ther and Father both dead; [Grandfather, 1st March, 1735; Father
(who lost the _Lines of Ettlingen_ lately in our sight), 3d September,
1735. Supra, vol. vi. p. 372.] and has just been blessed with an Heir,
to boot. Congratulation on the birth of this Heir is the formal purport
of the Letter, though it runs ever and anon into a military strain. Here
are some sentences in a condensed form:--

"DANTZIG, 26th OCTOBER, 1735.... Thank my dear Sister for her services.
I am charmed that she has made you papa with so good a grace. I fear you
won't stop there; but will go on peopling the world"--one knows not to
what extent--"with your amiable race. Would have written sooner; but I
am just returning from the depths of the barbarous Countries; and having
been charged with innumerable commissions which I did not understand too
well, had no good possibility to think or to write.

"I have viewed all the Russian labors in these parts; have had the
assault on the Hagelsberg narrated to me; been on the grounds;--and own
I had a better opinion of Marshal Munnich than to think him capable of
so distracted an enterprise. [_OEuvres de Frederic,_ xxvii. part 2d, p.
31. Pressed for time, and in want of battering-cannon, he attempted
to seize this Hagelsberg, one of the outlying defences of Dantzig, by
nocturnal storm; lost two thousand men; and retired, WITHOUT doing "what
was flatly impossible," thinks the Crown-Prince. See Mannstein, pp.
77-79, for an account of it.]... Adieu, my dear Brother. My compliments
to the amiable young Mother. Tell her, I beg you, that her proof-essays
are masterpieces (COUPS D'ESSAI SONT DES COUPS DE MAITRE)."...

"Your most," &c.,

"FREDERIC."

The Brunswick Masterpiece, achieved on this occasion, grew to be a man
and Duke, famous enough in the Newspapers in time coming: Champagne,
1792; Jena, 1806; George IV.'s Queen Caroline; these and other
distracted phenomena (pretty much blotting out the earlier better sort)
still keep him hanging painfully in men's memory. From his birth, now
in this Prussian Journey of our Crown-Prince, to his death-stroke on the
Field of Jena, what a seventy-one years!--

Fleury and the Kaiser, though it is long before the signature and
last finish can take place, are come to terms of settlement, at the
Crown-Prince's return; and it is known, in political circles, what the
Kaiser's Polish-Election damages will probably amount to. Here are, in
substance, the only conditions that c