gineers.

His next act was to fix the military establishment of France at 360,000
men; his third act, in violation of his own treaties, and of all the
feelings of Europe, was to make a rapid invasion of Switzerland, thus
breaking down the independence of the country, and seizing, in fact, the
central fortress of the Continent. His fourth act has been the seizure
of Piedmont, and its absolute annexation to France. By a decree of the
Republic, Piedmont is divided into six departments, which are to send
seventeen deputies to the French legislature. Turin is declared to be a
provincial city of the Republican territory; and thus the French armies
will have a perpetual camp in a country which lays Italy open to the
invader, and will have gained a territory nearly as large as Scotland,
but fertile, populous, and in one of the finest climates of the south.
Those events have excited the strongest indignation throughout Europe.
We have already discovered that the peace was but a truce; that the
cessation of hostilities was but a breathing-time to the enemy; that the
reduction of our armies was precipitate and premature; and that, unless
the fears of the French government shall render it accessible to a sense
of justice, the question must finally come to the sword.

* * * * *

Schiller's play of the "Robbers" is said to have propagated the breed of
highwaymen in Germany. To ramble through the country, stop travellers on
the highway, make huts in the forest, sing Bedlamite songs, and rail at
priests and kings, was the fashion in Germany during the reign of that
popular play. It was said, a banditti of students from one of the
colleges had actually taken the road, and made Carl Moor their model.
All this did very well in summer, but the winter probably cooled their
enthusiasm; for a German forest, with its snow half a dozen feet deep,
and the probability of famine, would be a formidable trial to the most
glowing mysticism.

But an actual leader of banditti has been just arrested, whose exploits
in plunder have formed the romance of Germany for a considerable period.
The confusion produced by the French war, and the general disturbance of
the countries on both sides of the Rhine, have at once awakened the
spirit of license, and given it impunity. A dashing fellow named
Schinderhannes, not more than three-and-twenty years of age, but loving
the luxuries of life too well to do without them, and disliki