who, through want of attention and through subsequent
participation in the discussion on the basis of misapprehensions,
occasions further repetitions and waste of time.

The envoy from Baden, Herr von Marschall, is not without sense and
fitness for affairs, but is scrupulously careful to avoid the
responsibility of an independent opinion, and to discover in the least
dubitable matter an intermediate point of view from it may be possible
to agree with both sides, or at least to disagree with neither. If there
is no escape, he inclines, either for family reasons or because his
government is more afraid of Vienna than of Berlin, to the Austrian side
rather than to ours. Support against the Chair--as, for example, in the
matter of the order of business, upon which he is charged with a
report--I can hardly expect from him.

Our colleague from the Electorate, Herr von Trott, takes as little part
as possible in the affairs of the Diet; especially avoids reports and
committee work; and is frequently absent, making the representative from
Darmstadt his proxy. He prefers country life and hunting to
participation in assemblies, and gives the impression rather of a jovial
and portly squire than of an envoy. He confines himself to announcing
his vote, briefly and in the exact language of his instructions; and
while the latter are invariably drawn by the Minister, Hassenpflug, in
accordance with the directions received from Austria, it does not appear
to me that either Austria or the States of the Darmstadt coalition enjoy
the personal support of Herr von Trott any more than we do--an
impartiality which is rendered easy to the Hessian envoy as much by his
distaste for affairs, and I like to think by the revolt of his
essentially honorable nature against all that savors of intrigue, as by
his formerly indubitable sympathy for Prussia's interests.

We find a more inimical element in the Grand-Ducal Hessian envoy, Baron
von Muench-Bellinghausen. While this gentleman is attached from the start
to the interests of Austria by his family connections with the former
presidential envoy of the same name, his antagonism to Prussia is
considerably intensified by his strong, and I believe sincere, zeal for
the Catholic Church. In private intercourse he is a man of agreeable
manners; and as regards his official attitude, I have to this extent no
cause of complaint--that beyond the degree of reserve imposed upon him
by the anti-Prussian policy of