390 Mr. A. W. Ward [March 8, 



Empire ; that France was not snch was her own choice, and she pre- 

 ferred to trust to the principle now first established that tlie con- 

 clusion of alliances with foreign powers was open to any Cxermauic 

 State at its own discretion. • But though this full measure of depen- 

 dence was, as I say, due to the War, the splitting-up of the nation 

 into an infinitude of sovereign units, which it was impossible to bring 

 into common action by the excercise of an acknowledged Imperial 

 authority, and which could only be gathered into groups or camps 

 under the name of Leagues or Unions by the special operation of 

 interest, passion or intrigue (though the interest might be that of 

 self-preservation and the passion that of religious dominance) — this 

 was a damnosa hseriditas which mounted further back than the War. 

 And the fashion of submitting with predisposed readiness to foreign 

 influence as eo ipso irresistible — in a fashion which from political 

 spread into almost every other aspect or branch of the national life, 

 wliether concerned with things intellectual or things material — this 

 fashion was an old and inrooted evil which the windiness and want 

 of patriotic self-confidence, fostered by the Great War, could only 

 augment and exaggerate, but which it did not originate or invent. 



I had intended to illustrate this observation by tracing, at the 

 hands of Gebauer and other recent authorities, the history of a 

 particular foreign influence which beyond any other has naturally 

 occupied the minds and engaged the researches of modern German 

 historians ; but my time is growing short, and I can only ask you 

 to examine for yourselves the earlier, as well as the later, chapters of 

 the story of the French refugees in Germany, of which it is diiflcult 

 to exaggerate the importance, and which begins with the period of 

 the French Religious Wars and part of the not wholly tolerant reign 

 of Henry IV. himself. Religious and university life were alike 

 animated by the constant contact ; trade both export and import 

 flourished, France supplying the means of gratifying the growing 

 love of luxury of all sorts, Germany, through its great banks of the 

 South-west, supplying the French monarchs with ready cash in return 

 for many welcome concessions. A particular trade which specially 

 concerns us, the bookselling trade, with Lyons in this era as a centre 

 perhaps even more important than Paris, was extremely active in 

 advancing French influences of all kinds across the border. Thus, 

 the ground had already been diligently prepared, and the intimate 

 relations betw^een German Calvinism and French Protestantism, 

 French Liberalism and French public policy were steadily encouraging 

 the process, when the Thirty Years' War supervened, and by its 

 ultimate issues secured to France a political ascendancy which reacted 

 upon every other kind of influence. 



The influence of French manners, to which I intended to have 

 more especially directed your attention, is traceable with curious 

 completeness, though of course in varying degrees of intensity, 

 during the periods immediately preceding and forming part of that 



