russian officials. The supreme court of judicature had maintained
itself in the high consideration it had gained since the organisation
of the last King. It was a numerous body; it included the flower of
Prussian intelligence, the greatest strength of the citizens, and the
highest culture of the nobles. The elder were trained under Cocceji,
and the younger under Carmer--judicious, upright, firm men, of great
capacity for work, of proud patriotism and independence of character,
who were not led astray by any ministerial rescript. The court
_coteries_ did not yet venture to assail these unpliable men; and it is
a merit in the King that he held a protecting hand over their
integrity. They belonged partly to citizens' families, which for many
generations had sent their sons to the lecture-rooms of the professors
of law; in the East to Frankfort and Koenigsberg, in the West to Halle
and Goettingen. Their families formed an almost hereditary aristocracy
of officials. United with them as fellow-students and friends, and
like-minded, were the best talents of the administration; also
foreigners who had entered the Prussian civil service. From this circle
had been produced all the officials, who, after the prostration of
Prussia, were active in the renovation of the State, Stein, Schoen,
Vinke, Grolmann, Sack, Merkel, and many others, presidents of the
administration, and heads of the courts of justice after 1815.

It is a pleasure in this time of insecurity to direct our attention to
the quiet labours of these trustworthy men. Many of them were strictly
trained bureaucrats, with limited ideas and feelings; on the green
table of the Board lay the ambition and labour of their whole lives.
But they, the chief judges, the administrators of the Province,
maintained faithfully and lastingly through difficult times their
consciousness of being Prussians; each of them imparted to those about
him something of the tenacious perseverance and the confident judgment
which distinguished them. Even when they were severed from the body of
their State, and were obliged to declare the law under foreign rule,
they worked on in their sphere unchanged, in the old way; accustomed to
calm self-control, they concealed in the depths of their souls the
fiery longing after their hereditary ruler, and perhaps quiet plans for
a better time.

Whoever will compare these men with some of the powerful talents of the
official class which were developed at this