The French are not solid enough for my taste; but, Gott in Himmel that people has had a fire baptism, and the democracy which is born of a fire baptism like theirs, "Geist" cannot help caring about. They were unripe for the task they in '89 set themselves to do; and yet, by the strength of "Geist " and their faith in "Geist," this "mere viper brood of canting egotists" did so much that they left their trace in half the beneficial reforms through Europe; and if you ask how, at Naples, a convent became a school, or in Ticino an intolerable oligarchy ceased to govern, or in Prussia Stein was able to carry his land-reforms, you get one answer: the French! Till modern society is finally formed, French democracy will still be a power in Europe, and it will manage to have effective leaders at the Tuileries, and not only in Cayenne. It will live, though the classes above it may rot; because it has faith in "Geist," and does not think that people can do without "Geist " by dint of holding monster meetings, and having their Star1 and Telegraph every morning, and paying no church-rates, and marrying their deceased wife's sister.

We Prussians, Sir, have, as a people, no great love for the French, because we were blown into the air by the explosion of their "Geist" some sixty years ago, and much quarrelling and ill-blood followed.

1 The Star, like Arminius himself, has passed from amongst us; but may we not say that its work was done when it had once laid the basis of that admirable and fruitful alliance between Mialism and Millism, which the course of our politics is now every day consolidating ?-ED.

But we saw then what a power the "Geist " in their democracy gave them; and we set to work to make ourselves strong, not by a sort of wild fire-baptism of the mass, but in our steady German way, by culture, by forming our faculties of all kinds, by every man doing the very best he could with himself, by trusting, with an "Ernst der ins Ganze geht," to mind and not to clap-trap. Your "earnest Liberal" in England thinks culture all moonshine; he is for the spiritual development of your democracy by rioting in the parks, abolishing church-rates, and marrying a deceased wife's sister; and for leaving your narrow and vulgar middle class (of which I saw an incomparable specimen in a Reigate train when I was over in England) just as it is. On the other hand, Mr. Matthew Arnold writes me word that a club has just been formed among you to do honour to the memory of that great man, Richard Cobden; that this club has taken for its motto, "Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform;" and that these words, by a special command from Mr. Cobden's ghost, are to bear the following interpretation :-"Peace to our nonsense, retrenchment of our profligate expenditure of clap-trap, and reform of ourselves." Whether this is true, or merely a stroke of my poor friend's so-called playfulness (Heaven save the mark !), I do not feel quite sure; I hope for your sakes it is true, as this is the very thing you want, and nothing else can save you from certain decline.

Do not be astonished at the aristocratic prefix to

my name; I come of a family which has for three generations rubbed shoulders with philosophy. Your humble servant,

VON THUNDER-TEN-TRONCKH.

To the EDITOR of the PALL MALL GAZETTE.

LETTER III.

I EXPOSTULATE WITH ARMINIUS ON HIS

SIR,

REVOLUTIONARY SENTIMENTS.

GRUB STREET, August 6, 1866.

I THOUGHT it was very odd I got no answer from Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh (he was christened Hermann, but I call him Arminius, because it is more in the grand style), when I so particularly begged him to write soon, and save what rags he could of his tissue of nonsense about "Geist," after my countrymen had riddled it, as I knew they were sure to do. I supposed he had taken service, like the rest of the German Liberals, under Bismarck, and was too busy pillaging the poor Frankfort people to think of intellectual matters; but I now see he has been writing direct to you, and wants to leave me out in the cold altogether. I do not in the least care for his coarse Prussian sneers, but I must say it is rather good that he should not be above sponging on me week after week in Grub Street, swilling beer (none of your Bavarian wash, but sound English Bass) at my expense, filling my garret (for I don't smoke myself) with the smell of his execrable tobacco,

getting the daily benefit of my Star and Telegraph (I take the Star for wisdom and charity, and the Telegraph for taste and style), and keeping me up yawning till two o'clock every morning to listen to his rubbishy transcendentalism, and yet be too fine a gentleman to make me the depositary of his ideas for transmission to the English public. But Arminius has the ridiculous pride of his grandfather, who, though the family estate had all gone to the dogs, and he was ruined and turned priest, chose to set his stiff German face against Candide's marriage with his sister. He got shipped off to the Jesuits at Rome, as every one knows; but what is not so well known is,1 that when the French Revolution came, this precious priest, like Talleyrand, married, and my Arminius is his grandson. Arminius came over here to make acquaintance with Mr. Lowe, who he has found out is in some odd way descended from the philosopher Pangloss, a great friend of the Von Thunder-tenTronckh family; but ever since the sack of their château by the Bulgarians, the Von Thunder-tenTronckhs have not had a sixpence in the world except what they could get by their "Geist," and what Arminius gets by his is such beggar's allowance that

1 It was necessarily unknown to Voltaire, who wrote the history of the Von T. family.-ED.

2 It is my firm belief that this relationship, which had become a fixed idea with Arminius, never really existed. The optimism of Mr. Lowe's estimate of the British middle class and its House of Commons, in his celebrated speech on Reform, had, in my opinion, struck Arminius's fancy, and made him imagine a kinship in the flesh where there was in truth only a kinship in the spirit.-ED.