But another power had arisen to render the balance of Europe still more precarious. Russia, at the beginning of the century, known but as a land of semi-barbarism, had suddenly started into a massive force, which threatened the absorption of Germany. Possessing the highest advantages for a great military empire, with harbours commanding the North, a population of sixty millions, a territory almost boundless and almost unassailable, and a government which, under all the changes of individual character in its princes, has retained in its policy the same character of continual progress, of restless interference in European politics, and of bold ambition--Russia must, in all the views of the English statesman, assume an interest of the most pressing order. To interpose an iron barrier to the ambition of Russia necessarily became the principle of English policy, and the English politician naturally looked for that barrier in the vigorous administration and steady strength of the resources of Prussia. The eighteenth century may be called the Century of Sovereigns. There was no period, before or since, in which so many remarkable personages sat on the thrones of Europe--William III., Louis XIV., Charles XII., the Czar Peter, Maria Theresa of Austria, Catherine II., and Frederick II. of Prussia--each possessed either of great intellectual or great political qualities; all capable of distinction, if they had been born in the humbler conditions of mankind; but all developing, in the duties and labours of thrones, those qualities in a degree which made them, for their day, the great _impulses_ of Europe, and which have placed them in an immovable rank among the high recollections of history. But, to the Englishman, whether politician or philosopher, Prussia is the most important, from its position, the nature of its connexion with our country, the singularity of its origin, and the especial dependence of its early advance to sovereignty on the vigour of an individual mind.