l of a regiment
which had made a great blunder at a review; when, in the marsh lands of
the Netze, he calculated more the strokes of the ten thousand spades
than the hardships of the labourers, who lay, stricken with marsh
fever, in the hospital he had erected for them; when be overstepped in
his demands what the most rapid action could accomplish,--terror as of
one who moved in an unearthly element mingled with the deep reverence
and devotion of his people. Like Fate, he appeared to the Prussians,
incalculable, inexorable, and omniscient; superintending the smallest
as well as the greatest things. When they related to one another that
he had endeavoured to control Nature also, but that his orange-trees
had been frozen by the last spring frosts, then they secretly rejoiced
that there were limits even for their King, but still more that he had
borne it with such good humour, and had made his bow to the cold days
of May.

With touching sympathy the people collected all the sayings of the King
in which there was any human feeling that brought him more into
communion with them. So lonely were his house and garden, that the
imaginations of his Prussians continually hovered about the consecrated
spot. If any one was so fortunate as to come into the neighbourhood of
the castle on a warm moonlight night, he would perhaps find open doors
without a guard, and he could see the great King in his bedroom,
sleeping on his camp-bed. The scent of the flowers, the night song of
the birds, and the quiet moonlight were the only guards, almost the
whole regal state, of the lonely man.

For fourteen years after the acquisition of West Prussia, did the
oranges of Sans Souci bloom; then did Nature reassert her empire over
the great King. He died alone, only surrounded by his servants.

In the bloom of life he was completely wrapped up in ambitious
feelings; he had wrested from fate all the high and splendid garlands
of life,--he, the prince of poets and philosophers, the historian and
the General. No triumph that he had ever gained contented him; all
earthly fame had become to him accidental, uncertain, and valueless; an
iron feeling of duty, incessantly working, was all that remained to
him. Amid the dangerous alternation of warm enthusiasm and cool
acuteness, his soul had reached its maturity. He had, in his own mind,
surrounded with a poetical halo, certain individuals; and he despised
the multitude about him. But in the struggles of li