at the castle of Hubertsburg, near Dresden, February 15, 1763.

The brilliant military reputation which Frederic had acquired in this arduous contest did not tempt him to pursue the career of a conqueror. He had risked everything to maintain possession of Silesia ; but, if his writings speak the real feelings of his mind, he was deeply sensible to the sufferings and evils which attend upon war. "The state of Prussia," he himself says, in the 'Histoire de mon Temps,' "can only be compared to that of a man riddled with wounds, weakened by loss of blood, and ready to sink under the weight of his misfortunes. The nobility was exhausted, the commons ruined, numbers of villages were burnt, of towns ruined. Civil order was lost in a total anarchy: in a word, the desolation was universal.” To cure these evils Frederic applied his earnest attention; and by grants of money to those towns which had suffered most; by the commencement and continuation of various great works of public utility; by attention to agriculture; by draining marshes, and settling colonists in the barren, or ruined portions of his country; by cherishing manufactures (though not always with a useful or judicious zeal), he succeeded in repairing the exhausted population and resources of Prussia with a rapidity the more wonderful, because his military establishment was at the same time recruited and maintained at the enormous number, considering the size and wealth of the kingdom, of 200,000 men. One of his measures deserves especial notice, the emancipation of the peasants from hereditary servitude. This great undertaking he commenced at an early period of his reign, by giving up his own seignorial rights over the serfs on the crown domains: he completed it in the year 1766, by an

edict abolishing servitude throughout his dominions. In 1765, he commenced a gradual alteration in the fiscal system of Prussia, suggested in part by the celebrated Helvetius. In the department of finance, though all his experiments did not succeed, he was very successful. He is said, in the course of his reign, to have raised the annual revenue to nearly double what it had been in his father's time, and that without increasing the pressure of the people; and from his last biographer, he has obtained the praise of having "arrived, as far as any sovereign ever did, at perfection in that part of finance, which consists in the extracting as much as possible from the people, without overburthening or impoverishing them; and receiving into the royal coffers the sums so extracted, with the least possible deductions."

In such cares and in his literary pursuits, among which we may especially mention his History of the Seven Years War,' passed the time of Frederic for ten years. In 1772, he engaged in the nefarious project for the first partition of Poland. Of the iniquity of that project it is not necessary to speak; the universal voice of Europe has condemned it. It does not seem, however, that the scheme originated, as has been said, with Frederic: on the contrary, it appears to have been conceived by Catherine II., and matured in conversations with Prince Henry, the King of Prussia's brother, during a visit to St. Petersburg. By the treaty of partition, which was not finally arranged till 1777, Prussia gained a territory of no great extent, but of importance from its connecting Prussia Proper with the electoral dominions of Brandenburg and Silesia, and giving a compactness to the kingdom, of which it stood greatly in need. Frederic made some amends for his conduct in this matter by the diligence with

which he laboured to improve his acquisition. In this, as in most circumstances of internal administration, he was very successful; and the country, ruined by war, misgovernment, and the brutal sloth of its inhabitants, soon assumed the aspect of cheerful industry.

The King of Prussia once more led an army into the field, when, on the death of the Elector of Bavaria, childless, in 1778, Joseph II. of Austria conceived the plan of re-annexing to his own crown, under the plea of various antiquated feudal rights, the greater part of the Bavarian territories. Stimulated quite as much by jealousy of Austria as by a sense of the injustice of this act, Frederic stood out as the assertor of the liberties of Germany, and, proceeding with the utmost politeness from explanation to explanation, he marched an army into Bohemia in July, 1778. The war, however, which was terminated in the following spring by the peace of Teschen, was one of manoeuvres and partial engagements; in which Frederic's skill in strategy shone with its usual lustre, and success, on the whole, rested with the Prussians. By the terms of the treaty, the Bavarian dominions were secured, nearly entire, to the rightful collateral heirs, whose several claims were settled, while certain minor stipulations were made in favour of Prussia.

A few years later, in 1785, Frederic again found occasion to oppose Austria, in defence of the integrity of the Germanic constitution. The Emperor Joseph, in prosecution of his designs on Bavaria, had formed a contract with the reigning elector, to exchange the Austrian provinces in the Netherlands for the Electorate. Dissenting from this arrangement, the heir to the succession intrusted the advocacy of his rights to Frederic, who lost no time in

negotiating a confederation among the chief powers of Germany, (known by the name of the Germanic League,) to support the constitution of the empire, and the rights of its several princes. By this timely step Austria was compelled to forego the desired acquisition.

At this time Frederic's constitution had begun to decay. He had long been a sufferer from gout, the natural consequence of indulgence in good eating and rich cookery, to which throughout his life he was addicted. Towards the end of the year he began to experience great difficulty of breathing. His complaints, aggravated by total neglect of medical advice, and an extravagant appetite, which he gratified by eating to excess of the most highlyseasoned and unwholesome food, terminated in a confirmed dropsy. During the latter months of his life he suffered greviously from this complication of disorders; and through this period he displayed remarkable patience, and consideration for the feelings of those around him. No expression of suffering was allowed to pass his lips; and up to the last day of his life he continued to discharge with punctuality those political duties which he had imposed upon himself in youth and strength. Strange to say, while he exhibited this extraordinary self-control in some respects, he would not abstain from the most extravagant excesses in diet, though they were almost always followed by a severe aggravation of his sufferings. Up to August 15, 1786, he continued, as usual, to receive and answer all communications, and to despatch the usual routine of civil and military business. On the following day he fell into a lethargy, from which he only partially recovered. He died in the course of the night of August 16.

The published works of the King of Prussia were