s again,--more incalculable than ever to contemporary mankind. "How
these things will end?" Fancy of what a palpitating interest THEN, while
everybody watched the huge game as it went on; though it is so little
interesting now to anybody, looking at it all finished! Finished; no
mystery of chance, of world-hope or of world-terror now remaining in
it; all is fallen stagnant, dull, distant;--and it will behoove us to be
brief upon it.

Contemporaries, and Posterity that will make study, must alike admit
that, among the sons of men, few in any Age have made a stiffer fight
than Friedrich has done and continues to do. But to Friedrich himself it
is dismally evident, that year by year his resources are melting away;
that a year must come when he will have no resource more. Ebbing very
fast, his resources;--fast too, no doubt, those of his Enemies, but not
SO fast. They are mighty Nations, he is one small Nation. His thoughts,
we perceive, have always, in the background of them, a hue of settled
black. Easy to say, "Resist till we die;" but to go about, year after
year, practically doing it, under cloudy omens, no end of it visible
ahead, is not easy. Many men, Kings and other, have had to take that
stern posture;--few on sterner terms than those of Friedrich at present;
and none that I know of with a more truly stoical and manful figure of
demeanor. He is long used to it! Wet to the bone, you do not regard new
showers; the one thing is, reach the bridge before IT be swum away.

The usual hopes, about Turks, about Peace, and the like, have not been
wanting to Friedrich this Winter; mentionable as a trait of Friedrich's
character, not otherwise worth mention. Hope of aid from the Turks, it
is very strange to see how he nurses this fond shadow, which never came
to anything! Happily, it does not prevent, it rather encourages, the
utmost urgency of preparation: "The readier we are, the likelier are
Turks and everything!" Peace, at least, between France and England,
after such a Proposal on Choiseul's part, and such a pass as France has
really got to, was a reasonable probability. But indeed, from the first
year of this War, as we remarked, Peace has seemed possible to Friedrich
every year; especially from 1759 onward, there is always every winter
a lively hope of Peace:--"No slackening of preparation; the reverse,
rather; but surely the Campaign of next Summer will be cut short, and we
shall all get home only half expended!" [Sch