19.

"I expect nothing satisfactory and substantial from the assembling
together, and the deliberations, of mediocre and superficial men.

"The most important thing that could be done for the preservation of
the public peace in Germany, were to _put an end to the reign of
arbitrary power, and, in the place of it, to commence a system of
constitutional law; in the place of the bureaucratists and the
democratic pamphleteers--of whom the former oppress the people by
much and bad governing, and the other excite and confound it--to
place the influence and the activity of the proprietors of the
soil_."

With these memorable words we are willing that the character of Stein, as
an English statesman in Prussia, should grave itself deep in the hearts
both of Englishmen and Prussians. We have only to add that, in his latter
years, Stein occupied himself in organizing a society at Frankfort for
publishing the original documents of German history, which are best known
to the English historical student in connexion with the name of Perz; and
that he took an active share in the business of the provincial states of
Westphalia. He was also (since 1827) member of the council of state in
Berlin; but this dignity, conferred at so late a period, seems merely to
have been intended as a sort of unavoidable compliment to a person of his
rank and standing. It certainly did not imply that his well-known English
principles were intended to assume any greater prominency in the conduct
of Prussian and German affairs than they had enjoyed since the peace.

Baron Stein died on the 29th June 1831, in his castle of Coppenberg in
Westphalia.

THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE.

We are constantly told that invention is worn out; that every thing is
exhausted, that all the intellectual treasures of modern Europe have been
dug up; and that we must look to a new era of the world, and a different
quarter of the globe, for new ideas or fresh views of thought. It must be
confessed, that if we look to some parts of our literature, there seems
too good reason for supposing that this desponding opinion is well
founded. Every thing, in some departments, does seem worked out. Poetry
appears for the time wellnigh extinguished. We have some charming ballads
from Tennyson; some touching lines from Miss Barret; but where are the
successors of Scott and Byron, of Campbell and Southey? Romance, in some
branches, has ev