No wonder he looked at the rest of us with little hope.
But a stronger test was coming both for Carlyle and England.

Prussia, plodding, policing, as materialist as mud, went on solidifying and strengthening after unconquered Russia and unconquered England had rescued her where she lay prostrate under Napoleon.

In this interval the two most important events were the Polish national revival, with which Russia was half inclined to be sympathetic, but Prussia was implacably coercionist; and the positive refusal of the crown of a united Germany by the King of Prussia, simply because it was constitutionally offered by a free German Convention.

Prussia did not want to lead the Germans: she wanted to conquer the Germans.

And she wanted to conquer other people first.