History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 21Carlyle, Thomas
History
History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 21
Carlyle, Thomas
Frederick II, King of Prussia, 1712-1786; Prussia (Germany) -- History -- Frederick II, 1740-1786; Social problems
"I should say," continues he, "it somehow reminds you of the City of
Bath. It has the cut of a battered Beau of old date; Beau still extant,
though in strangely other circumstances; something in him of pathetic
dignity in that kind. It shows excellent sound masonries; which have
an over-tendency to jerk themselves into pinnacles, curvatures and
graciosities; many statues atop,--three there are, in a kind of grouped
or partnership attitude; 'These,' said diligent scandal, 'note them;
these mean Maria Theresa, Pompadour and CATIN DU NORD' (mere Muses, I
believe, or of the Nymph or Hamadryad kind, nothing of harm in them).
In short, you may call it the stone Apotheosis of an old French Beau.
Considerably weather-beaten (the brown of lichens spreading visibly
here and there, the firm-set ashlar telling you, 'I have stood a hundred
years');--Beau old and weather-beaten, with his cocked-hat not in the
fresh condition, all his gold-laces tarnished; and generally looking
strange, and in a sort tragical, to find himself, fleeting
creature, become a denizen of the Architectural Fixities and earnest
Eternities!"--
From Potsdam Palace to the New Palace of Sans-Souci may be a mile
distance; flat ground, parallel to the foot of Hills; all through
arbors, parterres, water-works, and ornamental gardenings and cottagings
or villa-ings,--Cottage-Villa for Lord Marischal is one of them. This
mile of distance, taking the COTTAGE Royal of Sans-Souci on its
hill-top as vertex, will be the base of an isosceles or nearly isosceles
triangle, flatter than equilateral. To the Cottage Royal of Sans-Souci
may be about three-quarters of a mile northeast from this New Palace,
and from Potsdam Palace to it rather less. And the whole square-mile or
so of space is continuously a Garden, not in the English sense, though
it has its own beauties of the more artificial kind; and, at any rate,
has memories for you, and footsteps of persons still unforgotten by
mankind.--Here is a Notice of Lord Marischal; which readers will not
grudge; the chronology of the worthy man, in these his later epochs,
being in so hazy a state:--
Lord Marischal, we know well and Pitt knows, was in England in
1761,--ostensibly on the Kintore Heritage; and in part, perhaps, really
on that errand. But he went and came, at dates now uncertain; was back
in Spain after that, had difficult voyagings about; [King's Letters to
him, in _OEuvres de Frederic,_ xx. 282-285.]--and did not get to rest
again, in his Government of Neufchatel, till April, 1762. There is a
Letter of the King's, which at least fixes that point:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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