political boundaries, etc., was concerned; but they did not succeed in discrediting the principles. A great picture had been made in the minds of men, and the Commissioners could not wipe it out. As a result, three revolutions took place in 1820, 1830 and 1848, of which the second was more important than the first, and the third was more important than the second. Shortly after the fall of Napoleon, the Czar Alexander, with the emperor of Austria and the king of Prussia, invented the Holy Alliance. It was in pretense an alliance to advance the cause of religion, and to reduce to practice in political affairs the teachings of Christ; but it was in intention a league against the spread of the ideas embodied in the French Revolution. The League was not successful in the end, for the picture of liberty made in the minds of men was too brilliant and too deeply printed to be wiped out. One of the results of the Holy Alliance was the invention by the United States of the Monroe Doctrine which was made to prevent that intervention in affairs on the American continent which the proceedings of the Alliance foreshadowed. Italy was very harshly treated by the Congress of Vienna, two of her largest provinces in the north being given to Austria, who forthwith proceeded then to try to control the entire peninsula. In 1820, a revolution broke out in Italy, but it was soon suppressed. Another broke out in 1830, simultaneous with that in France; and this was also suppressed. The third, in 1848, met a similar fate. But the revolutions in France were successful; the one of 1848 resulting in the formation of a republic. At the same time, a sympathetic revolution in Germany was in a measure successful also. In Germany, the formation of the German Confederation in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna was the formation of a kind of political body that has never lasted long; for no political body has ever lasted long, except an actual and definite nation. The various components of the German Confederation were too loosely bound together. This invention, like others of mechanical machines, was not a practical invention because the machine invented was too easily thrown out of adjustment. The Customs Union was invented in 1828 to supply the necessary element of coherency. It was hardly adequate for its task, at the time; but it made the people think of national union; an idea that was finally developed in 1871. In Russia, considerable progress was made from 1800 to 1850, though not so much as in the countries farther west. An adequate reason would seem to be that there were too few minds, in proportion to the entire population, that were able to conceive and develop the ideas that are needed to make progress.