; in the hundred
months of common rumor, which he regarded little; and notice iracund and
minatory, when it led him into collision with the independent portions
of mankind, now and then. This latter sort was not pleasant, and
sometimes looked rather serious; but this too he contrived always
to digest in some tolerable manner. He continued drilling and
recruiting,--we may say not his Army only, but his Nation in all
departments of it,--as no man before or since ever did: increasing, by
every devisable method, the amount of potential-battle that lay in him
and it.

In a military, and also in a much deeper sense, he may be defined as the
great Drill-sergeant of the Prussian Nation. Indeed this had been the
function of the Hohenzollerns all along; this difficult, unpleasant and
indispensable one of drilling. From the first appearance of Burggraf
Friedrich, with good words and with HEAVY PEG, in the wreck of anarchic
Brandenburg, and downwards ever since, this has steadily enough gone
on. And not a little good drilling these populations have had, first
and last; just orders given them (wise and just, which to a respectable
degree were Heaven's orders as well): and certainly Heavy Peg, for
instance,--Heavy Peg, bringing Quitzow's strong House about his
ears,--was a respectable drummer's cat to enforce the same. This has
been going on these three hundred years. But Friedrich Wilhelm completes
the process; finishes it off to the last pitch of perfection. Friedrich
Wilhelm carries it through every fibre and cranny of Prussian Business,
and so far as possible, of Prussian Life; so that Prussia is all a
drilled phalanx, ready to the word of command; and what we see in the
Army is but the last consummate essence of what exists in the Nation
everywhere. That was Friedrich Wilhelm's function, made ready for him,
laid to his hand by his Hohenzollern foregoers; and indeed it proved a
most beneficent function.

For I have remarked that, of all things, a Nation needs first to be
drilled; and no Nation that has not first been governed by so-called
"Tyrants," and held tight to the curb till it became perfect in its
paces and thoroughly amenable to rule and law, and heartily respectful
of the same, and totally abhorrent of the want of the same, ever came
to much in this world. England itself, in foolish quarters of England,
still howls and execrates lamentably over its William Conqueror, and
rigorous line of Normans and Plantagenets; but