of
Silesia and the Lausitz, as well as of Saxony here!--and answers, with
his own hand, on the instant: "Your Dilection will not be so mad!"
[In Preuss, ii. 58, the pungent little Autograph in full.] And at
once recalls Moritz, and appoints the Prince of Prussia to go and
take command. Who directly went;--a most important step for the King's
interests and his own. Whose fortunes in that business we shall see
before long!--

At Leitmeritz the King continues four weeks, with his Army parted in
this way; waiting how the endless hostile element, which begirdles his
horizon all round, will shape itself into combinations, that he may
set upon the likeliest or the needfulest of these, when once it has
disclosed itself. Horizon all round is black enough: Austrians, French,
Swedes, Russians, Reichs Army; closer upon him or not so close, all are
rolling in: Saxony, the Lausitz and Silesia, Brandenburg itself, it is
uncertain which of these may soonest require his active presence.

The very day after his arrival in Leitmeritz,--Tuesday, 28th June, while
that junction with Keith was going on, and the troops were defiling
along the Bridge for junction with Keith,--a heavy sorrow had befallen
him, which he yet knew not of. An irreparable Domestic loss; sad
complement to these Military and other Public disasters. Queen Sophie
Dorothee, about whose health he had been anxious, but had again been
set quiet, died at Berlin that day. [Monbijou, 28th June, 1757; born at
Hanover, 27th March, 1687.] In her seventy-first year: of no definite
violent disease; worn down with chagrins and apprehensions, in this
black whirlpool of Public troubles. So far as appears, the news came on
Friedrich by surprise:--"bad cough," we hear of, and of his anxieties
about it, in the Spring time; then again of "improvement, recovery, in
the fine weather;"--no thought, just now, of such an event: and he took
it with a depth of affliction, which my less informed readers are far
from expecting of him.

July 2d, the news came: King withdrew into privacy; to weep and bewail
under this new pungency of grief, superadded to so many others. Mitchell
says: "For two days he had no levee; only the Princes dined with him
[Princes Henri and Ferdinand; Prince of Prussia is gone to Jung-Bunzlau,
would get the sad message there, among his other troubles]: yesterday,
July 3d, King sent for me in the afternoon,--the first time he has seen
anybody since the news came:--I had the