396 Appendix I 



already difficult to change bank notes. The town is quieter to-day. No 

 news from the army. A list of the new Ministry is published, Palikao, La 

 Tour d'Auvergne, Magne, Rigault, Girardin — more Bonapartist than 

 ever. The Chamber supports them for the present. Paris is full of troops, 

 500 Marines marched past our house this morning on their way to the war, 

 all stout, smart fellows. I take it no troops have ever fought better than 

 the French have done. 



" I have been reading Prevost Paradol's last book, ' La France Nouvelle,' 

 published last year. The concluding chapter reads prophetically now. He 

 gives the future of the world to the English race, true enough if it includes 

 our off-shoots, American and Colonial, but he hardly foresees what must 

 happen, the extinction of England herself. England's political life will be 

 over the day that Holland is annexed to Germany. There is also little 

 sign of the continuance of the intellectual eminence of our race. Litera- 

 ture never long survives a nation's decline, and in the English speaking 

 off-shoots no sign of intellectual life has yet been given, though America 

 has had a hundred years of independence. The English language, how- 

 ever, is never likely to become a dead one. Her literature will still live, 

 even if it ceases to be productive; in France it is otherwise. French will 

 be a dead language, as dead at least as Spanish is. As for German, which 

 is to become the language of Europe, it shows no sign of producing a 

 readable literature. The only German I can read is Goethe's, who took 

 the best of his inspiration from Rousseau. Where he is purely German, 

 he is pedantic and wearisome. Germany possesses some good lyric poetry, 

 but romance, tragedy, history, all are dull. What is really meritorious is 

 the scientific writing, but that is owing to the matter rather than the 

 manner. The Volkslieder have the melancholy charm of barbarous poetry, 

 but the serious poets are without humour. German is bourgeois and its 

 literature bourgeois. [This is a poor diagnosis. I ought to have at least 

 excepted Heine, but I left him out, I suppose, as being a Jew living at 

 Paris, and more of a Frenchman than of a German.] 



"14th Aug. — Deauville. I came here on the night of the nth, as 

 there was no special news at Paris. The day I left, old Barre (the doyen 

 of the Paris Tennis Court) came to breakfast with me and after it we 

 played tennis, Brinquant making us a chouette. Barre was playing in 

 better form that I can remember him. Brinquant has just been called out 

 to join the army, being between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. 

 He will have to go as a 'simple pioupiou.' Substitutes are still to be had 

 at 8,000 francs, but it is considered dishonourable not to march in person. 

 In the middle of our game a company of grenadiers marched in through 

 the door by the net, and took formal possession of the Court, turning us 

 out. The officer in command saluting us politely from the net with his 

 drawn sword, saying, ' Messieurs, vous etes pries d'evacuer le jeu.' [This 

 proved to be absolutely the last game old Barre, the champion paumier of 

 his day, ever played, for he died of the hardships of the siege, though not 

 till 1872. He was a wonderful player, especially on the floor of the Court, 

 so that though I was then young and active, he could still give me the 

 walls. In private life he was excellent company, and some of us used to 



