There is no prospect that the dissension will be ended by mutual concessions. This might be done, if mutual confidence existed between the contending parties; but of such confidence there is a total lack. So great is the estrangement that the original occasion of it is lost sight of. Neither party cares so much about securing the success of its favorite measures as about defeating the measures of its opponent. Either the possibility of such a relation of the king to the Parliament was not entertained when the constitution was drawn up, or it is a great deficiency that no provision was made for it; or (as we should prefer to say) the difficulty may have been foreseen and yet no provision have been made for it, simply because none could have been made consistently with Frederick William IV.'s maxim, 'A free people under a free king'—a maxim which sounds well, but which, when the people are bent on going in one way and the king in another, is difficult to reconcile with the requirement of the constitution that both must go in the same way. In a republic, where the legislature and chief magistrate are both chosen representatives of one people, no protracted disagreement between them is possible. In a monarchy where a ministry, which has lost the confidence of the legislature, resigns its place to another, the danger is hardly greater. But in a monarchy whose constitution provides that king and people shall rule jointly, yet both act freely and independently, nothing but the most paradisiacal state of humanity could secure mutual satisfaction and continued harmony. Prussia is now demonstrating to the world that, if the people of a nation are to have in the national legislation anything more than an advisory power, they must have a determining power. To say that the king shall have the unrestricted right of declaring and making war, and at the same time that no money can be used without the free consent of Parliament, is almost fit to be called an Irish bull. Such mutual freedom is impossible except when king and Parliament perfectly agree in reference to the war itself. But, if this agreement exists, there is either no need of a Parliament or no need of a king. It makes little difference how the constitution is worded in this particular, nor even what was intended by the author of this provision. What is in itself an intrinsic contradiction cannot be carried out in practice. Whether any formal change is made in the constitution or not, a different mode of interpreting it, a different conception of the relation of monarch to subject, must become current, if the constitution is to be a working instrument. Prussia must become again practically an absolute monarchy or a constitutional monarchy like England. Nor is there much doubt which of these possibilities will be realized. And not the least among the causes which will hasten the final triumph of Liberalism there, is the exhibition of the strength of republicanism here, while undergoing its present trial. When one observes how many of the more violent Prussian Conservatives openly sympathize with the rebels, and most of the others fail to do so only because they dislike slavery; when one sees, on the other hand, how anxiously the Prussian Liberals are waiting and hoping for the complete demonstration of the ability of our Government to outride the storm which has threatened its destruction, the cause in which we are engaged becomes invested with a new sacredness. Our success will not only secure the blessings of a free Government to the succeeding generations of this land, but will give a stimulus to free principles in every part of the globe. If 'Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell' at the hands of despotism, a longer and sadder wail would mark the fall of American republicanism, wounded and slain in the house of its friends.
'YE KNOW NOT WHAT YE ASK.'
One morn in spring, when earth lay robed
In resurrection bloom,
I turned away my tear-veiled eyes,
Feeling the glow but gloom,
And asked my God one boon I craved,
Or earth were living tomb.
One autumn morn, when all the world
In ripened glory lay,
I turned to God my shining eyes,
And praised Him for that day,
When asking curses with my lips,
He turned His ear away.
COMING UP AT SHILOH.
The rain, which had been falling steadily since shortly after midnight, ceased at daybreak. The morning dawned slowly and moodily, above the wooded hilltops that rose steeply from the farther bank of the creek close by, right over against the cornfield, in which, on the preceding evening, we had comfortably pitched our camp. The bugle wound an early reveille; then came the call to strike tents, though one half of the brigade was yet busy in hurried preparations for breakfast, and presently the assembly sounded. We were on the march again by the time the sun would have liked to greet us with his broad, level-thrown smile for 'good morning,' if the sky had been clear and open enough, instead of covered, as it was on this damp, chilly April morning, with dull, sullen masses of cloud that seemed still nursing their ill humor and bent on having another outbreak. The road was heavy; an old, worn stage-coach road, of a slippery, treacherous clay, which the trampings of our advanced regiments speedily kneaded into a tough, stiff dough, forming a track that was enough to try the wind and bottom of the best. For some miles, too, the route was otherwise a difficult one—hilly, and leading by two or three tedious crossings in single file over fords, where now were rushing turbid, swollen streams, gorging and overflowing their banks everywhere in the channels, which nine months out of the twelve give passage to innocent brooklets only, that the natives of these parts may cross barefoot without wetting an ankle. Spite of these drawbacks, the men were in fine spirits; for this was the end of our weary march from Nashville, and we were sure now of a few days' rest and quiet.
A few minutes after midday we reached Savannah, and were ordered at once into camp. By this time the sky had cleared, the sun was shining brightly, though, as it seemed, with an effort; the wind, which had been freshening ever since morning, was blowing strong and settled from out the blue west, and the earth was drying rapidly. The Sixth Ohio and a comrade regiment of the Tenth Brigade pitched their tents in an old and well-cleared camping ground, on a gently sloping rise looking toward the town from the southeastward; a little too far from the river to quite take in, in its prospect, the landing with its flotilla of transports and the gunboats which they told us were lying there, yet not so far but we could easily discern the smoke floating up black and dense from the boats' chimney stacks, and hear the long-drawn, labored puffs of the escape pipes, and the shrill signals of the steam whistles. Altogether our camping ground was eligible, dry, and pleasant.