Hygrometer at Wine, NI " clouds; f, fog: is ball; sightalogs mr ne 9 (dali) x. rary anew; b tina hom Ir might not be imagined that polities, though largely affecting trade in general, would have any special influence on the manufacturers of, and dealers in, water-colour paints. Yet if Winsor & Newton or any other eminent firm of artistcolonrmen were questioned, they would certainly have reason to declare that the political changes of the past thirty years have seriously affected one branch of their industry, viz. the politico-geographical colour-box. An application to Messrs, A. Keith Johnston & Ca. would, we fancy, likewise be responded to by the avowal that the tints used in cartography have notably diminished in number and variety.
To begin with the map of Europe. The list of States which have lost their individuality and forfeited their claim to a distinguishing colour along the boundary line, owing to absorption into their more powerful neighbouring kingdoms, is along one. Poland has been divided by three, and only a fraction of it retains its old designation as the jurisdiction of a Russian Governor. The shares of the spoil which fell to Prussia and Austria leave no recognise able trace on the general map. Parma, Modena, and Tuscany have gone the way that most Grand Duchies have travelled already and the rest must ip, ritory which was the cradle of the Hohenzollern race and the private heritago of the Prussian Kings. Yet further south the town of Neuchatel owed allegiance to the same sovereign, and had to be tinted to match by the couscieutions map-maker. And in the heart of Germany itself, what a proality of colouring! Hanover avd Mecklenburg, Saxony and Coburg, Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Darmstadt, Renss, Waldeck-Pyrmont, Oldeubarg and the Lippes, the Hanseatic towns and free Frankfort, and many another little independent State, Grand Dachy, or Principality, from sizeable Nassau lo microscopic Lichtonsteiu, each with claim tobe distinguished. What " chess. board it once was! But 1870 completed what 1866 bad begun. Many of those political divisions still remain in name. Hanover still has a king, and Saxony likewise; there are grand dukes and princes with many-jointed titles in as pleasing abundance as ever; but be of Sonderhausen set one colour on his palette, seized his stiffest brush, and spread the Prassian blae with a steady hand in an oven wash over them all.
Baden, Bavaria, and Wartemburg may boast a difference of colouring, the one a shade lighter, the other a shade darker; bat they are blue every one, and as years go on the differences and shades will wear and fade until the tint is uniform. Bismarck's blue
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.