lic imagination. A tribunal
was organized at Paris, under the presidency of the Duc d'Aumale, son
of Louis Philippe--the same who with the Prince de Joinville had been
on McClellan's staff during the peninsular campaign in our Civil War.
Before this court Bazaine was haled as a traitor to his country. He
was tried, convicted and condemned to degradation and death. It was
only by the most strenuous efforts in his behalf that a commutation of
the sentence to imprisonment for twenty years was obtained.

The Marshal was accordingly incarcerated in a prison at Cannes,
whither he was sent in December of 1873, and from which he effected
his escape in the following August. He succeeded in making his way to
Madrid, and took up his residence there. He sought assiduously by
writings and argument and appeal to reverse the judgment of his
countrymen and of the world with regard to the justice of his
sentence; but he could not succeed. It is probably true that the
greatest surrender of military forces known in the history of the
world was brought about by the preference of the commanding general of
the conquered army for an Emperor who was already dethroned, as
against a true devotion to his country. There was also in the case a
measure of incapacity. Bazaine was no match as a military commander
for the powerful genius of Von Moltke and the persistency of Frederick
Charles and the more than two hundred thousand resolute Germans who
surrounded him, and brought him and his army to irretrievable ruin.

Astronomical Vistas.

THE CENTURY OF ASTEROIDS.

The nineteenth century may be called the Age of the Asteroids. It was
on _the first night_ of this century that the first asteroid was
discovered! Through all the former ages, no man on the earth had had
definite knowledge of the existence of such a body. It was reserved
for Guiseppe Piazzi, an Italian astronomer at Palermo, to make known
by actual observation the first member of the planetoid group. If
human history had the slightest regard for the calendars of
mankind--if the eternal verities depended in any measure on the
almanac or the division of time into this age or that--we might look
with wonder on the remarkable coincidence which made the discovery of
the first asteroid to happen in the first evening twilight of the
first day of the nineteenth century!

At the close of the eighteenth century, mankind were acquainted with
all the major planets except Neptune. Uranus,