; it was austere, monotonous, and rude,
with little beauty or carefree cheerfulness. And as the King's
bachelor household, his taciturn servants, and the submissive
intimates under the trees of the quiet garden, gave a foreign guest
the impression of a monastery, so in all Prussian institutions he
found something of the renunciation and the discipline of a great busy
monastic brotherhood.

For something of this spirit had been transmitted even to the people
themselves. Today we honor in this an undying merit of Frederick II.,
for this spirit of abnegation is still the secret of the greatness of
the Prussian State, and the final and best guarantee of its
permanence. The artfully constructed machine which the great King had
set up with so much intelligence and effectiveness was not to last
forever; twenty years after his death it broke down; but in the fact
that the State did not perish with it, that the intelligence and
patriotism of the citizens were able of their own accord to establish
under his successors a new life on a new basis, we see the secret of
Frederick's greatness.

Nine years after the close of the last war which was fought for the
possession of Silesia, Frederick increased his domain by a new
acquisition, not much less in area, but thinly populated--the Polish
districts which have since become German territory under the name of
West Prussia.

If the King's claims to Silesia had been doubtful, all the acumen of
his officials was now needed to make a show of some uncertain right to
portions of the new acquisition. About this the King himself was
little concerned. He had defended before the world with almost
superhuman heroism the occupation of Silesia. This province was united
to Prussia by streams of blood. In the case of West Prussia the craft
of the politician did the work almost alone, and for a long time the
conqueror lacked in public opinion that justification for his action
which, as it seems, is given by the horrors of war and the capricious
fortune of the battlefield. But this last acquisition of the King's,
though wanting in the thunder of guns and the trumpets of victory, was
yet, of all the great gifts which the German people owe to Frederick
II., the greatest and most abounding in fortunate consequences.
Through several hundred years the Germans had been divided and hemmed
in and encroached upon by neighbors greedy for conquest; the great
King was the first conqueror who again pushed the Ge