very one; and a not less
comprehensive military system made every healthy man's services
available to the state. There never before took the field so highly
educated a force as that which has just reduced Count Bismark's policy
to practice,--not even in America. There may have been as intelligent
armies in the Union's service during our civil conflict as those which
obeyed Prince Frederick Charles and the Crown Prince of Prussia, but as
highly educated most certainly they were not.

When Friedrich von Raumer was in England, in 1835, he, at an English
dinner, gave this toast: "The King of Prussia, the greatest and best
reformer in Europe." That he was the "best reformer in Europe," we will
not insist upon,--but that he was the greatest reformer there, we have
no doubt whatever. That he was a reformer at heart, originally, no one
would pretend who knows his history. He was made one by stress of
circumstances. But having become a reformer, he did a great work, as
contemporary history shows. He would have been content to live, and
reign, and die, sovereign of just such a Prussia as he found in 1797;
but, in spite of himself, he was made to effect a mightier revolution
than even a French revolutionist of 1793 would have deemed it possible
to accomplish. His career is the liveliest illustration that we know of
the doctrine that men are the sport of circumstances.

Frederick William III. died in 1840. His son and successor, Frederick
William IV., was a man of considerable ability and a rare scholar; but
he was not up to his work, the more so that the age of revolutions
appeared again early in his reign. He might have made himself master of
all Germany in 1848, but had not the courage to act as a Prussian
sovereign should have acted. He was elected Emperor by the revolutionary
Diet at Frankfort, but refused the crown. A little later, under the
inspiration of General Radowitz, he took up such a position as we have
seen his successor fill so effectively. War with Austria seemed close at
hand, and the unity of Germany might have been brought about sixteen
years since had the Prussian monarch been equal to the crisis. As it
was, he "backed down," and Radowitz, who was a too-early Bismark, left
his place, and died at the close of 1853. The king lost his mind in
1857; and his brother William became Regent, and succeeded to the throne
in 1861, on the death of Frederick William IV.

The reign of William I. will be regarded as one of