were brought to Berlin; theatres, operas, ballets, were
established; a sort of German Versailles arose amid the sands of
Brandenburg; and the "Garden House outside the gate," which was
Frederick William's summer residence and place of recreation, soon
sank down to the humble rank of a gardener's lodge to his son's
palace! The machinery of government was never carried on with such
perfect regularity. The king superintended the whole himself, and that
without any regular intercourse with his ministers, some of whom, it
is said, he never saw in his life. They furnished him every morning
with abridged statements of the business to be transacted, and he
wrote his order on the margin of the paper; the affairs of state were
all settled in a couple of hours. Literary compositions, in prose and
verse, military reviews, meals, and conversation, filled up the rest
of the day. "Frederick," says Voltaire, in his vile and mischievous
"Memoires," "governed without court, council, or religious
establishment" (_culte_). It was during this brilliant period of the
king's reign that the French poet passed some time at Berlin.

The Austrians, who had ridiculed the drilling and powdering, had paid
for their folly in many a bloody field, but had profited by the
lesson, and could now move as accurately and fire as quickly as their
neighbors. The first combat of the great Seven Years' War, which began
in 1756, already proved this to the conviction of all parties. The
Prussians purchased a slight advantage by a great loss of blood; and
on the very battle-field the general remark was, "These are no longer
the old Austrians." On the capture of the Saxon army, which
surrendered at Pirna, Frederick, who exacted such unlimited allegiance
from his subjects and soldiers, gave a strange proof of inconsistency,
and of that contempt with which he seemed to treat the feelings of
other men; for, without so much as asking their consent, he ordered
all the prisoners to be incorporated into the ranks of his army, and
expected to make loyal Prussians of them by merely changing their
uniforms. As was to be expected, they deserted immediately.

The progress of the war is out of our province. Spoiled by success,
Frederick, after gaining the dearly purchased victory of Prague,
attempted to reduce a city which he could not invest, and in which an
army was concentrated. The Austrians advanced with 60,000 men to raise
the siege; and the presumptuous king did not hes