s, which is still
decipherable if one study well, has in truth a good deal of the
brilliant, of the popular-magnanimous; but manifests strong solid
quality withal, and a head steadier than might have been expected. For
the Berlin world is all in a rather Auroral condition; and Friedrich too
is,--the chains suddenly cut loose, and such hopes opened for the young
man. He has great things ahead; feels in himself great things, and
doubtless exults in the thought of realizing them. Magnanimous enough,
popular, hopeful enough, with Voltaire and the highest of the world
looking on:--but yet he is wise, too; creditably aware that there are
limits, that this is a bargain, and the terms of it inexorable. We
discern with pleasure the old veracity of character shining through
this giddy new element; that all these fine procedures are at least
unaffected, to a singular degree true, and the product of nature, on his
part; and that, in short, the complete respect for Fact, which used to
be a quality of his, and which is among the highest and also rarest in
man, has on no side deserted him at present.

A trace of airy exuberance, of natural exultancy, not quite repressible,
on the sudden change to freedom and supreme power from what had
gone before: perhaps that also might be legible, if in those opaque
bead-rolls which are called Histories of Friedrich anything human could
with certainty be read! He flies much about from place to place; now at
Potsdam, now at Berlin, at Charlottenburg, Reinsberg; nothing loath
to run whither business calls him, and appear in public: the gazetteer
world, as we noticed, which has been hitherto a most mute world, breaks
out here and there into a kind of husky jubilation over the great things
he is daily doing, and rejoices in the prospect of having a Philosopher
King; which function the young man, only twenty-eight gone, cannot but
wish to fulfil for the gazetteers and the world. He is a busy man; and
walks boldly into his grand enterprise of "making men happy," to the
admiration of Voltaire and an enlightened public far and near.

Bielfeld speaks of immense concourses of people crowding about
Charlottenburg, to congratulate, to solicit, to &c.; tells us how he
himself had to lodge almost in outhouses, in that royal village of hope,
His emotions at Reinsberg, and everybody's, while Friedrich Wilhelm
lay dying, and all stood like greyhounds on the slip; and with what
arrow-swiftness they shot away when t