range of thought and a large share of originality. Mrs. Piozzi in her happiest moments could do no more than turn off an epigram or tell a story in verse. She always lived in the region of commonplace, and although she had a quick perception of the meaning of words, a ready memory, and a turn for making the best of herself, she was on a very low level as compared with Madame de Staël. She did not even know what she could do; and in 1801 she published a book with a title that alone was enough to condemn it, and to show the defects of the mind of its authoress it was called Retrospection; or, a Review of the most striking and important Characters, Situations, and their Consequences, which the last eighteen hundred years have presented to the view of Mankind. It was in two volumes quarto, and contained upwards of a thousand pages. Whether the world really grows wiser and better may be doubtful, but there are some changes for the better which we cannot deny; and we may be thankful that at least such a book is impossible now, and that our literary ladies do not explain their views on general history in bulky quartos.

Mrs. Piozzi is not a woman, as it seems to us, who merits much posthumous blame or praise. Mr. Hayward does his best to show that she has been unjustly depreciated. Certainly the libellous epigrams that were made at the time of her second marriage were very unfair both in her case and her husband's; and there are parts in her history, such as her behaviour during Mr. Thrale's troubles, which must be admired by every one. All those also who did not quarrel with her spoke highly of her, and she attached men to her whose attachment is itself a commendation. But she had very considerable faults; and it so happens that the more we read of her own compositions, the more this unpleasantness reveals itself. As long as she is Johnson's Hetty, the kind hostess, the leader in conversation, the petted antagonist and profound admirer of Johnson, she comes before us in her best aspect. But her memoirs, her anecdotes, and her letters, show that she had defects which marred her usefulness in life, and repel us now that she is as completely gone as any of those whose portraits at Streatham she has given us in verse. She is, in short, one of those persons of whom we like to read, but whom we do not care to remember.

ART. VII.-PRUSSIA AND THE GERMAN CONFEDERA

TION.

La Prusse en 1860. Par Edmond About. Jeffs.

VERY shortly after his accession, the present King of Prussia summoned his generals round him. He told them that he had succeeded to the throne "at a moment pregnant with dangers, and with the perspective of struggles in which he might stand in need of their devotion. . . . . Let us not deceive ourselves. If I do not succeed in averting the struggle, it must be a struggle in which we must conquer, if we do not wish to be annihilated." There was no doubt, at the time these words were uttered, and there is no doubt now, as to whom they referred. Every one knew that they pointed to the Emperor of the French. We may wonder at their explicitness, but we cannot wonder at the distrust which they freely express. Prussia and her kings have no great reason to love the dynasty now ruling France. "The Bourbons and the Bonapartes are natural enemies," said the ex-King of the Two Sicilies the other day. The Hohenzollerns and the Bonapartes are natural enemies, might be said as truly. If in France itself, in Spain, and in Naples, the descendants of Hugh Capet were disseized of their territories and crowns, to make way for the vassals of Napoleon I., the nephew of Frederick the Great had scarcely less ignominious humiliations to resent from the same quarter. He was deceived and despoiled. Drawn away, in the hope of territorial aggrandisement and supremacy in Germany, from the alliance of kings into a partnership, galling to royal susceptibilities, with a parvenu and adventurer, Prussia found herself in a few years plundered of her territory, and reduced not merely to political nullity, but to the most abject dependence on France. Instead of becoming the sovereign of Northern Germany, she was in the course of a few years reduced from a first-rate to a thirdrate power, deprived of more than half her possessions, and of more than six millions of her subjects. Smarting under the sense of defeat, as well as under that of loss, obliged to submit to the coarse insults which spared neither misfortune nor sex, Frederick William III., after the defeat of Jena had been consummated in the treaty of Tilsit, occupied a position far more intolerable than that of a dethroned king. He was the mere puppet of a more powerful sovereign, obliged, like a feudal vassal, to afford him aids in war of men and money. The semblance of power simply irritated the sense of impotency. The

Prussian people, who do not always share the sentiments of their monarchs, shared their hatred of Napoleon and the French people. The unrestrained animosity and savage Vandalism in which this feeling found expression, during the occupation of Paris by the Allied troops, is well known.

Half a century of pacific relations has done little to efface their hatred. When war broke out in 1859 between Austria and France, the statesmen of Prussia had difficulty in checking the unmeasured hostility of the Prussian court and army. This dislike and distrust are not altogether due to the bitter memories of the past. A circumspect regard to future contingencies justifies them. The policy of the present Emperor of the French, however subtly pursued, has nothing original in it. It is in all essential particulars the exact reproduction of that followed by the founder of his line. A campaign in Italy laid the foundation of the dictatorship exercised by Napoleon I. over Europe, and transferred the limits of France to the other side of the Alps. The detachment of Prussia from Germany, which, in pamphlets and personal interviews, has been recommended by the present Emperor, led, more than half a century ago, to the overthrow of the German nationality, the foundation of the Confederacy of the Rhine under French protection, and the degradation of Prussia herself to a position inferior in material resources, and morally far lower, than that from which the genius of the first Frederick William and the second Frederick had raised her. The grounds of former conquest and of natural boundaries, on which Sardinia has been deprived of Savoy and Nice, would apply with equal if not greater strength to the seizure, by force or fraud, of that undying object of French desire the left bank of the Rhine. Taking these things, and some others of a similar character, into account, it is not surprising that the present King of Prussia should see in the events of the last two years the commencement of enterprises such as those which, towards the close of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth centuries, set Europe in a blaze. Napoleon I., like Napoleon III., attacked Austria by way of Italy, and by sowing, as Napoleon III. appears to have tried to sow, dissension between it and Prussia.

The effect of the policy which the Emperor of the French has hitherto pursued has been to draw into closer union the two rival powers of Germany, to put a period to their jealousies and counter-intrigues, to suppress, if not to extinguish, their mutual hostilities, to defer, if not to reconcile, their internal dissensions. Its author has thus unwittingly played into the hands of English policy. Our ablest diplomatists have always seen in the existence of a strong and united Germany the only

effectual barrier in the way of the two aggressive empires of Europe-France and Russia. The scheme of European conquest, and of divided empire, which the first Napoleon proposed to Alexander I., represents the permanent ambition and desires of both countries. The accident of a mild and humane sovereign in either may interrupt, but cannot permanently dispel, them. A league which should give France carte blanche in the west and Russia in the east of Europe, which should begin by allowing the former empire the Rhine, and the latter the Danubian principalities, is no inconceivable thing.

The fluttering of the German dovecotes occasioned by the interview of the present Napoleon and Alexander at Stuttgart, in September 1857, shows that this fear is still a living fear. The exaggerated apprehensions which this meeting, probably one of curiosity or courtesy only, occasioned, found expression in the wildest speculations, and the most ingenious historical parallels based on the interviews half a century earlier between another Napoleon and another Alexander at Tilsit and Erfurth.

The fear of such a league and understanding, which only a great power occupying the plains of central Europe could effectually defeat, has made English statesmen anxious always to cultivate the friendship and strengthen the resources of Austria. With this view, they have always striven to induce Prussia to draw closer the bonds which unite it with the House of Hapsburg. The revulsion felt by England towards the domestic policy pursued by the Court of Vienna has not been able to shake the conviction felt here of the necessity of her existence and strength to the peace of Europe and the world.

Lord John Russell gave distinct utterance to this feeling in the debate of the 7th of March last. "Austria," he emphatically pronounced, "is a great, regular, and conservative power in the middle of Europe, that tends to preserve many of the political and social advantages which Europe enjoys;' adding, that it was his wish, "as it should be that of every Englishman, that Austria may so reconcile the various parts of her monarchy as to satisfy the wishes of her subjects, and maintain the place of a great power in Europe."

To the same conviction we must refer the course pursued by Lord Palmerston during the Hungarian revolution; his passiveness when a word of recognition might have saved the historic rights and liberties of Hungary is only intelligible on this hypothesis.

Austria was supposed to be necessary to the European balance of power; and Austria, stripped of Hungary, would not, it was imagined, be sufficient for that end. The result

shows this idea to have been a mistake; the Austrian monarchy was weakened, not strengthened, by its unjust usurpation and conquest. The question then supposed to have been settled in its favour, whether it would live or die, again presents itself. Its dissolution and disappearance from the map of Europe seem at least as likely as its revival and consolidation into one strong empire. Granted, however, a strong Austria, it could be of little avail in the interests of the balance of power, unless associated with a strong Prussia. A divided Germany, so far from being a barrier against aggression on the part of France or of Russia, would be a positive invitation to, and provocative of, it. For this reason England has always striven to reduce the dualism of these two states, and to bring them to some good understanding.

M. de Ségur truly stated the fact, and the motive of it, in the French Corps Législatif, a few days since, during the debate on the Address. "England," he said, "wishes to surround us with great states, and to unify and Germanise. England is every where hostile to the policy of France," which is, to divide and weaken, to sow dissensions, and to profit by them.

The system of constitutional government on which, since the publication of the Rescript of October, Austria has entered, with whatever of sincerity may be supposed to spring from the conviction that her only chance of life lies in that direction, diminishes the objections which many Englishmen feel towards the Austrian alliance, and makes her less reluctant than they otherwise would be to urge on the more liberal German powers a policy of coöperation and joint action. Unhappily this policy is more easily recommended by spectators than acted upon by the principals to it. Two great powers, each with an ambition of its own, with great differences of intellectual and moral culture, with traditions, aspirations, and interests not altogether coinciding, must, in the absence of a common danger, almost of necessity be rivals. Each is anxious for ascendency in Germany, and to that end is on the look-out to steal a march whenever it can upon the other, and to thwart every design formed and neutralise every advantage gained by its competitor. The history of Prussia, from the time when she ceased to be a minor German state, subject, like the other minor German states, to imperial influences, is the history of contest by war and diplomacy, by force and intrigue, with Austria. The reign of Frederick the Great commenced with the attack upon the possessions of Maria Theresa. The two Silesian and the Seven-Years Wars, and the league known as the Fürstenbund, were its leading events. The royal panic which the outbreak of the first French Revolution occasioned did indeed drive the successor of