rom small
to great; steadily growing henceforth under guidance: and the contrast
between guidance and no-guidance, or mis-guidance, in such matters, is
again impressively illustrated there. This we see well to be the fact;
and the details of this would be of moment, were they given us: but they
are not;--how could voluminous Dryasdust give them? Then, on the other
hand, the Phenomenon is, for a long while, on so small a scale, wholly
without importance in European politics and affairs, the commonplace
Historian, writing of it on a large scale, becomes unreadable and
intolerable. Witness grandiloquent Pauli our fatal friend, with his
Eight watery Quartos; which gods and men, unless driven by necessity,
have learned to avoid! [Dr. Carl Friedrich Pauli, _Allgemeine
Preussische Staats-Geschichte_, often enough cited here.] The Phenomenon
of Brandenburg is small, remote; and the essential particulars, too
delicate for the eye of Dryasdust, are mostly wanting, drowned deep in
details of the unessential. So that we are well content, my readers and
I, to keep remote from it on this occasion.

On one other point I must give the reader warning. A rock of offence on
which if he heedlessly strike, I reckon he will split; at least no help
of mine can benefit him till he be got off again. Alas, offences must
come; and must stand, like rocks of offence, to the shipwreck of many!
Modern Dryasdust, interpreting the mysterious ways of Divine Providence
in this Universe, or what he calls writing History, has done uncountable
havoc upon the best interests of mankind. Hapless godless dullard that
he is; driven and driving on courses that lead only downward, for him
as for us! But one could forgive him all things, compared with this
doctrine of devils which he has contrived to get established, pretty
generally, among his unfortunate fellow-creatures for the time!--I must
insert the following quotation, readers guess from what author:--

"In an impudent Pamphlet, forged by I know not whom, and published in
1766, under the title of _Matinees du Roi de Prusse,_ purporting to
be 'Morning Conversations' of Frederick the Great with his Nephew the
Heir-Apparent, every line of which betrays itself as false and spurious
to a reader who has made any direct or effectual study of Frederick
or his manners or affairs,--it is set forth, in the way of exordium to
these pretended royal confessions, that _'notre maison,'_ our Family
of Hohenzollern, ever sin