had been stopping, and far more alive, thanks to the folly of the Elector, who took sides with Austria against Prussia and had to flee the country after Sadowa. New houses are going up in all directions, and the place seemed prosperous. We went out to Wilhelmhöhe and dined, little dreaming of the events which in a month or two were to make it the most famous castle in Germany. Of all the parks and pleasure grounds, natural or artificial, public or private, these are by far the most superb I have ever seen. The arrangements for the distribution of the water through the forests of magnificent trees have been made with great taste and apparently without regard to expense.

When I reflected that they were paid for mainly by the proceeds of hiring out 12,000 subjects as soldiers to prevent the achievement of American independence and that a descendant of the Elector who built that palace had become within a century a refugee in a foreign land, I felt that the fortress has charms which should be more impressive to Americans than to the people of any other nationality.

On the 3d of July a Mr. Van Dyke, who had been brought up in the East by his father, who was a missionary, and who was studying in Berlin for the same profession, called in the evening, and the question whether Dickens was a Christian-raised at one of Mr. Beecher's Friday evening prayer-meetings was discussed. It had been pronounced a very indecorous question to raise. I defended Beecher's speech on the occasion, which I thought as liberal and generous as could be made or had been made by anyone; and then I said that, beneficent as I regarded the tendency of Dickens's writings in the main, he was not a saint by any means, and the question, though now raised in an improper place, was not one upon which Christians might not be permitted to speculate without undertaking to judge. Dickens was a man who for thirty years had never been wholly free from the influence of intoxicating drinks. He had a passion for accumulating money which made him indifferent to his obligations to society, to his family, and to his physical health. In all his writings one will find no allusion to the Sabbath, to any of the sacred offices of religion- - at least in a spiritual sense - nor any recognition of a God or a Redeemer, or the Bible. He never went to church himself nor did anything to indicate to the public that religion had any consolations or that life involved any special obligation toward its divine Author.

He had as good a right to construct his fictions without the religious element as Bishop Butler to attempt to prove the truth of the Christian religion without appealing to the Gospels or to Revelations; but it is possible to pay too unreserved homage to the example of a man who, to be sure, furnished the world more innocent amusement in his time than any contemporary, but whose life and personal babits could hardly be recommended as models.

JOHN HAY TO BIGELOW

LEGATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

MADRID

My dear Mr. Bigelow:

MADRID, July 9, 1870.

I was cheered but not inebriated by your letter of the 4th which is probably the only one written by an American that day that contained no reference to the Eagle. I do not want you to bear me on your mind over here. My letter was written simply under the impression that you were still in New York, elbowing your way through crowds of editors and publishers every day, to whom it might be convenient for you to mention my name, at some hour when you found them hungering and thirsting for copy. My affairs are not so desperate as my letter may have caused you to think. I have a sure income of two or three hundred dollars in ordinary times, and that is opulence in Warsaw - where living costs nothing & where I have all the comforts of a home, within five minutes walk of the station. If I go away from that bower of innocent repose, I shall spend more and make more.

I fully expected to be in America by this time, having given my word to my people that I would be with them in time for the July crackers. But it is more amusing here just now than it has ever been before. Every body has left Madrid, which makes it very lively & pleasant, and I am freed from society and its intolerable pleasures. We are in a very interesting condition at this moment and must wait a fortnight or so to see what is to become of us. I do not like to go while the fun is so fast and furious. I may be here another month-possibly two - I think not possibly more.

I expect to have some work offered me at home this autumn. It depends on the result of the fall elections—not that I am interested in them, but if another man gets an office, I will take his place in his shop.

There is an enormous effervescence here since Gramont's1 ridiculous speech in the Corps Législatif. The Spanish heart is thoroughly fired. They pretend that they would rather fight than eat. But there is a possibility that the Union liberal will bolt the Hohenzollern candidature, and that, with the abstentions, will defeat it, and the matter will end with a ministerial crisis. This is however by no means certain. Every possible means will be used during the coming ten days to whip in a majority.

I have had a curious experience during the past week. There have been some street rows, in which the Carlists were severely handled. One night, the parliamentary leader of this medieval party came to my house & asked for protection. I took the ardent protestant-burner in, and kept him a week, and at last sent him away with lampblack daubed over him, to his monkish friends in Avila. I was so much interested in meeting a man who believed that I sat up with him, night after night, talking ultramontanism. It is a rare growth in these days. These Spanish Catholics are the only pious men left in the world. They do not believe there is a Protestant or a free-thinker in the world. There may be some lunatics, they admit, but the bulk of heretics are conscious of their crimes, and it is a mercy to burn them and ease their tortured consciences.

Some time, before I go, I would be glad of a note of introduction to Mr. Bryant. I have only been introduced to him 5 or 6 times, and so would not like to call without credentials. He is just now so savage against our Legation that I would not try to see him; but he will live forever, and I can use the letter some day. I hope I shall not lose sight of you again. Your invitation is a terrible temptation, but it is not written that I shall see you so Give my regards to Mrs. Bigelow and those of your household who are with you, and think of me always as your uncompromising adherent.

soon.

'French Minister of Foreign Affairs.

VII

THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR

N THE Paris Journal des Débats of July 4, 1870, appeared the following paragraph:

I

Grave news reaches us to-day from Madrid. A deputation sent to Prussia by Marshal Prim1 has offered the Crown of Spain to a Prince of the Hohenzollern family, who has accepted it. The dispatch which announces the acceptance of the Prussian Prince adds: "This candidature would be proclaimed en dehors le Cortes." This phrase so little intelligible, does it signify that Marshal Prim counts upon installing upon the throne of Spain a relative of the King of Prussia without the consent of the representatives of the Spanish people? We refuse to believe it jusqu'à nouvelle ordre.

On the following day, in response to the interpellation of a deputy in the Corps législatif, His Excellency the Duke of Gramont, Minister of Foreign Affairs, said:

It is true that Marshal Prim has offered to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern the crown of Spain, and that the latter has accepted it. But the Spanish people have not yet expressed themselves and we have not yet the true details of the negotiation, which have been concealed from us. Hence a discussion now of the incident could end in no practical result. you, Gentlemen, to adjourn it.

We beg

We have not ceased t testify our sympathy with the Spanish nation and to avoid everything that could have the appearance of meddling with the internal affairs of a noble and great nation in the plenary exercise of its sovereignty. We have not departed from the strictest neutrality in respect to the various pretenders to the throne, nor have we testified, even, a preference or an aversion to any of them.

We shall persist in this conduct. But we do not believe that respect for the rights of a neighboring people obliges us to suffer a foreign power by placing one of its princes on the throne of Charles V, to derange to our detriment the actual equilibrium of the forces in Europe, and put in peril the interests and honor of France.

'President of the Royal Council.

871

This eventuality we have the firm hope will not be realised. To prevent it, we count at the same time upon the wisdom of the German people and upon the friendship of the Spanish.

Should it prove otherwise, strong, Gentlemen, in your support, and that of the nation, we shall know how to discharge our duty without hesitation and without weakness.

The news here alluded to and this speech announcing it, lighted the torch of war that resulted in putting into the field more soldiers than were ever embattled at any one time in Europe before or since, and that cost more money and lives than had been expended there in the same length of time in any war ever waged in historic times, and with political results yet

more momentous.

FROM MY DIARY

July 5, 1870. Accompanied by my wife and children I yesterday went to Eisenach by rail, thence on foot to the Wartburg to keep our Fourth of July. After going through the castle we dined at the restaurant, then crossed to the Annathal. On our way we met the guests arriving on the side hill at Marienthal to attend the festival in honor of the Grand Duke's birthday, which, though it occurred on the 24th of June, it had proved convenient to celebrate later. We chose to treat it as a celebration of American independence, so we stopped at the grounds, and giving my card, we were admitted. There was music from two or three bands, a rustic open-air theatre for some very poor playing, for dancing and tight-rope gymnastics. The grounds were treated like a camp, patrolled by sentinels. Most of the guests were children, generally dressed in fancy costumes and giving a brilliant appearance to the scene, not improved by the singular absence of personal beauty revealed on mingling among them. Soon after we came upon the grounds the Grand Duke made his appearance, standing upon a rock. When he got near the front of it he stopped, bowed two or three times, and the people arose and a few hurrahs were heard. There were no boisterous demonstrations of enthusiasm. If there were any they were not intelligible to me. After a few minutes the Grand Duke sat down, then the company sat down, and the wretchedly acted play began. The Grand Duke did not descend among his people, but remained