Solid Nicolai hunted diligently after traces of him in the Assessor business here; and found some: Order from Papa, to "make Report, upon the Glass-works of the Neumark:" Autograph signatures to common Reports, one or two; and some traditions of his having had a hand in planning certain Farm-Buildings still standing in those parts:--but as the Kammer Records of Custrin, and Custrin itself, were utterly burnt by the Russians in 1758, such traces had mostly vanished thirty years before Nicolai's time. [Nicolai, _Anekdoten,_ vi. 193.] Enough have turned up since, in the form of Correspondence with the King and otherwise: and it is certain the Crown-Prince did plan Farm-Buildings;--"both Carzig and Himmelstadt (Carzig now called FRIEDRICHSFELDE in consequence)," [See Map] dim mossy Steadings, which pious Antiquarianism can pilgrim to if it likes, were built or rebuilt by him:--and it is remarkable withal how thoroughly instructed Friedrich Wilhelm shows himself in such matters; and how paternally delighted to receive such proposals of improvement introducible at the said Carzig and Himmelstadt, and to find young Graceless so diligent, and his ideas even good. [Forster, ii. 390, 387, 391.] Perhaps a momentary glance into those affairs may be permitted farther on. The Prince's life, in this his eclipsed state, is one of constraint, anxiety, continual liability; but after the first months are well over, it begins to be more supportable than we should think. He is fixed to the little Town; cannot be absent any night, without leave from the Commandant; which, however, and the various similar restrictions, are more formal than real. An amiable Crown-Prince, no soul in Custrin but would run by night or by day to serve him. He drives and rides about, in that green peaty country, on Domain business, on visits, on permissible amusement, pretty much at his own modest discretion. A green flat region, made of peat and sand; human industry needing to be always busy on it: raised causeways with incessant bridges, black sedgy ditch on this hand and that; many meres, muddy pools, stagnant or flowing waters everywhere; big muddy Oder, of yellowish-drab color, coming from the south, big black Warta (Warthe) from the Polish fens in the east, the black and yellow refusing to mingle for some miles. Nothing of the picturesque in this country; but a good deal of the useful, of the improvable by economic science; and more of fine productions in it, too, of the floral, and still more interesting sorts, than you would suspect at first sight. Friedrich's worst pinch was his dreadful straitness of income; checking one's noble tendencies on every hand: but the gentry of the district privately subscribed gifts for him (SE COTISIRENT, says Wilhelmina); and one way and other he contrived to make ends meet. Munchow, his President in the Kammer, next to whom sits Friedrich, "King's place standing always ready but empty there," is heartily his