Thus at the very
moment that France, during the intoxication consequent on the
triumphs of Jena and Friedland, was losing the last remnant of the
free institutions which had been called into existence during the
fervour and crimes of the Revolution, Prussia, amidst the humiliation
of unprecedented disasters, and when groaning under the weight of
foreign chains, was silently relaxing the fetters of the feudal
system, and laying the foundation, in a cautious and guiltless
reformation of experienced grievances, for the future erection of
those really free institutions which can never be established on any
other bases than those of justice, order, and religion."

But Stein was too fierce and fiery a spirit, not merely too ardent, but
too open and reckless a "French-hater," to remain long as prime-minister
of Prussia under such a suspicious and jealous-eyed master-general of
continental police as Napoleon. An intercepted letter revealed Stein's
sentiments to the French; and by order of Napoleon, Hardenberg, a man of a
more smooth and polite exterior, (though as true a _German_ at heart,) was
nominated in his place. The reforming baron, after felling a few gigantic
trees, was obliged to surrender the work of perfect clearing of the social
forest to a not unworthy successor, himself retiring, or (to speak more
properly) being banished to Prague. There he lay in a convenient central
position, like a lion nursing his wrath, ready to start off in any
direction--back to Prussia, south to Vienna, north to Petersburg, or
wherever any thing substantial, by word or deed, was likely to be done
against the man whom his soul hated with an intensity of moral indignation
truly grand, even out-Bluchering Blucher. Stein indeed hated Napoleon, not
for one good reason only, but for four: first, as he was a Frenchman,
vainglorious and false; second, as he was a conqueror; third, as he was a
tyrant and an oppressor; fourth, as he was a godless man and a heathen. In
Prague, therefore, Stein remained, in company with Justus Eumer, the
banished Elector of Hesse-Cassel, Karl von Nostez, and many French
emigrants, as it were in a secret-burning focus, and hidden metropolis of
anti-Gallican spirit,[18] for a few years, waiting not patiently, but, in
his fashion, with extreme impatience, for the coming of the great day of
political retribution, in which he believed as firmly as in God, and in
the last ju