"They were Wars extraneous to England little less than to France;
neither Nation had real business in them; and they seem to us now a
very mad object on the part of both. But they were not gratuitously
gone into, on the part of England; far from that. England undertook
them, with its big heart very sorrowful, strange spectralities
bewildering it; and managed them (as men do sleep-walking) with a
gloomy solidity of purpose, with a heavy-laden energy, and, on the
whole, with a depth of stupidity, which were very great. Yet look
at the respective net results. France lies down to rot into grand
Spontaneous-Combustion, Apotheosis of Sansculottism, and much else;
which still lasts, to her own great peril, and the great affliction
of neighbors. Poor England, after such enormous stumbling among the
chimney-pots, and somnambulism over all the world for twenty years,
finds on awakening, that she is arrived, after all, where she
wished to be, and a good deal farther! Finds that her own important
little errand is somehow or other, done;--and, in short, that
'Jenkins's Ear [as she named the thing] HAS been avenged,' and the
Ocean Highways 'opened' and a good deal more, in a most signal way!
For the Eternal Providences--little as poor Dryasdust now knows of
it, mumbling and maundering that sad stuff of his--do rule; and the
great soul of the world, I assure you once more, is JUST.
And always for a Nation, as for a man, it is very behooveful to be
honest, to be modest, however stupid!"--

By this time, however,--Mollwitz having fallen out, and Belleisle
being evidently on the steps,--his Britannic Majesty recognizes
clearly, and insists upon it, strengthened by his Harringtons and
everybody of discernment, That, nefarious or not, this Friedrich
will require to be bargained with. That, far from breaking in upon