retical dogmas long ago settled in every part
of the civilized world, or microscopical practical questions which
never led to any practical result. Thus, the Assembly being a sort of
Lancastrian School for the mutual instruction of members, and being,
therefore, very important to themselves, they were persuaded it was
doing even more than the German people had a right to expect, and
looked upon everyone as a traitor to the country who had impudence to
ask them to come to any result.

When the Viennese insurrection broke out, there was a host of
interpellations, debates, motions, and amendments upon it, which, of
course, led to nothing. The Central Power was to interfere. It sent
two commissioners, Welcker, the ex-Liberal, and Mosle, to Vienna. The
travels of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza form matter for an Odyssey in
comparison with the heroic feats and wonderful adventures of those two
knight-errants of German Unity. Not daring to go to Vienna, they were
bullied by Windischgraetz, wondered at by the idiot Emperor, and
impudently hoaxed by the Minister Stadion. Their despatches and
reports are perhaps the only portion of the Frankfort transactions
that will retain a place in German literature; they are a perfect
satirical romance, ready cut and dried, and an eternal monument of
disgrace for the Frankfort Assembly and its Government.

The left side of the Assembly had also sent two commissioners to
Vienna, in order to uphold its authority there--Froebel and Robert
Blum. Blum, when danger drew near, judged rightly that here the great
battle of the German Revolution was to be fought, and unhesitatingly
resolved to stake his head on the issue. Froebel, on the contrary, was
of opinion that it was his duty to preserve himself for the important
duties of his post at Frankfort. Blum was considered one of the most
eloquent men of the Frankfort Assembly; he certainly was the most
popular. His eloquence would not have stood the test of any
experienced Parliamentary Assembly; he was too fond of the shallow
declamations of a German dissenting preacher, and his arguments wanted
both philosophical acumen and acquaintance with practical matters of
fact. In politics he belonged to "Moderate Democracy," a rather
indefinite sort of thing, cherished on account of this very want of
definiteness in its principles. But with all this Robert Blum was by
nature a thorough, though somewhat polished, plebeian, and in decisive
moments his plebeian