to make his existence beautiful,--to make
it magnificent at least, and regardless of expense;--and it threatens to
come to little. Courage, poor Grandfather: here is a new second edition
of a Friedrich, the first having gone off with so little effect: this
one's back is still unbroken, his life's seedfield not yet filled with
tares and thorns: who knows but Heaven will be kinder to this one?
Heaven was much kinder to this one. Him Heaven had kneaded of more
potent stuff: a mighty fellow this one, and a strange; related not only
to the Upholsteries and Heralds' Colleges, but to the Sphere-harmonies
and the divine and demonic powers; of a swift far-darting nature this
one, like an Apollo clad in sunbeams and in lightnings (after his sort);
and with a back which all the world could not succeed in breaking!--Yes,
if, by most rare chance, this were indeed a new man of genius, born
into the purblind rotting Century, in the acknowledged rank of a king
there,--man of genius, that is to say, man of originality and veracity;
capable of seeing with his eyes, and incapable of not believing what
he sees;--then truly!--But as yet none knows; the poor old Grandfather
never knew.

Meanwhile they christened the little fellow, with immense magnificence
and pomp of apparatus; Kaiser Karl, and the very Swiss Republic being
there (by proxy), among the gossips; and spared no cannon-volleyings,
kettle-drummings, metal crown, heavy cloth-of-silver, for the poor soft
creature's sake; all of which, however, he survived. The name given him
was Karl Friedrich (Charles Frederick); Karl perhaps, and perhaps also
not, in delicate compliment to the chief gossip, the above-mentioned.
Kaiser, Karl or Charles VI.? At any rate, the KARL, gradually or from
the first, dropped altogether out of practice, and went as nothing:
he himself, or those about him, never used it; nor, except in some
dim English pamphlet here and there, have I met with any trace of it.
Friedrich (RICH-in-PEACE, a name of old prevalence in the Hohenzollern
kindred), which he himself wrote FREDERIC in his French way, and at last
even FEDERIC (with a very singular sense of euphony), is throughout, and
was, his sole designation. Sunday 31st January, 1712, age then precisely
one week: then, and in this manner, was he ushered on the scene, and
labelled among his fellow-creatures. We must now look round a little;
and see, if possible by any method or exertion, what kind of scene it
was.