important portion of his political part to play. That he has been oftener misjudged than judged, and that he is aware of this, is a fact shown distinctly by the following passage, in a letter written by him to a friend :

"It is certainly hard," says he, alluding to the calumnies propagated touching political personages in general; " and it is my fate. Throughout my life I have tried, with respect to my political and religious antagonists, to separate always the persons from the principles, and never to let the one be responsible for what I blamed in the other. This hunger and thirst for truth and justice' has often been reproached me by those of my own party as the fanaticism of impartiality. But if any one there be, who ever knew me act differently, let him come forward. In my own case, on the contrary, it has not seemed enough to discuss the public part of life, as it is exposed to every one's eye; but my personal and private existence has been called into question, and even my childhood and the religious differences of my parents have been roughly handled.* Absurd littlenesses, wilful misrepresentations, and positive lies, have been woven

* Till the age of fourteen, Radowitz was brought up by his Protestant mother in the tenets of her church. But from 1812, he returned to the faith of his father, who was a strict Catholic.

together, and ceaselessly spread, for the last few years, throughout newspapers, pamphlets, and books. It is calculated, rightly enough, that I shall not dream of occupying the public of Germany with my individual concerns, from my baptismal act up to my first officer's commission; and that gives liberty to my detractors. Certainly I shall not myself prevent these evil-famed biographers from gratifying the public with a caricature, but shall take the matter quietly, and look on in admiring wonder. Therefore, dear friend, if I will not satisfy your wish that I should defend myself, I must, of course, accept the consequences. For instance, with whom shall I quarrel, if, judging from my portraits, he believes me full of the absurd vanity of a high aristocratic origin; I, whose nobility is based upon the supposition, that probably my Hungarian ancestors followed the plough on the banks of the Marosch, and whose earliest recollection represents the obscure existence of my father exchanged for the vicissitudes of a mercantile speculation, in which his small fortune was lost! Is it, then, impossible, in Germany, to advocate the indispensibility, to a healthy State, of a strong and really aristocratic element, without being met by the ridiculous supposition that it is your own cause which you defend? No, my dear friend, I have neither reason nor disposition to be proud; but if I were so, my

pride would be to have owed fortune to no extraneous advantage, whether of family, wealth, or position; but to have gone my way hitherto alone, and dependent solely upon my own efforts. . . . .

In the equal injustice with which both have been judged in so many instances, lies another reason for the strong sympathy between the sovereign and his subject. There is, between Frederick William IV. and M. de Radowitz, a constant similarity of opinion, which is revealed to the public eye by the identity of the attacks to which both are exposed; attacks which-putting aside the question of the affections of the heart-make them, in most political occurrences, feel, as it were, together.

Above all comparisons, historical ones are the most to be avoided, because they the oftenest mislead otherwise I should feel tempted to say that, of so intimate a union between Statesman and King, as that existing between the Protestant Sovereign of Prussia and his Catholic counseller, there is scarcely another example in history, unless it may be that of the friendship which bound the Protestant Sully to the Catholic Henri Quatre.

CHAPTER XVIII.

PRUSSIA AND NORTHERN GERMANY-SCHLESWIG

HOLSTEIN AND WRANGEL.

Of all the countries of Europe, Germany is the one, to use the Irish expression, most "bothered" by its frontiers. Whilst insular England has no next-door neighbour, France none but Spain to the south-west and Germany to the north-east, Italy but Germany alone, Spain only France, Germany is surrounded by lands upon which it is, as it were, forced to lay hold, in order to prevent them from laying hold of it. Denmark to the north, Russia to the north-east, Italy to the south, France to the west, all, more or less, pre-occupy Germany, and balance the advantages of its position as a Central Power by manifold disadvantages. Whilst Austria is obliged doubly to watch upon its southern and eastern

frontiers, over its own possessions, Italy and Hungary, not to speak of Turkey, northern Germany, better situated, bounded and defended by the German Ocean and the Baltic, has but one point of contact with a neighbouring state, but that point is a sore one-Holstein.

Forming the southern frontier of Denmark, Holstein is a sort of wedge driven tightly into the side of northern Germany, breaking, as it were, the very ribs of Hanover and Mecklenburg, and forming the separation between the Baltic and the North Sea. It is backed by Schleswig, which is, in reality, what many German writers have called it—a passage-land between Germany and Denmark.

From the very earliest ages, these northern frontiers have tormented considerably the possessors of the lands which now constitute Prussia. In the ninth century, we find the Holsteiners entering into a league with Denmark to oppose the progress of Charlemagne, and in the first half of the twelfth century, the Emperor Lothario let loose "the dogs of war" by assuming what was called the Wendenland, or country of the Vandals, to be an Imperial fief, and granting it to Canute, Duke of Schleswig, son of King Eric I. of Denmark. The Wendenland, at this period, comprised the country stretching from