At last, nothing being left for the armies to devour, the masters of the armies began to think of peace. The diplomatists went to work, and in true diplomatic fashion. Two years they spent in formalities and haggling, while Germany was swarming with disbanded lansquenets. It was then that old Oxenstierna said to his son, who had modestly declined an ambassadorship on the ground of inexperience, "Thou knowest not, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed." The object of all the parties to the negotiations was acquisition of territory at the expense of their neighbours, and the treaty of Westphalia, though, as we have said, it was long the Public Law of Europe, was an embodiment, not of principles of justice or of the rights of nations, but of the relative force and cunning of what are happily called the powers. France obtained, as the fruit of the diplomatic skill with which she had prolonged the agony of Germany, a portion of the territory which she has recently disgorged. The independence of Germany was saved; and though it was not a national independence, but an independence of petty despotisms, it was redemption from Austrian and Jesuit bondage for the present, with the hope of national independence in the future. When Gustavus broke the Imperial line at Lutzen, Luther and Loyola might have turned in their graves. Luther had still two centuries and a half to wait, so much difference in the course of history, in spite of all our philosophies and our general laws, may be made by an arrow shot at a venture, a wandering breath of pestilence, a random bullet, a wreath of mist lingering on one of the world's battlefields. But Luther has conquered at last. Would that he had conquered by other means than war-- war with all its sufferings, with all its passions, with the hatred, the revenge, the evil pride which it leaves behind it. But he has conquered, and his victory opens a new and, so far as we can see, a happier era for Europe. THE LAMPS OF FICTION _Spoken on the Centenary of the Birth of Sir Walter Scott_