we confer upon ourselves, and in the proud elevation of our mind above our difficulties. You will know that while we oppose France, the mainspring of our country is sound and whole. As to peace with us, for you it is the affair of an hour. You declare it by the very act of your separation from France. From that happy hour all things will fall back into their original order, and begin for you a new era of life and happiness.

Here I close my subject. Much more remains to be said, but we have enough for the day. Time presses, and I must bid you farewell. Receive therefore, my dear Sir, once more the assurances of my durable esteem, of the high consideration with which I am impressed for your abilities and your virtues, and of my true good wishes for your success and happiness.

THE papers which follow were written in consequence of the appearance of a work, entitled "Mémoires et Lettres inédits du Chevalier de Gentz;" printed at Stutgard in the year 1841. Two of these memoirs, especially the latter, concern too nearly the author's account of the same transactions not to require some notice on his part.

REMARKS ON M. GENTZ'S NARRATIVE OF WHAT PASSED AT THE PRUSSIAN HEAD-QUARTERS IN OCTOBER, 1806,

PREVIOUSLY TO THE BATTLE OF JENA.

It will be observed by the reader of the despatches which form the ground-work of the preceding historical memoir, that a fuller exposition of the condition of Prussia, and particularly of the system of its government under the administration of Count Haugwitz, is necessary for a full knowledge of the state of Europe at the time they were written; and of the reason why no general confederacy could then be formed against Napoleon. He may collect, indeed, the nature of the obstacles to such a confederacy by the measures suggested for their removal; but it will require a more extended detail of facts, with many of which the writer was then unacquainted, to establish in his mind the conviction of its utter impossibility. Evidence decisive of this fact has been produced recently to the world in a posthumous publication of memoirs by the well-known Chevalier Gentz. It was printed at Stutgard, in 1841.

This gentleman had been invited to the Prussian head-quarters to write proclamations and manifestoes. He arrived at Erfurt on the 3d of October, a few days before the great battle, and during his stay there drew up a narrative in the form of a journal, of his daily conversations with Messrs. Haugwitz, Lucchesini, and Lombard - the three great directors of the Prussian councils.

His narrative, therefore, becomes an important historical document. M. Gentz was a man steadily attached to the old governments, an acute observer of public transactions, and a writer, as we all know,

of very considerable eloquence and ability. His journal was drawn up with a regard to truth which seems evident, under the clearest conviction of his judgment, and in the full bitterness also of his despair for the public cause. To that cause he certainly was devoted; and although I shall have to remark not very favourably on some passages in another paper contained in this posthumous collection, consisting of comments and criticisms on the negociations for peace in 1806, between England and France, of which he could know nothing, I will not refuse my testimony to his patriotism and his zeal, of which he gave me many proofs in his letters while I was at Vienna.

The document is further valuable as exhibiting, by actual experiment of its working, the faults of the system adopted by the Prussian government in the early days of the French Revolution; that is to say, by persisting in their French connection after the nature and the reason of their original alliance with that Power, and consequently of all that was German in its objects, had become fundamentally altered: I speak of the time when on the failure of the Duke of Brunswick's expedition in 1792, Prussia separated herself from Austria, and concluded shortly afterwards the peace of Basle. From the web of that treaty she never could extricate herself. In fact, the breaking up of the German union began with that act, and prepared the way consequently for the dissolution of the empire. It brought Prussia into a vicious system of relation towards the smaller states, whose union, grounded originally on resistance to the too great pretensions and preponderance of Austria, was nevertheless German in purpose, and German in its means. At the head of this national league, Prussia had long taken her place, and she had no right to desert it, or to change its character into that of an armed protectorship, grounded on a neutrality too necessary to France