senses than one;--and that in the breeding of him there are two
elements noticeable, widely diverse: the French and the German.
This is perhaps the chief peculiarity; best worth laying hold of,
with the due comprehension, if our means allow.


FIRST EDUCATIONAL ELEMENT, THE FRENCH ONE.

His nurses, governesses, simultaneous and successive, mostly of
French breed, are duly set down in the Prussian Books, and held in
mind as a point of duty by Prussian men; but, in foreign parts,
cannot be considered otherwise than as a group, and merely with
generic features. He had a Frau von Kamecke for Head Governess,--
the lady whom Wilhelmina, in her famed Memoires, italic> always writes KAMKEN; and of whom, except the floating
gossip found in that Book, there is nothing to be remembered.
Under her, as practical superintendent, SOUS-GOUVERNANTE and
quasi-mother, was the Dame de Roucoulles, a more important person
for us here. Dame de Roucoulles, once de Montbail, the same
respectable Edict-of-Nantes French lady who, five-and-twenty years
ago, had taken similar charge of Friedrich Wilhelm; a fact that
speaks well for the character of her performance in that office.
She had done her first edition of a Prussian Prince in a
satisfactory manner; and not without difficult accidents and
singularities, as we have heard: the like of which were spared her
in this her second edition (so we may call it); a second and, in
all manner of ways, an improved one. The young Fritz swallowed no
shoe-buckles; did not leap out of window, hanging on by the hands;
nor achieve anything of turbulent, or otherwise memorable, in his
infantine history; the course of which was in general smooth, and