spirit of war and domination, of national selfishness and revolutionary violence. The game of kings has become the impact of armed peoples. The Congress of Vienna settled the affairs of Europe upon a basis which endured with but few changes for almost fifty years; the great treaty of Berlin of 1878, in form an act of restitution as well as of peace, has become as dead a letter as the treaty of Paris of 1856. Principles of older date and less questionable validity than treaties patched up with premature jubilation obtain; and the solemn irony of Prince Talleyrand, that “non-intervention is a diplomatic term, which signifies much the same as intervention,” has become axiomatic. It is no exaggeration to speak of Europe as an armed camp, with the dogs of war pulling heavily on their chains. Armies of men stand scowling into one another’s eyes across a fanciful frontier, marked by a few parti-colored posts. In spite of all European assurances of “cloudless political horizons” and “luxuriant international olive-branches,” the perfection of armaments and the augmentation of already enormous armies go faithfully on. Every one who visits Europe must be amazed at the military influence that everywhere dominates, especially on the continent. “Above the roar of the city street sounds the sharp drum-beat of the passing regiment; in the sweet rural districts the village church-bell cannot drown the bugle peal from the fortress on the hill. France sinks millions in frontier strongholds, Russia masses troops in Poland and on the Pruth, Austria strengthens her fortresses in Galicia, and Germany builds railways to the Rhine and bridges to span its yellow flood.” There is no European peace, except that peace described by Hosea Biglow, which was “druv in with bag’nets.” Montesquieu, the upright magistrate, who, living under despotic rule, nevertheless insisted that by the Constitution of France its king was not absolute, sought in the records of history to discern the tendency of each great form of government, and has left his testimony that “_L’esprit de la monarchie est la guerre et l’agrandissement; l’esprit de la république est la paix et la modération_” (“the spirit of monarchy is war and aggrandizement; the spirit of a republic is peace and moderation”).