Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/782

768 load of official anxieties and responsibility than has been borne by any statesman of this century. He marches under it — but less erectly and with not so firm a step, noticeably, as he was wont to do. The czar is not old, but then he is not strong. He has been for some time in that state which is described as "giving anxiety to his friends;" and observers of his appearance at Berlin report the improvement in his health in very guarded terms. The life of no one of these three is such that men of prudence would count upon its long continuance with any degree of confidence, and the death of any one of them might, and probably would, alter the whole aspect of European affairs. The struggle between Germany and the Papacy which is distracting that country, and ever threatening to embroil her with her neighbours, could not but be affected either for good or ill by a demise of the triple crown. Whoever might be the new pope, it is certain that the relations between him and Germany would differ in one way or another from those maintained by the present pope. Whether he were Liberal or Ultramontane — prepared to "come to terms with the modern spirit," or as rooted in opposition to it as Pius IX. himself — the situation would be changed; for if Pius IX. were able to transmit his opinions to his successor he could not transmit his personality; and that is not an unimportant element in the present situation. We have, moreover, to consider what turmoil, what intrigue, what persuasion and threatening will probably arise over the election of the new pope; and nobody knows what such strife might not end in. Again, the death of the Emperor Alexander would be fraught with momentous consequences in another way. It would remove the control of the policy of Russia from the hands of a sovereign who is at least on a footing of personal sympathy with the German emperor, to place it in the hands of a successsor whose sympathies and likings are believed to incline strongly the other way. And a czar sympathizing with France would not be the most likely or the best-qualified moderator of the hatred with which a large portion of his subjects regard Germany. On the effects of the death of Prince Bismarck himself it is unnecessary to speculate, for every one must feel that the removal of a statesman whose policy has been more emphatically personal than that of any statesman perhaps within living memory, and whose individuality makes itself felt at every turn of German or even European politics, would be far-reaching indeed. But the death of the emperor of Germany himself — another aged man — might also seriously affect the future. The strong will and the keen vision of the statesman would yet remain, but they would energize under different conditions; the material upon which the Imperial chancellor would have to work would be altogether changed, and therewith the results of its operation, probably.

The ease with which we can in practice put aside and ignore these considerations altogether is a proof that nations, like men, behave as though they believed in human immortality upon earth. We count upon the endurance of lives as we do upon the stability of the order of nature, and seem as little to suspect that we are building upon a foundation which may crumble at a touch. We talk of the "policy of Germany," "the pacific views of the czar," the "irreconcilable attitude of the Papacy," as though these things were as eternal as the stars, and subject to as little variation as their motions in the heavens. It is strange how seldom we reflect that these three phrases are but names for the individualities of three mortal men, two of whom show no very marked promise of long life, while the other has already outlived the allotted human span.

 

 . — M. Faye, in the Comptes Rendus, discusses Mr. Langley's observations on the relative temperature of different parts of the sun's surface, drawing special attention to the result arrived at by Mr. Langley that the equatorial regions of the sun are not sensibly hotter than the polar, and that therefore all analogies founded on terrestrial phenomena such as trade-winds are false, the currents in the sun being, not towards the equator, but parallel to it, as shown by the drift of sun-spots. M. Faye hence derives support for his theory of the sun in contradistinction to that of P. Secchi.