ountains, they
may be beneficently dispensed. What country is there that can compete
with Germany in respect of scientific culture?--and have the courts
of so many princes not contributed to this result? And in ancient
Greece was it not a similar state of things, that, as one great
element at least, produced a similar result? But I will not attempt
to discuss this subject in all its bearings. Enough, if you will
believe me, that in the arrangement of the future political state of
Germany, I do not look for a mere FARCE; while, at the same time, I
feel obliged to protest decidedly, in present circumstances at least,
against your project of uniting Germany under one or two masters."

There are many admirable points in the above letter; and after pondering
it well, no intelligent reader will doubt for a moment that the schemes of
Stein with regard to German _unity_, were not only impracticable in their
main scope, but, in some respects, of very questionable propriety. It
were necessary, however, to have had the experience of a Prussian, and the
heart of a Stein, in the year 1813, if one would fully understand how
imperatively these practical impossibilities must have presented
themselves to the earliest and patriotic minds of those days. Convinced
that the cool Hanoverian is right, we still feel inclined to sympathise
with the hot Prussian, who is in the wrong. "_Malo cum Plutone errare._"
Stein followed Alexander into Germany, witnessed the battles of Lutzen and
Bautzen, disheartening as they were, like all true Germans, undismayed:
and on the 23d August 1813, shortly after the resumption of hostilities,
we find him a second time in Prague, and writing most characteristically
as follows:--

"The spirit of the people here is by no means what it was in 1809;
and for this plain reason, that the government does nothing, and will
do nothing, to rouse it. At that time (1809) the STADIONS held the
helm, and they used every means to waken the nobler feelings of human
nature, and they attained their object. Now, at the head of affairs,
we have a cold, scheming, shallow, calculating man, who is afraid of
nothing so much as an energetic measure--loves nothing more than a
goal at the nearest possible distance from his nose--and is always
ready to help himself out of a scrape with any miserable patchwork
that may serve for the nonce. He