many reflections. We have seen that they resemble each other in
origin, rate of growth and actual size. In their composition, however,
they differ widely. The population of Berlin is homogeneous, devotedly
attached to the Hohenzollern dynasty, enterprising in trade and
manufactures, thrifty and economical. It spends far less than it
earns. For upward of half a century it has been subjected to the most
careful military and scientific training. Moreover, Berlin is the
geographical and political centre of a thoroughly homogeneous realm.
We cannot afford to encourage any delusions on this point. It has
become of late the fashion among certain French writers and their
imitators to sneer at the Prussians as semi-Slaves, to call them
Borussians, and contrast them with the so-called Germans proper of
Bavaria, Swabia and the Rhine; whereas the fact of ethnography is that
the Prussians are an amalgamation of the best--that is, the hardiest
and most enterprising--elements of all the German districts. The
purest blood and the most active brains of the old empire left their
homes on the Main and the Weser to colonize and conquer under the
leadership of the Teutonic order. The few drops of Slavic blood are
nothing in comparison. Slavic names of towns and villages do not prove
Slavic descent; else, by like reasoning, we should have to pronounce
"France" and "French" words implying German blood, and "Normandy" an
expression for Norse lineage. So far from being composite, Berlin is
ultra German. It is more national, in this sense, than Dresden, where
the Saxon court was for generations Polish in tastes and sympathies,
and where English and American residents constitute at this day
a perceptible element; more so than Bremen and Hamburg, which are
entrepôts for foreign commerce; more so than Frankfort, with its
French affiliations. The few Polish noblemen and workmen from Posen
only serve to relieve the otherwise monotonous German type of the
city. The French culture assumed by Frederick the Great and his