iet garden, gave the
impression of a monastery to a foreign guest; so he found in the whole
Prussian regime, something of the self-denial and obedience of a large
industrious monastic brotherhood.

Somewhat of this spirit had passed into the people themselves. But we
honour in this an enduring service of Frederic II.: still is this
spirit of self-denial the secret of the greatness of the Prussian
State, the last and best guarantee for its duration. The excellent
machine which the King had erected with so much intelligence and energy
could not eternally last; it was shattered twenty years after his
death; but that the State did not at the same time sink,--that the
intelligence and patriotism of the citizen were in a condition to
create a new life on new foundations under his successors,--is the
secret of Frederic's greatness.

Nine years after the conclusion of the last war, which led to the
retention of Silesia, Frederic increased his kingdom by a new
acquisition, not much less in number of miles, but with a scanty
population: it was the district of Poland, which has since passed under
the name of West Prussia.

If the claims of the King on Silesia had been doubtful, it required all
the acuteness of his officials to put a plausible appearance on the
uncertain rights to a portion of the new acquisition. The King himself
cared little about it; he had, with almost superhuman heroism, defended
the possession of Silesia in the face of the world; that province had
been bound to Prussia by streams of blood; but in this case, political
shrewdness was almost all that had been required. Long, in the opinion
of men, was the conqueror deficient in that justification which it
appeared was only given by the horrors of war and the accidental
fortune of the battle-field. But this last acquisition of the King,
which was made without the thunder of cannon or the flourish of
victory, was, of all the great gifts for which the German people had to
thank Frederic II., the greatest and most beneficial. During many
hundred years the much-divided Germans were confined and injured by
ambitious neighbours; the great King was the first conqueror who
extended the German frontier further to the east. A century after his
great ancestor had in vain defended the Rhine fortresses against Louis
XIV., he again gave the Germans the emphatic admonition, that it was
their task to carry laws, education, freedom, cultivation, and industry
into the east of