comes and goes; and within three weeks later, we are touched almost
with a kind of pity to see it definitely emerging in a kind of Official
state once more. For the question is symbolical of important political
questions. The question means withal, What is to be done in these
dreadful Congress-of-Soissons complexities, and mad reelings of the
Terrestrial Balance? Shall we hold by a dubious and rather losing
Kaiser of this kind, in spite of his dubieties, his highly inexplicit,
procedures (for which he may have reasons) about the Promise of Julich
and Berg? Or shall we not clutch at England, after all,--and perhaps
bring him to terms? The Smoking Parliament had no Hansard; but, we
guess its Debates (mostly done in dumb-show) were cloudy, abstruse and
abundant, at this time! The Prussian Ministers, if they had any power,
take different sides; old Ilgen, the oldest and ablest of them, is
strong for England.

Enough, in the beginning of October, Queen Sophie, "by express desire of
his Majesty," who will have explicit, Yes or No on that matter, writes
to England, a Letter "PRIVATE AND OFFICIAL," of such purport,--Letter
(now invisible) which Dubourgay is proud to transmit. [Despatch, 5th
October, 1728, in State-Paper Office.] Dubourgay is proud; and old
Ilgen, her Majesty informed me on the morrow, "wept for joy," so zealous
was he on that side. Poor old gentleman,--respectable rusty old Iron
Safe with seven locks, which nobody would now care to pick,--he died
few weeks after, at his post as was proper; and saw no Double-Marriage,
after all. But Dubourgay shakes out his feathers; the Double-Marriage
being again evidently alive.

For England answers, cordially enough, if not, with all the hurry
Friedrich Wilhelm wanted, "Yea, we are willing for the thing;"--and
meets, with great equanimity and liberality, the new whims, difficulties
and misgivings, which arose on Friedrich Wilhelm's part, at a wearisome
rate, as the negotiation went on; and which are always frankly smoothed
away again by the cooler party. Why did not the bargain close, then?
Alas, one finds, the answer YEA had unfortunately set his Prussian
Majesty on viewing, through magnifiers, what advantages there might have
been in NO: this is a difficulty there is no clearing away! Probably,
too, the Tobacco-Parliament was industrious. Friedrich Wilhelm, at last,
tries if Half will not do; anxious, as we all too much are, "to say Yes
AND No;" being in great straits, p