morrow." And in this way it bore illfruit for the unfortunate Crown-Prince, upon whom most of his father's vexations were visited.

The European embroilments springing from the Pragmatic Sanction, and the alliance of Spain and Austria by the Treaty of Vienna, disturbing to the balance of power-with the counter alliance of England, France, and Prussia, by the Treaty of Hanover, to set right the said balance -occurred at this time, and greatly disturbed Friedrich Wilhelm's peace, as they do that of Mr. Carlyle, who has to record them. He enters on their history with louder lamentations than become so emphatic an advocate of silent endurance and steady uncomplaining work.

"To pitch them utterly out of window, and out of memory," he says, "never to be mentioned in human speech again: this is the manifest prompting of Nature; and this, were not our poor Crown-Prince and one or two others involved in them, would be our ready and thrice joyful course. Surely the so-called Politics of Europe' in that day are a thing this Editor would otherwise, with his whole soul, forget to all eternity."

But they affected Friedrich Wilhelm's temper and his treatment of his son, our poor young Fritz getting tormented, scourged, and throttled in body and soul, till he grew to loathe the light of the sun, and looked to have quitted said light at one stage of the business." For this reason, they enjoy a temporary remission of the sentence of "suppression" which Mr. Carlyle would otherwise pass on them. It is sufficient for us to note them as facts occurring at this time, and irritating to the King of Prussia.

We must here stop to record that, while these storms were raging without and within the royal Prussian household, the Crown-Prince made a memorable step in life. He entered on active duty in the army on the twentieth of August, 1726-not yet quite fifteen-as major in the Potsdam Life-Guards, the celebrated regiment of giants which Friedrich Wilhelm recruited and kidnapped from all the countries of Europe. "Hereby to" his son's "Athenian-French elegancies, and airy promptitudes, and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism, very rare, but very indispensable to such a superstruc

ture."

Three months before this date, an event apparently accidental, but of scarcely less importance, had occurred. "On the eleventh of May, 1726, towards sun-set," as the King sits smoking in the Tabagie [Tobacco-Parliament, or Smoking Club] of the Berlin palace, "a square-built, shortish, steel-gray Gentleman of military cut, past fifty, is" seen "strolling over the

Square in front of the palace. He turns out, on inquiry, to be the Austrian Ordnance-Master Seckendorf, whom Friedrich Wilhelm had known at the Siege of Stralsund' and elsewhere, passing through Berlin on pressing business in Denmark. However pressing his business, for the present, at any rate, he may be invited in. Friedrich Wilhelm, opening the window, beckons Seckendorf up with his own royal head and hand." He is invited to return when his business in Denmark is done. "Seckendorf sure enough will return swiftly to such a King, whose familiar company, vouchsafed him in this noble manner, he likes-oh! how he likes it!" Seckendorf's real business is with Friedrich Wilhelm, to whom, after a decent term of absence, he returns, not to leave him for the next seven years. He is there in the interest of Austria, to detach the King from his allies of the Treaty of Hanover-England and Franceand bring him over to the Kaiser's side; which with the aid of Grumkow, a bribable man, and the King's confidential adviser, he succeeds in doing, on conditions mutually advantageous, it is supposed, which are embodied in the Treaty of Wusterhausen, twelfth October, 1726. This secession from the English side in the politics of Europe is virtually the death of the double-marriage project; though it continued still to live in the hopes and wishes of the queen, Friedrich, and Wilhelmina. Seckendorf's business is to keep "Prussian majesty steady to the Kaiser, always well divided from the English ;" to the widening of the estrangement, already wide enough, between the king and his wife, son, and daughter.

In the mean time the Crown-Prince was attending to his command over the Potsdam giants, and already attracting notice by his intelligence and vivacity. His flute, his French books, his indifference to hunting, and his inability to smoke any other than an empty pipe at the Tobacco College, increased the paternal dislike. What was worse, he had fallen into dis

The Crown-Prince and Wilhelmina were forbidden his presence except at dinner-time, when they were as often as not saluted with showers of crockery and bad words. They held private interviews with the queen in her apartment, with spies out to warn them of the king's approach; who, however, surprising them on one occasion, they had to squat for hours, and almost got suffocated.

"Thy [in German the contemptuous third person singular is used] obstinate perverse disposition" (Kopf, head,)" which does not love thy Father, for when one does every thing, and really loves one's Father, one does what the Father requires, not while he is there to see it, but when his back is turned too. For the rest, thou know'st very well that I can endure no effeminate fellow, who has no human inclination in him; who puts himself to shame, can not ride nor shoot; and withal is dirty in his person; frizzles his hair like a fool, and does not cut it off. And all this I have a thousand times reprimanded; but all in vain, and no improvement in nothing. For the rest, haughty, proud as a churl; speaks to nobody but some few, and is not popular and affable; and cuts grimaces with his face, as if he were a fool; and does my will in nothing unless held to it by force; nothing out of love; and has pleasure in nothing but following his own whims," (own Kopf)"no use to him in any thing else. This is the

answer.

-Vol. ii. pp. 47-8.

FRIEDRICH WILHELM."

The increased complication of European politics, involving the possibility that he might have to go to war for his ally the Kaiser-suspicion of a secret intrigue in his own house for the renewal of the double-marriage project-the failure of an attempt to set that matter again on a right footing-the death of his cousin George I. of England, whom he really loved-annoyances from George II. on recruiting business-and his own sufferings from gout-all these and many other vexations are to be taken into account in reading of Friedrich Wilhelm's freaks of rage.

For years he was, in large part through the machinations of Seckendorf and Grumkow aggravating all misunderstandings, kept in a state of chronic irritation scarcely distinguishable from mad

66

"His Prussian Majesty," writes Dubourgay, the British Ambassador (Dec. 10, 1729,) can not bear the sight of either the Prince or Princess-Royal. The other day, he asked the Prince: Kalkstein makes you English; does not he?'. . . To which the Prince answered, 'I respect the English because I know the people there love me;' upon which the King seized him by the collar, struck him fiercely with his cane, in fact rained showers of blows upon him; and it was only by superior strength," thinks Dubourgay, "that the poor Prince escaped no worse."-Vol. ii. pp. 113, 114.

He

Friedrich himself, describing this incident to his mother, says, "it was only weariness that made" his father "give up." "He never saw my brother without threatening him with his cane," writes Wilhelmina. Unwillingness to leave his sister to bear the brunt of the paternal rage had alone prevented him from making his escape, long ago, from the court and from Prussia. Now not even that consideration could withhold him. father to August the Strong, Elector of resolved, on occasion of a visit with his Saxony and King of Poland, at his Saxon court of Dresden, to get across to England; but again yielded to Wilhelmina's representations and entreaties, and postponed his design. There was now, indeed, a short interval of calmer weather. The Queen felt ill. This softened Friedrich Wilhelm for a time. "He wept aloud and abundantly, poor man ; declared in private he would not survive his Feekin;' and for her sake, solemnly pardoned Wilhelmina, and even Fritz-till the symptoms mended." But the discovery of a secret correspondence, which Friedrich had been carrying on with the English court on the subject of the double-marriage, soon made matters worse, if possible, than they had been before. On a second visit of compliment to the Saxon camp at Radewitz, (June, 1730,) "where the eyes of so many strangers were directed to him"-Mr. Carlyle quotes from Ranke-" the Crown-Prince was treated like a disobedient boy, and

answer for his safe custody with his own head. To Lieutenant Keith, at Wesel, the page's brother, and a confident also of Friedrich's, Friedrich managed to write in Bonn, and smuggle to the postoffice, three words in pencil: "Sauvez vous, tout est découvert, (All is found out; away!") profiting by which hint, Keith made off in safety to Holland, and thence to England. Katte, who had warning and time for escape, loitered, and was arrested.

On the journey the King's rage was boundless. He thrust his cane into his son's face, till it bled: he drew his sword upon him, and would have slain him had not others interfered. At Wesel, Friedrich confessed all, and named his confidents, Keith and Katte, whom he imagined both to be out of reach of danger. He and Katte were tried by court-martial: Katte was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, which the King, not being able to get the court to reverse their decision, changed to death of his own authority. Friedrich, as a deserter, had sentence of death passed on him by the court. The end is well known.

"It was in the gray of the winter morning, sixth November, 1730, that Katte arrived in Cüstrin Garrison," [where Friedrich himself, under sentence of death, was imprisoned.] "He [Katte] took kind leave of Major and men; Adieu, my brothers; good be with you ever more!-And, about nine o'clock, he is on the road towards the Rampart of the Castle, where a scaffold stands. Katte wore, by order, a brown dress exactly like the Prince's; the Prince is already brought down into a lower room, to see Katte as he passes, (to 'see Katte die,' had been the royal order; but they smuggled that

into abeyance ;) and Katte knows he shall see him. President Münchow and the Commandant were with the Prince; whose emotions one may fancy, but not describe. Seldom did any Prince or man stand in such a predicament. Vain to say, and again say: In the name of God, I ask you, stop the execution till I write to the King! Impossible that; as easily stop the course of the stars. here Katte comes; cheerful loyalty still beaming on his face, death now nigh. Pardonezmoi, mon cher Katte!' cried Friedrich in a tone: Pardon me, dear Katte; oh! that this should be what I have done for you!-Death is sweet for a Prince I love so well,' said Katte: 'La mort est douce pour un si aimable Prince;

And so

and fared on―round some angle of the Fortress, it appears; not in sight of Friedrich; who sank into a faint, and had seen his last glimpse of

Katte in this world.

"The body lay all day upon the scaffold, by

royal order; and was buried at night obscurely in the common church-yard; friends, in silence, took mark of the place against better timesand Katte's dust now lies elsewhere, among that of his own kindred."—Vol. ii. pp. 289, 291.

The King's vengeance, or sense of what justice required-for the two feelings were not very distinct in his mind-was satisfied by this one execution; and, at the Kaiser's intercession, his son's blood was not shed. Henceforth Friedrich's misfortunes, having reached their culminating point, began gradually to mend. He was for fifteen months a prisoner in the fortress of Cüstrin; and for a twelvemonth he did not see his father's face. This, perhaps, he can hardly have much regretted. He professed penitence and submission. The rigor of his confinement was gradually lessened. His flute and his French books were allowed him. He discussed the doctrine of predestination, which he had adopted, and which was an odious heresy in the King's eyes, with clergymen deputed to convince him of his error. After an ingenious show of resistance, he gave way, not feeling inclined, according to his own statement, to become a martyr for his opinion. On the fifteenth of August, 1731, the King visited him at Cüstrin; and after a scene, not without its pathos, a reconciliation took place. Henceforth father and son were on the best terms, the latter implicitly obeying, to the extent of contracting a distasteful marriage, with the outward show of cheerfulness and contentment. He made some acquaintance with the art of war, serving in the Rhine campaign under Prince Eugene against France. First at Ruppin, and afterwards at Reinsberg, he was initiated into the mysteries of government. As a soldier and an administrator he no doubt owed an incalculable debt to his father; but that his moral nature was improved by the rough "apprenticeship to Friedrich Wilhelm" which we have been reviewing, and which Mr. Carlyle thinks so salutary, seems to us more than doubtful. Mr. Carlyle's general judgment appears to be, that the nonsense was taken out of him by it-that he learned reticence, self-control, and the 66 power of enduring hardness" silently. And this, perhaps, must be admitted. But that he also learned something like hypocrisy, that he got rid of much generous enthusiasm, that a tone of harshness, and a willingness to treat others as he himself had been