t, or in fluency of elocution. And, above all, he had
his opinions. He hated and despised the bureaucratic element of the
Prussian Monarchy, but only because all his sympathies were with the
feudal element. Himself one of the founders of, and chief contributors
to, the _Berlin Political Weekly Paper_, the so-called Historical
School (a school living upon the ideas of Bonald, De Maistre, and
other writers of the first generation of French Legitimists), he
aimed at a restoration, as complete as possible, of the predominant
social position of the nobility. The King, first nobleman of his
realm, surrounded in the first instance by a splendid court of mighty
vassals, princes, dukes, and counts; in the second instance, by a
numerous and wealthy lower nobility; ruling according to his
discretion over his loyal burgesses and peasants, and thus being
himself the chief of a complete hierarchy of social ranks or castes,
each of which was to enjoy its particular privileges, and to be
separated from the others by the almost insurmountable barrier of
birth, or of a fixed, inalterable social position; the whole of these
castes, or "estates of the realm" balancing each other at the same
time so nicely in power and influence that a complete independence of
action should remain to the King--such was the _beau ideal_ which
Frederick William IV. undertook to realize, and which he is again
trying to realize at the present moment.

It took some time before the Prussian bourgeoisie, not very well
versed in theoretical questions, found out the real purport of their
King's tendency. But what they very soon found out was the fact that
he was bent upon things quite the reverse of what they wanted. Hardly
did the new King find his "gift of the gab" unfettered by his father's
death than he set about proclaiming his intentions in speeches without
number; and every speech, every act of his, went far to estrange from
him the sympathies of the middle class. He would not have cared much
for that, if it had not been for some stern and startling realities
which interrupted his poetic dreams. Alas, that romanticism is not
very quick at accounts, and that feudalism, ever since Don Quixote,
reckons without its host! Frederick William IV. partook too much of
that contempt of ready cash which ever has been the noblest
inheritance of the sons of the Crusaders. He found at his accession a
costly, although parsimoniously arranged system of government, and a
mode