nd does purchase; so that all things and persons can be
falsified and enchanted, as need is. By and by it has got so far,
that Friedrich Wilhelm's Ambassador at London maintains a
cipher-correspondence with Grumkow; and writes to Friedrich Wilhelm,
not what is passing in city or court there, but what Grumkow wishes
Friedrich Wilhelm to think is passing.

Of insinuations, by assent or contradiction, potent if you know the
nature of the beast; of these we need not speak. Tabaks-Collegium has
become a workshop:--human nature can fancy it! Nay human nature can
still read it in the British State-Paper Office, to boundless stupendous
extent;--but ought mostly to suppress it when read.

This is a very strange part of Friedrich Wilhelm's history; and has
caused much wonder in the world: Wilhelmina's Book rather aggravating
than assuaging that feeling, on the part of intelligent readers. A Book
written long afterwards, from her recollections, from her own oblique
point of view; in a beautifully shrill humor; running, not unnaturally,
into confused exaggerations and distortions of all kinds. Not
mendaciously written anywhere, yet erroneously everywhere. Wilhelmina
had no knowledge of the magical machinery that was at work: she
vaguely suspects Grumkow and Seckendorf; but does not guess, in the mad
explosions of Papa, that two devils have got into Papa, and are
doing the mischief. Trusting to memory alone, she misdates, mistakes,
misplaces; jumbles all things topsy-turvy;--giving, on the whole, an
image of affairs which is altogether oblique, dislocated, exaggerative;
and which, in fine, proves unintelligible, if you try to construe it
into a fact or thing DONE. Yet her Human Narrative, in that wide waste
of merely Pedant Maunderings, is of great worth to us. A green tree,
a leafy grove, better or worse, in the wilderness of dead bones and
sand,--how welcome! Many other Books have been written on the matter;
but these to my experience, only darken it more and more. Pull
Wilhelmina STRAIGHT, the best you can; deduct a twenty-five or sometimes
even a seventy-five per cent, from the exaggerative portions of her
statement; you will find her always true, lucid, charmingly human;
and by far the best authority on this part of her Brother's History.
State-Papers to some extent have also been printed on the matter; and
of written State-Papers, here in England and elsewhere, this Editor has,
had several hundred-weights distilled for him: b