Rushed to battle, fought and died; Ruffians, pitiless as proud, Heaven awards the vengeance due; Empire is on us bestowed, Shame and ruin wait for you. THE WATCH ON THE RHINE. MAX SCHNECKENBURGER. TRANSLATION BY G. F. DUNNING. A VOICE resounds like thunder-peal, 'Mid dashing waves and clang of steel, "The Rhine! the Rhine! the German Rhine! Who guards to-day my stream divine?" Dear Fatherland! No danger thine: Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine. They stand, a hundred thousand strong, And though in death our hopes decay, Dear Fatherland! No danger thine: From yon blue sky are bending now "As long as German hearts are free Firm stand thy sons to watch the Rhine. "While flows one drop of German blood, Our oath resounds; the river flows; THE PRUSSIAN ARMISTICE. LEON GAMBETTA. EXTRACTS. TRANSLATION ANONYMOUS. CITIZENS, -The foreigner is about to inflict on France the most cruel injury which it has been given him to attempt during this cursed war, a punishment unmeasurably beyond the errors and weaknesses of a great people. Paris, impregnable to force, vanquished by famine, has not been able to hold longer in check the Prussian hordes. It surrendered on the 28th of January. The city itself remains intact like a last homage snatched by its power and grandeur from the barbarian ; her forts alone have been surrendered to the enemy. But there has been signed, unknown to us, without our being able to avert it, an armistice, whose guilty folly we have but just become aware of and which gives up to the Prussian troops the departments occupied by our soldiers. Frenchmen, let us think of our fathers who have bequeathed us a France compact and indivisible; let us not betray our history nor hand over to the barbarian our hereditary domain. Who, then, would sign? It would not be the Legitimists who have fought so well under the flag of the Republic to defend the soil of the old kingdom of France! Nor you, sons of the bourgeois of 1789 whose master work has been to weld. the old provinces into one compact and indissoluble whole; nor you, workingmen of the towns, whose intelligent and generous patriotism has always represented France in her power and unity as the initiator of the people into modern liberty; nor you, the laborers, proprietors of the country, who have ever sold your blood for the defence of the Revolution to which you owe your land and your dignity as citizens. No, there will not be found one Frenchman to sign this infamous compact. The foreigner will be deceived! He must abandon the mutilation of France, because the whole nation, animated with the same love for the mother country, will rise up again and expel the foreigner. To attain this sacred object we must devote to it our hearts, our minds, our lives and-sacrifice perhaps more difficult still-we must lay aside our preferences; we must rally close around the Republic and give proof above all of coolness-strength of mind. Let us yield neither to passion or weakness! Let us swear simply as men who are free to defend against all to defend France and the Republic. To arms! To arms! diag GOVERNMENT BY EPIGRAMS. GUY DE MAUPASSANT. EXTRACTS. No. I. THE throne of France is maintained by the cap and bells of the jester. Jests, jests, nothing but jests, ironic or heroic, polished or coarse, jests float forever to the surface in their history, and make it like nothing so much as a collection of puns and witticisms. Clovis, the Christian king, cried on hearing the story of the Passion, "Why was I not there with my Franks?" This prince, in order to reign alone, massacred his allies and his relations, and committed every crime imaginable. Nevertheless, he is looked upon as a pious and civilized monarch.) What do we know of Louis VI.? Nothing. Pardon! In the battle of Brenneville, when an Englishman laid hands upon him, crying, "The king is taken," this truly French monarch replied, "Do you know, knave, that a king can never be taken, even at chess?" That noodle, Philip VI., beaten and wounded at the battle of Crécy, cried as he knocked at the gates of the castle of Arbroie, "Open: here are the fortunes of France!" They are still grateful to him for this melodramatic speech. John II., made prisoner by the Prince of Wales, remarks, with chivalrous good will, and the graceful gallantry of a French troubadour, "I had counted upon entertaining you at supper to-night; but fortune wills otherwise, and ordains that I should sup with you." It would be impossible to bear adversity more gracefully. "It is not for the king of France to avenge the quarrels of the Duke of Orleans," was the generous declaration of Louis XII. And it is, truly, a kingly saying; one worthy of the remembrance of all princes. That hare-brained fellow Francis I. has saved his reputation, and surrounded his name with an imperishable halo, by writing to his mother those few superb words, after the defeat of Pavia: "All is lost, Madame, save honor." Does not that phrase remain to this day as good as a victory? Has it not made this prince more illustrious than the conquest of a kingdom? We have forgotten the names of the greater number of the famous battles |