as brought into close relations with the
Empire, the Republic and the Commune by means of its delegated character
as protector of North German subjects during the war. It was, for that
period, much the most notable among the foreign embassies in France. While
those of the principal European powers, as for most of the time the French
government itself, left the capital, it, with the representatives of two
or three minor states, remained at its post. Outside of the very onerous
function assumed by it at the request of the German government, it had
other great cares and great opportunities for good. These appear to have
been encountered and used with remarkable tact and energy. Its display of
those qualities has been gratefully acknowledged by its own people, those
of Germany and many of the French. At the outbreak of the war thirty
thousand Germans were established in Paris. Summary expulsion was decreed
against these, and the American minister and his subordinates had the sole
charge of applying the meagre funds sent by their own sovereign for
mitigating the suffering due to that order. Some thousands, unable to
leave or preferring to run all risks, remained throughout the war. This
unhappy remnant constantly looked to the American ministry for aid to
subsist and to escape violence. Mr. Hoffman ventures to place the
banishment of the Germans, for acuteness if not mass of suffering, by the
side of the ejection of the Huguenots and the Moors. This exaggeration
serves at least to show the impression it made on an eye-witness.

Major Hoffman's remarks on the causes of the moral breakdown of the Empire
and of the French army do not help us to much that is novel. He lays more
than the usual stress on Ultramontanism as an influence. The death of the
archbishop of Paris could have been prevented, he thinks, had the
Versailles authorities acted with due promptness and determination; and he
avers his belief that the liberalism of that prelate made his death not
unacceptable to the Church party represented now by Eugenie and MacMahon.
He ascribes fanaticism also to the savior of Paris that was to be--Trochu.
Trochu's main hope, he believes, was miraculous interposition. His
statement of the extent to which unreasoning panic had possession of both
soldiers and citizens supports the idea that supernatural aid only could
have saved the city.

The better, and really ruling, traits of the French people are not to be
studied in their per