woe of Europe, and give law to the Nation," [Wilhelmina, i. 143.]--in a manner! Which Wilhelmina did not think a celestial prospect even then. Who knows but, of all the offers she had, "four" or three "crowned heads" among them, this final modest honest one may be intrinsically the best? Take your portion, if inevitable, and be thankful!-- The Betrothal follows in about a week: Sunday, 3d June, 1731; with great magnificence, in presence of the high guests and all the world: and Wilhelmina is the affianced Bride of Friedrich of Baireuth:--and that enormous Double-Marriage Tragi-comedy, of Much Ado about Nothing, is at last ended. Courage, friends; all things do end!-- The high guests hereupon go their ways again; and the Court of Berlin, one cannot but suppose, collapses, as after a great effort finished. Do not Friedrich Wilhelm and innumerable persons--the readers and the writer of this History included--feel a stone rolled off their hearts?--It is now, and not till now, that Queen Sophie falls sick, and like to die; and reproaches Wilhelmina with killing her. Friedrich Wilhelm hopes confidently, not; waits out at Potsdam, for a few days, till this killing danger pass; then departs, with double impetuosity, for Preussen, and despatch of Public Business; such a mountain of Domestic Business being victoriously got under. Poor King, his life, this long while, has been a series of earthquakes and titanic convulsions. Narrow miss he has had, of pulling down his house about his ears, and burying self, son, wife, family and fortunes, under the ruin-heap,--a monument to remote posterity. Never was such an enchanted dance, of well-intentioned Royal Bear with poetic temperament, piped to by two black-artists, for the Kaiser's and Pragmatic Sanction's sake! Let Tobacco-Parliament also rejoice; for truly the play was growing dangerous, of late. King and Parliament, we may suppose, return to Public Business with double vigor. Chapter IV. -- CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN PREUSSEN AND ELSEWHERE. Not that his Majesty, while at the deepest in domestic intricacies, ever neglects Public Business. This very summer he is raising Hussar Squadrons; bent to introduce the Hussar kind of soldiery into his Army;--a good deal of horse-breaking and new sabre-exercise needed for that object. [Fassmann, pp. 417, 418.] The affairs of the Reich have at no moment been out of his eye; glad to see the Kaiser edging round to the Sea-Powers again, and things coming into their old posture, in spite of that sad Treaty of Seville.