The Czar Alexander I., who had just succeeded his murdered father Paul, was a great admirer of Napoleon.  His empire was too remote to fear French encroachments or French ideas.  Indeed, he started with many liberal sentiments.  By nature he was kind and affectionate; he was simple in his tastes, truthful in his character, philanthropic in his views, enthusiastic in his friendships, and refined in his intercourse,—­a broad and generous sovereign.  And yet there was something wanting in Alexander which prevented him from being great.  He was vacillating in his policy, and his judgment was easily warped by fanciful ideas.  “His life was worn out between devotion to certain systems and disappointment as to their results.  He was fitful, uncertain, and unpractical.  Hence he made continual mistakes.  He meant well, but did evil, and the discovery of his errors broke his heart.  He died of weariness of life, deceived in all his calculations,” in 1825.

Metternich spent four years in Berlin, ferreting out the schemes of Napoleon, and striving to make alliances against him; but he found his only sincere and efficient ally to be England, then governed by Pitt.  The king of Prussia was timid, and leaned on Russia; he feared to offend his powerful neighbor on the north and east.  Nor was Prussia then prepared for war.  As for the South German States, they all had their various interests to defend, and had not yet grasped the idea of German unity.  There was not a great statesman or a great general among them all.  They had their petty dynastic prejudices and jealousies, and were absorbed in the routine of court etiquette and pleasures, stagnant and unenlightened.  The only brilliant court life was at Weimar, where Goethe reigned in the circle of his idolaters.  The great men of Germany at that time were in the universities, interested in politics, like the Humboldts at Berlin, but not taking a prominent part.  Generals and diplomatists absorbed the active political field.  As for orators, there were none; for there were no popular assemblies,—­no scope for their abilities.  The able men were in the service of their sovereigns as diplomatists in the various courts of Europe, and generally were nobles.  Diplomacy, in fact, was the only field in which great talents were developed and rewarded outside the realm of literature.

In this field Metternich soon became pre-eminently distinguished.  He was at once the prompting genius and the agent of an absolute sovereign who ruled over the most powerful State, next to France, on the continent of Europe, and the most august.  The emperor of Austria was supposed to be the heir of the Caesars and of Charlemagne.  His territories were more extensive than that of France, and his subjects more numerous than those of all the other German States combined, except Prussia.  But the emperor himself was a feeble man, sickly in body, weak in mind, and governed by his ministers, the chief of whom was Count