ting him to his carriage. [Boyer, xxxv. 198.]
"Great tokens of affection," known to the Newspapers, there were; and
one token not yet known, a promise on King August's part that he would
return this ever-memorable compliment in person at Potsdam and Berlin in
a few months. Remember, then!--

As for the poor Crown-Prince, whom already his Father did not like, he
now fell into circumstances more abstruse than ever in that and other
respects. Bad health, a dangerous lingering fit of that, soon after his
return home, was one of the first consequences. Frequent fits of bad
health, for some years coming; with ominous rumors, consultations of
physicians, and reports to the paternal Majesty, which produced small
comfort in that quarter. The sad truth, dimly indicated, is sufficiently
visible: his life for the next four or five years was "extremely
dissolute." Poor young man, he has got into a disastrous course;
consorts chiefly with debauched young fellows, as Lieutenants Katte,
Keith, and others of their stamp, who lead him on ways not pleasant to
his Father, nor conformable to the Laws of this Universe. Health, either
of body or of mind, is not to be looked for in his present way of life.
The bright young soul, with its fine strengths and gifts; wallowing like
a young rhinoceros in the mud-bath:--some say, it is wholesome for a
human soul; not we!

All this is too certain; rising to its height in the years we are now
got to, and not ending for four or five years to come: and the reader
can conceive all this, and whether its effects were good or not.
Friedrich Wilhelm's old-standing disfavor is converted into open
aversion and protest, many times into fits of sorrow, rage and despair,
on his luckless Son's behalf;--and it appears doubtful whether this
bright young human soul, comparable for the present to a rhinoceros
wallowing in the mud-bath, with nothing but its snout visible, and a
dirty gurgle all the sound it makes, will ever get out again or not.

The rhinoceros soul got out; but not uninjured; alas, no; bitterly
polluted, tragically dimmed of its finest radiances for the remainder
of life. The distinguished Sauerteig, in his SPRINGWURZELN, has these
words: "To burn away, in mad waste, the divine aromas and plainly
celestial elements from our existence; to change our holy-of-holies into
a place of riot; to make the soul itself hard, impious, barren! Surely a
day is coming, when it will be known again what virtue is in