most
comfortable road, and will content himself with respectable vamping
in any shape. The history of the negotiations proves this; and had it
not been for the MADNESS OF NAPOLEON, we should unquestionably have
had for the third, fourth, and fifth time, a ruinous and wretched
peace."

The person so severely handled in two places of these letters where he is
not named, is plainly enough Prince Metternich; a statesman who, whatever
may be his abilities, and whatever may have been his merits--and merits in
the management of German affairs--from the peace of Vienna in 1809, to
that of Paris in 1815, (and it were out of place to attempt discussing
these points here,) was plainly in every respect the _antipodes_ of Stein;
and a man whom the hot Prussian baron could no more form a just judgment
of, than Martin Luther could of Erasmus. Diplomatists and mere
politicians, even the best of them, are seldom--to say the least of
it--the most noble specimens of human nature: there are bad and good
amongst them of course; but Stein, in his despotic sweeping style, was
fond of classing them all together, as in one of his letters to Gagern;
where, after expressing his confident reliance on "Providence, and the
hand of a loving Father who guides all," he adds, but "from the sly crafty
animals called politicians--(the original is English)--from these
_homunciones_ I expect nothing."

The official position which Stein occupied during the eventful year 1813,
was that of Supreme Director of the Interim Central Board of
Administration (_Central Verwaltung_) of the conquered provinces of
Germany, till arrangements should be made for their final disposal in a
general congress. When that congress came to do its work, of course he had
nothing more to do; and it will be pretty evident to the reader, from the
temper and opinions of the man, as above exhibited, that he was in nowise
calculated to work efficiently with such men as Metternich, Talleyrand,
and Lord Castlereagh, at Vienna. The very composition of the congress,
made up of every possible complex and contending interest, rendered from
the beginning the realization of Stein's patriotic views, with regard to
German unity, impossible. In such congregations of working and
counter-working diplomatists, not the triumph of any great principle, but
the compromise of a number of petty claims, is generally the result; but
compromise and patchwork of every kind were, to a m