young peasants who, influenced by soft attractions, stole by night from one village to another to pay their _devoirs_ to bright eyes waking to receive them, walked through perils, love in their hearts, and a musket on their shoulders. The enrollers of Frederick, and indeed those of his great son after him, cast a chill shadow of fear over every age, sex, and station of life. In the meantime the two Kings reviled each other as coarsely as any two dragoons in their respective services. The quarrel was nursed until it was proposed to be settled, not by diplomacy, but by a duel. When this was first suggested, the place, but not the time, of meeting, was immediately agreed upon. The territory of Hildesheim was to be the spot whereon were to meet in deadly combat two monarchs--two fathers, who could not quietly arrange a marriage between their sons and daughters. It really seemed as if the blood of Sophia Dorothea of Zell was ever to be fatal to peace and averse from connubial felicity. The son of Sophia Dorothea selected Brigadier-General Sutton for his second. Her son-in-law (it will be remembered that he had married that unhappy lady’s daughter) conferred a similar honour on Colonel Derschein. His English Majesty was to proceed to the designated arena from Hanover; Frederick was to make his way thither from Saltzdhal, near Brunswick. The two Kings of Brentford could not have looked more ridiculous than these two. They would, undoubtedly, have crossed weapons, had it not been for the strong common sense of a Prussian diplomatist, named Borck. ‘It is quite right and exceedingly dignified,’ said Borck one day, to his master, when the latter was foaming with rage against George the Second, and expressing an eager desire for fixing a near day whereon to settle their quarrel--‘it is most fitting and seemly, since your Majesty will not marry with England, to cut the throat, if possible, of the English monarch; but your faithful servant would still advise your Majesty not to be over-hasty in fixing the day: ill-luck might come of it.’ On being urged to show how this might be, he remarked--‘Your gracious Majesty has lately been ill, is now far from well, and might, by naming an early day for voidance of this quarrel, be unable to keep the appointment.’ ‘We would name another,’ said the King. ‘And in the meantime,’ observed Borck, ‘all Europe generally, and George of England in particular, would be smiling, laughing, commenting on, and ridiculing the King who failed to appear where he had promised to be present with his sword. Your Majesty must not expose your sacred person and character to such a catastrophe as this: settle nothing till there is certainty that the pledge will be kept; and, in the meantime, defer naming the day of battle for a fortnight.’