one: there is a most shrill female soul busy with intense
earnestness here; looking, and teaching us to look. We find it a
VERACIOUS Book, done with heart, and from eyesight and insight; of
a veracity deeper than the superficial sort. It is full of mistakes,
indeed; and exaggerates dreadfully, in its shrill female way; but is
above intending to deceive: deduct the due subtrahend,--say perhaps
twenty-five per cent, or in extreme cases as high as seventy-five,--you
will get some human image of credible actualities from Wilhelmina.
Practically she is our one resource on this matter. Of the strange King
Friedrich Wilhelm and his strange Court, with such an Heir-Apparent
growing up in it, there is no real light to be had, except what
Wilhelmina gives,--or kindles dark Books of others into giving. For
that, too, on long study, is the result of her, here and there. With
so flickery a wax-taper held over Friedrich's childhood,--and the other
dirty tallow-dips all going out in intolerable odor,--judge if our
success can be very triumphant!

We perceive the little creature has got much from Nature; not the big
arena only, but fine inward gifts, for he is well-born in more senses
than one;--and that in the breeding of him there are two elements
noticeable, widely diverse: the French and the German. This is
perhaps the chief peculiarity; best worth laying hold of, with the due
comprehension, if our means allow.

FIRST EDUCATIONAL ELEMENT, THE FRENCH ONE.

His nurses, governesses, simultaneous and successive, mostly of French
breed, are duly set down in the Prussian Books, and held in mind as
a point of duty by Prussian men; but, in foreign parts, cannot be
considered otherwise than as a group, and merely with generic features.
He had a Frau von Kamecke for Head Governess,--the lady whom Wilhelmina,
in her famed _Memoires,_ always writes KAMKEN; and of whom, except the
floating gossip found in that Book, there is nothing to be remembered.
Under her, as practical superintendent, SOUS-GOUVERNANTE and
quasi-mother, was the Dame de Roucoulles, a more important person for
us here. Dame de Roucoulles, once de Montbail, the same respectable
Edict-of-Nantes French lady who, five-and-twenty years ago, had taken
similar charge of Friedrich Wilhelm; a fact that speaks well for the
character of her performance in that office. She had done her first
edition of a Prussian Prince in a satisfactory manner; and not without
difficult accide