to go battling. Which they did,
with a witness; making a terrible thing of it, over all the world,
for above seven years to come. Foolish Nations; doomed to settle their
jarring accounts in that terrible manner! Nay, the fewest of them had
any accounts, except imaginary ones, to settle there at all; and they
went into the adventure GRATIS, spurred on by spectralities of the sick
brain, by phantasms of hope, phantasms of terror; and had, strictly
speaking, no actual business in it whatever.

Not that Mollwitz kindled Europe; Europe was already kindled for
some two years past;--especially since the late Kaiser died, and his
Pragmatic Sanction was superadded to the other troubles afoot. But ever
since that Image of JENKINS'S EAR had at last blazed up in the slow
English brain, like a fiery constellation or Sign in the Heavens,
symbolic of such injustices and unendurabilities, and had lighted the
Spanish-English War, Europe was slowly but pretty surely taking fire.
France "could not see Spain humbled," she said: England (in its own dim
feeling, and also in the fact of things) could not do at all without
considerably humbling Spain. France, endlessly interested in that
Spanish-English matter, was already sending out fleets, firing
shots,--almost, or altogether, putting forth her hand in it. "In which
case, will not, must not, Austria help us?" thought England,--and was
asking, daily, at Vienna (with intense earnestness, but without the
least result), through Excellency Robinson there, when the late Kaiser
died. Died, poor gentleman;--and left his big Austrian Heritages lying,
as it were, in the open market-place; elaborately tied by diplomatic
packthread and Pragmatic Sanction; but not otherwise protected against
the assembled cupidities of mankind! Independently of Mollwitz, or of
Silesia altogether, it was next to impossible that Europe could long
avoid blazing out; especially unless the Spanish-English quarrel got
quenched, of which there was no likelihood.

But if not as cause, then as signal, or as signal and cause together
(which it properly was), the Battle of Mollwitz gave the finishing
stroke, and set all in motion. This was "the little stone broken loose
from the mountain;" this, rather than the late Kaiser's Death, which
Friedrich defined in that manner. Or at least, this was the first LEAP
it took; hitting other stones big and little, which again hit others
with their leaping and rolling,--till the whole mountai