y in Stockholm, his "Balloon-Letter," a
Hudibrastic rhymed epistle in nearly 400 lines, containing, with a good
deal that is trivial, some striking symbolical reminiscences of his trip
through Egypt, and some powerful ironic references to the caravan of
German invaders, with its Hathor and its Horus, which was then rushing
to the assault of Paris under the doleful colors of the Prussian flag.
Ibsen's sarcasms are all at the ugliness and prosaic utilitarianism of
the Germans; "Moltke," he says, "has killed the poetry of battles."

Ibsen was now greatly developing and expanding his views, and forming
a world-policy of his own. The success of German discipline deeply
impressed him, and he thought that the day had probably dawned which
would be fatal to all revolt and "liberal rebellion" for the future.
More than ever he dreaded the revolutionary doctrines of men like
Jaabaek and Bjoernson, which would lead, he thought, to bloodshed and
national disaster. The very same events were impressing Goldwin Smith at
the very same moment with his famous prophecy that the abolition of all
dynastic and aristocratic institutions was at hand, with "the tranquil
inauguration" of elective industrial governments throughout the world.
So history moves doggedly on, _propheten rechts, propheten links_, a
perfectly impassive _welt-kind_ in the middle of them. In Copenhagen
Ibsen had, after all, missed Brandes, delayed in Rome by a long and
dangerous illness; and all he could do was to exchange letters with this
still unseen but increasingly sympathetic and beloved young friend. To
Brandes Ibsen wrote more freely than to any one else about the great
events which were shaking the face of Europe and occupying so much of
both their thoughts:--

The old, illusory France has collapsed [he wrote to Brandes on December
20, 1870, two days after the engagement at Nuits]; and as soon as the
new, real Prussia does the same, we shall be with one bound in a new
age. How ideas will then come tumbling about our ears! And it is high
time they did. Up till now we have been living on nothing but the crumbs
from the revolutionary table of last century, a food out of which all
nutriment has long been chewed. The old terms require to have a new
meaning infused into them. Liberty, equality and fraternity are no
longer the things they were in the days of the late-lamented Guillotine.
This is what the politicians will not understand, and therefore, I hate
them. They