t looked soon to have quitted said light at one stage
of the business.

We are now approaching Act Second of the Double-Marriage, where Imperial
Ordnance-Master Graf von Seckendorf, a Black-Artist of supreme quality,
despatched from Vienna on secret errand, "crosses the Palace Esplanade
at Berlin on a summer evening of the year 1726;" and evokes all the
demons on our little Crown-Prince and those dear to him. We must first
say something of an important step, shortly antecedent thereto, which
occurred in the Crown-Prince's educational course.

Chapter V. -- CROWN-PRINCE GOES INTO THE POTSDAM GUARDS.

Amid such commotion of the foreign elements and the domestic, an
important change occurs in the Crown-Prince's course of schooling. It is
decided that, whatever be his progress in the speculative branches, it
is time he should go into the Army, and practically learn soldiering.
In his fourteenth year, 3d May, 1725, [Preuss, i. 26; 106; and _Buch fur
Jedermann_ (a minor book of his, on the same subject, Berlin, 1837),
ii. 13.] not long before the Treaty of Hanover, he was formally named
Captain, by Papa in War-council. Grenadier Guards, Potsdam Lifeguards,
to be the regiment; and next year he is nominated Major, and, a vacancy
occurring, appointed to begin actual duty. It is on the "20th of August,
1726, that he first leads out his battalion to the muster," on those
terms. His age is not yet fifteen by four months;--a very tiny Major
among those Potsdam giants; but by rank, we observe, he rides; and his
horse is doubtless of the due height. And so the tiny Cadet-drillings
have ended; long Files of Giants, splendent in gold-lace and
grenadier-caps, have succeeded; and earnest work instead of mimic, in
that matter, has begun.

However it may have fared with his other school-lessons, here now is a
school-form he is advanced to, in which there will be no resource but
learning. Bad spelling might be overlooked by those that had charge of
it; bad drilling is not permissible on any terms. We need not doubt the
Crown-Prince did his soldier-duty faithfully, and learned in every point
the conduct of an officer: penalty as of Rhadamanthus waited upon all
failure there. That he liked it is by no means said; he much disliked
it, and his disgusts were many. An airy young creature:--and it was
in this time to give one instance, that that shearing of his locks
occurred: which was spoken of above, where the Court-Chirurgus proved so