No Baresark of them, nor Odin's self, I think, was a bit of truer human stuff;--I confess his value to me, in these sad times, is rare and great. Considering the usual Histrionic, Papin's-Digester, Truculent-Charlatan and other species of "Kings," alone attainable for the sunk flunky populations of an Era given up to Mammon and the worship of its own belly, what would not such a population give for a Friedrich Wilhelm, to guide it on the road BACK from Orcus a little? "Would give," I have written; but alas, it ought to have been "SHOULD give." What THEY "would" give is too mournfully plain to me, in spite of ballot-boxes: a steady and tremendous truth from the days of Barabbas downwards and upwards!--Tuesday, 31st May, 1740, between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, Friedrich Wilhelm died; age fifty-two, coming 15th August next. Same day, Friedrich his Son was proclaimed at Berlin; quilted heralds, with sound of trumpet and the like, doing what is customary on such occasions. On Saturday, 4th June, the King's body is laid out in state; all Potsdam at liberty to come and see. He lies there, in his regimentals, in his oaken coffin, on a raised place in the middle of the room; decent mortuary draperies, lamps, garlands, banderols furnishing the room and him: at his feet, on a black-velvet TABOURET (stool), are the chivalry emblems, helmet, gauntlets, spurs; and on similar stools, at the right hand and the left, lie his military insignia, hat and sash, sword, guidon, and what else is fit. Around, in silence, sit nine veteran military dignitaries; Buddenbrock, Waldau, Derschau, Einsiedel, and five others whom we omit to name. Silent they sit. A grim earnest sight in the shine of the lamplight, as you pass out of the June sun. Many went, all day; looked once again on the face that was to vanish. Precisely at ten at night, the coffin-lid is screwed down: twelve Potsdam Captains take the coffin on their shoulders; four-and-twenty Corporals with wax torches, four-and-twenty Sergeants with inverted halberts lowered; certain Generals on order, and very many following as volunteers; these perform the actual burial,--carry the body to the Garrison Church, where are clergy waiting, which is but a small step off; see it lodged, oak coffin and all, in a marble coffin in the side vault there, which is known to Tourists. [Pauli, viii. 281.] It is the end of the week, and the actual burial is done,--hastened forward for reasons we can guess.