I have been amused of late, by tracing, in the publications at home, a great and growing admiration for the Prussian polity!  There is something so absurd in an American’s extolling such a system, that it is scarcely possible to say where human vagaries are to end.  The Prussian government is a despotism; a mode of ruling that one would think the world understood pretty well by this time.  It is true that the government is mildly administered, and hence all the mystifying that we hear and read about it.  Prussia is a kingdom compounded of heterogenous parts; the north is Protestant, the south Catholic; the nation has been overrun in our own times, and the empire dismembered.  Ruled by a king of an amiable and paternal disposition, and one who has been chastened by severe misfortunes, circumstances have conspired to render his sway mild and useful.  No one disputes, that the government which is controlled by a single will, when that will is pure, intelligent, and just, is the best possible.  It is the government of the universe, which is perfect harmony.  But men with pure intentions, and intelligent and just minds, are rare, and more rare among rulers, perhaps, than any other class of men.  Even Frederic II, though intelligent enough, was a tyrant.  He led his subjects to slaughter for his own aggrandizement.  His father, Frederic William, used to compel tall men to marry tall women.  The time for the latter description of tyranny may be past, but oppression has many outlets, and the next king may discover some of them.  In such a case his subjects would probably take refuge in a revolution and a constitution, demanding guarantees against this admirable system, and blow the new model-government to the winds!

Many of our people are like children who, having bawled till they get a toy, begin to cry to have it taken away from them.  Fortunately the heart and strength of the nation, its rural population, is sound and practical, else we might prove ourselves to be insane as well as ridiculous.

LETTER XXV.

Controversy respecting America.—­Conduct of American Diplomatists.—­Attaches to American Legations.—­Unworthy State of Public Opinion in America.

Dear ——­,

The recent arrivals from America have brought a document that has filled me with surprise and chagrin.  You may remember what I have already written you on the subject of a controversy at Paris, concerning the cost of government, and the manner in which the agents of the United States, past and present, wrongfully or not, were made to figure in the affair.  There is a species of instinct in matters of this sort, which soon enables a man of common sagacity, who enjoys the means of observation, to detect the secret bias of those with whom he is brought in contact.  Now, I shall say, without reserve, that so far as I had any connexion with that controversy, or had the ability