iedrich a little with their own eyes and judgments,--there
may be pleasant contrasts and comparisons of that kind in store, one
day. But the far commoner experience (which also has been my own),--here
is Smelfungus's stern account of that:--

"My friend, you will be luckier than I, if, after ten years, not to
say, in a sense, twenty years, thirty years, of reading and rummaging
in those sad Prussian Books, ancient and new (which often are laudably
authentic, too, and exact as to details), you can gather any character
whatever of Friedrich, in any period of his life, or conceive him as a
Human Entity at all! It is strange, after such thousand-fold writing,
but it is true, his History is considerably unintelligible to mankind at
this hour; left chaotic, enigmatic, in a good many points,--the military
part of it alone being brought to clearness, and rendered fairly
conceivable and credible to those who will study. And as to the Man
himself, or what his real Physiognomy can have been--! Well, it must be
owned few men were of such RAPIDITY of face and aspect; so difficult to
seize the features of. In his action, too, there was such rapidity, such
secrecy, suddenness: a man that could not be read, even by the candid,
except as in flashes of lightning. And then the anger of by-standers,
uncandid, who got hurt by him; the hasty malevolences, the stupidities,
the opacities: enough, in modern times, what is saying much, perhaps
no man's motives, intentions, and procedure have been more belied,
misunderstood, misrepresented, during his life. Nor, I think, since
that, have many men fared worse, by the Limner or Biographic class, the
favorable to him and the unfavorable; or been so smeared of and
blotched of, and reduced to a mere blur and dazzlement of cross-lights,
incoherences, incredibilities, in which nothing, not so much as a human
nose, is clearly discernible by way of feature!"--Courage, reader,
nevertheless; on the above terms let us march according to promise.

Chapter II. -- THE HOMAGINGS.

Young Friedrich, as his Father had done, considers it unnecessary to be
crowned. Old Friedrich, first of the name, and of the King series, we
did see crowned, with a pinch of snuff tempering the solemnities. That
Coronation once well done suffices all his descendants hitherto. Such an
expense of money,--of diluted mendacity too! Such haranguing, gesturing,
symbolic fugling, all grown half false:--avoid lying, even with your
eyes,