History of Friedrich II of Prussia Volume X Part 4

So that Oczakow was taken, sure enough; terms, life only: and every remaining Turk packs off from it, some "twenty thousand inhabitants young and old" for one sad item.--A very blazing semi-absurd event, to be read of in Prussian military circles,--where General Keith will be better known one day.

Russian War with the Turk: that means withal, by old Treaties, aid of thirty thousand men from the Kaiser to Russia. Kaiser, so ruined lately, how can he send thirty thousand, and keep them recruited, in such distant expedition? Kaiser, much meditating, is advised it will be better to go frankly into the Turk on his own score, and try for slices of profit from him in this game. Kaiser declares war against the Turk; and what is still more interesting to Friedrich Wilhelm and the Berlin Circles, Seckendorf is named General of it. Feldzeugmeister now Feldmarschall Seckendorf, envy may say what it will, he has marched this season into the Lower-Donau Countries,--going to besiege Widdin, they say,--at the head of a big Army (on paper, almost a hundred and fifty thousand, light troops and heavy)--virtually Commander-in-Chief; though nominally our fine young friend Franz of Lorraine bears the t.i.tle of Commander, whom Seckendorf is to dry-nurse in the way sometimes practised. Going to besiege Widdin, they say. So has the poor Kaiser been advised. His wise old Eugene is now gone; [Died 30th April, 1736.] I fear his advisers,--a youngish Feldzeugmeister, Prince of Hildburghausen, the chief favorite among them,--are none of the wisest.

All Protestants, we observe, these favorite Hildburghausens, Schmettaus, Seckendorfs of his; and Vienna is an orthodox papal Court;--and there is a Hofkriegsrath (Supreme Council of War), which has ruined many a General, poking too meddlesomely into his affairs! On the whole, Seckendorf will have his difficulties. Here is a scene, on the Lower Donau, different enough from that at Oczakow, not far from contemporaneous with it. The Austrian Army is at Kolitz, a march or two beyond Belgrade:--

"KOLITZ, 2d JULY, 1737. This day, the Army not being on march, but allowed to rest itself, Grand Duke Franz went into the woods to hunt.

Hunting up and down, he lost himself; did not return at evening; and, as the night closed in and no Generalissimo visible, the Generalissimo AD LATUS (such the t.i.tle they had contrived for Seckendorf) was in much alarm. Generalissimo AD LATUS ordered out his whole force of drummers, trumpeters: To fling themselves, postwise, deeper and deeper into the woods all round; to drum there, and blow, in ever-widening circle, in prescribed notes, and with all energy, till the Grand Duke were found.

Grand Duke being found, Seckendorf remonstrated, rebuked; a thought too earnestly, some say, his temper being flurried,"--voice snuffling somewhat in alt, with lisp to help:--"so that the Grand Duke took offence; flung off in a huff: and always looked askance on the Feldmarschall from that time;" [See _Lebensgeschichte des Grafen van Schmettau_ (by his Son: Berlin, 1806), i. 27.]--quitting him altogether before long; and marching with Khevenhuller, Wallis, Hildburghausen, or any of the subordinate Generals rather. Probably Widdin will not go the road of Oczakow, nor the Austrians prosper like the Russians, this summer.

Pollnitz, in Tobacco-Parliament, and in certain Berlin circles foolishly agape about this new Feldmarschall, maintains always, Seckendorf will come to nothing; which his Majesty zealously contradicts,--his Majesty, and some short-sighted private individuals still favorable to Seckendorf. [Pollnitz, _Memoiren,_ ii. 497-502.] Exactly one week after that singular drum-and-trumpet operation on Duke Franz, the Last of the Medici dies at Florence; [9th July (_Fastes de Louis XV._, p. 304).]

and Serene Franz, if he knew it, is Grand Duke of Tuscany, according to bargain: a matter important to himself chiefly, and to France, who, for Stanislaus and Lorraine's sake, has had to pay him some 200,000 pounds a year during the brief intermediate state.

OF BERG AND JULICH AGAIN; AND OF LUISCIUS WITH THE ONE RAZOR.

These remote occurrences are of small interest to his Prussian Majesty, in comparison with the Pfalz affair, the Cleve-Julich succession, which lies so near home. His Majesty is uncommonly anxious to have this matter settled, in peace, if possible. Kaiser and Reich, with the other Mediating Powers, go on mediating; but when will they decide? This year the old Bishop of Augsburg, one Brother of the older Kur-Pfalz Karl Philip, dies; nothing now between us and the event itself, but Karl Philip alone, who is verging towards eighty: the decision, to be peaceable, ought to be speedy! Friedrich Wilhelm, in January last, sent the expert Degenfeld, once of London, to old Karl Philip; and has him still there, with the most conciliatory offers: "Will leave your Sulzbachs a part, then; will be content with part, instead of the whole, which is mine if there be force in sealed parchment; will do anything for peace!" To which the old Kur-Pfalz, foolish old creature, is steadily deaf; answers vaguely, negatively always, in a polite manner; pus.h.i.+ng his Majesty upon extremities painful to think of. "We hate war; but cannot quite do without justice, your Serenity," thinks Friedrich Wilhelm: "must it be the eighty thousand iron ramrods, then?" Obstinate Serenity continues deaf; and Friedrich Wilhelm's negotiations, there at Mannheim, over in Holland, and through Holland with England, not to speak of Kaiser and Reich close at hand, become very intense; vehemently earnest, about this matter, for the next two years. The details of which, inexpressibly uninteresting, shall be spared the reader.

Summary is, these Mediating Powers will be of no help to his Majesty; not even the Dutch will, with whom he is specially in friends.h.i.+p: nay, in the third year it becomes fatally manifest, the chief Mediating Powers, Kaiser and France, listening rather to political convenience, than to the claims of justice, go direct in Kur-Pfalz's favor;--by formal treaty of their own, ["Versailles, 13th January, 1739" (Olrich, _Geschichte der Schlesischen Kriege,_ i. 13); Mauvillon, ii 405-446; &c.] France and the Kaiser settle, "That the Sulzbachers shall, as a preliminary, get provisional possession, on the now Serenity's decease; and shall continue undisturbed for two years, till Law decide between his Prussian Majesty and them." Two years; Law decide;--and we know what are the NINE-POINTS in a Law-case! This, at last, proved too much for his Majesty. Majesty's abstruse dubitations, meditations on such treatment by a Kaiser and others, did then, it appears, gloomily settle into fixed private purpose of trying it by the iron ramrods, when old Kur-Pfalz should die,--of marching with eighty thousand men into the Cleve Countries, and SO welcoming any Sulzbach or other guests that might arrive. Happily old Kur-Pfalz did not die in his Majesty's time; survived his Majesty several years: so that the matter fell into other hands,--and was settled very well, near a century after.

Of certain wranglings with the little Town of Herstal,--Prussian Town (part of the Orange Heritage, once KING PEPIN'S Town, if that were any matter now) in the Bishop of Liege's neighborhood, Town highly insignificant otherwise,--we shall say nothing here, as they will fall to be treated, and be settled, at an after stage. Friedrich Wilhelm was much grieved by the contumacies of that paltry little Herstal; and by the Bishop of Liege's high-flown procedures in countenancing them;--especially in a recruiting ease that had fallen out there, and brought matters to a head. ["December, 1738," is crisis of the recruiting case (_Helden-Geschichte,_ ii. 63); "17th February, 1739,"

Bishop's high-flown appearance in it (ib. 67); Kaiser's in consequence, "10th April, 1739."] The Kaiser too was afflictively high in countenancing the Bishop;---for which both Kaiser and Bishop got due payment in time. But his Prussian Majesty would not kindle the world for such a paltriness; and so left it hanging in a vexatious condition. Such things, it is remarked, weigh heavier on his now infirm Majesty than they were wont. He is more subject to fits of hypochondria, to talk of abdicating. "All gone wrong!" he would say, if any little flaw rose, about recruiting or the like. "One might go and live at Venice, were one rid of it!" [Forster (place LOST).] And his deep-stung clangorous growl against the Kaiser's treatment of him bursts out, from time to time; though he oftenest pities the Kaiser, too; seeing him at such a pa.s.s with his Turk War and otherwise.

It was in this Pfalz business that Herr Luiscius, the Prussian Minister in Holland, got into trouble; of whom there is a light dash of outline-portraiture by Voltaire, which has made him memorable to readers. This "fat King of Prussia," says Voltaire, was a dreadfully avaricious fellow, unbeautiful to a high degree in his proceedings with mankind:--

"He had a Minister at the Hague called Luiscius; who certainly of all Ministers of Crowned Heads was the worst paid. This poor man, to warm himself, had made some trees be felled in the Garden of Honslardik, which belonged at that time to the House of Prussia; he thereupon received despatches from the King, intimating that a year of his salary was forfeited. Luiscius, in despair, cut his throat with probably the one razor he had (SEUL RASOIR QU'IL EUT); an old valet came to his a.s.sistance, and unhappily saved his life. In after years, I found his Excellency at the Hague; and have occasionally given him an alms at the door of the VIEILLE COUR (Old Court), a Palace belonging to the King of Prussia, where this poor Amba.s.sador had lived a dozen years. It must be owned, Turkey is a republic in comparison to the despotism exercised by Friedrich Wilhelm." [_OEuvres de Voltaire (Vie Pricee,_ or what they now call _Memoires_ ), ii. 15.]

Here truly is a witty sketch; consummately dashed off, as n.o.body but Voltaire could; "round as Giotto's O," done at one stroke. Of which the prose facts are only as follows. Luiscius, Prussian Resident, not distinguished by salary or otherwise, had, at one stage of these negotiations, been told, from head-quarters, He might, in casual extra-official ways, if it seemed furthersome, give their High Mightinesses the hope, or notion, that his Majesty did not intend actual war about that Cleve-Julich Succession,--being a pacific Majesty, and unwilling to involve his neighbors and mankind. Luiscius, instead of casual hint delicately dropped in some good way, had proceeded by direct declaration; frank a.s.surance to the High Mightinesses, That there would be no war. Which had never been quite his Majesty's meaning, and perhaps was now becoming rather the reverse of it. Disavowal of Luiscius had to ensue thereupon; who produced defensively his instruction from head-quarters; but got only rebukes for such heavy-footed clumsy procedure, so unlike Diplomacy with its shoes of felt;--and, in brief, was turned out of the Diplomatic function, as unfit for it; and appointed to manage certain Orange Properties, fragments of the Orange Heritage which his Majesty still has in those Countries. This misadventure sank heavily on the spirits of Luiscius, otherwise none of the strongest-minded of men. Nor did he prosper in managing the Orange Properties: on the contrary, he again fell into mistakes; got soundly rebuked for injudicious conduct there,--"cutting trees," planting trees, or whatever it was;--and this produced such an effect on Luiscius, that he made an attempt on his own throat, distracted mortal; and was only stopped by somebody rus.h.i.+ng in. "It was not the first time he had tried that feat," says Pollnitz, "and been prevented; nor was it long till he made a new attempt, which was again frustrated: and always afterwards his relations kept him close in view:" Majesty writing comfortable forgiveness to the perturbed creature, and also "settling a pension on him;" adequate, we can hope, and not excessive; "which Luiscius continued to receive, at the Hague, so long as he lived." These are the prose facts; not definitely dated to us, but perfectly clear otherwise.

[Pollnitz, ii. 495, 496;--the "NEW attempt" seems to have been "June, 1739" (_ Gentleman's Magazine,_ in mense, p. 331).]

Voltaire, in his Dutch excursions, did sometimes, in after years, lodge in that old vacant Palace, called VIEILLE COUR, at the Hague; where he gracefully celebrates the decayed forsaken state of matters; dusky vast rooms with dim gilding; forgotten libraries "veiled under the biggest spider-webs in Europe;" for the rest, an uncommonly quiet place, convenient for a writing man, besides costing nothing. A son of this Luiscius, a good young lad, it also appears, was occasionally Voltaire's amanuensis there; him he did recommend zealously to the new King of Prussia, who was not deaf on the occasion. This, in the fire of satirical wit, is what we can transiently call "giving alms to a Prussian Excellency;"--not now excellent, but pensioned and cracked; and the reader perceives, Luiscius had probably more than one razor, had not one been enough, when he did the rash act. Friedrich employed Luiscius Junior, with no result that we hear of farther; and seems to have thought Luiscius Senior an absurd fellow, not worth mentioning again: "ran away from the Cleve Country [probably some mad-house there] above a year ago, I hear; and what is the matter where such a crack-brain end?"

[Voltaire, _OEuvres_ (Letter to Friedrich, 7th October, 1740), lxxii.

261; and Fredrich's answer (wrong dated), ib. 265; Preuss, xxii. 33.]

Chapter V. -- VISIT AT LOO.

The Pfalz question being in such a predicament, and Luiscius diplomatizing upon it in such heavy-footed manner, his Majesty thinks a journey to Holland, to visit one's Kinsfolk there, and incidentally speak a word with the High Mightinesses upon Pfalz, would not be amiss.

Such journey is decided on; Crown-Prince to accompany. Summer of 1738: a short visit, quite without fuss; to last only three days;--mere sequel to the Reviews held in those adjacent Cleve Countries; so that the Gazetteers may take no notice. All which was done accordingly: Crown-Prince's first sight of Holland; and one of the few reportable points of his Reinsberg life, and not quite without memorability to him and us.

On the 8th of July, 1738, the Review Party got upon the road for Wesel: all through July, they did their reviewing in those Cleve Countries; and then struck across for the Palace of Loo in Geldern, where a Prince of Orange countable kinsman to his Prussian Majesty, and a Princess still more nearly connected,--English George's Daughter, own niece to his Prussian Majesty,--are in waiting for this distinguished honor. The Prince of Orange we have already seen, for a moment once; at the siege of Philipsburg four years ago, when the sale of Chasot's horses went off so well. "Nothing like selling horses when your company have dined well," whispered he to Chasot, at that time; since which date we have heard nothing of his Highness.

He is not a beautiful man; he has a crooked back, and features conformable; but is of prompt vivacious nature, and does not want for sense and good-humor. Paternal George, the gossips say, warned his Princess, when this marriage was talked of, "You will find him very ill-looking, though!" "And if I found him a baboon--!" answered she; being so heartily tired of St. James's. And in fact, for anything I have heard, they do well enough together. She is George II.'s eldest Princess;--next elder to our poor Amelia, who was once so interesting to us! What the Crown-Prince now thought of all that, I do not know; but the Books say, poor Amelia wore the willow, and specially wore the Prince's miniature on her breast all her days after, which were many.

Grew corpulent, somewhat a huddle in appearance and equipment, "eyelids like upper-LIPS," for one item: but when life itself fled, the miniature was found in its old place, resting on the old heart after some sixty years. O Time, O Sons and Daughters of Time!--

His Majesty's reception at Loo was of the kind he liked,--cordial, honorable, unceremonious; and these were three pleasant days he had.

Pleasant for the Crown-Prince too; as the whole Journey had rather been; Papa, with covert satisfaction, finding him a wise creature, after all, and "more serious" than formerly. "Hm, you don't know what things are in that Fritz!" his Majesty murmured sometimes, in these later years, with a fine light in his eyes.

Loo itself is a beautiful Palace: "Loo, close by the Village Appeldoorn, is a stately brick edifice, built with architectural regularity; has finely decorated rooms, beautiful gardens, and round are superb alleys of oak and linden." [Busching, _Erdbeschreibung,_ viii. 69.] There saunters pleasantly our Crown-Prince, for these three days;--and one glad incident I do perceive to have befallen him there: the arrival of a Letter from Voltaire. Letter much expected, which had followed him from Wesel; and which he answers here, in this brick Palace, among the superb avenues and gardens. [_OEuvres,_ xxi. 203, the Letter, "Cirey, June, 1738;" Ib. 222, the Answer to it, "Loo, 6th August, 1738."]

No doubt a glad incident, irradiating, as with a sudden sunburst in gray weather, the commonplace of things. Here is news worth listening to; news as from the empyrean! Free interchange of poetries and proses, of heroic sentiments and opinions, between the Unique of Sages and the Paragon of Crown-Princes; how charming to both! Literary business, we perceive, is brisk on both hands; at Cirey the _Discours sur l'Homme_ ("Sixth DISCOURS" arrives in this packet at Loo, surely a deathless piece of singing); nor is Reinsberg idle: Reinsberg is copiously doing verse, such verse! and in prose, very earnestly, an "ANTI-MACHIAVEL;"

which soon afterwards filled all the then world, though it has now fallen so silent again. And at Paris, as Voltaire announces with a flourish, "M. de Maupertuis's excellent Book, _Figure de la T'erre,_ is out;" [Paris, 1738: Maupertuis's "measurement of a degree," in the utmost North, 1736-1737 (to prove the Earth flattened there). Vivid Narrative; somewhat gesticulative, but duly brief. The only Book of that great Maupertuis which is now readable to human nature.] M. de Maupertuis, home from the Polar regions and from measuring the Earth there; the sublimest miracle in Paris society at present. Might build, new-build, an ACADEMY OF SCIENCES at Berlin for your Royal Highness, one day? suggests Voltaire, on this occasion: and Friedrich, as we shall see, takes the hint. One pa.s.sage of the Crown-Prince's Answer is in these terms;--fixing this Loo visit to its date for us, at any rate:--

"LOO IN HOLLAND, 6th AUGUST, 1739.... I write from a place where there lived once a great man [William III. of England, our Dutch William]; which is now the Prince of Orange's House. The demon of Ambition sheds its unhappy poisons over his days. He might be the most fortunate of men; and he is devoured by chagrins in his beautiful Palace here, in the middle of his gardens and of a brilliant Court. It is pity in truth; for he is a Prince with no end of wit (INFINIMENT D'ESPRIT), and has respectable qualites." Not Stadtholder, unluckily; that is where the shoe pinches; the Dutch are on the Republican tack, and will not have a Stadtholder at present. No help for it in one's beautiful gardens and avenues of oak and linden.

"I have talked a great deal about Newton with the Princess,"--about Newton; never hinted at Amelia; not permissible!--"from Newton we pa.s.sed to Leibnitz; and from Leibnitz to the Late Queen of England," Caroline lately gone, "who, the Prince told me, was of Clarke's sentiment" on that important theological controversy now dead to mankind.--And of Jenkins and his Ear did the Princess say nothing? That is now becoming a high phenomenon in England! But readers must wait a little.

Pity that we cannot give these two Letters in full; that no reader, almost, could be made to understand them, or to care for them when understood. Such the cruelty of Time upon this Voltaire-Friedrich Correspondence, and some others; which were once so rosy, sunny, and are now fallen drearily extinct,--studiable by Editors only! In itself the Friedrich-Voltaire Correspondence, we can see, was charming; very blossomy at present: businesses increasing; mutual admiration now risen to a great height,--admiration sincere on both sides, most so on the Prince's, and extravagantly expressed on both sides, most so on Voltaire's.

CROWN-PRINCE BECOMES A FREEMASON; AND IS HARANGUED BY MONSIEUR DE BIELFELD.

His Majesty, we said, had three pleasant days at Loo; discoursing, as with friends, on public matters, or even on more private matters, in a frank unconstrained way. He is not to be called "Majesty" on this occasion; but the fact, at Loo, and by the leading Mightinesses of the Republic, who come copiously to compliment him there, is well remembered. Talk there was, with such leading Mightinesses, about the Julich-and-Berg question, aim of this Journey: earnest enough private talk with some of them: but it availed nothing; and would not be worth reporting now to any creature, if we even knew it. In fact, the Journey itself remains mentionable chiefly by one very trifling circ.u.mstance; and then by another, not important either, which followed out of that.

The trifling circ.u.mstance is,--That Friedrich, in the course of this Journey, became a Freemason: and the unimportant sequel was, That he made acquaintance with one Bielfeld, on the occasion; who afterwards wrote a Book about him, which was once much read, though never much worth reading, and is still citable, with precaution, now and then.

[Monsieur le Baron de Bielfeld, _Lettres Familieres et Autres,_ 1763;--second edition, 2 vols. a Leide, 1767, is the one we use here.]

Trifling circ.u.mstance, of Freemasonry, as we read in Bielfeld and in many Books after him, befell in manner following.

Among the dinner-guests at Loo, one of those three days, was a Prince of Lippe-Buckeburg,--Prince of small territory, but of great speculation; whose territory lies on the Weser, leading to Dutch connections; and whose speculations stretch over all the Universe, in a high fantastic style:--he was a dinner-guest; and one of the topics that came up was Freemasonry; a phantasmal kind of object, which had kindled itself, or rekindled, in those years, in England first of all; and was now hovering about, a good deal, in Germany and other countries; pretending to be a new light of Heaven, and not a bog-meteor of phosphorated hydrogen, conspicuous in the murk of things. Bog-meteor, foolish putrescent will-o'-wisp, his Majesty promptly defined it to be: Tom-foolery and KINDERSPIEL, what else? Whereupon ingenious Buckeburg, who was himself a Mason, man of forty by this time, and had high things in him of the Quixotic type, ventured on defence; and was so respectful, eloquent, dexterous, ingenious, he quite captivated, if not his Majesty, at least the Crown-Prince, who was more enthusiastic for high things.

Crown-Prince, after table, took his Durchlaucht of Buckeburg aside; talked farther on the subject, expressed his admiration, his conviction,--his wish to be admitted into such a Hero Fraternity.

Nothing could be welcomer to Durchlaucht. And so, in all privacy, it was made up betweeen them, That Durchlaucht, summoning as many mystic Brothers out of Hamburg as were needful, should be in waiting with them, on the Crown-Prince's road homeward,--say at Brunswick, night before the Fair, where we are to be,--and there make the Crown-Prince a Mason.

[Bielfeld, i. 14-16; Preuss, i. 111; Preuss, _Buch fur Jedermann,_ i.

41.]

This is Bielfeld's account, repeated ever since; substantially correct, except that the scene was not Loo at all: dinner and dialogue, it now appears, took place in Durchlaucht's own neighborhood, during the Cleve Review time; "probably at Minden, 17th July;" and all was settled into fixed program before Loo came in sight. [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xvs. 201: Friedrich's Letter to this Durchlaucht, "Comte de Schaumbourg-Lippe" he calls him; date, "Moyland, 26th July, 1738: "Moyland, a certain SCHLOSS, or habitable Mansion, of his Majesty's, few miles to north of Mors in the Cleve Country; where his Majesty used often to pause;--and where (what will be much more remarkable to readers) the Crown-Prince and Voltaire had their first meeting, two years hence.] Bielfeld's report of the subsequent procedure at Brunswick, as he saw it and was himself part of it, is liable to no mistakes, at least of the involuntary kind; and may, for anything we know, be correct in every particular.

He says (veiling it under discreet asterisks, which are now decipherable enough), The Durchlaucht of Lippe-Buckeburg had summoned six Brethren of the Hamburg Lodge; of whom we mention only a Graf von Kielmannsegge, a Baron von Oberg, both from Hanover, and Bielfeld himself, a Merchant's Son, of Hamburg; these, with "Kielmannsegge's Valet to act as Tiler,"

Valet being also a Mason, and the rule equality of mankind,--were to have the honor of initiating the Crown-Prince. They arrived at the Western Gate of Brunswick on the 11th of August, as prearranged; Prussian Majesty not yet come, but coming punctually on the morrow. It is Fair-time; all manner of traders, pedlers, showmen rendezvousing; many neighboring n.o.bility too, as was still the habit. "Such a bulk of light luggage?" said the Custom-house people at the Gate;--but were pacified by slipping them a ducat. Upon which we drove to "Korn's Hotel"

(if anybody now knew it); and there patiently waited. No great things of a Hotel, says Bielfeld; but can be put up with;--worst feature is, we discover a Hanover acquaintance lodging close by, nothing but a wooden part.i.tion between us: How if he should overhear!--

Prussian Majesty and suite, under universal cannon-salvos, arrived, Sunday the 12th; to stay till Wednesday (three days) with his august Son-in-law and Daughter here. Durchlaucht Lippe presents himself at Court, the rest of us not; privately settles with the Prince: "Tuesday night, eve of his Majesty's departure; that shall be the night: at Korn's Hotel, late enough!" And there, accordingly, on the appointed night, 14th-15th August, 1738, the light-luggage trunks have yielded their stage-properties; Jachin and Boaz are set up, and all things are ready; Tiler (Kielmannsegge's Valet) watching with drawn sword against the profane. As to our Hanover neighbor, on the other side the part.i.tion, says Bielfeld, we waited on him, this day after dinner, successively paying our respects; successively pledged him in so many b.u.mpers, he is lying dead drunk hours ago, could not overhear a cannon-battery, he. And soon after midnight, the Crown-Prince glides in, a Captain Wartensleben accompanying, who is also a candidate; and the mysterious rites are accomplished on both of them, on the Crown-Prince first, without accident, and in the usual way.

Bielfeld could not enough admire the demeanor of this Prince, his clearness, sense, quiet brilliancy; and how he was so "intrepid,"

and "possessed himself so gracefully in the most critical instants."

Extremely genial air, and so young, looks younger even than his years: handsome to a degree, though of short stature. Physiognomy, features, quite charming; fine auburn hair (BEAU BRUN), a negligent plenty of it; "his large blue eyes have something at once severe, sweet and gracious."

Eligible Mason indeed. Had better make despatch at present, lest Papa be getting on the road before him!--Bielfeld delivered a small address, composed beforehand; with which the Prince seemed to be content. And so, with masonic grip, they made their adieus for the present; and the Crown-Prince and Wartensleben were back at their posts, ready for the road along with his Majesty.

His Majesty came on Sunday; goes on Wednesday, home now at a stretch; and, we hope, has had a good time of it here, these three days. Daughter Charlotte and her Serene Husband, well with their subjects, well with one another, are doing well; have already two little Children; a Boy the elder, of whom we have heard: Boy's name is Karl, age now three; sprightly, reckoned very clever, by the fond parents;--who has many things to do in the world, by and by; to attack the French Revolution, and be blown to pieces by it on the Field of Jena, for final thing!

That is the fate of little Karl, who frolics about here, so suns.h.i.+ny and ingenuous at present.

Karl's Grandmother, the Serene Dowager d.u.c.h.ess, Friedrich's own Mother-in-law, his Majesty and Friedrich would also of course see here. Fine Younger Sons of hers are coming forward; the reigning Duke beautifully careful about the furtherance of these Cadets of the House.

Here is Prince Ferdinand, for instance; just getting ready for the Grand Tour; goes in a month hence: [Mauvillon (FILS, son of him whom we cite otherwise), _Geschichte Ferdinands Herzogs von Braunschweig-Luneburg_ (Leipzig, 1794), i. 17-25.] a fine eupeptic loyal young fellow; who, in a twenty years more, will be Chatham's Generalissimo, and fight the French to some purpose. A Brother of his, the next elder, is now fighting the Turks for his Kaiser; does not like it at all, under such Seckendorfs and War-Ministries as there are. Then, elder still, eldest of all the Cadets, there is Anton Ulrich, over at Petersburg for some years past, with outlooks high enough: To wed the Mecklenburg Princess there (Daughter of the unutterable Duke), and be as good as Czar of all the Russias one day. Little to his profit, poor soul!--These, historically ascertainable, are the aspects of the Brunswick Court during those three days of Royal Visit, in Fair-time; and may serve to date the Masonic Transaction for us, which the Crown-Prince has just accomplished over at Korn's.

As for the Transaction itself, there is intrinsically no harm in this initiation, we will hope: but it behooves to be kept well hidden from Papa. Papa's good opinion of the Prince has sensibly risen, in the course of this Journey, "so rational, serious, not dangling about among the women as formerly;"--and what a shock would this of Korn's Hotel be, should Papa hear of it! Poor Papa, from officious tale-bearers he hears many things: is in distress about Voltaire, about Heterodoxies;--and summoned the Crown-Prince, by express, from Reinsberg, on one occasion lately, over to Potsdam, "to take the Communion" there, by way of case-hardening against Voltaire and Heterodoxies! Think of it, human readers!--We will add the following stray particulars, more or less ill.u.s.trative of the Masonic Transaction; and so end that trifling affair.

The Captain Wartensleben, fellow-recipient of the mysteries at Brunswick, is youngest son, by a second marriage, of old Feldmarschall Wartensleben, now deceased; and is consequently Uncle, Half-Uncle, of poor Lieutenant Katte, though some years younger than Katte would now have been. Tender memories hang by Wartensleben, in a silent way! He is Captain in the Potsdam Giants; somewhat an intimate, and not undeservedly so, of the Crown-Prince;--succeeds Wolden as Hofmarschall at Reinsberg, not many months after this; Wolden having died of an apoplectic stroke. Of Bielfeld comes a Book, slightly citable; from no other of the Brethren, or their Feat at Kern's, comes (we may say) anything whatever. The Crown-Prince prosecuted his Masonry, at Reinsberg or elsewhere, occasionally, for a year or two; but was never ardent in it; and very soon after his Accession, left off altogether: "Child's-play and IGNIS FATUUS mainly!" A Royal Lodge was established at Berlin, of which the new King consented to be patron; but he never once entered the place; and only his Portrait (a welcomely good one, still to be found there) presided over the mysteries in that Establishment.