in his policy, and his judgment was easily warped by
fanciful ideas. "His life was worn out between devotion to certain
systems and disappointment as to their results. He was fitful,
uncertain, and unpractical. Hence he made continual mistakes. He meant
well, but did evil, and the discovery of his errors broke his heart. He
died of weariness of life, deceived in all his calculations," in 1825.

Metternich spent four years in Berlin, ferreting out the schemes of
Napoleon, and striving to make alliances against him; but he found his
only sincere and efficient ally to be England, then governed by Pitt.
The king of Prussia was timid, and leaned on Russia; he feared to offend
his powerful neighbor on the north and east. Nor was Prussia then
prepared for war. As for the South German States, they all had their
various interests to defend, and had not yet grasped the idea of German
unity. There was not a great statesman or a great general among them
all. They had their petty dynastic prejudices and jealousies, and were
absorbed in the routine of court etiquette and pleasures, stagnant and
unenlightened. The only brilliant court life was at Weimar, where Goethe
reigned in the circle of his idolaters. The great men of Germany at
that time were in the universities, interested in politics, like the
Humboldts at Berlin, but not taking a prominent part. Generals and
diplomatists absorbed the active political field. As for orators, there
were none; for there were no popular assemblies,--no scope for their
abilities. The able men were in the service of their sovereigns as
diplomatists in the various courts of Europe, and generally were nobles.
Diplomacy, in fact, was the only field in which great talents were
developed and rewarded outside the realm of literature.

In this field Metternich soon became pre-eminently distinguished. He was
at once the prompting genius and the agent of an absolute sovereign who
ruled over the most powerful State, next to France, on the continent of
Europe, and the most august. The emperor of Austria was supposed to be
the heir of the Caesars and of Charlemagne. His territories were more
extensive than that of France, and his subjects more numerous than those
of all the other German States combined, except Prussia. But the emperor
himself was a feeble man, sickly in body, weak in mind, and governed by
his ministers, the chief of whom was Count Stadion, minister of foreign
affairs. In Austria the aristocrac