28 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



French kings, and surrounded by the trophies of French arms, 

 WilUam, King of Prussia, was crowned the Emperor of United 

 Germany. The French Empire had now fallen, and the Commune 

 reared its ensanguined head. Frenchmen fought with Frenchmen. 

 The spirit of '93 again burst forth with lurid glare. Again Notre 

 Dame was desecrated ; again the capital became the sport of the 

 fickle, frenzied mob ; once more her streets ran red with blood. 

 The Commune crushed, Germany demanded her pound of flesh. 

 The terms were : $1,000,000,000 in money; the support" of an army 

 until that sum was paid ; and the cession, with all their fortresses, of 

 Lorraine and French Alsace. How that debt was paid is one of the 

 marvels of history. Day by day cars laden with bullion crossed the 

 frontier, until, with the recuperative power she has so often shown, 

 France stood once more before the world, no foeman's foot upon her 

 soil. A stable republic, she set herself calmly and determinedly to 

 profit by the errors of the past. In 1878, and again in 1889, she 

 gave the grandest expositions the world had seen ; her empire has 

 extended itself in Farther India, in Madagascar, in Africa, to a degree 

 undreamt of before ; her army is larger than that of Germany ; her 

 navy second only to that of Britain ; her school system in certain 

 respects is the best in the world ; and she stands to-day far stronger 

 than when her troops set out so boastfully to cross the German Rhine. 

 Let us now turn to the second great movement of the last thirty 

 years. There is no more wonderful page in recent history than that 

 which describes the rise of the Kingdom of Italy. The story can be 

 told in a few words. For hundreds of years before the middle of 

 this century, Italy had been merely what Napoleon had called it, 

 "a geographical expression." But there had never died out in the 

 people's heart a desire for unification, a longing for the day when the 

 flag of a united nation should wave "from the base of the Alps to 

 the shores of the sea." The memories of Rome in ancient days, of 

 Florence and Pisa, of Venice and Genoa, in modern days, fired the 

 Italian heart ; and the cry of " Italy, one and free," never entirely died 

 away. Fortunately there was, at the time of which I am now speak- 

 ing, in the province of Savoy [Savoy which lies just beneath the 

 shadows of the Alps back of Genoa], a royal house fit to undertake 

 this patriotic task. Fortunately, also, Italy was rich in great men : 

 the King, Cavour, Mazzini, and the lame lion of Caprera — Garabaldi. 



