lent, when't is upon ill employment!"[Footnote: Merry Wives of
Windsor, Act V. Sc. 5.]--and another character, in a play of
Beaumont and Fletcher, reveals the same evil destiny in stronger
terms, when he says,--

"Hell gives us art to reach the depth of sin, But leaves us
wretched fools, when we are in." [Footnote: Queen of Corinth, Act
IV. Sc. 3.]

And this was precisely the condition of the French Empire. Germany
perhaps had one surprise, at the sudden adoption of the pretext
for war. But the Empire has known nothing but surprise. A fatal
surprise was the promptitude with which all the German States,
outside of Austrian rule, accepted the leadership of Prussia, and
joined their forces to hers. Differences were forgotten,--whether
the hate of Hanover, the dread of Wuertemberg, the coolness of
Bavaria, the opposition of Saxony, or the impatience of the Hanse
Towns at lost importance. Hanover would not rise; the other States
and cities would not be detached. On the day after the reading of
the War Manifesto at the French tribune, even before the King's
speech to the Northern Parliament, the Southern States began to
move. German unity stood firm, and this was the supreme surprise
for France with which the war began. On one day the Emperor in his
Official Journal declares his object to be the deliverance of
Bavaria from Prussian oppression, and on the very next day the
Crown Prince of Prussia, at the head of Bavarian troops, crushes
an Imperial army.

Then came the manifest inferiority of the Imperial army,
everywhere outnumbered, which was another surprise,--the manifest