promoted by the Austrian administration, notwithstanding the national jealousy of the inhabitants. Venice, with her chokedup harbour, could, it is true, no longer compete with Trieste. The German element has gained ground in Galicia by means of the public authorities and the immigration of agriculturists and artificers. The Hungarians endeavoured to render their language the common medium throughout Hungary, and to expel the German element, but their apprehension of the numerous Slavonian population of Hungary, whom religious sympathy renders subject to Russian influence, has speedily reconciled them with the Germans. Slavonism has, on the other hand, also gained ground in Bohemia.

The emperor, Francis I., expired A. D. 1835, and was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand I., without a change taking place in the system of the government, of which Prince Metternich continued to be the directing principle.

The decease of some of the heads of foreign royal families and the marriages of their successors again placed several German princes on foreign thrones. The last of the Guelphs on the throne of Great Britain expired with William IV., whose niece and successor, Victoria Alexandrina, wedded [a. D. 1840] Albert of Saxe-Coburg, second son of Ernest, the reigning duke. That the descendant of the stedfast elector should, after such adverse fortune, be thus destined to occupy the highest position in the reformed world, is of itself remarkable. One of this prince's uncles, Leopold, is seated on the throne of Belgium, and one of his cousins, Ferdinand, on that of Portugal, in right of his consort, Donna Maria da Gloria, the daughter of Don Pedro, king of Portugal and emperor of the Brazils, to whom, on the expulsion of the usurper, Don Miguel, he was wedded, A. D. 1835. These princes of Coburg are remarkable for manly beauty.

The antipathy with which the new dynasty on the throne of France was generally viewed rendered Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, Louis Philippe's eldest son, for some time an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of a German princess; he at length conducted Helena, princess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, although against the consent of her stepfather, Paul Frederick, the reigning duke, to Paris, A. D. 1837, as future queen of the French. He was killed, a. D. 1842, by a fall from his carriage, and left two infant sons, the Count of Paris and the

Duke of Chartres. The Czarovitch, Alexander, espoused Maria, Princess of Darmstadt.

The French chambers and journals have reassumed towards Germany the tone formerly affected by Napoleon, and, with incessant cries for war, in which, in 1840, the voice of the prime minister Thiers joined, demand the restoration of the left bank of the Rhine. Thiers was, however, compelled to resign office, and the close alliance between Austria, Prussia, and the whole of the confederated princes, as well as the feeling universally displayed throughout Germany, demonstrated the energy with which an attack on the side of France would be repelled. The erection of the long-forgotten federal fortresses on the Upper Rhine was also taken at length under consideration, and it was resolved to fortify Rastadt and Ulm without further delay.

Nor have the statesmen of France failed to threaten Germany with a Russo-Gallic alliance in the spirit of the Erfurt congress of 1808; whilst Russia perseveres in the prohibitory system so prejudicial to German commerce, attempts to suppress every spark of German nationality in Livonia, Courland, and Esthonia, and fosters Panslavism, or the union of all the Slavonic nations for the subjection of the world, among the Slavonian subjects of Austria in Hungary and Bohemia. The extension of the Greek church is also connected with this idea. "The European Pentarchy," a work that attracted much attention in 1839, insolently boasts how Russia, in defiance of Austria, has seized the mouths of the Danube, has wedged herself, as it were, by means of Poland, between Austria and Prussia, in a position equally threatening to both, recommends the minor states of Germany to seek the protection of Russia, and darkly hints at the alliance between that power and France.

Nor are the prospects of Germany alone threatened by France and Russia; disturbances, like a phantastic renewal of the horrors of the middle age, are ready to burst forth on the other side of the Alps, as though, according to the ancient saga of Germany, the dead were about to rise in order to mingle in the last great contest between the gods and mankind.

CCLXXII. Prussia and Rome.

WHILST Austria remains stationary, Prussia progresses. Whilst Austria relies for support upon the aristocracy of the Estates, Prussia relies for hers upon the people, that is to say, upon the public officers taken from the mass of the population, upon the citizens emancipated by the city regulation, upon the peasantry emancipated by the abolition of servitude, of all the other agricultural imposts, and by the division of property, and upon the enrolment of both classes in the Landwehr. Whilst Austria, in fine, renders her German policy subordinate to her European diplomacy, the influence exercised by Prussia upon Europe depends, on the contrary, solely upon that possessed by her in Germany.

Prussia's leading principle appears to be, "All for the people, nothing through the people!" Hence the greatest solicitude for the instruction of the people, whether in the meanest schools or the universities, but under strict political control, under the severest censorship; hence the emancipation of the peasantry, civic self-administration, freedom of trade, the general arming of the people, and, with all these, mere nameless provincial diets, the most complete popular liberty on the widest basis without a representation worthy of the name; hence, finally, the greatest solicitude for the promotion of trade on a grand scale, for the revival of the commerce of Germany, which has lain prostrate since the great wars of the Reformation, for the mercantile unity of Germany, whilst it is exactly in Prussia that political Unitarians are the most severely punished.

The great measures were commenced in Prussia immediately after the disaster of 1806: first, the re-organization of the army and the abolition of the privileges of the aristocracy in respect to appointments and the possession of landed property; these were, in 1808, succeeded by the celebrated civic regulation which placed the civic administration in the hands of the city deputies freely elected by the citizens; in 1810, by freedom of trade and by the foundation of the new universities of Berlin, (instead of Halle,) of Breslau, (instead of Frankfurt on the Oder,) and, in 1819, of Bonn, by which means the libraries, museums, and scientific institutions of every de

scription were centralized; in 1814, by the common duty imposed upon every individual of every class, without exception, to bear arms and to do service in the Landwehr up to his thirty-ninth year; in 1821, by the regulation for the division of communes; and, in 1822, by the extra post.

In respect to the popular representation guaranteed by the federal act, Prussia announced, on the 22nd of May, 1815, her intention to form provincial diets, from among whose members the general representation or imperial diet, which was to be held at Berlin, was to be elected. When the Rhenish provinces urged the fulfilment of this promise in the Coblentz address of 1817, the reply was, "Those who admonish the king are guilty of doubting the inviolability of his word." Prussia afterwards declared that the new regulations would be in readiness by the February of 1819. On the 20th of January, 1820, an edict was published by the government, the first paragraph of which fixed the public debt at 180,091,720 dollars,* and the second one rendered the contraction of every fresh debt dependent upon the will of the future imperial diet. The definitive regulations in respect to the provincial Estates were finally published on the 5th of June, 1823, but the convocation of a general diet was passed over in silence.

The prosperity of the nations of Germany, wrecked by the great wars of the Reformation, must and will gradually return. Prussia has inherited all the claims upon, and consequently all the duties owing to Germany. Still the general position of Germany is not sufficiently favourable to render the renovation of her ancient Hanseatic commerce possible. It is to be deplored that the attachment of the Prussian cabinet to Russian policy has not at all events modified the commercial restrictions along the whole of the eastern frontier of Prussia, §

* £26,263,375 168. 8d.

The Maritime Commercial Company, meanwhile, entered into a

contract.

"We have long since lost all our maritime power. The only guns now fired by us at sea are as signals of distress. Who now remembers that it was the German Hansa that first made use of cannons at sea, that it was from Germans that the English learnt to build men of war?"Jahn's Nationality.

§ Prussia, of late, greatly contributed towards the aggrandizement of the power of Russia by solemnly declaring in 1828, when Russia ex

and that Prussia has not been able to effect more with Holland in regard to the question concerning the free navigation of the Rhine.* Prussia has, on the other hand, deserved the gratitude of Germany for the zeal with which she promoted the settlement of the Customs' Union, which has, at least in the interior of Germany, removed the greater part of the restrictions upon commercial intercourse, and has a tendency to spread still further. Throughout the last transactions, partly of the Customs' Union, partly of Prussia alone, with England and Holland, a vain struggle against those maritime powers is perceptible. England trades with Germany from every harbour and in every kind of commodity, whilst German vessels are restricted to home produce and are only free to trade with England from their own ports. Holland finds a market for her colonial wares in Germany, and, instead of taking German manufactured goods in exchange, provides herself from England, throws English goods into Germany, and, in lieu of being, as she ought to be, the great emporium of Germany, is content to remain a mere huge English factory. The Hanse towns have also been converted into mercantile depots for English goods on German soil.

The misery consequent on the great wars, and the powerful reaction against Gallicism throughout Germany, once more caused despised religion to be reverenced in the age of philosophy. Prussia deemed herself called upon, as the inheritor of the Reformation brought about by Luther, as the principal Protestant power of Germany, to assume a prominent position in the religious movement of the time. Frederick William III., a sovereign distinguished for piety, appears, immediately after the great wars, to have deemed the conciliation of the various tended her influence over Turkey, that she would not on that account prevent Russia from asserting her "just claims," a declaration that elicited bitter complaints from the British government; and again in 1831, by countenancing the entry of the Russians into Poland, at that time in a state of insurrection.

* The reason of the backwardness displayed from the commencement by Prussia to act as the bulwark of Germany on the Lower Rhine is explained by Stein in his letters: “Hanoverian jealousy, by which the narrow-minded Castlereagh was guided, and, generally speaking, jealousy of the German ministerial clauses, as if the existence of a Mecklenburg were of greater importance to Germany than that of a powerful warlike population, alike famous in time of peace or war, presided over the settlement of the relation in which Belgium was to stand to Prussia."