is passions or enthusiasm, or to attack, in
verse or prose, any one who provoked or annoyed him--not only the pope
and the Empress, the Jesuits and the Dutch journalists, but also old
friends if they seemed lukewarm to him,--which he could not
endure,--or if they actually threatened to break with him. Never since
Luther has there been such a belligerent, relentless, untiring writer.
As soon as he put pen to paper he was like Proteus, everything: sage
or intriguer, historian or poet, whatever the situation demanded,
always an active, fiery, intellectual--sometimes also an
ill-mannered--man, with never a moment's thought of his royal
position. Whatever he liked he praised in poems or eulogies: the noble
doctrines of his own philosophy, his friends, his army, religious
liberty, independent investigation, tolerance, and popular education.

The conquering power of Frederick's mind had reached out in all
directions. When ambition inspired him to victory it seemed as if
there were no obstacle that would check him. Then came the years of
trial--seven years of terrible, heartrending cares--the great period,
in which the heaviest tasks that ever a man accomplished were laid
upon his rich, ambitious spirit, in which almost everything perished
which was his own possession, joy and happiness, peace and selfish
comfort; in which also many pleasing and graceful characteristics of
the man were to disappear, that he might become the self-sacrificing
prince of his people, the foremost servant of his State, and the hero
of a nation. No lust of conquest made him take the field this time; it
had long been plain to him that he was fighting for his own life and
that of his State. But his determination had grown only the stronger.
Like the stormwind he purposed to dash into the clouds which were
collecting from all sides about his head, and to break up the
thunderbolts through the energy of an irresistible attack, before they
were discharged. He had never been conquered up to this time. His
enemies had been beaten every time he had fallen upon them with his
terrible instrument--the army. Herein lay his only hope. If his
well-tried power did not fail him now, he might save his State.

But in the very first conflict with his old enemy, the Austrians, he
saw that they, too, had learned from him and were changed. He exerted
his strength to the utmost, and at Kollin it failed him. The 18th of
June, 1757, is the most momentous day in Frederick's li