LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR.
The Italian Question. 1859.
(Three letters: June 6, June 15, and August 1.)
The Foreign Policy of England. 1863.
The Position of Denmark. 1864.
The Jamaica Insurrection. 1865.
The Franco-Prussian War. 1870.
(Two letters: October 6 and 7.)
Modern Warfare. 1876.
ARROWS OF THE CHACE.
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR.
[From "The Scotsman," July 20, 1859.]
THE ITALIAN QUESTION.[1]
Berlin, June 6, 1859.
I have been thinking of sending a few lines about what I have seen of Austrians and Italians; but every time I took my pen and turned from my own work about clouds and leafage to think for a few minutes concerning political clouds and thickets, I sank into a state of amazement which reduced me to helpless silence. I will try and send you an incoherent line to-day; for the smallest endeavor at coherence will bring me into that atmosphere of astonishment again, in which I find no expression.
You northern Protestant people are always overrating the value of Protestantism as such. Your poetical clergymen make sentimental tours in the Vaudois country, as if there were no worthy people in the Alps but the Vaudois. Did the enlightened Edinburgh evangelicals never take any interest in the freedom of the Swiss, nor hear of such people as Winkelried or Tell? Not but that there is some chance of Tell disappearing one of these days under acutest historical investigation.