the base to the summit; and upon which,
after all, corpses alone crown the whole hasty and tottering erection.
But this I _shall_ say, that Germany is at this moment on the verge of
insurrection; and that the first French flag which waves on the right
bank of the Rhine will be the signal of explosion. I say more; that if
the effect is to be permanent, pure, or beneficial, it will _not_ be the
result of the tricolor. The French conquests have always been brilliant,
but it was the brilliancy of a soap-bubble. A puff of the weakest lips
that ever breathed from a throne, has always been enough to make the
nation conquerors; but the hues of glory no sooner began to colour the
thin fabric, than it burst before the eye, and the nation had only to
try another bubble. It is my impression, that the favouritism of
Revolution at this moment will even receive its death-blow from France
itself. All is well while nothing is seen of it but the blaze
ascending, hour by hour, from the fragments of her throne, or nothing
heard but the theatrical songs of the pageants which perform the new
idolatry of 'reason.' But when the Frenchman shall come among nations
with the bayonet in his right hand and with the proclamation in his
left--when he turns his charger loose into the corn-field, and robs the
peasant whom he harangues on the rights of the people--this republican
baptism will give no new power to the conversion. The German phlegm will
kick, the French _vivacite_ will scourge, and then alone will the true
war begin. Yet all this may be but the prelude. When the war of weapons
has been buried in its own ashes, another war may begin, the war of
minds--the struggle of mighty nations, the battle of an ambition of
which our purblind age has not even a glimpse--a terrible strife, yet
worthy of the immortal principle of man, and to be rewarded only by a
victory which shall throw all the exploits of soldiership into the
shade."

While I was meditating on the hidden meanings of this letter, in which
my Jewish friend seemed to have imbibed something of the dreamy spirit
of Germany itself, I was startled by a tremendous uproar outside the
hospital--the drums beat to arms, the garrison hastily mustered, the
population poured into the streets, and a strong and startling light in
all the casements, showed that some great conflagration had just begun.
The intelligence was soon spread that the Hotel de Ville, the noblest
building in the city, a fine spe