home from his
Parisian Embassy, and got launched among the wintry mountains, on a
new operation,--which, however, proves of non-effect for the present.
[_Helden-Geschichte,_ i. 678; Orlich, _Geschichte der beiden
Schlesischen Kriege,_ i. 49.]

Indeed, it is observable that southward of Breslau, the dispute, what
dispute there can be, properly begins; and that General Browne is there,
and shows himself a shining man in this difficult position. It must be
owned, no General could have made his small means go farther. Effective
garrisons, 1,600 each, put into Brieg and Neisse; works repaired,
magazines collected, there and elsewhere; the rest of his poor 7,000
thriftily sprinkled about, in what good posts there are, and "capable
of being got together in six hours:" a superior soldier, this Browne,
though with a very bad task; and seems to have inspired everybody with
something of his own temper. So that there is marching, detaching,
miscellaneous difficulty for Friedrich in this quarter, more than had
been expected. If the fate of Brieg and Neisse be inevitable, Browne
does wonders to delay it.

Of the Prussian marches in these parts, recorded by intricate Dryasdust,
there was no point so notable to me as this unrecorded one: the Stone
Pillar which, I see, the Kleist Detachment was sure to find, just now,
on the march from Ohlau to Brieg; last portion of that march, between
the village of Briesen and Brieg. The Oder, flowing on your left hand,
is hereabouts agreeably clothed with woods: the country, originally
a swamp, has been drained, and given to the plough, in an
agreeable manner; and there is an excellent road paved with solid
whinstone,--quarried in Strehlen, twenty miles away, among the Hills to
the right yonder, as you may guess;--road very visible to the Prussian
soldier, though he does not ask where quarried. These beautiful
improvements, beautiful humanities,--were done by whom? "Done in 1584,"
say the records, by "George the Pious;" Duke of Liegnitz, Brieg
and Wohlau; 156 years ago. "Pious" his contemporaries called this
George;--he was son of the ERBVERBRUDERUNG Duke, who is so important to
us; he was grandfather's grandfather of the last Duke of all; after whom
it was we that should have got these fine Territories; they should
all have fallen to the Great Elector, had not the Austrian strong hand
provided otherwise. George did these plantations, recoveries to the
plough; made this perennial whinstone road a