ure at this time. The new King was a man of
fiery, enthusiastic temperament, he was quickly aroused, and the tears
came readily to his eyes. Like his contemporaries, he too was
passionately eager to admire grandeur and to give himself up to tender
feelings in a poetical mood. He played adagios softly on his flute.
Like his worthy contemporaries, he did not easily find, in prose or
poetry, the full expression of his feelings; pathetic oratory stirred
him to tearful emotion. In spite of all his French aphorisms, the
essence of his nature was very German in this respect also.

Those who ascribe to him a cold heart have judged him unfairly. It is
not cold hearts in princes which give the most offense by their
harshness. Such hearts are almost always gifted with the art of
satisfying those about them by uniform graciousness and tactful
expression. The strongest utterances of contempt are generally found
close beside the pleasing tones of a caressing tenderness. But in
Frederick, it seems to us, there was a striking and unusual union of
two totally opposite tendencies of the emotional nature, which
elsewhere are engaged in an unending struggle. He had in equal degree
the need to idealize life for himself, and the impulse to destroy
ideal moods without mercy in himself and in others. This first
peculiarity of his was perhaps the most beautiful, perhaps the
saddest, with which a human being was ever equipped in the struggles
of earth. His was indeed a poetic nature. He possessed to a high
degree that peculiar power which endeavors to reconstruct vulgar
reality according to the ideal needs of its own nature, and covers
everything near with the grace and light of a new life. It was a
necessity for him to make over with the grace of his imagination the
image of those dear to him, and to adorn the relation to them into
which he had voluntarily entered. In this there was always a certain
kind of posing. Even where he had the most ardent feelings, he was
more in love with the glorified picture of the individual in his mind
than with the real personality. It was in such a mood that he kissed
Voltaire's hand. As soon as the difference between the ideal and the
real person became unpleasantly perceptible, he let go the person and
clung to the image. One to whom nature has given this temperament,
letting him see love and friendship chiefly through the colored glass
of a poetical mood, will always, according to the judgment of others,
sh