boast of names greater than those of Racine,
of Moliere, and of Massillon, in the country of Dante, in the country of
Cervantes, in the country of Shakespeare and Milton, the intellectual
fashions of Paris had been to a great extent adopted. Germany had not
yet produced a single masterpiece of poetry or eloquence. In Germany,
therefore, the French taste reigned without rival and without limit.
Every youth of rank was taught to speak and write French. That he should
speak and write his own tongue with politeness, or even with accuracy
and facility, was regarded as comparatively an unimportant object. Even
Frederic William, with all his rugged Saxon prejudices, thought it
necessary that his children should know French, and quite unnecessary
that they should be well versed in German. The Latin was positively
interdicted. "My son," his Majesty wrote, "shall not learn Latin; and,
more than that, I will not suffer anybody even to mention such a thing
to me." One of the preceptors ventured to read the Golden Bull in the
original with the Prince Royal. Frederic William entered the room, and
broke out in his usual kingly style:--

"Rascal, what are you at there?"

"Please your Majesty," answered the preceptor, "----was explaining the
Golden Bull to his Royal Highness."

"I'll Golden Bull you, you rascal!" roared the Majesty of Prussia. Up
went the King's cane; away ran the terrified instructor; and Frederic's
classical studies ended forever. He now and then affected to quote Latin
sentences, and produced such exquisitely Ciceronian phrases as these:
"Stante pede morire;" "De gustibus non est disputandus;" "Tot verbas tot
spondera." Of Italian he had not enough to read a page of Metastasio
with ease; and of the Spanish and English, he did not, as far as we are
aware, understand a single word.

As the highest human compositions to which he had access were those of
the French writers, it is not strange that his admiration for those
writers should have been unbounded. His ambitious and eager temper early
prompted him to imitate what he admired. The wish, perhaps, dearest to
his heart was that he might rank among the masters of French rhetoric
and poetry. He wrote prose and verse as indefatigably as if he had been
a starving hack of Cave or Osborn; but Nature, which had bestowed on
him, in a large measure, the talents of a captain and of an
administrator, had withheld from him those higher and rarer gifts,
without which industry