There is no evidence that any European power was about to interfere in behalf of Austria.  Prussia, it is true, had taken a stern attitude, and showed a disposition to place herself at the head of those German States which were for beginning a march upon Paris at once, though M. le Marechal Duc de Malakoff was ready with two hundred thousand men to receive them, and Paris itself was not the feeble place it had been in 1814 and 1815.  It is altogether likely that Prussia was, as is usual with her at every European crisis, shamming.  She had no interest in the maintenance of Austria’s territorial integrity, and it was rather late in the day to assume that Berlin was affected by the mortifications of Vienna.  Could the hearts of kings and the counsels of cabinets be known with that literal exactness which is so desirable in politics, and yet so unattainable, we should probably find that Prussia’s apparent readiness to lead Germany was owing to her determination that German armies should be led nowhere to the assistance of Austria.  England had just changed her Ministry, the Derby Cabinet giving way to Lord Palmerston’s, which was recognized on all sides as a great gain to the cause of Italian independence; and Lord John Russell had written one of those crusty notes to the Prussian government for which he is so famous, and which was hardly less Italian in its sentiments than that in which, written in October last, he upheld the course of Garibaldi and Victor Emanuel.  Russia had evinced no disposition to interfere in behalf of Austria, and perhaps the news of Magenta and Solferino was as agreeable to the dwellers in St. Petersburg and Moscow as it was to the citizens of New York and Boston.  She was, indeed, believed to be backing France.  Politically, so far as we can judge, there was no cause or occasion for the throwing up of the cards by the French, after Solferino.

Nor were the military reasons for the cessation of warlike operations of a nature to convince men of their irresistible weightiness.  A great deal was said about the strength of “the Quadrilateral,” and of the impregnability of the position which it formed,—­as if there ever had existed a military position which could not be carried or turned, or out of which its defenders could not be bought, or forced, or starved!  The strength of the Quadrilateral was as well known to the Emperor in January as it was in July, and he must have counted its powers of resistance before he resolved upon war.  Victory he had organized, like Carnot; and victory in Lombardy was sure to take his army to the Mincio.  Verona and Venetia were to be the complement of Milan.  Then there was the story that he frightened the Kaiser into giving his consent to the truce by proving to him that the fortresses upon which he relied were not in good defensible condition, his commissaries having placed the funds in their pockets that should have been devoted to the purchase of stores,—­a story that wears a very probable air, in view of the