16th Sept., 1740. placid People, heavily asleep (and snoring much, shall we say, and inarticulately grunting and struggling under indigestions, Constitutional and other? Do but listen to the hum of those extinct Pamphlets and Parliamentary Oratories of theirs!)-yet an honestly intending People, and keenly alive to any commandment from Heaven that could pierce through the thick skin of them into their big obstinate heart. Such a commandment, then and there, was that monition about Jenkins's Ear. Upon which, so pungent was it to them, they started violently out of bed into painful sleep-walking, and went, for twenty years and more, clambering and sprawling about, far and wide, on the giddy edge of precipices, over house-tops and frightful cornices and parapets, in a dim fulfillment of the said Heaven's command. I reckon that this War, though there were intervals, Treaties of Peace more than one, and the War had various names, did not end till 1763. And then, by degrees, the poor English Nation found that (at, say, a thousand times the necessary expense, and with imminent peril to its poor head, and all the bones of its body) it had actually succeeded-by dreadful exertions in its sleep! This will be more apparent by-and-by, and may be a kind of comfort to the sad English reader, drearily surveying such somnambulisms on the part of his poor ancestors."

2. Two Difficulties.-"There are Two grand Difficulties in this FarceTragedy of a War, of which only one, and that not the worst of the Pair, is in the least surmised by the English hitherto. Difficulty First, which is even worse than the other, and will surprisingly attend the English in all their Wars now coming, is, That their fighting-apparatus, though made of excellent material, can not fight, being in disorganic condition; one branch of it, especially the Military' one, as they are pleased to call it, being as good as totally chaotic, and this in a quiet habitual manner, this long while back. With the Naval branch it is otherwise, which also is habitual there. The English, almost as if by nature, can sail and fight in ships; can not well help doing it. Sailors innumerable are bred to them; they are planted in the Ocean, opulent stormy Neptune clipping them in all his moods forever; and then by nature, being a dumb, much-enduring, much-reflecting, stout, veracious, and valiant kind of People, they shine in that way of life, which specially requires such. Without much forethought, they have sailors innumerable, and of the best quality. The English have among them also, strange as it may seem to the cursory observer, a great gift of organizing-witness their Arkwrights and others—and this gift they may often, in matters Naval more than elsewhere, get the chance of exercising. For a Ship's Crew, or even a Fleet, unlike a land Army, is of itself a unity, its fortunes disjoined, dependent on its own management; and it falls, moreover, as no land Army can, to the undivided guidance of one man,

16th Sept., 1740. who (by hypothesis, being English) has now and then, from of old, chanced to be an organizing man, and who is always much interested to know and practice what has been well organized. For you are in contact with verities to an unexampled degree when you get upon the Ocean with intent to sail on it, much more to fight on it; bottomless destruction raging beneath you and on all hands of you if you neglect, for any reason, the methods of keeping it down, and making it float you to your aim!

"The English Navy is in tolerable order at that period. But as to the English Army, we may say it is, in a wrong sense, the wonder of the world, and continues so throughout the whole of this History and farther! Never before, among the rational sons of Adam, were Armies sent out on such terms—namely, without a General, or with no General understanding the least of his business. The English have a notion that Generalship is not wanted; that War is not an Art, as playing Chess is, as finding the Longitude, and doing the Differential Calculus are (and a much deeper Art than any of these); that War is taught by Nature, as eating is; that courageous soldiers, led on by a courageous Wooden Pole with Cocked-hat on it, will do very well. In the world I have not found opacity of platitude go deeper among any People. This is Difficulty First—not yet suspected by an English People capable of great opacity on some subjects.

Difficulty Second is, That their Ministry, whom they had to force into this War, perhaps do not go zealously upon it. And perhaps even, in the above circumstances, they totally want knowledge how to go upon it, were they never so zealous. Difficulty Second might be much helped were it not for Difficulty First. But the administering of war is a thing also that does not come to a man like eating. This Second Difficulty, suspicion that Walpole and perhaps still higher heads want zeal, gives his Britannic Majesty infinite trouble; and-"

And so, in short, he stands there, with the Garter-leg advanced, looking loftily into a considerable sea of troubles, that day when Friedrich drove past him, Friday, 16th September, 1740, and never came so near him again.

The next business for Friedrich was a Visit at Brunswick to the Affinities and Kindred in passing, where also was an important little act to be done: Betrothal of the young Prince, August Wilhelm, Heir-Presumptive whom we saw in Strasburg, to a Princess of that House, Louisa Amelia, younger Sister of Friedrich's own Queen-a modest promising arrangement, which

24th Sept.-25th Oct., 1740. turned out well enough, though the young Prince, Father to the Kings that since are, was not supremely fortunate otherwise.3 After which, the review at Magdeburg, and home on the 24th, there to "be busy as a Turk or as a M. Jordan,” according to what we read long since.

CHAPTER VII.

WITHDRAWS TO REINSBERG, HOPING A PEACEABLE WINTER. By this Herstal token, which is now blazing abroad, now and for a month to come, it can be judged that the young King of Prussia intends to stand on his own footing, quite peremptorily if need be, and will by no means have himself led about in Imperial harness, as his late Father was; so that a dull Public (Herrenhausen very specially), and Gazetteer Owls of Minerva every where, may expect events-all the more indubitably when that spade-work comes to light in the Wesel Country. It is privately certain (the Gazetteers not yet sure about it till they see the actual spades going) this new King does fully intend to assert his rights on Berg-Jülich, and will appear there with his iron ramrods the instant old Kur-Pfalz shall decease, let France and the Kaiser say No to it or say Yes. There are, in fact, at a fit place, "Büderich, in the neighborhood of Wesel," certain rampart-works, beginnings as of an Intrenched Camp, going on

"for Review purposes merely," say the Gazetteers, in italics. Here, it privately is Friedrich's resolution, shall a Prussian Army, of the due strength (could be well-nigh 100,000 strong, if needful), make its appearance directly on old Kur-Pfalz's decease, if one live to see such event.1 France and the Kaiser will probably take good survey of that Büderich phenomenon before meddling.

To do his work like a King, and shun no peril and no toil in the course of what his work may be, is Friedrich's rule and intention. Nevertheless, it is clear he expects to approve himself magnanimous rather in the Peaceable operations than in the

3 Betrothal was 20th September, 1740; Marriage, 5th January, 1742 (Buchholz, i., 207). 1 Stenzel, iv., 61.

24th Sept.-25th Oct., 1740. Warlike, and his outlooks are, of all places and pursuits, toward Reinsberg and the Fine Arts for the time being. His Public activity meanwhile they describe as "prodigious," though the ague still clings to him; such building, instituting, managing; Opera-House, French Theatre, Palace for his Mother; day by day, many things to be recorded by Editor Formey, though the rule about them here is silence except on cause.

No doubt the ague is itself privately a point of moment. Such a vexatious paltry little thing, in this bright whirl of Activities, Public and other, which he continues managing in spite of it, impatient to be rid of it. But it will not go: there it reappears always, punctual to its "fourth day," like a snarling street-dog in the high Ballroom and Workroom. "He is drinking Pyrmont water;" has himself proposed Quinquina, a remedy just come up, but the Doctors shook their heads; has tried snatches of Reinsberg, too short; he intends soon to be out there for a right spell of country, there to be "happy," and get quit of his ague. The ague went, and by a remedy which surprised the whole world, as will be seen!

Wilhelmina's Return- Visit.

Monday, 17th Oct., came the Baireuth Visitors; Wilhelmina all in a flutter, and tremor of joy and sorrow, to see her Brother again, her old kindred and the altered scene of things. Poor Lady, she is perceptibly more tremulous than usual; and her Narrative, not in dates only, but in more memorable points, dances about at a sad rate; interior agitations and tremulous shrill feelings shivering her this way and that, and throwing things topsyturvy in one's recollection. Like the magnetic needle, shaky but steadfast (agitée mais constante). Truer nothing can be; points forever to the Pole; but also what obliquities it makes; will shiver aside in mad escapades if you hold the paltriest bit of old iron near it—paltriest clack of gossip about this loved Brother of mine! Brother, we will hope, silently continues to be Pole, so that the needle always comes back again, otherwise all would go to wreck. Here, in abridged and partly rectified form, are the phenomena witnessed:

“We arrived at Berlin the end of October" (Monday, 17th, as above VOL. III.-E

24th Sept.-25th Oct., 1740. said). My younger Brothers, followed by the Princes of the Blood and by all the Court, received us at the bottom of the stairs. I was led to my apartment, where I found the Reigning Queen, my Sisters" (Ulrique, Amelia), "and the Princesses" (of the Blood, as above, Schwedt and the rest). "I learned with much chagrin that the King was ill of tertian ague" (quartan; but that is no matter). "He sent

me word that, being in his fit, he could not see me, but that he depended on having that pleasure to-morrow. The Queen Mother, to whom I went without delay, was in a dark condition; rooms all hung with their lugubrious drapery; every thing yet in the depth of mourning for my Father. What a scene for me! Nature has her rights; I can say with truth, I have almost never in my life been so moved as on this occasion." Interview with Mamma-we can fancy it-" was of the most touching." Wilhelmina had been absent eight years. She scarcely knows the young ones again, all so grown; finds change on change; and that Time, as he always is, has been busy. That night the Supper-Party was exclusively a Family one.

Her Brother's welcome to her on the morrow, though ardent enough, she found deficient in sincerity, deficient in several points, as indeed a Brother up to the neck in business, and just come out of an ague-fit, does not appear to the best advantage. Wilhelmina noticed how ill he looked, so lean and broken-down (maigre et défait) within the last two months, but seems to have taken no account of it farther in striking her balances with Friedrich. And, indeed, in her Narrative of this Visit, not, we will hope, in the Visit itself, she must have been in a high state of magnetic deflection-pretty nearly her maximum of such, discoverable in those famous Memoirs-such a tumult is there in her statements, all gone to ground-and-lofty tumbling in this place; so discrepant are the still ascertainable facts from this topsy-turvy picture of them, sketched by her four years hence (in 1744). The truest of magnetic needles, but so sensitive if you bring foreign iron near it!

Wilhelmina was loaded with honors by an impartial Berlin Publicthat is, Court-Public; "but, all being in mourning, the Court was not brilliant. The Queen Mother saw little company, and was sunk in sorrow; had not the least influence in affairs, so jealous was the new King of his Authority-to the Queen Mother's surprise," says Wilhelmina. For the rest, here is a King “becoming truly unpopular" (or we fancy so, in our deflected state, and judging by the rumor of cliques); “a general discontent reigning in the Country, love of his subjects pretty much gone; people speaking of him in no measured terms" (in certain cliques). "Cares nothing about those who helped him as Prince Royal, say some; others complain of his avarice" (meaning steady vigilance in outlay) "as surpassing the late King's; this one complained of his