Bazaine became the Black Beast of the public imagination.  A tribunal was organized at Paris, under the presidency of the Duc d’Aumale, son of Louis Philippe—­the same who with the Prince de Joinville had been on McClellan’s staff during the peninsular campaign in our Civil War.  Before this court Bazaine was haled as a traitor to his country.  He was tried, convicted and condemned to degradation and death.  It was only by the most strenuous efforts in his behalf that a commutation of the sentence to imprisonment for twenty years was obtained.

The Marshal was accordingly incarcerated in a prison at Cannes, whither he was sent in December of 1873, and from which he effected his escape in the following August.  He succeeded in making his way to Madrid, and took up his residence there.  He sought assiduously by writings and argument and appeal to reverse the judgment of his countrymen and of the world with regard to the justice of his sentence; but he could not succeed.  It is probably true that the greatest surrender of military forces known in the history of the world was brought about by the preference of the commanding general of the conquered army for an Emperor who was already dethroned, as against a true devotion to his country.  There was also in the case a measure of incapacity.  Bazaine was no match as a military commander for the powerful genius of Von Moltke and the persistency of Frederick Charles and the more than two hundred thousand resolute Germans who surrounded him, and brought him and his army to irretrievable ruin.

Astronomical Vistas.

THE CENTURY OF ASTEROIDS.

The nineteenth century may be called the Age of the Asteroids.  It was on the first night of this century that the first asteroid was discovered!  Through all the former ages, no man on the earth had had definite knowledge of the existence of such a body.  It was reserved for Guiseppe Piazzi, an Italian astronomer at Palermo, to make known by actual observation the first member of the planetoid group.  If human history had the slightest regard for the calendars of mankind—­if the eternal verities depended in any measure on the almanac or the division of time into this age or that—­we might look with wonder on the remarkable coincidence which made the discovery of the first asteroid to happen in the first evening twilight of the first day of the nineteenth century!

At the close of the eighteenth century, mankind were acquainted with all the major planets except Neptune.  Uranus, the last of the group, was discovered by the Elder Herschel, on the night of the thirteenth of March, 1781.  True, this planet had been seen on twenty different occasions, by other observers; but its character had not been revealed.  Sir William called his new world Georgium Sidus, that is, the George Star, in honor of the King of England.  The world, however, had too much intelligence to allow the transfer of the name of George III. from earth to heaven.  Such nomenclature would have been unpopular in America!  The name of the king was happily destined to remain a part of terrestrial history!