It is natural that States which feel an incessant desire of increasing, should not retain the inflexible principles of upright and generous policy in their diplomatic system. Every time they feel stifled, they strive for more space and the means of more extended respiration; and such has constantly been the condition of the Prussian monarchy, from the time of its foundation, which may be said to have taken place unexpectedly, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At this period the Duchy became a Kingdom, and no sooner was the kingdom established than it wanted to become great; for more room is required to unfold the sweeping train of a King, than to wear the robes merely of a Duke or a Margrave. This necessity for augmentation created a national law peculiar to Prussia; and looking at nothing but the necessities of her position, she seized every thing she could lay her hands upon. Frederic II. carried on this system of conquest, for his wars were regulated by no principle of the law of nations, and he appeared to have but one object in view, which was, to attack at one time Poland, and at another Silesia, for the purpose of conquering cities and provinces. On this account he availed himself of all means of distinction, striving for the celebrity of a writer and the pretension of a poet; even making the most of the puerile vanity of the philosophical party of the eighteenth century. When we examine into the actual constitution of Prussia, as well as into that she formerly possessed, we shall observe that her organisation has always been such as to render conquest imperatively necessary; even at present is not the kingdom like a lean giant, armed at all points, whose head is at Königsberg and his feet dipped in the Rhine, but whose middle is wanting? and the country that is required to complete the picture, is it not Saxony? It is, then, as the personification of the Prussian political system, that I am about to write the life of Baron, afterwards Prince Hardenberg, the most remarkable statesman that has been at the head of affairs in the monarchy of Frederic. Charles-Augustus, baron Hardenberg, was born in October 1750, at Hanover, that principality wedged into the midst of Germany, which recalls to the recollection the origin of the kings of England. Hanover preserves its German character under a separate administration, although it belongs to the patrimonial inheritance of the princes called to wear the English crown; and this separation was imperatively demanded by the English, a people so tenacious of their liberty, in order to avoid the chance of fatal continental wars, to defend the patrimony of their sovereign--a contingency their constitution will not permit.