very great and universal;--still testified in manifold dull,
unreadable old pamphlets, records official and volunteer,--which
were then all ablaze like the bonfires, and are now fallen dark
enough, and hardly credible even to the fancy of this new Time.

The poor old Grandfather, Friedrich I. (the first King of
Prussia),--for, as we intimate, he was still alive, and not very
old, though now infirm enough, and laden beyond his strength with
sad reminiscences, disappointments and chagrins,--had taken much
to Wilhelmina, as she tells us; [ Memoires de Frederique
Sophie Wilhelmine de Prusse, Margrave de Bareith, Soeur d
Frederic-le-Grand (London, 1812), i. 5.] and would
amuse himself whole days with the pranks and prattle of the little
child. Good old man: he, we need not doubt, brightened up into
unusual vitality at sight of this invaluable little Brother of
hers; through whom he can look once more into the waste dim future
with a flicker of new hope. Poor old man: he got his own back
half-broken by a careless nurse letting him fall; and has slightly
stooped ever since, some fifty and odd years now: much against his
will; for he would fain have been beautiful; and has struggled all
his days, very hard if not very wisely, to make his existence
beautiful,--to make it magnificent at least, and regardless of
expense;--and it threatens to come to little. Courage, poor
Grandfather: here is a new second edition of a Friedrich, the
first having gone off with so little effect: this one's back is
still unbroken, his life's seedfield not yet filled with tares and
thorns: who knows but Heaven will be kinder to this one?
Heaven was much kinder to this one. Him Heaven had kneaded of
more potent stuff: a mighty fellow this one, and a strange;
related not only to the Upholsteries and Heralds' Colleges,