CHAPTER VI.

Mr Egerton glanced over the pile of letters placed beside him, and first he tore up some, scarcely read, and threw them into the waste-basket. Public men have such odd out-of-the-way letters that their waste-baskets are never empty: letters from amateur financiers proposing new ways to pay off the National Debt; letters from America, (never free!) asking for autographs; letters from fond mothers in country villages, recommending some miracle of a son for a place in the king's service; letters from freethinkers in reproof of bigotry; letters from bigots in reproof of freethinking; letters signed Brutus Redivivus, containing the agreeable information that the writer has a dagger for tyrants, if the Danish claims are not forthwith adjusted; letters signed Matilda or Caroline, stating that Caroline or Matilda has seen the public man's portrait at the Exhibition, and that a heart sensible to its attractions may be found at No. -- Piccadilly; letters from beggars, impostors, monomaniacs, speculators, jobbers--all food for the waste-basket.

From the correspondence thus winnowed, Mr Egerton first selected those on business, which he put methodically together in one division of his pocket-book; and secondly, those of a private nature, which he as carefully put into another. Of these last there were but three--one from his steward, one from Harley L'Estrange, one from Randal Leslie. It was his custom to answer his correspondence at his office; and to his office, a few minutes afterwards, he slowly took his way. Many a passenger turned back to look again at the firm figure, which, despite the hot summer day, was buttoned up to the throat; and the black frock-coat thus worn, well became the erect air, and the deep full chest of the handsome senator. When he entered Parliament Street, Audley Egerton was joined by one of his colleagues, also on his way to the cares of office.

After a few observations on the last debate, this gentleman said--

"By the way, can you dine with me next Saturday, to meet Lansmere? He comes up to town to vote for us on Monday."

"I had asked some people to dine with me," answered Egerton, "but I will put them off. I see Lord Lansmere too seldom, to miss any occasion to meet a man whom I respect so much."

"So seldom! True, he is very little in town; but why don't you go and see him in the country? Good shooting--pleasant old-fashioned house."

"My dear Westbourne, his house is '_nimium vicina Cremonæ_,' close to a borough in which I have been burned in effigy."

"Ha--ha--yes--I remember you first came into Parliament for that snug little place; but Lansmere himself never found fault with your votes, did he?"

"He behaved very handsomely, and said he had not presumed to consider me his mouthpiece; and then, too, I am so intimate with L'Estrange."

"Is that queer fellow ever coming back to England?"

"He comes, generally every year, for a few days, just to see his father and mother, and then goes back to the Continent."

"I never meet him."

"He comes in September or October, when you, of course, are not in town, and it is in town that the Lansmeres meet him."

"Why does not he go to them?"

"A man in England but once a year, and for a few days, has so much to do in London, I suppose."

"Is he as amusing as ever?"

Egerton nodded.

"So distinguished as he might be!" continued Lord Westbourne.

"So distinguished as he is!" said Egerton formally; "an officer selected for praise, even in such fields as Quatre Bras and Waterloo; a scholar, too, of the finest taste; and as an accomplished gentleman, matchless!"

"I like to hear one man praise another so warmly in these ill-natured days," answered Lord Westbourne. "But still, though L'Estrange is doubtless all you say, don't you think he rather wastes his life--living abroad?"

"And trying to be happy, Westbourne? Are you sure it is not we who waste our lives? But I can't stay to hear your answer. Here we are at the door of my prison."

"On Saturday, then?"

"On Saturday. Good day."

For the next hour, or more, Mr Egerton was engaged on the affairs of the state. He then snatched an interval of leisure, (while awaiting a report, which he had instructed a clerk to make him,) in order to reply to his letters. Those on public business were soon despatched; and throwing his replies aside, to be sealed by a subordinate hand, he drew out the letters which he had put apart as private.

He attended first to that of his steward: the steward's letter was long, the reply was contained in three lines. Pitt himself was scarcely more negligent of his private interests and concerns than Audley Egerton--yet, withal, Audley Egerton was said by his enemies to be an egotist.

The next letter he wrote was to Randal, and that, though longer, was far from prolix: it ran thus--

"Dear Mr Leslie,--I appreciate your delicacy in consulting me, whether you should accept Frank Hazeldean's invitation to call at the Hall. Since you are asked, I can see no objection to it. I should be sorry if you appeared to force yourself there; and for the rest, as a general rule, I think a young man who has his own way to make in life had better avoid all intimacy with those of his own age who have no kindred objects nor congenial pursuits.

"As soon as this visit is paid, I wish you to come to London. The report I receive of your progress at Eton renders it unnecessary, in my judgment, that you should return there. If your father has no objection, I propose that you should go to Oxford at the ensuing term. Meanwhile, I have engaged a gentleman who is a fellow of Baliol, to read with you; he is of opinion, judging only by your high repute at Eton, that you may at once obtain a scholarship in that college. If you do so, I shall look upon your career in life as assured.

"Your affectionate friend, and sincere well-wisher,

A. E."

The reader will remark that, in this letter, there is a certain tone of formality. Mr Egerton does not call his _protegé_ "dear Randal," as would seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, "Dear Mr Leslie." He hints, also, that the boy has his own way to make in life. Is this meant to guard against too sanguine notions of inheritance, which his generosity may have excited?

The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind from the others. It was long, and full of such little scraps of news and gossip as may interest friends in a foreign land; it was written gaily, and as with a wish to cheer his friend; you could see that it was a reply to a melancholy letter; and in the whole tone and spirit there was an affection, even to tenderness, of which those who most liked Audley Egerton would have scarcely supposed him capable. Yet, notwithstanding, there was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the fine tact of a woman would detect. It had not that _abandon_, that hearty self-outpouring, which you might expect would characterise the letters of two such friends, who had been boys at school together, and which did breathe indeed in all the abrupt rambling sentences of his correspondent. But where was the evidence of the constraint? Egerton is off-hand enough where his pen runs glibly through paragraphs that relate to others; it is simply that he says nothing about himself--that he avoids all reference to the inner world of sentiment and feeling. But perhaps, after all, the man has no sentiment and feeling! How can you expect that a steady personage in practical life, whose mornings are spent in Downing Street, and whose nights are consumed in watching Government bills through a committee, can write in the same style as an idle dreamer amidst the pines of Ravenna or on the banks of Como.

Audley had just finished this epistle, such as it was, when the attendant in waiting announced the arrival of a deputation from a provincial trading town, the members of which deputation he had appointed to meet at two o'clock. There was no office in London at which deputations were kept waiting less than at that over which Mr Egerton presided.

The deputation entered--some score or so of middle-aged, comfortable-looking persons, who nevertheless had their grievance--and considered their own interests, and those of the country, menaced by a certain clause in a bill brought in by Mr Egerton.

The Mayor of the town was the chief spokesman, and he spoke well--but in a style to which the dignified official was not accustomed. It was a slap-dash style--unceremonious, free, and easy--an American style. And, indeed, there was something altogether in the appearance and bearing of the Mayor which savoured of residence in the Great Republic. He was a very handsome man, but with a look sharp and domineering--the look of a man who did not care a straw for president or monarch, and who enjoyed the liberty to speak his mind, and "wallop his own nigger!"

His fellow-burghers evidently regarded him with great respect; and Mr Egerton had penetration enough to perceive that Mr Mayor must be a rich man, as well as an eloquent one, to have overcome those impressions of soreness or jealousy which his tone was calculated to create in the self-love of his equals.

Mr Egerton was far too wise to be easily offended by mere manner; and, though he stared somewhat haughtily when he found his observations actually pooh-poohed, he was not above being convinced. There was much sense and much justice in Mr Mayor's arguments, and the statesman civilly promised to take them into full consideration.

He then bowed out the deputation; but scarcely had the door closed before it opened again, and Mr Mayor presented himself alone, saying aloud to his companions in the passage, "I forgot something I had to say to Mr Egerton; wait below for me."

"Well, Mr Mayor," said Audley, pointing to a seat, "what else would you suggest?"

The Mayor looked round to see that the door was closed; and then, drawing his chair close to Mr Egerton's, laid his forefinger on that gentleman's arm, and said, "I think I speak to a man of the world, sir."

Mr Egerton bowed, and made no reply by word, but he gently removed his arm from the touch of the forefinger.

MR MAYOR.--"You observe, sir, that I did not ask the members whom we return to Parliament to accompany us. Do better without 'em. You know they are both in Opposition--out-and-outers."

MR EGERTON.--"It is a misfortune which the Government cannot remember, when the question is whether the trade of the town itself is to be served or injured."

MR MAYOR.--"Well, I guess you speak handsome, sir. But you'd be glad to have two members to support Ministers after the next election."

MR EGERTON, smiling.--"Unquestionably, Mr Mayor."

MR MAYOR.--"And I can do it, Mr Egerton. I may say I have the town in my pocket; so I ought, I spend a great deal of money in it. Now, you see, Mr Egerton, I have passed a part of my life in a land of liberty--the United States--and I come to the point when I speak to a man of the world. I'm a man of the world myself, sir. And if so be the Government will do something for me, why, I'll do something for the Government. Two votes for a free and independent town like ours--that's something, isn't it?"

MR EGERTON, taken by surprise.--"Really, I--"

MR MAYOR, advancing his chair still nearer, and interrupting the official.--"No nonsense, you see, on one side or the other. The fact is that I've taken it into my head that I should be knighted. You may well look surprised, Mr Egerton--trumpery thing enough, I dare say; still, every man has his weakness, and I should like to be Sir Richard. Well, if you can get me made Sir Richard, you may just name your two members for the next election--that is, if they belong to your own set, enlightened men, up to the times. That's speaking fair and manful, isn't it?"

MR EGERTON, drawing himself up.--"I am at a loss to guess why you should select me, sir, for this very extraordinary proposition."

MR MAYOR, nodding good-humouredly.--"Why, you see, I don't go all along with the Government; you're the best of the bunch. And maybe you'd like to strengthen your own party. This is quite between you and me, you understand; honour's a jewel!"

MR EGERTON, with great gravity.--"Sir, I am obliged by your good opinion; but I agree with my colleagues in all the great questions that affect the government of the country, and--"

MR MAYOR, interrupting him.--"Ah, of course, you must say so; very right. But I guess things would go differently if you were Prime Minister. However, I have another reason for speaking to you about my little job. You see you were member for Lansmere once, and I think you came in but by two majority, eh?"

MR EGERTON.--"I know nothing of the particulars of that election; I was not present."

MR MAYOR.--"No; but, luckily for you, two relatives of mine were, and they voted for you. Two votes, and you came in by two! Since then, you have got into very snug quarters here, and I think we have a claim on you--"

MR EGERTON.--"Sir, I acknowledge no such claim; I was and am a stranger to Lansmere; and, if the electors did me the honour to return me to Parliament, it was in compliment rather to--"

MR MAYOR, again interrupting the official.--"Rather to Lord Lansmere, you were going to say; unconstitutional doctrine that, I fancy. Peer of the realm. But, never mind, I know the world; and I'd ask Lord Lansmere to do my affair for me, only I hear he is as proud as Lucifer."

MR EGERTON, in great disgust, and settling his papers before him.--"Sir, it is not in my department to recommend to his Majesty candidates for the honour of knighthood, and it is still less in my department to make bargains for seats in Parliament."

MR MAYOR.--"Oh, if that's the case, you'll excuse me; I don't know much of the etiquette in these matters. But I thought that, if I put two seats in your hands, for your own friends, you might contrive to take the affair into your department, whatever it was. But, since you say you agree with your colleagues, perhaps it comes to the same thing. Now, you must not suppose I want to sell the town, and that I can change and chop my politics for my own purpose. No such thing! I don't like the sitting members; I'm all for progressing, but they go _too_ much a-head for me; and, since the Government is disposed to move a little, why I'd as lief support them as not. But, in common gratitude, you see, (added the Mayor, coaxingly,) I ought to be knighted! I can keep up the dignity, and do credit to his Majesty."

MR EGERTON, without looking up from his papers.--"I can only refer you, sir, to the proper quarter."

MR MAYOR, impatiently.--"Proper quarter! Well, since there is so much humbug in this old country of ours, that one must go through all the forms and get at the job regularly, just tell me whom I ought to go to."

MR EGERTON, beginning to be amused as well as indignant.--"If you want a knighthood, Mr Mayor, you must ask the Prime Minister; if you want to give the Government information relative to seats in Parliament, you must introduce yourself to Mr ---- the Secretary of the Treasury."

MR MAYOR.--"And if I go to the last chap, what do you think he'll say?"

MR EGERTON, the amusement preponderating over the indignation.--"He will say, I suppose, that you must not put the thing in the light in which you have put it to me; that the Government will be very proud to have the confidence of yourself and your brother electors; and that a gentleman like you, in the proud position of Mayor, may well hope to be knighted on some fitting occasion. But that you must not talk about the knighthood just at present, and must confine yourself to converting the unfortunate political opinions of the town."

MR MAYOR.--"Well, I guess that chap there would want to do me! Not quite so green, Mr Egerton. Perhaps I'd better go at once to the fountain-head. How d'ye think the Premier would take it?"

MR EGERTON, the indignation preponderating over the amusement.--"Probably just as I am about to do."

Mr Egerton rang the bell; the attendant appeared.

"Show Mr Mayor the way out," said the Minister.

The Mayor turned round sharply, and his face was purple. He walked straight to the door; but, suffering the attendant to precede him along the corridor, he came back with a rapid stride, and, clenching his hands, and, with a voice thick with passion, cried, "Some day or other I will make you smart for this, as sure as my name's Dick Avenel!"

"Avenel!" repeated Egerton, recoiling, "Avenel!"

But the Mayor was gone.

Audley fell into a deep and musing reverie which seemed gloomy, and lasted till the attendant announced that the horses were at the door.

He then looked up, still abstractedly, and saw his letter to Harley L'Estrange open on the table. He drew it towards him, and wrote, "A man has just left me, who calls himself Aven --" in the middle of the name his pen stopped. "No, no," muttered the writer, "what folly to reopen the old wounds there," and he carefully erased the words.

Audley Egerton did not ride in the Park that day, as was his wont, but dismissed his groom; and, turning his horse's head towards Westminster Bridge, took his solitary way into the country. He rode at first slowly, as if in thought; then fast, as if trying to escape from thought. He was later than usual at the House that evening, and he looked pale and fatigued. But he had to speak, and he spoke well.

THE RISE, POWER, AND POLITICS OF PRUSSIA.[1]

If there is such a thing in diplomacy as a natural ally, Prussia is the natural ally of England. Each possesses exactly what the other wants--the power of Prussia consisting in an immense army, the power of England in an unrivalled fleet: for though the British troops have shown themselves at least equal to any troops in the world, the genius of the nation looks chiefly to naval pre-eminence; and though, in the course of time, Prussia may be in possession of naval honours, nothing can be clearer than that its present strength depends on its soldiery.

The close alliance of England with Prussia is now a century old. We find the great Lord Chatham taking the most open interest in the successes of Frederick II., and establishing the principle that the independence of Prussia is essential to the balance of Europe. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the north of Germany was divided among a cluster of petty sovereignties--of all forms of a national system the surest to foster political intrigues, to invite the intermeddling of foreigners, the one to offer the strongest inducements to invasion, and to provide the feeblest means of defence. The formidable power of France, within twenty miles of England, must always fix the eye of the English statesman; and no more essential operation for our national tranquillity could be conceived than the solid establishment of a kingdom on the northern frontier of France, which might make that proverbially impetuous and ambitious nation aware, that an attempt to assault England could not be made without incurring the hazard of an assault on her own most exposed frontier.

But another power had arisen to render the balance of Europe still more precarious. Russia, at the beginning of the century, known but as a land of semi-barbarism, had suddenly started into a massive force, which threatened the absorption of Germany. Possessing the highest advantages for a great military empire, with harbours commanding the North, a population of sixty millions, a territory almost boundless and almost unassailable, and a government which, under all the changes of individual character in its princes, has retained in its policy the same character of continual progress, of restless interference in European politics, and of bold ambition--Russia must, in all the views of the English statesman, assume an interest of the most pressing order. To interpose an iron barrier to the ambition of Russia necessarily became the principle of English policy, and the English politician naturally looked for that barrier in the vigorous administration and steady strength of the resources of Prussia.

The eighteenth century may be called the Century of Sovereigns. There was no period, before or since, in which so many remarkable personages sat on the thrones of Europe--William III., Louis XIV., Charles XII., the Czar Peter, Maria Theresa of Austria, Catherine II., and Frederick II. of Prussia--each possessed either of great intellectual or great political qualities; all capable of distinction, if they had been born in the humbler conditions of mankind; but all developing, in the duties and labours of thrones, those qualities in a degree which made them, for their day, the great _impulses_ of Europe, and which have placed them in an immovable rank among the high recollections of history.

But, to the Englishman, whether politician or philosopher, Prussia is the most important, from its position, the nature of its connexion with our country, the singularity of its origin, and the especial dependence of its early advance to sovereignty on the vigour of an individual mind.

Gibbon remarks that the oldest royal genealogy of Europe scarcely ascends to the eighth century. The genealogy of the Prussian throne, whether by the zeal of the herald, or the truth of the historian, nearly reaches that cloudy period. Its pedigree is dubiously traced up to the founder of the great Swabian family of Hohenzollern, of whom the first supposed ancestor was a Count Thalasso of Zollern. The family then either fell into obscurity, or rested in contentment with its ancestral possessions, until the thirteenth century, when it started on the national eye as the Burgraves of Nurnberg. But it again slumbered for eight generations, until the difficulties of the Emperor Sigismund drove him to apply to the resources of the family, then probably grown rich, as the chief personages of an opulent German community. The service was repaid by the Viceroyalty of Brandenburg, and the subsequent donation of the actual territory, with the title of Elector, and the office of archchamberlain of the empire.

The imperial gratitude probably continued to be reminded of its duties by fresh loans, for the electorate continued to receive frequent additions of territory, until, early in the seventeenth century, the annexation of the duchy of Prussia placed the Elector in an imposing rank among the dependant princes of the Continent. In the middle of this century a man of distinguished ability, fortunately for Prussia, ascended the electoral throne. Germany was then ravaged by the memorable Thirty Years' War. Frederick the Great afterwards expressed the embarrassments of the new reign in a few pithy words, as was his custom: "My great ancestor," said this graphic describer, "was a prince without territory, an elector without power, and an ally without a friend."

But talent and time are the true elements of success in every condition of life. By economy the Elector restored his finances; by common sense he reclaimed his half-savage subjects; and by sound policy he continued to augment his dominions, without doing violence to his neighbours. The peace of Westphalia, (1648,) which established the imperial system, gave him the additional importance attached to the possession of the archbishopric of Magdeburg, of Halberstadt, and of the actual sovereignty of ducal Prussia, hitherto held as a Polish fief.

But those were the victories of peace; he was at length forced to exhibit his qualities for war. In 1674, as a prince of the empire, he was compelled to furnish his contingent to its army against France. Louis XIV., in revenge, let loose the Swedes in Pomerania to invade Brandenburg. The reputation of the Swedish troops had risen to the highest rank in the Thirty Years' War, and they were regarded as all but invincible. The Prussian Elector, justly alarmed at this new peril of his dominions, appealed to his allies. But German alliances (in those days at least) were slippery, and German succours are habitually slow. Wearied by their delays, the Elector determined to act for himself. Breaking up from Franconia, he transferred his little army of eight thousand men suddenly to Magdeburg. The Swedes, encamped on the Havel, and contemptuous of Prussian strategy, took no trouble to ascertain his movements. The whole expedition was conducted with equal vigour and dexterity. On his arrival in Magdeburg, the gates were kept shut for four-and-twenty hours: thus all intelligence to the enemy was cut off. At nightfall he sallied forth; by daybreak he reached and assaulted the Swedish headquarters, took their baggage and cannon, and hunted the troops from post to post until their dispersion was total.

This battle was one of the instances in which the most important results have followed from slight events. The battle would have been in later times scarcely more than an affair of advanced guards, for the Swedes had but eight thousand, and the Prussians engaged were but five thousand five hundred. But, to have beaten the most distinguished soldiery in Europe, to have surprised the most disciplined, and to have gained the victory with inferior numbers, instantly drew the eyes of Europe on the Elector. His dominions were subjected to no further insult; the character of the Prussian army was raised; and Prussia made the first actual stride to northern supremacy.

This eminent man died in 1688, after a career which earned the panegyric even of his fastidious descendant, Frederick II., who thus described him, almost a hundred years after:--

"He possessed all the qualities which can make a man great, and Providence afforded him abundant opportunities of developing them. He gave proofs of prudence at an age when youth, in general, exhibits nothing but errors. He never abused the heroic virtues, but applied his valour to the defence of his dominions, and the assistance of his allies. He had a sound judgment, which made him a great statesman; and was active and affable, which made him a good sovereign. His soul was the seat of virtue; prosperity could not inflate, nor adversity depress it. He was the restorer of his country, the arbiter of his equals, and the founder of the power of Brandenburg. _His life was his panegyric._"

Frederick, the eldest son of the great elector, by his marriage with a sister of George I. then Elector of Hanover, became connected with English politics; sent six thousand men to the assistance of the Prince of Orange in his invasion of England; joined the Allies, with twenty thousand men, in revenging the havoc of the Palatinate; and, in the Grand Alliance of 1691, sent fifteen thousand troops to join the army of William III.

But Prussia was continually progressive, and in 1700 she was to make that advance in rank of which nations are as ambitious as their princes. In this year Prussia obtained from the Emperor the long-coveted title of kingdom; and the monarch, as Frederick I., took his place among European sovereigns. He died in 1713, and was succeeded by the prince-royal, Frederick-William. The character of the deceased monarch was, long after, given with epigrammatic contemptuousness by Frederick II.

"In person short and deformed, with a haughty manner and a commonplace countenance, violent from temper, mild from carelessness, he confounded vanities with acts of greatness, and was fonder of show than of utility. He sold the blood of his subjects to England and Holland, as the Tartars sell their cattle to the Podolian butchers for slaughter; he oppressed the poor to make the rich fatter still. He wished to pledge the royal domains to buy the Pitt diamond; and he sold to the Allies twenty thousand men, to have it said that he kept thirty thousand."

Royal extravagance is never pardoned, and the memory of this princely spendthrift prepared popularity for his rigid successor. The _Memoirs of the Margravine of Bareith_ have thrown that successor into ridicule; and it must be acknowledged, that his early acts were calculated to throw all the courtiers of Europe into mingled astonishment and indignation. Immediately on his accession, he ordered the grand-marshal of the palace to bring him the list of the royal establishment. The king took a pen, and crossed out the whole. The grand-marshal, in horror at this sweeping style of reform, lost his speech, and fled from the royal presence. Meeting an officer in the antechamber, the latter, seeing his countenance of consternation, asked what had happened. The grand-marshal showed him the list, and the officer translated it for the benefit of the levée--"Gentlemen, our good master is dead, and the new king sends you all to the d--l!"

The twenty-six trumpeters, who supplied the place of conversation at the royal dinners, were scattered among the regiments. The hundred Swiss--the decorated slaves, whom Switzerland, with all her boast of freedom, was in the habit of sending to play the menial to the European sovereigns--were dismissed to do duty in the ranks of the line. The hoards of pearls and diamonds, and gold and silver plate, which it had been the pride and the folly of the late king to amass, were sold to pay his debts and to raise troops.

The old court had been overrun with French fashions, the French language--everything French. The king set about reforming those anti-national propensities: he dressed the regimental provosts, or army floggers and executioners, in the full French costume, to render it ridiculous; the embroidered coats and huge wigs of his privy councillors and chamberlains he ordered to be worn by the court fool on gala days.

But the discipline of the Prussian army was the peculiar distinction of this singular reign. Of all European nations, Prussia is the one to which an army is the most important. The exposed condition of a long and irregular territory, wholly without a natural frontier, with neither mountain range nor bordering river for its protection, and surrounded by warlike and powerful nations, required an army, to keep it in existence. The Alps or Pyrenees, the Rhine and the Danube, the Dniester and the Po, might protect their several countries from invasion; but the levels of Prussia required a force always on foot, prompt and prepared. To _frontierless_ Prussia a powerful army was as peculiarly essential as a Royal Navy is to the British _Isles_. In all the early difficulties of his predecessor's debt, the king had raised the Prussian army to upwards of forty thousand men; and, before he died, his muster-roll amounted to nearly eighty thousand of the finest troops on the Continent. It gives a curious contrast of the nature of belligerency in the nineteenth century, to know that the Prussian army now reckons three hundred thousand men, and that, on the first rumour of war, it would probably number half-a-million.

The new school of finance makes inquiries of this kind important; for since every country must be prepared to defend itself, and troops require to be paid, the whole question of national safety depends on the national force. The Manchester financiers tell us that reduction is the true secret of strength, and that fleets and armies are only provocatives to war. The older school held, that to be prepared for war was the best security for peace; that the reduction which extinguished the national force was only an invitation to insult; and that it was a wiser policy to give the soldier his pay for our protection, than to give an invader every shilling we were worth in the shape of plunder. Frederick-William was of the old school; and, by showing that he was always prepared for war, he secured peace, even in the most quarrelsome of all countries, Germany, through a reign of twenty-seven years. The organisation of the Prussian army was even then a phenomenon in Europe: its provision, its government, its recruiting, and, above all, its manoeuvring, attracted universal admiration, and doubled the impression of its numbers on the general mind.

These facts have an interest beyond their mere effect at the time; they are the testimonials of talent, evidences of the power of mind, encouragements to original conception, substantial declarations that men should always try to invigorate, improve, and advance inventions, however apparently perfect. There is always a field beyond.

Why a German duchy was suffered thus to rise into European influence--to extend from a province into a territory, now containing sixteen millions of souls, and to change from a dependent electorate into a kingdom, now acting as the barrier of Northern Germany against the gigantic monarchy of St Petersburg--is a question which ought to be asked by the politician, and which may well excite the study of the philosopher.

The true value of history consists in developing _principles_. Memoirs and biographies, the anecdotes of vigorous minds, and the narratives of leading events, all have their obvious value; but history has a distinction of its own. It is more than a tissue of striking recollections; it is superior to a fine arrangement of facts; it is the spirit of great facts, a _system_ displaying the _science_ of influential things.

Events are, of course, its material, but it is only as the materials of architecture furnish the means of erecting the palace or the temple: the mind of the architect must supply the beauty and grandeur of the edifice. Without that constructive genius, history is only a compilation.

It is certainly in no superstition, that we strongly incline to account for the rise of Prussia in the necessity of a protection for Protestantism in Northern Germany. The whole tenor of its annals substantiates the conception. Prussia, at an early period, felt a singular sympathy with the Protestantism of Germany. The especial scene of persecution was Poland, where neither royal compact nor popular declaration was able to secure the faith of the Scriptures from the outrages of Romanism. The Treaty of Oliva, in 1660, had, like the Edict of Nantes, been the charter of Protestantism; but, like the Edict, it had been broken, and the life of the Polish Protestant was a scene of suffering. The "Great Elector" had signalised his Christianity, and perhaps raised his country, by giving protection to the sufferers. His descendant, Frederick-William, followed his honourable example. When the Starost Umruh, in 1715, was sentenced to have his tongue cut out, and to be beheaded, for his Protestant opinions, he fled to Prussia, and was protected by Frederick-William. The Diet of Grodno commenced a persecution by declaring the Polish Protestants to have forfeited both their civil and religious privileges. Frederick-William answered this act of infidelity and tyranny by a royal remonstrance to the diet, and by a letter to the King of England, advocating the persecuted cause. In the Treaty of Stockholm, in 1720, he inserted a stipulation, binding the Swedish Government to make common cause with the Protestants of Germany. In Western Germany, persecution had long exhibited its irrational policy, and exercised its cruel power. At Heidelberg, Popish advisers and confessors had poisoned the mind of the Elector, and acts of violence had taken place. The Protestants, in their distress, applied to Prussia. The King, in conjunction with the British monarch, and the Elector of Hesse, adopted their defence; issuing, at the same time, the effective menace that, if the persecution in the Palatinate were not stopped, he would shut up every Romish chapel, convent, and institution, and sequestrate every dollar of their revenue in Prussia, while the persecution lasted.

The same impulse acted throughout the century. Frederick II. was an infidel: the national policy continued unchanged. As a Voltairist, he was an ostentatious advocate of toleration, which, though in both Frederick and his teacher the work of the scoffer, yet produced the effect of forbidding all religious tyranny. Even the war for the possession of Silesia, though difficult to be explained in its question of right, had the result of weakening the Popish influence in Germany. Maria-Theresa was the prop of Popery, while Frederick II. was universally regarded as the champion of Protestantism; and his final success, by enfeebling the supremacy of the empress, showed that a kingdom of Protestantism possessed the means of resisting an empire of Popery hitherto supposed irresistible. If Prussia had been crushed in that contest, the _prestige_ of Popery would again have risen to its old height in Germany, Protestantism would unquestionably have felt the blow to its foundations, and the probable consequence would have been to throw the Continent at the feet of Rome.

Frederick the Great was born on the 24th of January 1712, in the palace at Berlin. At his baptism, the sponsors were at least sufficiently numerous and stately; they were the Emperor Charles VI., the Dowager-empress, the Czar Peter, the States-general of Holland, the Canton of Berne, the Electant Prince of Hanover, and the Dowager-duchess of Mecklenburg.

Frederick was born Prince of Prussia and Orange; but after the cession of Orange to France, by the Peace of Utrecht, the name was given up, though the Crown of Prussia retained the title and the arms.

The popular feeling, on this occasion, was connected with a simple yet curious circumstance. An American Aloe, which had been forty-four years in the royal garden, suddenly threw out a profusion of blossoms. Thousands flocked to see this fine production of nature, which, on a stem thirty-one feet high, exhibited 7277 blossoms! The multitude gave it an almost mystic meaning, and conceived the plant (which, in all this profusion of beauty, was decaying) to be emblematic of the failing health of the old king, and the new prospects of honour under his grandson. Poems and pictures of the Aloe were spread through the kingdom. The omen was as imaginative as one of the poetic superstitions of Greece, and the imagination was realised.

The education of the future possessor of a sceptre is an important topic. In Germany the education of the higher orders generally embraces a sort of encyclopædia of accomplishments. The young heir to the throne thus learned music and painting, in addition to mathematics and languages. In music he became a proficient, and with his favourite instrument, the flute, could sustain his part in an orchestra. But, the chief object of his education, as that of all the German princes, being military, he learned all of the art of war that could be taught; the perfection of the art he was yet to learn in the field, and give evidence of his acquirement only in his memorable victories.

One misfortune of this education possessed and perverted him through life. Germany was, in literature, but a province of France. The licentiousness of French sentiment had tempted the rising generation to abandon the manly feelings of the Reformers. It is to the honour of our country that the principles of true religion, like those of true liberty, then found their defence within her borders; and in the existing, and still darker, period of German infidelity, the battle is still fought by the theology of England.

Adversity seems essential to the education of all great princes. Frederick was not without his share of this stern pupillage. The eccentricities of his royal father, his own waywardness, and the roughness of court discipline, produced continual collisions in the royal family, and the prince remained for some years in a kind of honourable exile from Berlin. During this period, however, he cultivated his powerful understanding to its height; but made the singular mistake of believing that he was born for a hermit, a sentimentalist, and a writer of French verses. In this fantastic spirit, he gave his immediate friends names from Greece and Rome; and was surrounded by Hephæstion, Diophanes, Cæsarion, and Quintus Icilius. Even the place of his retirement, Rheinsberg, was transformed into Remusberg, to meet a tradition that Remus was not killed by Romulus, but, flying from Rome, had settled in the spot which was afterwards to teach sentiment and solitude to the Prince of Prussia.

Those are traits worth remembering in the history of human nature. Who could have conceived the most daring of warriors, the most subtle of politicians, and the most ambitious of kings, in the writer of letters such as these?--

"My house, indeed, is not a place for those who are fond of noisy pleasures; but are not tranquillity, quiet, and the search for truth, to be preferred to the giddy and turbulent diversions of this world?

"On the 25th I am going to Amaltheu, my beloved garden at Ruppin. I am quite impatient to see again my vines, my cherries, and my melons; there, free from all useless cares, I shall live entirely for myself. My whole soul is now intent on philosophy. It renders me incomparable services, and I am deeply indebted to it. My spirit is less agitated by impetuous emotions. I repress the first working of my passions, and I never make a choice until I have maturely considered it."

All his letters are in the same strain of studious quiet, of steady self-control, and of systematic love of retirement. He sometimes even turns enthusiast, and he thus writes to Voltaire, _then_ known chiefly as the author of the _Henriade_--(his worse celebrity, as the impugner of all religion, was still at a distance.) In a letter, in 1738, he addresses the Frenchman in this rapturous effusion:--

"At Rheinsberg, to be perfectly happy, we want only a Voltaire. But, though you live far from us, still you are in our midst. Your portrait adorns my library; it hangs over the bookcase which contains our Golden Fleece, immediately above your works, and opposite to the place where I generally sit, that I may always have it in my view. I might almost say, that your picture is to me as the statue of Memnon, which, when the sun's rays fell on it, emitted harmonious sounds, and imparted inspiration to the mind of every one who looked upon it."

In another letter he writes--

"In pagan antiquity, men offered to the gods the first fruits of the harvest and of the vintage.... In the Romish church, they devote not only the firstborn, not only the younger sons, but whole kingdoms, as we see in the instance of St Louis, who renounced his in favour of the Virgin Mary. For my part, I have no first fruits of the earth, no children, and no kingdom to devote; but I devote to you the first fruits of my muse in the year 1739. Were I a pagan, I would address you by the name of Apollo; were I a Papist, I might have chosen you for my patron saint, or my confessor; but, being none of these, I am content to admire you as a philosopher, to love you as a poet, and to esteem you as a friend."

But this romance was soon to be exchanged for reality; the elegancies of royal idleness were to be forgotten in the sound of cannon, and the fictions of a pampered fancy were to be thrown into the shade by the vicissitudes of one of the most sanguinary struggles that Europe had ever seen.

In 1740, Frederick had ascended the throne. He was at Potsdam, and confined to his chamber by illness, when the death of the Emperor Charles was announced to him. This event broke up the peace of Germany.

The Emperor, Charles VI., having no issue after a marriage of four years, established a new law of succession, known as the Pragmatic Sanction. The heirship of Austria had hitherto been limited to males; but, by the new law, the undivided monarchy was to devolve first to his own daughters, or, if they should not be living at the time of his death, to the daughters of his elder brother Joseph, Electresses of Saxony and Bavaria, and so on, always to the nearest relatives.

The death of the Emperor obviously threatened to involve all Europe, and especially Germany, in convulsion; for the mere publication of the Pragmatic Sanction, in 1724, had produced counter declarations from no less than three princes of the empire, who regarded their rights as invaded. The Elector of Bavaria, who was married to a daughter of the Emperor Joseph I., founded a claim to the Austrian dominions on the will of Ferdinand I.; France was disposed to enter into an alliance with Prussia; Sweden and Russia would have been inevitably involved in the war. And it was of this complication of events that the young Prussian monarch took advantage to make an assault upon Austria. For one hundred years Prussia had complained of the loss of Silesia. Her successive kings had severally impeached its seizure by Austria, and the Great Elector had still earlier bequeathed the recovery of the province to the gallantry, or the good fortune, of his successors. Frederick, now at the head of a powerful army, with a full treasury, and seeing an approaching contest for the possession of Austria itself, regarded this as a favourable moment for the recovery of his ancestral territory.

Frederick, having now completed all his preparations, sent an envoy to Vienna, to offer his alliance to Maria-Theresa, and his vote to her husband at the election of emperor, provided she would give up Silesia. But knowing the contempt with which the Austrian cabinet regarded the minor princes of Germany, and also knowing the advantage of promptitude, where the object is possession, he at once set his army in motion for the Silesian frontier. His proposal was, as he had foreseen, rejected; and on its rejection, without a moment's delay, he rushed over the frontier. He found, as he had expected, the Austrian government wholly unprepared. The whole disposable force of Austria, for the defence of Silesia, amounted to 3000 men. The invading army amounted to 28,000. Breslau the capital, Glogau the principal fortress, every town, speedily fell before him. In a note to his friend Jordan, who had attempted to dissuade him from the enterprise, he wrote, in a mixture of scoffing and exultation--

"My gentle M. Jordan, my kind, my mild, my peace-loving M. Jordan, I acquaint your serenity that Silesia is as good as conquered. I prepare you for most important plans, and announce to you the greatest luck that the womb of fortune ever produced. For the present this must be enough for you. Be my Cicero in defending my enterprise; in its execution I will be your Cæsar."

We now advert to the distinguished public servant whose correspondence throws the principal light on this important period of our foreign policy--the British envoy to the court of Berlin.

Andrew Mitchell was born in Edinburgh in 1708, son of one of the ministers of St Giles's, king's chaplain for Scotland. His mother, Margaret Cunningham, was a descendant of Lord Glencairn. Mitchell adopted the law as his profession, was admitted to the Middle Temple, and was called to the English bar in 1738. Besides a knowledge of the Scotch law, he was a man of general and rather elegant acquirement, having left among his papers observations on the Ciceronian philosophy, on the chief European histories, on morals, models, statues, and classic objects in general. He was also a member of the Royal Society.

Mitchell was evidently either sustained by active interest, or an opinion of his talents; for on the appointment of the Marquis of Tweeddale to the secretaryship for Scotland, he fixed on Mitchell as his undersecretary. In 1747, he was elected member for the county of Aberdeen. In 1756, he was appointed as British representative at the court of Frederick II.

In the more decorous style of modern diplomacy, we can seldom find examples of the court-candour with which the royal personages of the last age spoke of each other. George II. called Frederick-William "my brother the corporal." Frederick-William called George II. "my brother the dancing-master." Of course those opinions made their way to the last ears which ought to have heard them, and they left stings. But the necessities of the time overcame the bitterness of the sarcasms. Some of the letters of the elder Horace Walpole, Sir Robert's brother, who had been ambassador at Paris and the Hague, then the chief scenes of foreign diplomacy, probably expressed the chief feeling of English public men in his day, as they certainly were soon embodied in their policy. Of Frederick II. he says,--

"I know the character of that prince. I know how little he is to be trusted, and I would not have trusted him without good security for the execution of his engagements.... I need not tell you that the house of Brandenburg is a rising house. The economy of the late king, the spirit of discipline he introduced into his army, the ambition, talents, and active genius of the present monarch, must render that house a powerful friend or formidable enemy."

He gives an equally decisive opinion of the Austrian policy--

"I apprehend that the principal object of the court of Vienna will be to distract, divide, and _devour_ the Prussian dominions. Their pride, their vengeance, and, above all, their _bigotry_ will naturally lead them to destroy a _Protestant_ power that has dared to offend them."

At length it was ascertained that a private negotiation had been commenced between Austria and France, the result of which must expose the Electoral dominions to invasion by France. An alliance with Prussia was immediately concluded. The account subsequently given by Thiébault, in his _Memoirs of the Prussian Court_, gives a strong impression of Mitchell's manliness and intelligence:--

"Sir Andrew Mitchell, Knight of the Order of the Garter, [a mistake for the Bath,] had been for several years the English ambassador at Berlin, when I first arrived there. Some time, however, elapsed before I had the least acquaintance with him, not only because it was little to be expected that Englishmen should be desirous of the society of Frenchmen, but also because Sir Andrew Mitchell was of the number of those meritorious characters who stand in no need of perpetual society for existence, and have the philosophy to prefer being occasionally alone. When he first arrived in Berlin, he had caused the persons who necessarily invited him to their houses considerable perplexity; for he played at no game of cards, so that his hosts constantly said,--'What shall we do with the Englishman, who never plays at cards?' In a few days, however, the contest was, who should withhold himself from the card-table, and have the advantage of conversing with a man in whom they had discovered every requisite to afford the highest pleasure in colloquial intercourse. In reality, his understanding was no less admirable than the virtues of his character. Of this I cannot give a more substantial proof, than by observing that he was united in the strictest bonds of friendship with the author of _L'Esprit des Loix_."

Some of the shrewd _bons-mots_ of the diplomatic Scot are given by the Frenchman. On one occasion, when the English mail had three times been due, the king said to him at the levée--"Have you not the spleen, M. Mitchell, when the mail is thus delayed?" The reply was,--"No, Sire, not when it is delayed, but often enough when it duly arrives."

The English cabinet having promised to send a fleet to the Baltic, to prevent the Russians from sending troops against the king, and the fleet not appearing, Frederick was chagrined; at length he ceased to invite the envoy to the royal table. One day some of the servants, meeting him, asked,--"Is it dinner-time, M. Mitchell?" The significant retort was,--"Gentlemen, no fleet, no dinner." This was told to Frederick, and the invitations were renewed.

The next _bon-mot_ is happier still. After the taking of Port Mahon, and the retreat of the unfortunate Admiral Byng, the king, meeting the envoy, said,--"You have made a bad beginning, M. Mitchell; your trial of Admiral Byng is but a bad plaster for the disease; you have made an unlucky campaign." "Sire," observed Mitchell, "we hope, with God's assistance, to make a better one next year."

"With God's assistance, sir! I did not know that you had such an ally," said the king.

"We hope we have, Sire; and he is the _only one_ of our allies that costs us nothing," was the pungent reply.

In the latter portion of the war against Napoleon, it was the custom to send British officers to attend the headquarters of the Allies, and diplomatists frequently moved along with the armies. But the instance of Mitchell's moving along with the Prussian monarch was, we believe, the first example of the kind. On this subject, we have a lively letter from the Earl of Holdernesse, then Secretary of State to the envoy:--

"Dear Sir,--I heartily wish you health and success in the new trade you are going to undertake. However, do not grow too much a soldier, and set a bad precedent for the rest of your black brethren of the ink-bottle. Observation is our business, not fighting. Remember, if you do get a knock of the pate, _vous en emporterez la peine, et l'on dira--Que diable y avoit-il à faire_. Yet I would not advise you to follow the steps of the minister of Mayence at Dettingen, who, during the time of action, came up to Lord Granville's coach, crying out, '_Je proteste contre toute violence_.'

"I can find no trace in the office books of any particular allowance made to Foreign Ministers for such sort of expeditions; but I am persuaded I shall adjust it easily with the Duke of Newcastle. Once more, adieu. Our constant toast now here is, 'Success to the King of Prussia.' He grows vastly popular among us. For my part, I always add a gulp more to my old friend Mitchell."

A letter from the envoy, addressed to the King of Prussia, makes the formal request that he may be allowed to follow the headquarters--a permission which was immediately conceded by the king. The object of this request, (suggested by the English Ministry,) was twofold--to have an intelligent observer of the politics of Prussia on the spot; and to supply George II. with anecdotes of war, for which he conceived himself to have a peculiar talent; and on which subject the despatches of the envoy were always read by him with peculiar interest.

The envoy was not long without material. Before he left Berlin, he had the following despatch to write to the Earl of Holdernesse--

"My Lord,--This morning, about seven o'clock, Monsieur Oppen, an officer in the Guards, arrived here from the Prussian army. He had no letters, only a scrap of paper without date, which he was directed to deliver to the queen-mother, in which was written with a pencil, in the king's own hand, that his troops had beaten the Austrians, _platte couture_, that he reckoned his loss about two thousand, and that of the Austrians at four thousand men."

This was a hard-fought but indecisive action. The Austrians, under Marshal Browne, were the assailants; and the engagement continued from morning till past midday, when they retreated; but they numbered two-thirds more than the Prussians, their force being nearly seventy thousand to about forty thousand.

But a more important success immediately followed. The Saxon army, amounting to sixteen thousand, had been surrounded in their fortified camp at Pirna; the fortifications were so strong that the only hope of reducing them was by famine. To the universal astonishment, they suddenly quitted this impregnable position, and marched into a defile, where they could neither advance nor retreat. The king offered them conditions, which they accepted; and Mitchell, who had waited at Berlin only for the royal permission to join the army, arrived just in time to see the surrender; and what was more curious still, the quiet transfer of their allegiance to the Prussian service. He thus writes--

"_October 21, 1756._

"On Sunday the 17th, the Saxon troops, preceded by their general officers, crossed the Elbe.... Thence they marched into a plain in the neighbourhood, and, after passing between two battalions of Prussian Guards, they were received by the battalions of the Prince of Prussia's regiments, drawn up on the right and left. They were then formed into a hollow square, and had the articles of war read, and the military oath administered to them, in the presence of Prince Maurice of Anhalt-Dessau, or of Prince Ferdinand, the King of Prussia's brother. The soldiers were all armed; but the officers, almost to a man, refused to enter into the Prussian service.

"The whole Saxon army consisted of sixteen thousand, of which three thousand were horse and dragoons. The soldiers are extremely well-looking, mostly young men, and do not seem to have suffered for want of provisions during the blockade of five weeks. The cavalry have suffered more--many of their horses are ruined."

But we are not to suppose that this association with the mighty of the earth, and these exhibitions of capitulating armies were without their drawbacks. The Prussian king's politics were always subtle, the English cabinet was already tottering, and the campaign was already prolonged into winter. The envoy's correspondence at length sinks into complaint, and his description of his harassed life might make a man shrink from the honours of travelling diplomacy. He writes in November from Seidlitz--

"I am here in a very awkward situation--quite out of my element; and though I have great reason to be satisfied with the King of Prussia's manner of treating me, I wish I was at Berlin again, or rather in England, notwithstanding the absurd speeches that I should hear in parliament.

"The Prussian camp is no place of pleasure. Neither convenience nor luxury dwell here. You are well provided with everything, _if_ you bring it along with you. I find I must increase my equipage, or _starve_. _All my family are like spectres._ It is true I am fed at the king's table, because he desired me to leave my equipage at Dresden. The Duke of Newcastle has this _encouraging_ paragraph in his letter: 'I will forward your demands for the expenses of your journey, whenever you send them over in a _proper manner_ to my Lord Holdernesse.' I have spent a great deal of money, and have _hardly_ the necessaries of life, and _none_ of its comforts."

Correspondence of this intimate kind gives us a true view of that life which the world in general sees so gilded and glittering. It thus has a value superior to even its historical interest. It tells the humbler conditions of life to be content with their fate; and perhaps demonstrates that, like the traveller among mountains, the higher man goes, the more slippery is his path, and the more stormy his atmosphere. The Secretary of State thus writes:--

"_November, 1766._

"Mr Pitt [Chatham] has been laid up with a severe fit of the gout ever since his nomination to office, which has greatly retarded business. I think his opinions on foreign affairs, _now he is in place_, are exactly the same with mine, however different they were some time ago. _Tempora mutantur et nos, &c._--I hope you will never find that maxim applicable to your old friend in Arlington Street. I knew long ago of some _private letters_ written to you by the Duke of Newcastle. You were in the right not to discover a secret intrusted to you; but though--for reasons you know--I bore this from _him_, such matters must cease for the future with _others_. I therefore insist that I may know directly if any other person in the Administration offers to correspond with you. While I remain in business, I will do the duty of my office _myself_, and without submitting to those disagreeable interruptions I have met with from others; nor will I henceforward be led by persons of my own age, and less experience.

"In short, dear Mitchell, if I stay in, I must now have my share of the cake; and if you hear I continue, depend upon it I have succeeded in what I think just and reasonable pretensions. A volume would not explain to you the transactions of these last six weeks. We have five Administrations in one day, and none existing at night.

"The parliament will produce a motley scene next week; you are happy to be out of the scrape."

The next campaign was one of still greater political perplexity, and of still more desperate fighting. It was signalised by the then unheard-of number of four pitched battles; but the French war has since accustomed history to more ruinous and more frequent conflicts. The first engagement was the battle of Prague, thus hastily sketched in a flying despatch to Lord Holdernesse:--

"_May 6._

"I have the honour to acquaint your lordship that this day, a little before ten o'clock in the morning, a general engagement began between the Prussian and Austrian armies, which lasted till half an hour past two in the afternoon. The fire of the artillery and small arms was dreadful; but I can yet give no account of particulars on either side. All we know is, that the left of the Prussians, commanded by the king, attacked the right of the Austrians, and, after a very obstinate resistance, drove them from the field of battle. The Prussian hussars and cavalry are now in full pursuit of them, and the right wing of the Austrians are now retiring towards the Zasawa. The right of the Prussians attacked the left of the Austrians, have likewise defeated them, and drove them towards the Moldan. A great part of their infantry have thrown themselves into Prague.

"The place where this action happened is in the high grounds on the other side of Prague. The King of Prussia's army, after the junction with Marshal Schwerin, might be seventy or eighty thousand men; and that of the Austrians upwards of one hundred thousand--the deserters say one hundred and fifty thousand.

"I can say nothing of the loss on either side, which must be considerable. But the whole Prussian army are now in tears for the loss of Marshal Schwerin, one of the greatest officers this, or perhaps any country, has produced, and one of the best of men. The King of Prussia is well, but greatly afflicted for the loss of Marshal Schwerin."

This victory cost a terrible sacrifice of human life. The victors had eighteen thousand men _hors-de-combat_; the vanquished had twenty-four thousand killed, wounded, and taken. The struggle was long doubtful. At one period of the day, the Prussian infantry, moving through a defile, recoiled from the showers of ball which swept the head of the defile; the Marshal rushed forward to the front, and, taking a standard from its bearer, led back the column, and charged the enemy. In this charge the gallant old man was struck by a ball, and fell. He was seventy-two.

This battle was useless, for all its fruits were lost immediately after; but in a military sense it was justifiable, for it was fought to prevent the junction of Marshal Daun with General Browne, whose army protected Prague. Its effects in England, however, were greatly to increase the popular feeling in favour of Frederick. A letter from Lord Holdernesse gives a strong picture of the public excitement:--

"_May 20, 1757._

"Dear Mitchell,--A fishing-boat despatched by Colonel Yorke, (Sir Joseph,) brought us, last night, the news of the great and glorious victory obtained by the King of Prussia, near Prague, on the 6th inst., which fortunate event has filled the Court and the whole nation with the highest joy, and raised the admiration we already had of his Prussian Majesty's heroism to the highest pitch. Women and children are singing his praises; the most frantic marks of joy appear in the public streets: he is, in short, become the idol of the people. It only remains that we make a proper use of those advantages, and neither suffer ourselves to be elated beyond bounds, or to lose precious moments."

But, from the beginning, the struggle was unequal between Austria and Prussia. Nothing but a miracle could make a country then but of five millions vanquish a country of thirty; and the prodigious rapidity with which the Austrian armies were recruited after the severest losses, made perpetual battles actually necessary to keep them at bay. The Prussians had blockaded Prague. An Austrian force of forty-two thousand, or upwards, was advancing to raise the blockade; and Frederick, with his usual promptitude, rushed to meet it on its march, with thirty-two thousand. The armies met at Kaurzim, (better known as Kolin.) The battle began at noon, and was carried into night. The Prussians attacked: the Austrian positions were too strong for even the impetuosity and the perseverance of their brave assailants. The Prussians, after driving them from two heights, were ascending the _third_, when, from some mistake, their flank was exposed. The Austrian cavalry, then the finest on the Continent, took instant advantage of the misfortune, charged, and threw the whole movement into confusion. The battle was lost; and though the king retained the honour of the day by resting that night on the field, the result was unequivocal, in a retrograde march next day, and the raising of the blockade of Prague.

This battle diminished his army by thirteen thousand men! The king exposed himself with almost desperation. At last his staff remonstrated with him on his gallant obstinacy, and one of his officers even exclaimed, "Does your Majesty mean to storm those batteries alone?"

Frederick was now in the deepest distress. The Austrian hussars had advanced to the gates of Berlin, and even levied a contribution on the city. The scandalous convention by which the Hanoverian army laid down its arms, let loose its French assailants; and Prussia was about to be crushed by a weight of force then unexampled in European hostilities. On this occasion the envoy speaks in the spirit of a man who saw no hope for the king, but to save himself by a negotiation in which he must concede everything, or take his chance of an honourable death in the field. But he strikingly reminds the British Cabinet of the probable consequences of disaster to Prussia.

"If the King of Prussia should be ruined, or obliged, from necessity, to throw himself into the arms of France, (which he has no inclination to do,) my duty obliges me to put your lordship in mind what the situation of England will be next year, without a single friend on the Continent to resist the whole undiverted power of France, instigated by the malice of the house of Austria, against which too early and too vigorous preparations cannot be made, and I most heartily wish they may be effectual.

"I have but _one_ imagination which comforts me, which arises from the _insatiable ambition_ of the French. They have already ruined a great part of Germany and reduced the house of Brandenburg; they are at this moment masters of Germany, and have the Empress-Queen almost as much in their power as they have the King of Prussia. Now, it is not consistent with common sense to leave the house of Austria possessed of a greater degree of power than it ever had, and without a rival in the empire. I therefore flatter myself they will find some pretence to save the King of Prussia, which may embroil them with their new ally, and give a breathing-time to England."

The British envoy, sagacious as he certainly was, here adopted the common error of conceiving that the safety of England depended on her Continental allies. The cry has been repeated in every war in which England has been subsequently engaged; and the British diplomatist at foreign courts has habitually employed his ingenuity in the elaborate effort to warn us that the national existence depended at one time on the triumph of Prussia; at another, of Austria; or, at another, of Spain. All these are follies. The whole Continent, not merely alienated from us, but combined against us, was not able to shake the strength of England, during the last and bloodiest of all wars, urged by the last and bloodiest of all ambitions. In this foolish spirit, it has been echoed from one desponding party to another, that England was saved from ruin by the march from Moscow, then by the battle of Leipzig, then by the battle of Waterloo. England would have survived, if Napoleon had grasped every province of Prussia, if Leipzig had been a field of German massacre, and if Waterloo had only exhibited the bravery without the fortune of the British army. This style of talking is trifling and pusillanimous--it exhibits an utter forgetfulness of history, and an utter ignorance of the actual capacities of the country. England, if true to herself, is unconquerable, and might look on Continental battles with no more personal consideration of the consequences than if they were battles in the clouds. Still, it will fully be admitted, that our Continental alliances ought to be scrupulously sustained; that, in the event of war with any of the Continental powers, it must be of importance to have as few enemies, and as many friends as we can; and that there can be no more short-sighted sense of the true interests of England than insult to foreign thrones, under the shallow pretext of forwarding the privileges of the people. Monarchs are the natural allies of a monarchy--rebels are the natural enemies of all government; and the attempt to create liberty on the Continent, by encouraging the absurdities of the rabble, is only to waste the noble influence of England in the most hopeless of all projects, and to degrade the national character by the abuse of the national principles.

The proverbial uncertainty of war was now about to be vividly illustrated by a new phase of Frederick's varied career. The French army, under the Prince Soubise, had poured into the centre of Germany in great force, and Marshal Keith, a gallant Scot, distinguished in the service of Prussia, was sent to check their irruption. The result was one of the most extraordinary victories on record. Frederick had arrived at Rosbach with but eighteen thousand men; the French and Imperialists, amounting to sixty thousand, made sure of his capture. It was even said that the Prince de Soubise had already sent a courier to Paris announcing it, and the ruin of the whole army. The French officers, in the spirit of their nation, actually scoffed at the idea of war with so small a kingdom as Prussia. They said "it was doing Monsieur le Marquis de Brandenbourg too much honour to carry on a _sort_ of war with him."

On the 6th of November, Soubise advanced; the King then formed his plan of attack. It was to fall on the enemy before they had time to form. The general of cavalry, Seydlitz, was to turn the enemy's horse, and fall on their infantry in the act of formation. The two armies moved parallel to each other, until Seydlitz had turned the enemy's right unseen. The Prussian infantry were in movement after him; but seeing, with the quick eye of a thorough soldier, a favourable moment, he galloped in front of his squadrons, threw up his meerschaum in the air, as the signal for attack, and plunged into the enemy's columns. Two Austrian cuirassier regiments and two French battalions fought stoutly, but they were overwhelmed. All thenceforth was confusion. Though the king's infantry had scarcely been engaged, the enemy's infantry had been driven together in a mass, and, on nightfall, had broken up. By six in the evening the victory was complete. Six thousand prisoners were taken, with five generals and three hundred officers. The Allied army lost, on the whole, ten thousand men; the Prussians about four hundred in killed and wounded. They took seventy guns, fifteen standards, &c.

This victory spread universal exultation through Germany. It was scarcely to be called a German defeat, for the weight of the action fell on the French. It was regarded as a trial of strength between the German and the Frenchman. The victory made the king a National champion.

Many years after the battle, the inhabitants of the vicinity erected a pillar as its memorial. In the disastrous days of Prussia in our time, Napoleon, after surveying the scene of the battle, ordered the pillar to be conveyed to Paris. But, on the day before the first entrance of the Allies into Paris, in 1814, the veterans of the Invalides threw the pillar into the Seine, that it might not be restored to the Prussians. After the victory of Leipzig, however, an iron column was placed on the site of the old memorial.

The victory gave occasion to one of Frederick's _bons-mots_. The conversation at table turned on the comparative style of living among the German princes; the king pronounced that of the Prince Hildburg-Hausen to be the most magnificent, "for," said he, "he keeps thirty thousand _runners_." (The prince had commanded the German troops who were beaten along with Soubise.)

But all was vicissitude in this campaign. While the king was triumphing in one quarter, he was all but ruined in another. The Duke of Bevern, commanding in Silesia, was attacked by a force so overpowering that the province was soon in the hands of the Austrians. Their purpose was now to fall upon the king, and extinguish him. Frederick, in this knowledge, made an appeal to the loyalty of his generals; and, declaring that he had no alternative but victory or death, offered to give his dismission to any officer who was unwilling to follow him farther. The whole levée burst into protestations of fidelity; and the king marched to fight the Austrians at Leuthen, under the command of Prince Charles of Lorraine, assisted by the most distinguished of their generals, Marshal Daun. But this was the battle of despair. In the king's last speech to his officers, he said--"Should I fall, and not be able to remunerate the services which you have rendered me, the country must do it. Now, go to the camp, and repeat to the regiments what I have said to you."

On the morning of the 5th, at daybreak, the Prussians moved. On their march they fell in with cavalry pushed forward under the well-known General Wostitz. The Austrians were instantly overwhelmed, and Wostitz, furious at his misfortune, rushing into the midst of the Prussian cavalry, received fourteen wounds, of which he died two days after.

Among the prisoners was a deserter, a Frenchman. The king questioned him, "Why did you leave me?" "The fact is," answered the deserter, "things were going on very badly with us." "Come, come," replied Frederick, probably amused by the fellow's nonchalance in a moment of such peril to himself, "let us fight another battle to-day. If I am beaten, we shall desert together to-morrow." He then sent him back to join his old regiment.

The king's manoeuvre, on his advance, was so dexterous that, even to the experienced eye of Daun, he appeared to be in retreat. "The Prussians are off," said he to Prince Charles; "let us not disturb them." The cautious marshal always practised the maxim of "a bridge of gold for a retreating enemy." But the hasty Prince resolved on a battle. He was speedily to feel the hazard of such an antagonist as Frederick. The manoeuvre was intended to throw the whole force of the Prussians on the Austrian left wing. It succeeded perfectly. The wing was turned, and, after a brief resistance, was driven from the field. The village of Leuthen, the centre of their position, was then stormed; but the Austrian artillery was powerful, and every attack cost great slaughter. The battle was now for a while doubtful--but it was at last decided by a charge of cavalry. The Austrian general, Luchesi, had attempted to fall with his troopers on the Prussian flank; but, in the act, he was unexpectedly charged by the main body of the Prussian cavalry. Luchesi fell, his cavalry were broken, and the battle was at an end. The rest was the capture of the separate posts of the Austrians, and the pursuit of the right wing, which, though not engaged, had disbanded. This success was unexampled. The Prussians took twenty thousand prisoners, one hundred and sixteen guns, fifty-one pair of colours, and four thousand baggage waggons. The Austrians left seven thousand four hundred men on the field. The victors lost, in killed and wounded, six thousand men. This victory produced a prodigious effect on the public opinion of Europe. To have won two pitched battles, with inferior numbers, and in the midst of political difficulties, with all his conquests torn from him, and his capital insulted and laid under contribution, appeared like the work of romance. The king was, from that moment, the first of European generals. He was the invincible Frederick the Great in German lips; the Protestant hero, by a still more honourable title, in England. Germany then first felt that she had poets, and a theme for poetry. Bards sprang up on every side, and the Prussian king's exploits were sung in palace, cottage, and bivouac. The war-songs of Glein exhibited the true fire of poetry, and form stirring and noble records of the time to this day.

Mitchell's correspondence, on this important occasion, was exulting. On the 9th December, he writes--

"My Lord,--This moment a chasseur has arrived from Silesia, with the news of a complete victory obtained by his Prussian Majesty on the 5th, between Neumarkt and Lissa. The chasseur was present in, and despatched from the field of battle.... In a letter from the king to his brother, Prince Henry, he says he had taken eight thousand prisoners, many standards, colours, and cannon that he had attacked with his right, _et qu'il avait refusé la gauche_, which had succeeded perfectly well, _parce qu'il avait tourné l'ennemi_."

The envoy, in his subsequent letters, collects intelligence from all quarters, and sends it in fragments.

"We have yet no _relation_ of the _victory of victories_, but there are letters from the King of Prussia which say that he expected soon to be master of Breslau, and of the garrison and wounded in that town, amounting to ten thousand men. He computes the loss of the Austrians at thirty thousand.... What I write is almost incredible; but two miracles, in the space of one month, two victories gained by the same handful of men--for the Prussian army, in the first action of the 5th of November, did not exceed eighteen thousand, and in the last might be from thirty to thirty-five thousand--have, I hope, restored affairs to a situation I never expected to see them in."

The merit of this diligence may be estimated from the difficulty of correspondence in those days of convulsion. In his first despatch on this subject, so important to the English cabinet, he says,--

"In case this letter should be stopped, I have prevailed with a Jew to write to his correspondent at the Hague a letter in _Hebrew_, which contains further particulars, &c., which he is directed forthwith to communicate to Colonel Yorke, (the British Resident with the States of Holland.)"

We then have a curious specimen of the spirit of diplomacy.

"TO THE EARL OF HOLDERNESSE.

"_December 1757._

"My Lord,--I have had some suspicion that Prince Henry is paving the way to a negotiation with France, without the knowledge of the king his brother.

"The prince is very vain, and hates his brother, of whose greatness he is jealous; at the same time, he has talents, but more cunning than real parts, and is French to the bone.

"I live well with him, but have carefully watched him. He owned to me the other day that he had taken upon himself to release Monsieur Martinfort, _commissaire des vivres_ to Soubise's army, taken at the battle of the 5th of November. The pretence for releasing him is, that Martinfort has no rank in the army, and therefore cannot be exchanged; and that he will prevail on the Prince of Soubise to release, in his room, a Prussian counsellor, who was carried off as a hostage by the French.

"I know the prince's way of thinking--ambition is his only principle. He imagined--looking on the state of the King of Prussia's affairs as desperate--that he should have the glory of making peace. For this purpose, he first began to show an enormous partiality to the French officers, and to hold frequent and long conferences with Martinfort, who is a shrewd, sensible man; and I am convinced that the prince flatters himself that he shall bring about something by his means.... I judge it necessary to give your lordship these hints, that Martinfort may be _properly watched_ in Paris."

Napoleon, in his memoirs of the campaigns of the great European generals, gave a high place to the battle of Leuthen, pronounced it a masterpiece, and declared it of itself sufficient to fix Frederick in the foremost rank of generalship.

During this memorable year, the envoy frequently attended the headquarters, and shared not merely the privations but the dangers of the campaign. Of this period he kept a diary, containing the more remarkable particulars, and giving a curious picture of the harassing life, even of the highest rank, once engaged in war. But of this service there was soon to be an interruption. The Hanoverian Convention had soured the King of Prussia's mind against the English cabinet: the failure of the expedition against Rochfort--a failure, however, which arose simply from a precipitate embarkation, (for the English troops had, until that moment, driven everything before them)--and the delay of sending a fleet to the Baltic, were topics of irritation at the Prussian court, which, of course, were first visited on the head of the envoy, and which, in turn, he visited (with whatever reserve) on the head of the British cabinet. But Chatham had then succeeded to the direction of affairs, and he was not a man to take remonstrance patiently. The immediate result was the mission of Yorke to Berlin, and the recall of Mitchell. But another change in the public councils made Yorke's mission only temporary, and Mitchell was ordered to remain "until further orders."

The brilliant successes of Rosbach and Leuthen had raised the King's military name to the highest rank, but they only increased the number of his enemies. The Russians, fresh in the field, admirably equipped for the campaign, and longing to gather German laurels, had poured down upon his army, exhausted as it was by incessant fighting, and almost hopeless of seeing an end to the war, but still proud of their reputation, and confident in their King. A letter from the envoy to Lord Holdernesse gives an animated though brief account of their first collision.

"FIELD OF BATTLE, ZORNDORF, _26th August 1753_.

"My Lord,--I have the satisfaction to acquaint your Lordship, that yesterday, after an action which lasted _ten hours_, the King of Prussia has gained a victory over the Russian army, taken many pieces of cannon, and many colours and standards.

"The army marched in four columns. The whole cavalry made the fourth column. They arrived in a large open plain, edged with woods, about eight o'clock in the morning, and formed very quickly, as they had marched in order of battle. At nine in the morning, the whole army was formed. The vanguard began the action before the village of Zorndorf, which had been set on fire by the enemy; and as soon as the King of Prussia, thought that he had gained their flank, he ordered the attack to be made by his left wing, while he refused his right. The cavalry, commanded by General Seidletz, formed a fourth line, which, after the infantry should have broken in upon that of the enemy, were to act on either flank, as occasion should offer.

"The fire of the artillery was terrible on both sides, and continued almost without interruption till the end of the battle. What added to the horror of the spectacle was, that the Cossacks and Calmucks had set fire to the villages all round, and a great number of Russian powder-waggons blew up in the woods which surrounded the field."

This was a tremendous conflict, and the particulars of the loss on both sides made it amount to nearly 24,000, killed and wounded, of which the Prussian loss was about 4000. The Russians lost ninety pieces of cannon, standards, and several military chests, containing 858,000 roubles. The subsequent despatches give us some idea of the feelings of men in the field, even though not actually combatants. In one of these the envoy says,--

"I have had many unpleasant moments of late--we were upon the very brink of destruction. The Russians fought like devils. The King of Prussia's presence of mind saved us all. There are many particulars which I would willingly write, but I am almost dead with fatigue. _Would to God I were out of this scene of horror and bloodshed._"

All now was anxiety.

"Last night the King of Prussia called me to him, between seven and eight o'clock, _just after the battle ended_, and told me that he had not time to write to the King (George II.) that night. He desired I should delay despatching a courier to England _till the affair was ended_; that, in the mean time, he would write a short letter to Berlin to _keep up their spirits_."

Such is the life of kings and generals.

"As the Russians continue firm in their position, I fear we shall have _another action to-morrow_, for which we are by no means well prepared."

It is remarkable, in nearly all the great Prussian victories, how much the King owed to his cavalry. The battles of Rosbach and Leuthen were actually won by cavalry charges, and the value of cavalry seems to have been fully appreciated by Frederick. It is equally remarkable, that they scarcely appear to have been used since, except to repulse a charge, or to follow a broken enemy. There is a fashion in those things. Napoleon relied on artillery. Wellington relied on infantry. The Russian and German generals, in the French war, relied upon redoubts and fieldworks--a tactic perhaps partly imposed on them by the nature of their troops, which were new to discipline, and, though brave, were unprepared for manoeuvring. But novelty has great effect in war, and the first general who will try the momentum of cavalry on a large scale will probably beat his enemy. The common objection, that cavalry costs too much to bring it into the field in force, is absurd: nothing can be too costly which wins the battle.

The envoy now went to Dresden, where the Austrian generals had collected a force, and commenced the siege. Here he was the spectator of some severe attacks, and had his share in the wretchedness of war. On the Austrian demonstration, the general commanding in the city ordered the suburbs to be set on fire, to deprive the enemy of their cover for the assault.

"On the 10th, about three in the morning, General Schmettau set fire to the suburb adjoining the Pirna Gate, and to many of the houses built on the edge of the fosse, apprehensive that they might be occupied by the enemy. I will not describe to your Lordship the _horror of this night_, nor the terror and confusion it struck into the poor inhabitants, as the whole town seemed to be environed with flames. I mounted into one of the steeples, from which I saw the most melancholy prospect--the poor frightened inhabitants running from the burning suburbs, with the wretched remains of their furniture, towards the Great Garden, and the whole circuit of the town appearing in flames, ruins, and smoke."

Marshal Daun next day remonstrated against this act, as contrary to the laws of war. The Prussian general replied "that the Marshal knew better, and that he must do his duty; but that if the Marshal wished to save the rest of the suburbs, he had only to withdraw his troops." Daun replied "that he would receive no directions _how_ he was to attack." The military repartees passed away, but the people were ruined.

The name of Dresden was familiarised to English ears in the last war by the battles fought round it, and the sufferings of its inhabitants. It is difficult to think of those calamities, and of the calamities to which every Continental city is exposed in the first breaking out of hostilities, without a sense of the superior security of our country, and, it is to be hoped, without a sense of the gratitude due for that security to the Supreme Disposer of the fates of nations. Of war England knows little but by her victories.

The close of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, released the envoy from the more arduous part of his service; and in 1765 he returned to England, and was made a Knight of the Bath, then an honour much more restricted than now--the number being few, and the reward unshared, but by public ministers and military men of the first distinction. His health at this period had been declining, and, retaining his envoyship to the last, and with the same vigour of faculties, he died by a short illness in June 1771. Sir Andrew Mitchell was evidently a man of high spirit, clear understanding, and active intelligence. His Journals are brief, yet interesting; and if, instead of writing a Diary, he had given us a History, no man would have rendered a more important account of one of the most important periods of Europe.

The remaining career of Frederick we pass, as a portion of universal history. His battles, his share in the fatal partition of Poland, the vigorous administration which raised Prussia from a third-rate state to a first, and from a population of five millions to one of three times the number, are matters of high interest to the political philosopher. In the character of Frederick II., there was much that no man of religious principle can applaud; but the habits of France had been rendered infidel by the effects of Popery on a lively and ingenious people. The religion which Voltaire and his followers saw from day to day was _not_ Christianity--the miracles of supposed saints, and the worship of a supposed Queen of Heaven, which revolted the common sense of mankind, extinguished the implicit faith of these keen-witted Frenchmen. The infidel was only a scoffer at a graver infidelity. The wit of the Frenchman made his scoff popular; and the German, destined to be always an imitator, was proud to follow the laugh, without attempting to examine the logic, of Voltaire.

The later history of Prussia has grown in importance with the growing pressure of our time. Prussia is no longer a struggling state; she is a great European power. No longer a dependent on the policy of Europe, she constitutes a prime mover of that policy. The French have trampled her under foot, apparently only to give her the great lesson that the strength of a nation is in the national virtue. The cause, which was lost by the army, was restored by the population. There was no army in Europe which fell into such instant ruin; there was no population of Europe which started on its feet with such invincible vigour. No defeat was so desperate, no victory so memorable. The peasant restored the monarchy.

Prussia has since been scourged in the common insurgency of the Continent; yet even that suffering will be of infinite value, if it shall remind her that the safety of thrones is in the religion of the people. The connexion is evident. Revolution is the natural tempter of man; it offers opulence to the poor, rank to the vain, agitation to the active, and power to the ambitious. To resist these original stimulants of our nature, what is there in the arm of kings, in the frowns of law, or in the morals of philosophy? There must be a protector, not to be found among the dubious impulses or infirm decencies of this world. That only protector is Religion!

Germany is irreligious. Its Protestant population is infidel, its Popish is sunk in the depths of superstition. In neither is it _Christian_. Individuals may still _protest_, in the once famous land of Protestantism; but the volumes with which Germany is now inundating the world are hostile to every principle of the Gospel. Germany must return to the Bible before her monarchs can sit safely in their palaces. The offer of Constitutions to their people is only the offer of wine to the intoxicated. It is the abuse of a noble gift, and the conversion of a source of natural vigour into the nutriment of a habitual vice. Prussia has now a great vocation. Whatever share of rational liberty exists in Germany is to be sought for at her hands. She possesses the most enlightened intellect, the most vigorous learning, and the most inquiring spirit of Germany. Every man who wishes well to the progress of the Continent must give his aspirations to the progress of Prussia. But her superior advantages will only insure the keener suffering, unless guided by superior virtue.

Her late interference in the war of the Northern Duchies was suspicious; and the passion for naval power, and the hope of acquiring the protectorate of Northern and Central Germany, may have betrayed her into encroachments on her neighbours. But these dreams seem to be past; and it must depend wholly on herself whether she shall disappoint a noble experiment, or shall establish an imperishable name; whether her emblem shall be the scaffold or the altar; whether she shall be the great magazine of political combustion, or the great armoury of political defence to Europe; whether the shade of the royal tree shall shelter the fugitive principles of rational freedom, or direct the lightnings upon them. There can be no question that we live in times of vast political peril: the pealing of the tempest has scarcely sunk behind our march, when clouds gather on it before. New expedients are required to revive the preservative power of old principles. Religion is on its trial among ourselves; but _here_ it will not meet its catastrophe. The Continent will be the scene of the great conflict; and Prussia, more probably than any other portion of the Continent, will witness the severity of the struggle. It may be decided even within the lapse of a few years, and by the exercise of her own wisdom, whether her throne shall stand forth the barren centre of German revolution, or a magnificent creation of power--a central temple, to which the nations of the Continent shall come for the sacred fire, appointed to administer virtue to the living generation, and illustrate posterity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Memoirs and Papers of Sir Andrew Mitchell, K.B._, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the Court of Great Britain to the Court of Prussia, from 1756 to 1771. By ANDREW BISSET, of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law. 2 Vols. Chapman & Hall, London.

HOURS IN SPAIN.

The neglect of Spanish literature is perhaps, after the decay of Spanish power, the most striking instance of the precarious tenure of greatness that modern history can supply. Various causes have contributed to this result; none more powerfully perhaps than that ecclesiastical domination which included all that could embellish and exalt our nature in the sphere of its malignant activity, and after poisoning the sources of material prosperity--after making the river, the forest, and the mine useless to their possessors--after turning the land of corn, and wine, and oil into a wilderness--extended its destructive conquest to the informing soul of its inhabitants, and to the ruin of commerce added the extermination of thought itself.

There were many causes which contributed to the triumph of this influence in Spain. The long war against the Moors, carried on with such unequalled pertinacity, and terminated by such complete success, could hardly fail to prolong and exasperate the feelings of religious antipathy, and to make the bigotry, which so many generations had identified with patriotic feeling, precious and venerable to their descendants. And as in France it must for many centuries have been the great object of every true patriot to fortify and to consolidate, at the sacrifice even of constitutional principle, the central power which alone could protect her from invasion, and prevent her from being reduced to the state of wretched insignificance to which a minute subdivision of power into petty principalities had degraded Germany,--so in Spain, national pride mingled itself with religious principle; the hostility of race combined with the hatred of sect; and if the latter made the former furious, the former made the last implacable. The Saxon submitted to the Norman. But the Spaniard, under circumstances far less favourable to resistance, never for one moment abandoned his hostility to the Moor. Again, when Louis the Fourteenth had been compelled by adverse fortune to surrender the cause of his own grandson, the Spanish peasant, without resources, without commerce, without fleets, without armies, adhered with inflexible fidelity to the cause he had once embraced, and in spite of Blenheim and Ramilies and Oudenarde--in spite of Marlborough, Eugene, and Peterborough--kept the sovereign of his affections on the throne;-and finally, when the rest of Continental Europe quailed before the first of conquerors, the spirit which had triumphed at Almanza and Granada showed itself once more to be invincible, and taught mankind the memorable lesson that "all was not lost" where hatred was immortal, and the determination of resistance not to be overcome. Such a nation must leave an imperishable mark in history. As, however, these elements of pride and bigotry acquired an ascendency in the Spanish character, it gradually sank into a sullen apathy of unsocial indolence, which its declining influence and repeated mortifications tended materially to confirm. Shut up behind the barrier of the Pyrenees--living only in the past, consoling itself by the recollections of former grandeur for the consciousness of actual insignificance and decay; the slave of priests, the victim of kings--it clung to habits unknown in the rest of Europe, and to feelings with which all sympathy had long since passed away. The language, which in the sixteenth century had been spoken in every court of Europe, was unknown--the writers, whom the giant intellects that surrounded the throne of our Elizabeth had studied with so much care, were forgotten. In spite of her noble colonies, in spite of her glorious dialect, in spite of writers more nearly approaching the great models of antiquity in the exquisite perfection of style than those of any modern country, in spite of a drama the wealth of which was inexhaustible Spain ceased to have any influence on the progress of human thought and action. Her vast empire was a corpse from which life had fled. So complete was the ignorance of Spanish literature, that Montesquieu said of the Spaniards, without incurring the charge of having sacrificed truth to epigram, "Le seul de leurs livres qui soit bon est celui qui a fait voir le ridicule de tous les autres:" a singular proof of literary ingratitude in the countryman of Molière, Corneille, and Le Sage--and a still more remarkable proof of the fluctuation of national studies in a country where, scarce a century before, ignorance of Spanish would have been looked upon as a proof of the most barbarous rusticity.

In France, says Cervantes, there is no one man or woman who does not learn Spanish. "En Francia, ni varon ni muger dexa de aprender la lengua Castellana."

To the effect of this very circumstance the growing indifference to Spanish literature may, in some measure, be ascribed. During the palmy state of Spanish greatness, the Spaniard, finding his language, as the French is now, the received organ of social intercourse throughout Europe, seldom vouchsafed to study modern languages. Nor, indeed, were such studies congenial to the taste and temper of that fastidious and haughty nation. In earlier days, poetical traditions and popular ballads had wandered across the Pyrenees. The songs of the Troubadours, and the effusions in the tongue of Oc, had, by means of the kindred dialect of Catalonia, exercised great influence over Castilian poetry. But, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the connection between French and Spanish literature was altogether interrupted: as the language of Catalonia sank to the level of a mere provincial dialect, the channel of communication was blocked up. The family relations between the different members of the houses of Hapsburg and Bourbon could not fill up the chasm which nature had placed between the inhabitants of different sides of the Pyrenees, and which centuries of almost incessant warfare had contributed to widen; and as the provinces of Berne and Languedoc became scandalous as the seats of heresy, everything that came from France was looked upon with aversion and distrust. Still stronger and more insurmountable were the barriers against English literature. He who will read the _Dragontea_ of Lope de Vega, the most amiable of authors, and the ode of Gongora, _Al armamento de Felipe segundo contra Inglaterra_, may form some idea of the scorn and hatred with which the Spaniard, proud of his race, proud of his victories, proud of his language, and, above all, tenacious to madness of the unsullied purity of his faith, looked upon the piratical English, twice apostates from the Holy See, who spoke a barbarous dialect, unknown to the nations of the South, clogged with consonants and monosyllables, incapable of sonorous cadences, and in every respect the opposite of his own. Even at the present day, it is remarkable that Southey--with all his faults, the best writer of English prose that our age has produced--was deeply versed in Spanish literature; and in spite of our acquisitions in physical science, a native of the South, to whom his own beautiful dialect is familiar, might be forgiven when he reads the clumsy prose and prosaic verse of the present day, if he reflect with delight on the Ciceronian eloquence of Cervantes, and the finished periods of Saavedra Faxardo. A Spanish artisan would be ashamed to write like our learned men, or to speak like many members of the House of Commons--so true and so universal is the doctrine of compensation. In the year 1754, Velasquez assures us that there was in Spain no single translation of an English author. But the aversion was not reciprocal. In the days of our great Elizabeth, when the English intellect was at a height from which it has ever since been travelling downwards, Spanish novels and romances were diligently studied, and perpetually translated. There is strong evidence to show that the great dramatists of that day were not ignorant of the Spanish stage.

A translation, or rather an abridgment, of the _Celestina_, was printed in London in 1530, and in 1580 the story was acted in a London theatre.

But as all our readers may not have heard--and many of them probably have not read a line of the _Celestina_--we will, before we proceed farther, explain the nature of this most remarkable--and if the age when it was written be considered--this quite unequalled production.

The _Celestina_, or _Tragi-comedia di Calisto y Meliboea_, is the title of a book which appeared at Salamanca in the year 1500. It is named from the principal person, a procuress, who is the instrument by which all the events that it describes are brought about. It is the work of two authors. The name of the first, who wrote the first act only, cannot certainly be determined. Some ascribe it to Juan de Mena, and some to Rodrigo Cota. The language seems to prove that the date of the first act cannot be much earlier than the end of the fifteenth century, or than that of the twenty acts added to it by the Bachelor, Fernando de Rozas, by whom the whole was published. The work was received with universal, but, if its merit be considered, not with excessive approbation. This is testified by the numerous editions which succeeded each other with great rapidity, not only throughout Spain, but in Venice, Milan, and Antwerp; and translations of it were eagerly studied in France, England, Italy, and Germany. The great length of the _Celestina_ proves that it never could have been intended for the stage; but its influence on the dramatic literature of Spain has been, nevertheless, considerable. For the language of the dialogue is so exquisitely beautiful--the representations it contains are so vivid--and the pathos of several passages so touching,--above all, the characters are drawn with so much spirit and truth of colouring, that it became the favourite model of the great Spanish dramatists of the sixteenth century.

To enter into a detailed account of this beautiful composition would be mere pedantry. It might, perhaps, be agreeable to an age which receives with exultation and delight prose translations of the most beautiful poetry, and places equestrian statues over archways; but it must fill every one to whom the rudiments of taste are not absolutely unknown--every one for whom eloquence and poetry are not merely a dead letter--with unspeakable disgust. It would bear the same resemblance to the original that a corpse does to the body animated by an informing spirit. The plot is extremely simple. Calisto, a youth of high birth, cherishes the most passionate love for the beautiful Meliboea. In order to gratify his passion, he has recourse to Celestina, and by her arts and love-potions, and intrigues, he at length accomplishes his object. They meet at her house; and while

"Imparadised in one another's arms,"

the servants of Calisto quarrel, a conflict ensues, in which Celestina loses her life. The law interferes, seizes upon the malefactors, and condemns them to the gallows. The friends of the servants agree to revenge their death. They beset the house, in which Calisto and his beloved have met again. Calisto, who wishes to encounter them, is slain. Meliboea, distracted with remorse and sorrow, and resolved not to survive her lover, ascends a lofty tower, and, after informing her parents of her errors, and of the death of him who shared them, precipitates herself from its summit. Such is the outline of this primitive effort of dramatic art, the eloquence of which is as various and astonishing as the plot is simple and inadequate. There are passages in it which may remind the reader of _Clarissa Harlowe_; and it is very possible that it may have suggested hints to Richardson. Bouterwek's remarks upon the _Celestina_ are trivial and insignificant.

"I may boldly say it, because I have seen it," says Stephen Gosson, in 1581, writing under the influence of those puritanical feelings which were soon to play so conspicuous a part in our dramatic history, "that the _Palace of Pleasure_, the _Golden Ass_, the _Æthiopian History_, _Amadis of France_, and the _Round Table_, indecent histories in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, have been thoroughly ransacked to furnish the playhouses in London." Robert Green, the author of _Friar Bacon_, one of the most eminent of Shakspeare's immediate predecessors, tells us that he had travelled in Spain. There are several expressions in Shakspeare which indicate an acquaintance with Spanish literature--among others, the remarkable phrase, "this is mischief malikin," which is evidently a corruption of "mucho malhecho." The origin of the _Taming of the Shrew_ is Spanish. The alternate rhymes of _Love's Labour_ Lost prove, beyond a doubt, a Spanish model. The advice from Polonius to his son is said to be a literal translation from a Spanish dramatist. The resemblance between _Twelfth Night_ and an anonymous comedy, _La Española in Florencia_, is too striking to be merely accidental. It is, indeed, most improbable that Shakspeare who was acquainted with French, and has inserted in his works--in the _Tempest_ for instance--several paraphrases of Montaigne, should have been ignorant of Spanish, which was not only a more popular language, but one which contained far more to reward and stimulate the labour of the student. And here we may observe, that the prodigy of the Spanish stage, Lope de Vega--the "monster of nature," as Cervantes calls him, and certainly the most surprising instance of the combination of facility and genius which the modern world has seen--was born on the 25th November 1562, at Madrid, two years before Shakspeare. If we pursue our examination of the influence of Spanish literature on the English drama, we shall find a close resemblance between Fletcher's beautiful play of the _Elder Brother_--which was mutilated to please our barbarous grandfathers by Cibber,--and Calderon's _Two Effects from one Cause_, (_De una Causa dos Efectos_;) the _Maid of the Mill_, by Beaumont and Fletcher, and Lope's _Quinta de Florencia_; Webster's _Duchess of Malfi_, and Lope de Vega's _Mayor Domo de la Duquesa de Amalfi_. So the _Señora Cornelia_, a novel of Cervantes', is the foundation of the brilliant play of the _Chances_. The third scene of the third act of the _Little French Lawyer_, is taken from the fourth chapter of the second part of the first book of Aleman's _Guzman d'Alfarache_. _The Knight of the Burning Perkle_, shows that _Don Quixote_ was commonly read in England. The _Spanish Gipsy_ of Middleton and Rowley, and _Beggars' Bush_ of Fletcher, are taken from the _Fuerza de la Sangre_, and _Gitanilla_ of Cervantes; and the plan of _Love's Pilgrimage_ is borrowed from the _Dos Doncellas_ of the same author. _The Spanish Curate_ is taken from the _Gerardo_ of Gonzalo de Cerpedes; and _The History of Alphonso, or a Wife for a Month,_ is that related by many Spanish writers of Sancho, the eighth King of Leon. To this list may be added a remarkable passage in Milton's _Areopagitica_, in which he alludes to Spanish poetry as we should allude to Manzoni and Lamartine. "The villages also must have _their_ visitors, to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebec reads even to the gamut of every municipal fiddler; for _these_ are the _countryman's_ Arcadias and his Monte Mayors." In 1663 was printed, _The Adventures of Five Hours_, from the Spanish comedy, _Los Empeños de Seis Horas_. Lord Digby's _'Tis better than it was_ is taken from Calderon's _Mejor está que estaba_. His _Worse and Worse_ from _Peor está que estaba_. His _Elvira, or the Worst not always True_, from Calderon's _No siempre lo Peor es Cierto_. There can be little doubt, as a careful and elaborate writer, Shack, remarks in his instructive work on the Spanish stage, that a more accurate inquiry than has yet been instituted into the English drama, would lead to the conclusion, that many of the works of Lope de Vega were familiar to the great writers of Elizabeth's time; not, indeed, that it is contended, or that with any shadow of plausibility it can be maintained, that the Spanish is the origin of the English drama, or, indeed, that it ever exercised a decided influence on the English stage. The rapid intrigue, the brilliant accumulation of incidents, which the peasant of the South follows with delight and ease in scenic representation, would confound and bewilder the most educated classes of which a Northern audience is composed. Let an English or German reader try the experiment of reading one of Calderon's most agreeable plays, _Tambien, hay duelo en las Damas_, which may be freely translated, "There may be Trust in Women," and see whether, even in the quiet of his study, his brain does not grow dizzy with the complicated intrigue that it describes.

The truth is, that both in Spain and England, the drama, at the period of its greatest splendour, was drawn from the inmost sources of the national character and genius. It spoke the language of the different races amid which it appeared, and the peculiarities of each were wrought into the stamina of its existence. Before that time, and while it was seeking the track which it was to illuminate with such a flood of glory, before the days of Shakspeare and Lope de Vega, its effects had been feeble and unsuccessful. _Ferrex and Porrex_, _Ralph Royster_, _ Doyster_, _Damon and Pythias_, bear, like the contemporary works of Spanish and Italian authors, traces of the attempt to substitute, as in the _Sophonisba_ of Trissino, a cold, stiff, and affected imitation of ancient models for the appeal to those passions, and the image of those manners, with which man has an unchangeable and an everlasting sympathy. In the rude comedies of that day, as in the Spanish farces in the middle of the sixteenth century, coarse buffoonery and the realities of vulgar detail predominate. After this phasis, there may be still observed, in the dramatists of the day, a want of power to manage the materials which they had just begun to discover and appreciate. In the plays of Green, as well as of Juan de la Cueva, the sudden and inartificial incidents, the actions without a motive, and the want of a regularly constructed plot, betray the authors' want of experience and self-command. Marlow and Christoval de Vines resemble each other in their love of what is horrible and extravagant, and their use of a turgid and inflated diction. Neither in Peele, Kyd, or Lily, in our country, nor in Arguesda, Artieda, or Cervantes, (considered exclusively as a dramatist,) in the other, is any fixed, systematic, matured, independent, national drama distinctly to be traced. They were, however, the harbingers, in their respective lands, of the meridian light which was fast travelling to its maturity of splendour, and rejoicing as a giant to run its course. A lustre then was shed over the Western skies, which more than rivalled the earlier glories of the East. How did this come to pass? to what are we to ascribe the surprising resemblance of dramatic literature, in so many essential points, of Spain and England? this simultaneous outbreak of genius, this selection of the same path, and this arrival at the same goal--a goal which the utmost exertions of other modern nations have never enabled them to come within sight of, much less to reach? What is the seed of the noble and stately plant that shot up at once in such prodigality of magnificence? Shall we content ourselves with the cant of a romantic school, which, after it had wearied the Continent, has, of course, been put forward as a great discovery by our wretched sciolists, in explanation of this curious epoch in the history of the human mind? Or shall we look to the national feelings, sympathies, tastes, and legends, which the masters of the Greek, as well of the Spanish and of the English drama, unveiled in their immortal creations to the very depths? This is the true reason why these nations alone possess a drama of their own--this is the reason which accounts for the triumph of ancient as well as modern art--not an ambiguous and obscure phrase, but a principle which must insure the originality of the drama, so long as man is man.

If we pursue the comparison between the drama of Spain and England, we shall find the period of its golden age far more circumscribed in the latter than in the former. In the latter, it cannot be said to reach beyond the time of Charles the First; and from the time of Shakspeare its decline is visible. But in Spain, from the end of the sixteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century, during a period when poetry was almost forgotten throughout the rest of Europe, the stream of the Spanish drama held on its majestic course, supplied from an ever-gushing fountain, and reflecting from its radiant surface all the varieties of human life. If Shakspeare has reached the very summit of all poetry, and a height to which no Spanish dramatist has ascended, the interval which divides him from every other of his countrymen is enormous. But the drama in Spain is not bound up with a single name, or with individual genius; it can exhibit a galaxy of light, and many constellations contribute to its lustre.

The starry host, of which Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are the Lucifers, far surpasses in numbers and splendour that which any other country can exhibit; nor would the dull, brutal, stupid, hard-hearted, and obscene ribaldry which (Congreve excepted) is the prevailing characteristic of the popular writers of Charles the Second's time, and especially of Wycherley, have been endured by the Spanish peasant for a moment.

Christoval Suavey de Figueroa, who lived towards the end of the sixteenth and about the beginning of the seventeenth century, was of all enemies to the theatre of his day the most bitter and the most implacable. The influence of the priesthood had been early turned against the drama, especially on the grounds which had induced the Catholic Church of all ages to oppose itself to the drama, but in reality because the secular plays had superseded the rude and gross religious representations from which they sprang in Spain, as well as in France and England, and which had long been a principal means by which the priests had preserved their influence over the vulgar. Figueroa's animadversions are to be found in two works, one, the _Playa universal de todas las Ciencias_, published at Madrid, 1615; the other, _Advertencios utilissimas a la Vida humana_, Madrid, 1617. The writer complains that the nourishment which the writers of plays furnish for the diseased appetites of the vulgar is poisonous; and that, far from intermixing with their levity any moral or instructive sentences, the sole object of the writers is to provoke the laughter of the audience. Hence men, who are scarcely able to read, venture to write comedies, as is proved by the _Tailor of Toledo_, the _Weaver of Seville_, and other instances of success equally disgraceful. "Hence it happens that scandalous comedies, full of obscene language and trivial conceptions, are represented on the stage, in which all respect for sovereigns is trampled under foot, together with the rules of reason and morality. In these pieces the valet speaks without shame, the maid without modesty, and the old man without discretion."

In the _Pasagero_, which is a dialogue, the principal person says that "if Plautus and Terence were now living they would be driven from the stage, as a certain person, (Lope de Vega,) who considers himself beyond all rule, has invented a particular kind of farce, as lucrative as it is monstrous." But the exhortations of Figueroa were in vain. The passion for writing plays, far from diminishing, increased with tenfold fury, in spite of the Church and the critic, and even Philip the Second's edict. Nor can it be denied that, amid the prodigious and almost incredible mass of plays which increased with every year, some were of a very moderate description. But the very worst were above the level of the great majority of plays in other countries, and especially in our own. It would be difficult to find a single play in the time of Lope de Vega or of Calderon, in which some redeeming quality, happy incidents, or fiery invective, or beautiful language did not appear. Some of these writers, however, acquired an imperishable reputation. Of these, Gabriel Tellez, who wrote under the name of Tirso de Molina, was the most illustrious.

It may be quoted, as a proof of the profound disregard for Spanish literature in Europe, that Bouterwek never mentions this extraordinary dramatist; and that Schlegel, who affected such profound knowledge of the Spanish drama, and whose remarks on Euripides and Molière are so thoroughly unjust and absurd, has been to all real purpose equally silent concerning him; though no man, not even Lope de Vega, or Calderon himself, whom Schlegel praises (not because he was a great poet, but because he was a bigoted Roman Catholic,), bears a stronger impress of true Castilian genius, or is more identified with the drama of his country. Gabriel Tellez was considerably younger than Lope de Vega: he was born about 1570. Little is known of his life till he became a monk at Madrid. He became a doctor of theology, and died in 1648, prior of the monastery at Soria. His comedies are second only, in point of number, to those of Lope de Vega--a circumstance which makes Schlegel's absolute omission of all but his very name, and perhaps of that, the more unpardonable; and he was, besides, the author of many other works--among others, of a defence of the national drama of Spain against the champions of the unities. This was written twelve years before _The Cid_ of Corneille, and therefore anticipated a controversy to which we invariably assign a more recent, as well as a Gallic origin. The following are extracts from this admirable vindication.

"The delightful interest excited by the drama, the skill of the actors, and the succession of various incidents, make the time appear so short, that no man, though the representation had lasted three hours, would find aught to censure but its brevity. This at least was the judgment of the unprejudiced--I mean of those who attend a dramatic representation, not so much to find fault as to procure for themselves a poetical gratification. The drones who do not themselves know how to labour, but how to rob the industrious bees, could not indeed renounce their nature, and plunged their stings, with a malignant hum, into the honeyed treasures of genius. One says the piece is intolerably too long; another says it is unseemly; a pedantic historian said the poet should be chastised, because he has, against the truth of Portuguese history, made the Duke Pedro of Coimbra a shepherd--though he was in fact slain in battle against his cousin, King Alonzo, and left no posterity. It is an affront to the house of Aveiro, and its great duke, that the daughters of the last should be described as reckless damsels, who, in defiance of all the laws of decency, turn their garden into a scene of their licentiousness--as if the liberties of Apollo were tethered to historical accuracy, and might not raise the fabric of poetry on true historical foundations. In the mean time there were not wanting defenders of the absent poet, who maintained his honour, and struck to earth the argument of the envious censurers; although besotted minds, who are in love with their own opinion, and display their acuteness rather in the censure of others' works than in any productions of their own, never will allow that they are overcome.... Among many absurdities," says the critic to be refuted, "it has most shocked me to observe the impudence with which the poet has transgressed the limits assigned to their art by the inventors of the drama; for though the action required by them is one which is complete in twenty-four hours at the most, he has crowded months into his play, crammed with love adventures; and even that time is not long enough for ladies of rank and education to fall blindly in love with a shepherd, to make him their secretary, and enable him to decipher their real purpose amid the riddles with which it is expressed.... Moreover, I am at a loss to comprehend with what propriety a piece, in which dukes and counts make their appearance, can be called a comedy." So far the malignant censurer proceeds, when he is interrupted by Don Alejo, the other speaker in the Dialogue. "I cannot assent to your opinion, inasmuch as, setting aside the rule that, in common courtesy, the guest is bound not to quarrel with the viands set before him, this particular comedy does comply with the rules which still are valid; and, in my opinion, which is common to all who are free from prejudice with myself, the dramas actually represented in our Spain have a great advantage over those of antiquity, although they depart from the rules laid down by the creators of the stage. If they establish this principle, that a play should only represent such transactions as can by possibility be compressed within the space of twenty-four hours--can there be a more flagrant absurdity than that a man in his senses should, in so short a period, fall passionately in love with a woman equally in possession of hers, and carry the matter on so rapidly, that the love, which is announced in the morning, ends in a marriage at night? Is that time enough to represent jealousy, despair, hope--in short, all the passions and incidents, without which love is a mere word, without any signification? These evils are, according to the judgment of all persons competent to form an opinion, far greater than those arising from the circumstance that the spectators, without moving from their seats, see and hear things which must occupy several days. For as he who reads a history of a few pages, informs himself of events which have occurred in remote countries during many centuries, even so may comedy, which is the image and representation of that on which it is founded, in describing the events which befall two lovers, paint in the most vivid colours all that can take place on such an occasion; and as it is improbable that all these incidents should occur in one day, may feign also for itself the longer time, of which it stands in need. Not improperly has poetry been called a living picture; and as the pencil represents on a few feet of canvass remote distances, which cheat the eye with an appearance of reality, so must the same privilege be conceded to the pen; and so much the rather, as the latter is incomparably more energetic than the former, inasmuch as articulated syllables are more intelligible than silent images, which can explain thought by signs only. And if you object to me, that, under pain of being esteemed presumptuous and ungrateful, we must obey the precepts of the first inventors of the drama, I reply to you, that we owe them indeed reverence for having triumphed over the difficulties which belong to a beginning in any matter, but that we are bound to bring what they have discovered to perfection; so that, without impairing the substance, we may change the manner of proceeding, and improve it by the lessons of experience.

"It were indeed a precious state of things if the musician, because the inventors of music studied harmony of sound from the blows of the hammer on the anvil, were at the present day to use the instruments of Vulcan, and incur censure because they introduced a harp with strings, and thus brought to perfection what originally was imperfect. Herein it is that art differs from nature, because what the one has established since the creation remains immutable--as the pear-tree always produces pears, and the oak its acorns (for we shall not now stop to consider the exceptions arising from soil and climate, and the skill and graftings of the gardener); while in art, the roots of which grow in the shifting qualities of men, use causes the most important changes and modifications. What reason is there for surprise, then, if comedy transgresses the rules of our forefathers, and, according to the analogy of nature and of art, grafts the comic on the tragic, while it combines these opposite kinds of poetry in a fascinating whole, in which sometimes the serious characters of the one, sometimes the ludicrous and playful characters of the other, make their appearance. Moreover, if the pre-eminence of Æschylus and Menander in Greece, and that of Terence and Seneca in Rome, were sufficient to make their rules immutable, the excellence of our Lope de Vega, the pearl of the Manzanares, the Tully of Castile, the phoenix of our nation, so far surpasses these in the quantity as well as the quality of his writings, that his authority is abundantly sufficient to weigh down the doctrine I have cited; and as he has brought comedy to the perfection and consummate refinement in which we now behold it, we must think ourselves fortunate in having such a teacher, and zealously defend his school of poetry against its passionate antagonists. For when he says, in many passages of his writings, that he has deviated from the rules of the ancients only out of condescension to the taste of the multitude, this is only said from the modesty of his nature, and in order that the malevolence of the ignorant should not ascribe that to arrogance which is in fact aiming at perfection. But it is incumbent on us who are his followers, for the reasons which I have enumerated, as well as many others which I will not now allege, to look upon him as the reformer of the new comedy, and to hold in honour modern writers as more beautiful and more instructive than those of former ages." It is difficult to conceive a more ingenious and solid defence of the Spanish drama than Tellez has here put forward; and it is time to examine how far his practice exemplifies his theory. Many of our readers will be surprised to hear that Tirso de Molina, or Gabriel Tellez, is the first author who brought Don Juan and the famous story of the statue-guest upon the stage, under the title of the _Burlador de Sevilla_, or the _Convidado de Piedra_. The name of the hero is Don Juan Tenorio. The story still lives in the tradition of the people of Seville, in which city the Tenorios were a distinguished race, though the name exists no longer. It was one of the famous twenty-four, the "_veinti-cuatros_" of Seville. The basis of the story is, that, after seducing the daughter of the Comendador Ulloa, Don Juan killed the father, who was buried in the convent of San Francisco. Don Juan's birth and connections placed him above the reach of legal punishment; but the monks of San Francisco contrived to get him within their walls, where they put him to death, and propagated a rumour that Don Juan had gone to the chapel in which the statue of the Comendador was placed, for the purpose of insulting his memory, when the statue had seized him and precipitated him into the infernal regions. Such is the legend on which rests _El Burlador de Sevilla_. It became extremely popular in Spain, and even more so in foreign countries. In 1620 it was transplanted to the Italian stage. Three translations of it appeared in France, under the not very happily chosen title of the _Festin de Pierre_; the first in 1659 by De Villiers; the second 1661, by Dorimon; the third 1665, by Molière. In Spain the same subject was dramatised by Zamora, in a play which still keeps possession of the stage.

As a specimen, we subjoin a translation from one of his most amusing plays, _The Pious Martha_, (_Martha la Piadosa_) in which long before the Tartuffe, and in Spain, hypocrisy was exposed to ridicule. A girl, in order to get rid of a rich and aged suitor, pretends to be seized with a fit of piety, and an aversion to marriage. Her father, after some little resistance, allows her to follow the bent of her inclination without restraint, under pretence of visiting the sick in hospitals. She contrives to obtain repeated interviews with her favoured lover, who--the trait is thoroughly Spanish--has killed her brother in a duel; and at last to procure admittance for him, under the disguise of a palsied and penniless student, into her father's house to teach her the Latin grammar. Some of the scenes are in the highest vein of comedy:--one, where the student pretends to faint from weakness, and her father desires her to hold him up, and bids him lean upon her without scruple; another where the lady, having given vent to her jealousy in a very vivid exclamation which her father overhears, escapes from the detection of her hypocrisy by pretending that the student has said it, and that she is repeating it in anger. The expression is tantamount to "By heavens!" (_vive Dios_;) and the father tells her she is too severe. The lover pretends that his feelings are too much hurt for him to stay any longer in the house: the father desires the daughter to appease him; and with wit equal to Molière, the girl, in her father's presence, goes down on her knees before her lover, and kisses his hand, which is the only condition upon which he has said that he will remain.

_Martha._--Forgive me, brother,--stay.

_Felip._--Yes, if you kiss upon your knees my hand.

(_Martha kneels._)

_Martha._--This is an act to mortify the flesh.

_The Father._--What matchless virtue!

_Martha_, (_aside_.)--Were I to say the truth, the kiss was honey.

As a farther specimen of Molina's style, we subjoin the following translation. The lover and his friend Pastrana, a man full of dry caustic wit, are present at a bull-fight. The following dialogue ensues:--

_Pastrana._--Think not to see me at the bull-fight here, Unless indeed upon the platform perched, Or looking from a window.

_Felip._--Friend Pastrana, That is a woman's post, and not a man's, Unless he's wool and water. Let us dare What fate may bring us, so may we acquire Perchance eternal blazon and renown.

_Pastrana._--No, brother; death sits on the pointed horn.

_Felip._--Talk not so fondly; but that well I know Your lofty spirit and your courage tried, I'd call it cowardice.

_Pastrana._--I give you leave. Call my resolve by any name you please, So long as we remain no longer here.

_Felip._--And can it be that you, who swallow men, Now tremble at a beast?

_Pastrana._--'Tis true, indeed. Wonder at my opinion as you may, To fight with two men, or with three men, oft Is valour rather than temerity. Since courtesy or valour furnish means Of safety--and much more the cunning art Taught by Cararvza of the dextrous thrust, Strait or oblique--the science of revenge. Then one may say, if one is hardly pressed, "Sir, my experience shows me, that your worship Is an epitome of human valour; So I will never haunt this street again, Nor speak with Donna Mencia any more. And if you will accept me as a friend, My services attend you from this day." Words soft as these control a gentleman-- Money the robber. If your foe be brave, He must to greater pride and courage yield. In short, there's always hope, however fierce His wrath and keen his passion for revenge, To soothe the fury of the incensed _man_, If he be one whom gold or breeding win. But when a _bull_ has rent your cloak to shreds, And bellows at the shoulders of its owner, In hot pursuit--then try your time--advance, And whisper in the yelling monster's ear, "Sir Bull, a gentle bearing sets off valour-- Put some restraint upon your boiling rage. Indeed, that constant tossing of the head Can only suit a madman or a fool." And you will see the fruit of your advice. Offer your friendship to him, turn your head, You'll find the light at once shine through your back, Through two clear holes, each half a yard in length.

But the most popular play of this great writer, and one which is always received with the most rapturous applause, is _Gil de las Calzas Verdes_, (_Gil of the Green Trousers_.) A lady has been abandoned by her lover for a rich beauty of Madrid. She calls herself Don Gil--follows him thither, dresses herself in male attire, of which the green trousers are the most conspicuous part--torments him with letters from the convent where he supposes her to be, describing her suffering, her illness, and at last her death; interrupts his remittances, destroys his credit, carries off his mistress, who falls desperately in love with her; thwarts him at every turn; obliges him to believe that he is really haunted by the ghost of her whom he has wronged; and at last causes him to be arrested for her murder. The rage, amazement, confusion, repentance and despair of the faithless lover are portrayed in the most brilliant colours. Do what he will, mean what he will, attempt what he will, Gil of the Green Trousers, though invisible, has been beforehand with him. He goes to his bankers: the check is paid to Don Gil of the Green Trousers. He endeavours to mislead his intended father-in-law: the plot is unravelled by Don Gil of the Green Trousers. He tries to soften his mistress: she raves of nothing but Don Gil of the Green Trousers. As Don Gil is so successful with his green trousers, other suitors of the Madrid lady dress in green trousers, and assume his name in the dark under her window. There are at one time four persons in the street, each calling himself Gil with the Green Trousers. The faithless suitor of the true Gil is one of them. His rival challenges him; but no sooner does the challenged see the fatal garment, than his conscience smites him, and he addresses his furious rival as the ghost of his injured mistress.

"O soul most innocent! by that sweet love Which once thou cherished for me, and which now Delights my memory, I charge thee, rest My punishment, thy rigour, are complete If haply to disturb my present love, Thou hast assumed a body here on earth, And at Madrid calling thyself Don Gil, In such attire, and bearing such a name, Dost meditate to wreak revenge on me,

* * * * *

O cease, blest spirit! from thy fierce pursuit."

The other lover, who hears this grotesque invocation, thinks it a mere trick of his rival to escape a duel, and overwhelms him with every epithet of abuse.

The play ends by the marriage of Don Gil with her fickle suitor. We are almost ashamed to add, that this was the favourite play of Ferdinand VII., and was ordered for him on all solemn occasions by the municipality of Madrid. Without the refinement of Calderon or Lope de Vega, Molina surpasses both in his verve and gaiety. His satire is unlimited; it spares neither the authorities of earth, nor the ministers of heaven--nay, it does not even spare the great national amusement. Epigram after epigram is poured out upon every object that attracts his notice; his brilliant and sparkling wit is inexhaustible; and his "malice" as boundless as it is subtle. Of all French writers, it has been said, by a very competent judge, that he resembles Beaumarchais most closely; and however strange it may seem, that the Spanish monk of the seventeenth century should bear so close an analogy to the Parisian _bel esprit_ of the eighteenth, the remark is undoubtedly correct. We have dwelt more especially on this writer, because he is not well known in Europe, and because even Mr Ticknor, in his accurate and valuable work on Spanish literature--a work we hail both for what it proves, and for what it makes us expect, with the greatest delight--has failed to do him complete justice. Shack seems to us to have appreciated him more justly in his excellent and useful dissertation. But our limits are exhausted for the present.

MODERN STATE TRIALS.[2]