is estates in Nassau. We notice this retirement and the
alleged cause of it particularly, because, as will appear in the sequel,
Stein, with all his talent, seems to have been a man of a peculiar temper,
and not so easily to be managed on many occasions as he was both willing
and able to manage others. However, whatever the cause of the resignation
might be, Frederick William had sense enough to see that these were not
times when Prussia could want the services of any man of real talent and
energy; and accordingly, (some say on the recommendation of Napoleon,) so
early as the harvest of that same year, he called the baron back and made
him prime-minister. Here was a situation worthy of a great man; Prussia,
after the battle of Jena, overthrown, prostrate, and bleeding beneath the
iron tramp of insolent France. How to convert this Prussia into the
Prussia that in a few years afterwards was destined to be a chief
instrument employed by Providence in the overthrow of the general European
tyrant--here was a problem!--one worthy of the worthiest man that the
kingdom of the Great Frederick could find; and most worthily did the Baron
von Stein execute the mission. The reforms which he boldly planned, and no
less boldly executed, in that critical year 1808, followed out as they
were by his able successor, Count Hardenberg, are sufficient to place him
in the very first rank of modern statesmen. He actually changed a nation
of serfs, by a single bloodless blow, into a free people; he did that for
Prussia, morally and socially, which Frederick the Great had done only
geographically; he caused it to rank side by side with the more civilized
and advanced, as opposed to the semi-barbarous (Russia) and stationary or
retrograde (Austria and Spain) powers of Europe. To detail at large the
important social changes thus effected in a single year by this most
energetic man, would lead us too far from our biographical purpose here,
and prevent us from making such a free use as we should desire of the
correspondence published by Von Gagern and Hormayr. We shall therefore
content ourselves with a short quotation from Mr Alison's sixth volume;
and may refer the reader, at the same time, to the more detailed and yet
succinct statement of the same matter given by Mr Russell--_Tour in
Germany_, vol. ii. p. 116.

"So clearly were his ideas formed, and so decided his conviction as
to the only means which remained of reinstating the public a