the Romish Jesuits against the indigenous civilization of the
nation, aided, alas! by some of the German princes. It was by such
means that it had endeavoured to become great in Germany, and in the
same spirit, an overzealous Emperor called forth the bloody decision.
On his head, not on the German people or Princes, lies the guilt of
this endless war. The Protestant chiefs, with the exception of the
lesser rulers, only sought to submit and make peace with their Emperor.
It was only for a few years they were led into open war, by the
arrogance of Wallenstein, the scorn of Vienna, and the warlike pressure
of Gustavus Adolphus; the alliance of the great electoral houses of
Saxony and Brandenburg with Sweden did not last four years; at the
first opportunity they receded, and during the last period of the war,
neutrality was their strongest policy.

The princes obtained by the peace the object of their defensive
opposition; the extravagant designs of the Imperial Court were crushed.
Germany was free. Yes, free! Devastated and powerless, with its western
frontier for a century the fighting-ground and spoil of France, it had
still to bear the out-pouring of an accumulated measure of humiliation
and shame. But whoever would now clench their hands at this, let them
beware of raising them against the Westphalian peace. The consequences
that followed, the laying in ashes of the Palatinate, the seizure of
Strasburg, the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, were not owing to this
peace. The cause of all this, was long before the Thirty years' war; it
had been foreseen by patriotic men long beforehand. Since the
Smalkaldic war the sovereignty of the German Princes, and the
independence of portions of the empire, were the only guarantee for a
national progressive civilization. One may deeply lament, but can
easily understand this. Now at last this independence had been legally
established by streams of blood. Whoever considers the year 1813,--the
first kindling of the people since 1648,--as full of glory; whoever has
at any time ennobled himself by a sense of duty and enlarged moral
sentiments, acquired from the severe teaching of Kant and his
followers; whoever has at any time derived pleasure from the highest
that man is capable of understanding, and from the nature and souls of
his own and foreign people; whoever has at any time felt with transport
the beauty of the new German poetry, the Nathan, Faust, and Guillaume
Tell; whoever has take