He is said too, by his enemies, to atone for the merriment of his youth by the fanaticism of his age. Von Roon kept his place, and Bernstorff, well known and but little admired in England.

These were not the men to meet and manage such an assembly as that with which they had to deal. Most of the leading Fortschritt politicians had come back fiercer than ever; and the moderate liberals, although they tried to prevent the last extremities, were not by any means friendly.

The principal speakers of the moderate liberal party in the present parliament are, Vincke, who has again appeared on the scene; Twesten, who was ranked in January last with the Fortschritt section, but who seems more recently to have inclined to those politicians who desire to postpone discussions about internal reform to energetic action in the German question; and Professor von Sybel, the well-known and popular historian.

Twesten is the son of the theologian of that name, and is best known by his duel with General von Manteuffel. Small and slight, but possessed of a singularly clear enunciation, he is said to be a successful debater.

Heinrich von Sybel, born at Dusseldorf in 1817, is the son of a well-known Prussian liberal and parliamentary speaker. He studied at Berlin, and became a passionate admirer of Ranke, whose method he has adopted. His most important historical works relate to the Crusades and to the French Revolution; but his studies in old German history have been those which have most influenced his political career. He was the youngest member of the Parliament at Erfurt, by which Prussian statesmen hoped to arrive at some satisfactory settlement of the German question; and, in a speech which excited much attention, he urged Prussia to fulfil her great mission, and to raise up anew a German empire. His ideas on this subject did not prevent his being called to Munich by King Maximilian; and he remained there in great favour till the events of 1859 resuscitated the hopes of the Gotha party, which had slumbered since the disaster of Olmütz. Munich then became too hot to hold him, and he accepted the chair at the University of Bonn left vacant by the death of Dahlmann. He was elected in 1861, but was prevented by illness from taking his seat. In 1862 he was again returned, and has, as we have said, acted chiefly with the Vincke section.

The recognition of the kingdom of Italy brought some good-will to the government, and they carried the ratification of the commercial treaty with France by a large majority; but the fatal question of the military expenditure could at last

no longer be postponed, and an unusually fierce debate ended, on the 20th of Sept., by the absolute rejection of the demands of the government, with regard to the money required for the reorganisation of the army. Bernstorff and Von der Heydt had the wisdom to retire, and Count Bismark Schönhausen took the unenviable post of president of the council. His first act was to withdraw the budget of 1863, which was about to meet the fate of its predecessor; his second, to send to the Herrenhaus the budget of 1862, and to have the military part of it, which had been eliminated by the representatives of the tax-payers, reintroduced and authorised by that imprudent assembly; his third was to prorogue the second Chamber, which had protested against the unconstitutional proceedings of the other House, until the 13th of January 1863.

Our readers are now, we trust, in a position to understand the views of the several parties which are contending for power in Prussia, and the leanings of most of the politicians, on whose resolves the near future of that country, to a great extent, depends. It remains to offer, with great diffidence, some suggestions as to the probable course of events.

The simplest and most satisfactory solution of the present difficulty would be the king's abdication. Public opinion forced Louis of Bavaria to resign, and placed the Austrian diadem on the head, not of the rightful heir, but of his son, the young Francis Joseph. There is every thing to be said for, and nothing to be said against, this plan. William I., junior to his brother by only seventeen months, was an ensign at ten years old, and never till comparatively lately contemplated his accession to the throne as a probable event. His time was occupied by the cares of the garrison and the parade-ground, or by pleasures, not always of the most exalted character. He is simply incapable of comprehending the position of a monarch with a real constitution. His views are analogous to those of an old French legitimist duke who remarked to Niebuhr, when asked. whether he had not had a hand in framing the Charte, "Oh, yes, I had; but, good God! do you suppose I ever imagined that the king was not to do what he liked, in spite of it?"

In the event of his abdication, his son would be able gracefully to retire from an untenable position, and the state machine might at length be got into good working order. We only fear that such a course is too wise a one to have any chance of being adopted. True it is, that the brood of "court theologians, missionary deaconesses," and the like, who enraged Alexander von Humboldt, no longer flit about the palace. Marcus von Niebuhr, the unhappy son of an illustrious sire, has been stricken by a malady not unlike that which destroyed his royal

master. General von Gerlach caught cold at the funeral of the late king, and died a few days after; but the influences now brought to bear on the royal mind are, although different, not much better. The king is in the hands of a military clique-of the "Ungeist (reaction) in uniform," as the Berliners say; and the policy which it is likely to recommend will hardly be one of concession. M. von der Heydt, the Elberfeld banker, who was the moving spirit of the last ministerial combination, is a man of shifts and expedients; a keen intellect, but of a coarse low type, both mentally and morally. In his heart he was probably not disinclined to yield,-witness the incident of the stolen letter, which was used last spring to influence the elections. M. von der Heydt, at the commencement of his political career in 1847, took the side of the constitutionalists; and, according to Prussian ministerial convenances, he is perhaps not quite responsible for all the reactionary proceedings of the cabinets of which he has formed a member. M. Bismark Schönhausen never was a constitutionalist. From the first he has been the avowed enemy of free government. He was one of the founders of the Kreuzzeitung; and although he has of late rather drawn off from it in the direction of French absolutism, he still holds most of its heresies.

Many seem to think that his policy will be to bid for the support of the Gotha party throughout Germany, and of those politicians of the constitutional and Fortschritt sections in the Prussian parliament who care more for the German question than for internal reforms, by picking a quarrel with Austria, or by attacking Denmark. That personal hatred to Count Rechberg, and strong political feeling, would impel him to persuade his royal master to buckle on his old sword, and begin a new thirty years' war, is likely enough; but those who, relying on his known admiration for the success of the imperial legerdemain at Paris, expect him to inaugurate a brilliant despotism at home, and "to flood Hesse, Hanover, and the Mecklenburgs with troops," do not give him the credit of knowing the difference between the world of dreams and the world of realities. If, again, any arrangement satisfactory to Germany is to be arrived at with Denmark, it will hardly be by violence. We who hold that Lord Palmerston's proposal for dividing Schleswig was about the best likely to be hit upon, would tremble for the results, if Prussia, by her rash proceedings, forced all peace-loving Europe to become distinctly Danish. The powers will hardly allow this international chancery-suit to end in a war.

A more satisfactory turn of events, as it seems to us, would be the following. The government will meet the Chambers in January. August Reichensperger, or some such person, might

propose a vote of indemnity to the ministers for their unconstitutional proceedings, which might be carried, on the understanding that henceforward all the estimates should be presented before any money is paid, except under most peculiar circumstances. The government project for the reform of the army organisation might also be accepted, as it is a fait accompli, the king yielding the popular demands about introducing the non-noble element more largely into the far too close corporation of officers.

It must be admitted, we fear, that, from the military point of view, the king is to a great extent right in his proposals. The old Prussian army would appear to be a very indifferent force, likely to be swept away as easily as at Jena in any contest with France. Further, the king ought to concede the reform of the Herrenhaus. His most reactionary ministers will find it hard work to get on with that absurd body.

All we are now saying may be destined to be merely what the Germans call fromme Wünsche ("pious hopes"); and before these pages see the light, events may occur to render what we venture to propose entirely impossible. The king is angry. The liberals are, most naturally, exasperated. The chief of the cabinet is a violent and headstrong man. Any day may bring us evil tidings; but, next to the king's retreating from a position to which he is quite unequal, we should think that the solution which we have sketched would best save the dignity of all parties, and lead to the most permanent gain, alike to the internal constitutional life of Prussia, and to her position in Germany. The minor states will never rally round a despotic or half-despotic power. A thoroughly liberal system should rise before the eyes of the King of Prussia, like the cross of Constantine: "In hoc signo vinces."

ART. IV.-SHELLEY'S POETICAL MYSTICISM.

Relics of Shelley. Edited by Richard Garnett. Moxon, 1862.
Memorials of Shelley. By Lady Shelley. Moxon, 1859.

Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron. By E. J.
Trelawny. Moxon, 1858.

The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Vols. I. and II. Moxon, 1858.

THE little volume which stands at the head of our list will not add much, probably was not intended to add much, to the fame of Shelley. One poem, indeed, of rare beauty, printed before only in the pages of Macmillan's Magazine, it contains; but for the rest we have nothing but sparkling fragments of fancy-like powdered diamond-dust-to prove, what no one doubted, that even the clippings of Shelley's bright imagination had caught the intrinsic lustre of his mind. Perhaps the literary part of the volume is rather an excuse to usher in Mr. Garnett's reply to Mr. Peacock's reflections on Shelley's conduct towards his first wife. But even this is scarcely wise; for though it is a convincing argument for an arrest of judgment in the case, until the further evidence promised by the poet's family shall in due time be produced, few would have been inclined to pass sentence wrongfully in anticipation of that publication, and these unfortunate instalments of an incomplete apology have the effect of concentrating a needless and fatal attention on the morbid places in the poet's life. Whenever the private reasons that still induce his family to withhold circumstances which they regard as clearing his memory from the only grave moral imputation ever cast on it shall cease to operate, it will be the proper time to estimate Shelley's character and career as a whole. In the mean time, with the fresh materials that the last few years have given us,-in Mr. Trelawny's Recollections, Mr. Hogg's satirical and vulgar but still important biographical volumes, and Lady Shelley's Memorials, this seems no unfit occasion to review afresh the general character of his poetry in special relation to the intellectual influences which it has exerted, and will continue to exert so long as the young continue to thirst for the intoxicating ether of intellectualised passion and to spurn the clay of common earth.

Shelley was a poetical mystic, but a poetical mystic of a very unique kind. Usually the word denotes a tendency to bore deep into the world of divine Infinitude, a disposition to prostrate the mind before the Eternal Will, and to bring the