without them, if you will
consider well, what had it ever been? A gluttonous race of Jutes and
Angles, capable of no grand combinations; lumbering about in pot-bellied
equanimity; not dreaming of heroic toil and silence and endurance,
such as leads to the high places of this Universe, and the golden
mountain-tops where dwell the Spirits of the Dawn. Their very
ballot-boxes and suffrages, what they call their "Liberty," if these
mean "Liberty," and are such a road to Heaven, Anglo-Saxon high-road
thither,--could never have been possible for them on such terms. How
could they? Nothing but collision, intolerable interpressure (as of men
not perpendicular), and consequent battle often supervening, could
have been appointed those undrilled Anglo-Saxons; their pot-bellied
equanimity itself continuing liable to perpetual interruptions, as in
the Heptarchy time. An enlightened Public does not reflect on these
things at present; but will again, by and by. Looking with human eyes
over the England that now is, and over the America and the Australia,
from pole to pole; and then listening to the Constitutional litanies of
Dryasaust, and his lamentations on the old Norman and Plantagenet Kings,
and his recognition of departed merit and causes of effects,--the mind
of man is struck dumb!

Chapter IV. -- HIS MAJESTY'S WAYS.

Friedrich Wilhelm's History is one of ECONOMICS; which study, so soon as
there are Kings again in this world, will be precious to them. In that
happy state of matters, Friedrich Wilhelm's History will well reward
study; and teach by example, in a very simple and direct manner. In what
is called the Political, Diplomatic, "Honor-to-be" department, there is
not, nor can ever be, much to be said of him; this Economist King
having always kept himself well at home, and looked steadily to his own
affairs. So that for the present he has, as a King, next to nothing
of what is called History; and it is only as a fellow-man, of singular
faculty, and in a most peculiar and conspicuous situation, that he can
be interesting to mankind. To us he has, as Father and daily teacher
and master of young Fritz, a continual interest; and we must note
the master's ways, and the main phenomena of the workshop as they
successively turned up, for the sake of the notable Apprentice serving
there.

He was not tall of stature, this arbitrary King: a florid-complexioned
stout-built man; of serious, sincere, authoritative face; his atti