carefully controlled by government, were instituted; and the reformed administration, working with more unity and efficiency than before, became that imperious bureaucracy which Schön compared to the Catholic priesthood, and of which a leading member rebuked some Prussian citizens for supposing that with their " narrow private understanding" they could possibly form a judgment of the views of the government! In spite however of all reaction, the change irrevocably made by the legislation of that time was similar to that made in France by the Revolution, and caused the age before Jena to be regarded as an ancien régime. But in addition to this, a change had been made in men's minds and thoughts by the shocks of the time, which prepared the way for legislative changes which have taken place since. How unprecedented in Prussia, for instance, was the dictatorial authority wielded by Hardenberg early in 1807, by Stein in the latter part of that year and in 1808, and by Hardenberg again from 1810 onwards! Before that time in the history of Prussia we find no subject eclipsing or even approaching the King in importance. Prussia had been made what she was almost entirely by her electors and kings. In war and organisation alike all had been done by the Great Elector or Frederick William I., or Frederick the Great. But now this is suddenly changed. Everything now turns on the minister. Weak ministers are expelled by pressure put upon the king, strong ones are forced upon him. He is compelled to create a new ministerial power much greater than that of an English Prime Minister, and more like that of a Grand Vizier, and by these dictators the most comprehensive innovations are made. The loyalty of the people was not impaired by this; on the contrary, Stein and Hardenberg saved the Monarchy; but it evidently transferred the Monarchy, though safely, to a lower pedestal; it evidently prepared the way for such constitutionalism as we now see. If Another powerful impulse moved the state in the same direction. we consider the transformation of Prussia as covering the whole period between 1807 and 1813, we may consider that it was accomplished in two movements. The first was the legislative movement guided by dictatorial ministers-Stein in 1807 and 1808, Hardenberg in 1810 and 1811. The second is the great popular movement which ended in the War of Liberation. Now, while in the former, the king for the first time in Prussian history is eclipsed by his ministers, in the latter the initiative is taken out of the hands of the government altogether, and the most important step of all is taken by a parliamentary assembly. The great transition of Prussia from the French to the Russian alliance at the beginning of the year 1813 was begun and well-nigh completed without the intervention, and ostensibly against the wish, of the Prussian government. It began with Yorck's Convention of Tauroggen, which was concluded on his own responsibility, and was afterwards disavowed by the government. Then came the meeting of the Estates of East Prussia at Königsberg. In this assembly Yorck appeared and spoke openly of "beating the French wherever he should find them;" and yet the French were at this time the king's allies! The assembly then proceeded to make one of the greatest institutions of modern Prussia-they created the Landwehr. But of course they were summoned by the king, and acted under his directions? Not at all; they were summoned by Stein, and his commission did not run in the name of the King of Prussia, but in that of the Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias ! No doubt the king resumed a little later the guidance of his people. The Landwehrordnung was sanctioned by him and extended to the other pro wonder that when, a month after, Stein lay at death's door in the hotel Zum Zepter at Breslau, the king, though the Court was in the same town, would know nothing about him, and caused no inquiries to be made after his health. Parallel with this fall and reconstruction of Prussia we see the fall and reconstruction of Germany. Here too the first step is to create, so to speak, the nation. A great space had to be traversed from the time when Lessing and Herder wrote of the very virtue of patriotism with disapprobation, wondering at the same time what the feeling might be like, to the days of Arndt and Körner. And when the feeling had been awakened the difficulty of expressing it in institutions seemed to have grown greater than ever. The Confederation of the Rhine had thrown half Germany into the foreign camp. New kings had been created, all whose interests were involved in the division of Germany. At the moment of the fall of Napoleon, perhaps, with decision and good fortune, something might have been done. Stein, who is even greater in the history of Germany than he is in the history of Prussia, formed a daring plan of dethroning the princes of the Confederation of the Rhine along with their master, and in this way constituting the unity of Germany, or at least its duality under Austria and Prussia, at the same time that its independence was secured. But Metternich disappointed him. And we have witnessed since the slow and wonderful attainment of the same goal by another path. This chapter of history has commonly been thought uninviting, partly I suppose because of the intricate appearance which German history always presents from the multitude of small states, partly, perhaps, because the Germans do not write history in a dramatic or epigrammatic style. The first difficulty lies altogether on the surface; as to the second, it must be confessed that the Germans as a nation have not the art of posing like their neighbours. The French contrive to make the long ignominy and decay of Louis XV.'s reign interesting, while the Germans cannot make even the age of Stein and Hardenberg seem SO. Nor, I fear, will the two thousand judicious pages in German type, which have suggested this paper, mend the matter. German history will never be read by the novel-reading public. But that it should be read by nobody seems a pity. It is quite as instructive and important as other history. And if it does not make a good novel of plot, it makes, at least in the age we are thinking of, a very fair novel of character. It is unfortunate that the only biography of an eminent German politician of that age which is known to the English public is confessedly unsatisfactory from the political point of view. Miss Winkworth, when she translated Niebuhr's life, regretted in her preface that "the account given in it of his public career was very incomplete, and by no means one that enabled the reader to perceive the relation in which Niebuhr stood to his times." Yet Niebuhr's character is so interesting, even when a good part of it is left in shade, that two or three editions of the book have been called for. Let some one put by the side of it a portrait executed on the same scale of the other great scholar-statesman of Prussia, W. von Humboldt, the great educational reformer and founder of the University of Berlin. The life of Arndt, with its wanderings and adventures, might be made even popular. Blücher, Gneisenau, and Yorck, are striking military figures. Scharnhorst is perhaps more important than any of these, but his reserved and unimpassioned character is not much adapted for biography, at least if we may judge from the admitted failure of Klippel's attempt; but perhaps the rising historian, Max Lehmann, who promises a new life of Scharnhorst, will teach us better. The age too is rich in interesting specimens of more or less perverted character. Such are Dalberg, Prince Primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, Johannes Müller, Gentz, the first King of Würtemberg. Who, in all this assemblage of characters, holds the regal position? I think it is the proud Reichsfreiherr, Karl von Stein, greater than any by the breadth of his views and the commanding force of his character, even if we should grant that Hardenberg might claim to rival him in the sum of his achievements. Our author closes his work with an elaborate comparison between the two statesmen, in which, as was natural, and perhaps proper, in a Life of Hardenberg, somewhat more than justice is done to him, and somewhat less to Stein. The great superiority of Stein lies in the influence he exerted outside Prussia upon Germany as a whole. In 1813 it was the custom to speak of him as Emperor of Germany; and the phrase was a happy way of marking that, as our author says, he was "the first and grandest representative of the German idea." Who else could write as early as 1812 what Stein wrote to Count Münster?-"I am sorry your Excellency suspects a Prussian in me and betrays a Hanoverian in yourself. I have but one fatherland, and that is Germany; and as under the old constitution I belonged to Germany alone, and not to any part of Germany, so to Germany alone, and not to any part of it, I am devoted with my whole heart." It is the strangest ignorance which pictures this great-hearted man- -who had his life in large and simple ideas, and who has been called Germany's political Luther--merely as a successful legislator on land questions. If we made a commencement by becoming familiar with the lives of a few of these men, we should find the fog which now hides German politics from our view insensibly dissipated, and, I believe, also, we should be astonished at the richness, variety, and interest of the scene which would be disclosed. J. R. SEELEY. 1 No. 215.-VOL. XXXVI. A A LOVE'S ARROWS. "AT a league's distance from the town of Ponteille in Provence, and hard by the shrine of our Lady of Marten, there is in the midst of verdant meadows a little pool, overshadowed on all sides by branching oak-trees, and surrounded at the water's edge by a green sward so fruitful that in spring it seemeth, for the abundance of white lilies, as covered with half melted snow. Unto this fair place a damsel from out a near village once came to gather white flowers for the decking of our Lady's chapel; and while so doing saw lying in the grass a naked boy in his hair were tangled blue water-flowers, and at his side lay a bow and marvellously wrought quiver of two arrows, one tipped at the point with gold, the other with lead. These the damsel, taking up the quiver, drew out; but as she did so the gold arrow did prick her finger, and so sorely that, starting at the pain, she let fall the leaden one upon the sleeping boy. He at the touch of that arrow sprang up, and crying against her with much loathing, fled over the meadows. She followed him to overtake him, but could not, albeit she strove greatly; and soon, wearied with her running, fell upon the grass in a swoon. Here had she lain, had not a goatherd of those parts found her and brought her to the village. Thus was much woe wrought unto the damsel, for after this she never again knew any joy, nor delighted in aught, save only it were to sit waiting and watching among the lilies by the pool. By these things it seemeth that the boy was not mortal as she supposed, but rather the Demon or Spirit of Love, whom John of Dreux for his two arrows holdeth to be that same Eros of Greece."-MSS. Mus. Aix. B. 754. The story that I write of shows how Love, Or the light of Love's own eyes. From this belt of flowers the sward Footing soft as is most meet And upon this sward oak-trees Stretched their branches to the breeze, And with pleasant sound and shade When Love saw the oak tree's shade, And how soft the sward was laid, He at once did throw aside When Love tired of swimming grew, From the pool his limbs he drew, The soft turf that formed his bed And from out his hair there gleamed For the humming of the bees, And the murmurs from the trees That his bed of wild flowers shaded, Sleep o'er all his limbs to steal; Now, as chance had it, to the pool-side came |