rman towns of the Catholic Ermeland,--were in
tolerable circumstances. The other Towns lay in ruins; so also most of
the Hamlets (HOFE) of the open Country. Bromberg, the city of German
Colonists, the Prussians found in heaps and ruins: to this hour it
has not been possible to ascertain clearly how the Town came into this
condition. [_"Neue Preussische Provinzialblotter,_ Year 1854, No. 4, p.
259."] No historian, no document, tells of the destruction and slaughter
that had been going on, in the whole District of the NETZE there, during
the last ten years before the arrival of the Prussians, The Town of
Culm had preserved its strong old walls and stately churches; but in the
streets, the necks of the cellars stood out above the rotten timber and
brick heaps of the tumbled houses: whole streets consisted merely of
such cellars, in which wretched people were still trying to live. Of
the forty houses in the large Market-place of Culm, twenty-eight had no
doors, no roofs, no windows, and no owners. Other Towns were in similar
condition."

"The Country people hardly knew such a thing as bread; many had never
in their life tasted such a delicacy; few Villages possessed an oven. A
weaving-loom was rare, the spinning-wheel unknown. The main article of
furniture, in this bare scene of squalor, was the Crucifix and vessel
of Holy-Water under it [and "POLACK! CATHOLIK!" if a drop of gin
be added].--The Peasant-Noble [unvoting, inferior kind] was hardly
different from the common Peasant: he himself guided his Hook Plough
(HACKEN-PFLUG), and clattered with his wooden slippers upon the
plankless floor of his hut.... It was a desolate land, without
discipline, without law, without a master. On 9,000 English square miles
lived 500,000 souls: not 55 to the square mile."

SETS TO WORK. "The very rottenness of the Country became an attraction
for Friedrich; and henceforth West-Preussen was, what hitherto Silesia
had been, his favorite child; which, with infinite care, like that of an
anxious loving mother, he washed, brushed, new-dressed, and forced to
go to school and into orderly habits, and kept ever in his eye. The
diplomatic squabbles about this 'acquisition' were still going on,
when he had already sent [so early as June 4th, 1772, and still more on
September 13th of that Year [See his new DIALOGUE with Roden, our Wesel
acquaintance, who was a principal Captain in this business (in PREUSS,
iv. 57, 58: date of the Dialogue is "11th M