several towns there are agency offices; an insurance office exists in Berlin; and commercial relations with the different European States are maintained by reciprocal consuls. Prussia possesses a paper circulation, but not in sufficient proportion to the metallic currency; for the utmost of the sum afloat in promissory notes is about 5,500,000 crowns; while the mass of coined money may be reckoned at 30,000,000 of crowns. All money is coined at the three mints of Berlin, Breslaw, and Dusseldorf, but the coins vary in different provinces. Bankers' accounts are kept both in imaginary and silver groschen. The gute grosche—an imaginary coin-is estimated at three English halfpence; the silver grosche at five farthings. The thaler is equal to about 38. British currency. The Frederic d'or, stamped as being equal to 5 thalers, is now equal to 52.

CHAP. III.-INHABITANTS RELIGION-STATE OF EDUCATION -GOVERNMENT-REVENUE-MILITARY FORCE.

Inhabitants.] THE mass of the inhabitants of Prussia consists of Germans, who form more than 7 of the whole, and with the exception of the province of Posen, are everywhere the preponderant race. They are partly of the Lower, and partly of the Upper German race, and are also distinguished by their different dialects. The Walloons, who live in the neighbourhood of the Ardennes, and in some of the other provinces as colonists, speak a patois of mixed French and German. The inhabitants of Slavonian descent amount to about 1,600,000, and are subdivided into Lithuanians, Wendes, Sorabes, and Kassubes, Lettes and Cures, and Tscheches or Bohemians. In the district of Sarlouis, and in the Mark Brandenburg and Pomerania, are a good many inhabitants of French descent, who, although mixed with the Germans, have preserved their native language; and in the centre of Pomerania, small villages are found, where most of the inhabitants understand and speak French. Their number may amount to about 12,000. There are nearly 134,000 Jews in the kingdom, four-fifths of whom reside in the duchy of Posen. Except in the newly-acquired provinces in Poland, Saxony, and on the Rhine, where the government is very far from being liked, the Prussians everywhere exhibit a great attachment to their king and constitution. According to Dr. Casper of Berlin, who has published a pamphlet on the subject, there were in 1824 no less than 5,590 medical men in Prussia, or one for every 2000 of the population. But what is much more extraordinary, there were no less than 10,307 midwives! The rate of mortality varies in the provinces from one in 40 to one in 354.

Ecclesiastical Affairs.] With respect to religion, by an estimate made shortly after the treaty of Vienna, the Protestants, to whom belong the Lutherans, and members of the Reformed creed, who are now united in most of the Prussian provinces, the Moravians, Hussites, and several other sects, amounted in the whole to about 6,500,000. Of these, the Lutherans are by far the most numerous; the members of the Reformed church amounted to about 350,000, and the Moravians and Hussites to about 600,000. The Catholics amounted to about 4,500,000, and the Jews by a census taken in 1824, amounted to 149,594. Although the population has increased since, it may be safely presumed, that

the principal sects still exist in nearly the same proportions. There is no established religion in the Prussian States; the professors of all creeds enjoy equal rights, and are equally eligible to every civil dignity. The Lutheran church has two bishops in Berlin and Königsberg; the rest of the clergy are divided into general superintendents, deacons, ministers, and curates. The clergy of every diocese form a synod under the presidency of the superintendent, which watches over church-discipline, and the religious instruction of the schools. These synods stand under a provincial synod, which meets twice a-year, and reports upon church affairs to the consistorium, and through it to the ministry. Every fifth year, a general synod meets in Berlin. Every province has a consistorium, and a board of education. The Moravians have a bishop at Niesky; but are, like the Gichtelianians and Socinians, under the Lutheran consistorium; the Catholic clergy consists of archbishops, bishops, deacons, and curates. The churches and the inferior clergy owe obedience to the archepiscopalian and episcopalian consistoriums; but the rights of the sovereign, circa sacra, are watched over by a councillor, who has a place in the Protestant consistoriums. The Catholics are allowed to appeal to the Roman See in affairs of religion and conscience; but all despatches sent there must first be laid before the bishop, or his vicar-general, who delivers them to the ministry for church-affairs, to be forwarded to Rome. An exception is made in affairs of conscience, and matters appertaining to the forum poenitentiale. The numerous convents and nunneries formerly existing in Silesia, and other Prussian provinces, have been secularized, with a few exceptions; the Jews have schools and synagogues, rabbies and teachers.

State of Education.] The literature of Prussia has already been comprehended in our general sketch of German literature. The great exertions which the Prussian government has made for the advancement of literature and science are acknowledged in all Germany; and Berlin may fairly be considered as one of the principal points from which the light of civilization and knowledge radiates over Germany,―an honour which the liberty of the press, introduced by the great Frederic, mainly contributed to win for this country; and although this liberty has been somewhat restricted by his weaker successors, a very considerable degree of it still exists. In no country certainly has government done more, or perhaps as much, for public instruction as in Prussia; it employs 21 per cent. of its revenue in public education, while France allows for the same important purpose no more than per cent.; the direction of it stands under the ministry for church-affairs. There are six universities in Prussia; viz. Berlin, with 4 faculties; Breslaw, with 5; Greifswalde, with 4; Halle, with 4; Königsberg, with 4; and Bonn, with 5. The gymnasiums, or preparatory schools for the universities, are divided into from 3 to 6 classes, and have from 4 to 12 teachers. The city schools, divided into high and ordinary schools, serve as preparatory schools for the gymnasiums; village and parochial schools are found in almost every village; but in some districts beyond the Rhine, in Westphalia, where the farms are quite isolated, and in Posen, the children are sometimes obliged to walk several miles to school.5

5 Prussia has given birth to many illustrious characters, whose names stand high in the roll of fame. The immortal Leibnitz, the father of German philosophy, was a native of Prussia; Cluverius, an eminent antiquarian and geographer, was a native of Dantzic; Nicholas Copernicus, the restorer of astronomy, was born at Thorn; Regiomontanus, a celebrated mathematician, was a native of Königsberg; and Ema

Government.] Prussia is still an absolute monarchy. Although in 1815 a solemn promise was given by the king to grant a constitution, the only step yet taken is the convocation of the Landstande, who have, however, quite as little power of legislation or control as their brethren in Austria. The succession is hereditary in the male and female line. The monarch is of age at 18. There is no fundamental law for the kingdom, excepting the act of confederacy for the German States, and some particular treaties for different provinces. The first order of the Prussian monarchy is that of the Black Eagle, founded by Frederic I. in 1701.

Administration.] The king is at the head of the administration; he directs the whole machine; he is the supreme lawgiver, and the first judge and bishop. The chancellor of state acts as prime minister, under the immediate command of the king. The council of state is the highest consultative authority in the kingdom; the king is president of this council, and the princes of the royal family become members of it at 18 years of age; the field-marshals and ministers are also members. In this council, proposals for new laws are discussed, and regulations for the administration enacted. The ministry consists of different departments independent of one another, and each responsible to the king only. It is divided into the department of foreign affairs; the treasury and exchequer; the department of justice; the department for church and school-affairs; the commercial department; the department of home-affairs; that of police; the war department; and the department for finance. Each of the provinces are divided into districts, and at the head of the administration of each province stands a president; each different circle or district has a provincial councillor at the head of the administration. In each circle is a physician and a surgeon for the exercise of medical police. The towns have magistrates. The general code of laws for the monarchy is that promulgated in 1794, which is about to be introduced, though with some modification, into the Rhenish provinces also, where hitherto the French code has existed.

Revenue.] In the days of the great elector Frederic William, the revenues of the house of Brandenburg were estimated at £750,000 ster

nuel Kant, lately a mighty name, was a native of, and professor of philosophy, at the same place; Opitz, the father of German poetry, was a native of Silesia, and emphatically called the Swan of Bober; Christian Wolff, once a gigantic name, and who in his day was lord of the philosophical ascendant, was also a native of Silesia, and professor of mathematics at Halle; Christian Garve, whose elegant translations and judicious criticisms have proved so serviceable to the reputation of our British moralists upon the Continent, also owed his birth to a Prussian province; Klaproth, the cele brated mineralogist and explorer of the Caucasian Alps, and the two Humboldts, William and Alexander, the first minister for foreign affairs to his Prussian majesty, and the second the most illustrious of travellers, and whose unrivalled labours have done more service to the science of geography, in the opinion of our own journalists, than those of all preceding travellers, and Von Busch, who explored the Alps of Norway, are also Prussian natives. We must also mention the names of the elder and the younger Jablonski, of Königsberg, the latter of whom explored the recesses of Coptic literature; Mendelsohn, the Jew; Nicolai, the celebrated Berlin journalist; the pious and learned Franck, of Halle; and those colossuses of literature, Jenich, Adelung, and Vater. These names, and many more which might be added, are certainly sufficient to redeem the Prussian nation from the foul aspersions which political writers, in the plenitude of their zeal for France, and their own ignorance of the subject of German literature, have thrown upon the betes d'Allemands.

A recent number of the Bulletin des Sciences publishes the following list of crimes in Prussia in 1824: viz. fire-raising, 261; robberies, 135; thefts, with personal violence, 1,013; common thefts, 8,297; parricides, 3; murders of wives by their husbands, or husbands by their wives, 7; infanticides, 75; murders, with robbery, 8; other murders, 48; homicides, 46; suicides, no less than 928! This statement does not include the crimes in the Rhenish provinces.

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ling. Before the second, and after the first partition of Poland, the revenue was 23,000,000 dollars, or £4,025,000 sterling. After the second and third partitions of Poland, the revenue in 1800, was estimated at more than £5,000,000 sterling. By Hoeck, in his appendix, published in 1804, when Prussia was farther extended by the indemnities of 1803, the revenue was estimated at 36,000,000 rixdollars, which at 38. 6d. each, would amount to £6,300,000 sterling; and by Hasselt, who wrote at a still later period, and quotes Hoeck, and many other writers on the subject, it was computed at 40,000,000 rixdollars, or £7,000,000 sterling. To pretend to state precisely the present amount of the Prussian revenue would be presumptuous, as we have no documents upon the subject; at all events it must be much greater now than in 1805. The provinces acquired by the treaty of Vienna, and the second treaty of Paris, must yield a much greater revenue than those parts of the duchy of Warsaw which were given up to the emperor Alexander, as they are equally fertile, and far more populous. It is certain also that the taxes must have been greatly augmented to pay the interest of the national debt, created by the surprising efforts which Prussia made in 1813 and 1814, to throw off the yoke of France. If, therefore, we take into consideration the above-mentioned circumstances requiring an augmentation of taxes, and the addition of territory, the revenue cannot we imagine fall short of Balbi's estimation of it in 1826, viz. 215,000,000 francs, or nearly £9,000,000 sterling.

A national debt is quite a new thing in the annals of the Prussian monarchy. Previous to the battle of Jena and its disastrous consequences, her revenue exceeded her expenditure, and she had no Statedebt. But the enormous contributions levied by Bonaparte in 1807, amounting to 300,000,000 livres, or £12,500,000,-the maintenance of a French army of 150,000 men, who lived for 18 months after the peace of Tilsit, at discretion upon the inhabitants,the havock made by the passage of French armies to the Russian war, the advance of 94,000,000 livres, or very nearly £4,000,000 sterling, made by the Prussian monarch in 1812, and which was never paid, besides other contributions and requisitions too tedious to enumerate, along with the total annihilation of all commerce, concurred to weigh down this country. Even in 1807, about the time of the battle of Eylau, the Prussian monarch was obliged to supply his imperial brother of Russia with the last remnant of the funds of the bank of Berlin which had been carried off on the approach of Bonaparte. We need not be surprised, after all this, that a national debt has been created in Prussia: the credit of the administration, however, is so good, that the public funds have never fallen below 85 per cent. Balbi estimates the total debt in 1826, at 726,680,000 francs, or £30,278,333 6s. 8d., estimating the franc at 10d.

Military Force.] Prussia being a kingdom but of comparatively modern date, her strength as a military State was not apparent till the era of the great Frederic. The foundation of her warlike power was laid by Frederic William I., the immediate ancestor of Frederic II. He it was who first established in his dominions the system of conscription. In 1783, the whole military force of Prussia amounted to 296,666 infantry, and 42,496 cavalry. In 1806, the army amounted to 234,000 infantry, and 34,000 cavalry. In the campaign of 1813 and 1814, Prussia sent 200,000 warriors from her wasted territories to the field, exclusive of the landwehr, or militia, and landsturm, or reserve; and

in 1815, 250,000 Prussians entered France. The Prussian army is now divided into, 1st, troops of the line, which form the permanent army; 2d, landwehr; 3d, landsturm. The troops of the line are raised partly by conscription, to which every young man from 20 to 25 is subjected, and partly by volunteers. The landwehr assembles yearly for exercise; and the first division of the landwehr, including all young men, if thought necessary, from 20 to 25 who are not in the line, and also a part of those from 26 to 30, in the event of war, goes into the field with the troops of the line. The second division, including if necessary all the men above 30 and under 40 able to bear arms, remains in garrison in time of war. The landsturm are only employed for the maintenance of civil order and domestic security.

The principal military reward is advancement; but from a captaincy upwards, the king has reserved to himself the right of nomination, without reference to the time of service. The punishment of flogging has been entirely abolished in the Prussian service.

CHAP. IV.-TOPOGRAPHY.

THE Prussian dominions out of Germany are divided into three provinces, which follow in order the German provinces, which have already been described.

I. THE PROVINCE OF EASTERN PRUSSIA.

This province is bounded on the N.E. and E. by Russia; on the S. by Poland; on the W. by Western Prussia; and on the N.W. by the Baltic. Its surface, according to Hoffmann, amounts to 702.80; and according to Stein, to 703 German, or 15,115 British square miles.

Physical Features.] Eastern Prussia is an immense plain, having only a few hills in the S.W. The country is so flat towards the sea, that the coast would everywhere be exposed to inundations, if the downs of sand did not protect it. The want of fall causes most of the rivers near the sea to run into stagnant lakes. The soil is of various qualities, however; about two-thirds are a rich mould; the remaining third is sandy. The highest hills do not exceed 506 feet above the level of the sea.

Lakes and Forests.] On the southern angle of ancient Prussian