erge of destruction; political passion raised it again.

But here an account shall be given of the feelings of a German citizen
on the fall of his State. He belonged to that circle of Prussian
jurists of whom we have just spoken. What he imparts is already known
from other records, yet his honest description will find sympathy from
its judicial clearness and simplicity:--

Cristoph Wilhelm Heinrich Sethe, born 1767, deceased 1855. "_Wirklicher
Geheimer Rath_," and chief president of the Rhenish court of appeal,
descended from a great legal family in the dukedom of Cleves; his
grandfather and father had been distinguished officials of the
government; his mother was a Grolmann. The boy grew up in the
enjoyment of wealth in his father's town; at sixteen years of age his
father sent him to the university of Duisburg, and then to Halle and
Goettingen; on his return he went through the Prussian grades of service
in the government of Cleve-Mark, an excellent school. These western
provinces---not of very great extent--comprised a good portion of the
strength of the Prussian State. This firm, vigorous population clung
with warm fidelity to the house of their Princes; there was in the
cities and among the peasants, who lived as freemen on their land, much
wealth, and the High Court of Justice was one of the best in Prussia
Sethe was "_Geheimer Rath_," happily married, with his whole heart in
his home, when a gloom was thrown over his native city and his own life
by the sound of war, the march and quartering of troops, exciting
reports, and, finally, the occupation of the town by the French, who,
as it is well known, allowed the sovereignty of Prussia to continue
for some years, till the Peace of Amiens took away the last vestige
of Prussian possession. Then Sethe severed himself from his home,
and established himself in the Prussian administration of the
newly-acquired portion of Muenster.

He shall now relate himself what he experienced.[41]

"You can easily imagine, my dear children, that the departure from
Cleve was very distressing to us. It was a bitter feeling to wander in
this way from home, and leave one's native city under foreign laws and
the dominion of a foreign people.

"On 3rd October, 1803, we left. We went from Cleve to Muenster in three
days; the journey from Emmerick was extremely difficult and tedious; it
was over corduroy roads, with loose stones thrown on them."[42]

"In the beginning of our life at Mue