if in establishing equality of condition in the modern world, the Revolution, like the Roman Empire in former times, had not paved the way for a new form of despotism.

No publicist was more struck with this thought than the celebrated and penetrating Alexis de Tocqueville. First, in his very original book," On Democracy in America" he, in a time of peace, moderation and constitutionality, threatened modern nations "with the tyranny of the Cæsars," a strange prediction, which no circumstance, event or apparent symptom seemed to authorize. Later, justified in some measure by events, he again took up the thought and developed it with the rarest sagacity in his work on "L'ancien Regime et la Revolution." In it he refutes those who believed that the Revolution was essentially anarchical; undoubtedly the Revolution was destructive; since it was called upon to put an end to the feudal regime, it had to attack at once all the established powers, counteract all recognized influences, blot out tradition and "as it were to clear the human mind of all ideas on which, up to that time, respect and obedience had been founded." There was nothing left but debris; from the midst of these ruinous heaps arose an immense central power, absorbing and swallowing up in its oneness all the small divisions of authority and influence, heretofore dispersed among the secondary powers, and scattered here and there through the social body-a power, whose equal has never been seen since the fall of the Roman Empire. The governments founded by the Revolution are unstable no doubt; but unstable as they are, are a hundred times stronger than their predecessors, "unstable and powerful from the same causes." Following the example of the Revolution, the new princes in their turn destroyed everywhere the middle powers, to establish their own despotism; the Revolution which had been "their Scourge" became "their instructress."

But if the Revolution may serve as example to absolute monarchs, it must be remembered that it only followed the example given by previous absolute monarchies; so it is true, as De Tocqueville says, that it made less innovation than is generally believed. It astonished by its sudden and extraordinary explosion; but this explosion was only the result of a long process in which many former generations had labored together. When the Revolution began, it was taken for an accident; afterward, when it had continued

and horrified the world, it was called a prodigy, a monster, a "miracle," which is De Maistre's name for it. De Tocqueville established that it was neither an accident nor a miracle, but had had a previous existence during the ancien regime. Instead of showing it as destroying everything, as its adversaries alleged, or as reconstructing everything, as did its admirers, De Tocqueville showed its secret and deep connection with the ancien regime, and in this manner proves by a succession of investigations as new as they are ingenious, that administrative centralization was an institution of the ancien regime, and not a creation of the republic and the empire, as is ordinarily stated-that the administrative interference, the usurpation of judicial functions by the executive, la garantie des fonctionaires, were all of them institutions of the ancien regime—that, under the ancien regime, France was of all the countries of Europe the one in which the capital had the greatest preponderance over the provinces, and the one in which men became most like one another-that it was the ancien regime which completed the revolutionary education of the people that the requisitions, the forced sale of provisions and the "maximum tax," were all measures which, as well as arbitrary judicial processes, had precedents in the ancien regime. "The ancien regime furnished the Revolution with many of its forms, to which it added nothing but the atrocity of its nature." From these considerations it would seem to follow, that the Revolution brought nothing new with the world, but De Tocqueville does not go so far; he recognizes it as an "immense" revolution, and concedes its great originality; in that it was the first political revolution that had the characteristics of a religious one, cosmopolitanism and proselytism. "All civil and political revolutions have had a country; the French Revolution had no nationality, it brought together and separated men without regard to laws, traditions, character, language, making enemies of fellowcountrymen and brothers of strangers." Of cosmopolitanism was born proselytism. The Revolution penetrated everywhere like a religion, "par la predication et la propagande;" and the cause of this resemblance was that the Revolution, like religion, considered "men in general" not some particular man or some particular nationality. From this cause, the Revolution took the characteristics of a religion," a religion, without God, without worship

and without a future life, but which, nevertheless, like Islamism, has deluged the whole world with its soldiers and its apostles."

In this way De Tocqueville in one sense justifies the Revolution, and in another criticis:s it, but differently from the way in which either its friends or its enemies have. He justifies it in showing that it was not so much of an innovation and in consequence not so absurd, as the partisans of the past had said. It had endeavored to found a social order on pure reason, on the abstract idea of right and humanity; but even in that it had only realized what had been preparing before. It was then truly philosophical and truly historical. But on the other side De Tocqueville has awakened our anxiety as to one of the possible consequences of the Revolution, the establishment of a new abso. lutism, democratic or Cæsaric, utter disregard of the individual, indifference to rights, absorption of all local life by the center, and the consequent extinction of vitality in the parts; an evil whose extent De Tocqueville has perhaps exaggerated, but which, having its germ through all our history, has been propagated and aggravated without doubt to an extreme degree by the Revolution. Such is the moral suggested by M. De Tocqueville's book. His book is, however, that of a historian rather than of a moralist; he explains more than he judges. He is neither friend nor enemy, but simply a looker-on. The passion which animates him is felt at the bottom, and his impartiality is not that of indifference; he makes his heart keep silence and endeavors to communicate truths rather than precepts to us.

While France, examining into the causes of her failures, applies to the Revolution a sincere and independent criticism, Germany, on her side, proceeds with the same criticism with that cold and systematic hatred whose terrible effects we have more recently felt. Such is the character of Herr von Sybels' "History of the French Revolution," a work filled with new and curious documents, but in which cannot be found even the shadow of impartiality. He combats the French Revolution, both because it was a revolution and because it was French. He denies all its claims of good and acknowledges only its origination of evil. However, notwithstanding his attempts to blacken it, more than one. confession escapes him of the utility, the justice and the benefits of the Revolution he detests. Thus, to go immediately to the

material results, which are less contestable, because the imagination has nothing to do with them, he tells us that the France of the ancien regime was, according to the report of trades and professions, four times less rich, and according to the report of commerce and agriculture, three times less rich than at present. As to the inequality of taxes, he estimates that the privileged classes ought to have paid 35,000,000 francs more than they did; that the “frais de corbee," which weighed exclusively upon the common people, amounted to 20,000,000 francs, the militia tax to 6,000,000; that the duties levied directly upon the people by the proprietaries amounted to 40,000,000 francs, which, adding all these sums, gives a total of about 100,000,000 francs taken from the one to enrich the other. Added to which, according to Herr von Sybel, the budget of the ancien regime was larger than that of any of the governments which followed it, excepting the Committee of Public Safety, which he puts as equal to what would be to-day a budget of 24,800,000,000 francs. Add again the intolerable abuses of farming the revenue, and you can imagine what the poorer classes must have suffered from such a state of society. These facts suffice to prove how necessary a change had become. Notwithstanding his hostile disposition the author does not escape enthusiasm for those noble spirits on the celebrated night of the 4th of August. Even while repeating the mot of Mirabeau, who called it "an orgie," he says: "That assembly is often and wrongfully reproached with the ruin of a system impossible to sustain; on the night of the 4th of August it accomplished forever the liberty of labor, the equality of rights, the unity of the state."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

M

us.

THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN.*

OST readers of the most popular and best-known poem of all that Robert Browning has written, take the story of the Pied Piper to be a pure fiction of the author's own invention. Those who are learned in German mythology, however, know that our great master of the grotesque has only taken a story which exists in a great many forms in German literature, and filled up the spaces between the original lines from his vivid imagination. There is even a separate literature of this story, one piece of which a thin square Latin dissertation of four sheets-lies before Herr Nieremberger, it seems, was studying philosophy and theology at the very orthodox Lutheran University of Wittenberg in the latter part of the seventeenth century, when his attention was called to a disquisition on the subject published by one M. Schookius, at Gröningen in 1662.* This Schookius was undoubtedly a forerunner of that terrible and evil race, the German rationalists. He scouts the whole story as a pure fiction. Herr Nieremberger, like a true orthodox German, thinks there is another side to the question, and replies much more briefly in his dissertation, quoting the authorities for the story, and giving his reasons for thinking it no fiction.

Nieremberger (like Schookius) opens his dissertation with a preface on historical truth; no unanglicized German was ever satisfied to begin anywhere except at the beginning. He then describes Hamelin and its history; traces the etymology of the name, and proceeds to quote the authorities for the story (1) those writers that give it in full detail; (2) the oldest writers that record it, and (3) the local monuments that attest its truth. Taking them in the reverse order we notice that a window in the city church contains an inscription partly effaced, but evidently re

*Historia Hamenlesis; sive Dissertatio de Inauspicato Liberorum Hamelensium Egressu . . . . . ab Nicolao Nieremberger, Wittenbergae, Anno MDCLXXVII. [The Hamelin History, or a Dissertation or the Lamentable Departure of the children of that city. . . . by Nicholas Nieremberger. Pub. at Wittenberg, 1677.]

Fabula Hamelensis; sive Disquisitio Historica qua premissa generali dissertatione de historiae veritate, ostenditur, commente rationem habere, quæ vulgo circumferatur de infausto exitu puerorum Hamelensium, etc. Ed. II. 12 mɔ.