coloured sheep, grey, black, and
mixed, should be entirely got rid of within three years, and only white
wool should be permitted; when he accurately prescribed how the sample
measure of the Berlin scheffel--which, at the cost of his subjects, he
had sent throughout the country--should be locked up and preserved,
that they might not be battered; when, in order to promote the linen
and woollen trade, he commanded that his subjects should not wear the
fashionable chintz and calico, threatening with a fine of 300 thalers
and three days in the pillory, all who, after eight months, should have
in their house any cotton articles, either nightgowns, caps, or
furniture,--such measures of government appeared certainly harsh and
trivial; but the son learnt to honour the shrewd sense and benevolent
care which were the groundwork of these decrees, and he himself
gradually became familiar with a multitude of details, with which
otherwise as a prince he would not have been conversant: the value of
property, the price of the necessaries of life, the wants of the
people, and the customs, rights, and duties of life in the lower
classes. He had also a share of the self-satisfaction with which the
King boasted of this knowledge of business. When he himself became the
all-powerful administrator of his State, the incalculable advantage of
his knowledge of the people and of trade became manifest. It was owing
to this that the wise economy with which he managed his own house and
the finances of the country became possible, and that he was enabled to
advance the agriculture, trade, wealth, and education of his people by
incessant care of details. Equally with the daily accounts of his
kitchen he knew how to test the calculations concerning the crown
demesnes and forests, and the excise. His people had chiefly to thank
the years in which he was compelled to sit as assessor at the green
table at Ruppin for his power of overlooking with a sharp eye the
smallest as well as the greatest affairs. But sometimes what had been
so vexatious in his father's time happened to himself: his knowledge of
business details was not sufficient, so that here and there, just like
his father, he commanded what violently interfered with the life of his
Prussians, and could not be carried out.

The wounds inflicted upon Frederic by the great catastrophe had
scarcely been healed, when a new misfortune befell him as great almost
in its consequences as the first. The Kin