or system of Estates: this
was indeed of the most rudimentary order, and consisted chiefly of
representatives of the nobles, craft gilds, and ecclesiastical
corporations; but it is worthy of note that, as in the Tyrol, there was
a Peasants' Estate in Wuerttemberg, and that these Estates did possess,
though they rarely made good, the right of voting or withholding
supplies from His Serenity. On the occasion referred to, when he
expressed some doubts as to whether his Estates would agree to the
proposed treaty, Napoleon, who had methods of his own for dealing with
refractory representatives, answered that 'he would settle all that.'
The Elector then got his crown from Napoleon; but in November, 1813, a
very similar scene was enacted at Stuttgart, (with Alexander in place
of Napoleon,) when the confederation of the Rhine was dissolved, and
Bavaria had already made her peace with the allies by the treaty of
Ried. Then the magnanimous King Frederick threw in his lot with the
winning side again, in return for that fatal guarantee of absolute
sovereignty and territorial indemnification for his losses, (for he was
obliged to disgorge some of the spoils of his neighbours,) which proved
such an obstacle in the way of the long-deferred restoration of
Germany.

Growing up under influences like these, it is wonderful that young
Hauff and his brother Hermann (his senior by two years) should ever
have discovered that they were Germans at all; but they lost their
father in 1809 and do not afterwards appear to have had any political
connection with the government: and by 1815, when Wilhelm was only
thirteen, the worst was over and the people of Stuttgart were left face
to face with their amiable monarch; who surprised them and all the
world by granting them of his own grace and favour an absolutely free
constitution. This, however, on the principle of 'Timeo Danaos et dona
ferentes,' was too much for the Wuerttembergers, who profoundly
mistrusted him: but before the matter could be settled King Frederick
died, and King Wilhelm I, the husband of a Russian princess, and a
brave soldier and able diplomatist, who had stood up for the rights of
Germany in the deferred Elsass question, gave to his people, after much
preparation, a very respectably constitutional form of government
with two chambers, which included a representation both of clergy and
old-imperial nobility, backed up by a strong Executive. This was in
1822, and the remaining