chial in their outlook; and the others, the
more broad-minded, were not national but cosmopolitan in spirit. To the
tradition of municipal thinking, which had lasted on uninterruptedly in the
Free Cities of Germany from the Middle Ages, Germany owes the excellence of
her municipal government to-day. To the broad and tolerant humanism of
her more enlightened courts, such as Weimar and Brunswick, we owe the
influences that shaped the work of Goethe and of Lessing, two of the
greatest figures in European thought and letters.

Into these peaceful haunts of culture and parochialism Napoleon, with the
armies and the ideas of Revolutionary France, swept like a whirlwind,
breaking up the old settled comfortable life of the cities and countryside.
One of the greatest of German writers, the Jew Heine, has described in a
wonderful passage what the coming of Napoleon meant to the inhabitants of a
little German Principality. It is worth transcribing at some length, for
it gives the whole colour and atmosphere of the old local life in Western
Germany, which has not even yet entirely passed away. The speaker is an old
soldier giving reminiscences of his boyhood:

"Our Elector was a fine gentleman, a great lover of the arts, and himself
very clever with his fingers. He founded the picture gallery at Duesseldorf,
and in the Observatory in that city they still show a very artistic set of
wooden boxes, one inside the other, made by himself in his leisure hours,
of which he had twenty-four every day.

"In those days the Princes were not overworked mortals as they are to-day.
Their crowns sat very firmly on their heads, and at night they just drew
their nightcaps over them, and slept in peace, while peacefully at their
feet slept their peoples; and when these woke up in the morning they said,
'Good morning, Father,' and the Princes replied, 'Good morning, dear
children.'

"But suddenly there came a change. One morning when we woke up in
Duesseldorf and wanted to say, 'Good morning, Father,' we found our Father
gone, and a kind of stupefaction over the whole city. Everybody felt as
though they were going to a funeral, and people crept silently to the
market-place and read a long proclamation on the door of the City Hall. It
was grey weather, and yet thin old tailor Kilian stood in his alpaca coat,
which he kept for indoor use only, and his blue woollen stockings hung down
so that his miserable little bare legs were visible above them and h