From this single grand outline, all the minor lines either start, or towards it tend, indirectly, in convergent curves. From the vast system formed by the monster-questions--United Germany, the Latin races, the East, the future of catholicism and the papacy, the strife of liberty against despotism--from all these parent problems you can detach none of the smaller incidents of the age; you are obliged to take count of the little Danish Campaign, which taught Prussia those deficiencies, impelling her directly to the attainment of her future military omnipotence, and which, under the abortive attempts of the Saxon minister, M. de Beust,* gave a timid reminder to Germany of what her unity had been and might once again be. Each incident, however local or however remote, formed a feature of the whole; between 1854 and 1870, you cannot ignore the would-be secession of the Southern Confederates, which ended in making "all America" the counterpoise to our older world--neither dare you neglect the Indian meeting whence England issued, clad in moral as in political glory, and gave the noblest sign of the Christian significancy of the Victorian Era; all holds together, men and facts succeed each other in quick alternation; the light that fades on one hand shines with dazzling glare on the other. Cavour dies. Greatest of all, and genuine creator, with his disappearance the equilibrium is endangered. Right ceases to reign, force asserts itself, and Bismarck, ironhanded, invincible, holds sway over a scared, unresisting, one may say a _soulless_ world. This is the turning-point. The one man theory apparently endures; but physically and morally, the vision of disintegration rises, threatening all; and whence the "New Order" is to come, above all morally, none divine. We reach here the close of the preliminary period. Up to the 4th of September, 1870, and for a few years beyond, State policy is the proper name for whatever occurs; we deal to a large extent with mathematical quantities, with impersonal obstructions. Statesmen and statecraft are in their place, and fill it; individuals, however distinguished, are, as it were, sheathed in collective symbols and represented by principles. Documentary evidence suffices now! Treaties, minutes, diplomatic reports, instruments of all descriptions, are really the requisite agents of this inanimate diplomatic narration. State papers are the adequate expression, the exclusive speech of mere states, and of this speech Heinrich v. Sybel is one of the foremost living masters.