indemnifying our Monarchy for
its past losses, by incorporating Polish Prussia with my Old Provinces."
[_OEuvres de Frederic,_ (Preface to MEMOIRS DEPUIS 1763 JUSQU'A 1774),
vi. 6, 7: "MEMOIRES [Chapter FIRST, including all the Polish part] were
finished in 1775; Preface is of 1779."]

Here is a Historian King who uses no rouge-pot in his Narratives,--whose
word, which is all we shall say of it at present, you find to be
perfectly trustworthy, and a representation of the fact as it stood
before himself! What follows needs no vouching for: "This acquisition
was one of the most important we could make, because it joined Pommern
to East Prussia [ours for ages past], and because, rendering us masters
of the Weichsel River, we gained the double advantage of being able to
defend that Kingdom [Ost-Preussen], and to draw considerable tolls from
the Weichsel, as all the trade of Poland goes by that River."

Yes truly! Our interests are very visible: and the interests and wishes
and claims of Poland,--are they nowhere worthy of one word from you, O
King? Nowhere that I have noticed: not any mention of them, or allusion
to them; though the world is still so convinced that perhaps they were
something, and not nothing! Which is very curious. In the whole course
of my reading I have met with no Autobiographer more careless to
defend himself upon points in dispute among his Audience, and marked as
criminal against him by many of them. Shadow of Apology on such points
you search for in vain. In rapid bare summary he sets down the sequel of
facts, as if assured beforehand of your favorable judgment, or with the
profoundest indifference to how you shall judge them; drops his actions,
as an Ostrich does its young, to shift for themselves in the wilderness,
and hurries on his way. This style of his, noticeable of old in regard
to Silesia too, has considerably hurt him with the common kind of
readers; who, in their preconceived suspicions of the man, are all the
more disgusted at tracing in him, not the least anxiety to stand well
with any reader, more than to stand ill, AS ill as any reader likes!

Third parties, it would seem, have small temptation to become his
advocates; he himself being so totally unprovided with thanks for you!
But, on another score, and for the sake of a better kind of readers,
there is one third party bound to remark: 1. That hardly any Sovereign
known to us did, in his general practice, if you will examine it, mo