Mr Harris's first visit to the Continent was in 1767, when he set out on a tour to Holland, Prussia, and Poland, remaining for some time at Berlin, where he had the advantage of seeing the cleverest, though the most eccentric, of all sovereigns, Frederick the Great. A number of traits of character are given, of various degrees of force, but all expressive. The king's chief amusement was playing on the flute, on which he performed very well for an amateur, though, compared with the professional performers, he necessarily made rather an unkingly figure. Frederick, who was afraid of nothing else, was so much afraid of failure in his flute playing, that whenever he had a new piece of music, he shut himself up in his closet some hours beforehand, to practise it; and although no one was permitted to be present at those concerts except a very few select friends, he was always observed to be remarkably nervous at the commencement. He had a fine collection of flutes, all made by the same man, and for which he paid a hundred ducats a-piece. He had an attendant whose sole office was to keep those flutes in order. During the war, when his finances were reduced to so low an ebb that he paid bad coin to every one, he took care that his flute-maker should be paid in good coin, lest, for bad money, he should give him bad flutes. Royal architecture is not always fortunate. It is observed that Louis XIV. built his famous Versailles in a swampy hollow, when he had the noble terrace of St Germain before him. Frederick built his Sans-Souci in a marshy meadow, while he had a fine hill within sight. Unhappily _we_ have but little to boast of in the location of our modern palaces. The site of Buckingham Palace seems to have been chosen with no other object than to discover which was the superior annoyance, the smoke of steam-engines or the vapours of a swamp; and this was chosen with one of the finest possible situations within half a mile of it, in the centre of Hyde Park. Her Majesty's palace at Brighton has been located with exactly the same curious perversion of taste; the hills to the north of that very handsome town offering one of the noblest situations that can be conceived--a fine land view, and an unobstructed sweep of the ocean: but the evil genius of building prevailed, and the palace is fixed in a gloomy bottom, from which it can be overlooked by every body, and from which nothing can be seen. Frederick, though sometimes superb in his expenses, was habitually penurious. He seems to have thought that war was the only thing on which it was worth his while to spend money. The salaries of his gentlemen and attendants were all on the narrowest scale. Lord Malmesbury observes that even the Prince of Dessau's marriage, at which he was present, exhibited this penury. All the apartments, except those immediately used for supper or cards, were lighted with a single candle. The supper had no dessert; the wines were bad; their quantity stinted.