fame is an offence to all men not concerned
in them, till time has softened it to a memory

"Of old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago."

It was for some such reason that while the Marches turned with instant
satiety from the swelling and strutting sculpture which celebrated the
Leipsic heroes of the war of 1870, they had heart for those of the war
of 1813; and after their noonday dinner they drove willingly, in a pause
of the rain, out between yellowing harvests of wheat and oats to the
field where Napoleon was beaten by the Russians, Austrians and Prussians
(it always took at least three nations to beat the little wretch)
fourscore years before. Yet even there Mrs. March was really more
concerned for the sparsity of corn-flowers in the grain, which in their
modern character of Kaiserblumen she found strangely absent from their
loyal function; and March was more taken with the notion of the little
gardens which his guide told him the citizens could have in the suburbs
of Leipsic and enjoy at any trolley-car distance from their homes.
He saw certain of these gardens in groups, divided by low, unenvious
fences, and sometimes furnished with summer-houses, where the tenant
could take his pleasure in the evening air, with his family. The guide
said he had such a garden himself, at a rent of seven dollars a year,
where he raised vegetables and flowers, and spent his peaceful leisure;
and March fancied that on the simple domestic side of their life, which
this fact gave him a glimpse of, the Germans were much more engaging
than in their character of victors over either the First or the Third
Napoleon. But probably they would not have agreed with him, and probably
nations will go on making themselves cruel