It is curious here, at this time, to read the impressions written in 1769 by one who felt passionately, and wrote the truth as it was in him-I mean the great poet Alfieri. His Life fell under Mr. N.'s hand the other day, and he read us a passage from it which you may have forgotten. It is this: "In the month of September I continued my journey to Prague and Dresden. Thence I went on to Berlin, where I stayed a month. On entering the states of the Great Frederick, which seemed to me but a never-ending guard-house for soldiers, I felt my horror of the infamous military trade doubled and tripled. The most infamous of all trades it is, because it is the sole basis of arbitrary power, and that power springs from the thousands of hired satellites at its disposal." Having got so far I must give you a little more. I must tell you what he says of the man who was the source and centre of arbitrary power in his day-the man from whom the Directory in France and Bonaparte also took their lessons in military affairs-the man to whom Europe owes the military organisation of which it now boasts as the certain means of keeping rival nations in check. We must be ready to fight in order not to have to fight, each government says, and so these terrible armaments are kept up-"the hired satellites, supporters of arbitrary power." Alfieri says of the king: "I was presented to him, and felt on seeing him no emotion of admiration or of respect, but, on the contrary, one of indignation-nay, of rage. This was increased and strengthened in me by the sight of so many things that are not what they ought to be, of so many falsities wearing the face of truth, and gaining the renown due to it. I observed the king narrowly, fixing my eyes on his, and I felt that I had reason to thank Heaven that I was not born his slave. In November I left Prussia, that great barrack, that soldiers' prison, abhorring it as much as it is possible for a man to abhor anything."

What would Alfieri think now were he to behold Prussia, with its soldiery a score of times as numerous as in his day? Would his rage against the hired satellites of arbitrary power increase in the same proportion? It should not do so. These hired satellites, this soldiery, should be the objects of our compassion, not of our indignation. They are the first victims of the arbitrary power that they support-victims in thousands on bloody battle-fields. They have not thy eyes, O poet! to discern when falsehood wears the face of truth, and led on by specious war-cries of " country and freedom," fight with blind enthusiasm at a Leipzig or a Waterloo, and after victory find themselves more completely in the toils of arbitrary power than they were before. The shedding of their blood has given it new strength, new life.

"Whilst we were preparing for the great struggle against the first Napoleon," said a Prussian to me, "we were allowed to inhale

a little free air, ein wenig freie lüft,' we had great hopes; but after all was settled, when we sat down at peace, things were worse than they had been. We perhaps felt this the more acutely from knowing how much we had done for our rulers, knowing how much was due to us by them."

That the debt unpaid to the people has never been cancelled by them is certain, although the generation to whom it was owing has passed away-yes, even another generation too-yet that there are heirs to claim what was due to their fathers, the upheaving of the public mind in Germany after the events of 1830 in France, and again by what occurred in all the German states after those of 1848.

I saw Berlin at first, I think, a little with your eyes, which would be rather like those of Alfieri. I felt that although the military prison had been very much enlarged and adorned, still it is a military prison. Prison discipline seemed, however, in the late time of revolutions, about to fail in this capital for a moment. There was great excitement, some barricades were hastily erected, a deputation of the burghers who went with a petition to the king were fired on-not by his orders, unquestionably, it is said by those of the Prince of Prussia, his brother; but, by whomsoever the act was done, it caused on the instant feelings of dismay and desire for vengeance to become predominant among the people, and there was some bloody work before the military restored tranquillity.

Royalty did not come with dignity out of this short struggle. The king, a man of peace, showed weakness and alarm. The Prince of Prussia, who is supposed to be at least very soldierly in his instincts, fled in disguise to England, his princess, a very proud lady, the daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, followed him in the same fashion. Since they have found it safe to return, it is generally remarked that they show themselves a sadder and a wiser pair than they were.

Thus, now, you have this affair of Berlin to add to what I have told you of Dresden and Prague. Will you not think, after reading it, that although it may be dull to live in a vale in England, it is well for her people to be beyond the reach of catching that fever in the blood which spreads through Europe when the vital heat in the heart of France becomes too great for her repose?

We think of going to Weimar, and I may write to you before I shall receive a reply to this. If I can find what will interest you in that town of poetic and literary reminiscences, you shall have it. In the mean time, rejoice in poetry and literature under your

tree.

THE DREAM PAINTER

BY DR. J. E. CARPENTER.

Book I.
V.

BLIGHTED HOPES.

LEOPOLD, prostrated by his adventure of the night before, and harassed in his mind by his endeavour to sift some words of comfort from his last interview with Geraldine, obtained little repose until it was early morning; it was therefore late in the forenoon when he descended from his room to join the family in their common sitting-room. His mother and Bertha were already plying the busy finger, engaged in their usual occupation by a table under the window, which overlooked a pleasant garden at the back of the house; his father was attending to a customer in his little shop.

The breakfast-table, in the centre of the room, had been left with the tray for the late comer.

There was an air of comfort about the establishment of the honest tailor, but every article of furniture, down to the prints of Goethe and Schiller, in their plain wooden frames, was of the most homely description, and evinced that there frugality was not less a rule than a necessity.

When Leopold entered the room, Frau Sternemberg immediately put down her work, gave her son a kiss, and proceeded to make him some coffee.

"You look very pale this morning," she said, addressing him kindly. "What a fright you gave us last night. I was for sitting up, but Bertha would insist on my going to bed. She said you had only gone to make a sketch of the moonlight. I am sure I don't understand how you contrive to paint pictures in the dark."

"Nor anybody else, mother," he replied. "I don't paint in the dark, but I must go and see the effects that I want to produce in order to understand them. Then even the moon may give me light enough to make a few memorandums."

"That was a pretty moonlight scene I saw on your table the other morning," continued his mother. "You seem to be fond of moonlights, lately."

"Yes," replied Leopold, "I had a-a commission for one."

"Did you see it, Bertha?" said the Frau Sternemberg, without noticing the reply.

"No, mother," said Bertha, looking up from her sewing.

"That is too bad of you, Leopold, when you know what an interest your sister takes in everything you do," pursued his mother, turning to him and pouring out his coffee, which now spread a pleasant aroma throughout the apartment.

"I shall have plenty more to gratify Bertha's curiosity," said Leopold, sipping his coffee, and looking towards Bertha with a gesture that seemed to say, "Don't make any bother about it."

"Ah! but this one," insisted his mother, who, like most dames. who have the control of a household, when once resolved upon carrying her point, was not easily to be put down. "I never saw anything so beautiful. I will run and fetch it."

"It would be useless, mother," said Leopold; "it is gone." "Gone! Where?"

"Gone home, to be sure."

"And you have really sold it. How much did you get for it?" asked the proud mother, apparently delighted.

Leopold was above telling a lie, even on a far graver matter than this. He, however, endeavoured to fence the question by saying:

"I did not sell it at all. I gave it away."

Bertha looked up from her work, and regarded her brother with an air of curiosity.

"You gave it away! Well, I'm sure, if you set such little store by it, I should have liked to have had it framed and put between the two portraits there."

"It was quite unworthy of such exalted companionship," replied the student, smiling.

"They are only pictures, after all, and I am sure yours was much more beautiful," said the matter-of-fact wife of the tailor. "Never mind, mother, you shall have a picture to put over your mantelpiece."

"Always the way," said the good dame, by no means satisfied by the mere promise, and more than half piqued. "Strangers first, one's own relations afterwards. I am sure I don't know any.one you could give a picture to. Who was the favoured gentle

man?”

"No gentleman at all, mother," answered Leopold, dryly, becoming in his turn vexed by the interrogation.

"No gentleman!"

"No. I gave it to a lady, since you must know."

The Frau Sternemberg burst out laughing at her son's discomfiture; then she said, kindly:

"Come, lad, I don't want you to tell your old mother all your secrets. I dare say we shall know all about it in good time."

"You are altogether mistaken, mother," answered Leopold, seriously. "One of the young ladies at the school where I teach wished for a sketch of the house by moonlight, and I could not be so rude as to refuse her."

"Oh! oh! One of the young ladies! Take care, Leopold, that one of the young ladies does not give you the heartache."

"And why should she give him the heartache ?" put in Bertha, who, though she had never left off her sewing, had been listening attentively to the conversation.

"Bertha," said her mother, sharply, "I know you have got some high-flown notions into your head, or you would have accepted Paul Fischer, who would have made you a very good husband. The young ladies at that school are not those for the son of Hain Sternemberg to look out for a wife among."

If Bertha had got any high-flown notions into her head, she ran the risk of shaking them out, for she tossed it violently.

"Mother," she replied, "I consider Leopold as an artist the equal of any of the young girls at that school. Who are they? Daughters of wine-merchants, farmers, and the like. Money is not the only thing that gives position."

"The young lady for whom I made that sketch," said Leopold, thrown off his guard in his desire to separate Geraldine from the companionship of the daughters of supposititious wine-merchants and imaginary farmers, "is not a regular pupil; she goes there for lessons in music, languages, and drawing. She is the daughter of a rich visitor. They have scarcely been a twelvemonth in Bonn." The unnecessary warmth with which Leopold gave this explanation convinced Bertha that she had discovered his secret.

"I don't see how that mends matters," said the elder lady; and she quoted a popular German proverb, "Heirathe über den Mist, so wiesst du wer sie ist"-a proverb more remarkable for its force than for the elegance of its diction.

By this time Leopold had finished his scanty breakfast, and his father came into the parlour rubbing his hands, apparently in great good humour.

He had taken an order for an entire suit of clothes all at once -a thing unusual with him, and not an every-day occurrence with many tailors throughout the whole of Germany.

Hain Sternemberg, the tailor, was a good easy man, proud of his son's abilities, as was his wife, but he did not share the extravagant estimate of them that had been formed by his daughter Bertha. Age cannot look with the fond eyes of youth, and the long, certain, disappointing past, compared with the brief and still