us, but he had wholesome food in sufficient quantity to appease
hunger; he could read the Henriade without being kicked, and could play
on his flute without having it broken over his head.

When his confinement terminated he was a man. He had nearly completed
his twenty-first year, and could scarcely be kept much longer under the
restraints which had made his boyhood miserable. Suffering had matured
his understanding, while it had hardened his heart and soured his
temper. He had learnt self-command and dissimulation: he affected to
conform to some of his father's views, and submissively accepted a wife,
who was a wife only in name, from his father's hand. He also served with
credit, though without any opportunity of acquiring brilliant
distinction, under the command of Prince Eugene, during a campaign
marked by no extraordinary events. He was now permitted to keep a
separate establishment, and was therefore able to indulge with caution
his own tastes. Partly in order to conciliate the king, and partly, no
doubt, from inclination, he gave up a portion of his time to military
and political business, and thus gradually acquired such an aptitude for
affairs as his most intimate associates were not aware that he
possessed.

His favorite abode was at Rheinsberg, near the frontier which separates
the Prussian dominions from the Duchy of Mecklenburg. Rheinsberg is a
fertile and smiling spot, in the midst of the sandy waste of the
Marquisate. The mansion, surrounded by woods of oak and beech, looks out
upon a spacious lake. There Frederic amused himself by laying out
gardens in regular alleys and intricate mazes, by building obelisks,
temples, and conservatories, and by collecting rare fruits and flowers.
His retirement was enlivened by a few companions, among whom he seems to
have preferred those who, by birth or extraction, were French. With
these inmates he dined and supped well, drank freely, and amused himself
sometimes with concerts, and sometimes with holding chapters of a
fraternity which he called the Order of Bayard; but literature was his
chief resource.

His education had been entirely French. The long ascendency which Louis
the Fourteenth had enjoyed, and the eminent merit of the tragic and
comic dramatists, of the satirists, and of the preachers who had
flourished under that magnificent prince, had made the French language
predominant in Europe. Even in countries which had a national
literature, and which could