e seen): "Old
Ziethen," a little stumpy man, with hanging brows and thick pouting
lips; unbeautiful to look upon, but pious, wise, silent, and with
a terrible blaze of fighting-talent in him; full of obedience, of
endurance, and yet of unsubduable "silent rage" (which has brooked even
the vocal rage of Friedrich, on occasion); a really curious old Hussar
General. He is now a kind of mythical or demigod personage among the
Prussians; and was then (1779), and ever after the Seven-Years
War, regarded popularly as their Ajax (with a dash of the Ulysses
superadded),--Seidlitz, another Horse General, being the Achilles of
that service.

The date of this drive through the moors being "23d July, 1779," we
perceive it is just about two months since Friedrich got home from
the Bavarian War (what they now call "POTATO WAR," so barren was it in
fighting, so ripe in foraging); victorious in a sort;--and that in his
private thought, among the big troubles of the world on both sides of
the Atlantic, the infinitesimally small business of the MILLER ARNOLD'S
LAWSUIT is beginning to rise now and then. [Supra 415, 429. Preuss, i.
362; &c. &c.]

Friedrich is now 67 years old; has reigned 39: the Seven-Years War is
16 years behind us; ever since which time Friedrich has been an "old
man,"--having returned home from it with his cheeks all wrinkled, his
temples white, and other marks of decay, at the age of 51. The "wounds
of that terrible business," as they say, "are now all healed," perhaps
above 100,000 burnt houses and huts rebuilt, for one thing; and the
"ALTE FRITZ," still brisk and wiry, has been and is an unweariedly busy
man in that affair, among others. What bogs he has tapped and
dried, what canals he has dug, and stubborn strata he has bored
through,--assisted by his Prussian Brindley (one Brenkenhof, once a
Stable-boy at Dessau);--and ever planting "Colonies" on the
reclaimed land, and watching how they get on! As we shall see on this
occasion,--to which let us hasten (as to a feast not of dainties, but of
honest SAUERKRAUT and wholesome herbs), without farther parley.

Oberamtmann Fromme (whom I mark "Ich") LOQUITUR: "Major-General Graf von
Gortz," whom Fromme keeps strictly mute all day, is a distinguished man,
of many military and other experiences; much about Friedrich in this
time and onwards. [Supra, 399.] Introduces strangers, &c.; Bouille took
him for "Head Chamberlain," four or five years after this. He is ten
years