spondent narrated, not without sadness, how a whole "battalion" had disappeared when the fire of a mitrailleuse was turned upon it.

In fact, a company of the 40th Regiment, finding itself thus maltreated, did disappear beneath a bridge, but actively, not passively, and with a view X to cover.

CHAPTER IV.

ENTRY INTO THE INVADED COUNTRY.

HE passage of the frontier, between Saarbruck and Forbach, on the 8th of August,

was a noteworthy but by no means a noisy affair; indeed, apart from the call to arms, neither drum nor bugle, nor any sort of musical instrument, was heard, as hussars in light blue and red, dragoons of all colours, cuirassiers with steel glistening over tunics of white cloth, lancers with banners furled, in token, not of having struck, but of an intention to strike, cavalry of all kinds, passed from the main street up the streets at right angles to it, gained the heights on and before which the recent battles had been fought, and made for Forbach.

The infantry, marching strongly and steadily forward in long snake-like columns, looked far better than any one would have imagined who knew the

Prussian private from his deportment as an individual, and in time of peace alone. A Prussian soldier, walking with a perhaps military, but certainly stiff and awkward gait, covered with a helmet evidently not made to measure, looks something like a Roman in a burlesque. But see Prussian infantry moving in masses, or, better still, drawn up in order of battle, and there is nothing comic in their appearance, while there is, probably, much that is Roman.

When two modern nations engage in a great war, it is customary to compare them to two ancient nations in the same predicament. Napoleon I. likened France at war with England to Rome at war with Carthage. The Germans besieging Paris reminded Professor Mömmsen of the virtuous Goths besieging dissolute Rome. The Germans victorious over the French, are to Professor Curtius Greeks victorious over Persians. It would suit neither French nor Germans to compare France and Germany to Greece and Rome, for that would be to recognise military and methodical superiority on the one side, artistic superiority on the other, and each combatant considers itself the superior of the other in all respects. The French, however, have certainly some of the characteristic qualities and defects of the Greeks; and not only do the Prussians possess Roman virtues, but Prussia, from her

origin, has nourished Roman aspirations. When the Prussians reproach the French with their want of method, the French might reply to them that in their methodical training the Prussians resemble the youths of Rome, "learning by long calculations to subdivide an as into a hundred parts." But figures, on the other hand, according to a German saying, "govern the world ;" and to rule the nations is the goal of Prussian ambition, as proclaimed in the famous Virgilian lines, adopted as the motto of the Prussian State, and inscribed in letters of gold over the principal gate of the old capital, where I remember reading them nearly a dozen years ago, wondering at the time how a second-rate power could venture to entertain such ideas.

To return from Königsberg to Saarbrücken, and from 1862 to 1870, the Roman or Prussian infantry have gone on, and artillery ammunitionwaggons, provisions carried in carts, and live selftransporting provisions in the shape of oxen, are following. Then more troops; then, after the destructive columns, the sanitary columns, and, finally, what may be called the spiritual columns. Infantry to perforate the foe, artillery to smash him, cavalry to lacerate him, and at the same time, knights hospitallers, bearing the red-and-white cross of neutrality, to drag him from the field of

death; sisters of mercy to tend him, doctors to cure him, or, if it be too late for that, priests to save his soul.

The sanitary and spiritual columns gave almost a religious aspect to the warlike procession, which, as it moved away over the hills, looked here and there, when the red crosses of the sick-bearers, and the black-and-white dresses of the sisters of mercy, struck the eye, more like a procession of pilgrims approaching a holy shrine than of soldiers invading a hostile country.

Besides the sisters in black and white, there was a corps of sisters who wore dark, slate-coloured dresses and white hoods with butterfly wings, and, like the krankenträger, displayed round the left arm the red cross on a white ground. All the sisters marched on foot, each little company preceded by a priest or pastor. When the troops had fairly quitted the town and reached the hills outside, they were joined by other troops from neighbouring encampments, as, in an unbroken line, the main body made its way towards Forbach. Parties of cavalry kept the heights on the left, and patrolled the forests on the right; the krankenträger went across the hills, where numbers of the dead were still lying, and whence the last of the wounded had only that morning been removed.

The heights commanding the town, which the