the Continental blockade, for the old outlets for linen, cloth, and
iron, the great branches of Prussian trade, were lost--foreigners had
appropriated them. And capital also was wanting. Intercourse, also,
with the Sclavonian eastern districts, a vital question to the old
provinces, was gradually almost annihilated by the new Russian
commercial system. But a still greater hindrance arose from the waste
of men through the war. The whole youth of the country had been under
arms, a large portion had fallen on the battle-fields, and the
survivors had been torn away from their citizen life. Many remained in
the army: full a third part of the Prussian officers who commanded the
army in the following thirty years consisted of volunteer rifles of
1813. He who returned to his former vocation found himself reduced in
circumstances, and his relatives helpless and impoverished. He was at
last glad to become an unpretending official, and thus to obtain a
livelihood for himself and his family in the exhausted country. The
bloody work of three campaigns, and the habits of soldierly obedience
had not diminished his vigour, but the genial warmth, which enables
youth to look victoriously upon life, had passed away. He began now a
struggle for a respectable home, probably with patience and devotion to
duty, but in the narrow sphere into which he now entered, he could not
but look back to the mighty past which he had gone through. Thus had
the manly energy of the generation been spent. The youths also that
grew up in their families had no longer the advantage of being
influenced by great impressions, enthusiasm, and devotion.

These misfortunes fell heaviest on the old provinces. The new
acquisition demanded for many years great official power and much
government care before it could be moulded into the Prussian
commonwealth.

It is manifest that a free press and a constitution were the best means
of healing these weaknesses more rapidly, and of bringing a feeling of
convalescence and coherence among the people; for warmth and enthusiasm
are as necessary to the life of a nation as the light of heaven is to
plants and dew to the clouds. The further its development advances, the
greater becomes its need of exalted ideas, and of having intellectual
interests in common. When the Reformation first roused the people to an
intellectual struggle, it was as if a miracle had been worked upon
them; their character became stronger, their morality pu