onal society, conversation with a man of sense and
manly character, which Friedrich always much loved, was, no doubt, a
resource to Friedrich in his lonely roamings and vicissitudes in those
dark years. No other British Ambassador ever had the luck to please him
or be pleased by him,--most of them, as Ex-Exchequer Legge and the like
Ex-Parliamentary people, he seems to have considered dull, obstinate,
wooden fellows, of fantastic, abrupt rather abstruse kind of character,
not worth deciphering;--some of them, as Hanbury Williams, with the
mischievous tic (more like galvanism or St.-Vitus'-dance) which he
called "wit," and the inconvenient turn for plotting and intriguing,
Friedrich could not endure at all, but had them as soon as possible
recalled,--of course, not without detestation on their part.

At Leitmeritz, it appears, he kept withdrawn to his closet a good deal;
gave himself up to his sorrows and his thoughts; would sit many hours
drowned in tears, weeping bitterly like a child or a woman. This is
strange to some readers; but it is true,--and ought to alter certain
current notions. Friedrich, flashing like clear steel upon evildoers and
mendacious unjust persons and their works, is not by nature a cruel
man, then, or an unfeeling, as Rumor reports? Reader, no, far the
reverse;--and public Rumor, as you may have remarked, is apt to be an
extreme blockhead, full of fury and stupidity on such points, and
had much better hold its tongue till it know in some measure. Extreme
sensibility is not sure to be a merit; though it is sure to be reckoned
one, by the greedy dim fellows looking idly on: but, in any case, the
degree of it that dwelt (privately, for most part) in Friedrich was
great; and to himself it seemed a sad rather than joyful fact. Speaking
of this matter, long afterwards, to Garve, a Silesian Philosopher, with
whom he used to converse at Breslau, he says;--or let dull Garve himself
report it, in the literal third-person:--

"And herein, I," the Herr Garve (venturing to dispute, or qualify, on
one of his Majesty's favorite topics), "believe, lies the real ground
of 'happiness:' it is the capacity and opportunity to accomplish
great things. This the King would not allow; but said, That I did
not sufficiently take into account the natural feelings, different
in different people, which, when painful, imbittered the life of the
highest as of the lowest. That, in his own life, he had experienced the
deepest su