work is cut out,
and one hopes to be well left alone after doing it. This Crown-Prince
has been in far less desirable localities.

He had a reasonable house, two houses made into one for him, in the
place. He laid out for himself a garden in the outskirts, with what they
call a "temple" in it,--some more or less ornamental garden-house,--from
which I have read of his "letting off rockets" in a summer twilight.
Rockets to amuse a small dinner-party, I should guess,--dinner of
Officers, such as he had weekly or twice a week. On stiller evenings
we can fancy him there in solitude; reading meditative, or musically
fluting;--looking out upon the silent death of Day: how the summer
gloaming steals over the moorlands, and over all lands; shutting up the
toil of mortals; their very flocks and herds collapsing into silence,
and the big Skies and endless Times overarching him and them. With
thoughts perhaps sombre enough now and then, but profitable if he face
them piously.

His Father's affection is returning; would so fain return if it durst.
But the heart of Papa has been sadly torn up: it is too good news to be
quite believed, that he has a son grown wise, and doing son-like! Rumor
also is very busy, rumor and the Tobacco-Parliament for or against; a
little rumor is capable of stirring up great storms in the suspicious
paternal mind. All along during Friedrich's abode at Ruppin, this is a
constantly recurring weather-symptom; very grievous now and then; not to
be guarded against by any precaution;--though steady persistence in the
proper precaution will abate it, and as good as remove it, in course of
time. Already Friedrich Wilhelm begins to understand that "there is much
in this Fritz,"--who knows how much, though of a different type from
Papa's?--and that it will be better if he and Papa, so discrepant in
type, and ticklishly related otherwise, live not too constantly together
as heretofore. Which is emphatically the Crown-Prince's notion too.

I perceive he read a great deal at Ruppin: what Books I know not
specially: but judge them to be of more serious solid quality than
formerly; and that his reading is now generally a kind of studying
as well. Not the express Sciences or Technologies; not these, in any
sort,--except the military, and that an express exception. These he
never cared for, or regarded as the noble knowledges for a king or man.
History and Moral Speculation; what mankind have done and been in this
world