n
spoken acquittal; unspoken, accompanied with regrets and pity, is all
even Friedrich can aspire to. My own impression is, Smelfungus, if
candid, would on clearer information and consideration have revoked much
of what he says here in censure of Friedrich. At all events, if asked:
Where then is the specifical not "superstitious" WANT of "veracity" you
ever found in Friedrich? and How, OTHERWISE than even as Friedrich did,
would you, most veracious Smelfungus, have plucked out your Silesia from
such an Element and such a Time?--he would be puzzled to answer. I give
his Fragment as I find it, with these deductions:--

"What negotiating we have had, and shall have," exclaims Smelfungus, my
sad foregoer,--"fit rather to be omitted from a serious History,
which intends to be read by human creatures! Bargaining, Promising,
Non-performing. False in general as dicers' oaths; false on this side
and on that, from beginning to end. Intercepted Letters from Fleury;
Letter dropping from Valori's waistcoat-pocket, upon which Friedrich
claps his foot: alas, alas, we are in the middle of a whole world of
that. Friedrich knows that the French are false to him; he by no means
intends to be romantically true to them, and that also they know. What
is the use to human creatures of recording all that melancholy stuff?
If sovereign persons want their diplomacies NOT to be swept into the
ash-pit, there are two conditions, especially one which is peremptory:
FIRST, that they should not be lies;--SECOND, that they should be of
some importance, some wisdom; which with known lies is not a possible
condition. To unravel cobwebs, and register laboriously and date and
sort in the sorrow of your soul the oaths of crowned dicers,--what use
is it to gods or men? Having well dressed and sliced your cucumber,
the next clear human duty is: Throw it out of window. In that foul
Lapland-witch world, of seething Diplomacies and monstrous wigged
mendacities, horribly wicked and despicably unwise, I find nothing
notable, memorable even in a small degree, except this aspect of a
young King who does know what he means in it. Clear as a star, sharp as
cutting steel (very dangerous to hydrogen balloons), he stands in the
middle of it, and means to extort his own from it by such methods as
there are.

"Magnanimous I can by no means call Friedrich to his allies and
neighbors, nor even superstitiously veracious, in this business: but he
thoroughly understands, he al