t once nimble to grasp, delicate to feel,
and strong to clutch and hold: what may be called a beautiful hand,
because it is the usefulest.

Nothing could exceed his Majesty's simplicity of habitudes. But one
loves especially in him his scrupulous attention to cleanliness of
person and of environment. He washed like a very Mussulman, five times
a day; loved cleanliness in all things, to a superstitious extent; which
trait is pleasant in the rugged man, and indeed of a piece with the rest
of his character. He is gradually changing all his silk and other
cloth room-furniture; in his hatred of dust, he will not suffer a
floor-carpet, even a stuffed chair; but insists on having all of wood,
where the dust may be prosecuted to destruction. [Forster, i. 208.] Wife
and womankind, and those that take after them, let such have stuffing
and sofas: he, for his part, sits on mere wooden chairs;--sits, and also
thinks and acts, after the manner of a Hyperborean Spartan, which he
was. He ate heartily, but as a rough farmer and hunter eats; country
messes, good roast and boiled; despising the French Cook, as an entity
without meaning for him. His favorite dish at dinner was bacon and
greens, rightly dressed; what could the French Cook do for such a man?
He ate with rapidity, almost with indiscriminate violence: his object
not quality but quantity. He drank too, but did not get drunk: at the
Doctor's order he could abstain; and had in later years abstained.
Pollnitz praises his fineness of complexion, the originally eminent
whiteness of his skin, which he had tanned and bronzed by hard riding
and hunting, and otherwise worse discolored by his manner of feeding and
digesting: alas, at last his waistcoat came to measure, I am afraid to
say how many Prussian ells,--a very considerable diameter indeed! [Ib.
i. 163.]

For some years after his accession he still appeared occasionally in
"burgher dress," or unmilitary clothes; "brown English coat, yellow
waistcoat" and the other indispensables. But this fashion became rarer
with him every year; and ceased altogether (say Chronologists) about
the year 1719: after which he appeared always simply as Colonel of the
Potsdam Guards (his own Lifeguard Regiment) in simple Prussian uniform:
close military coat; blue, with red cuffs and collar, buff waistcoat and
breeches; white linen gaiters to the knee. He girt his sword about the
loins, well out of the mud; walked always with a thick bamboo in his