has been known, in
his irreverent impatience, to call the Grenadier uniform his "shroud
(STERBEKITTEL, or death-clothes);" so imprisoning to the young mind
and body! Paternal Majesty has heard this blasphemous rumor; hence
doubtless, in part, his fury against the wider brocade garment.

It was Quantz himself that reported this explosion to authentic Nicolai,
many years afterwards; confessing that he trembled, every joint of him,
in the wood-closet, during that hour of hurricane; and the rather as he
had on "a red dress-coat," whioh color, foremost of the flaring colors,
he knew to be his Majesty's aversion, on a man's back. [Nicolai,
_Anekdoten_ (Berlin, 1790), ii. 148.] Of incomparable Quantz, and
his heart-thrilling adagios, we hope to hear again, under
joyfuler circumstances. Of Lieutenant von Katte,--a short stout young
fellow, with black eyebrows, pock-marked face, and rather dissolute
manners,--we shall not fail to hear.

Chapter VIII. -- CROWN-PRINCE GETTING BEYOND HIS DEPTH IN TROUBLE.

It is not certain that the late Imminency of Duel had much to do with
such explosions. The Hanover Imminency, which we likened to a tropical
waterspout, or sudden thunderous blotting-out of the sky to the
astonished Gazetteers, seems rather to have passed away as waterspouts
do,--leaving the earth and air, if anything, a little REFRESHED by
such crisis. Leaving, that is to say, the two Majesties a little less
disposed for open quarrel, or rash utterance of their ill humor in time
coming. But, in the mean while, all mutual interests are in a painful
state of suspended animation: in Berlin there is a privately rebellious
Spouse and Household, there is a Tobacco-Parliament withal;--and the
royal mind, sensitive, imaginative as a poet's, as a woman's, and liable
to transports as of a Norse Baresark, is of uncertain movement. Such a
load of intricacies and exaggerated anxieties hanging on it, the
royal mind goes like the most confused smoke-jack, sure only to HAVE
revolutions; and we know how, afar from Soissons, and at home in
Tobacco-Parliament, the machine is influenced! Enough, the explosive
procedures continue, and are on the increasing hand.

Majesty's hunting at Wusterhausen was hardly done, when that alarming
Treaty of Seville came to light (9th November, 1729), France and England
ranked by the side of Spain, disposing of Princes and Apanages at their
will, and a Kaiser left sitting solitary,--which awakens the domes