Her late interference in the war of the Northern Duchies was suspicious; and the passion for naval power, and the hope of acquiring the protectorate of Northern and Central Germany, may have betrayed her into encroachments on her neighbours. But these dreams seem to be past; and it must depend wholly on herself whether she shall disappoint a noble experiment, or shall establish an imperishable name; whether her emblem shall be the scaffold or the altar; whether she shall be the great magazine of political combustion, or the great armoury of political defence to Europe; whether the shade of the royal tree shall shelter the fugitive principles of rational freedom, or direct the lightnings upon them. There can be no question that we live in times of vast political peril: the pealing of the tempest has scarcely sunk behind our march, when clouds gather on it before. New expedients are required to revive the preservative power of old principles. Religion is on its trial among ourselves; but _here_ it will not meet its catastrophe. The Continent will be the scene of the great conflict; and Prussia, more probably than any other portion of the Continent, will witness the severity of the struggle. It may be decided even within the lapse of a few years, and by the exercise of her own wisdom, whether her throne shall stand forth the barren centre of German revolution, or a magnificent creation of power--a central temple, to which the nations of the Continent shall come for the sacred fire, appointed to administer virtue to the living generation, and illustrate posterity. FOOTNOTES: [1] _Memoirs and Papers of Sir Andrew Mitchell, K.B._, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the Court of Great Britain to the Court of Prussia, from 1756 to 1771. By ANDREW BISSET, of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law. 2 Vols. Chapman & Hall, London. HOURS IN SPAIN. The neglect of Spanish literature is perhaps, after the decay of Spanish power, the most striking instance of the precarious tenure of greatness that modern history can supply. Various causes have contributed to this result; none more powerfully perhaps than that ecclesiastical domination which included all that could embellish and exalt our nature in the sphere of its malignant activity, and after poisoning the sources of material prosperity--after making the river, the forest, and the mine useless to their possessors--after turning the land of corn, and wine, and oil into a wilderness--extended its destructive conquest to the informing soul of its inhabitants, and to the ruin of commerce added the extermination of thought itself.