The speed with which Prussia recovered was extraordinary.
Within little more than a year (June 1st, 1764), the Coin was all
in order again; in 1765, the King had rebuilt, not to mention other
things, "in Silesia 8,000 Houses, in Pommern 6,500." [Rodenbeck,
ii. 234, 261.] Prussia has been a meritorious Nation; and, however
cut and ruined, is and was in a healthy state, capable of
recovering soon. Prussia has defended itself against overwhelming
odds,--brave Prussia; but the real soul of its merit was that of
having merited such a King to command it. Without this King, all
its valors, disciplines, resources of war, would have availed
Prussia little. No wonder Prussia has still a loyalty to its great
Friedrich, to its Hohenzollern Sovereigns generally. Without these
Hohenzollerns, Prussia had been, what we long ago saw it, the
unluckiest of German Provinces; and could never have had the
pretension to exist as a Nation at all. Without this particular
Hohenzollern, it had been trampled out again, after apparently
succeeding. To have achieved a Friedrich the Second for King over
it, was Prussia's grand merit.

An accidental merit, thinks the reader? No, reader, you may believe
me, it is by no means altogether such. Nay, I rather think, could
we look into the Account-Books of the Recording Angel for a course
of centuries, no part of it is such! There are Nations in which a
Friedrich is, or can be, possible; and again there are Nations in
which he is not and cannot. To be practically reverent of Human
Worth to the due extent, and abhorrent of Human Want of Worth in
the like proportion, do you understand that art at all? I fear,
not,--or that you are much forgetting it again! Human Merit, do you
really love it enough, think you;--human Scoundrelism (brought to
the dock for you, and branded as scoundrel), do you even abhor it