last; and amount to boundless masses
of the liveliest Parliamentary Eloquence, now fallen extinct to all
creatures. [Given, to great lengths, in _Helden-Geschichte,_ iii. iv.
(and other easily avoidable Books).] The Kaiser, otherwise a solid
pacific gentleman, intent on commercial operations (furnishes a good
deal of our meal, says Friedrich), is Officially extremely violent in
behalf of injured Saxony,--that is to say, in fact, of injured Austria,
which is one's own. Kur-Mainz, Chairman of the Diet (we remember how he
was got, and a Battle of Dettingen fought in consequence, long since);
Kur-Mainz is admitted to have the most decided Austrian leanings:
Britannic George, Austria being now in the opposite scale, finds him
an unhandy Kur-Mainz, and what profit it was to introduce false weights
into the Reich's balance that time! Not for long generations before, had
the poor old semi-imaginary Reich's-Diet risen into such paroxysms; nor
did it ever again after. Never again, in its terrestrial History, was
there such agonistic parliamentary struggle, and terrific noise of
parliamentary palaver, witnessed in the poor Reich's-Diet. Noise and
struggle rising ever higher, peal after peal, from September, 1756, when
it started, till August, 1757, when it had reached its acme (as perhaps
we shall see), though it was far from ending then, or for years to come.

Contemporary by-standers remark, on the Austrian part, extraordinary
rage and hatred against Prussia; which is now the one point memorable.
Austria is used to speak loud in the Diet, as we have ourselves seen:
and it is again (if you dive into those old AEolus'-Caves, at your
peril) unpleasantly notable to what pitch of fixed rage, and hot sullen
hatred Austria has now gone; and how the tone has in it a potency of
world-wide squealing and droning, such as you nowhere heard before.
Omnipotence of droning, edged with shrieky squealing, which fills the
Universe, not at all in a melodious way. From the depths of the gamut
to the shrieky top again,--a droning that has something of porcine or
wild-boar character. Figure assembled the wild boars of the world, all
or mostly all got together, and each with a knife just stuck into its
side, by a felonious individual too well known,--you will have some
notion of the sound of these things. Friedrich sometimes remonstrates:
"Cannot you spare such phraseology, unseemly to Kings? The quarrels of
Kings have to be decided by the sword; what