ligent
man, has his orders not to return at once from Custrin; but to stay
there, and deal with the Prince, on that horrible Predestination topic
and his other unexampled backslidings which have ended so. Muller stayed
accordingly, for a couple of weeks, intensely busy on the Predestination
topic, and generally in assuaging, and mutually mollifying, paternal
Majesty and afflicted Son. In all which he had good success; and
especially on the Predestination point was triumphantly successful.
Muller left a little Book in record of his procedures there; which,
had it not been bound over to the official tone, might have told us
something. His Correspondence with the King, during those two weeks, has
likewise been mostly printed; [Forster, i. 376-379.] and is of course
still more official,--teaching us next to nothing, except poor Friedrich
Wilhelm's profoundly devotional mood, anxieties about "the claws of
Satan" and the like, which we were glad to hear of above. In Muller
otherwise is small help for us.

But, fifty years afterwards, there was alive a Son of this Muller's; an
innocent Country Parson, not wanting in sense, and with much simplicity
and veracity; who was fished out by Nicolai, and set to recalling what
his Father used to say of this adventure, much the grandest of his
life. In Muller Junior's Letter of Reminiscences to Nicolai we find some
details, got from his Father, which are worth gleaning:--

"When my Father first attempted, by royal order, to bring the
Crown-Prince to acknowledgment and repentance of the fault committed,
Crown-Prince gave this excuse or explanation: 'As his Father could
not endure the sight of him, he had meant to get out of the way of his
displeasure, and go to a Court with which his Father was in friendship
and relationship,'"--clearly indicating England, think the Mullers
Junior and Senior.

"For proof that the intention was towards England this other
circumstance serves, that the one confidant--Herr van Keith, if I
mistake not [no, you don't mistake], had already bespoken a ship for
passage out."--Here is something still more unexpected:--

"My Father used to say, he found an excellent knowledge and conviction
of the truths of religion in the Crown-Prince. By the Prince's
arrangement, my Father, who at first lodged with the Commandant, had
to take up his quarters in the room right above the Prince; who daily,
often as early as six in the morning, rapped on the ceiling for him to
c