many of the most promising of the rising generation in both hemispheres, who reverence him as a prophet. We were, therefore, not sorry to find in the book before us some new and curious illustrations of his fallibility, in the shape of detailed and decided proofs that what he would fain pass off as the incidental caprices or weaknesses of his patriot-king formed, in fact, the very staple of the character.

The greater part of them have been derived from the despatches of the Count de Manteuffel, Saxon minister at Berlin, who was in the habit of transmitting to his Court reports resembling those which were regularly transmitted to the Venetian Republic, in its palmy days, by its ambassadors. An English minister at the Court of Berlin at a somewhat later period, whose credit for priority of information was at stake, took the bold and self-sacrificing step of making love to the unattractive wife of a Secretary for Foreign Affairs who had access to her husband's cabinet. The Count de Manteuffel was not a whit more scrupulous in his sources of information; and so long as the tobaccoparliament lasted, he experienced little difficulty in ascertaining what was said or done at its sittings, or elsewhere, by its royal president.

The extravagance of Frederic William's passion for giants very far exceeds the popular estimate of it, based on three or four good stories, which many believe to be apocryphal. He procured, through his emissaries, a register of all the tall men in Saxony, and was constantly intriguing or conspiring for the legal or illegal possession of some of them. Dr. Weber prints the heads of a contract for the exchange of various rarities and objects of art, to be selected from the Prussian museums, for tall fellows (lange Kerls). He enumerates a collection of medals; statues of Diana, Priapus, and Momus; an equestrian statue; a bronze St. George, and rare skins from the Indies; the whole

valued at 500,000 dollars. The tall Saxons were put down by the Prussian negotiator at the low figure of 300 dollars a head, which so disgusted the Saxon agent that he broke off the bargain. Marshal von Flemming sold the King two recruits for a sum of money and 'the pardon of M. de Sparfeld.' The King of Denmark, after vainly demanding, upon the faith of treaties and international law, the extradition of a criminal (Prætorius, who had murdered Count Christian von Rantzan), bought him for a dozen tall men. The Bishop of Wilna, a Polish refugee, had procured a safeconduct by a promise of giants, which he failed to supply. He was consequently detained at Tilsit; and the Count de Manteuffel, when requested to intercede for him, writes:

'Je m'emploierois volontiers pour son élargissement s'il était accusé d'avoir voulu p. e. détrôner le Roi de Prusse ou attenter à sa vie, mais que de parler pour quelqu'un qui a promis des grands hommes, ce seroit m'exposer à tout qui pouvoit m'arriver de fâcheux sans la moindre espérance de réussir.'

The commanders of companies were often placed in the most embarrassing dilemma, for the King required them to have lange Kerls,' and if possible foreigners, on the right flank. If these were found wanting, cashiering or Spandau was the word. In November, 1739, a major was sent to Spandau for six years for having no tall foreign recruits. In the preceding June two majors were broken in front of their regiments for no other assignable delinquency. One of them, Thatt, had already spent 10,000 dollars, probably his whole fortune, in tall recruits. A foreign fugleman, who had cost his captain 1500 dollars, got drunk, fell from a bridge into the Spree, and was drowned. The captain complained to the King, alleging that the loss had arisen through the negligence of the bridge superintendent, who should have seen to the security of the balus

trade. His Majesty took this view of the question, and quartered a subaltern with six men on the superintendent till he replaced the soldier or compensated the captain.

A rich resident of Amsterdam had relatives in Prussia, whom, not being on good terms with them, he declared his intention to cut off with a shilling on his decease. The relatives applied to the King, and promised him a number of grosse Kerls,' if he would send their wealthy cousin to Spandau for life. The proposition was favourably received: and the Amsterdam cousin, lured into Prussia on some pretence or another, was seized and sent to Spandau, where he remained till the King's death.

Any promising recruit whom the King encountered in his walks was tied to the lash of a long whip, which his Majesty habitually carried, and led off to the nearest barrack or guard-house. Fine-looking boys were marked out for military service by a red collar round the neck. The story is well known, and not at all improbable, of the tall woman to whom his Majesty gave a note to be carried to the Colonel of the Guard, who was forthwith to marry her to the tallest of the unmarried guardsmen. Suspecting its contents, she gave it to a little old woman, who faithfully delivered it and got a gigantic husband for her pains.1

There was a tragic as well as a comic side to the caprices of this man of genius. A tall grenadier, who had killed his landlord, declared his only motive to be the commission of a crime punishable by death, which would free him from an enforced service which had become intolerable. A young man of rank and lite

1 To review this towering regiment was his daily pleasure, and to perpetuate it so much his care, that when he met a tall woman he immediately commanded one of his Titanian retinue to marry her, that they might propagate procerity.'-Johnson's 'Memoirs of Frederick II., King of Prussia.'

rary habits, who had the misfortune to be tall and was refused his discharge on that account, became similarly desperate, resolved on killing the first person he met, rushed into the street and killed a child. The King soon hit upon an effectual method of checking this description of mutiny. Instead of inflicting death on some deserters who defied him to his face, he ordered their noses and ears to be cut off, and sent them to Spandau for life.

His Majesty's notions of justice were equally under the influence of the 'poetic temperament' when he was not mounted on his favourite hobby. On August 22, 1736, he was walking in the garden smoking his pipe, when there appeared before him the wife of a hautboy player, named Fischbach, to complain of her husband for adultery with a girl. The accused was confronted with her, and a scene of rude altercation ensued; in the course of which he admitted his intimacy with the girl, but denied its criminality, as well as all knowledge of what had become of her. On the assertion of the wife that their son, fourteen years old, was privy to the father's infidelity, and the place of concealment of the girl, the lad was sent for and examined. A storm arising during the inquiry, the King, instead of adjourning it within doors, ordered a tent to be pitched. The son was as obstinate or honestly ignorant as the father, and two buffoon attendants of the King tried to make him speak by caning him, which simply had the common effect of torture, in inducing him to heap story upon story to obtain momentary relief. His tormentors did not give over till he was nearer dead than alive with pain and terror.

Determined not to be baffled, the Prussian Solon caused Fischbach to be brought before him again, and as he still refused to give information against his supposed paramour, four non-commissioned officers were

ordered to cudgel him, which they did with such severity that, adds an eye-witness, Manteuffel, it was a wonder he survived. He never uttered a syllable, preferring to die under the cane rather than betray his beloved.' The concluding words of the report are remarkable:

'J'avoue que cette exécution m'a inspiré une terreur dont je ne suis pas encore revenu: l'opiniâtreté du hautbois et de son fils m'a frappé, mais moins que la tranquillité avec laquelle on voyait tourmenter ces malheureux.'

The courtiers of Frederic William had seen too many of such exhibitions to be shocked by them.1

A man accused his wife of adultery with a State councillor, and demanded a divorce, but as he produced no proof, his demand was rejected, and his wife was acquitted by the criminal court. The plaintiff went straight to the King, who, on his own mere motion, drew up a judgment the very opposite of that given by the tribunal, adding: This judgment is much

6

1‘A just man, I say, and a valiant and veracious.'—( Carlyle, vol. i. p. 406.) Here is one of his own examples of justlce :-' Doris Ritter, a comely-enough good girl, nothing of a beauty, but given to music, 'Potsdam Cantor's (Precentor's) daughter, has chanced to be standing in 'the door, perhaps to be singing within doors once or twice, when the 'Prince passed that way. Prince inquired about her music, gave her 'music, spoke a civility as young men will,-nothing more upon my honour; though his Majesty believes there was much more, and con'demns poor Doris to be whipt by the beadle, and beat hemp for three years. Rhadamanthus is a strict judge, your Majesty, and might be a 'trifle better informed.'-(Vol. ii. p. 277.) Now for veracity. Frederic William, obliged to provide horses and travelling accommodation for the Czar Peter, writes to the postmaster :-'Observe, you contrive to do it for 6000 thalers: won't allow you one other penny; but you are to 'give out in the world that it costs me from 30 to 50,000.' Mr. Carlyle's comment on this combination of meanness, falsehood, and tyranny runs thus: So that here is the Majesty of Prussia, who beyond all men 'abhors lies, giving orders to tell one-alas, yes, a kind of lie or fib (white fib or even gray), the pinch of thrift compelling. But what a 'window into the artless inner-man of his Majesty, even that gray fib, --not done by oneself, but ordered to be done by the servant, as if 'that were cheaper '-(Vol. i. p. 424.)