might have judged a little otherwise. But Pitt's seat is
altogether temporary, insecure; the ruling deities Newcastle and
Royal Highness, who withal are in standing quarrel. So that Friedrich,
Schmettau, Mitchell pleaded to the deaf. Nothing but "Defend the Weser,"
and ignorant Fatuity ready for the Impossible, is to be made out there.
"Cannot help it, then," thinks Friedrich, often enough, in bad moments;
"Army of Observation will have its fate. Happily there are only 5,000
Prussians in it, Wesel and the other garrisons given up!"

Only 5,000 Prussians: by original Engagement, there should have
been 25,000; and Friedrich's intention is even 45,000 if he prosper
otherwise. For in January, 1757 (Anniversary, or nearly so, of that
NEUTRALITY CONVENTION last year), there had been--encouraged by Pitt,
as I could surmise, who always likes Friedrich--a definite, much closer
TREATY OF ALLIANCE, with "Subsidy of a million sterling," Anti-Russian
"Squadron of Observation in the Baltic," "25,000 Prussians," and other
items, which I forget. Forget the more readily, as, owing to the strange
state of England (near suffocating in its Constitutional bedclothes),
the Treaty could not be kept at all, or serve as rule to poor England's
exertions for Friedrich this Year; exertions which were of the
willing-minded but futile kind, going forward pell-mell, not by plan,
and could reach Friedrich only in the lump,--had there been any "lump"
of them to sum together. But Pitt had gone out;--we shall see what, in
Pitt's absence, there was! So that this Treaty 1757 fell quite into
the waste-basket (not to say, far deeper, by way of "pavement" we know
where!),--and is not mentioned in any English Book; nor was known to
exist, till some Collector of such things printed it, in comparatively
recent times. ["M. Koch in 1802," not very perfectly (Scholl, iii. 30
n.; who copies what Koch has given).] A Treaty 1757, which, except
as emblem of the then quasi-enchanted condition of England, and as
Foreshadow of Pitt's new Treaty in January, 1758, and of three others
that followed and were kept to the letter, is not of moment farther.

REICH'S THUNDER, SLIGHT SURVEY OF IT; WITH QUESTION, WHITHERWARD, IF
ANY-WHITHER.

The thunderous fulminations in the Reich's-Diet--an injured Saxony
complaining, an insulted Kaiser, after vain DEHORTATORIUMS, reporting
and denouncing "Horrors such as these: What say you, O Reich?"--have
been going on since September