CHAPTER V.

HANOVER, AND THE TREATY OF THE THREE KINGS.

I HAVE travelled in nearly all parts of Germany, north and south; I have seen ultras of all kinds and colours—Radicals, Republicans, Unitarian Germans and Imperialists, Constitutionalists and Revolutionists, and men who think there is no help save in armed force; but everywhere amongst those who hate, and those who applaud him— amongst those who call him a tyrant, and those who say he understands his age-I have heard the King of Hanover praised for the one great quality, of which the want has been so sadly felt in our times-firmness.

"Ernst August is a genuine Ritter," said to me the Ban Jellacic, one day that we were speaking of Germany.

"He is a man," * there's no denying that," remarked a Leipziger doctor, with whom I fell into a discussion, and who, at the same time, abused him for being a despot. "He's a man, and knows his own mind," and the twinge with which the words left his lips and the grimace he made, added plainly: "I wish he were at the d-l."

The appearance of this inflexible monarch suffices, at once, to show you what the 'man' is, who thus imposes respect even upon those who abhor him, and who knows too well the value of popularity (commonly so-called) ever to have sought one instant to obtain it. Ernst August, the first King of Hanover, is as erect and stately as ever, and you feel that he will stand upright to the last. He is thinner than when we were used to see him in England, but his step is firm, his frame unshaken, and his eye piercing still, as its bright clear glance comes sharp and blue as steel from under the shadow of his overhanging white eyebrow. The outlines of his face in becoming sharper, show more clearly how very handsome they must have been in youth, and the broad expanse of brow, all unhidden by any hair, the high aquiline nose, and the lip, curling every now and then in witty sarcasm, beneath the well

* Schuselka, in his "Deutsche Fahrten," speaking of the letter of the King of Hanover (on the question of the foundation of the Central Power), which, in the month of July, '48, caused such dissatisfaction among the Radicals (of the Paulskirche), says: "One must admit that King Ernest August does not beat about the bush, like the wary diplomatists, but speaks the truth with a resolute uprightness peculiar to himself."

furnished snowy, long moustache, are each and all unmistakably royal features.

If there had been in Germany many sovereigns like Ernest Augustus, the year 1848 might have been less lamentable; for, I repeat it, with the exception of the countries immediately on the banks of the Rhine, revolution in Germany was indigenous nowhere, and its successes were everywhere owing to the slight resistance by which it was opposed.

When we arrived in Hanover, the preparations were then making actively for the joint and definite withdrawal of this kingdom and that of Saxony from the so-called treaty of the three kings. It is probable some of my readers may not be altogether conversant with the details of this act, which was one of the first important steps taken by any of the German sovereigns, after the dissolution of the Parliament of Frankfort, to produce a Constitution, and for that reason I will, as briefly as possible, state the circumstances of the case.

I will not here speak of the Congress of Vienna (more particularly as I must do so later) more than to observe, that already in 1814, the project of an improved system of confederation with a

more liberal constitution and judicial organization, and with greater guarantees for the rights of the subject came from Austria, Prussia, and Hanover, whose plenipotentiary, if I recollect, was Count Munster. This plan was set at nought by the opposition of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and Hesse-Darmstadt who would give up no atom of the sovereignty they had gained in the Rhein Bund: of the other smaller princes, it need only be said, that they were an embarrassment to all parties. At last, a species of confederation was established, which preserved its sovereign authority to each state, and out of which intimate union the southern countries we have mentioned were unluckily excluded. What could not be established upon any more durable grounds, was to be left to the decisions of the Diet (Bundestag). Here came the first evil. Austria and Prussia leaned towards what is commonly termed absolutism (no term can be more false, as I shall try to prove by and bye, but for the moment we will let it pass) whilst on the contrary, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, glad of an opportunity of vexing the two principal powers, and dreaming of popularity at the same time,

accorded liberal constitutions, as they are called, and which, in many instances, had no connexion whatever with the confederated constitution, nor with even the laws, and the internal system of administration of the countries where they were established.

Between 1815 and 1830, we all know what were the fruits of this organized system of confusion; and between '30 and '48 things only grew worse instead of growing better. Then came the outcry for a Constitution in Hanover; the confessional quarrels between the two religious convictions in Prussia and Bavaria; the complaints of the Protestants in Austria; the GermanCatholics, and Ronge; the weakness and hesitation shown in the affairs of Switzerland, numberless events, in short, which produced in several local assemblies in different parts of the country, proposals to reform the system of the Confederation, and which, when the Revolution of February broke out, marked the Bund as the one object for common attack. At first its existence was spared, and the new Constituent Power of Frankfort acted nominally with it; but soon, in face of the fear with which its slightest