o
conclusive results. As it was at Strehlen where mostly these Diplomacies
went on, and the Camp of Strehlen was the final and every way the main
one, it may stand as the representative of these Diplomatizing Camps to
us, and figure as the sole one which in fact it nearly was.

Strehlen is a pleasant little Town, nestled prettily among its granite
Hills, the steeple of it visible from Mollwitz; some twenty-five miles
west of Brieg, some thirty south of Breslau, and about as far northwest
of Neisse: there Friedrich and his Prussians lie, under canvas mainly,
with outposts and detachments sprinkled about under roofs:--a Camp
of Strehlen, more or less imaginable by the reader. And worth his
imagining; such a Camp, if not for soldiering, yet for negotiating and
wagging of diplomatic wigs, as there never was before. Here, strangely
shifted hither, is the centre of European Politics all Summer. From the
utmost ends of Europe come Ambassadors to Strehlen: from Spain, France,
England, Denmark, Holland,--there are sometimes nine at once, how many
successively and in total I never knew. [_Helden-Geschichte,_ i.
932.] They lodge generally in Breslau; but are always running over to
Strehlen. There sits, properly speaking, the general Secret Parliament
of Europe; and from most Countries, except Austria, representatives
attend at Strehlen, or go and come between Breslau and Strehlen,
submissive to the evils of field-life, when need is. A surprising thing
enough to mankind, and big as the world in its own day; though gone
now to small bulk,--one Human Figure pretty much all that is left of
memorable in it to mankind and us.

French Belleisle we have seen; who is gone again, long since, on his
wide errands; fat Valori too we have seen, who is assiduously here. The
other figures, except the English, can remain dark to us. Of Montijos,
the eminent Spaniard, a brown little man, magnificent as the Kingdom of
the Incas, with half a page of titles (half a peck, five-and-twenty or
more, of handles to his little name, if you should ever require it);
who, finding matters so backward at Frankfurt, and nothing to do there,
has been out, in the interim, touring to while away the tedium; and
is here only as sequel and corroboration of Belleisle,--say as
bottle-holder, or as high-wrought peacock's-tail, to Belleisle:--of
the eminent Montijos I have to record next to nothing in the shape of
negotiation ("Treaty" with the Termagant was once proposed