the Holy Alliance than that the idea
should have proceeded from so wooden-headed a personage as the Prussian
king, who had about as much sentiment as a Memel log. Alexander was
always haunted by the thought that he had consented to the death of his
father,--that, as a Greek would have said, he was pursued by the Furies;
and he was constantly thinking of expiation, and seeking to propitiate
the Deity, and that by means not much different in spirit from those to
which savages have resort. There was much of that Tartar in him which,
according to Napoleon, you will always find when you scratch a Russian.

Whether Frederick William III. suggested the Holy Alliance may be
doubted; but there can be no doubt that he lived thoroughly up to its
spirit, which was the spirit of intense absolutism. He broke every
promise he had made to his people when he needed their aid to keep his
kingdom out of the grasp of Napoleon. He became the vindictive
persecutor of the men who had led his subjects in the war to rush to
arms, without counting the odds they had to encounter at first. He was a
despot of the old pattern, as far as a sovereign of the nineteenth
century could be one. It does not appear that he acted thus from love of
power for its own sake, to which so much of tyrannical action is due. In
most respects he was rather a favorable specimen of the despot. His
action was the consequence of circumstances, the effect of experience.
He had had two or three thorough frights, and twice he had been in
danger of losing his crown, and of seeing the extinction of that nation
which his ancestors had been at such pains to create. If exertions of
his could prevent the recurrence of such evils, they should not be
wanting. As Charles II., after the Restoration of 1660, had firmly
resolved on one thing, namely, that, come what would, he would not again
go upon his travels, so had Frederick William III., after the
restoration of his kingdom, firmly resolved that, happen what might, he
would have no more wars, and that, if he could, he would keep out of
politics. So he maintained peace, and kept down the politicians. Prussia
flourished marvellously during the last twenty-five years of his reign;
and, judging from results, his government could not have been a bad one.
Under it was created that people whose recent action has astonished the
world, and produced for it a new sensation. A comprehensive system of
education opened the paths to knowledge to e