tation, it is
settled in Tobacco-Parliament and the royal breast, That Katte and the
Crown-Prince, as Deserters from the Prussian Army, can and shall be
tried by Court-Martial; to that no power, on the earth or out of it, can
have any objection worth attending to. Let a fair Court-Martial of our
highest military characters be selected and got ready. Let that, as a
voice of Rhadamanthus, speak upon the two culprits; and tell us what is
to be done. By the middle of October, things on Friedrich Wilhelm's side
have got so far.

CROWN-PRINCE IN CUSTRIN.

Poor Friedrich meanwhile has had a grim time of it, these two months
back; left alone, in coarse brown prison-dress, within his four bare
walls at Custrin; in uninterrupted, unfathomable colloquy with the
Destinies and the Necessities there. The King's stern orders must be
fulfilled to the letter; the Crown-Prince is immured in that manner. At
Berlin, there are the wildest rumors as to the state he has fallen into;
"covered with rags and vermin, unshaven, no comb allowed him, lights
his own fire," says one testimony, which Captain Dickens thinks worth
reporting. For the truth is, no unofficial eye can see the Crown-Prince,
or know what state he is in. And we find, in spite of the Edict,
"tongues," not "cut out," kept wagging at a high rate. "People of all
ranks are unspeakably indignant" at certain heights of the business:
"Margravine Albert said publicly, 'A tyrant as bad as Nero!'" [Dickens,
7th November, 2d December, 1730.]

How long the Crown-Prince's defiant humor held out, we are not told. By
the middle of October there comes proposal of "entire confession" from
the Prince; and though, when Papa sends deputies accordingly, there
is next to nothing new confessed, and Papa's anger blazes out again,
probably we may take this as the turning-point on his Son's part. With
him, of course, that mood of mind could not last. There is no wildest
lion but, finding his bars are made of iron, ceases to bite them. The
Crown-Prince there, in his horror, indignation and despair, had a lucid
human judgment in him, too; loyal to facts, and well knowing their
inexorable nature, Just sentiments are in this young man, not capable of
permanent distortion into spasm by any form of injustice laid on
them. It is not long till he begins to discern, athwart this terrible,
quasi-infernal element, that so the facts are; and that nothing but
destruction, and no honor that were not dishonor,