lped little! Very big generosities, to
a frightful cipher of Millions Sterling through the coming years, will
go the same road; and amount also to zero, even for the receiving party,
not to speak of the giving! For men and kings are wise creatures.

But wise or unwise, how great are his Britannic Majesty's activities
in this Pragmatic Business! We may say, they are prodigious, incessant,
ubiquitous. They are forgotten now, fallen wholly to the spiders and
the dust-bins;--though Friedrich himself was not a busier King in those
days, if perhaps a better directed. It is a thing wonderful to us, but
sorrowful and undeniable. We perceive the Britannic Majesty's own little
mind pulsing with this Pragmatic Matter, as the biggest volcano would
do;--shooting forth dust and smoke (subsidies, diplomatic emissaries,
treaties, offers of treaty, plans, foolish futile exertions), at an
immense rate. When the Celestial Balances are canting, a man ought
to exert himself. But as to this of saving the House of Austria from
France,--surely, your Britannic Majesty, the shortest way to that, if
that is so indispensable, were: That the House of Austria should consent
to give up its stolen goods, better late than never; and to make this
King of Prussia its friend, as he offers to be! Joined with this King,
it would manage to give account of France and its balloon projects, by
and by. Could your Britannic Majesty but take Mr. Viner's hint; and,
in the interim, mind your OWN business!--His Britannic Majesty intends
immediate fighting; and, both in England and Hanover, is making
preparation loud and great. Nay, he will in his own person fight, if
necessary, and rather likes the thought of it: he saw Oudenarde in his
young days; and, I am told, traces in himself a talent for Generalship.
Were the Britannic Majesty to draw his own puissant sword!-His own
puissant purse he has already drawn; and is subsidizing to right and
left; knocking at all doors with money in hand, and the question, "Any
fighting done here?" In England itself there goes on much drilling,
enlisting; camping, proposing to camp; which is noisy enough in the
British Newspapers, much more in the Foreign. One actual Camp there was
"on Lexden Heath near Colchester," from May till October of this 1741,
[Manifold but insignificant details about it, in the old Newspapers of
those Months.]--Camp waiting always to be shipped across to the scene
of action, but never was:--this actual Camp, a