lized countries in both hemispheres.

The rapid advance in learning, however, especially in the universities
and the gymnasia, led to the discussion of innumerable subjects,
including endless theories of government and the rights of man, by which
discontent was engendered and virtue was not advanced. Strange to say,
even crime increased. The universities became hot-beds of political
excitement, duels, beer-drinking, private quarrels, and infidel
discussion, causing great alarm to conservative governments and to
peaceful citizens generally. At last the Diet began to interfere, for it
claimed the general oversight of all internal affairs in the various
States. An army of three hundred thousand men which obeyed the dictation
of the Diet was not to be resisted; and as this Diet was controlled by
Austria and Prussia, it became every year more despotic and
anti-democratic. In consequence, the Press was gradually fettered, the
universities were closely watched, and all revolutionary movements in
cities were suppressed. Discontent and popular agitations, as usual,
went hand in hand.

As early as 1818 the great reaction against all liberal sentiments in
political matters had fairly set in. The king of Prussia neglected, and
finally refused, to grant the constitutional government which he had
promised in the day of his adversity before the battle of Waterloo;
while Austria, guided by Metternich, stamped her iron heel on everything
which looked like intellectual or national independence.

This memorable reaction against all progress in government, not confined
to the German States but extending to Europe generally, has already been
considered in previous chapters. It was the great political feature in
the history of Europe for ten years after the fall of Napoleon,
particularly in Austria, where hatred of all popular movements raged
with exceeding bitterness, intensified by the revolutions in Spain,
Italy, and Greece. The assassination of Kotzebue, the dramatic author,
by a political fanatic, for his supposed complicity with the despotic
schemes of the Czar, kindled popular excitement into a blazing flame,
but still more fiercely incited the sovereigns of Germany to make every
effort to suppress even liberty of thought.

During the period, then, when ultra-conservative principles animated the
united despots of the various German States, and the Diet controlled by
Metternich repressed all liberal movements, little advance was mad