she has attained to a full sense of
responsibility. No longer are her constructive powers hopelessly
outmatched by her critical powers. In the political sphere she has found
a due balance between the brain and the hand. From analysis she has
worked her way to synthesis.

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The following are the Ministries of the Republic in 1870-1900:--1870,
Favre; 1871, Dufaure (1); 1873, De Broglie (1); 1874, Cissey; 1875,
Buffet; 1876, Dufaure (2); 1876, Simon; 1877, De Broglie (2); 1877, De
Rochebouet; 1877, Dufaure (3); 1879, Waddington; 1879, Freycinet (1);
1880, Ferry (1); 1881, Gambetta; 1882, Freycinet (2); 1882, Duclerc;
1883, Fallieres; 1883, Ferry (2); 1885, Brisson; 1886, Freycinet (3);
1886, Goblet; 1887, Rouvier; 1887, Tirard (1); 1888, Floquet; 1889,
Tirard (2); 1890, Freycinet (4); 1892, Loubet; 1892, Ribot (1); 1892,
Dupuy (1); 1893, Casimir Perier; 1894, Dupuy (2); 1895, Ribot (2); 1895,
Bourgeois; 1896, Meline; 1898, Brisson; 1898 Dupuy (3); 1899,
Waldeck-Rousseau.

CHAPTER VI

THE GERMAN EMPIRE

"From the very beginning of my career my sole guiding-star
has been how to unify Germany, and, that being achieved, how
to strengthen, complete, and so constitute her unification
that it may be preserved enduringly and with the goodwill of
all concerned in it."--BISMARCK: Speech in the North German
Reichstag, July 9, 1869.

On the 18th of January 1871, while the German cannon were still
thundering against Paris, a ceremony of world-wide import occurred in
the Palace of the Kings of France at Versailles. King William of Prussia
was proclaimed German Emperor. The scene lacked no element that could
appeal to the historic imagination. It took place in the Mirror Hall,
where all that was brilliant in the life of the old French monarchy used
to encircle the person of Louis XIV. And now, long after that dynasty
had passed away, and when the crown of the last of the Corsican
adventurers had but recently fallen beneath the feet of the Parisians,
the descendant of the Prussian Hohenzollerns celebrated the advent to
the German people of that unity for which their patriots had vainly
struggled for centuries.

The men who had won this long-deferred boon were of no common stamp.
King William himself, as is now shown by the publication of many of his
letters to Bismarck, had played a far larger share in the making of a
united Germany than was formerly believed. His