from the Peace one. Neither is
any borrowing possible; that sublime Art, of rolling over on you know
not whom the expenditure, needful or needless, of your heavy-laden self,
had not yet--though England is busy at it--been invented among Nations.
Once, or perhaps twice, from the STANDE of some willing Province,
Friedrich negotiated some small Loan; which was punctually repaid when
Peace came, and was always gratefully remembered. But these are as
nothing, in face of such expenses; and the thought how he did contrive
on the Finance side, is and was not a little wonderful. An ingenious
Predecessor, whom I sometimes quote, has expressed himself in these
words:--

"Such modicum of Subsidy [he is speaking of the English Subsidy in
1758], how useful will it prove in a Country bred everywhere to Spartan
thrift, accustomed to regard waste as sin, and which will lay out no
penny except to purpose! I guess the Prussian Exchequer is, by this
time, much on the ebb; idle precious metals tending everywhere towards
the melting-pot. At what precise date the Friedrich-Wilhelm balustrades,
and enormous silver furnitures, were first gone into, Dryasdust has
not informed me: but we know they all went; as they well might. To me
nothing is so wonderful as Friedrich's Budget during this War. One day
it will be carefully investigated, elucidated and made conceivable and
certain to mankind: but that as yet is far from being the case. We
walk about in it with astonishment; almost, were it possible, with
incredulity. Expenditure on this side, work done on that: human nature,
especially British human nature, refuses to conceive it. Never in this
world, before or since, was the like. The Friedrich miracles in War are
great; but those in Finance are almost greater. Let Dryasdust bethink
him; and gird his flabby loins to this Enterprise; which is very
behooveful in these Californian times!"--

The general Secret of Prussian Thrift, I do fear, is lost from the
world. And how an Army of about 200,000, in field and garrison, could
be kept on foot, and in some ability to front combined Europe, on about
Three Million Sterling annually ("25 million THALERS"=3,150,000
pounds, that is the steady War-Budget of those years), remains to us
inconceivable enough;--mournfully miraculous, as it were; and growing
ever more so in the Nugget-generations that now run. Meanwhile, here are
what hints I could find, on the Origins of that modest Sum, which also
are a won