At the congress of Verona, Hardenberg was seen, for the last time, exerting all his strength to support the opinions of the Emperor Alexander and Metternich, upon the necessity of a war with Spain. His last public act was a journey to Rome, to sign a concordat between Prussia and the Holy See; and the reconciliation between a Protestant state and the head of the Catholic Church was certainly a most singular and novel proceeding. Whence did it proceed? and what was the cause of it? The excitement occasioned in Europe by the Holy Alliance had reunited the various and scattered sovereignties. Their ideas were confounded by the necessity of mutual defence, and the various shades of opinion were effaced by the urgent anxiety for the repression of the democratic principle; so that the Pope was restored by the English, Prussians, and Russians, who all belong to different communions. These political reconciliations had strengthened the religious feeling, and, at this time, the Czar was dreaming of an universal church, by the union of all the sects, which offers some explanation how Hardenberg might go to Rome to sign the concordat. We must not, however, forget that, owing to her new position, and her great acquisition of territory, nearly half her population were now Papists, all the Rhenish provinces surrounding the great cathedral of Cologne being of that profession, and it was necessary to secure the exercise of their religion to these people, but half-subject to their new master. Hardenberg had still sufficient strength to preside over this treaty; he then proceeded to Genoa in search of a milder climate, and had taken one of those delightful villas where Lord Byron was accustomed to enjoy the charms of a lovely country, when he was surprised by illness and death, at the age of seventy-two years. It was a diplomatic career as long as that of Prince Talleyrand; but Prince Hardenberg had not, like him, preserved the polished manners and mode of expression which, in his youth, won the hearts of the republicans. His speech had become thick and heavy; he spoke French well, but with the German accent, that is slightly observable with Baron Humboldt. His language was very cold, and appeared the mirror of his feelings, which seldom permitted themselves to be excited by the imagination; he appeared to be even more a man of business than a statesman; and, in fact he has organised, not created, an administration which still exists, and gradually advances on the path marked out for it by him.