preserved many noble minds from the contagion of cold and heartless theories, and contained within itself the fruitful elements of a still more fortunate period. The great political events which marked the close of the century gave a new impulse to the mind of Germany. The principles and opinions which then manifested themselves with tremendous consistency in France had exerted a more or less noxious and disturbing force in the former country, but the violent crisis to which they led was there at least in the highest degree beneficial. It did not operate, as in some other countries, merely as a lesson of political experience, to regulate the external conduct of those who were interested in the maintenance of established institutions without altering their principles, and thus to produce a show of union and stability while the discordant elements continued to ferment in secret. In Germany the principles and doctrines which had become triumphant in France were subjected to the most free and vigorous discussion. The German spirit of philosophical speculation had never sunk into the dogmatical materialism of the French school. The monstrous caricatures exhibited by the understanding, when relying on its unassisted powers it undertook to build the future on the destruction of the past, drew the attention of the deepest thinkers to the fundamental errours of the moral and political theory then for the first time brought into action. To avert its immediate practical consequences was left to the vigilance of the great and the steady attachments of the people. The more important intellectual struggle against the theory itself was carried on, in every direction and with every species of literary armour, by the most powerful minds which at this critical epoch were rising to maturity.