London a conference of English
and French statesmen, to which Spain was likewise admitted, had come to an
agreement to interfere on behalf of Queen Maria II., in Portugal. When this
was made known, Bandiera, one of the chief partisans of Dom Pedro,
announced his submission. Nonetheless, Pedro's followers persevered, and on
June 26 the Junta at Oporto had to capitulate to Pedro's army.

[Sidenote: German Parliamentary essays]

[Sidenote: Schleswig-Holstein issue]

In Germany, in the meanwhile, the agitation for Parliamentary government
steadily gained ground. In Bavaria, where King Louis's open liaison with
the dancer Lola Montez had turned his subjects against him, the deputies
of the Landtag exerted their power to abolish the crown lotteries by a
unanimous vote. In Prussia, King Frederick William IV. at last issued his
long-promised summons for a united provincial Diet. A semblance of
representative government was established. It was at this time that
Frederick William became Elector of Hesse-Cassel. The agitation for a
representative government grew. On September 12, the Liberals held a
meeting at Orthenburg. Within a month the Constitutional party met at
Heppenheim, in Hesse. At length a united Prussian Parliament, called the
Landtag, was convoked at Berlin. The first question to claim the attention
of this Parliament was that of Schleswig-Holstein. The gauntlet recently
flung down to the German population of Schleswig and Holstein, by King
Christian VIII. of Denmark, was picked up not only by the anti-Danish
Holsteiners, but by the whole German nation as well. Little Schleswig, with
its 160 square miles and 400,000 inhabitants, was claimed by every German
as German borderland. King Christian at this time was failing in health.
His condition had been aggravated by the recent great fire at Copenhagen,
which, amid other costly properties, destroyed invaluable records of
Icelandic literature, including more than 2,000 unpublished manuscripts.

[Sidenote: Death of Mendelssohn]

[Sidenote: "Songs Without Words"]

An event of like international importance was the death of Felix
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, at the age of thirty-eight. He was the grandson of
the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, and the son of the gifted Lea
Solomon-Bartholdy, from whom he received his first piano lessons. At the
age of ten he joined the Singing Academy of Berlin, where a composition of
his, the "Nineteenth Psalm," was performed shortly after h