not unpropitious to pleasure.
Nobody had the least suspicion that a tyrant of extraordinary military
and political talents, of industry more extraordinary still, without
fear, without faith, and without mercy, had ascended the throne.

The disappointment of Falstaff at his old boon companion's coronation
was not more bitter than that which awaited some of the inmates of
Rheinsberg. They had long looked forward to the accession of their
patron, as to the event from which their own prosperity and greatness
was to date. They had at last reached the promised land,--the land which
they had figured to themselves as flowing with milk and honey; and they
found it a desert. "No more of these fooleries," was the short, sharp
admonition given by Frederic to one of them. It soon became plain that,
in the most important points, the new sovereign bore a strong family
likeness to his predecessor. There was indeed a wide difference between
the father and the son as respected extent and vigor of intellect,
speculative opinions, amusements, studies, outward demeanor. But the
groundwork of the character was the same in both. To both were common
the love of order, the love of business, the military taste, the
parsimony, the imperious spirit, the temper irritable even to ferocity,
the pleasure in the pain and humiliation of others. But these
propensities had in Frederic William partaken of the general unsoundness
of his mind, and wore a very different aspect when found in company with
the strong and cultivated understanding of his successor. Thus, for
example, Frederic was as anxious as any prince could be about the
efficiency of his army. But this anxiety never degenerated into a
monomania, like that which led his father to pay fancy prices for
giants. Frederic was as thrifty about money as any prince or any private
man ought to be. But he did not conceive, like his father, that it was
worth while to eat unwholesome cabbages for the purpose of saving four
or five rix-dollars in the year. Frederic was, we fear, as malevolent as
his father; but Frederic's wit enabled him often to show his malevolence
in ways more decent than those to which his father resorted, and to
inflict misery and degradation by a taunt instead of a blow. Frederic,
it is true, by no means relinquished his hereditary privilege of kicking
and cudgelling. His practice, however, as to that matter, differed in
some important respects from his father's. To Frederic William, th