AND TOTOR TO FREDERICK THE NOBLE. 



215 



between them, and this regularity means not a little as between 

 men who are poor letter-writers. These were extremely busy 

 men too. The letters that have been freely circulated are 

 obviously restricted to two points : such occasions as births, 

 marriages, deaths, in either circle. But the private friendship 

 which united prince and parson, enabled them to exchange 

 thoughts outside what we may call the professional occupations 

 and family interests of each. 



Theirs is the correspondence of two gentlemen who, within 

 the limits of what their friendship may take cognisance of, are 

 on equal terms. Eeligion is not the topic of those letters, but 

 neither is it ever absent from the minds of the writers, though 

 in the case of Frederick, the letters came from a Eoyal personage 

 actively engaged in generalship and state business, at a time 

 when the making of history was proceeding apace. The light 

 thrown upon the " mentality " of Frederick is such that by the 

 time one has finished reading these letters, the reader has con- 

 ceived lor him a genuine love. 



Since the post- Waterloo general resettling of affairs in 

 Europe, the period from 1845 to 1857 is the only one that was 

 attended by some serious upheavals in the internal history of 

 Neuchatel and Switzerland. The internal affairs of Switzerland 

 were then marked by a violent opposition between Protestants 

 and Catholics, culminating in Civil War in 1846, and ending in 

 the strengthening of the Federal bond, a struggle which was 

 closely watched by foreign powers, some of which were 

 interested in the triumph — which did not take place — of the 

 Catholic Party ; while others, with Britain at their head, were 

 simply interested in the strengthening of the Confederation as 

 a whole by means of the Protestant majority — which came 

 to be. 



But the crisis bore also another aspect that entered more 

 deeply into the sphere of what are called foreign or interna- 

 tional politics. The wish of a large section — soon to be the 

 majority — of the Neuchatel people was to break off the tie with 

 Prussia entirely, to proclaim a Kepublic, not after the French 

 model of 1848, but on the Swiss pattern, and to be Swiss and 

 only Swiss. 



This scheme went through phases, but ultimately succeeded 

 in 1857, thanks mainly to the support of Britain. France and 

 Prussia bargained in vain with each other, till the matter got 

 beyond the haggling stage, thanks to the unanimity of the Swiss 

 in accepting the arbitrament of war between them and Prussia — 

 which, however, was in the end dispensed with, when the 



