merciful. To clog the winged Psyche in ever-returning parade-routine and
military pipe-clay,--it seems very cruel. But it is not to be altered:
in spite of one's disgusts, the dull work, to the last item of it,
has daily to be done. Which proved infinitely beneficial to the
Crown-Prince, after all. Hereby, to his Athenian-French elegancies,
and airy promptitudes and brilliancies, there shall lie as basis an
adamantine Spartanism and Stoicism; very rare, but very indispensable,
for such a superstructure. Well exemplified, through after life, in this
Crown-Prince.

OF THE POTSDAM GIANTS, AS A FACT.

His regiment was the Potsdam Grenadier Guard; that unique
giant-regiment, of which the world has heard so much in a vague
half-mythical way. The giant-regiment was not a Myth, however, but a
big-boned expensive Fact, tramping very hard upon the earth at one time,
though now gone all to the ghostly state. As it was a CLASS-BOOK, so
to speak, of our Friedrich's,--Class-Book (printed in huge type) for a
certain branch of his schooling, the details of which are so dim, though
the general outcome of it proved so unforgettable,--readers, apart from
their curiosity otherwise, may as well take a glimpse of it on this
occasion. Vanished now, and grown a Giant Phantom, the like of it hardly
again to be in this world; and by accident, the very smallest Figure
ever ranked in it makes it memorable there!--

With a wise instinct, Friedrich Wilhelm had discerned that all things
in Prussia must point towards his Army; that his Army was the heart and
pith; the State being the tree, every branch and leaf bound, after
its sort, to be nutritive and productive for the Army's behoof. That,
probably for any Nation in the long-run, and certainly for the Prussian
Nation straightway, life or death depends on the Army: Friedrich
Wilhelm's head, in an inarticulate manner, was full of this just notion;
and all his life was spent in organizing it to a practical fact. The
more of potential battle, the more of life is in us: a MAXIMUM of
potential battle, therefore; and let it be the OPTIMUM in quality! How
Friedrich Wilhelm cared, day and night, with all his heart and all his
soul, to bring his Army to the supreme pitch, we have often heard; and
the more we look into his ways, the more we are impressed with that
fact. It was the central thing for him; all other things circulating
towards it, deriving from it: no labor too great, and none too little