mina's marriage, then, is off; an end to IT. Abbess
of Herford [good Protestant refuge for unprovided Females of Quality,
which is in our gift], let her be Abbess there;"--and writes to the then
extant Abbess to make Wilhelmina "Coadjutress," or Heir-Apparent to that
Chief-Nunship! Nay what is still more mortifying, my Brother says, "On
the whole, I had better, had not I?" The cruel Brother; but indeed the
desperate!--for things are mounting to a pitch in this Household.

Queen Sophie's thoughts,--they are not yet of surrender; that they
will never be, while a breath of life is left to Queen Sophie and her
Project: we may fancy Queen Sophie's mood. Nor can his Majesty be in a
sweet temper; his vexations lately have been many. First, England is now
off, not off-and-on as formerly: that comfortable possibility, hanging
always in one's thoughts, is fairly gone; and now we have nothing but
the Kaiser to depend on for Julich and Berg, and the other elements
of our salvation in this world! Then the St.-Mary-Axe discoveries,
harassing shadows of suspicion that will rise from them, and the
unseemly Hotham catastrophe and one's own blame in it; Womankind and
Household still virtually rebellious, and all things going awry; Majesty
is in the worst humor;--bullies and outrages his poor Crown-Prince
almost worse than ever. There have been rattan-showers, hideous to think
of, descending this very week [Guy Dickens's Despatch, 18th July, 1730.]
on the fine head, and far into the high heart of a Royal Young Man; who
cannot, in the name of manhood, endure, and must not, in the name of
sonhood, resist, and vainly calls to all the gods to teach him WHAT he
shall do in this intolerable inextricable state of matters.

Fate and these two Black-Artists have driven Friedrich Wilhelm nearly
mad; and he, in turn, is driving everybody so. He more than suspects
Friedrich of an intention to fly; which is horrible to Friedrich
Wilhelm: and yet he bullies him occasionally, as a spiritless wretch,
for bearing such treatment. "Cannot you renounce the Heir-Apparentship,
then; your little Brother is a fine youth. Give it up; and go,
unmolested, to the--in fact to the Devil: Cannot you?"--"If your
Majesty, against the honor of my Mother, declare that I am not your
eldest son: Yes, so; not otherwise, ever!" modestly but steadily
persists the young man, whenever this expedient is proposed to him,--as
perhaps it already sometimes is. Whereat the desperate Fa