was noble. In several instances, even foreign noblemen were, avowedly on the ground of their birth, preferred for officers' places to native plebeians. In like manner, none but youths of good family were allowed admission into the College of Cadets. So late as 1784 we find Frederick directing the expulsion of three brothers named Stephani as being deficient in this essential qualification not of true and right nobility," says the King himself. Celibacy, though recommended in most services, has never yet been so rigidly enforced in any other; as an instance, it is mentioned that when in 1778 the Baireuth regiment of dragoons was reviewed by the King, it contained seventy-four officers, and of these not one-from the commander, General Bülow, down to the youngest Ensign-was a married man! In other respects the duties were very severe, and the least departures from them punished by long arrests, while the pay was extremely small, and leave of absence seldom granted.

Scanty, however, as were the allowances of the Prussian army, they absorbed the larger share of the revenues of the state. In 1740, just before the accession of Frederick, it is stated that from a total income of 7,137,000 dollars, not less than 5,977,000 were devoted to the military department. At Frederick's decease in 1786, when the provinces had more than doubled in extent and population, and much more than doubled in productive industry, the income was twenty-two millions, and the expenses of the army thirteen. Yet notwithstanding this constant and enormous drain on his resources, such was the wise economy of Frederick, that he never seemed to want money whenever any object of public utility seemed to need assistance. We have already noticed his taste for building as shown in his costly palaces, but it would be doing him great injustice to suppose that it was confined to them; not only his capital, but his principal cities, such as Breslau, owed him the construction of libraries, theatres, and other stately public edifices, besides new streets and squares for private houses. In one of his letters of 1773, he is able to boast with just pride that he had that very year begun to rebuild some towns in Prussian Poland, which had lain in ruins ever since the pestilence of 1709.† In the same year he made arrangement for founding sixty new villages among the waste lands of Upper Silesia, and for rebuilding two towns in the same district, which had been destroyed by conflagration; they were of wood,' says he, but they shall now be of brick or of stone from the neighbouring quarries which we have opened.' In 1775 we find him establish and endow at once an hundred and

* Von wal.rem und rechten Adel.

To Volatire, Oct. 24, 1773.

eighty schools in his new Polish province-some, of the Protestant, and others of the Roman Catholic communion.* Were there any veins of metal discovered in the mountains-did any district suffer either from drought or inundation in the plainsdid any new manufacture call for bounties-was there any attempt of producing at home instead of importing from abroad-in all these, and many other such cases, and without distinction of province or of creed, the succouring hand of Frederick was extended. His subjects found that he would not give alms to compassion, but only aids to restoration or improvement; he would help them whenever they would bestir themselves. On his yearly journeys through his states he was always on the watch for old abuses to correct, or new works of public benefit to commence. His questions were ever: Why not drain yonder marshes? why should that range of hills remain bare? might not this sheltered hollow bear fruit-trees? should not a new bridge span that river, or a new road pierce that forest? Nor were these mere vague recommendations: they became the first germ of speedy plans and estimates, and when the King passed by in the ensuing year, or summoned his provincial officers to Potsdam, he insisted on ascertaining what real progress had been made. Activity of any kind is rare, when great wealth and power of indolence exist; but how much rarer still to find it thus welldirected and steady in its aim! We had once the high honour of being for a short time in the company of a Prince, whose mind struck us as a curious contrast to Frederick's; he asked nearly the same questions, but seldom paused to hear the answer, or cried, Right-quite right-exactly so'--whatever the answer might be!

To show more clearly how close and minute was Frederick's superintendence of his provincial affairs, we will give an account of one of his Ministers Reviews,' as they were termed—that is a conference which he held every summer with the principal holders of office. Of the one which took place at Sans Souci on the 1st of June, 1770, a summary was drawn up by the Minister of State Von Derschau, for the information of an absent colleague:

'His Majesty received us with a most gracious countenance, and said, "Gentlemen, I have caused you to come that we might examine our household affairs together." We replied that we had duly prepared ourselves for this investigation upon which he proceeded to say that he had himself inspected in the Oder-bruch the district which had suffered this year by the inundations of the Oder, and had found the damage by no means so great as it had been represented to him. "One ought not,"

* Letter to D'Alembert, June 19, 1775.

he added, "to be too much dismayed by such calamities of Nature, however frightful they seem at first; since Nature is apt herself to repair, and at no long interval, the havoc she has made." At Freienwalde there were only two small breaches in the dam, and only about twentyfive houses slightly damaged, so that the whole real loss of the inhabitants would be scarcely more than a few cartloads of hay and the growing crops on the ground. His Majesty then proceeded: "I do not therefore see the necessity of such large sums as you have proposed to me to grant in remission of taxes and compensations for losses. However I will allow 60,000 dollars. When the water shall have flowed off again the Minister of State Von Hagen shall go to the spot and examine everything more exactly. But I cannot conceal from you how much I was dissatisfied at finding the new church in the Oder-bruch not yet completed. I desire that you will again send a sharp order to Lieut.Colonel Petri to take measures for having the church ready soon, or it shall be the worse for him!

Upon this his Majesty took up the account of the sums proposed to be allotted, and said, "1. That as to the funds for repairing the Oderdam they were already assigned. 2. That in addition he would gladly grant the 13,000 dollars proposed for the new sluice at Plauen. 3. That he would undertake the cost of the stables for the Cuirassiers' horses at Kyritz, and of the hospital and orphan-asylum at Belgard, since these expenses were both needful and useful. 4. That he would refer to the Board of General Direction the charges required for the harbours of Rügenwald and Colberg.

'When this was over, the King looked through with a keen eye the accounts of the Chambre des Domaines and of the Caisse Militaire, and signed them respectively. He then opened his desk, drew out a paper, and read to us a statement of the considerable sums which he intends this year, as far as he finds it possible, to devote to the benefit of his dominions. Among these sums we especially noticed 300,000 dollars for the nobility of Pomerania, 20,000 for the province of Hohnstein, and 30,000 on account to restore the towns in the March of Brandenburg. On the first item the King observed:-" Gentlemen, I recommend to you especially the upholding and supporting my nobility. I lay great stress upon that order, for I require it both for my army and my civil administration. You know how many valuable men I have already drawn from it, and what I have been able to do by its means."

'Before dinner the King spoke to us on sundry other matters, and said, amongst the rest, that it gave him pleasure whenever any of his subjects travelled into foreign states with views of improvement, and brought back useful knowledge to their native country. He added, that during his last journey through Pomerania he had seen at Colbatz the Ober-Amtman Sydow, who, together with his son, had been lately in England, and had studied the English system of husbandry. They understand how to grow lucerne, and what are termed TURNIPS (a white root for fodder, of which nine or ten often reach an hundredweight); and experiments in the culture of both have been made in Pomerania

with excellent success. His Majesty wishes that the same may be done in Brandenburg. We are, therefore, to put ourselves in correspondence with these gentlemen, and receive from them the necessary instructions; and we are, also, to send some sensible Wirthschafts-Schreiber from various Amter in Brandenburg to Colbatz, to observe and afterwards adopt at home the cultivation not only of these turnips and lucerne, but also of the hops, which last his Majesty has recommended to us in the most pressing terms. The King observes that the country-people in Brandenburg are still too stubborn and prejudiced against any new discovery, however good and useful it may be. Therefore, says his Majesty, the men in office should always make a beginning with whatever promises well; and if it answers, then the lower classes will be sure to follow. "You would not think," added his Majesty with much animation," how eager I feel to make the people advance in knowledge and welfare; but you must have often experienced, as I have, how much contradiction and thwarting one meets with, even where one has the best intentions."'

Our limits warn us to carry no further the report of this remarkable interview. We will therefore omit, though reluctantly, the King's remarks and directions as to the better manuring of pasture-lands—the reclaiming of several sandy spots near Löwenberg, Strausberg, Alt-Landsberg, and Werneuchen which he had noticed on his last journey-the draining of the great marshes at Stendal, and with the profits bringing over to the spot a colony of Dutchmen the encouragement of bee-hives and silk-worms, for which last large plantations of mulberry-trees had been made several years before the establishment of extensive nurserygardens near Berlin to be manured from the sweepings of the streets and drains in that city-the planting of fruit-trees in other places likewise, so as to check the importation of dried fruit every year from Saxony, and to keep,' the King added, our money at home-the working of the cobalt and coal-mines in Silesia, and how the coals should be transported, and how applied in bleachinggrounds, tile-kilns, and lime-kilns. After so many and such manifold orders this Ministers' Review' ended, we may observe, in a manner more agreeable than most Cabinet-Councils in England-by a general invitation to the Royal table that same day. During the repast,' adds our reporter, his Majesty was especially condescending and gay, made a great number of jests, and then bade us go-highly delighted at his gracious reception.'

·

In thus considering the administration of Frederick we must always bear in mind that his authority over his people was entirely and in all respects uncontrolled. Not only the treaties with foreign powers and the systems of foreign policy, the army, the ordnance, the shipping, the questions of trade and protecting duties, the imposition or remission of new taxes, and the application of the revenue received, were subject to his despotic sway,

but

but even the decisions of the courts of law, which most other tyrannies hold sacred. Nay more, even beyond the frontiers of the state, personal freedom was so far controlled that no Prussian subject could travel without special permission from the King, and even when that permission was granted there was a Royal Ordinance of October 29, 1766, fixing the amount of pocketmoney which he might take with him: if a nobleman or an officer, 400 dollars; if neither, 250. The government was, in fact, one of those which, when well administered, as was Frederick's, are called by friends Patriarchal or Paternal, which leave little to individual choice or enterprise, but direct every man to the path in which he should go.

It is remarkable that Frederick, who not only possessed but actively wielded this uncontrolled authority, and who never to his dying day manifested the slightest idea of relaxing it, yet in many of his writings expresses the most ardent aspirations for freedom. Thus in his epistle to the Marquis d'Argens :

"Vous de la liberté héros que je révère,

O Mânes de Caton, o Mânes de Brutus!'

Or when he thus upbraids Hermothême :—

Votre esprit est imbu des préjugés vulgaires,
Vos parchemins usés ne sont que des chimères.'

We remember that in Emile Rousseau points an eloquent invective against those mock-philanthropists who profess unbounded zeal for the Tartars, but who will never help a poor neighbour at the door. In like manner we confess that we feel small reverence for those Kings who never part with one iota of their inherited despotism, who give a subject the hem of their garment to kiss, who bound their promotions to nobles, and who leave their peasantry serfs, and yet with all this love to prate of republicans and regicides-provided only that these lived many hundred years ago!

It is certainly true that Frederick, upon the whole, administered his despotic power with enlightened views and with public spirit for the good of his subjects, and it may perhaps be argued, as Montesquieu has done, that despotic power while thus administered, is the best of all forms of government. Take any Prussian town or district during the peaceful years of Frederick, and it will, we believe, appear that amidst very many cases of individual grievance and hardship the general progress of prosperity was rapid and unceasing. No instance can be stronger than that of Silesia. Here was a province won without a shadow of real right from Maria Theresa-a sovereign who, besides her legitimate title, had all the claims to her subjects' sympathy which woman

hood,