But the King, however honest he might be, who wished to continue to govern in the old way through pliant officials, was in danger from this new condition of the world of becoming the tool of a noxious faction, or the victim of foreign influence. He required a strong counterpoise against the preponderating power of Russia, and diplomatic entanglements with Austria. This he could only find in the strength of an attached people, who in union with him would deliberate on the policy and support of his State. King Frederic William III. never felt the incongruous position in which he had placed himself, in respect to the necessities of the time, for his image was closely bound up with the grandest reminiscences of the people; and the private virtues of his life made him, during a long reign, an object of reverence to the rising generation. But his successor was to suffer fearfully from the circumstance that he himself, his officials, and his people had grown up under a crippled system of State. But that the Prussians of 1813 should so quietly have borne their disappointed hopes, that--whilst already in the States of the Rhenish Confederation parties were in vehement struggle--the "great State" lay so lifeless, is to be attributed to other reasons besides loyalty to the Hohenzollerns. The nation was exhausted to the uttermost by the war and what had preceded it, and wearied to death. Scarcely had it strength to cultivate its land. Years passed over before the live stock could be fully replaced. Cities and village communities, landed proprietors and peasants were all deeply in debt. The price of landed properties sank lower than they had been before 1806. It often happened that noble estates remained without masters for many years, when the last proprietor had wasted the live stock, and that auctions were often unattended by solvent bidders. Commerce and industry had been destroyed by the Continental blockade, for the old outlets for linen, cloth, and iron, the great branches of Prussian trade, were lost--foreigners had appropriated them. And capital also was wanting. Intercourse, also, with the Sclavonian eastern districts, a vital question to the old provinces, was gradually almost annihilated by the new Russian commercial system. But a still greater hindrance arose from the waste of men through the war. The whole youth of the country had been under arms, a large portion had fallen on the battle-fields, and the survivors had been torn away from their citizen life. Many remained in the army: full a third part of the Prussian officers who commanded the army in the following thirty years consisted of volunteer rifles of 1813. He who returned to his former vocation found himself reduced in circumstances, and his relatives helpless and impoverished. He was at last glad to become an unpretending official, and thus to obtain a livelihood for himself and his family in the exhausted country. The