The Express.
London, England, 1861-01-03 00:00:00

THE. XXERESS, THURSDAY .EVRITMG, JANUARY 3, VIB6I. -

of his father, which must have deeply injured
either his principles or his sensibilities. Erin Nie-
buhr, who di/dated the movements oa behalf of
popular freedom, never, in the days of hiehiegiest
and latent censervatisui, pretended to e. tenauce
the conduct of the Princes of Germany, who pro-
mised constitittines, and then withdrew or never
bestowed them. The late Kiug seemed, however,
radically unable to understand what the purpolie of
a coutitution really was. He mid he would never
allow a hit of paper to interpose between bin, and
his people ; and he evidently thought that team, soil
kiwis of the band, and processions and demoustra-
tieue in the serrete, were of far more weight and
efficacy than coustitutional provisiou. He saw
inscribed in the statute hook his father's promise in
1815 to devehli the uatioual representation, as soon
as peace should be wowed ; awl liti heard his
father lab in 1817, and thentmfurth at in-
tervals till 1840, that not every time
is the right time ; and that he hail
never mentioned the date at which he would do it.
Stich was the political training of the Crown
Prince. It is no wonder that when he had mar-
ried, in 1$?, a Bavarian princess, he turuwl from
politics to art, literature, and speculative philo-
sophy. Niebuhr, on retnniing from Rome, met him
again, a year after this marriage, and thought him
' improved beyond description —with a mind full
of knowledge, and a heart full of hue sensibilities.
Yet at this time the Crown Prime', notion of Euro-
pean politic. comprehended little more than the old
jealousy of Austria ; and the worship of Russia, as
the mily stout bulwark against Austrian supremacy.
There were occasional paroxysms of fear of tyro-
lutien in 18d0, for imitative, and whenever reform
was anywhere heard oil ; and there were occasional
serapes, arising teen nieddlinge with protestant
sects, or getting Into quarrels with the Pope and
the clergy—scrapes got into by the third
Frederick, and affording a curious train-
ing for the fourth of the name ; but,
on the whole, the Prince lived for art and
literature, for dreams and Neutiment, till he came
to the throne in 1840. His presence iu this
country in the beginning of 1842, and his far-famed
breakfast with Mrs. Fry, awl the high hope and
laudation thereby created atuoug the Quakers, are
remembered by oust of our generation. He came
over to st.wd sponsor to our Primal of Wales. He
had just dour a good act in issuing an amnesty for
political offences, and in recalling the Grimm, Pro-
fessor Arndt of Bonn, and other scholars who had
been driven abroad, or displaced from their
functions for political reasons. His minister at our
court was theft the Chevalier Bunsen' whose poli-
tics were inure liberal than his own ; his apparent
intention was to give his people their promised
parliament ; and nothing had occurred since he
became king to test the genuine worth of his sen-
timents ; at. that he was welcomed at our court, and
I in 'some degree by the nation, as something more
than a political ally. The thought was in ninny
Iminds that there ought hereafter be intermarriages
between royal children in our country and in his •
between our Queen's children and his nephews anti
nieces (for he was himself childless). If times hail
continued quiet, and there hail been no trouble-
some peoples to perplex royalties, such a friendship
and such schemes might have prospered : but
the nineteenth century is one which de-
mands awl imposes action ; and the exposure of
the weakness of the poor King of Prussia,
caused by the events of 1848, left no option to any
who knew him about respecting or despising him.
Ministers, friends, family, people could not help
being ashamed of their muter, friend, relative, ori
sovereign, after knowiug the true story of March,
1848. Those who saw him in the streets of Berlin
on the 21st of that March had no more hope of him.
There bad been passages in his conduct, from the
day of his accession' which had reminded historical
politicians of the Stuart., though the likeness was
" with • difference." No Stuart would have spon-
taneonsly promised the people, however vaguely,
that their privileges should be confirmed and their
institutions developed ; and the King did this, nu
occesion of his sentimental journey through his
dominions after his father's death. But when the
states of Prussia Proper took hire at his word, mid
thanked him for his purpoee of fulfilling the pro-
mises of his father, he backed out of his
engagements in true Stuart style. From the
time of his letter to the States, repri-
mantling them for their expectation, his poli—
tical reputation was gone. Is is true he called
together the provincial &tides at Berlin in 1847 •
but that was because lie could not help it. He had
impoverished himself by the vast military expen-
diture by which he hoped to keep down the people
and secure to himself the support of a great army,
and he had given away money with both hands to
Don Carlos and other hopeful followers of the
Stuart example. And he wanted something else
besides mealy. He was more thin-skinned than
the Stuarts, and he was wretched under the con-
tempt and dislike of his people. The parliament
of 1847 was his method of recovering his popu-
larity, and he boasted of having conceded all
manner of valuable things, while begging the
estates to observe that he had "not surrendered
one right of his crown." Well, as his game of
seesaw was now understood, his " beloved Ber-
liners" were really surprised at his proclamation
of the 18th of March, 1848, whereby he appeared
to put himself in the very front of the revolutionists
of Europe. His proposal to abolish the confede-
ration of German States, and all the restrictions
imposed by that scheme, and to constitute one
German federal state, was almost as confounding
to his own eourt as it must have been to Austria.
The citizens assembled before his palace tocheer him
for his concessions ; but, unfortunately, the soldiery
were brought up by the King's order ; and, unable
to bear some popular jeers, they rude in among the
crowd, and killed above sixty persons. The groan-
ing and moaning proclamation of the King on the
occasion declared that the sabres were meant to be
sheathed, sad that the gun. of the infantry went
off of themselves. That proclamation was not the
only address to the "beloved Berliners." The
same dedication was inscribed in chalk by night
over the bullet sent into a poet in the square by
use of those guns, no doubt, which went off of
themselves.

The next morning was that on which the King
and Queen were compelled by the assembled friends
of the murdered citizen to come down iuto the
courtyard of the palace, and with uncovered heads
to view the corpses, andi be told that they beheld
their own work. There was some difficulty in get-
ting the Queen down ; but her visitors would not
depart without seeing her. Her husband trembled
as excessively es she did. But it was not this
which overthrew the last remains of respect
in the minds of manly observers. It was
the demeanour of the King on the 21st, whim
be rode through the streets of the city, and pro-
yoked the universal remark that he had lost his
senses. He kissed his hand and gesticulated like a
madman, forswore all personal alms and desires,
called Heaven to witness, in the attitude of taking
an oath, that he desired nothing but the unity of
Germany and the supremacy of popular interests.
He declared that he added another to the list of
mighty princes and dukes who had carried the
banner of freedom at the head of the nation ; and
1 that liberty and propels were the one thought that
I filled his mind. He liberated the Polish and other
state prisoners, and declared that this day would
be the great day of Prussia in future ; and
in one sense, the last ; as the name of Prussia
should henceforth merge in that of Germany. He
said nothing of wbo was to be emperor of this
united Germany ; but there were plenty of con-
temptuous spectators who saw that he intended to
be carried into that seat of power on the
shoulders of insurrectionary Germany. He (h-
-awed that the people of Berlin had behaved
so nobly and generously towards him as the
population of no other city in the world
would have done. Yet in another year he called
(by the month of his minister) this movement " a
street riot, disgraceful to Berlin and Prussia," and
bad already committed himself to the strong though
shallow current of a reantionary policy, checked now
and then by his hankering after the Imperial crown,
which he fancied t 9 be indicated by en old monk-
ish prophecy as reserved for him. Before the
Eastern question took form, and brought in new
complications, be sympathised with Austria in

dread:of revolution, and in precautionary and re-
Ipreseive measures, which seemed to him the hatred
Id his beloved Berliners ; while his oeseinmal senti-
mental snatches at the crown of federal Oeimany
prevented any cordial friendship with Almeria. In
this kind of employment, varied by continual
attempts to retain the name of a parliament and a''
press while not permitting the real existence of
either, and by worshipping Russia, and meddling
with religion, and fiddle-faddling with art, litera-
ture, military shows, and demonstrations of other
sorts, the feeble King filled up the interval between
his escapade of 1848 and the full development of
the Eastern question.

In one of his characteristics the deceased King
W 11.4 unlike the Stuarts ; and thin quality would
have entitled him to deep and pare compassion,
if it had not been defiled by a bad eshnixture.
His fair family affections so implicated him with
Russia that all possible allowance would have been
made for him in his difficulties during the great Rus •
mien war, if his fair family attachments had not been
implicated with his unfair ambition and jealousy
with regard to Austria. The difficulty of his posi-
tion wax indeed extreme. His people feared and
abhorred Russiawhile every affection and sentiment
of his own disposed him in favour of the Romanoffs,
with whom his sister had become one. He did the
worst thing possible in that hard position • for
duplicity is the lowest resource of : and, hard an
:mint have been his sacrifices in any course, the sacri-
ficed his integrity and royal good faith is that which
the.nioat lenient must find it most difficult to make
allowance fur. He was sufficiently punished—
punished by the lone of that public opinion of
Europe which his vanity craved, by the contempt of
the Czar, whieh was revealed by the Secret Cone-
hipondence between Nicholas and the British go-
veruineut, by his own exclusion from the hseincils
of the Allies, and by the indignation of hie own
people, which would hare dethroned him if he had
ruled over any but unpractical Germans. There is
little doubt that it coat him his life, for he seems
to have sunk under his pain of mind. In this
country great injustim has been done to the late
King in respect of his personal habits—and
especially about the nature and amount of his in-
temperance. With irritable nerves and a feeble
brain, he was in a manner intoxicated by every sort
of stimulus, as well as by wine. He
wee drunk at the spftlacle of a moving
work of art, at the sound of acclamations or exe-
' orations in the streets, at every one of the scenes
which he was so fond of getting up ; at pious letters
from the Russian wart, or at milting one himself ;
at being called " the angel of pesos" by the Czar
Nicholas ; and at the exhibition of the Czar's old
uniform ; at everything which in any way stimulated
has sensibilities. He was truly pitiable in his
latter days. He had alienated his best friends and
servants ; and when Bunsen, and Usedom, and
Humboldt held aloof from him, after long forbear-
ance, he found himself dependent on a Mantentrel,
a Gerlach, and a Niebuhr—fit comrades of the
Russian creatures who swarmed at his court. He
could scarcely keep on decent terms with his
brother and his brother's son—his two next suc-
cessors. He was nicknamed by every court in
Europe •, and cursed, as he knew, by his people, to
whom he had promised the rank of a first-class
European nation. He who above all men craved
sympathy on every hand, found himself a despised
outcast in the crisis which an able monarch would
have employed for the establishment of has king-
dom in a higher position than it bad ever held.
He rail pitiable as every maim is who finds him-
self in the wrong place, and has no power to
get into a fitter. He was not " a square man in
a round hole and so far was he from being what
the Germans so prize, a " many-aided" man,
that he was not even that fewest-sided thing,
a triangle in a square hole. If he had
been a private citizen, he might, with his
sensibility, his cultivation, and his intellectual
tastes, have led a blameless, and perhaps a bene-
ficent and happy life. He could not have been
even a country gentleman, in the continental sense,
because his deficiency of will must have caused
failure in the very smal lest f unction of administration;
but as an opulent citizen, with his library, and
chapel, and music-room, and museum of antiquities,
he might have fulfilled the anticipations of his old
tutor, Niebuhr ; but evil was the destiny which
made him a ruling Prince in our revolutionary
nineteenth century.
One good may live after him. He may serve as
a warning to his successors. It is to be hoped that
they are not Stuarts too—unable to take warning.
The time for Stuarts will soon be over on the Con-
tinent as completely as it has long been in England.
The Prussian people are so deficient in political
education that their political qualities have as yet
been of no use to them : but the qualities exist,
and the training will come, in one fashion or
another. They will not let their Princes play fast
and loose with them for ever. nor allow their
loyalty and generosity to be made their snare in the
future as they have in the peat.

Sbe Court.

___•__
WINDSOR CASTLE, JAL 1.

The royal dinner party yesterday included the
Prince of Wales, the Princess Alice, the Prince and Princess
of Leininpn, the Her. Lord and Lady Wriotheeley Rural.
lady Caroline Barrington, Major-General the Hon. R. and
Yrs. Bruce, the Hon. Mn. O. Grey, Colonel the Has. Sir
C. and Lady Phipps, Min Phipps, the Lean of Windsor and
the Hon. Mrs. Wellesley, the Hon. Mn. T. M. Biddnlph,
Mr. Russell, Lieutenant-Colonel Keppel, Major Elphinstone,
R.E., Mr. Woodward, and the Right Hon. Sir Charles
Wood, who arrived on a visit in the afternoon.
Inconsequence of the alarming accounts rewired by tele-
gram of the state of the King of Prussia, the military and
private bands did not play.
The Queen and Prince Consort, accompanied by the Prince
of Wales, Princess Alice, Prince Arthur, Prince Leopold,
and the Primmest' Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, left Wind-
sor by a specie' train for Osborne, about a quarter before
it o'clock this morning. In attendance were the Countess
of Gainsborongh, the Hon. Lucy Kerr, the Hon. Mary
Bulteel, Colonel the Hon. Sir C. Phipps, Colonel the Hon.
A. N. Hood, Colonel Pousouby, Lieutenant-Colonel Koppel,
Major Elphinstone, R.E., and the Master of the Household.

Sir Chirlee Wood apatite Honourable Mrs. R. Bruce have
taken their departure.
The Queen received very early this morning a telegram an-
nouncing the melancholy news of the death of the King
of Prussia, forwarded by the present King.
Despatches were received at the Colonial-office yesterday
from the Governor of British Columbia.

ARRIVAL OF THE COURT AT OSBORNE.

PORTSMOUTH. J. 2.

Her Majesty and the Prince Consort, accompa-
nied by the royal family, arrived at Clarence.yard, Gosport,
this afternoon, at five minutes past one o'clock, and em-
barked on board the Fairy screw yacht, Captain the Hon.
Joseph Denman, en route to Osborne. On her Majesty's
arrival at Clarence Yanl the royal standard was saluted by
the Victory and St. Vincent. and on the Fairy'. leaving the
harbour with the royal standard dying she was saluted by
the garrison battery and the ships at Spithead, consist.
ing of the Algiers, 90, screw, Captain George W. O'Calla-
ghan ; Trafalgar, 90, screw, Captain Edward G. Fanshawe ;
and Diadem, 32, screw, Captain Jams* H. Cockburn. The
Major-General Lord Paulett, Vice-Admiral Henry W.
Bruce, commander-in-chief, Rear-Admiral John Elphin-
stone Erskine, and a guard of honour, were at Clarence
Yard waiting her Majesty's arrival. The court arrived at
Osborne at a quarter-past two o'clock.

THE PRINCE OF WALES' VISIT TO THE
UNITED STATES.

(From the New Yont Heroht.)

The following important oorrespondence han juet
pared between our government sad Great Britain, through
Loyd Lyons, the British Moister. It explains itself, and will
be read by every American with pride and pleasure

LATEST I#4I4IGENCE.
iew4ol.

PARIS, THURPIDAT MOILVING.
TM Moniteur contains decrees appointing M.
Michel Chevalier Grand Officer and M. ltecayrac-
Delanture Commander of the Legion of Honour.

In its daily political review, the Moniteur states
that financial events in foreign countries have in-
fluenced the French money market in a manner to
be regretted, but declares the report that the
French government is under the necessity of having
recourse to a new loan to be without any founda-
tion.

The Moniteur also states that the amount of
Treasury Bonds does not at tho present moment ex-
ceed 75,000,000 fr.