England, always intelligent and clear-sighted, has striven to apply a remedy to the instability of men, by the stability of parties. In that country there are two schools opposed to each other, the Whigs and the Tories; and men from their earliest childhood are destined to belong to one, or other of these vast divisions. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge receive into their bosom this twofold generation of students, who apply themselves to the study of the peculiar ideas which divide these shades of parliamentary opinion, and proceed without hesitation on the path they have chosen for themselves; and, on quitting the university, they support in parliament the opinions in which they have been educated, or which they have adopted. Suppose a young man to be a Tory, if the Tories are in power he obtains an appointment as one of the under-secretaries of state, and only resigns it when his party go out of office; should he be a Whig, and the Whigs are at the head of affairs, the same thing takes place: every thing is fixed, and proceeds according to rule in the government; by that means alone it is known whence people come, and they are equally well acquainted with the course they are likely to take. In bringing together the names of Metternich, Nesselrode, and Hardenberg, I do not pretend to draw an absolute parallel between them; on the contrary, there exists a strong and well-defined difference. Metternich and Hardenberg always expressed their own ideas, and were the representatives of a system, which they followed with the utmost perseverance, and applied through all the changeful course of events that occurred in the two great kingdoms committed to their care. They were statesmen who had taken office with fixed principles, and their whole life was employed in their developement. For instance, the self-imposed object of Prince Hardenberg's foreign policy, was the increase of the national influence of Prussia against Napoleon; and of his internal government, the reconstruction of the States and of the Prussian citizen classes. Prince Metternich, in the foreign relations of the cabinet of Vienna, especially strove to establish his system of armed mediation, and moral influence produced by means of vast military establishments; while, to speak the truth, Count Nesselrode has been nothing more than the upright and intelligent executor of the will of his sovereign: he was the reflected image of Alexander, the faithful hand which undertook the execution of his wishes, even of those where his personal feelings were most concerned. The position of Nesselrode with regard to the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas, might be compared to that of the _ministres secrétaires d'état_ under Napoleon; the influence he exercises results from his long experience, and from the circumstance of his every-day life being passed in the midst of politics, which are thus interwoven with all his habits; and this in itself confers a great degree of power.