the world; that a King and his people, all of
their blood, had given an aureola of glory to the German nation--a new
purport to the history of civilised man. Now they had all experienced
how a great man could struggle, venture, dare, and conquer. Now labour
in your study, peaceful thinker, imaginative dreamer; you have learnt
during the night to look abroad with smiles, and to hope great things
from your own endowments. Try now what will gush from your heart.

Whilst the youthful strength of the people fluttered its wings with
enthusiastic warmth, what, meanwhile, were the feelings of the great
Prince, who was incessantly contending with enemies? The enthusiastic
acclamations of the nation bore only feeble tones to his ear; the King
received it almost with indifference. In him everything was calm and
cold; though, undoubtedly, he had hours of passionate sorrow and
heart-rending care. But he concealed them from his army; the calm
countenance became harder, the furrows deeper, the expression more
rigid. There were but few to whom he occasionally opened his heart;
then, for some moments, the sorrows of the man, which had reached the
limits of human endurance, broke forth.

Ten days after the battle of Collin, his mother died; a few weeks
later, in anger, he drove his brother August Wilhelm away from the
army, because he had not carried on the war with sufficient vigour.
This Prince died in that same year, of grief, as the King was informed
by the officer who reported it. Shortly afterwards he received the
account of the death of his sister of Baireuth. One after another his
Generals fell by his side, or lost the King's confidence; because they
were not able to come up to the superhuman requirements of this war.
His old soldiers, his pride, the iron warriors who had gone through the
test of three severe wars--they who, dying, still stretched out their
hands to him and called upon his name--were expiring in heaps around
him; and those who filled up the wide gaps which death incessantly made
in his army were young recruits, some of good material, but many bad
ones. The King used them, as he had done the others, with strictness
and severity; but even in the worst subjects his look and word inspired
both bravery and devotion. But he knew that all this would not avail;
short and cutting was his censure, and sparing was his praise. Thus he
continued to live; five summers and winters came and went; the labour
was gigantic; he wa