rlin and the formation of the
Triple Alliance mark the end of a momentous period in European history.
The quarter of a century which followed the Franco-Austrian War of 1859
in Northern Italy will always stand out as one of the most momentous
epochs in State-building that the world has ever seen. Italy, Denmark,
Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Turkey, assumed their present form. The
Christians of the Balkan Peninsula made greater strides towards liberty
than they had taken in the previous century. Finally, the new diplomatic
grouping of the Powers helped to endow these changes with a permanence
which was altogether wanting to the fitful efforts of the period
1815-59. That earlier period was one of feverish impulse and picturesque
failure; the two later decades were characterised by stern organisation
and prosaic success.

It generally happens to nations as to individuals that a period devoted
to recovery from internal disorders is followed by a time of great
productive and expansive power. The introspective epoch gives place to
one of practical achievement. Faust gives up his barren speculations
and feels his way from thought to action. From "In the beginning was the
Word" he wins his way onward through "the Thought" and "the Might,"
until he rewrites the dictum "In the beginning was the Deed." That is
the change which came over Germany and Europe in the years 1850-80. The
age of the theorisers of the _Vor-Parlament_ at Frankfurt gave place to
the age of Bismarck. The ideals of Mazzini paled in the garish noonday
of the monarchical triumph at Rome.

Alas! too, the age of great achievement, that of the years 1859-85,
makes way for a period characterised by satiety, torpor, and an
indefinable _malaise_. Europe rests from the generous struggles of the
past, and settles down uneasily into a time of veiled hostility and
armed peace. Having framed their State systems and covering alliances,
the nations no longer give heed to constitutions, rights of man, or
duties of man; they plunge into commercialism, and search for new
markets. Their attitude now is that of Ancient Pistol when he exclaims

"The world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open."

In Europe itself there is little to chronicle in the years 1885-1900,
which are singularly dull in regard to political achievement. No popular
movement (not even those of the distressed Cretans and Armenians) has
aroused enough sympathy to bring it to the