inventions for which we must look to the future. It is something,
meanwhile, that, with the extinction of feudalism and the concretion
of the detached provinces with which it had macadamized Christendom,
the ceaseless fusillade of little wars, which played like a lambent
flame of mephitic gas over the surface of each country, has come to an
end. The petty sovereignties which made up Germany, France and Italy
have been within a few generations absorbed into three masses--so many
police districts which have proved tolerably effective in keeping
the peace within the large territories they cover. The nations, thus
massing themselves for exterior defence, and maintaining a healthy
system of graduated and distributed powers, original or conferred,
for the support of domestic order and activity, have cultivated
successfully the field of home politics.

In that the change for the better is certainly vast. It is difficult
for Americans, whose acquaintance with European history is usually
derived from compends, to realize what an incubus of complicated
and conflicting privileges, restrictions and forms has, within the
century, been lifted from the energies of the Old World. The sweeping
reforms in French law are but a small part of what has been done. All
the neighbors of France, from Derry to the Dardanelles, have shared
in the blessing. We may be assisted to an idea of it by turning to the
experience of our own country, whose condition in this regard was
so exceptionally good at the beginning of the period in point. The
constitutions of our States have been repeatedly altered, and they are
now very different in their details from the old colonial charters,
liberal and elastic as these for the most part were. Yet American
innovations are but child's play to those of Europe, which has not
reached the position we held at the beginning, and has a great
deal still to do. In France the people are not trained to local