Friedrich's "Three principal Secretaries of State," as we should designate them, are very remarkable. Three Clerks he found, or had known of, somewhere in the Public Offices; and now took, under some advanced title, to be specially his own Private Clerks: three vigorous long-headed young fellows, "Eichel, Schuhmacher, Lautensack" the obscure names of them; [Rodenbeck, 15th June, 1740.] out of whom, now and all along henceforth, he got immensities of work in that kind. They lasted all his life; and, of course, grew ever more expert at their function. Close, silent; exact as machinery: ever ready, from the smallest clear hint, marginal pencil-mark, almost from a glance of the eye, to clothe the Royal Will in official form, with the due rugged clearness and thrift of words. "Came punctually at four in the morning in summer, five in winter;" did daily the day's work; and kept their mouths well shut. A very notable Trio of men; serving his Majesty and the Prussian Nation as Principal Secretaries of State, on those cheap terms;--nay almost as Houses of Parliament with Standing Committees and appendages, so many Acts of Parliament admittedly rather wise, being passed daily by his Majesty's help and theirs!--Friedrich paid them rather well; they saw no society; lived wholly to their work, and to their own families. Eichel alone of the three was mentioned at all by mankind, and that obscurely; an "abstruse, reserved, long-headed kind of man;" and "made a great deal of money in the end," insinuates Busching, [_Beitrage,_ v. 238, &c.] no friend of Friedrich's or his. In superficial respects, again, Friedrich finds that the Prussian King ought to have a King's Establishment, and maintain a decent splendor among his neighbors,--as is not quite the case at present. In this respect he does make changes. A certain quantity of new Pages, new Goldsticks; some considerable, not too considerable, new furbishing of the Royal Household,--as it were, a fair coat of new paint, with gilding not profuse,--brought it to the right pitch for this King, About "a hundred and fifty" new figures of the Page and Goldstick kind, is the reckoning given. [_Helden Geschichte,_ i. 353.] So many of these; and there is an increase of 16,000 to one's Army going on: that is the proportion noticeable. In the facts as his Father left them Friedrich persisted all his life; in the semblances or outer vestures he changed, to this extent for the present.--These are the Phenomena of Friedrich's Accession, noted by us.