honor to remain with him some
hours in his closet. I must own to your Lordship I was most sensibly
afflicted to see him indulging his grief, and giving way to the warmest
filial affections; recalling to mind the many obligations he had to her
late Majesty; all she had suffered, and how nobly she bore it; the good
she did to everybody; the one comfort he now had, to think of having
tried to make her last years more agreeable." [_Papers and Memoirs,_ i.
253; Despatch to Holderness, 4th July (slightly abridged);--see ib.
i. 357-359 (Private Journal). Westphalen, ii. 14. See _OEuvres de
Frederic,_ iv. 182.] In the thick of public business, this kind of mood
to Mitchell seems to have lasted all the time of Leitmeritz, which is
about three weeks yet: Mitchell's Note-books and Despatches, in that
part, have a fine Biographic interest; the wholly human Friedrich
wholly visible to us there as he seldom is. Going over his past Life to
Mitchell; brief, candid, pious to both his Parents;--inexpressibly sad;
like moonlight on the grave of one's Mother, silent that, while so much
else is too noisy!

This Friedrich, upon whom the whole world has risen like a mad
Sorcerer's-Sabbath, how safe he once lay in his cradle, like the rest of
us, mother's love wrapping him soft:--and now! These thoughts commingle
in a very tragic way with the avalanche of public disasters which is
thundering down on all sides. Warm tears the meed of this new sorrow;
small in compass, but greater in poignancy than all the rest together.
"My poor old Mother, oh, my Mother, that so loved me always, and would
have given her own life to shelter mine!"--It was at Leitmeritz, as
I guess, that Mitchell first made decisive acquaintance, what we
may almost call intimacy, with the King: we already defined him as a
sagacious, long-headed, loyal-hearted diplomatic gentleman, Scotch by
birth and by turn of character; abundantly polite, vigilant, discreet,
and with a fund of general sense and rugged veracity of mind; whom
Friedrich at once recognized for what he was, and much took to, finding
a hearty return withal; so that they were soon well with one another,
and continued so. Mitchell, as orders were, "attended the King's person"
all through this War, sometimes in the blaze of battle itself and
nothing but cannon-shot going, if it so chanced; and has preserved, in
his multifarious Papers, a great many traits of Friedrich not to be met
with elsewhere.

Mitchell's occasi