Strehlen is a pleasant little Town, nestled prettily among its
granite Hills, the steeple of it visible from Mollwitz; some
twenty-five miles west of Brieg, some thirty south of Breslau, and
about as far northwest of Neisse: there Friedrich and his Prussians
lie, under canvas mainly, with outposts and detachments sprinkled
about under roofs:--a Camp of Strehlen, more or less imaginable by
the reader. And worth his imagining; such a Camp, if not for
soldiering, yet for negotiating and wagging of diplomatic wigs, as
there never was before. Here, strangely shifted hither, is the
centre of European Politics all Summer. From the utmost ends of
Europe come Ambassadors to Strehlen: from Spain, France, England,
Denmark, Holland,--there are sometimes nine at once, how many
successively and in total I never knew. [ Helden-
Geschichte, i. 932.] They lodge generally in Breslau;
but are always running over to Strehlen. There sits, properly
speaking, the general Secret Parliament of Europe; and from most
Countries, except Austria, representatives attend at Strehlen, or
go and come between Breslau and Strehlen, submissive to the evils
of field-life, when need is. A surprising thing enough to mankind,
and big as the world in its own day; though gone now to small
bulk,--one Human Figure pretty much all that is left of memorable
in it to mankind and us.

French Belleisle we have seen; who is gone again, long since, on
his wide errands; fat Valori too we have seen, who is assiduously
here. The other figures, except the English, can remain dark to us.
Of Montijos, the eminent Spaniard, a brown little man, magnificent
as the Kingdom of the Incas, with half a page of titles (half a
peck, five-and-twenty or more, of handles to his little name, if