16th March 1763. which once knew better, the omnipotence of shoddy; filling her ears and soul with shriekery and metallic clangour, mad noises, mad hurries mostly nowhither;—and are awakening, I suppose, in such of her sons as still go into reflection at all, a deeper and more ominous set of Questions than have ever risen in England's History before. As in the foregoing case, we have to be patient and keep hoping.

3°. In regard to France. It appears, noble old Teutschland, with such pieties and unconquerable silent valours, such opulences human and divine, amid its wreck of new and old confusions, is not to be cut in Four, and made to dance to the piping of Versailles or another. Far the contrary! To Versailles itself there has gone forth, Versailles may read it or not, the writing on the wall: "Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting" (at last even "found wanting")! France, beaten, stript, humiliated; sinful, unrepentant, governed by mere sinners and, at best, clever fools (fous pleins d'esprit),—collapses, like a creature whose limbs fail it; sinks into bankrupt quiescence, into nameless fermentation, generally into dry-rot. Rotting, none guesses whitherward;- rotting towards that thrice-extraordinary Spontaneous-Combustion, which blazed-out in 1789. And has kindled, over the whole world, gradually or by explosion, this unexpected Outburst of all the chained Devilries (among other chained things), this roaring Conflagration of the Anarchies; under which it is the lot of these poor generations to live, for I know not what length of Centuries yet. "Go into Combustion, my pretty child!" the Destinies had said to this belle France, who is always so fond of shining and outshining: Self-Combustion;-in that way, won't you shine, as none of them yet could ?" Shine; yes, truly,—till you are got to caput mortuum, my pretty child (unless you gain new wisdom!)-But not to wander farther:

Wednesday March 16th, Friedrich, all Saxon things being now settled, among the rest, 'eight Saxon Schoolmasters' to be a model in Prussia,-quitted Leipzig, with the Seven-Years War safe in his pocket, as it were. Drove to Moritzburg, to dinner with the amiable Kurprinz and still more amiable Wife : "It was to your Highness that we owe this Treaty!" A dinner which readers may hear of again. At Moritzburg; where, with the Lacys, there was once such rattling and battling. After

30th March 1763.

which, rapidly on to Silesia, and an eight days of adjusting and inspecting there.

Wednesday March 30th, Friedrich arrives in Frankfurt-onOder, on the way homeward from Silesia: 'takes view of the Field of Kunersdorf' (reflections to be fancied); early in the afternoon speeds forward again; at one of the stages (place called Tassdorf) has a Dialogue, which we shall hear of; and between 8 and 9 in the evening, not through the solemn receptions and crowded streets, drives to the Schloss of Berlin. 'Goes straight to the Queen's Apartment,' Queen, Princesses and Court all home triumphantly some time ago; sups there with the Queen's Majesty and these bright creatures,—beautiful supper, had it consisted only of cresses and salt; and, behind it, sound sleep to us under our own roof-tree once more.13 Next day, the King made gifts to,' as it were, to everybody; 'to the Queen about 5,000l., to the Princess Amelia 1,000l.,' and so on; and saw true hearts all merry round him,—merrier, perhaps, than his own was.

13 Rödenbeck, ii. 211, 212; Preuss, ii. 345, 346; &c. &c.

BOOK XXI.

AFTERNOON AND EVENING OF FRIEDRICH'S

LIFE.

1763-1786.

CHAPTER I.

PREFATORY.

THE Twelve Hercules-labours of this King have ended here; what was required of him in World-History is accomplished. There remain to Friedrich Twenty-three Years more of Life, which to Prussian History are as full of importance as ever; but do not essentially concern European History, Europe having gone the road we now see it in. On the grand WorldTheatre the curtain has fallen for a New Act; Friedrich's part, like everybody's for the present, is played out. In fact, there is, during the rest of his Reign, nothing of World-History to be dwelt on anywhere. America, it has been decided, shall be English; Prussia be a Nation. The French, as finis of their attempt to cut Germany in Four, find themselves sunk into torpor, abeyance and dry-rot; fermenting towards they know not what. Towards Spontaneous Combustion in the year 1789, and for long years onwards!

There, readers, there is the next mile-stone for you, in the History of Mankind! That universal Burning-up, as in hellfire, of Human Shams. The oath of Twenty-five Million men, which has since become that of all men whatsoever, "Rather than live longer under lies, we will die !"—that is the New Act in World-History. New Act,-or, we may call it New Part; Drama of World-History, Part Third. If Part Second was 1,800 years ago, this I reckon will be Part Third. This is the truly celestial-infernal Event: the strangest we have seen for a thousand years. Celestial in one part; in the other, infernal. For

1763.

it is withal the breaking-out of universal mankind into Anarchy, into the faith and practice of No-Government,—that is to say (if you will be candid), into unappeasable Revolt against ShamGovernors and Sham-Teachers,—which I do charitably define to be a Search, most unconscious, yet in deadly earnest, for true Governors and Teachers. That is the one fact of WorldHistory worth dwelling on at this day; and Friedrich cannot be said to have had much hand farther in that.

Nor is the progress of a French or European world, all silently ripening and rotting towards such issue, a thing one wishes to dwell on. Only when the Spontaneous Combustion breaks out; and, many-coloured, with loud noises, envelopes the whole world in anarchic flame for long hundreds of years: then has the Event come; there is the thing for all men to mark, and to study and scrutinise as the strangest thing they ever saw. Centuries of it yet lying ahead of us; several sad Centuries, sordidly tumultuous, and good for little! Say Two Centuries yet, say even Ten of such a process: before the Old is completely burnt out, and the New in any state of sightliness? Millennium of Anarchies ;-abridge it, spend your heart's-blood upon abridging it, ye Heroic Wise that are to come! For it is the consummation of All the Anarchies that are and were ;—which I do trust always means the death (temporary death) of them! Death of the Anarchies: or a world once more built wholly on Fact better or worse; and the lying jargoning professor of Sham-Fact, whose name is Legion, who as yet (oftenest little conscious of himself) goes tumulting and swarming from shore to shore, become a species extinct, and well known to be gone down to Tophet!

There were bits of Anarchies before, little and greater: but till that of France in 1789, there was none long memorable; all were pygmies in comparison, and not worth mentioning separately. In 1772 the Anarchy of Poland, which had been a considerable Anarchy for about three hundred years, got itself extinguished,-what we may call extinguished ;-decisive surgery being then first exercised upon it: an Anarchy put in the sure way of extinction. In 1775, again, there began, over seas, another Anarchy much more considerable,-little dreaming that it could be called an Anarchy; on the contrary, calling itself Liberty, Rights of Man; and singing boundless IoPæans to itself, as is common in such cases; an Anarchy which

1763.

has been challenging the Universe to show the like ever since. And which has, at last, flamed-up as an independent Phenomenon, unexampled in the hideously suicidal way;—and does need much to get burnt out, that matters may begin anew on truer conditions. But neither the Partition of Poland nor the American War of Independence have much general importance, or, except as precursors of 1789, are worth dwelling on in History. From us here, so far as Friedrich is concerned with them, they may deserve some transient mention, more or less: but World-History, eager to be at the general Funeral-pile and ultimate Burning-up of Shams in this poor World, will have less and less to say of small tragedies and premonitory symptoms.

Curious how the busy and continually watchful and speculating Friedrich, busied about his dangers from Austrian encroachments, from Russian-Turk Wars, Bavarian Successions, and other troubles and anarchies close by, saw nothing to dread in France; nothing to remark there, except carelessly, from time to time, its beggarly decaying condition, so strangely sunk in arts, in arms, in finance; oftenest an object of pity to him, for he still has a love for France ;—and reads not the least sign of that immeasurable, all-engulfing French Revolution which was in the wind! Neither Voltaire nor he have the least anticipation of such a thing. Voltaire and he see, to their contentment, Superstition visibly declining: Friedrich rather disapproves the heat of Voltaire's procedures on the Infâme.' “Why be in such heat? Other nonsense, quite equal to it, will be almost sure to follow. Take care of your own skin!" Voltaire and he are deeply alive, especially Voltaire is, to the horrors and miseries which have issued on mankind from a Fanatic Popish Superstition, or Creed of Incredibilities,—which (except from the throat outwards, from the bewildered tongue outwards) the orthodox themselves cannot believe, but only pretend and struggle to believe. This Voltaire calls "The Infamous;” and this— what name can any of us give it? The man who believes in falsities is very miserable. The man who cannot believe them, but only struggles and pretends to believe; and yet, being armed with the power of the sword, industriously keeps menacing and slashing all round, to compel every neighbour to do like him what is to be done with such a man? Human Nature calls him a Social Nuisance; needing to be handcuffed,