CASPAR HAUSER, THE HEREDITARY
PRINCE OF BADEN.

attributed to
William Howitt
(1792-1879)

      SUCH is the startling title of a little book, professing to be published at Paris, but supposed to be printed in Switzerland, and to this hour most rigorously proscribed in Baden. Thereby hangs a tale, and a most strange tale, yet little known, and never published in England.

      Our readers will well recollect the Life of Caspar Hauser, published in London by Simpkin and Marshall in 1833. It was a translation of the account drawn up from legal documents by Anselm von Feuerbach, the criminal judge, and one of the very commissioners appointed in Bavaria to inquire into the facts connected with the life, the discovery, and the murder of Hauser. There was also a little book published about him by the Earl Stanhope, who patronized and adopted Hauser while alive, but after his death, having been on a visit to the court of Baden, professed to have discovered that Hauser was an imposter. So far, however, from Hauser having been discovered to be an impostor, all the circumstances of his life are utterly opposed to such a possibility; and the circumstances of both his life and death, the more they are reflected upon by the German public, the more firmly do they fix themselves in its mind, as connected with some great state mystery and crime. The very fact, that this youth was for seventeen years shut up in a hidden cell; that he was tended by a man in disguise; that when he was supposed to have lost all recollection of his origin, and all power of communicating aught respecting his life except one long and great blank, he was sent out into the world, with a letter in his hand, purporting him to be the son of a poor girl; but, when it was found that, having acquired the power of speech, he began to put one thing to another, and to draw forth from the strange mystery of his life indications which might eventually furnish a clue to his real origin, that then "The Man," as Hauser always called him — the man in disguise who had kept him prisoner, should suddenly appear, and attempt his life: should again appear, and stab him to death. These circumstances were to the German public convincing proofs that no poor girl was the mother, no priest, as asserted, the father of this youth; but that more wealthy, more powerful, and more worldly exalted personages were implicated in the parentage, and in the crimes perpetrated on this unfortunate person.

      These things have made Caspar Hauser the very Perkin Warbeck of Germany. That he had, however, a more real claim to a lofty origin is strongly attested by the secret firmness which the faith in his right to the title indicated in the heading of our article, is held by a vast body, not only of the people, but of the most intelligent classes in Germany; and still more so by the active and rigid vigilance with which all publications, all talk, and even all whispers of this faith in Baden are suppressed. Let but a copy of the book or pamphlet be sent in the most secret manner into any town of Baden, and the police is instantly on the track of it; letters are intercepted in the post that mention it, and questions on the subject in ordinary conversation are touched with alarm.

      Before going into the singular details which we mean now to give, in order to put the reader on the true ground for fully comprehending their bearings, it will be as well to give a concise history of Caspar Hauser, from the publications already referred to, and well known in England.

      Kaspar, or Caspar Hauser, the Nuremberg foundling, was observed in the evening of Whit-Monday, the 26th of May, 1828, standing against the wall in the Unschlitt market place. The citizen, an inhabitant of the market-place, who first observed him, was struck by his singular appearance. It was that of a peasant youth, clad in the peasant costume, and holding in his hand a letter addressed to the captain of the fourth squadron of the sixth regiment of light horse, lying there. Being conducted to him by this good citizen, and questioned by him who and what he was, it became evident that he was almost wholly incapable of speech, was thoroughly ignorant of everything in life, and strange in his behaviour. To all questions he answered, "From Regensburg," or "Joh woais nit," in the dialect of Bavaria, "I don't know;" and yet on pen and ink being put before him, he wrote in a tolerably legible hand, his name, "Kaspar Hauser." All endeavours to draw from him, however, whence he came, where he had lived, or any other matter connected with himself, were vain. He appeared to be from sixteen to seventeen years of age. He was of middle size, broad-shouldered, and of a perfect regularity of build. His skin was white and fine, his limbs were delicately moulded, his hands small and beautifully formed; and his feet, which were as soft in texture and finely shaped as his hands, bore not the slightest trace of having been compressed in shoes. He showed the utmost abhorrence of all food or drink, except dry bread and water. His speech was confined to a very few words or sentences in the old Bavarian dialect, as "Reuta wähn, wie mei Votta Wähn is:" "I wish to be a trooper, as my father was." He exhibited the most utter unacquaintance with the commonest objects and most daily appearances of nature, and a total indifference to the comforts and necessities of life. In his wretched dress was found a handkerchief marked K. H.; and he had also in his pocket a manuscript Catholic prayer-book. The writer of the letter which he had brought in his hand professed to be a poor labourer, and the father of ten children, and said that the boy had been left by his unknown mother at his door; that he had taken him in, and brought him up secretly, teaching him reading, writing, and Christianity. The letter was dated 1828, from the Bavarian frontiers, but the place not named. Within it was another letter, purporting to be from the mother, and written in Roman characters, saying that the boy was born on the 30th of April, 1812; that his mother was a poor maiden, who could not support him, and his father a soldier in the 6th regiment of light horse, now dead. That she requested the labourer to keep him till he was seventeen, and then send him to the regiment.

      The whole of the story was soon felt to hang very badly together. It was not likely that a mother, determining to expose her child, would lay it at the door of a poor labourer with ten children, and expect him to keep it seventeen years. It was less likely that any poor labourer in such circumstances could or would so faithfully support a burden of this kind for so many years, and then so punctually convey him to the place appointed. Besides, what motive could the man have for concealment? The mother might have, but what could the poor labourer have? If he had received the child, he would most likely have let him run about with his own ten. But to shut him up in a dark den, and there for seventeen years feed and visit him, was a piece of labour and mystery which no common labourer would subject himself to. There was evidently a nobler parentage, and another story, for which this was but a clumsy substitute.

      He was handed over by the captain of horse to the police the very evening that he was found, and he was treated by them as a helpless person from some unknown place. The greatest curiosity was excited regarding him, as soon as the case was known, and the Bürgermeister Binder especially exerted himself to penetrate the mystery which surrounded him. The result of much inquiry, partly from himself, and partly from circumstantial evidence, was, that he had been kept from his childhood in a dark, subterranean place, where he could not once stretch himself properly, it was so small, and there he had remained, clad only in a shirt and trowsers, and fed on bread and water. Occasionally he found himself attacked with very heavy sleep, and on awaking from these peculiar sleeps he found that his clothes had been changed, his nails cut, and the place had been cleaned out. His only amusement was playing with two wooden horses. For some time, however, before he was carried off to Nuremberg, the man who tended him, but whose face he never saw, had come frequently into his cell, had guided his hand in writing with a pencil on paper, which had delighted him very much, and had taught him to say he would be a soldier as his father had been; that he was from Regensburg; and "I don't know." At length "the man," as he always called him, came one night, carried him out of his dungeon, made him try to walk, on which he fainted, and at last brought him to the gate of Nuremberg.

      Every circumstance testified to the truth of these facts. He stumbled slowly forward in attempting to walk. He appeared to have no guidance or control of his limbs. His feet, which had never been used to boots, were now thrust into them, and evidently gave him the greatest torture. Walking occasioned him to groan and weep. His eyes could not bear the light, but became inflamed; and the formation of the bones and muscles of his legs demonstrated that he had sate all his life long. At first he had no idea whatever of the qualities of things; nor of distances. He was delighted with the flame of a candle, and put his finger into it. At the police office he exhibited no symptoms of interest in anything, of confusion, or of alarm. Feigned cuts were made at him, and thrusts, but he did not even wink in consequence. The sound of bells made no impression on him; but on drums beating near him he was thrown into convulsions.

      From the police-office he was removed to the prison for vagabonds and beggars. Here the keeper at first regarded him as an impostor, but soon found him actually to be in the state of a little child; and the jailer's children played with him, and taught him to speak.

      The public curiosity regarding him and his story grew, and numbers flocked from all sides to see him. They brought him toys. Von Feuerbach visited him after he had been considerably more than a month in Nuremberg, and found his room stuck all over with prints and pictures which had been given him, and money, playthings, and clothes lying about in regular order, which every night he packed up, and unpacked and arranged every morning. He complained that the people teazed him; that he had head-aches, which he had never known in his cell.

      On the 18th of July he was released from the prison, and given into the care of Professor Daumer, who undertook to bring him up and educate him; and an order was issued by the magistrates that he should not be interrupted by any more visitors. Here being shown a beautiful prospect from a window, he drew back in terror; and when afterwards he had learned to speak, and was asked why he did so, he said it was because a wooden shutter seemed to have been put close before his eyes, spattered all over with different colours. His sense of smell was most acute, and often gave him great agony. He could not bear to pass through or near a churchyard, because the effluvia, unperceived by others, affected him with horror. He was extremely amiable, and attached himself with the utmost affection to Professor and Mrs. Daumer.

      On the 17th of October he was found bleeding, and insensible, from a dreadful wound in the forehead, in a cellar. He was supposed to be dead; but he finally recovered, and stated that "the man" had entered the house in the absence of the family, having his face blacked, and had wounded him; how he got into the cellar he could not tell. In his delirium he had often said, "Man come — don't kill me. I love all men — do no one anything. Man, I love you too. Don't kill — why man kill?"

      Strict official inquiry was made into the circumstances, but no further light was thrown upon them. It was evident, however, that some diabolical mystery hung over him. There were powerful enemies somewhere, and it was now evident that they had taken alarm. The public curiosity had spread far and wide the fame of this strange youth, and it was evident that he might yet recollect things which might lead to a detection of his origin. Amongst those who now became deeply interested in him was Lord Stanhope, who undertook the whole charge of his education, and removed him to Anspach. Here he was placed for awhile as clerk in the registrar's office of the Court of Appeal; and he was quietly performing his duties when Lord Stanhope began to talk of adopting him and bringing him to England. This most probably scaled his fate; for one evening, December 14, 1833, as he was returning from the office, a stranger accosted him in the street, and on pretence of giving him news from Lord Stanhope, and intelligence regarding his origin, induced him to accompany him into the castle gardens, where he suddenly stabbed him in the left side. Hauser had strength enough to reach home, and to utter a few indistinct words, when he fainted. The police were instantly summoned, but before they arrived Kaspar Hauser was dead. No trace of the murderer could be found.

      It is no wonder that a fate so melancholy upon a life so strange should rouse the public mind to an extraordinary degree. It was felt that the eyes of those who, for some unknown purpose, but as clearly from most important grounds, had thus treated this unfortunate youth — who had inflicted on him a treatment which Professor Feuerbach styled "a crime against the life of a soul" — had never been removed from him. It was evident that no ordinary persons, and no ordinary fears, were concerned. It became the subject of deep popular inquiry; and the public knowledge of certain strange events in a certain high quarter led gradually to a conviction which now exists with a wide and deep effect on the popular mind in Germany. We will proceed to state what this conviction is, and on what it rests, from a little volume entitled, "Einige Beiträge Zur Geschischte Caspar Hausers, nebst einer dramaturgischen Einleitung von Joseph Heinrich Garnier."

CASPAR HAUSER.

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      "The first prince was a murderer, and introduced the purple to conceal the stains of his deed in this blood colour." — SCHILLER'S Fiesco.

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      [The author, after glancing at some of the many rumours of the crimes of palaces which, spite of the censorship of the press and the swarming of police, still circulate in Germany, proceeds as follows:—]

      To these princely family-histories I add, as no unfitting topstone, the singular fate of Caspar Hauser. In the territory of Baden the story runs from end to end, that the unfortunate Hauser was the true heir of the throne of Baden, a son of the Grand-Duke Karl and the adopted daughter of Napoleon, Stephanie Tascher. If this rumour stood nakedly and alone, we should hesitate to make it public; but it stands linked with such a train of facts, which we produce for our justification, that we entertain at least a doubt — a bitter doubt.

      In the time of the French Revolution, in Baden ruled the Margrave Karl Frederick, a brave and able man, and one of the few sovereigns whom the public could honestly praise. At an already advanced age, he made a left-handed marriage with a lady of the court, Fräulein Geyer von Geyersberg. The fruit of this marriage were the three Margraves, formerly the Counts von Hochberg, of whom the eldest, through a singular concurrence of circumstances, yet sits on the grand-ducal throne.

(To be continued.)

CASPAR HAUSER, THE HEREDITARY
PRINCE OF BADEN.

(Continued from p. 259.)

      THE heir apparent to the throne, namely, the eldest son of the Margrave Frederick, died (during the lifetime of his father) a violent death, while on a journey to the north, in the year 1801. The carriage was upset, and his neck was broken. He left, however, a son, Karl, who succeeded on the death of his grandfather in 1811. This was the husband of Stephanie, whom he married in 1806. Stephanie, now in advanced age, is esteemed a lady of fascinating manners, full of intellect and goodness of heart; but in the flower of her youth she united in herself all which constitutes the perfect charm of a young Frenchwoman. Notwithstanding, for a long time she deigned not to confer on her husband a word or look. An evil demon appeared to stand between them, and it did stand between them; who it was we shall anon see. Sound sense and natural goodness however, finally triumphed; the married pair discovered the truth, and became attached to each other. Their eldest child was the Princess Louise, who was born in 1811. Their marriage seemed to promise to become one of the happiest in the world, but the evil demon again presented itself. Karl was amiable, but weak; a knot of dissipated people acquired an influence over him; he was regularly ruined, and died of exhaustion in the thirtieth year of his life. He had had in the whole five children: three princesses, who still live; and two princes, one born in September, 1812, who died (?) in a few weeks; the other born in 1816, who died in the following year. Karl, therefore, left no male heir; and, at his death, who succeeded to the throne? — The evil genius of his father — his father's brother Ludwig, and that after the next elder brother, the Margrave Frederick, had died in the preceding year 1817, and died, too, of a sudden death.

      Since, then, this Grand-Duke Ludwig, the predecessor of the present reigning grand-duke, is the principal figure in the infernal picture that we now unroll, it is necessary in a few words to denote his character. Possessing a powerful constitution, he was full of vehement and contradictory passions. He was dissolute to the highest degree, irreconcilable in his hatred, constant in friendship — or more properly, grateful for personal services rendered him, which were truly of a very dubious kind, consisting in procuration and base adulation — arbitrary and despotic, and yet, so able, that perhaps never was there a prince who could rely so unconditionally on the devotion of his soldiers; at a signal from him they would have fired on father and mother. He was, moreover, persevering and determined in his resolves and opinions, and, finally, not wanting in personal courage, to which he added tolerable knowledge of military affairs.

      Let us now take a retrospective review of the whole succession of deaths which must happen, in order to open to him the way to the throne; and we find his eldest brother, who was killed by the overturning of his carriage; his next elder brother, who also died a sudden death; his brother's son, who died in the bloom of his years; and the two male children of this nephew, who both perished in their infancy.

      Without allowing ourselves to speculate how far these circumstances were ordered or effected by a human hand, since the inquiry is impossible, so much is certain, he was the murderer of his nephew, the murderer of Karl.

      At the time of the Congress of Vienna, a rumour was abroad that he had procured poison to be given him in Vienna; and the suicide of Karl's valet which took place in that city, and the cause of which never could be discovered, was soon connected with it in the public mind, and regarded as the consequence of the stings of conscience. Yet Karl died not till 1818: it did, indeed, appear as if his health had suffered a shock since his sojourn in Vienna; yet we willingly admit that Karl died in direct consequence of his debaucheries; but, if we cast a glance at the loose companions who seduced him into these disgraceful excesses, we at once discover none but people who, after the death of the nephew, became the particular favourites of the uncle.

      One of these, Von Gensau, colonel of the guards, led a life of constant scandal, contracted false debts, embezzled even fees belonging to the war-office, for which a poor devil of the name of Bernauer, who served both gentlemen as secretary, soon after the accession of the present grand-duke, was arrested, and for two years continued under trial at Carlsruhe. But Ludwig was too shrewd, and too zealous an observer — for he acquainted himself with the whole gossip of the city, and knew it all — for the debaucheries of his colonel of guards to escape him, which the very children in the streets were familiar with, and yet he never brought him to account for them. Was there a criminal secret between the two — the cement of this enduring connexion? The reward for having ministered diligently to the excesses of the nephew, which exhausted his strength? Was there a secret between them? Probably there was more than one!

      Another favourite of the Grand-Duke Ludwig was the Major Hennehofer, in whom many believe that they see the murderer of Caspar Hauser. This man has, indeed, talent, but unrestrained by principle, and capable of anything. He made a strikingly rapid career in Germany. The war of 1813 found him a commissary, if I mistake not, at Gernsbach. He was about the person of Karl, as a ranger; but under Ludwig he rose speedily to the rank of Minister of Foreign Affairs. Those must have been important services which were rewarded with so rapid an advancement. Was he also in the secret?

      The grand-duke openly took from the theatre a dancer, Mademoiselle Werner: he had two children by her, and afterwards created her Countess of Langenstein. Extensive and various as were his intrigues, to this lady he showed an unvarying constancy: he visited her every day, reposed in her the most unbounded confidence, and left her at his death the bulk of his private property, which was considerable. Near the residence of this Mademoiselle Werner was that of the park-ranger Hauser, who had earlier been chamberlain to Ludwig of Baden, still stood in high favour with him, and whose daughter daily visited her neighbour, where she often saw the grand-duke too. Both Mademoiselle Werner and the daughter of the park-ranger are good, plain, unpretending women, of the middle class, to whom people willingly listen when they talk out of their own heads, or become the echoes of persons of fashion. In this way, on one occasion came flying to me a feather, which once hung in the pinion of one of the Hauser family.

      The conversation was of Hennehofer; of his brilliant career; and whether, in case of a change in the government, he might not be a loser. "By no means," was the answer, "he knows too much." That much could not have grown in her garden; it was evidently the observation of the ruler, who had let it fall in confidential talk with his mistress. I could well comprehend on what occasion the grand-duke might have dropped this expression. Major Hennehofer stood in connexion with Mademoiselle Werner, he was even about to marry her sister; he had no private property; nothing but his pay. In the intimate conversations concerning this marriage, in which the grand-duke took a lively interest, and which he particularly desired, it was quite in character that the princely favourite or her sister, who was looking for a secure provision, should observe to the duke that the future bridegroom depended entirely on his pay, and might lose it under a successor. To which the reply was the requisite consolation, "He is indispensable to the successor — he knows too much." But what did he know?

      Perhaps it was how both the heirs male had perished so speedily while the sisters all remained alive. The people from the first regarded the affair as very striking, and said all sorts of things about it: the deaths were also attended with truly extraordinary circumstances.

      Before the death of each of the princes appeared the white lady. This white lady, as every one knows, bestowed formerly, and for ages, her visits on many of the great families of Germany, and each appearance was the herald of death. In the Castle of Blankenburg in the Hartz country, you may see a very striking full-length portrait of her. The white lady appeared at the cradle of the princes successively, bowed herself in grief over it, and the terrified nurses fled away.

      I have read with much pleasure the stories of the white lady and of the banshee, in the Irish popular legends; but as all these bore an ancient date, I had drawn the conclusion that the white lady had long since vanished, and appeared no more. I deduce, therefore, from this present fact, another meaning, one which certain persons in Carlsruhe adopted, that the white lady was no other than the Reichsgräfin, formerly maid of honour, Geyer von Geyersberg, the mother of the present grand-duke, and that she destroyed the children.

      This woman must have been an unnatural monster towards her own children. She was recklessly extravagant and irregular in her life; credit, she had none amongst the rich, to whom she was too well known; her agents went continually about amongst the dwellings of the poor, and exacted from them, under menaces and the most deceitful promises, their little savings for their own necessities. — She is dead, but curses and imprecations on her memory daily resound around her grave, from thousands of those whose families she reduced to poverty, or whose poverty she aggravated to ruin. Her eldest son is now Grand-Duke of Baden; her two other sons are Margraves of Baden, and all three are very rich; yet it has occurred to none of them to rescue the memory of their mother! They left her, during the latter years of her life, in a condition of indigence and destitution, which she endeavoured to escape by compelling from widows and orphans their last mites: and now that she is in her grave, they will not, by a small part of their superfluous wealth, purchase her an exemption from the curses of these unhappy ones! When the mother appears so infamous to her own children, what shall we think of her? We must believe everything, the moment that we can be shown what interest she could have to become the accursed work-tool of the murder in question.

      We have already said, that the Margraf Karl Frederick, at an advanced age, contracted a left-handed marriage with the maid of honour, Mademoiselle Geyer von Geyersberg, who was very young, and she bore the margraf particularly strong and healthy children. The courtiers made remarks thereon, and plenty of people set it down to their own satisfaction, that the real father of these children was no other than their own half-brother, the evil demon of our history, Ludwig of Baden; and certainly he who could seduce his father's wife to a crime of this kind, could easily lead her to the infinitely lesser sins of stealing or smothering other people's children. But if, indeed, these partly worn-out rumours were based on fact, there are other mysterious circumstances in the history of Ludwig, which can only be explained by the intimate relation between father and son, between a man and his successor.

      When Ludwig ascended the throne, he was yet a vigorous man. He had two healthy and strong children by his mistress the Gräfin Langenstein; he was not a man to be dreaming of dying soon; he was ambitious to the highest degree; why then did it never occur to him to marry, that he might be able to leave his throne to his own children — that throne, which, according to all appearances, he had grasped only by a whole series of crimes? The most powerful reasons of state must indeed urge upon him the policy of hastening such a marriage.

      Between the courts of Bavaria and Baden, there existed and still exist the most serious and earnestly contested claims to the possession of the Pfalz, the richest and most beautiful portion of Baden. After the death of the Grand-Duke Ludwig, there remained none of the family of the Margrave Karl Frederick, except the children of the Reichsgräfin von Hochberg, i. e. Madam Geyer von Geyersberg, who had been so created. But these were the fruit of a left-handed marriage, i. e. of a marriage in which the children inherited the quality, not of the father, but of the mother only. Thus the ruling family legally expired with Ludwig of Baden; and Bavaria might now make good its claims on the Pfalz, and Austria its claims on the Breisgau, which, in consequence of the French Revolution, had been given to Baden, at the expense of Bavaria. It became doubtful even whether the Reichsgräfin Hochberg could establish the claims of her children to the old hereditary portion of Baden which had for centuries belonged to the house.

      There were stupendous difficulties in these respects to surmount. The congress of Aix-la-Chapelle must declare the Graf von Hochberg capable of succeeding; and the whole influence of Alexander, the Emperor of Russia, who had married a princess of Baden, was necessary to elicit this declaration; which, however, after all, could not be elicited further than that the Hochberg family, if entitled to succeed at all, was entitled to succeed only to the original hereditary lands of the Margrave of Baden. It became necessary to make many journeys to all the courts of Europe; the Margrave Wilhelm, brother of the present grand-duke, engaged in the time of Charles X. to support the French court, and continued some months in Paris. There was a mass of memorials written and dispersed amongst the ruling powers. The Baden Chamber of Deputies was called on time after time to declare that the whole Grand Duchy of Baden was one and indivisible. A thousand other things were done and attempted; and yet, notwithstanding all this, the Court of Bavaria has never resigned its claims to the Pfalz, and these affairs at the present hour are by no means decided.

      Now all these difficulties were at once at an end, had Ludwig early married, and had legitimate male heirs. Why then did he not marry immediately on coming to the throne? Why did he not marry long before, as the creeping disease of his nephew had for years plainly opened to his view the certainty of his succession? Could it be that he had brought the Reichsgräfin to act the white lady, and to the pitch of infanticide, by the promise of setting her own children — his own children on the throne? If he gave such a promise, he was the man to keep it. But if he gave no such promise, or were no such man, was he not in the hands of the participator of his crime, and could she not come forward with this menace: "Remember the Bohemian Forest?¹ keep faith with us, or we will discover all!" Should he free himself from this by fresh murders? He was weary of murder, and in his wild doings towards the end of his life, many saw only his violent efforts to drown the irrepressible reproaches of his conscience.

(1) See Schiller's "Robbers."

      But if he did not revolt from recent murder, were not the confidants perhaps too many? Could not these hold in preparation for the worst chance, a written disclosure for foreign countries? it is certainly true that Ludwig of Baden never appeared to regard his heir to the throne but with a degree of aversion; but the case is very common, that the reigning father does not love his successor, who seems to await his end, and every day to pray for his life to be shortened. Ludwig was, moreover, sagacious, and must thoroughly perceive the pitiful want of character and the intellectual insignificance of his successor, who was not the man for him. Or was there engraven in his expressionless countenance, palpable to his eye, a train of crimes which made his hair stand on end, his blood run ice-cold?

      But did he really feel the pangs of an evil conscience? In his last years he had about him a dissolute, but at the same time bigoted and ignorant priest of the name of Engesser, who possessed an unlimited influence over him, an influence which he shared only with the aforesaid Hennehofer. These two understood each other admirably. Engesser, at the time that he contrived to attract the eye of Ludwig, was simply a parish priest. In little more than the space of a year, he rose to be the head of a ministerial department; but, in fact, he was prime minister, at whose nod everything gave way. Besides this, the grand-duke, who was otherwise avaricious, lavished upon him houses and money. Did the Protestant but aged prince feel a necessity to shrive himself before the Catholic priest? Spite of his stupidity he was Jesuit enough to appease the conscience of the ruler with Catholic grounds of consolation. The priest still lives, and is become a rich man.

      To all these rumours there is a consideration on the other side to be weighed, and it is important. If these rumours could spread themselves, and maintain themselves till now, had it been only in a confined circle, how did it happen that Karl of Baden, and his intellectual wife, against whom, and whose children, these hellish plans were directed, had no suspicion of them? Who knows? perhaps they had more — perhaps they had certainty.

      LUDWIG WAS BANISHED AT THE COMMAND OF THE GRAND-DUKE KARL TO HIS ESTATE, AND A GOOD MANY OTHER PERSONS AT THE SAME TIME.

      Nothing more precise ever reached the public regarding this measure, than that a political crime was laid to his charge, a conspiracy to hurl Karl from the throne, to which, in fact, Ludwig climbed out of his very banishment. The crime, and cause of abhorrence, must have been of no ordinary dye, which induced the nephew, for the honour of the family, to conceal it in a mysterious darkness. And if injustice were on this occasion done to Ludwig, why have none of the participators in it complained of it; Ludwig being upon the throne, and having raised them every one into places of high trust around him? They continued dumb, as before.

      But of whatever kind these crimes were, how do they connect themselves with the history of Hauser?

      His apparent age tallied exactly with the elder of the young princes who perished or were conveyed away, who was born at the end of 1812, and his first appearance with the termination of the reign of Ludwig. His birth occurred at an agitated period. His father made the campaign in 1813 in France; afterwards he went to Vienna; and his absence gave to his enemies opportunity enough to carry off the child, and to take the necessary measures for its concealment, when the white lady brought under her veil a dead child to exchange for the living one, which, according to the rumour, was strangled.

      At the ascension of Leopold, the present grand-duke, to the throne, there was again a strange but general report through Carlsruhe, that the ghost of a murdered prince had appeared to him as he went through the vaults of the palace. Did some one of those in the secret blab in this shape? In a censor-ridden country this is the only way in which a weary conscience can relieve itself. It cannot speak out, but it can half speak.

      But if Hauser was the son of Karl of Baden, and Ludwig of Baden, the uncle, was the cause of his incarceration, who was then the cause of his murder? God knows! I know only this, — that the present Grand-Duke Leopold, in whose time the murder happened, is called the friend of the middle class, and is universally beloved by his subjects — for so we read very often in the Carlsruhe Court Journal.

      After Leopold's accession to the government, Engesser and Hennehofer retained for a while their posts. Certain passages in the "Hochwächter," to which I alluded in my preface, made, however, such a scandal regarding the doings of these two gentlemen, that they were both removed; but it was done very gently, and Hennehofer, it is said, will one day be reinstated. He knows too much!

      Well, I have related only surmises, and made thence only dubious deductions: they of whom I have spoken are answerable to no tribunal which can put these surmises to the proof.

      These words are not mine. My passions as a republican might have led me wrong, and have given an importance to these matters which they might not deserve. But the words are those of an unimpassioned man; of a sober criminal judge, Feuerbach, to whom the king of Bavaria deputed the inquiry concerning Caspar Hauser, and who printed them in the report of the inquiry thus:— "There are circles of human society into which the arm of justice dares not penetrate."

      As the result of my material towards the history of Baden, the following important queries particularly present themselves:—

      1. Did Karl actually begin to sicken at the Congress of Vienna?

      2. Does the murder of his chamberlain stand connected with that circumstance, or with that of the murder of the former prince, which had occurred before?

      3. Have people seen the white lady, who are yet still living?

      4. Had the ranger Hennehofer already been connected with the successor of Ludwig?

      5. Why did he make so rapid a career of advancement?

      6. How great is the sum which Engesser received from Ludwig? and how can such an endowment be explained?

      7. Why was Ludwig banished to his estate and what were those who were banished with him charged with?

      8. In the features of Caspar Hauser is there not an obvious likeness to Karl of Baden, especially in the lower part of the face?

      9. For some time before the appearance of Caspar Hauser there came every five days a man into his cell, who taught him to write and read. Did any confidant of Ludwig of Baden, — for instance, Hennehofer, — make such regular journeys?

      To these there might be added another query, out of the political circumstances which arose on Caspar's death:—

      10. Was the Ritter von Lange, who is by no means an ass in other respects, and who asserts in the public prints that Caspar Hauser destroyed himself on speculation, — was this man before in debt and difficulties — and is he so no longer? — or has his property since then received a remarkable augmentation?

      The answer to these queries would solve a multitude of mysteries.

      To this little book is added this:—

POSTSCRIPT.

      I wrote the above in a kind of compulsory solitude, without books or other means of assistance than a copy of Schiller's "Robbers," and a little table of the genealogy of the House of Baden, which I owed to the care of an acquaintance. In other circumstances my details might have been richer. At this moment, the printing being finished, there comes to my hands something, which, for the sake of completeness, I add. The Frankfort Journal of the 4th of February states that:—

      "A certain Herr Cuno, Royal Economy Counsellor of Prussia, writes from Ratibor to the Magdeburg Gazette of the 9th of February, 1834, a letter, in which he says, that in the Vossich Gazette of November the 16th, 1816, No. 138, stands this communication:—

"Paris, 6th Nov. 1816.     

      "A boatman of Gross-Kemps found, on the 23rd of October, a bottle swimming in the Rhine, containing a paper with this passage in Latin:— Cuicunque qui hanc epistolam inveniet. Sum captivus in carcere apud Lauffenburg juncta Rheni flumen; meum carcer est subterraneum, nec novit locum ille qui nunc solio meo potitus est. Non plus possum scribere, quia sedulo et crudeliter custoditus sum.

"S. Hanes Spranciò."     

      To him who shall find this letter. I lie in a dungeon at Lauffenburg, on the Rhine; my subterranean prison is unknown to him who now sits on my throne. I can write no more because I am strictly and severely watched.

(To be continued.)

CASPAR HAUSER, THE HEREDITARY
PRINCE OF BADEN.

(Concluded from p. 276.)

      THIS singular document Herr Cuno communicated to Feuerbach, the President of the Court of Appeal, because he believed him to be prosecuting the history of Hauser. What must we think of it? Many things. The letter being written in Latin, and Latin of its kind, seems to indicate the author of it to be a country clergyman. Further, the writer being closely watched was to account for the singular choice of the vehicle of publication. The bottle had probably not been carried far, but flung out of the house window into the flood, which is stated to be on the Rhine. The place, Lauffenburg, points to the Upper Rhine Lands of Baden, for in Switzerland there is no throne. The date agrees with the government of Karl, and if Hauser was really the elder prince, then his underground dungeon was unknown to his father.

      Now, Engesser was a parish priest in the Upper Rhine Land; had he a hand in this, and thereby laid the foundation of his rapid fortune? In this case, he must have been too wicked to have written this document. It must have been some subordinate clergyman who had been made prison assistant; whose conscience oppressed him; but who was too closely watched to allow him to fly, and who hoped to help his charge by this scheme. If that charge was Hauser, he was then only four years old.

      Or, perhaps, it was a chaplain, who by chance was brought there upon the trace of his superior clergyman. It would be interesting to learn whether, about this time there was not a sudden death in the neighbourhood. The inhabitants of Lauffenburg should recollect, and if any such fact occurred, send the account of it to the Swiss newspapers.

      I learn further, that some days ago the Dorfzeitung contained the intelligence that the father of Hauser had been discovered to be a Catholic priest. I am generally on my guard against such reports, because of late there have been obviously manifold attempts to lead the public mind from the track; but in this case, perhaps, the last news may link itself to the first, and may locate Hauser's dungeon in some parsonage on the Rhine, near Lauffenburg, if, on the appearance of the paragraph in the Vossich Gazette, the youth had not been conveyed elsewhere.

      Here I send my little volume into the world, with a greeting to my friends. I must hide myself like a thief, in order to complete and print it. The Baden government has recently made inquisition after me, and the Strasburg police in consequence have been actively on the alert to discover me. As I have, since my abode on the French frontiers, held myself aloof from political correspondence, and concealed my retreat even from my most intimate friends, I may certainly believe that my regular and retiring behaviour can have drawn no increased surveillance of the French police upon me. And what can the Baden government want with me? A respectable and trustworthy person, who neither knew of the conversation in Rebstock alluded to in my preface, nor of my pamphlet, assured me that it was on account of a brochure, which this government was anxious to prevent me publishing. In this case the Baden government could not surely be aware that I meant to give forth the history of Hauser merely in the form of rumours, timidly and in doubt. Are mere rumours of such consequence that people should give themselves so much trouble about them?

---

      I have thus printed pretty fully the contents of this singular little volume, which has so long kept, and still keeps, the Baden government in such uneasiness. Mere rumours, nay, the slightest rumours, on this subject, put it into the greatest alarm. The story of Caspar Hauser had been read by us in England, and was partly forgotten, when, during our residence in Heidelberg in 1841, there was a sudden muttering in society of some circumstance which had taken place there. It was this. The police had waited on three citizens, and demanded their attendance at the police-office. There as many letters were produced, addressed to these gentlemen respectively, each announcing that a copy of the pamphlet now translated in these pages, and containing also an essay on Schiller's "Robbers," full of allusion to its subject, had been forwarded in a certain parcel to a certain Herr Trübner for each of them. These letters had been intercepted at the post-office, and the parcel in question, on its arrival, also had been intercepted at the parcel post, and the said books taken out, and were now produced. The three gentlemen were now strictly questioned as to their knowledge of, and connexion with, the senders of these books. They pleaded ignorance, but were not entirely dismissed without shrewd suspicions; and the books and letters were taken care of.

      This circumstance, in a little gossiping place like Heidelberg, where the police is strong and active, but tittle-tattle is still more strong and active, created, as may be supposed, a most lively, deep, and universal, though whispered, sensation. It was to us a matter of no little surprise how so strange an interest could attach to the story of Caspar Hauser, but particularly why the government treated a knowledge of it as a criminal matter. The love of talking on a prohibited subject was in our favour, and we soon were let into the whole mystery.

      We found the belief of Caspar Hauser having been no other than the eldest son of the Grand-Duke Karl, a fixed and most extensively diffused article of faith in the public mind, and not the less so in the higher than in the lower classes. All the suspicious circumstances above mentioned were detailed to us — the bad character of Ludwig, the sudden deaths which had cleared his way to the throne; the worse character of the Margravine of Hochberg, his step-mother, and supposed to be something even nearer to him; the fate of the Grand-Duke Karl, and the deaths, so called, of his two sons, while his daughters all lived; and then the mysterious story of Caspar Hauser; all were put together with matters that gave a strange verisimilitude to the relation. All that had been alleged of Caspar Hauser's being the son of a labourer, and then of a priest, would not satisfy public belief. They felt that the care and expense of seventeen years' so peculiar incarceration implied a victim of a higher station. The fame of the old Margravine von Hochberg was terrifically evil: her name was accompanied by muttered curses. There was no doubt whatever in the public mind that the Major Hennehofer was THE MAN spoken of by Caspar Hauser as his keeper, and who was, after two attempts, finally his murderer. It appeared clear that the party which had doomed Caspar Hauser to so strange a confinement, had believed that he would never be able to tell tales; but when they found that he had acquired languages, and that public curiosity was excited about him, they became alarmed. He was pursued and killed by the man; the man escaped readily, and was never discovered. The Baden government betrayed no eagerness to find him, or to dive into the mystery. When suspicion turned strongly upon this Hennehofer, he was never brought to any inquiry by government, but continued to live under its protection, and does so continue to this day. He lives in his castle in the Upper Rhine Land, leading a gloomy and secluded life. The public has always looked on the widow of the Grand-Duke Karl, and supposed mother of Caspar Hauser, with great regard, attracted not only by her talents and virtues, but by her ill health, and supposed secret sorrows. It believed, and believes, that the wicked old Margravine, as they call her, and her paramour Ludwig, had resolved at all costs that the children of the Frenchwoman, Stephanie, adopted daughter of Napoleon, should never sit on the ducal throne of Baden.

      And what course did the reigning family of Baden take to get rid of these dark suspicions? Did it invite inquiry; bring them to the light and disprove them? No! It has, from the first moment of their spreading, regarded them with the utmost apparent alarm and anxiety. Every means has been employed to stifle and suppress the report. The police has every where the strictest orders to keep it down — to watch for and seize every book or writing on the subject. In fact, if the reigning family be innocent, it has adopted every means calculated to convince the public that it is guilty. It has adopted every means that guilt could instinctively adopt.

      In the meantime, the Court of Bavaria, on the murder of Caspar Hauser, had instituted an inquiry, which went on for some time under the management of the acute and celebrated President of the Court of Appeal, Anselm von Feuerbach, and at length terminated with an abrupt announcement in the report of the judge in the words quoted above, that "there are circles of human society into which the arm of justice dares not penetrate."

      Such a termination, accompanied by such an announcement, was not calculated to set the public mind at rest. It only went on questioning, and putting things together with a more insatiable avidity. What increased and sustained this avidity was, that Lord Stanhope, who had evinced so much interest in Hauser while living, after his death was invited to the Court at Carlsruhe, and speedily professed that he regarded the whole history of Hauser as a hoax, or something of the kind, and manifested no further care about him. Not so with the sagacious and persevering Feuerbach. He pursued his own individual scrutiny into this mysterious history with enduring ardour, and it was said had made curious discoveries, and was likely one day to publish them. Feuerbach died suddenly, as has done almost every one who, in Germany, has been rash enough to trouble himself about this matter. We have conversed with connexions of the judge, and they seemed to entertain little doubt of the nature of his fatal disease.

      The books about Caspar Hauser were strictly prohibited throughout Baden. The portraits of him were considered to bear a striking resemblance to the reigning family. All talk on this subject was secret; and the greatest vigilance on the part of the police made every one who had a copy of Hauser's history hide it carefully.

      There was a lady, who came occasionally to our house, whom we unexpectedly found very open on the subject: but not being able to answer certain questions, she said she would ask her father, who knew a great deal about it from a friend at court. The next time we saw this lady we asked the result of her inquiries. Her countenance fell at once. She said that she had done very wrong. Her father had reprimanded her very severely; for this matter was by no means to the honour of the reigning family; and should, least of all, have been exposed to foreigners.

      Thus this opening was as suddenly closed as found. We learned nothing more from this informant, than that there were many things of strange character about the history of the Baden family, and that a great sensitiveness reigned throughout the palace on these subjects.

      So great was the jealousy of any discovery of an interest in the story of Caspar Hauser, that we never could procure a sight of the book we have now quoted from more than one person in Germany; and a second loan of it was declined, lest no good might come of it. We tried Hamburg and other large cities, but in vain. On our return to England, hearing that the work was published in Paris, we commissioned a German physician there, a warm friend of ours, to procure a copy. He sent us word that all his exertions to that end had been in vain. The shop was speedily shut up after the publication there; the publisher had disappeared; and it was believed that the Baden government had taken care both of him and his dangerous stock.

      We learned, however, that the author of the book was living in England. He had been obliged to make a rapid retreat not only from Germany, but from the continent, in consequence of this publication, and has continued to reside in England ever since, as his only safe retreat. The author, however, did not possess a copy of his own book; and it has not been without a most unremitting research that we have at length procured it.

      Some time ago we received from the author the following letter, which will open up a new and unexpected connexion of the history of Caspar Hauser with the politics of the continent. It is full of matter of singular importance.

            SIR,
      I have not forgotten the permission you gave me in a letter some four months ago to call on you; but it is now my turn to ask you whether you still take some interest in the subject of Caspar Hauser? His mother, the Grand-Duchess Stephanie is here, and something serious might be done. I have documents in hand never printed before, and the discovery or detection can be pushed forth several steps more. A new book would now be in time. The only misfortune is this — I know it from my own experience, to what persecutions a man is exposed by interfering in this subject; and I should under no circumstances advise you to publish even a translation under your name, if you wish ever to return to Baden; and then secondly, there are so many new statements to be made, which nobody but myself can take under his responsibility. I intend, under all circumstances, to publish a new book on Caspar Hauser; but, as it would be quicker done and better, if I had your co-operation, consider whether it is worth your while to undertake the thing. Many things will only be translations in it, and it is only the new information I must work out myself.

      As you have some knowledge of Baden and the subject of Caspar Hauser, I may be brief enough in laying before you the plan of the book as I have conceived it. The book is to contain a full information of all that is known until now to the public, and also to me, concerning Hauser. In my new statements certainly I appear as a witness, and for this reason I should distribute the matter in the following way:

      Introduction. — A short sketch of my own life, with a view of showing the way in which I got connected and acquainted with the principal actors of the tragedy, also throwing new light on their doings and character. The sketch is limited to this point — elucidating the subject of C. H.

      The book itself would contain a review of the principal publications on C. H. that have appeared; and lastly, my new statements and unprinted documents. There would be for consideration:

      1. Feuerbach's little work on Caspar Hauser, as containing all the principal incidents in the life of C. H. from his first appearance at Nuremberg, to the first attempt on his life. As to the authors of the crime, Feuerbach hints bravely that a court and priests (the priest Engesser) were implicated in it. The book being already translated into English, extracts would be sufficient principally referring to the facts, leaving the proofs aside. (In my possession.)

      2. The little work of the Earl of Stanhope on Hauser From this must be taken the relation of the end of C. H., and as he represented him as an impostor, his assertions must be disproved. (I can get it.)

      3. The little pamphlet I published myself at Strasburg, 1834, wherein first the family crimes of the grand-ducal family were drawn to the light. (I can get it.)

      4. A second article of mine, which appeared in a German paper, "Deutsches Leben," of which I published four numbers here in 1834. (I can get it.)

      These two productions of mine must be translated and given in whole, because they had their history; inciting the court of Baden to important steps, and serving, by a strange accident, as a trap in which the principal culprit "Von Hennehofer" was caught. Of this immediately after having despatched two other publications.

      There appeared in Switzerland a little book on Hauser, with the name of Paris on the title; this is probably the work you meant when you wrote to me. Besides some generally known notices, it is merely an amplification of my own pamphlet, in which the author has drawn largely on fiction. The book, however, is useful, as the subject is complete, and reads like a novel. (I can get it.)

      A real novel, however, appeared under the title Caspar Hauser, at Stuttgart, by a friend of mine, Sieboldt, which is partly made up from real facts, and in this respect deserves consideration. (I have it in my possession.)

      We come now to the subsequent events.

      When my pamphlet appeared, the Baden government took the most extraordinary measures to suppress it. But the strangest events happened after I had already left Strasburg for Paris.

      I was hidden at Strasburg because the French government wanted to induce me not to print the pamphlet. Some of the Germans, however, saw me occasionally; amongst those was a man I had only seen once or twice without taking much notice of him. His name was Sailer, he is a native of Wirtemberg, where his father was deputy, and by profession an apothecary. To this Sailer a friend of mine had given the manuscript of the Preface, in which, after it had been printed, I had wrapped some tobacco for him. My friend, without my knowledge, had given that manuscript to Sailer. Sailer soon afterwards departed for Kippenheim, where he had an uncle, and in the neighbourhood of which Hennehofer, minister of foreign affairs in Baden, under Ludwig, lived. He heard of the manuscript of a Preface, in which mention was not yet made of the real subject, and asked it from Sailer. From this moment, willing to employ him as his spy, he cultivated his acquaintance, and after the pamphlet had appeared, he really sent him to Strasburg, which I had already left. But arrived there he discovered his mission immediately to a friend of mine, who wrote down everything he said he had heard from, or been told by Hennehofer. What he said rendered the guilt of the latter glaring, and I learned several new facts of importance. All these discoveries were sent to me to Paris.

      In the summer of the same year I published here the above-mentioned periodical, "Deutsches Leben, Kunst and Poesie," in the second number of which I began a paper on Caspar Hauser, a condensation and criticism of what I had said before, but also containing a new matter of importance, the dispute of Baden with Bavaria about the Palatinate.

      Though this matter belongs to details farther on, I will state it here as showing you at once how the affairs of Hauser enter into the politics of Europe.

      The Palatinate formerly belonged to Bavaria, and the Breisgau, or South of Baden, to Austria. In 1813, when Baden had not yet separated from Napoleon, the two powers concluded a treaty at Ried, in virtue of which Bavaria ceded to Austria the Tyrol, under a promise of indemnification by the Palatinate, and a yearly payment of 100,000 guilders by Austria until Bavaria should be in possession, paid to the present day — whilst on the other hand Austria coveted the Breisgau. These designs were, however, frustrated by the accession of Baden to the allied army and the protection of Russia. There remained only one chance: the Grand-Duke Karl, husband to Stephanie, had at that moment no male children; and the same was the case with the only two remaining heirs, his two uncles. If he, therefore, died without male issue, the reigning family became extinct, and then both Austria and Bavaria could renew their pretensions. Thus both powers were interested in the extinction of the family.

      Of these two uncles, the younger, Ludwig, grand-duke (1818-1830), who was very ambitious, had likewise no chance of reigning unless his nephew died without male issue. He was, moreover, much in want of money, and had a personal spite against Stephanie. He it was who, through the Reichsgräfin, Geyer von Geyersberg, the mother of the margraves and the reigning duke, put the two male children of Stephanie out of the way. This was long known in the country; but the elder one, Hauser, who was believed to have been murdered like his brother, was saved in a strange way. It is almost certain that this was not done with the knowledge of Ludwig, but rather by his confederates, who in the child wished to preserve a weapon wherewith to frighten Ludwig, when on the throne, into a compliance with their wishes. Here Austria got in by obtaining knowledge of the secret, and forced Ludwig to a great extent to reign according to her own wishes. The same threat of exposing him was also employed against the reigning grand-duke. For this I can quote now an English authority for you, namely, extracts from the French papers, with the editorial observations in the Chronicle, then the organ of the ministry, number of October 28, 1839. But there being a slight mistake in it, I will place here the fact as it is.

      Papers referring to Hauser and the crimes committed against him were deposited with Rothschild and the Baden ambassador at the Diet; von Blittersdorf, a creature of Metternich, had the impudence to tell the grand-duke either to buy off the papers with two millions of guilders, or to run the risk of having the thing published.

      The grand-duke, frightened, laid the affair before the council of state, who advised him not to pay; but he was so full of fear that he paid the money from his private purse. Not satisfied with that, he was forced also to make Blittersdorf his minister of foreign affairs, — (it was the period of the Syrian question, when a war against France was possible, and Austria, consequently, interested to have a creature of her own master of the policy and army of Baden). The grand-duchess, aware of the disappearance of the money, and the part Blittersdorf had taken in the transaction, openly showed him her indignation. Then they took this revenge; the Jewish banker von Haber, who had acted as the agent of Austria, near Don Carlos, slandered her, openly boasting of having enjoyed her favours. Julius von Goeler then reproved him, and denounced him to the magistrate (vor Amt), but the thing was quashed. It was the same Goeler who in 1843 (October) refused to admit Haber at the ball given in honour of the Prussian grand-duchess, Helena, at Baden-Baden, for the reason assigned, and thus gave rise to those two famous duels: in the first of which both Goeler and his antagonist, a Russian officer, were killed; and in the second, the Baden artillery officer, Don Sarrahaga, by the hands of Haber. But to the Goelers, whom I know intimately, belonging to the highest nobility of Baden, the first result was, that the Austrian party was overthrown, and Blittersdorf driven out of the ministry. The thing, however, had created such a scandal, that the grand-duke also repudiated his wife, a daughter of the ex-king of Sweden, Gustavus, as blasted in her reputation. This again was answered by her brother, the Prince of Sweden, in the service of Austria, who had married a daughter of Stephanie, now here in England, from whom he also separated as being a princess of Baden. There is already plenty of other scandal, but what I cannot explain here; through Austria, also, the Jesuits were introduced into the business of Hauser.

      To return now to our real subject: I said, then, above, that Sailer had been sent by Hennehofer to Strasburg as a spy, with an order of finding out "from whom I had received my information," and then exposed his secrets. For the moment I could not make use of the discoveries, valuable as they had been. But in the same year, 1834, towards the end of it, when arrived here, I published the above-mentioned German paper. Sailer was at that moment at Strasburg; and now Hennehofer, by pay, and under the greatest promises, succeeded in persuading him to suppress the numbers that were sent to Strasburg, and prevent their circulation in Germany. To a great extent this was done; but Sailer, now still more in possession of the secrets of Hennehofer, used his position to extort money from him, and thus lived at his expense until the end of 1835. At that time Sailer was at Zurich, and there a political murder was committed against a Prussian spy, named Lessing, (see Conversations-Lexicon der Neuzeit, s. v.) and Sailer, like many others of the German refugees was arrested. In searching his house the whole series of the letters of Hennehofer to Sailer was discovered, and Sailer himself by the judge examined on the subject of Hauser. Both his deposition and the letters of Hennehofer have since been printed in Schauberg artenmässige Darstellung der über die Ermordung des Studenten Lessing, geführten Untersuchung, Zürich, 1837; and created an immense sensation; (I have in my possession the leaves of the book referring to Hauser;) but strange as is their nature already, without the letters in my possession not yet printed, the importance of the discovery cannot be fully appreciated.

      This would form a new topic, and the most interesting part of the book.

      The conclusion would consist of those diplomatical admixtures hinted at above — chiefly based on some despatches of Metternich, to be found in the works of Genz," and "Kombst's Bundestag."

      Excuse me, Sir, for having troubled you with these lines, but the interest you appeared to feel in the matter encourages me now to bring the subject to your remembrance, when the right moment of doing something is come.

      I hope I have written enough to enable you to judge whether there is a possibility for you of taking the direction of this work, without the responsibility of your name.

      To count from next Saturday I shall be glad to meet you at your house at any time you may be pleased to fix. The morning would be the most agreeable for me.

      In case, however, it should not suit your convenience to enter into the enterprise — of which the above is only an outline, subject to any alterations suggested by you — I beg you to accept these lines as the homage of a German to one of the first German scholars here, and a man who has done so much to spread a true knowledge of Germany and its customs amongst his compatriots.

Yours, etc. J. H. G.     

      Such is a brief outline of this most singular story. What further light the inquiries of persevering Germans may throw upon it remains yet to be seen. At present the evidence is but circumstantial; but whether the fact be, that Caspar Hauser was the Hereditary Prince of Baden or not, there is a mass of evidence that makes it one of the most curious questions, not of the age only, but of history in general. The circumstance, that no ordinary cause could have led to so singular and long-continued immurement of a boy, and that the alarm manifested on his acquiring language, and exciting the inquiry of the public, demonstrated that no ordinary causes did lie at the bottom of it, and that parties of no ordinary station or power were vitally mixed up with the mystery; — these things, combined with the trembling anxiety of the Baden government whenever the mystery was touched upon, will, should nothing further come to light, leave firmly on the public mind of Germany a strong opinion on the subject. Men of known sudden elevation under very suspicious circumstances, still living with all these suspicious circumstances under the protection of the government; — the fact of one of these men, suspected of having been the most active instrument in Caspar Hauser's fate, being the first to pounce on any one who dares to utter a syllable on the subject — the agreeing dates of things — the inroads of death on certain lives, and as if purposely to serve the views of certain ambitious parties — and finally, the constant, active, and continued suppression by the Baden government of all whisper of this history, — make the subject one of singular interest as a literary topic, and as such we have thrown it before the English public.

(THE END)