time in the territories of
South Germany, will perceive an essential difference. There, even in
the best, there are frequently traits that are displeasing to us;
arbitrariness in their political points of view; indifference as to
whom or for what they served; a secret irony with which they consider
the petty relations of their country. They all suffer from the want of
a State which merits the love of a man. This want gives their judgment,
acute as it may be, something uncertain, unfinished, and peevish; one
does not doubt their integrity, but one feels strongly that there is a
moral instability in them which makes them like adventurers, though
learned and highly cultivated men. Undoubtedly, however, if a Prussian
once lost his love of Fatherland, he became weaker than them. Karl
Heinrich Lang is deficient in what Freidrich Gentz once had, and lost
by moral weakness.

Conscientious officials have admitted at this time the confusion of
every country, especially the North; but the Prussians may justly claim
this pre-eminence, that in the circle of their middle order, not the
most refined, but the soundest culture of that time was to be found,
not occasionally, but as a rule.

The Prussian army suffered from the same deficiencies as the politics
and administration of the state. Here also there was improvement in
many particulars, but much that was old was carefully preserved; what
once had been progress was now mischievous. This bad condition is
acknowledged; none have condemned it more strongly than the Prussian
military writers since the year 1815.

The treatment of the soldiers was still too severe; there was unworthy
parsimony in their scanty uniforms and small rations, endless was the
drilling, endless the parades, the ineradicable suffering of the
Prussian army; the man[oe]uvres had become useless "spectacle," in
which every movement was arranged and studied beforehand; incapable
officers were retained to the extreme of old age. Hardly anything had
been done to adapt the old Prussian system to the changed method of
carrying on war which had arisen in the Revolution.

The officers were still an exclusive caste, which was almost entirely
filled by the nobility; only a few not noble were in the Fusilier
Battalions of Infantry and some among the Hussars. Under Frederic II.,
during the deficiency of men in the Seven Years' War, young volunteers
of citizen origin were made officers. Then they were, at least in their
pa