asked the ministers what they were worth a head. To flatter him, they named a high price, seven dollars. 'Right, right; seven dollars. Each of you will take one, but you must pay ready money.' After a grand chasse the slaughtered boars and porkers were counted by hundreds, like pheasants after an English battue, and portioned out in lots amongst the officials, nobility, and townspeople, who were obliged to take and pay for them whether they liked swine's-flesh or not. The Jews of Berlin were compelled to take 200 head at once, after a week of extraordinary slaughter in 1724. The Jews were turned to account in many ways. When the King wished to afford help which cost nothing, he was wont to give the object of his bounty a licence or privilege in blank for the settlement of a Jew in Berlin. This was saleable, and the name could be filled in at pleasure. One of them has been known to sell for seven or eight hundred dollars.

Finding the new part, the Tyburnia or Belgravia of Berlin (Dorotheenstadt), not sufficiently peopled, he ordered several families who were on the point of quitting, and had already removed their goods, to stay in it. In 1737, under the pretence that the soldiers were not well lodged, he issued a decree that the front rooms of the houses in the Old Town should be given up to the military, and that the householders who were not content to live in their own back rooms should remove to the New Town. To throw a halo round this child of his fancy, he decreed in 1739 that, dating from March 8, every one who possessed a carriage and horse, without distinction of ranks, should appear every Sunday from three to five on the promenade in the New Town, under the penalty of 100 dollars. The effect is described as curious in the extreme, since 'carriage' was understood to mean every description of vehicle, from a butcher's cart to a coroneted coach;

so that the promenade resembled the Epsom road on a Derby day, rather than the Prater, the Bois de Boulogne, or Hyde Park in its glory.

We must admit that there is considerable fertility of resource and variety of invention in these administrative expedients, and no want of energy or volition in their enforcement. But if these are proofs of genius or natural emanations of the poetic temperament, great injustice has been done to the East, where full many a Pacha wastes his poetry on (literally) the desert air: full many a Turkish Frederic William rests inglorious caret quia vate sacro-for want of a discriminating eulogist like Mr. Carlyle.

The late John Fector Laurie of Maxwelton and Lord C. H. were descending the Nile, when, their head boatman becoming obstreperous, they stopped at the first military post, and complained to the commander. He heard their charge, and ordered the man to be bastinadoed without waiting for his defence, remarking, 'Do you suppose these two English gentlemen would have taken the trouble to come to me about you, if you were not in the wrong?' Surely, there was quite as much poetic justice in this decision as in Frederic William's mode of dealing with the accused husband and the son.

The late Lord Alvanley dining with a Pacha who was proud of his cook, indirectly hinted that the man's performances were not quite on a level with Carème's. The next morning the head of the chef was suspended, by way of delicate attention, to the guest's saddle-bow. Beheading for tasting to no purpose may pair off with hanging for tasting at all.

The author of Hajji Baba' related, as founded on fact, that an Oriental governor, who had seized an English traveller's medicine-chest, was puzzled what to make of it; so he collected all the Jews in the town, made each swallow a portion of the contents of a

box or phial, and locked them together in a room till the effects were ascertained. This is more original than making the Jews of Berlin buy pork.

Professor Ranke describes the death-bed of Frederic William as presenting an edifying and touching scene, in which he addresses his successor in set phrases very similar to those applied by Philip of Macedon to Alexander after the adroit taming of Bucephalus. The dying despot may have had some lucid or maudlin moments, during which he showed himself not utterly destitute of rational faculties and natural affection; but there is abundant evidence that his demeanour on the near approach of death did not belie the general tenor of his life. In his first colloquy with a spiritual adviser, he improved on the doctrine of the French noble, who maintained that le bon Dieu' would think twice before making up his mind de damner un Clermont-Tonnerre.' 'Would it be right,' argued Frederic, that God, who from His love for me puts me here in His place to rule over so many thousands at my good pleasure, should one day liken me to one of these, and judge me with the same strictness?' The clergyman, a Protestant, did his duty manfully, and replied that God gave power to be used as He used it, with justice and mercy, not according to the good pleasure of the ruler, who would be punished for the abuse of it as the worst of sinners; whereupon the King told him he was an ignoramus, and might go to the Devil.

6

The patient grew more accommodating as he grew worse. In a colloquy on the same topic with another divine, he tried hard to extort the admission that faith was sufficient without good works, and that the love of God did not imply the forgiveness of enemies or the love of one's neighbour as oneself.

'King.-God knows that I have no enemy whom I have not willingly forgiven everything. I know of none but that

the King of England; but he too shall be forgiven.

Ficke (the Queen), write to your brother, as soon as I am dead, that before my end I forgave him everything with all my heart. Do you hear? when I am fairly dead and no mistake.

Divine.-I do not require to know the names of your enemies; but perhaps you remember others whom you hate as much and with as little reason as your brother-in-law, although they may be no great lords or foreigners.'

Here'long Hacke,' the favourite attendant, came in with medicine, and the divine was dismissed.

A prison chaplain on being asked by the Rev. W. Harriss, of honoured memory, whether his ministry had been generally attended with success, replied, With very little. A short time since I thought I had brought to a better state of mind a man under sentence of death, for an attempt to murder a woman. I gave him a Bible, and he was most assiduous in the study of it, frequently quoting passages which he said convinced him of the heinousness of his crime.' The chaplain goes on to say that, struck by this promise of reformation, he procured with some difficulty a commutation of the sentence, and called in person to inform the penitent of the future life of goodness and piety in store for him. His gratitude knew no bounds; he said I was his preserver, his deliverer. "And here," he added, as he grasped my hand in parting, "here is "here is your Bible. I may as well return it to you, for I hope I shall never want it again." If the old King had got a respite, he was equally ready to revert to his pristine state of hatred and uncharitableness.

Blowing the nose or clearing the throat in the King's chamber was forbidden under the penalty of a ducat for each offence. Hearing that his attendants were boarded in the palace, he ordered them to bring their dinners along with them, to be submitted to his inspection before eaten; on which occasions he frequently partook of their fare, and sometimes exchanged one of their dishes for one of his own. One day he ate and

enjoyed a snipe, which the cook, hearing he was out of humour, had omitted in the bill of fare. The day after, seeing snipe again, he struck it out, saying he wanted no such expensive garbage. To the remonstrance that he had declared the first snipe excellent, he replied that he took it for a present, and ate it out of compliment to the giver. The cook, therefore, was mulcted in the price. In all Pope's famous Epistle there are no more curious instances of the ruling passion strong in death than these.

He insisted on the Crown Prince's taking an oath to make no alteration after his death in the colleges or army, not to lay hands on the treasure, and to take into his service no person whose name should not be mentioned in a list. The Crown Prince respectfully refused. On the 31st January, 1740, the King exclaimed, I am not sorry that I must die; for he who fears death is a What pains me to the heart is that I must have such a brute (Unmenschen) as my son for successor.' Another time he vowed his sole cause for self-reproach was that he had not caused his son to be executed ten years ago. When the attendants rose on the Prince's entrance, the King flew into a violent passion, and cried out, Sit down in the Devil's name, or go all of you to the Devil.'

Despite of his bluster, he was by no means void of apprehension that he was about to travel in the same direction himself, and his efforts to keep up his courage

1 In August, 1730, the Crown Prince had a narrow escape for his life, and his sister was beaten and otherwise brutally ill-treated for interpos ing in his behalf. Mr. Carlyle introduces his account of the transaction with these words :-' The poor King, except that he was not conscious of intending wrong, but much the reverse, walked in the hollow night of Gehenna all that while, and was often like to be driven mad by the turn things had taken,'-as if the turn things had taken was not exclusively owing to his own madness or brutality. Mr. Carlyle may fairly claim those privileges of genius which he gratuitously accords to the poor King,' but even genius should refrain from constantly running counter to the moral and common sense of mankind.