Carlyle's "History of Friedrich II of Prussia"
Book XIII




FIRST SILESIAN WAR, LEAVING THE GENERAL EUROPEAN
ONE ABLAZE ALL ROUND, GETS ENDED.

May, 1741-July, 1742.


Chapter I.

BRITANNIC MAJESTY AS PALADIN OF THE PRAGMATIC.

Part First of his Britannic Majesty's Sorrows, the Britannic or
Domestic Part, is now perhaps conceivable to readers. But as to the
Second, the Germanic or Pragmatic Part,--articulate History, after
much consideration, is content to renounce attempting these;
feels that these will remain forever inconceivable to mankind in
the now altered times. So small a gentleman; and he feels, dismally
though with heroism, that he has got the axis of the world on his
shoulder. Poor Majesty! His eyes, proud as Jove's, are nothing like
so perspicacious; a pair of the poorest eyes: and he has to scan
with them, and unriddle under pain of death, such a waste of
insoluble intricacies, troubles and world-perils as seldom was,--
even in Dreams. In fact, it is of the nature of a long Nightmare
Dream, all this of the Pragmatic, to his poor Majesty and Nation;
and wakeful History must not spend herself upon it, beyond