and the like; empty as the east-wind;--with all the Demons laughing at you! Do you consider that Nature too is a swollen flunky, hungry for veils; and can be taken in with your sublime airs of sumptuosity, and the large balance you actually have in Lombard Street? Go to the--General Cesspool, with your nuggets and your ducats!" The flunky world, much stript of its plush and fat perquisites, accuses Friedrich Wilhelm bitterly of avarice and the cognate vices. But it is not so; intrinsically, in the main, his procedure is to be defined as honorable thrift,--verging towards avarice here and there; as poor human virtues usually lean to one side or the other! He can be magnificent enough too, and grudges no expense, when the occasion seems worthy. If the occasion is inevitable, and yet not quite worthy, I have known him have recourse to strange shifts. The Czar Peter, for example, used to be rather often in the Prussian Dominions, oftenest on business of his own: such a man is to be royally defrayed while with us; yet one would wish it done cheap. Posthorses, "two hundred and eighty-seven at every station," he has from the Community; but the rest of his expenses, from Memel all the way to Wesel? Friedrich Wilhelm's marginal response to his FINANZ-DIRECTORIUM, requiring orders once on that subject, runs in the following strange tenor: "Yes, all the way (except Berlin, which I take upon myself); and observe, you contrive to do it for 6,000 thalers (900 pounds),--which is uncommonly cheap, about 1 pound per mile;--won't allow you one other penny (_nit einen Pfennig gebe mehr dazu_); but you are (_sollen Sie_)," this is the remarkable point, "to give out in the world that it costs me from Thirty to Forty Thousand!" [1717: Forster, i. 213.] So that here is the Majesty of Prussia, who beyond all men abhors lies, giving orders to tell one? Alas, yes; a kind of lie, or fib (white fib, or even GRAY), the pinch of Thrift compelling! But what a window into the artless inner-man of his Majesty, even that GRAY fib;--not done by oneself, but ordered to be done by the servant, as if that were cheaper! "Verging upon avarice," sure enough: but, unless we are unjust and unkind, he can by no means be described as a MISER King. He collects what is his; gives you accurately what is yours. For wages paid he will see work done; he will ascertain more and more that the work done be work needful for him; and strike it off, if not. A Spartan man, as we said,--though probably he knew as little of the Spartans as the Spartans did of him. But Nature is still capable of such products: if in Hellas long ages since, why not in Brandenburg now? Chapter V. -- FRIEDRICH WILHELM'S ONE WAR.