meeting of Council, they say, he put this question, "Could
not the Prussian Army be reduced to 45,000?" The excellent young man.
To which the Council had answered, "Hardly, your Majesty! The
Julich-and-Berg affair is so ominous hitherto!" These may be secrets,
and dubious to people out of doors, thinks a wise editor; but one thing
patent to the day was this, surely symbolical enough: On one of his
Majesty's first drives to Potsdam or from it, a thousand children,--in
round numbers a thousand of them, all with the RED STRING round their
necks, and liable to be taken for soldiers, if needed in the regiment of
their Canton,--a thousand children met this young King at a turn of
his road; and with shrill unison of wail, sang out: "Oh, deliver us from
slavery,"--from the red threads, your Majesty. Why should poor we be
liable to suffer hardship for our Country or otherwise, your Majesty!
Can no one else be got to do it? sang out the thousand children. And
his Majesty assented on the spot, thinks the rash editor. [_Gentleman's
Magazine_ (London, 1740), x. 318; Newspapers, &c.] "Goose, Madam?"
exclaimed a philanthropist projector once, whose scheme of sweeping
chimneys by pulling a live goose down through them was objected to:
"Goose, Madam? You can take two ducks, then, if you are so sorry for the
goose!"--Rash editors think there is to be a reign of Astraea Redux in
Prussia, by means of this young King; and forget to ask themselves, as
the young King must by no means do, How far Astraea may be possible, for
Prussia and him?

At home, too, there is prophesying enough, vague hope enough, which for
most part goes wide of the mark. This young King, we know, did prove
considerable; but not in the way shaped out for him by the public;--it
was in far other ways! For no public in the least knows, in such cases:
nor does the man himself know, except gradually and if he strive to
learn. As to the public,--"Doubtless," says a friend of mine, "doubtless
it was the Atlantic Ocean that carried Columbus to America; lucky for
the Atlantic, and for Columbus and us: but the Atlantic did not quite
vote that way from the first; nay ITS votes, I believe, were very
various at different stages of the matter!" This is a truth which kings
and men, not intending to be drift-logs or waste brine obedient to the
Moon, are much called to have in mind withal, from perhaps an early
stage of their voyage.

Friedrich's actual demeanor in these his first week