Death was the great conqueror,--how, with help of modern art, war
showed itself to be murder by machinery,--how MacMahon, gathering
together his scattered men and strengthening them with reinforcements,
attempted to relieve Bazaine,--how at last, after long marches,
his large army found itself shut up at Sedan with a tempest
of fire beating upon its huddled ranks, so that its only
safety was capitulation,--how with the capitulation of the army
was the submission of the Emperor himself, who gave his sword to
the King of Prussia and became prisoner of war,--and how, on the
reception of this news at Paris, Louis Napoleon and his dynasty
were divested of their powers and the Empire was lost in the
Republic. These things you know. I need not dwell on them. Not to
battles and their fearful vicissitudes, where all is incarnadined
with blood, must we look, but to the ideas which prevail,--as for
the measure of time we look, not to the pendulum in its
oscillations, but to the clock in the tower, whose striking tells
the hours. A great hour for Humanity sounded when the Republic was
proclaimed. And this I say, even should it fail again; for every
attempt contributes to the final triumph.




A WAR OF SURPRISES.


The war, from the pretext at its beginning to the capitulation at
Sedan, has been a succession of surprises, where the author of the
pretext was a constant sufferer. Nor is this strange. Falstaff
says, with humorous point, "See now how wit may be made a Jack-a-