'I have stood a hundred
years');--Beau old and weather-beaten, with his cocked-hat not in the
fresh condition, all his gold-laces tarnished; and generally looking
strange, and in a sort tragical, to find himself, fleeting
creature, become a denizen of the Architectural Fixities and earnest
Eternities!"--

From Potsdam Palace to the New Palace of Sans-Souci may be a mile
distance; flat ground, parallel to the foot of Hills; all through
arbors, parterres, water-works, and ornamental gardenings and cottagings
or villa-ings,--Cottage-Villa for Lord Marischal is one of them. This
mile of distance, taking the COTTAGE Royal of Sans-Souci on its
hill-top as vertex, will be the base of an isosceles or nearly isosceles
triangle, flatter than equilateral. To the Cottage Royal of Sans-Souci
may be about three-quarters of a mile northeast from this New Palace,
and from Potsdam Palace to it rather less. And the whole square-mile or
so of space is continuously a Garden, not in the English sense, though
it has its own beauties of the more artificial kind; and, at any rate,
has memories for you, and footsteps of persons still unforgotten by
mankind.--Here is a Notice of Lord Marischal; which readers will not
grudge; the chronology of the worthy man, in these his later epochs,
being in so hazy a state:--

Lord Marischal, we know well and Pitt knows, was in England in
1761,--ostensibly on the Kintore Heritage; and in part, perhaps, really
on that errand. But he went and came, at dates now uncertain; was back
in Spain after that, had difficult voyagings about; [King's Letters to
him, in _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xx. 282-285.]--and did not get to rest
again, in his Government of Neufchatel, till April, 1762. There is a
Letter of the King's, which at least fixes that point:--

"BRESLAU, 10th APRIL, 1762. My nose is the most impertinent nose in
the universe, MON CHER MYLORD [Queen-Dowager snuff, SPANIOL from
the fountain-head, of Marischal's providing; quality exquisite, but
difficult to get transmitted in the Storms of War]; I am ashamed of the
trouble it costs you! I beg many pardons;--and should be quite abashed,
did I not know how you compassionate the weak points of your friends,
and that, for a long time past, you have a singular indulgence for my
nose. I am very glad to know you happily returned to your Government,
safe at Colombier (DOVE-COTE) in Neufchatel again." This is 10th April,
1762. There, as I gather, quiet in his Dove-cote,