traversed the echoing galleries, admired
the gilt mouldings and the costly hangings, the quaint furniture and
beautiful pictures: when we have, in short, become wrought into
enthusiasm by the clustering memories of a great monarch, by traits and
traditions which fill the very air, what do we see next? We are ushered
into a private chamber, and called upon to express our especial reverence
for a miserable figure, dressed up in the Great Frederick's "own
clothes;" seated in his own chair, stuck into his identical boots; his
own redoubtable stick dangling from its splayed fingers, and the whole
contemptible effigy crowned by the very three-cornered hat and crisp wig
he last wore! The spirit of mountebankism overshadows the spirit of the
mighty man, and his very relics are rendered ridiculous.

We turn from this puppet-show to contemplate with a melancholy wonder the
truly iron records of the almost life-imprisonment of Baron von Trenck.
For here, a silent memorial of at least one bad act of the Prussian
monarch, are iron cups and utensils engraved with scrolls and legends;
the work, not of the skilled artisan with tempered and well-prepared
gravers, but of the patient hands of a state prisoner with a mere nail
sharpened on the stony walls of his dungeon, and the painful result of
long and weary years. A strange contrast! the waxen image of the jailer,
tricked out in his last garments; the solitary labours of his captive.

Thinking more of the soldier and less of the king, we quit the palace and
turn on the left hand once more towards the waters of the Spree. Here is
one other monument we must not forget in our hasty ramble through the
main artery of the Prussian capital. In the centre of the Lange Brucke
(the Long Bridge) stands the bronze figure of the last Elector and Duke
of Brandenburg, Frederick William, the grandfather of Frederick the
Great. It is a well-executed equestrian statue, but to my mind the four
figures clustered round the pediment, on whose hands still hang the
broken chains of slavery, are better works of art, as well as admirable
emblems of the energetic materials--the oppressed but spirited
inhabitants of a few small states--of which the now powerful kingdom of
Prussia was originally formed.

We might follow the course of the wandering river over whose waters we
now stand, and thus penetrate into the heart of the old city, but we
should find little that was picturesque, and a great deal that was