Friedrich's History during this intervening Halcyon or Peace Period must, in some way, be made known to readers: but for a great many reasons, especially at present, it behooves to be given in compressed form; riddled down, to an immense extent, out of those sad Prussian Repositories, where the grain of perennial, of significant and still memorable, lies overwhelmed under rubbish-mountains of the fairly extinct, the poisonously dusty and forgettable;--ACH HIMMEL! Which indispensable preliminary process, how can an English Editor, at this time, do it; no Prussian, at any time, having thought of trying it! From a painful Predecessor of mine, I collect, rummaging among his dismal Paper-masses, the following Three Fragments, worth reading here:-- 1. "Friedrich was as busy, in those Years, as in the generality of his life; and his actions, and salutary conquests over difficulties, were many, profitable to Prussia and to himself. Very well worth keeping in mind. But not fit for History; or at least only fit in the summary form; to be delineated in little, with large generic strokes,--if we had the means;--such details belonging to the Prussian Antiquary, rather than to the English Historian of Friedrich in our day. A happy Ten Years of time. Perhaps the time for Montesquieu's aphorism, 'Happy the People whose Annals are blank in History-Books!' The Prussian Antiquary, had he once got any image formed to himself of Friedrich, and of Friedrich's History in its human lineaments and organic sequences, will glean many memorabilia in those Years: which his readers then (and not till then) will be able to intercalate in their places, and get human good of. But alas, while there is no intelligible human image, nothing of lineaments or organic sequences, or other than a jumbled mass of Historical Marine-Stores, presided over by Dryasdust and Human Stupor (unsorted, unlabelled, tied up in blind sacks), the very Antiquary will have uphill work of it, and his readers will often turn round on him with a gloomy expression of countenance!" 2. "Friedrich's Life--little as he expected it, that day when he started up from his ague-fit at Reinsberg, and grasped the fiery Opportunity that was shooting past--is a Life of War. The chief memory that will remain of him is that of a King and man who fought consummately well. Not Peace and the Muses; no, that is denied him,--though he was so unwilling, always, to think it denied! But his Life-Task turned out to be a Battle for Silesia. It consists of Three grand Struggles of War. And not for Silesia only;--unconsciously, for what far greater things to his Nation and to him!