"RUPPIN. 23d FEBRUARY, 1734. MY DEAR BROTHER,--I can with pleasure answer that the King hath spoken of thee altogether favorably to me [scrape now abolished, for the time]:--and I think it would not have an ill effect, wert thou to apply for leave to go with the ten thousand whom he is sending to the Rhine, and do the Campaign with them as volunteer. I am myself going with that corps; so I doubt not the King would allow thee. "I take the freedom to send herewith a few bottles of Champagne; and wish" all manner of good things. "FRIEDRICH." [Ib. xxvii. part 2d, p. 10.] This Margraf Heinrich goes; also his elder Brother, Margraf Friedrich Wilhelm,--who long persecuted Wilhelmina with his hopes; and who is now about getting Sophie Dorothee, a junior Princess, much better than he merits: Betrothal is the week after these ten thousand march; [16th April, 1734 (Ib. part 1st, p. 14 n).] he thirty, she fifteen. He too will go; as will the other pair of Cousin Margraves,--Karl, who was once our neighbor in Custrin; and the Younger Friedrich Wilhelm, whose fate lies at Prag if he knew it. Majesty himself will go as volunteer. Are not great things to be done, with Eugene for General?--To understand the insignificant Siege of Philipsburg, sum-total of the Rhine Campaign, which filled the Crown-Prince's and so many other minds brimful; that Summer, and is now wholly out of every mind, the following Excerpt may be admissible:-- "The unlucky little Town of Philipsburg, key of the Rhine in that quarter, fortified under difficulties by old Bishops of Speyer who sometimes resided there, [Kohler, _Munzbelustigungen,_ vi. 169.] has been dismantled and refortified, has had its Rhine-bridge torn down and set up again; been garrisoned now by this party, now by that, who had 'right of garrison there;' nay France has sometimes had 'the right of garrison;'--and the poor little Town has suffered much, and been tumbled sadly about in the Succession-wars and perpetual controversies between France and Germany in that quarter. In the time we are speaking of, it has a 'flying-bridge' (of I know not what structure), with fortified 'bridge-head (TETE-DE-PONT,)' on the western or France-ward side of the River. Town's bulwarks, and complex engineering defences, are of good strength, all put in repair for this occasion: Reich and Kaiser have an effective garrison there, and a commandant determined on defence to the uttermost: what the unfortunate Inhabitants, perhaps a thousand or so in number, thought or did under such a visitation of ruin and bombshells, History gives not the least hint anywhere. 'Quite used to it!' thinks History, and attends to other points.