Exactly what it was Napoleon III. asked of Prussia we never have seen stated by any authority that we can quite trust. The London Times, which is likely to be well informed on the subject, assumes, in its issue of August 11th, that the Emperor asked of Prussia the restoration of the French frontier of 1814,—meaning the French frontier as it was fixed by the Treaty of Paris, on the 30th of May, immediately after the fall of Napoleon I. If this is the correct interpretation of Napoleon's demand, he asked for very little. The Treaty of Paris took from France nearly all the conquests made by the Republic and the Empire, leaving her only a few places on the side of Germany, a little territory near Geneva, portions of Savoy, and the Venaissin. After the second conquest of France, most of these remnants of her conquests were taken from her. Napoleon III. has regained what was then lost of Savoy, and he seems to have sought from Prussia the restoration of that which was lost on the side of Germany, most of which was given to Bavaria and Belgium, and the remainder to Prussia herself. What Prussia holds, he supposed she could cede to France; and as to Bavaria, he may have argued that Prussia was in such position with regard to that kingdom as to make her will law to its government. But how could she get possession of what Belgium holds? Since the failure of his attempt, the French Emperor has been at peculiar pains to assure the King of the Belgians that he has no designs on his territory; and therefore we must suppose he had none when he propounded his demand to Prussia. It may be added, that the cession of the Prussian portion of the spoil of 1815 had been a subject of speculation, and of something like negotiation, long before war between Prussia and Austria was supposed to be possible.

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There has been as much noise made over the needle-gun as by that famous and fascinating slaughter weapon; yet it is by no means an arm of tender years. It had been known thirty years when the recent war began, and it had been amply tested in action seventeen years before it was first directed against the Austrians, not to mention the free use that had been made of it in the Danish war. Much that has been said of its character and capabilities since last June was said in 1849, and can be found in publications of that year. The world had forgotten it, and also that Prussia could fight. Nicholas von Dreyse, inventor of the needle-gun, is now living, at the age of seventy-eight. The thought of the invention occurred to him the day after the battle of Jena, in 1806. Some six or seven years since, we read, in an English work, an elaborate argument to show that, in a great war, Prussia must be beaten, because she had no experienced commanders!—like Benedek and Clam-Gallas, for example.

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The entire force of the Allies at Leipzig is generally stated to have been 290,000 men; that of the French at 175,000,—making a total of 465,000, or about 45,000 more than were present at Sadowa. So the excess at Leipzig was not so very great. At Leipzig the Allies alone had more guns than both armies had at Sadowa,—but what were the cannon of those days compared to those of these times? The great force assembled in and around Leipzig was taken from almost all Europe, as there were Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Italians, Poles, Swedes, Dutchmen, and even Englishmen, present in the two armies; whereas at Sadowa the armies were drawn only from Austria, Prussia, and Saxony. The battle of Sadowa lasted only one day; that of Leipzig four days, a large part of the Allied armies taking part only in the fighting of the third and fourth days. The French lost 68,000 men at Leipzig, the Allies, 42,640,—total, 110,640. But 30,000 of the French were prisoners, reducing the number of killed and wounded to 80,640,—which was even a good four days' work. Probably a third of these were killed or mortally wounded, as artillery was freely used in the battle. War is a great manufacturer of pabulum Acheruntis,—grave-meat, that is to say.

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It is impossible to speak with precision of the number of the population of Prussia. The highest number mentioned by a respectable authority is 19,000,000; but that is given in "round numbers," and is not meant to be taken literally. But if it be 19,000,000, but little more than half as large as that of Austria as it was when the war began, not much above a fourth as large as that of Russia, many millions below that of the British Islands, a few million less than that of Italy as it stood before the cession of Venetia by Austria, and a few millions more than that of Spain. The populations of Prussia and Italy when the war began were a little above 40,000,000. The populations of Austria and the German states that sided with her may have been about 50,000,000; and Austria had as much assistance from her German allies as Prussia had from the Italians,—the Saxons helping her much, showing the highest military qualities in the brief but bloody war. Had all the lesser German states preserved a strict neutrality, so that the entire Prussian force could have been directed against Austria, the Prussians would have been before Vienna, and probably in that city, in ten days from the date of Sadowa. Prussia brought out 730,000 men, or about one twenty-sixth part of her entire population.

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Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, and History of Prussia during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Vol. I. pp. 91, 92.

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Stein was one of those eminent men who have acted as if they thought coarseness bordering upon brutality an evidence of independence of spirit and greatness of soul. He was uncivil to those beneath him, not civil to those above him, and insulting to his equals. He addressed the King of Prussia in language that no gentleman ever employs, and he berated his underlings in a style that even President Johnson might despair of equalling. He hated the Duke of Dalberg, on both public and private accounts; and when the Duke was one of the French Ambassadors at Vienna, in time of the Congress, he offered to call on the Baron. "Tell him," said Stein, "that, if he visits me as French Ambassador, he shall be well received; but if he comes as a private person, he shall be kicked down stairs." Niebuhr, the historian, once told him that he (Stein) hated a certain personage. "Hate him? No," said Stein; "but I would spit in his face were I to meet him on the street." This readiness to convert the human face into a spittoon shows that he was qualified to represent a Southern district in our Congress; for what Stein said he would do was done by Mr. Plummer of Mississippi, who spat in the face of Mr. Slade of Vermont,—the American democrat, who probably never had heard of his grandfather, getting a little beyond the German aristocrat, who could trace his ancestors back through six or seven centuries. Thus do extremes meet. In talents, in energy, in audacity, in arrogance, in firmness of will, and in unbending devotion to one great and leading purpose, Count von Bismark bears a strong resemblance to Baron von Stein, upon whom he seems to have modelled himself,—while Austrian ascendency in Germany was to him what French ascendency in that country was to his prototype, only not so productive of furious hatred, because the supremacy of Austria was offensive politically, and not personally annoying, like that of France; but Bismark, though sufficiently demonstrative in the expression of his sentiments, has never outraged propriety to the extent that it was outraged by Stein. Stein died in 1831, having lived long enough to see the in French Revolution of 1830 that a portion of his work had been done in vain. His Prussian work will endure forever, and be felt throughout the world.

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The Prussian loss in the battle of Waterloo was 6,998; the British loss, 6,935;—but this does not include the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians who fell on the field or were put down among the missing. Wellington's total loss was about 16,000. The number of Prussians present in the battle was much more than twice the number of Britons. The number of the latter was 23,991, with 78 guns; of the former, 51,944, with 104 guns. Almost 16,000 of the Prussians were engaged some hours before the event of the battle was decided; almost 30,000 two hours before that decision; and the remainder an hour before the Allied victory was secured. It shows how seriously the French were damaged by Prussian intervention, that Napoleon had to detach, from the army that he had intended to employ against Wellington only, 27 battalions of infantry (including 11 battalions of the Guard), 18 squadrons of cavalry, and 66 guns, making a total of about 18,000 men, or about a fourth part of his force and almost a third of his artillery. This subtraction from the army that ought to have been used in fighting Wellington would alone have suffered gravely to compromise the French; and it is well known that Napoleon felt the want of men to send against the English long before the conflict was over; and this want was the consequence of the pressure of the Prussians on his right flank, threatening to establish themselves in his rear. But this was not all the aid derived by Wellington from the Prussian advance. It was the arrival of a portion of Zieten's corps on the field of Waterloo that enabled the British commander to withdraw from his left the comparatively untouched cavalry brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur, and to station them in or near the centre of his line, where they were of the greatest use at the very "crisis" of the battle,—Vivian, in particular, doing as much as was done by any one of Wellington's officers to secure victory for his commander. The Prussians followed the flying French for hours, and had the satisfaction of giving the final blow to Napoleonism for that time. It has risen again.

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No one who is not familiar with the correspondence of the Allied commanders in 1815 can form an adequate idea of the ferocity which then characterized the Prussian officers. On the 27th of June General von Gneisenau, writing for Blücher, declared that Napoleon must be delivered over to the Prussians, "with a view to his execution." That, he argued, was what eternal justice demanded, and what the Declaration of March 13th decided,—alluding to the Declaration against Napoleon published by the Congress of Vienna, which, he said, and fairly enough too, put him under outlawry by the Allied powers. Doing the Duke of Wellington the justice to suppose he would be averse to hangman's work, Gneisenau, who stood next to Blücher in the Prussian service as well as in Prussian estimation, expressed his leader's readiness to free him from all responsibility in the matter by taking possession of Napoleon's person himself, and detailing the intended assassins from his own army. Wellington was astonished at such language from gentlemen, and so exerted himself that Blücher changed his mind; whereupon Gneisenau wrote that it had been Blücher's "intention to execute [murder?] Bonaparte on the spot where the Duc d'Enghien was shot; that out of deference, however, to the Duke's wishes, he will abstain from this measure; but that the Duke must take on himself the responsibility of its non-enforcement." In another letter he wrote: "When the Duke of Wellington declares himself against the execution of Bonaparte, he thinks and acts in the matter as a Briton. Great Britain is under weightier obligations to no mortal man than to this very villain; for, by the occurrences whereof he is the author, her greatness, prosperity, and wealth have attained their present elevation. The English are the masters of the seas, and have no longer to fear any rivalry, either in this dominion or the commerce of the world. It is quite otherwise with us Prussians. We have been impoverished by him. Our nobility will never be able to right itself again." There is much of the perfide Albion nonsense in this. In a letter which Gneisenau, in 1817, wrote to Sir Hudson Lowe, then Governor of St. Helena, he said: "Mille et mille fois j'ai porté mes souvenirs dans cette vaste solitude de l'océan, et sur ce rocher interessant sur lequel vous êtes le gardien du repos public de l'Europe. De votre vigilance et de votre force de caractère dépend notre salut; dès que vous vous relâchez de vos mesures de rigueur contre le plus rusé scélérat du monde, dès que vous permettriez à vos subalternes de lui accorder par une pitié mal entendue des faveurs, notre repos serait compromis, et les honnêtes gens en Europe s'abandonneraient à leurs anciennes inquiétudes." An amusing instance of his prejudice occurs in another part of the same letter, where he says: "Le fameux manuscrit de Ste. Hélène a fait une sensation scandaleuse et dangereuse en Europe, surtout en France, où, quóiqu'il ait été supprimé, il a été lu dans toutes les coteries de Paris, et où même les femmes, au lieu nuits à le copier." Gneisenau was in this country in his youth,—one of those Hessians who were bought by George III. to murder Americans who would not submit to his crazy tyranny. That was an excellent school in which to learn the creed of assassins; for there was not a Hessian in the British service who was not as much a bravo as any ruffian in Italy who ever sold his stiletto's service to some cowardly vengeance-seeker. It ought, in justice, to be added, that Sir Walter Scott states that in 1816 "there existed a considerable party in Britain who were of opinion that the British government would best have discharged their duty to France and Europe by delivering up Napoleon to Louis XVIII.'s government, to be treated as he himself had treated the Duc d'Enghien." So that the Continent did not monopolize the assassins of that time.

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RHODA

Uncle Bradburn took down a volume of the new Cyclopædia, and placed it on the stand beside him. He did not, however, open it immediately, but sat absorbed in thought. At length he spoke:—"Don't you think a young girl in the kitchen, to help Dorothy, would save a good many steps?"

"I don't know," replied Aunt Janet, slowly. "Dorothy has a great deal to do already. Hepsy is as good and considerate as possible, but Dorothy won't let her do anything hardly. Hepsy says herself that within doors she has only dusted furniture and mended stockings ever since she came."

"Can't you find sewing for Hepsy?"

"She ought not to do much of that, you know."

"Very true; but then this girl,—she will have to go to the poor-house if we don't take her. She has been living with Mrs. Kittredge at the Hollow; but Mrs. Kittredge has made up her mind not to keep her any longer. The fact is, nobody will keep her unless we do; and she is terribly set against going back to the poor-house."

"Who is she?" asked Aunt Janet, a little hurriedly. She guessed already.

"Her name is Rhoda Breck. You have heard of her."

"Heard of her! I should think so!"

"If I were you, Oliver," said grandmother, who sat in her rocking-chair knitting, "I would have two or three new rooms finished off over the wood-shed, and then you could accommodate a few more of that sort. Just like you!"

And she took a pinch of snuff from a little silver-lidded box made of a sea-shell. She took it precipitately,—a sign that she was slightly disturbed. This snuff-box, however, was a safety-valve.

Uncle Bradburn smiled quietly and made no reply.

"We will leave it to Dorothy," said Aunt Janet. "It is only fair, for she will have all the trouble."

Uncle Bradburn regarded the point as gained: he was sure of Dorothy. But he added by way of clincher, "Probably the girl never knew a month of kind treatment in her life, and one would like her to have a chance of seeing what it is. Just imagine a child of fifteen subjected to the veriest vixen in the country. There is some excuse for old Mrs. Kittredge, too, exasperated as she is by disease. No wonder if she is not very amiable; but that makes it none the less hard for the child."

So the upshot of the matter was, that Rhoda Breck was installed nominal aid to Dorothy.

Uncle brought her the next day in his sulky,—a slight little creature, with a bundle as large as herself.

Presently she appeared at the sitting-room door. She was scarcely taller than a well-grown ten-years child. She wore a dress of gay-hued print, a bright shawl whose fringe reached lower than the edge of her skirt, and on her head an old-world straw bonnet decorated with a mat of crushed artificial flowers, and a faded, crumpled green veil. The small head had a way of moving in quick little jerks, like a chicken's; and it was odd to see how the enormous bonnet moved and jerked in unison. The face and features were small, except the eyes, which were large and wide open, and blue as turquoise.

She took time to look well around the room before she spoke:—"Well, I'm come; I suppose you've been expecting of me. See here, be I going to sleep with that colored woman?"

It was not possible to know from her manner to whom the query was addressed; but Aunt Janet replied, "No, Rhoda, there is a room for you. We never ask Dorothy to share her room with any one." Then, turning to me, "Go and show Rhoda her room, my dear."

I rose to obey. Rhoda surveyed me, as if taking an inventory of the particulars which made up my exterior; and when I in turn felt my eyes attracted by her somewhat singular aspect, she remarked, in an indescribably authoritative tone, "Don't gawp! I hate to be gawped at."

"See what a pretty room Dorothy has got ready for you," said I,—"a chest of drawers in it, too; and there's a little closet. I am sure you will like your room."

"No, you ain't sure neither," she replied. "Nobody can't tell till they've tried. Likely yourn has got a carpet all over it. Hain't it, now?"

"It has a straw matting," I answered.

"And it's bigger'n this, I'll bet Ain't it, now?"

"It is larger; but Louise and I have it together," said I.

"Yes, I've heard tell about her," said Rhoda. "Well, you see you and her ain't town-poor. If you was town-poor you'd have to put up with everything,—little room, and straw bed, and old clothes, and everything. I expect I'll have to take your old gowns; hain't you got any? Say, now."

"Yes," I said, "but I wear them myself. Surely, that you have on is not old."

"Well, that's because I picked berries enough to buy it with. My bundle there's all old duds, though. It takes me half my time to patch 'em. You'd pitch 'em into the rag-bag. Wouldn't you, now?"

"I have not seen them, you know," I replied.

"More you hain't, nor you ain't agoing to. I hate folks peeking over my things."

"Well," said I, "you may be sure I shall never do it. I must go back to my work now."

"O, you feel above looking at town-poor's things, don't you? Wait till I've showed you my new apron. I didn't ride in it for fear I'd dust it. It's real gay, ain't it, now?"

"Yes," said I; "it looks like a piece of a tulip-bed. But I must really go. I hope you will like your room."

When I went back into the sitting-room, grandmother was wiping her eyes. She had been laughing till she cried at the new help Uncle Oliver had brought into the house.

"No matter, though," she was saying; "let him call them help if he likes. If Dorothy will put up with it, I am sure we ourselves may. He says Hepsy more than pays her way in eggs and chickens. Just as if he thought about the eggs and chickens! Of course, if persons are really in need, it always pays to help them; and I guess Oliver has about as much capital invested that way as any one I know of, and I'm glad of it. But it's his funny way of doing it; it's all help, you see." And she laughed again till the tears came.

In half an hour, during which time grandmother had a nap in her chair and Aunt Janet read, the little apparition stood in the doorway again. She had doffed the huge bonnet; and in her lint-white locks, drawn back from her forehead so straight and tight that it seemed as if that were what made her eyes open so round, she wore a tall horn comb. Around her neck, and standing well out, was a broad frill of the same material as her dress, highly suggestive of Queen Elizabeth.

"You hain't got any old things, coats and trousers and such, all worn out, have you? 'Cause if you have, I guess I'll begin a braided rug. When folks are poor, they've got to work, if they know what's good for 'em."

"They'd better work, if they know what's good for 'em, whether they're poor or not," said grandmother.

"There's a pedler going to bring me a diamond ring when I get a dollar to pay him for it."

This remark was elicited by a fiery spark on grandmother's finger.

"You had better save your money for something you need more," said grandmother.

"You didn't think so when you bought yourn, did you, now?" said Rhoda.

Meantime Aunt Janet had experienced a sense of relief at Rhoda's suggestion, by reason of finding herself really at a loss how to employ her. So they twain proceeded at once to the garret; whence they presently returned, Rhoda bearing her arms full of worn-out garments which had been accumulating in view of the possible beggar whose visits in that part of New England are inconveniently rare.

"Those braided rugs are very comfortable things under one's feet in winter," said grandmother. "They're homely as a stump fence, but that is no matter."

"I hardly knew what you would do with her while we were away," said Aunt Janet. "But it would kill the child to sit steadily at that. There's one thing, though,—strawberries will soon be ripe, and she can go and pick them. You may tell her, Kate, that I will pay her for them by the quart, just as any one else does. That will please and encourage her, I think."

I told her that evening.

"No, you don't," was her answer. "Nobody don't pay me twice over. I ain't an old skinflint, if I be town-poor. But I'll keep you in strawberries, though. Never you fear."

I quite liked that of her, and so did grandmother and Aunt Janet when I told them.

Uncle and Aunt Bradburn were going to make their yearly visit at Exeter, where uncle's relatives live. The very day of their departure brought a letter announcing a visit from one of Aunt Janet's cousins, a Miss Lucretia Stackpole. She was a lady who avowed herself fortunate in having escaped all those trammels which hinder people from following their own bent. One of her fancies was for a nomadic life; and in pursuance of this, she bestowed on Aunt Janet occasional visits, varying in duration from two or three days to as many weeks. The letter implied that she might arrive in the evening train, and we waited tea for her.

She did not disappoint us; and during the tea-drinking she gave us sketches, not only of all the little celebrities she had met at Saratoga, but of all the new fashions in dresses, bonnets, and jewelry, besides many of her own plans.

It was impossible for her to remain beyond the week, she said, because she had promised to meet her friends General and Mrs. Perkinpine in Burlington in time to accompany them to Montreal and Quebec, whence they must hurry back to Saratoga for a week, and go thence to Baltimore; then, after returning for a few days to New York, they were to go to Europe.

"But you don't mean to go with them to Europe, Lucretia?" said grandmother.