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2. LANDAU, in Rhenish Bavaria, on the Quetch, with 5300 inhabitants. In peace is held by a Bavarian garrison. The war garrison amounts to 7000 infantry and 200 cavalry. Of these Bavaria supplies 5709 infantry and the cavalry; the remaining 2291 infantry by the reserve division.

3. LUXEMBURG.-Capital of the Grand Duchy of the same name, on the Alzette, with 10,000 inhabitants. Governor, commandant, and garrison are Prussian. War garrison: 7000 infantry and 200 cavalry. Of these the Limberg-Luxemburg contingent furnishes 2536, the reserve division 1450, and Prussia the remainder.

4. ULM.-Capital of the circle of the Danube, in the kingdom of Wurtemberg, on the Danube, with 15,000 inhabitants. Garrisoned by Wurtemberg troops in peace, and Austrian detachments are added in

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5. RASTADT.—In the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the Mourz, a town of 4500 inhabitants, garrisoned by Austrians.

6. GERMERSHEIM.-In Rhenish Bavaria, a small town containing 1500 inhabitants, situated on the left bank of the Rhine, with a tête de pont on the other bank. The country between this fortress and Landau is a position which the Germans consider nearly impregnable, and on which 100,000 men could be collected.

Before quitting this branch of our subject, we will venture to add a small table, drawn up from the best resources at our command, showing at a glance the relative strength of European armies:

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3. Russia

4. Turkey

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540,000 80,000
100,800 17,280

1. England...... 119,000 13,600 15,122 2,460 80,000 (militia)..
2. France
382,000 86,000 57,000 8,200 33,800 (including 25,000

gendarmes)...
44,000 12,000 478,000 (reserve, irregular
garrison troops)..

Men. Guns. *230,200 120

566,000 1,182

1,154,000 2,250

13,000 1,600 325,000 (reserve, irregulars,
&c.)....

457,680 360

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4,400

9,000 748

62,000 152

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57,700 120

47,600 80

10. Belgium...... 46,000 5,800

11. Netherlands 43,500

12. Sardinia‡ 31,200 5,700 4,300 1,159 5,200

*East Indian army = 348,000 men, including 31,000 Queen's troops.

These figures are only approximative.

The armies of the four last states can be largely increased in case of war.

Since the first portion of our paper was written, the news from Vienna and Sebastopol has arrived, that the Allies have recommenced operations, and that the Russians have broken off the conferences. More unpleasant information arrived simultaneously, namely, that the Austrians were

gradually, but certainly, withdrawing from their given word, and that no assistance for the present at least can be expected from them. Such a result has not taken us by surprise, for we have long entertained the opinion that Germany was not to be depended on for a moment as likely to aid us in an offensive war; but the fact remains the same: there are immense armies, ready at a few weeks' notice, in the centre of Europe, and no one can yet say to which side in this great contest they will incline. That Austria would remain neutral if she could, might be assumed, as she can only be a loser, whichever side she takes up arms for; but Prussia, on the other hand, has most especial reasons to refrain from joining the allied forces. She is a new Power, without any protecting frontier, and could be overrun by the Russian troops as soon as her army was set in motion to take part in a war. But there is one weak point common to both Austria and Prussia: and that is their non-German provinces, which are ready, on the least signal from Russia, to throw off their allegiance. We know for a fact, though we are not at liberty to mention our authority, that the Hungarians are ready to join the forces of the Czar, if they can only have their revenge on the Austrians. The argument that appears to be used is, that although the Russians did help the Austrians in the subjugation of Hungary, still they never treated the Magyars as rebels, but as honourable foes. How far this opinion is entertained in the East may be seen from the fact that a report, to our knowledge, was very generally prevalent last May in Turkey, that Kos suth had offered the Czar the assistance of 200,000 men.

Unfortunately, the preponderance of Austria and Prussia in Germany will prevent any of the smaller kingdoms from joining us; but at the same time, their ill-concealed jealousy of each other, while serving to keep them apart, will also render them excessively cautious as to any decisive move. We may safely lay it down as an axiom, that as long as neither of the contending Powers gains a great success over the other, so long will the German neutrality be maintained, and the Allies kept quiet with promises. If, however, Sebastopol succumbs to our renewed attack Austria may be bribed, by the promise of a large tract of territory on the Danube, to render us material assistance, though only so far as may conduce to her own advantage. The way she can best serve us is to hold the Prussians in check, for it is certain that nothing could induce "le Roi Clicquot" to fight against his relation; and the antecedents of Prussian history reveal to us that they have a peculiar talent for taking up arms at the wrong moment. The chivalrous monarch may consequently rush to the aid of the Czar, if the Crimea is really imperilled, and such a step would lead indubitably to the most peculiar complications. What the army of the Confederation would do under such circumstances it would be difficult to say, but the probability is, the smaller regents would follow their long-established practice of joining the stronger party.

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My name is Briefless. I am a member of a large, and ancient, and well-known family, dating, I am assured, as far back as the Conquestthat "ultima Thule," or stand point (as our German cousins say), of genealogy. My domicile is in the third flight of a capacious mansion in Lincoln's Inn, to which they append the sarcastic sobriquet of Fields. More than this, on the score of my individuality, the reader will not thank me for troubling him with at present.

The work of the day was done, if it could be called work that went through my hands in the long vacation. I was moodily pacing the floor of the garret aforesaid, dight in all the dignity of dressing-gown and slippers. My law books-blessings on them!-were huddled together in a corner in majestic repose, and on my sofa lay the day's number of the Times newspaper which I had just been conning. My thoughts were not of the most serene. I had been reading the Registrar-General's Report of the weekly number of deaths from cholera, and my heart sickened at the dreary catalogue. I was growing, in fact, horribly morbid, and beset with "spectral lions," as Carlyle somewhere expresses

it. Lonelier I could not be, for I had no society but my own, and that was, perhaps, at the moment, the very worst I could possibly have had to do with. I was in a fever, and endeavoured to calm myself as best I might, in converse with my only companion and friend, my cigar, in whose comforting arms I had often before taken refuge. But this time it wouldn't do. The sorceress tobacco had lost her charm. What was to be done? I walked mechanically to my window and looked out into the night. It was starlight and peaceful, even in the midst of the world's Mammoth, as a child's dream, and the moon was shining benignantly on high, as though there were no sorrow on the earth.

The family of Briefless are not supposed to be given to sentiment, yet I plead guilty to the feeling on this one occasion-perhaps I ought to beg pardon. I know not by what association of ideas, but so it was, that old memories came flitting before me, old ghost-like recollections of boydays, green meadows, and wandering streams, the "sights, and sounds, and smells of the country." "I have it!" I cried, suddenly recollecting myself, and starting from my chair; "to-morrow morning I am off for a two days' ramble in the country." At seven o'clock I was steaming off from the Waterloo Station, and an hour and a half afterwards was confronting my mutton-chop in the inn at Farnham,-a pretty little country-town situated amid the hop-gardens of Surrey, and where William Cobbett first saw the light.

We are a travelling nation, and some of my countrymen and women have the credit of loving locomotion for its own sake. It may be an eccentricity on my part, but, although a lover of scenery in and for itself, I dislike moving from home without a more specific object, and my route was selected on the present occasion in this wise: It happened by a coincidence that I had been recently reading Mr. Courtenay's "Memoirs of Sir William Temple," and contemporaneously, Mr. Thackeray's admirable, though caustic, lecture on his secretary, the redoubtable "Dean of St. Patrick's." In the lives of both I found frequent mention of Moor Park. as the chosen retreat of the former, and the abode where the latter got May-VOL. CIV. NO. CCCCXIII.

C

his first insight into politics, and still more, laid the foundation of that eventful attachment which was to endure through a long portion of his stormy career, and which, however considered, must always be remembered with a romantic interest that has few parallels. Here was motive sufficient. The place had an historical and a literary recommendation for me, and, with all the foolish fuss and cant about hero-worship with which the world has been ringing these many years, I am not ashamed to confess myself a devout hero-worshipper, and a lover of the "homes and haunts of genius," wherever I can light upon them.

My breakfast despatched, I forthwith started to have a glimpse of the object of my expedition. It was a beautiful morning in September, and vividly stereotyped though the memory of my first Italian journey must ever remain on my mind, with all its romantic glories of blue sky and vine-clad hills, I do not know that the one experience at all tended to cast the other in the shade. Rather it was that this delicious English scenery brought back the memory of Italy. The sky was as blue, and the landscape more variedly picturesque, presenting to the eye the most singular combination imaginable of natural wildness and perfect cultivation. It was, in fact, Scotland and Italy combined. In the distance was a vast tract of moorland, such as the Cockney does not imagine to exist within the confines of his native Surrey; and more near, I had to walk through hop-gardens, whose climbing luxuriance and exquisite bloom recalled the picture of the southern vine, without losing by the comparison. Here, too, as in Italy, the "green alleys windingly allure;" and, to make the resemblance more complete, the eye of the wayfarer at this season lights upon a population little akin to the normal rustic labourer of our agricultural districts. For the nonce the swart gipsy takes the place of the ruddy Englishman, and, tatterdemalion as he is, with his wild flashing eyes of jet and vagabond face, serves to make up the picturesque effect of the whole scene. It was through a prospect such as this that I gradually made my way towards Moor Park.

"What is it," I kept asking myself as I went along" what is it in genius that invests it with that indefinable power of attraction, even in despite, oftentimes, of our better judgments? Is there not something altogether mesmeric and unaccountable about it, alluring and fascinating, almost what Goethe used to call dæmonie?" It is so indeed. The poets and philosophers are not only in very truth the unacknowledged legislators of the world, they not only fill the earth with wonder and beauty while they are on it, but, departing, they leave a flood of radiance behind them which does not die. The memory of them seems fadeless, not only by what they did, but simply for what they were. Hence everything and every place connected with a man of genius has its charm-his house, his horse, his very hat and walking-stick-and when young ladies in their teens, and elderly spinsters who have reached their grand climacteric, squabble for the privilege of sitting in a great man's chair when he can sit there no longer, they only illustrate the kind of homage which it is the prerogative of genius to compel. And now my two miles of journey are over, and my moralisings suddenly cut short, for I stand before the house whose roof gave shelter to Temple, and Stella, and the author of "Gulliver."

I am not so learned in architecture as Mr. Ruskin, and I fear I cannot talk about palaces or "sheep-folds" so well as he. Fortunately, how

any

ever, this house *may be described without architectural initiation, real or affected. It is a large, unpretending, quadrangular building, beautifully situated in the valley through which runs the river Wey. But let me pause a moment in my sketch of the place, while I narrate what to me was really a kind of adventure, and which turned out to be far from disagreeable, though unexpected. Approaching the entrance, I noticed the first emblem of the former renowned possessor in Temple's coat-of-arms blazoned in bronze above the doorway. I know nothing of heraldry, so am in the dark as to what the wild animals in the same, with their rampant attitudes, may possibly signify. No matter. But immediately beneath this device, on a marble slab, stands engraven the line of Virgil's Idyll, "Deus nobis hæc otia fecit," expressive of the repose the weary statesman found here when he had torn himself from the din and fever of public affairs and the metropolis, the "fumum et opes strepitumque Romæ." I made bold to ring the bell, and inquire of the domestic if I might be privileged to see something of the house and grounds, as being a kind of public property, but what was my astonishment to find that I had entered the threshold of a hydropathic establishment! "Shades of Swift and Temple," I thought, in my first moments of surprise, "has it come to this ?" The disappointment, however, was but that of a moment, and a glance at the interior speedily reconciled me to this singular caprice of the good goddess Fortune. It was comfort and elegance itself, with a look of cheerful well-being quite captivating. My name, meanwhile, was announced to the doctor, and I found myself presently in that gentleman's study, and deep in the classical associations of the place, of which I quickly discovered him to be a perfect master and intelligent appreciator. We discussed Temple and his times, fought the battle of the great revolution over again, were plunging earnestly into the eventful history of Swift, when the doctor most kindly volunteered to act as my cicerone over the house and grounds, and off we sallied. Here was a beautiful room, with a southern exposure, and looking out upon the lawn. This Temple occupied as his study, and here doubtless he received the Prince of Orange in consultation on more occasions than one. We can easily imagine the prim and elegant diplomatist at his desk, and we can picture to ourselves, too, the uncouth young Irishman at his side acting as his amanuensis, inwardly growling at his unworthy fate, with perhaps already the shadow of coming events pressing upon him in the proud consciousness of his own fiery strength and matchless intellect. Who says that genius is unconscious? Can Shakspeare walk beside a dwarf or an ordinary mortal and remain ignorant of his own transcendant stature? It is mere sophistical sentimentality to imagine it. Greatness, however, be it remembered, is always relative, and a man may well be cognisant of his own intellectual calibre when compared with that of his fellows, while he may still, and must, if he be genuinely great, confess in modesty how small a thing he is in the eye of the universe. And so doubtless was it with Swift.

Passing from Temple's apartments, with their elegances, I was next conducted to the servants'-hall of old days, and beheld the veritable room where Lady Giffard's waiting gentlewoman and Temple's literary drudge and man-of-all-work ate the crumbs that fell from the great man's table-the meed of poor relations. A bitter pill, but still with a gilding

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