ankind.

In Prussia there has long been a certain stubborn though planless
diligence in digging for the outward details of Friedrich's
Life-History; though as to organizing them, assorting them, or even
putting labels on them; much more as to the least interpretation or
human delineation of the man and his affairs,--you need not inquire
in Prussia. In France, in England, it is still worse. There an immense
ignorance prevails even as to the outward facts and phenomena of
Friedrich's life; and instead of the Prussian no-interpretation, you
find, in these vacant circumstances, a great promptitude to interpret.
Whereby judgments and prepossessions exist among us on that subject,
especially on Friedrich's character, which are very ignorant indeed.

To Englishmen, the sources of knowledge or conviction about Friedrich, I
have observed, are mainly these two. FIRST, for his Public Character: it
was an all-important fact, not to IT, but to this country in regard to
it, That George II., seeing good to plunge head-foremost into German
Politics, and to take Maria Theresa's side in the Austrian-Succession
War of 1740-1748, needed to begin by assuring his Parliament and
Newspapers, profoundly dark on the matter, that Friedrich was a robber
and villain for taking the other side. Which assurance, resting on
what basis we shall see by and by, George's Parliament and Newspapers
cheerfully accepted; nothing doubting. And they have re-echoed and
reverberated it, they and the rest of us, ever since, to all lengths,
down to the present day; as a fact quite agreed upon, and the
preliminary item in Friedrich's character. Robber and villain to begin
with; that was one settled point.

Afterwards when George and Friedrich came to be allies, and the grand
fightings of the Seven-Years War took place, George's Parliament and
Newspapers settled a second point, in regard to Friedrich: "One of the
greatest soldiers ever born." This second item the British Writer fully
admits ever since: but he still adds to it the quality of robber, in a
loose way;--and images to himself a royal Dick Turpin, of the kind known
in Review-Articles, and disquisitions on Progress of the Species, and
labels it FREDERICK; very anxious to collect new babblement of lying
Anecdotes, false Criticisms, hungry French Memoirs, which will confirm
him in that impossible idea. Had such proved, on survey, to be the
character of Friedrich, there is one British Writer whose curiosity
c