Friedrich's Domestic History was not of noisy nature, during this interval:--and indeed in the bewildered Records given of it, there is nothing visible, at first, but one wide vortex of simmering inanities; leading to the desperate conclusion that Friedrich had no domestic history at all. Which latter is by no means the fact! Your poor Prussian Dryasdust (without even an Index to help you) being at least authentic, if you look a long time intensely and on many sides, features do at last dawn out of those sad vortexes; and you find the old Reinsberg Program risen to activity again; and all manner of peaceable projects going on. Friedrich visits the Baths of Aachen (what we call Aix-la-Chapelle); has the usual Inspections, business activities, recreations, visits of friends. He opens his Opera-House, this first winter. He enters on Law-reform, strikes decisively into that grand problem; hoping to perfect it. What is still more significant, he in private begins writing his MEMOIRS. And furthermore, gradually determines on having a little Country House, place of escape from his big Potsdam Palace; and gets plans drawn for it,--place which became very famous, by the name of SANS-SOUCI, in times coming. His thoughts are wholly pacific; of Life to Minerva and the Arts, not to Bellona and the Battles:--and yet he knows well, this latter too is an inexorable element. About his Army, he is quietly busy; augmenting, improving it; the staff of life to Prussia and him. Silesian Fortress-building, under ugly Walrave, goes on at a steadily swift rate. Much Silesian settlement goes on; fixing of the Prussian-Austrian Boundaries without; of the Catholic-Protestant limits within: rapid, not too rough, remodelling of the Province from Austrian into Prussian, in the Financial, Administrative and every other respect:--in all which important operations the success was noiseless, but is considered to have been perfect, or nearly so. Cannot we, from these enormous Paper-masses, carefully riddled, afford the reader a glimpse or two, to quicken his imagination of these things? SETTLES THE SILESIAN BOUNDARIES, THE SILESIAN ARRANGEMENTS; WITH MANIFEST PROFIT TO SILESIA AND HIMSELF.