promise; in fact, industriously conciliatory and pacificatory:
such is Friedrich to all Silesian men. Provincial Authorities, who
can get no instructions from Head-quarters; Vienna saying nothing,
Breslau nothing, and Deputy-Governor Browne being far south in
Neisse,--are naturally in difficulties: How shall they act?
Best not to act at all, if one can help it; and follow the Mayor of
Grunberg's unsurpassable pattern!--

"These Silesians," says an Excerpt I have made, "are still in
majority Protestant; especially in this Northern portion of the
Province; they have had to suffer much on that and other scores;
and are secretly or openly in favor of the Prussians.
Official persons, all of the Catholic creed, have leant heavy, not
always conscious of doing it, against Protestant rights. The
Jesuits, consciously enough, have been and are busy with them;
intent to recall a Heretic Population by all methods, fair and
unfair. We heard of Charles XII.'s interference, three-and-thirty
years ago; and how the Kaiser, hard bested at that time, had to
profess repentance and engage for complete amendment. Amendment
did, for the moment, accordingly take place. Treaty of Westphalia
in all its stipulations, with precautionary improvements, was
re-enacted as Treaty of Altranstadt; with faithful intention of
keeping it too, on Kaiser Joseph's part, who was not a
superstitious man: 'Holy Father, I was too glad he did not demand
my own conversion to the Protestant Heresy, bested as I am,--with
Louis Quatorze and Company upon the neck of me!' Some improvement
of performance, very marked at first, did ensue upon this
Altranstadt Treaty. But the sternly accurate Karl of Sweden soon
disappeared from the scene; Kaiser Joseph of Austria soon
disappeared; and his Brother, Karl VI., was a much more