bloody work of three campaigns, and the habits of soldierly obedience had not diminished his vigour, but the genial warmth, which enables youth to look victoriously upon life, had passed away. He began now a struggle for a respectable home, probably with patience and devotion to duty, but in the narrow sphere into which he now entered, he could not but look back to the mighty past which he had gone through. Thus had the manly energy of the generation been spent. The youths also that grew up in their families had no longer the advantage of being influenced by great impressions, enthusiasm, and devotion. These misfortunes fell heaviest on the old provinces. The new acquisition demanded for many years great official power and much government care before it could be moulded into the Prussian commonwealth. It is manifest that a free press and a constitution were the best means of healing these weaknesses more rapidly, and of bringing a feeling of convalescence and coherence among the people; for warmth and enthusiasm are as necessary to the life of a nation as the light of heaven is to plants and dew to the clouds. The further its development advances, the greater becomes its need of exalted ideas, and of having intellectual interests in common. When the Reformation first roused the people to an intellectual struggle, it was as if a miracle had been worked upon them; their character became stronger, their morality purer, all the processes of the mind, all human energy had become stronger; and when the awakened need of a common aim was not satisfied in the State life of the German Empire, the people became inert and worse. Again, after a long and sorrowful time, a great Prince had given to at least a part of the Germans new enthusiasm and an ideal aim. The warm interest in the fate of their State, which ennobled Frederic's time, and the liberation of the mind from the tutelage of the State and the Church, had been a second great progress; and again had this progress required an answering extension of general interests and a strengthening of political action. But in the spiritless and powerless rule of the next generation the popular energies again decayed. The fall of Prussia was the consequence. Now, for the third time, a great portion of the Germans had made a new progress, the nation had given its property and its blood for its State, and it had become a passionate necessity to care for the Fatherland, and to take a share in its fate; and as this longing again met with no satisfaction, the people sank back for a time into weakness. The distractions of the year 1848 were the result. In almost every domain of ideal life the malady became apparent, even in philosophy.