ow caprice in the choice of his friends. The uniform warmth which
treats with consideration all alike seems to be denied to such
natures. To any one to whom the King had become a friend in his own
fashion, he always showed the greatest attention and assiduity,
however much his moods changed at particular moments. He could become
as sentimental in his sorrow over the loss of such a friend as any
German of the Werther period. He had lived for many years on somewhat
distant terms with his sister in Bayreuth, and not until the last
years before her death, amid the terrors of a burdensome war, did her
image rise vividly again before him as that of an affectionate sister.
After her death he found a gloomy satisfaction in picturing to himself
and others the cordiality of his relations with her. He erected a
little temple to her and often made pilgrimages to it. Toward any one
who did not approach his heart through the medium of a poetic mood, or
incite him to poetic expression of his affection, or who touched a
wrong note anywhere in his sensitive nature, he was cold,
contemptuous, and indifferent--a king who only asked to what extent
the other person could be useful to him; he even pushed him aside when
he could no longer use him. Such a character may perhaps surround the
life of a young man with poetic lustre and give brightness and charm
even to common things, but unless it is coupled with a high degree of
morality, a sense of duty, and a mind set upon higher things, it will
leave him sad and lonely in later years. In the most favorable cases
it will make bitter enemies as well as very warm admirers. A somewhat
similar disposition brought to Goethe's noble soul heavy sorrows,
transitory relations, many disappointments, and a solitary old age. It
becomes doubly momentous for a king, before whom others rarely stand
with assurance and on equal terms; for his most sincere friends may
yet turn into admiring flatterers, unstable in their bearing, now
constrained under the moral spell of his majesty, now, under the
conviction of their own rights, fault-finding and discontented.

This need of ideal relations and longing for people to whom he could
unbosom himself without reserve, worked at cross purposes with
Frederick's penetrating discrimination, and his uncompromising love of
truth, which was a deadly enemy of all deception, impatiently resisted
every illusion, despised shams, and sought for the essence of things.
This scrutiniz