History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 15Carlyle, Thomas
History
History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 15
Carlyle, Thomas
Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786; Prussia (Germany) -- History -- Frederick II, 1740-1786; Social problems
"It is a high-lying irregularly hilly Country; hilly, not mountainous.
Various streams rise out of it that have a long course,--among others,
the Spree, which washes Berlin;--especially three Valleys cross it,
three Rivers with their Valleys: Bober, Queiss, Neisse (the THIRD Neisse
we have come upon); all running northward, pretty much parallel, though
all are branches of the Oder. This is Neisse THIRD, we say; not the
Neisse of Neisse City, which we used to know at the north base of
the Giant Mountains, nor the Roaring Neisse, which we have seen at
Hohenfriedberg; but a third [and the FOURTH and last, "Black Neisse,"
thank Heaven, is an upper branch of this, and we have, and shall have,
nothing to do with it!]--third Neisse, which we may call the Lausitz
Neisse. On which, near the head of it, there is a fine old spinning,
linen-weaving Town called Zittau,--where, to make it memorable, one
Tourist has read, on the Town-house, an Inscription worth repeating:
'BENE FACERE ET MALE AUDIRE REGIUM EST, To do good and have evil said
of you, is a kingly thing.' Other Towns, as Gorlitz, and seventy miles
farther the above-said Guben, lie on this same Neisse,--shall we
add that Herrnhuth stands near the head of it? The wondrous Town of
Herrnhuth (LORD'S-KEEPING), founded by Count Zinzendorf, twenty
years before those dates; ["In 1722, the first tree felled" (LIVES of
Zinzendorf).] where are a kind of German Methodist-Quakers to this day,
who have become very celebrated in the interim. An opulent enough, most
silent, strictly regular, strange little Town. The women are in uniform;
wives, maids, widows, each their form of dress. Missionaries, speaking
flabby English, who have been in the West Indies or are going thither,
seem to abound in the place; male population otherwise, I should think,
must be mainly doing trade elsewhere; nothing but prayers, preachings,
charitable boarding-schooling and the like, appeared to be going on.
Herrnhuth is 'a Sabbath Petrified; Calvinistic Sabbath done into Stone,'
as one of my companions called it." [Tourist's Note (Autumn, 1852).]
Herrnhuth, of which all Englishmen have heard, stands near the head of
this our third Neisse; as does Zittau, a few miles higher up. I can do
nothing more to give it mark for them. Bober Valley, then Queiss Valley,
which run parallel though they join at last, and become Bober wholly
before getting into the Oder,--these two Valleys and Rivers lie in
Friedrich's own Territory; and are between him and the Lausitz, Queiss
River being the boundary of Silesia and the Lausitz here. It is down
the Neisse that Prince Karl means to march. There are Saxons already
gathering about Zittau; and down as far as Guben they are making
Magazines and arrangements,--for it is all their own Country in those
years, though most of it is Prussia's now. Prince Karl's march will go
parallel to the Bober and the Queiss; separated from the Queiss in this
part by an undulating Hill-tract of twenty miles or more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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