y "to arms" that
was raised; the troops would not charge the people, but mingled in the
shouts of "a republic! a republic!" The alarmed king conceded, tampered
with his own concessions, and at last abdicated. His son and successor
made a great flourish of proclamations and promises, throwing himself
upon the popular sympathy until time enabled him to forswear himself.
The credulous people who believed the oaths of kings, generally paid
afterwards the penalty of their credulity in blood or fetters.

In Saxony there was no harmony between the court and people; the former
were Roman Catholic, and the latter Protestant. The prudence of the
monarch, however, prevailed over the solicitations of his court to treat
his people with disdain, and he saved his throne and his honour.

The King of Hanover was less honest, as well as less compliant, but even
he had to recognise, for the time being, a constitution.

Prussia proper was affected, as well as her less homogeneous provinces,
by the grand convulsion. After a series of conflicts in the streets of
Berlin, order was at last restored, and the constitution modified so as
to satisfy a large portion of the people. The Poles in Posen revolted,
and perpetrated the utmost atrocities, but were put down by the Prussian
troops without obtaining any of the objects for which they so wildly
fought, and so vaguely demanded. The people of Posen had been
practised upon by their own nobles, and incited by their priests.
Their insurrection was one of fanaticism, not of freedom; the revolters
carried the symbols and images of their creed, not the banners of
nationhood before them,--they deserved to fail. Their chief oppressors
were the privileged classes of their own countrymen, from whom the
Prussian government derived no aid in its efforts to meliorate the
condition of the province. Education was resisted, industry discouraged,
and the religious rights of minorities assailed by ignorant and
fanatical mobs. The freedom required in Posen was an emancipation of the
people from their own passions and prejudices.

THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE.

The revolutionary history of the Austrian empire during the year
1848 was instructive, and full of the most eventful changes and great
results. On another page the progress of affairs in Austrian Italy was
sketched, and the relation of the kasir's interests there to contiguous
Italian states pointed out. The whole empire was, however, convulsed,
and the thr