deed he granted a pension-found in his states a cordial welcome and a quiet refuge. With equal readiness did he apply himself to provide churches for the Lutherans at Breslau, and a Cathedral for the Roman Catholics at Berlin. It may, however, be observed that he made no attempt to conciliate the good will of the latter by increasing their endowments or remitting their taxation. From all the convents and religious houses of Silesia he claimed the payment of 50 per cent. from their net incomes, and on the partition of Poland we find him establish the same scale in his new province of West Prussia.

We may likewise remark that, in corresponding with clergymen of whatever persuasion, Frederick was not led by any views of policy to refrain from his customary scoffs and sneers. He loved especially to taunt them with texts of Scripture misapplied. Once, he was building arcades around the windows of the town-church at Potsdam, and received a remonstrance from its clergy, entreating his Majesty to suspend the work, for that otherwise they would not be able to see. The King answered, Blessed are they which have not seen and yet have believed!' On another occasion the Pastor Pels of Bernau, finding that he could not subsist on his yearly stipend of less than 407. English, applied for some augmentation-a request which in England at least would not be thought unreasonable; but he received the following as the Royal reply: The Apostles did not thirst after lucre. They have preached in vain, for Herr Pels has no Apostolic soul!'-It is surprising that such mockeries do not seem at that time to have stirred up any of the religious resentment and indignation, which would undoubtedly be found to result from them at present.

The tolerant maxims of Frederick scarcely extended to the Jews. He appears to have felt a prepossession against that race; founded, perhaps, on their real or supposed unaptness for war. Alone among his subjects they were liable to an ignominious polltax, like so many heads of cattle-a tax not abolished until 1787, the year after Frederick's death. Many branches of trade were prohibited to them, as breweries and distilleries, or the sale of any article of food, except amongst themselves. Several towns, as Ruppin, were confirmed in the privilege, as they deemed it, that no Jew should ever sleep within their walls. In all other towns the number of Jewish families, as once settled, was on no account to be exceeded-(a rule, however, relaxed in practice); and these families were held liable collectively for the imposts due by any one of them. And such were the shackles in Prussia even on the more privileged, or, as called by courtesy, the protected Jews' (Schutz-Juden); and, heavy as they seem, yet lighter

than

than those they bore in many other parts of Germany! Even down to 1833, as we learn from Dr. Preuss, and as we believe even to the present year, no Jew, though of the highest character, was considered in the Prussian courts of law as what they term testis omni exceptione major; nor can his testimony ever be held fully equivalent to a Christian's! * Surely the resisting any further political concessions to that race is by no means incompatible with the denouncing such civil restraints upon them as most oppressive and unjust.

Nor can it be said that these restraints and hardships in the Prussian states under Frederick's reign were lightened by any peculiar gentleness of manner in his Majesty. Thus in November, 1764, we find him issue an angry order against the presumption of certain Jews who had taken cows on hire. And when Benjamin Meyer, of Magdeburg, in 1765, applied for equal rights with the Christian tradesmen of that town, the Royal reply was as follows:- Let the Jew immediately take himself away from Magdeburg, or the Commandant shall kick him out!'

In Prussia, as in other German states at that period, the press was far from free; there was both a censorship before publication, and after it at any time a power of seizure. Frederick was not a man to bear any attacks upon his policy, if by such attacks that policy. could be thwarted or endangered; but when his own person and character only were concerned, he displayed the most magnanimous forbearance. During his whole reign libels against him. might be circulated, and libellers go free. Thus, in 1761, a little pasquinade, whose venom may be discovered even in its title, La Lais Philosophe, was sold without obstruction in the Prussian capital. Frederick himself with a lofty spirit declared, 'C'est à moi à faire mon devoir, et laisser dire les méchans.' In the same tone he writes to Voltaire on March 2, 1775:

'Je pense sur ces satires comme Epictète: "Si l'on dit du mal de toi, et qu'il soit véritable, corrige-toi; si ce sont des mensonges, ris-en!" J'ai appris avec l'âge à devenir un bon cheval de poste; je fais ma station, et ne m'embarrasse pas des roquets qui aboient en chemin.'

In 1784 a severer trial awaited the King's magnanimity from Voltaire himself, when there came forth the witty and scandalous Vie Privée-that Parthian arrow which Voltaire had drawn on his flight from Berlin in 1753, but had concealed until his own death. Yet of this Vie Privée, teeming as it does with every topic of invective and ridicule upon the King, a whole edition

* We find, however, from the Allgemeine Preussische Zeitung of August 7, 1847, that a Projet de Loi, to remedy most of the remaining grievances of the Jews, has been recently submitted by the Government to the States, and in part adopted.

was

was leisurely disposed of by Pitra, the King's own bookseller, at Berlin!

Caricatures upon Frederick were treated by him with the same lofty unconcern. One day, as he was riding along the JägerStrasse at Berlin, he observed a crowd pressing forward and staring at a paper stuck high upon the wall. As he drew near, he perceived that it was a satirical representation of himself, as engaged in the coffee-monopoly, with one of his hands turning a coffee-mill and with the other greedily picking up a single bean which had fallen to the ground. Frederick turned coolly round to the Heyduke who attended him and said, Take down that paper and hang it lower, so that the people may not strain their necks in looking at it.' And this the Heyduke was proceeding to do, when the people, struck at their King's magnanimity, broke into loud huzzas, and tore the injurious portrait into a thousand pieces.

It was once observed by Dr. Johnson, with his usual admirable sense, that no man was ever written down, except by himself;' and certainly it was not from the publications of others, but from his own, that King Frederick suffered both in fame and fortunes. To this day his leaden volumes of poetry, of that kind of mediocrity, not, as Horace says, to be borne by Gods or men, form a counterpoise to his military glories and administrative skill. And during his lifetime it was truly surprising to find a prince so provident and wary on any other affair, beyond all measure rash and reckless in his satirical attacks on Madame de Pompadour at the height of her favour, and on the Empress Elizabeth of Russia. There is no doubt that the biting verses, imprudently written, and still more imprudently promulgated, on the private life of both these ladies, were among the main causes of the greatest danger which he ever ran—of that all but irresistible confederacy formed against him in the Seven Years' War.

war.

At other times, however, Frederick, versed as he was in the secrets of the press, made use of them for his own objects in a manner seldom tried by princes. Thus, in 1767, the King found the public at Berlin inclined to tattle on the chance of another To turn their attention he immediately composed and sent to the newspapers a full account of a wonderful hail-storm stated to have taken place at Potsdam on the 27th of February in that year. Not only did this imaginary narrative engross for some time, as he desired, the public conversation, but it gave rise to some grave philosophical treatises on the supposed phenomenon! Over the administration of Justice, Frederick, as we have already said, held despotic sway. Whenever he found fault with the decision of a Court of Law, he thought himself entitled

not

not only to reverse the sentence but to punish the judges. But it is due to him to add that he never exercised this authority on any grounds of powerful influence or personal regard. His statepapers and correspondence teem with applications from persons of the first rank in the Prussian monarchy, entreating him to suspend some decree of the courts which they found inconvenient, but the King invariably refuses, since,' as he often adds, the laws must govern all alike.' It was his maxim, that before a judicial court a prince and a peasant should be entirely equal; and this was not, like some of his others, a mere holiday maxim, to be paraded in a French poem or a French pamphlet, and never thought of afterwards; but again and again did he press it on his Chancellor and judges, both urging it in words, and enforcing it in action.

In explanation of this last point it is to be observed, that although Frederick would never consent to reverse a judgment from motives of friendship or favour, he was prompt to do so whenever he thought that the poor had been injured or despoiled by the rich. Nor was it merely such a case of oppression, real or supposed, which roused him: his keen eye discerned how frequently a delay is equivalent to a denial of justice. Sometimes, therefore, he would interfere to simplify and shorten the wearisome forms of jurisprudence, and cut through, as it were, with his sword those Gordian knots which lawyers love to weave, Of the technicalities in other countries he spoke with caustic disdain. Thus he writes to Voltaire, January 27, 1775, on the case of a French officer preparing to enter his service and perplexed by a law-suit at home:

A vue de pays son procès pourra bien traîner au moins une année. On me mande que des formalités importantes exigent ces délais, et que ce n'est qu'à force de patience qu'on parvient à perdre un procès au Parlement de Paris. J'apprends ces belles choses avec étonnement et sans y comprendre le moindre mot.'

It must be owned, however, that Frederick did not join to his horror of injustice sufficient thought and care, and that he sometimes caused the very evil which he dreaded. The story of the miller Arnold has been often told. The King, believing that here a poor man had been wronged through the undue influence of a nobleman his neighbour, took up the affair most warmly, discarded his Chancellor, sent three of his Judges to Spandau, and forcibly reinstated Arnold in possession of the mill. It was afterwards proved by incontrovertible documents, and is now universally acknowledged, that the miller was a knave; that the Chancellor had taken no part in the business; and, above all, that the Judges had decided according to right, and were there

fore

fore punished without reason. Nay more, we are assured that the King himself admitted his error to one of his familiar attendants, but added, that the mistake being already made, could not, without loss of dignity, be recalled. Such painful cases imply (for really the arguments here lie upon the surface) great want of care and attention in the Royal arbitrator. They also prove that no prince should ever in any country be invested with a despotic power above the laws. But while we deprecate despotic power, and while we demand vigilant care, we must, even in the teeth of such cases, express our sympathy in any endeavours to clear from rubbish and to open wider the portals of the Temple of Justice. In our own Court of Chancery we may perceive how, by never swerving from established forms, a most faulty system may consist with the most upright intentions, and with the most learned men. Our Lord Chancellors for the last century and upwards have been above all suspicion and reproach. We had lately Lord Lyndhurst, eminent as a judge, orator, and statesman. We have now Lord Cottenham, eminent as a judge. Every legal decision of either would command implicit and deserved respect. Yet in the courts over which they presided or preside, how often are old technicalities more powerful than they; how often are large fortunes lavished to secure the clearest right; how often is the clearest right relinquished or forborne rather than be asserted at such cost and time! Surely, even a killing Decree,' as poor Aubrey called it in Lord Bacon's time, would weigh more lightly on the suitors than the prospect of no Decree at all—the prospect that by the time the suit has grown to years, and the solicitor's bill to thousands, they should still be met by some fresh Demurrer or some renewed Reference to the Master!

The

We ask pardon of our readers for this digression, and are warned by it to forbear from entering upon other topics-as of Frederick's foreign policy-which might lead us too far. partition of Poland especially is so momentous an episode that it cannot be disposed of in a single paragraph. Yet, perhaps, not merely that transaction, but the whole foreign policy of Frederick was once aptly described by some Polish borderers in a single word. When they saw displayed on the flagstaff of the newly gained frontier the Prussian Eagle, with the motto SUUM CUIQUE, they slily wrote beneath RAPUIT! These questions, however, we shall for the present pass by, and proceed to relate the circumstances of Frederick's last illness and death.

During many years he had sustained periodical fits of gout, and also frequent stomach disorders, the result of his errors or excesses at table. Still, however, by early hours and regular exercise, his constitution had since his early youth gained much