point of becoming a second Spain. Teutonism was all but enslaved to the Croat. The double star of the House of Austria seemed with baleful aspect to dominate in the sky, and to threaten with extinction European liberty and progress. One bright spot alone remained amidst the gloom. By the side of the brave burghers who beat back the Prince of Parma from the cities of Holland, a place must be made in history for the brave burghers who beat back Wallenstein from Stralsund, after he had sworn, in his grand, impious way, that he would take it though it were bound by a chain to Heaven. The eyes of all Protestants were turned, says Richelieu, like those of sailors, towards the North. And from the North a deliverer came. On Midsummer day, 1630, a bright day in the annals of Protestantism, of Germany, and, as Protestants and Germans must believe, of human liberty and progress, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, landed at Penemunde, on the Pomeranian coast, and knelt down on the shore to give thanks to God for his safe passage; then showed at once his knowledge of the art of war and of the soldier's heart, by himself taking spade in hand, and commencing the entrenchment of his camp. Gustavus was the grandson of that Gustavus Vasa who had broken at once the bonds of Denmark and of Rome, and had made Sweden independent and Lutheran. He was the son of that Charles Vasa who had defeated the counter-reformation. Devoted from his childhood to the Protestant cause, hardily trained in a country where even the palace was the abode of thrift and self-denial, his mind enlarged by a liberal education, in regard for which, amidst her poverty, as in general character and habits of her people, his Sweden greatly resembled Scotland; his imagination stimulated by the wild scenery, the dark forests, the starry nights of Scandinavia; gifted by nature both in mind and body; the young king had already shown himself a hero. He had waged grim war with the powers of the icy north; he bore several scars, proofs of a valour only too great for the vast interests which depended on his life; he had been a successful innovator in tactics, or rather a successful restorer of the military science of the Romans. But the best of his military innovations were discipline and religion. His discipline redeemed the war from savagery, and made it again, so far as war, and war in that iron age could be, a school of humanity and self-control. In religion he was himself not an ascetic saint, there is one light passage at least in his early life: and at Augsburg they show a ruff plucked from his neck by a fair Augsburger at the crisis of a very brisk flirtation. But he was devout, and he inspired his army with his devotion. The traveller is still struck with the prayer and hymn which open and close the march of the soldiers of Gustavus. Schools for the soldiers' children were held in his camp. It is true that the besetting sin of the Swedes, and of all