fall to the lot of ambitious upstarts. of a member of the Roxburghe Club Compared with the other crowned heads for Caxtons. While the envoys of the of Europe, he made a figure resembling Court of Berlin were in a state of such that which a Nabob or a Commissary, squalid poverty as moved the laughter who had bought a title, would make in of foreign capitals, while the food placed the company of Peers whose ancestors before the princes and princesses of the had been attainted for treason against blood-royal of Prussia was too scanty the Plantagenets. The envy of the to appease hunger, and so bad that even class which Frederic quitted, and the hunger loathed it, no price was thought civil scorn of the class into which he too extravagant for tall recruits. The intruded himself, were marked in very ambition of the King was to form a significant ways. The Elector of Saxony brigade of giants, and every country at first refused to acknowledge the new was ransacked by his agents for men Majesty. Lewis the Fourteenth looked above the ordinary stature. down on his brother King with an air searches were not confined to Europe. not unlike that with which the Count No head that towered above the crowd in Molière's play regards Monsieur in the bazaars of Aleppo, of Cairo, or Jourdain, just fresh from the mum- of Surat, could escape the crimps of mery of being made a gentleman. Frederic William. One Irishman more Austria exacted large sacrifices in re-than seven feet high, who was picked turn for her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.

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up in London by the Prussian ambassador, received a bounty of near thirteen hundred pounds sterling, very much more than the ambassador's salary. This extravagance was the more absurd, because a stout youth of five feet eight, who might have been procured for a few dollars, would in all probability have been a much more valuable soldier. But to Frederic William, this huge Irishman was what a brass Otho, or a Vinegar Bible, is to a collector of a different kind.

Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince who must be allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose character was disfigured by odious vices, and whose eccentricities were such as had never before been seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and diligent in the transacting of business; and he was the first who formed the design of obtaining for Prussia a place among the European powers, alto- It is remarkable, that though the gether out of proportion to her extent main end of Frederic William's adand population, by means of a strong ministration was to have a great milimilitary organization. Strict economy tary office, though his reign forms an enabled him to keep up a peace estab-important epoch in the history of mililishment of sixty thousand troops. tary discipline, and though his domiThese troops were disciplined in such nant passion was the love of military a manner, that placed beside them, the display, he was yet one of the most pahousehold regiments of Versailles and cific of princes. We are afraid that his St. James's would have appeared an aversion to war was not the effect of awkward squad. The master of such humanity, but was merely one of his a force could not but be regarded by thousand whims. His feeling about all his neighbours as a formidable his troops seems to have resembled a enemy and a valuable ally. miser's feeling about his money. He loved to collect them, to count them, to see them increase; but he could not find it in his heart to break in upon the precious hoard. He looked forward to some future time when his Patagonian battalions were to drive hostile infantry before them like sheep: but this future time was always receding; and it is probable that, if his lite

But the mind of Frederic William was so il regulated, that all his inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated into sordid ava

rice.

His taste for military pomp and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that

had been prolonged thirty years, his | between the puffs of the pipe, to play superb army would never have seen any backgammon for three halfpence a harder service than a sham fight in the rubber, to kill wild hogs, and to shoot fields near Berlin. But the great mili- partridges by the thousand. The Prince tary means which he had collected were Royal showed little inclination either destined to be employed by a spirit far for the serious employments or for the more daring and inventive than his own. amusements of his father. He shirked Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of the duties of the parade: he detested Frederic William, was born in January, the fume of tobacco: he had no taste 1712. It may safely be pronounced either for backgammon or for field that he had received from nature a sports. He had an exquisite ear, and strong and sharp understanding, and a performed skilfully on the flute. His rare firmness of temper and intensity earliest instructors had been French of will. As to the other parts of his refugees, and they had awakened in character, it is difficult to say whether him a strong passion for French litethey are to be ascribed to nature, or to rature and French society. Frederic the strange training which he under- William regarded these tastes as effewent. The history of his boyhood is minate and contemptible, and, by painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in abuse and persecution, made them still the parish workhouse, Smike at Dothe-stronger. Things became worse when boys Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched heir apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William was hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented itself to right and left in curses and blows. When his Majesty took a walk, every human being fled before him, as if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie. If he met a lady in the street, he gave her a kick, and told her to go home and mind her brats. If he saw a clergyman staring at the soldiers, he admonished the reverend gentleman to betake himself to study and prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning, administered on the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic and his daughter Wilhelmina, afterwards Margravine of Bareuth, were in an especial manner objects of his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He despised literature. He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, and did not very well understand in what they differed from each other. The business of life, according to him, was to drill and to be drilled. The recreations suited to a prince, were to sit in a cloud of tobacco smoke, to sip Swedish beer

the Prince Royal attained that time of life at which the great revolution in the human mind and body takes place. He was guilty of some youthful indiscretions, which no good and wise parent would regard with severity. At a later period he was accused, truly or falsely, of vices from which History averts her eyes, and which even Satire blushes to name, vices such that, to borrow the energetic language of Lord Keeper Coventry, "the depraved nature of man, which of itself carrieth man to all other sin, abhorreth them." But the offences of his youth were not characterized by any peculiar turpitude. They excited, however, transports of rage in the King, who hated all faults except those to which he was himself inclined, and who conceived that he made ample atonement to Heaven for his brutality, by holding the softer passions in detestation. The Prince Royal, too, was not one of those who are content to take their religion on trust. He asked puzzling questions, and brought forward arguments which seemed to savour of something different from pure Lutheranism. The King suspected that his son was inclined to be a heretic of some sort or other, whether Calvinist or Atheist his Majesty did not very well know. The ordinary malignity of Frederic William was bad enough. He now thought malignity a part of his duty

as a Christian man, and all the con- When his confinement terminated science that he had stimulated his ha- he was a man. He had nearly comtred. The flute was broken: the pleted his twenty-first year, and could French books were sent out of the scarcely be kept much longer under palace the Prince was kicked and the restraints which had made his boycudgelled, and pulled by the hair. At hood miserable. Suffering had madinner the plates were hurled at his tured his understanding, while it had head sometimes he was restricted to hardened his heart and soured his bread and water: sometimes he was temper. He had learnt self-command forced to swallow food so nauseous that and dissimulation: he affected to conhe could not keep it on his stomach. form to some of his father's views, and Once his father knocked him down, submissively accepted a wife, who was dragged him along the floor to a win- a wife only in name, from his father's dow, and was with difficulty prevented hand. He also served with credit, from strangling him with the cord of though without any opportunity of the curtain. The Queen, for the crime acquiring brilliant distinction, under of not wishing to see her son murdered, the command of Prince Eugene, during was subjected to the grossest indigni- a campaign marked by no extraordities. The Princess Wilhelmina, who nary events. He was now permitted took her brother's part, was treated al- to keep a separate establishment, and most as ill as Mrs. Brownrigg's appren- was therefore able to indulge with tices. Driven to despair, the unhappy caution his own tastes. Partly in order youth tried to run away. Then the to conciliate the King, and partly, no fury of the old tyrant rose to madness. doubt, from inclination, he gave up a The Prince was an officer in the army: portion of his time to military and his flight was therefore desertion; and, political business, and thus gradually in the moral code of Frederic William, acquired such an aptitude for affairs as desertion was the highest of all crimes. his most intimate associates were not Desertion," says this royal theologian, aware that he possessed. in one of his half crazy letters," is from His favourite abode was at Rheinshell. It is a work of the children of berg, near the frontier which separates the Devil. No child of God could pos- the Prussian dominions from the Duchy sibly be guilty of it." An accomplice of Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg is a ferof the Prince, in spite of the recom- tile and smiling spot, in the midst of mendation of a court martial, was mer- the sandy waste of the Marquisate. cilessly put to death. It seemed pro- The mansion, surrounded by woods of bable that the Prince himself would oak and beech, looks out upon a spasuffer the same fate. It was with dif- cious lake. There Frederic amused ficulty that the intercession of the States himself by laying out gardens in reguof Holland, of the Kings of Sweden lar alleys and intricate mazes, by buildand Poland, and of the Emperor of ing obelisks, temples, and conservaGermany, saved the House of Bran- tories, and by collecting rare fruits denburg from the stain of an unnatural and flowers. His retirement was enmurder. After months of cruel sus-livened by a few companions, among pense, Frederic learned that his life whom he seems to have preferred those would be spared. He remained, how-who, by birth or extraction, were ever, long a prisoner; but he was not French. With these inmates he dined on that account to be pitied. He found in his gaolers a tenderness which he had never found in his father; his table was not sumptuous, but he had wholesome food in sufficient quantity to appease hunger: he could read the Henriade without being kicked, and could play on his flute without having it broken over his head.

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and supped well, drank freely, and amused himself sometimes with concerts, and sometimes with holding chapters of a fraternity which he called the Order of Bayard; but literature was his chief resource.

His education had been entirely French. The long ascendency which Lewis the Fourteenth had enjoyed, and

the eminent merit of the tragic and | English, he did not, as far as we are comic dramatists, of the satirists, and aware, understand a single word. of the preachers who had flourished As the highest human compositions under that magnificent prince, had to which he had access were those of made the French language predomi- the French writers, it is not strange nant in Europe. Even in countries that his admiration for those writers which had a national literature, and should have been unbounded. His which could boast of names greater ambitious and eager temper early than those of Racine, of Molière, and prompted him to imitate what he adof Massillon, in the country of Dante, mired. The wish, perhaps, dearest to in the country of Cervantes, in the his heart was, that he might rank country of Shakspeare and Milton, the among the masters of French rhetoric intellectual fashions of Paris had been and poetry. He wrote prose and verse to a great extent adopted. Germany as indefatigably as if he had been a had not yet produced a single master-starving hack of Cave or Osborn; but piece of poetry or eloquence. In Ger- Nature, which had bestowed on him, many, therefore, the French taste in a large measure, the talents of a reigned without rival and without captain and of an administrator, had limit. Every youth of rank was withheld from him those higher and taught to speak and write French. rarer gifts, without which industry That he should speak and write his labours in vain to produce immortal own tongue with politeness, or even eloquence and song. And, indeed, with accuracy and facility, was re- had he been blessed with more imagigarded as comparatively an unimport- nation, wit, and fertility of thought, ant object. Even Frederic William, than he appears to have had, he would with all his rugged Saxon prejudices, still have been subject to one great disthought it necessary that his children advantage, which would, in all proshould know French, and quite unne-bability, have for ever prevented him cessary that they should be well versed from taking a high place among men in German. The Latin was positively of letters. He had not the full cominterdicted. My son," his Majesty mand of any language. There was no wrote, "shall not learn Latin; and, machine of thought which he could more than that, I will not suffer any employ with perfect ease, confidence, body even to mention such a thing to and freedom. He had German enough me. One of the preceptors ventured to scold his servants, or to give the to read the Golden Bull in the original word of command to his grenadiers; with the Prince Royal. Frederic Wil- but his grammar and pronunciation liam entered the room, and broke out were extremely bad. He found it diffiin his usual kingly style. cult to make out the meaning even of the simplest German poetry. occasion a version of Racine's Iphigénie was read to him. He held the French original in his hand; but was forced to own that, even with such help, he could not understand the translation. Yet, though he had neglected his mother tongue in order to bestow all his attention on French, his French was, after all, the French of a foreigner. It was necessary for him to have always at his beck some men of letters from Paris to point out the solecisms and false rhymes of which, to the last, he was frequently guilty. Even had he possessed the poetic faculty, of which, as far as we can judge, he was utterly

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"Rascal, what are you at there?" "Please your Majesty," answered the preceptor, "I was explaining the Golden Bull to his Royal Highness."

"I'll Golden Bull you, you rascal!" roared the Majesty of Prussia. Up went the King's cane; away ran the terrified instructor; and Frederic's classical studies ended for ever. He now and then affected to quote Latin sentences, and produced such exquisitely Ciceronian phrases as these:"Stante pede morire,"- "De gustibus non est disputandus," "Tot verbas tot spondera." Of Italian, he had not enough to read a page of Metastasio with ease; and of the Spanish and

On one

destitute, the want of a language would of discerning what is excellent in art. have prevented him from being a great Had he been familiar with Sophocles or poet. No noble work of imagination, Shakspeare, we should have expected as far as we recollect, was ever com- him to appreciate Zaire more justly. posed by any man, except in a dialect Had he been able to study Thucydides which he had learned without remem- and Tacitus in the original Greek and bering how or when, and which he had Latin, he would have known that there spoken with perfect ease before he had were heights in the eloquence of hisever analysed its structure. Romans tory far beyond the reach of the author of great abilities wrote Greek verses; of the Life of Charles the Twelfth. But but how many of those verses have the finest heroic poem, several of the deserved to live? Many men of emi- most powerful tragedies, and the most nent genius have, in modern times, brilliant and picturesque historical work written Latin poems; but, as far as that Frederic had ever read, were Volwe are aware, none of those poems, not taire's. Such high and various exceleven Milton's, can be ranked in the lence moved the young Prince almost first class of art, or even very high in to adoration. The opinions of Voltaire the second. It is not strange, there- on religious and philosophical quesfore, that, in the French verses of Fre- tions had not yet been fully exhibited deric, we can find nothing beyond the to the public. At a later period, when reach of any man of good parts and an exile from his country, and at open industry, nothing above the level of war with the Church, he spoke out. Newdigate and Seatonian poetry. His But when Frederic was at Rheinsberg, best pieces may perhaps rank with the Voltaire was still a courtier; and, worst in Dodsley's collection. In his- though he could not always curb his tory, he succeeded better. We do not, petulant wit, he had as yet published indeed, find, in any of his voluminous nothing that could exclude him from Memoirs, either deep reflection or vivid Versailles, and little that a divine of painting. But the narrative is distin- the mild and generous school of Groguished by clearness, conciseness, good tius and Tillotson might not read with sense, and a certain air of truth and pleasure. In the Henriade, in Zaire, simplicity, which is singularly graceful and in Alzire, Christian piety is exhiin a man who, having done great bited in the most amiable form; and, things, sits down to relate them. On some years after the period of which the whole, however, none of his writings we are writing, a Pope condescended are so agreeable to us as his Letters, to accept the dedication of Mahomet. particularly those which are written The real sentiments of the poet, howwith earnestness, and are not embroi-ever, might be clearly perceived by a dered with verses.

keen eye through the decent disguise It is not strange that a young man with which he veiled them, and could devoted to literature, and acquainted not escape the sagacity of Frederic, only with the literature of France, who held similar opinions, and had been should have looked with profound vene- accustomed to practise similar dissimuration on the genius of Voltaire. "Alation.

man who has never seen the sun," says The Prince wrote to his idol in the Calderon, in one of his charming co-style of a worshipper; and Voltaire remedies, "cannot be blamed for think-plied with exquisite grace and address. ing that no glory can exceed that of the moon. A man who has seen neither moon nor sun, cannot be blamed for talking of the unrivalled brightness of the morning star." Had Frederic been able to read Homer and Milton or even Virgil and Tasso, his admiration of the Henriade would prove that he was utterly destitute of the power

A correspondence followed, which may be studied with advantage by those who wish to become proficients in the ignoble art of flattery. No man ever paid compliments better than Voltaire. His sweetest confectionery had always a delicate, yet stimulating flavour, which was delightful to palates wearied by the coarse preparations of inferior ar