th our Royal Master, one secretly fears! Baltimore's
finances, I can guess, were not in too good order; mostly an Absentee;
Irish Estates not managed in the first style, while one is busy in the
Fred vineyard! 'The best and honestest man in the world, with a good
deal of jumbled knowledge,' Walpole calls him once: 'but not capable of
conducting a party.'" [Walpole's _Letters to Mann_ (London, 1843), ii.
175; 27th January, 1747. See ib. i. 82.] Oh no;--and died, at any rate,
Spring 1751: [_Peerage of Ireland_ (London, 1768), ii. 172-174.] and we
will not mention him farther.

BIELFELD, WHAT HE SAW AT REINSBERG AND AROUND.

Directly on the rear of these fine visitors, came, by invitation, a pair
of the Korn's-Hotel people; Masonic friends; one of whom was Bielfeld,
whose dainty Installation Speech and ways of procedure had been of
promise to the Prince on that occasion. "Baron von Oberg" was the
other:--Hanoverian Baron: the same who went into the Wars, and was a
"General von Oberg" twenty years hence? The same or another, it does
not much concern us. Nor does the visit much, or at all; except that
Bielfeld, being of writing nature, professes to give ocular account
of it. Honest transcript of what a human creature actually saw at
Reinsberg, and in the Berlin environment at that date, would have had
a value to mankind: but Bielfeld has adopted the fictitious form;
and pretty much ruined for us any transcript there is. Exaggeration,
gesticulation, fantastic uncertainty afflict the reader; and prevent
comfortable belief, except where there is other evidence than
Bielfeld's.

At Berlin the beautiful straight streets, Linden Avenues (perhaps a
better sample than those of our day), were notable to Bielfeld; bridges,
statues very fine; grand esplanades, and such military drilling and
parading as was never seen. He had dinner-invitations, too, in quantity;
likes this one and that (all in prudent asterisks),---likes Truchsess
von Waldburg very much, and his strange mode of bachelor housekeeping,
and the way he dines and talks among his fellow-creatures, or sits
studious among his Military Books and Paper-litters. But all is loose
far-off sketching, in the style of _Anacharsis the Younger;_ and makes
no solid impression.

Getting to Reinsberg, to the Town, to the Schloss, he crosses the
esplanade, the moat; sees what we know, beautiful square Mansion among
its woods and waters;--and almost nothing that we do not know, exc