Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 421, November 1850Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 68, No. 421, November 1850
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
The name of Dresden was familiarised to English ears in the last war
by the battles fought round it, and the sufferings of its inhabitants.
It is difficult to think of those calamities, and of the calamities to
which every Continental city is exposed in the first breaking out of
hostilities, without a sense of the superior security of our country,
and, it is to be hoped, without a sense of the gratitude due for that
security to the Supreme Disposer of the fates of nations. Of war
England knows little but by her victories.
The close of the Seven Years' War, in 1763, released the envoy from the
more arduous part of his service; and in 1765 he returned to England,
and was made a Knight of the Bath, then an honour much more restricted
than now--the number being few, and the reward unshared, but by public
ministers and military men of the first distinction. His health at this
period had been declining, and, retaining his envoyship to the last,
and with the same vigour of faculties, he died by a short illness in
June 1771. Sir Andrew Mitchell was evidently a man of high spirit,
clear understanding, and active intelligence. His Journals are brief,
yet interesting; and if, instead of writing a Diary, he had given us a
History, no man would have rendered a more important account of one of
the most important periods of Europe.
The remaining career of Frederick we pass, as a portion of universal
history. His battles, his share in the fatal partition of Poland, the
vigorous administration which raised Prussia from a third-rate state to
a first, and from a population of five millions to one of three times
the number, are matters of high interest to the political philosopher.
In the character of Frederick II., there was much that no man of
religious principle can applaud; but the habits of France had been
rendered infidel by the effects of Popery on a lively and ingenious
people. The religion which Voltaire and his followers saw from day
to day was _not_ Christianity--the miracles of supposed saints, and
the worship of a supposed Queen of Heaven, which revolted the common
sense of mankind, extinguished the implicit faith of these keen-witted
Frenchmen. The infidel was only a scoffer at a graver infidelity. The
wit of the Frenchman made his scoff popular; and the German, destined
to be always an imitator, was proud to follow the laugh, without
attempting to examine the logic, of Voltaire.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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