lective number amounted to
hundreds of thousands. It is thanks to the Bohemian exiles, that
Electoral Saxony recovered its loss in men and capital quicker than
other countries. Yet it is not the numbers, however great, which give a
true representation of the loss. For those who fell into calamity on
account of their faith and political convictions were the noblest
spirits, the leaders of the people, the representatives of the highest
civilization of the time. But it was not the loss of them alone that
made the Emperor's dominions so weak and dormant; the millions also
that remained behind were crushed. Driven by every low motive, by rough
violence or the prospect of earthly advantage, from one faith to
another, they had lost all self-respect and the last ideal which even
the most commonplace man preserves, the feeling that he has a place in
his heart that cannot be bought. Everywhere throughout Germany in the
worst times after the war, there were thousands who were fortified by
the feeling that they also, like their fathers and neighbours, had
resisted armed conversion to the death. In the converted Austrian
territories of the Emperor, this feeling was rare. For almost a century
and a half the Bohemian and German races vegetated in a dreary dream
life. The Bohemian countryman hung the various saints of the restored
church by the side of his pictures of Huss and Zisko, but he kept a
holy lamp burning before the old heretic; the citizen of Vienna and
Olmutz accustomed himself to speak of the Empire and Germany as of a
foreign land; he accommodated himself to Hungarians, Italians, and
Croats, but at the same time he remained a stranger in the new state in
which he was now domiciled. Little did he care for the categorical
imperative, imposed by the new worldly wisdom; later he learned that
Schiller was a German poet. Only then did a new spring begin for the
Germans, in which freedom of mind and beauty of soul were sought for as
the highest aim of earthly life; when the new study of antiquity
inspired them with enthusiasm, when the genius of Goethe irradiated the
court of Weimar, then sounded from dormant Austria, the deepest and
most mysterious of arts, a fullness of melody. There also the spirit of
the people had found touching expression in Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven.

CHAPTER VII.

ROGUES AND ADVENTURERS.

The war had fearfully loosened the joints of burg