Peter III., who succeeded has lang been privately a sworn friend and admirer of the King; and hastens, not too SLOWLY as the King had feared, but far the reverse, to make that known to all mankind. That, and much else,--in a far too headlong manner, poor soul! Like an ardent, violent, totally inexperienced person (enfranchised SCHOOL-BOY, come to the age of thirty-four), who has sat hitherto in darkness, in intolerable compression; as if buried alive! He is now Czar Peter, Autocrat, not of Himself only, but of All the Russias;--and has, besides the complete regeneration of Russia, two great thoughts: FIRST, That of avenging native Holstein, and his poor martyr of a Father now with God, against the Danes;--and, SECOND, what is scarcely second in importance to the first, and indeed is practically a kind of preliminary to it, That of delivering the Prussian Pattern of Heroes from such a pattern of foul combinations, and bringing Peace to Europe, while he settles the Holstein-Danish business. Peter is Russian by the Mother's side; his Mother was Sister of the late Catin, a Daughter, like her, of Czar Peter called the Great, and of the little brown Catharine whom we saw transiently long ago. His Holstein Business shall concern us little; but that with Friedrich, during the brief Six Months allowed him for it,--for it, and for all his remaining businesses in this world,--is of the highest importance to Friedrich and us. Peter is one of the wildest men; his fate, which was tragical, is now to most readers rather of a ghastly grotesque than of a lamentable and pitiable character. Few know, or have ever considered, in how wild an element poor Peter was born and nursed; what a time he has had, since his fifteenth year especially, when Cousin of Zerbst and he were married. Perhaps the wildest and maddest any human soul had, during that Century. I find in him, starting out from the Lethean quagmires where he had to grow, a certain rash greatness of idea; traces of veritable conviction, just resolution; veritable and just, though rash. That of admiration for King Friedrich was not intrinsically foolish, in the solitary thoughts of the poor young fellow; nay it was the reverse; though it was highly inopportune in the place where he stood. Nor was the Holstein notion bad; it was generous rather, noble and natural, though, again, somewhat impracticable in the circumstances.