the crowd of enemies who pressed upon him, and jumped into the Tiber. The Etruscans poured their arrows into the water, but the brave fellow swam safely across to the other side. when we hear And "How well Horatius kept the bridge it ought to teach us a great lesson. It was hot work, no doubt, for one man to fight a whole army; but how much easier it was to keep the enemy back at the narrow entrance to the bridge than it would have been in the streets of Rome ! So it is with sin. We find it very hard sometimes to love God, and to do what He tells us; but it is much easier to do it now, when we are little, than to begin trying when we have become old When sin came to meet Joseph he fought out the struggle in a manly, noble way, and he conquered. If you want to be as good and great as Joseph afterwards was, you must deal with your faults, with your sins, with your temper in as resolute a way as he dealt with temptation. Do not play with wickedness. Wherever you find it put your foot on it, because it grieves the good God and it hurts us. Say to yourself when you are tempted to sin, "How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" Never do a wrong thing without thinking of the God who is at your side, and say to yourself, “What would my Father think of this?" CONVERSATIONS WITH PRINCE BISMARK. BY F. R. GRAHAME. THE indefatigable retailer of Prince Bismark's conversations, and the medium through which the German Chancellor makes his views known in the Berlin newspapers; Herr Moritz Busch; has lately published his master's opinions and customs to the world, in the "New Diary Leaves," issued from Leipsic. We understand that the MS. of both this book and the preceding "Recollections of Prince Bismark in the Franco-Prussian War" were first submitted to the Chancellor to make what corrections and additions he chose, and it does not say much for his refinement or good taste that several passages in the lastmentioned work were ever allowed to appear in print. The "New Diary Leaves "gives a very minute description of the Prince's life and residence at Varzin, where there is no church in the village, so his tenants, if they wish to attend public worship, have to go an hour's journey to Wussow, an expedition which we are told their master seldom undertakes himself. The long barrack-like town house in Berlin is also carefully depicted. "Had it not been for me," said Bismark to his Boswell-like biographer, "there would have been three great wars the less; the lives of 80,000 men would not have been sacrificed, and many parents, brothers, sisters, and widows would not now be mourners. This, however, I have settled with my Maker," a rather presumptuous remark it must be confessed. And yet as many more would probably have been sacrificed in two subsequent campaigns if more just and humane counsels than his own had not prevailed; so it appears that the responsibility for this heavy mortality sits lightly enough upon him Of the two works, the "Recollections" are certainly the most interesting, not being exclusively devoted to the affairs of Prince Bismark and Herr Busch. But it is very evident, from one or two anachronisms, that instead of the conversations being all taken down at the time of the Franco-German war, they have since been compiled from memory. For instance, when talking --- over the sovereigns of Europe who were favourable or otherwise to German aggression, he alludes to one who could be no other than King Leopold I., as "wishing anything but success to Germany;" as being "so made up that he had nothing real left about him;" and as being "too old or too frail to do them any harm." A reference to any penny almanack will show that though King Leopold was alive during the German and Austrian war, when he doubtless entertained those sentiments, he had died some years before the defeat at Sedan. A heartless observation of Prince Bismark is also recorded respecting the news of the death of a "Belgian or Dutch princess." His biographer probably mentions her purposely in this obscure fashion, but she was in reality the Princess Frederick of the Netherlands, the Emperor of Germany's sister, and whose death was a great blow to the old monarch in the midst of his triumph; in fact Bismark and his biographer do not set a very good example of respect for the reigning family. Another story told by Bismark of a sentinel set to guard a rose in a garden at St. Petersburg, and on which he remarked to the Emperor Alexander II., is to be found in several old books of travels in Russia, one of which was certainly written before either of them was born. He is therefore liable, like many other professed good story-tellers, to adopt adventures as his own, which he happens to have heard or read, as a way of making them more original. Throughout the "Recollections" there is a very bitter spirit shown towards England; and we believe that the Prussian Government-i.e., Bismark-has preserved a hostile feeling against the Liberals especially, who were then in power, because they did not join Germany against France. Yet all who remember that period in England must be aware that the popular feeling ran strongly in favour of our old allies; and the ministry received much blame from the Conservative opposition for not stepping forward to prevent the dismemberment of France. The Standard, the Morning Post, and other papers, which now support Lord Beaconsfield, were exceedingly warm partisans of the French. "Almost without intermission," said Bismark, speaking of the Standard, "that journal pours out upon the breakfast-tables of its readers the bitterest calumnies as to our conduct to the French population, and to the prisoners we have taken. It is always asserted that eyewitnesses or people otherwise well informed, drawing what they say from the best sources, furnish these falsehoods or these as perversions and exaggerations of the facts.' In this war, well as in every other, a great number of villages have been burned down, mostly by artillery fire, German as well as French. In those, women and children who have taken refuge in the cellars, not having had time to escape, have perished in the flames. This is true also of Bazeilles, which was taken by discharges of musketry, and retaken several times. The Duke of Fitz-James was an eye-witness merely of the ruins of the villages which he saw after the battle, as thousands of others have seen and deplored them. Everything else in his account is derived from the stories of unfortunate and embittered people. In a country where even the Government develops an unexampled systematic capacity for lying, it is scarcely to be expected that angry peasants, with the ruins of their burnt houses before their eyes, should have any great inclination to speak the truth about their enemies. Inhabitants of Bazeilles, not in uniform, but in blouses and shirt-sleeves, fired upon wounded and unwounded German troops in the streets, and whole rooms full of wounded men were murdered in the houses. In like manner it has been established by official inquiry that women armed with knives and guns committed the greatest cruelties against mortally wounded soldiers, and that other women took part in the battle along with the male inhabitants, loading their companions' guns, even themselves firing, and that while thus engaged they were wounded or killed like other combatants. The essential barbarism of the French nation overspread with a thin layer of culture, used to say "Grattez le Russe, et vous tramerez le Barbare." No one who is able to compare the conduct of the Russians to their enemies in the Crimean war with that of the French in the present will be in any doubt about the description recoiling on the French themselves." He also accused the French ministers of increasing their fortune by reports to raise stock. "France," said Bismark on another occasion, " is a nation of ciphers, a mere crowd; they have money and elegance, but no individual men, no feeling of individuality; they act only in the mass. They are 30,000,000 obedient Caffres, each without a native ring or a personal value. It would be easy to get sixty people together capable of holding down all the rest of these people, who are without character or personality so long as they are not united. How 1 He little foresaw that this Conservative (!) paper would become his warmest adherent amidst English journals. |