which it was constituted are the same-the preservation of the territory of each of its members from foreign attack, and its defence, if assailed, by the common forces of the Confederation. So far it is merely a defensive alliance, a mutual guarantee, such as might exist between any two or more perfectly foreign states. The members of the Confederation are further prohibited from declaring war upon each other, and required to submit their disputes to the arbitration of the Diet. This, again, scarcely constitutes a confederation, any more than the establishment of a European court of arbitration (for which Mr. Cobden used, some years ago, to argue) would do so. But the Diet went beyond this, and assumed the right of interference with the internal affairs of the several states. By articles published on the 28th of June 1832: (1) "the German Princes are not only authorised, but even obliged, to reject all propositions of the states which are contrary to the fundamental principle that all sovereign power emanates from the prince." (2) "The stoppage of supplies by the states, in order to obtain the adoption of their propositions, is to be considered as sedition, against which the Confederation may act." In 1833 the Diet forbade all political associations, and use of party colours and badges, and passed, at various times, measures against the freedom of the press in the several German states. In 1834, on the motion of Austria, a tribunal of arbitration was established by the Federative Diet, "in order to decide any differences which might break out," not between the several states of the Confederation, but "in any state of the Confederation, between the Government and the Chambers, respecting the interpretation of the constitution, or the encroachments on the rights of the prince by the Chambers, or the refusal of subsidies." The Diet thus became a Holy Alliance of sovereigns, a conspiracy of kings, a propaganda and mutual insurance of despotism, a solidarité of autocracy. In asserting the rights of sovereigns, however, it certainly invades them by assuming an authority over them which is inconsistent with internal sovereignty.

The Federative Diet is representative simply of the rulers of the several German states. It consists of two bodies: a General Assembly called the Plenum, in which organic changes are decided; and a Federative Assembly, or minor council, where alone discussion takes place, which transacts the current business of the Federation, and carries into effect the resolutions of the Plenum, which votes without discussion. The Federative Assembly is further divided into eight commissions for political, military, financial, commercial, and other purposes. The presidency of the Confederation is with Austria, whose representative has the casting vote both in the Plenum and in the minor

council. In the former Assembly, the Austrian empire, and the five kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and Würtemberg, have four votes each; five other states, three votes each; three others, two votes; the remaining twenty-one states, only one vote each. In the minor council, the eleven principal states have one vote each; the rest, six joint votes. Of the thirty-four states which make up the Confederation, thirty possess no territory out of the Confederation: four have also nonGermanic territory, namely, Austria, Prussia, Denmark (whose king is a member of the Diet in virtue of Holstein and Lauenburg), and Holland, whose king is Duke of the German duchies of Luxemburg and Limburg.

The complicated nature of this organisation will strike every one. All the other states of Europe have a foreign and a domestic policy-duties, claims, and interests, affecting them in their relations to other states, and again in relation to their own subjects. With the various German states things are by no means so simple. Into the dealings of Austria and Prussia, for example, with their own people, and with each of the several nations of Europe, their relations to the Germanic Confederatian enter as a disturbing element. Over and above the duties of Prussia, for example, to the Prussians, and her duties, as a great power, to Europe at large, she has an intermediate set of duties, which cannot be brought under the head either of her internal or of her external relations; her relations, namely, to Germany. The perplexities of the subject are increased by the fact that each of the two great German powers is only German in part. A considerable proportion of the territories and population of both lies beyond the limits and is without the jurisdiction of the Confederation, and exempt from obligations to it. The conflict of tendencies, of motives, and duties, thus becomes still more embarrassing. The interests and obligations of Prussia, considered simply in and for themselves, may lie in one direction; those which devolve upon her as a member of the German Confederation in another; her duties as a great European power in a third; while her German and Sclavonic provinces may have each incompatible rights and interests. To determine the mutual action of three bodies gravitating to each other is a task which lies beyond the resources of physical science; the mutual action of these diverse political bodies is not less difficult of determination. Political confederations, even in their simplest form, seem sources of endless and perpetual embarrassments. The relative rights of the central and local governments give constant occasion to controversies difficult of adjustment. When, however, a sovereign confederation consists of sovereign states, over whose internal affairs it claims to exercise authority, while

they are not excluded from external relations of their own, and where part of their territory is subject to federal rule, and part removed from it, the tangle becomes inextricable.

The history of the last half-century has practically provedwhat ought to have been foreseen-the utter unmanageableness and the manifold inconveniences of this scheme. The dissolution of the Federal Union, or the establishment of relations much closer and more intimate than at present subsist between the several states, is inevitable. In the former case, Germany will become what Italy has been called, a mere geographical expression, and Austria, and Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria, Hanover and Würtemberg, will cease to hold to each other any other relation than that which they sustain to France, or Greece, or Russia. Under these circumstances, the third-rate German states, and probably some of the second-rate states, would soon disappear from the map of Europe. The arrangement which the Emperor of the French has made concerning Monaco would find many imitations. Germany, as at the date of the Confederation of the Rhine, would swarm with mediatised princes. The disruption, however, of the Federal Union is by no means a probable event. The desire of unity, the sense of a common nationality, among the German people is strong enough to prevent it. A closer organic connection is the result to which alike their interests and their desires point. This object may be effected in either of two ways. Germany might, as an abstract possibility, be "unified" (to use the fashionable phrase), as Italy has been, by the expulsion of every other sovereign, and the annexation of her territory to that of Prussia. A summary measure of this kind is not desirable, if it were practicable. What is wanted at present is a federal union which shall not be confined to the sovereigns, but which shall embrace the populations also. A German parliament, containing members elected by each of the different German states, according to some fair scheme of representation, would not, indeed, of itself be a solution of the difficulties of the German question; but if it were established, and came fairly into operation, a solution would in time present itself. An organ of expression would be given for the common wishes and aspirations of the German mind. The different parts of the nation would be brought together, and would learn to know each other. The nation which from extent of territory, from population, and from superiority in intelligence and culture, acquired the greatest weight in the federal parliament, would of necessity become the leading German power. The initiative would unconsciously be ceded to it. But even this intimate federal union could scarcely be more than transitional. The disadvantages which attach to all confederations—

of which we have before spoken-would still be felt as an inconvenience in matters of internal government, and as a possible source of danger in relations with foreign states. As the German people, through their representatives, became accustomed to deliberate and legislate on their common interests, they would feel themselves becoming politically, as well as in sentiment, onemembers of one and the same nation, and not merely of one and the same race. The gradual substitution of a national for a federal union-the establishment of a single German kingdom or empire for a federation of kingdoms-would follow.

Of course, such a result as this will be very much deprecated by the sovereigns, great and small, whom, or whose successors, it will discrown. They will not be much consoled by the assurance that the accomplishment of it will be gradual. So far as it can be resisted, it will be resisted. The tendency of events, however, sets irresistibly in this direction. The German people know themselves to be one people, and are determined to be a free people; and insist on an organisation which shall at once assert and protect their unity and freedom. They will find that the Federal Parliament, necessary as the first step to this end, does not sufficiently accomplish it; that it leaves many diversities of interests and occasions of misunderstanding in matters of internal politics, and does not sufficiently consolidate the forces of the nation for the resistance of external dangers.

It will have been her own fault if, when the time comes for the consolidation of Germany into a united monarchy, Prussia does not profit by it. She is the most powerful of the German states, her German territories and population exceed those of Austria, her people are the freest and most intelligent of the German race. Her plain interest is to encourage the feeling of nationality, and of union; to put herself at the head of it; to moderate, if need be, its excesses; and to give it wise guidInstead of doing this, her rulers seem to aim at diverting it from its proper field by encouraging a wild and unjust crusade against Denmark in Schleswig, with the German population settled in which province the Federal Diet has no more legitimate concern than she has with the descendants of German settlers in America, or than France has with the French Canadians.

A resettlement of Europe on the basis of nationality seems one at least of the possibilities of a not distant future. The principle is triumphant in Italy. It is militant, and may triumph, in Hungary. Even Poland is not without stirrings of life and hope. With simultaneous discontent in the Duchy of Warsaw, in Posen, and in Gallicia, a common action is not impossible in

these three fragments of the dismembered kingdom. It is quite possible that the two great German powers may find it necessary to surrender their non-German dominions. If this should happen, it will be the fault of Prussia herself should she not find more than compensation in the leadership, and perhaps ultimately in the sovereignty, of a free and united Germany.

ART. VIII.-PORT ROYAL.

Port Royal: a Contribution to the History of Religion and Literature in France. By Charles Beard, B.A. 2 vols. Longman and Co.

1861.

IN a retired valley, eighteen miles from Paris, was situated the monastery of Port Royal, which has written its name in indelible characters on the history of the seventeenth century, and the religious and literary annals of Europe. From the commencement to the close of its eventful existence, its destiny seemed to lie at the mercy of external circumstances, of which, by its very constitution, and its solitary position, it might have been expected to be especially independent. For a century the fate of a little community of nuns, whose time was passed in a perpetual round of religious observances, conventual austerities, and unpretending charities-and of a still smaller group of recluses who had abandoned the highest honours of their professions, personal wealth, and court-favour, for the meanest manual labour and the most absorbing studies-agitated the mind of the French nation and of educated Europe, and divided the attention of successive kings and ministers of state with the fortunes of the great French monarchy. The name of "Port Royal," by what we might be excused for calling a specially providential relation of events, spread from the narrow confines of conventual asceticism into the wider circles of a great religious controversy, and a much greater intellectual epoch. The true founder of the monastery sought to bury it in the deepest obscurity of complete isolation from the world, and the humblest poverty; yet, almost from the day of its new birth under her auspices, down to that of its destruction by the orders of an absolute king, its name was seldom long absent from the lips of influential Frenchmen, and its fortunes were anxiously canvassed in the councils of each successive Roman Pontiff. The history of such a community is necessarily difficult of narration, for it touches on the most opposite phases of humanity