LOOKING at the career of this

great strategist through all its grim lessons of war, we may discern many elements of human interest, many facts of an instructive and elevating character. We see that the guiding principles of that career have been no love of popularity, or even high-toned ambition, but honour, self-denial, and patriotism. We will first give briefly the leading facts of this career. Von Moltke was a poor man, and the son of a poor man. It is a mistake to suppose, as has been sometimes stated, that he was a native of Holstein. The estate of Samrow, near Pilnitz, belonged to his family for centuries. His father had served in the Möllendorf regiment, and was resolved on giving a thorough soldierly education to his children. The bias which he received from his father, Von Moltke has transmitted to his children. He has two sons serving with the army: Count Bismarck has also two, of whom one has been dangerously wounded, and General Von Roon has four.

Von Moltke was born the 26th of October, 1800; the years of his age are always the years of the century. Soon after his birth his father bought land in Holstein, and there he passed his childhood and youth, acquiring among Danes those military tastes which he turned against them in the passage of the Alsen, and the investment of Düppel. When he was only twelve years old he was sent with an elder brother to the Land Cadet Academy at Copenhagen. When he was twenty-two he entered the Prussian military service, after a severe examination. He was the youngest second-lieutenant in the eighth regiment of footguards, then stationed at Frankfort-on-the-Oder. The corps was commanded at the time by General Von Marwick, whose wife was by birth a Countess Von Moltke. This circumstance VOL. XVIII.-NO. CVI.

would be a fortunate event for the young second-lieutenant. And, indeed, he needed any adventitious help which he could obtain; for his worldly prospects, beyond his profession, were at the very lowest ebb. His parents' property was nearly all lost through the war, and a long series of misfortunes. They were not able to allow him the slightest addition to his pay. Yet he was most anxious to learn modern languages, and to do this he had to save out of his scanty pay. Truly poverty is a hard mistress, but the lessons which she teaches are invaluable. He saved enough to enable him to learn modern languages, and has made himself a very remarkable linguist. He is a man of great taciturnity, and it has been humorously said of him that he knows how to hold his tongue in eight languages. From the military school at Berlin he passed to the direction of the somewhat insubordinate School of Division. He discharged his duty so well that he was attached to a commission for topographical surveys in Silesia and the Grand Duchy of Posen, under General Von Müffling. Every one loved and respected Von Müffling. Even in his admonitions there was a vein of kind pleasant humour. One of Von Moltke's companions introduced into his plan an impossible mountain, and would not acknowledge his error, even when the General pointed it out. The General only observed, with a quiet smile, 'Well, then, I congratulate you on having enriched science, and provided the province with a new mountain.' Soon after this he was promoted to the rank of captain, and ordered to serve on the staff, on which, through the influence of General Von Kranseneck, he received an appointment two years afterwards.

It has been asserted on high authority that Moltke has spent his

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