be paid, how were the means of life to be obtained in these weeks in which the usual chance profit was lost? This did not go on for one week, but for a whole year. Truly the spirit of sacrifice which showed itself in gifts, and in the offer of their own lives, was among the highest and noblest things of this great time; but not less honourable was the self-sacrificing, unpretending, and unobserved fulfilment of duty of many thousands of the lower classes, who, each in his sphere in the city or in the village, worked for the same idea of his State to the uttermost of his own powers. The question is still unsolved of the military importance, in a civilised country, of a _levee en masse_. The law for the establishment of this popular force was carried to the very last possibility of demand. In the first edict, the 21st of April, there was an almost fanatical strictness, which, in the subsequent laws of the 24th of July, was much mitigated. The edict exercised a great moral effect; it was a sharp admonition to the dilatory, that it was a question for all, of life or death. It had an imposing effect even upon the enemy by its Draconic paragraphs. But it was, immediately after its appearance, severely blamed by impartial judges, because it demanded what was impossible, and it had no great practical effect. The Prussians had always been a warlike people, but in 1813 they had not the military capacity which they have now. Besides the standing army, there were, before the introduction of the universal obligation of service, only the peaceful citizens without any practice in arms or movement of masses, or at the utmost, the old shooting guilds which handled the ancient shooting weapons. But now the nation had sent into the field all who were capable of fighting; the strength of the country was strained to the uttermost; every family had given up what they possessed of military spirit. The older men, who remained behind, who were also indispensable for the daily work of the field and workshop, were not especially capacitated to do valiant service in arms. Thus it was no wonder that this fearful law brought to light the ludicrous side of the picture; endless goodwill together with boorishness and narrowmindedness. It was read with great edification, that the whole people were to take up arms to withstand the invading enemy; that the women and children also were to be employed in certain occupations, was quite to the reader's mind, especially those who were not grown up; but doubts were excited by the sentence in which it was stated, that cowardice was to be punished by the loss of weapons, the doubling of taxes, and corporeal chastisement, as he who showed the feeling of a slave was to be treated as a slave. Then the poor little artisan, who could scarcely keep his children from hunger, had never touched a weapon, and had all his life anxiously avoided every kind of fighting, was placed in the position to put the difficult question wistfully to