true method, I tell you! As to the world and
its cackling,--let the world cackle!" At length Borck hits on a
consideration: "Your Majesty has been ill lately; hand perhaps not so
steady as usual? Now if it should turn out that your Majesty proved so
inferior to yourself as to--Good Heavens!" This, it is said, was the
point that staggered his Majesty. Tobacco-Parliament, and Borck there,
pushed its advantage: the method of duel (prevalent through the
early part of July, I should guess) was given up. [Bielfeld, _Lettres
familieres et autres_ (Second edition, 2 vols. Leide, 1767), i. 117,
118.] Why was there no Hansard in that Institution of the Country?
Patience, idle reader! We shall get some scraps of the Debates on
other subjects, by and by.--But hear Dubourgay again, in the absence of
Morning Newspapers:--

AUGUST 9th, 1729. "Berlin looks altogether warlike. At Magdeburg they
are busy making ovens to bake Ammunition-bread; Artillery is getting
hauled out of the Arsenal here;" all is clangor, din of preparation.
"It is said the King will fall on Mecklenburg;" can at once, if he like.
"These intolerable usages from England [Seckendorf is rumored to
have said], can your Majesty endure them forever? Why not marry
the Prince-Royal, at once, to another Princess, and have done with
them!"--or words to that effect, as reported by Court-rumor to her
Majesty and Dubourgay. And there is a Princess talked of for this Match,
Russian Princess, little Czar's Sister (little Czar to have Wilhelmina,
Double-Marriage to be with Russia, not with England); but the little
Czar soon died, little Czar's Sister went out of sight, or I know not
what happened, and only brief rumor came of that.

As for the Crown-Prince, he has not fallen desperate; no; but appears
to have strange schemes in him, deep under cover. "He has said to a
confidant [Wilhelmina, it is probable], 'As to his ill-treatment, he
well knew how to free himself of that [will fly to foreign parts, your
Highness?], and would have done so long since, were it not for his
Sister, upon whom the whole weight of his Father's resentment would then
fall. Happen what will, therefore, he is resolved to share with her all
the hardships which the King his Father may be pleased to put upon her."
[Dubourgay, 11th August, 1729.] Means privately a flight to England,
Dubourgay sees, and in a reticent diplomatic way is glad to see.

I possess near a dozen Hanoverian and Prussian Despatches upon