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

TEE LA TB KING OF PRUSSIA.

The death of the King of Prussia, after several
years of retirement, is not, and never would have
been, an event of much importance in the eyes of
those who interpret the signs and measure the
seasons of the political heavens. Fortune herself
denied to its late Sovereign that particular pattern
cf achievement and species of glory which takes
most with ordinary men. Frederick William IV.
was doomed from his infancy to be an almost pas-
sive spectator of fearful struggles and prodigious
events. His first lessons in history were the suc-
cessive humiliations of all the German States, in
which, perhaps, the part assigned by the conqueror
to the Court of Prussia was the most inglorious of
that age of degradation. After learning from his
instructors, as far as he could appreciate the facts,
the prostration and dismemberment of his father's
realms, the Austrian dominions, and nearly every
other Continental State, lie had then to take in as
well as he could the Battle of Austerlitz, that smote
even Pitt to his grave, the extinction of the Ger-
man Empire, name and thing, and the threatened
rise of a new Empire of the West, to which Ger-
many could give only tribute, vassals and slaves.
The dream of a Northern Confederation was pro-
bably the first political idea of a hopeful character
admitted into the young Prince's mind, and may
not unreasonably be supposed to have taken root
there, and borne branches and knit under very
different circumstances in long after years. The
negotiations which weakly attempted to carry out
this scheme might also be considered the model of
Prussian diplomacy up to the present day. How-
ever, the pleasing vision was speedily and rudely
dispelled by men who did while others thought and
talked. The battlo of Jena drove Frederick Wil-
liam 111. from his capital, compelled a vain appeal
to Russia, and eventually deprived Prussia of half
its dominions. The Sovereign who is just dead
saw the Rhenish provinces given up by the timid
friend to the daring foe, and learnt what to expect
if he should ever again side with the one against
the other for any cause whatever short of seltpnre
servation. Such was the commencement
period in which, if Prince Frederick.
•otle ,xnemes
indulged in honourable hopes and perks
he had to do so by stealth, biding. time, and
91Vp!ii°angi
'There were,
looking for deliverance from withohuot:
courage and
indeed in his country statesmen 6
master-
and troi tithe
sagacity. enabled them to. outwit even
spirit of the age, and quietiY gather
w At"lgth
strength of Prussia for an e„ " 1.•
the madness and disastei ot the Rum;ian campaign
oppressor and set the nations
broke the rod of the
free. Prussia, her armies and her chiefs, took a
prominent and honourable part in the campaign
that restored liberty to Europe, and introduced the
longest, the profoundest, and the most prosperous
peace of modern times.
But, though the close of the war restored happi-
ness and honour to the House of Brandenburg, its
princes still had their troubles and perplexities.
Surrounded by powerful neighbours representing
the greatest variety of principles, and with an un-
usual combination of discordant elements in its
own people, Prussia was compelled to neutrality
and inaction in spite of a thousand traditions
and aspirations that urged her to movement, and
even aggrandisement. Such a monarch as Fre-
derick the Great would only have been too
glad to see the pillars of the earth shaken, the
great deep broken up, and nations thrown into
the pile, to be divided again. Gamblers who play