of Nations! To expunge such is greatly
the duty of every man, especially of every King. Unconsciously, not
thinking of Devil's-worship, or spiritual dry-rot, but of money chiefly,
and led by Nature and the ways she has with us, it was the task of
Friedrich Wilhelm's life to bring about this beneficent result in all
departments of Prussian Business, great and little, public and even
private. Year after year, he brings it to perfection; pushes it
unweariedly forward every day and hour. So that he has Prussia, at
last, all a Prussia made after his own image; the most thrifty, hardy,
rigorous and Spartan country any modern King ever tied over; and himself
(if he thought of that) a King indeed. He that models Nations according
to his own image, he is a King, though his sceptre were a walking-stick;
and, properly no other is.

Friedrich Wilhelm was wondered at, and laughed at, by innumerable
mortals for his ways of doing; which indeed were very strange. Not that
he figured much in what is called Public History, or desired to do
so; for, though a vigilant ruler, he did not deal in protocolling and
campaining,--he let a minimum of that suffice him. But in court soirees,
where elegant empty talk goes on, and of all materials for it scandal
is found incomparably the most interesting. I suppose there turned up
no name oftener than that of his Prussian Majesty; and during these
twenty-seven years of his Reign, his wild pranks and explosions gave
food for continual talk in such quarter.

For he was like no other King that then existed, or had ever been
discovered. Wilder Son of Nature seldom came into the artificial
world; into a royal throne there, probably never. A wild man, wholly in
earnest, veritable as the old rocks,--and with a terrible volcanic fire
in him too. He would have been strange anywhere; but among the dapper
Royal gentlemen of the Eighteenth Century, what was to be done with such
an Orson of a King?--Clap him in Bedlam, and bring out the ballot-boxes
instead? The modern generation, too, still takes its impression of him
from these rumors,--still more now from Wilhelmina's Book; which paints
the outside savagery of the royal man, in a most striking manner; and
leaves the inside vacant, undiscovered by Wilhelmina or the rumors.

Nevertheless it appears there were a few observant eyes even of
contemporaries, who discerned in him a surprising talent for "National
Economics" at least. One Leipzig Professor, Saxon, no