hat secret object; and had very nearly managed it. Queen of France
that might have been; and now it is but Brandenburg, and the dice have
fallen somewhat wrong for us! She had Friedrich Wilhelm, the rough boy;
and perhaps nothing more of very precious property. Her first child,
likewise a boy, had soon died, and there came no third: tedious
ceremonials, and the infinitely little, were mainly her lot in this
world.

All which, however, she had the art to take up not in the tragic way,
but in the mildly comic,--often not to take up at all, but leave lying
there;--and thus to manage in a handsome and softly victorious manner.
With delicate female tact, with fine female stoicism too; keeping all
things within limits. She was much respected by her Husband, much loved
indeed; and greatly mourned for by the poor man: the village Lutzelburg
(Little-town), close by Berlin, where she had built a mansion for
herself, he fondly named _ Charlottenburg _ (Charlotte's-town), after
her death, which name both House and Village still bear. Leibnitz found
her of an almost troublesome sharpness of intellect; "wants to know
the why even of the why," says Leibnitz. That is the way of female
intellects when they are good; nothing equals their acuteness, and their
rapidity is almost excessive. Samuel Johnson, too, had a young-lady
friend once "with the acutest intellect I have ever known."

On the whole, we may pronounce her clearly a superior woman, this Sophie
Charlotte; notable not for her Grandson alone, though now pretty much
forgotten by the world,--as indeed all things and persons have, one day
or other, to be! A LIFE of her, in feeble watery style, and distracted
arrangement, by one _ Erman,_ [Monsieur Erman, Historiographe de
Brandebourg, _ Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire de Sophie Charlotte,
Reine de Preusse, las dans les Seances, &c. _ (1 vol. 8vo, Berlin,
1801.)] a Berlin Frenchman, is in existence, and will repay a cursory
perusal; curious traits of her, in still looser form, are also to be
found in _ Pollnitz: _[Carl Ludwig Freiherr von Pollnitz, _ Memoiren
zur Lebens-und Regierungs-Geschichte der vier letzten Regenten des
Preussischen Staats _ (was published in French also), 2 vols. 12mo,
Berlin, 1791.] but for our purposes here is enough, and more than
enough.

Chapter V. -- KING FRIEDRICH I.

The Prussian royalty is now in its twelfth year when this little
Friedrich, who is to carry it to such a height, comes into