FORE:The officer drew up a statement of the facts, and sent it to the king, with the complaint that he had been dishonored in discharging the duties intrusted to him by his majesty. The king sent the following reply:

FORE:��My children,�� said Frederick that night at parole, ��after such a day��s work you deserve rest. This day will send the renown of your name and that of the nation down to the latest posterity.��

FORE:There was nothing left for his Prussian majesty but to abandon Silesia, and retire within his own original borders, defeated and humiliated, the object of the contempt and ridicule of Europe, or to press forward in the conflict, summoning to his aid all the energies of despair.

FORE: ��We, remembering his important services to our house in diverting for nine years long the late king our father, and doing the honors of our court through the now reign, can not refuse such request. We do hereby certify that the said Baron P?llnitz has never assassinated, robbed on the highway, poisoned, forcibly cut purses, or done other atrocity or legal crime at our court; but that he has always maintained gentlemanly behavior, making not more than honest use of the industry and talents he has been endowed with at birth; imitating the object of the drama��that is, correcting mankind by gentle quizzing��following in the matter of sobriety Boerhaave��s counsels, pushing Christian charity so far as often to make the rich understand that it is more blessed to give than to receive; possessing perfectly the anecdotes of our various mansions, especially of our worn-out furnitures, rendering himself by his merits necessary to those who know him, and, with a very bad head, having a very good heart.

FORE:Frederick was endowed with brilliant powers of conversation. He was fond of society, where he could exercise and display these gifts and accomplishments. Frequent suppers were given at Sans Souci, which lasted from half past eight till midnight. Gentlemen only��learned men��were invited to these entertainments. Frederick was not an amiable man. He took pleasure in inflicting the keenest pain possible with his satirical tongue. No friend was spared. The more deeply he could strike the lash into the quivering nerves of sensibility, the better he seemed pleased with himself.81 The object of Colonel Hotham��s mission was well known. The cordial reception he had met from the king indicated that his message was not an unwelcome one to his Prussian majesty. In the indecent hilarity of the hour, it was assumed that the marriage contract between Wilhelmina and the Prince of Wales was settled. Brains addled with wine gave birth to stupid jokes upon the subject. ��A German ducat was to be exchanged for an English half guinea.�� At last, in the semi-delirium of their intoxication, one proposed as a toast, ��To the health of Wilhelmina, Princess of Wales.�� The sentiment was received with uproarious jollity. Though all the company were in the same state of silly inebriation, neither the king nor the British ministers, Hotham and Dubourgay, for a moment lost sight of their settled policy. The king remained firm in his silent resolve to consent only to the marriage of Wilhelmina and the Prince of Wales. Hotham and Dubourgay could not swerve from the positive instructions which they had received, to insist upon both marriages or neither. Thus, notwithstanding this bacchanal jollification, neither party was disposed to swerve a hair��s breadth from its fixed resolve, and the question was no nearer a settlement than before.

FORE:The rich abbeys of the Roman Catholics were compelled to establish manufactures for weaving damasks and table-cloths. Some were converted into oil-mills, or ��workers in copper, wire-drawers, the flaxes and metals, with water-power, markets, and so on.��The Prince of Soubise had rendezvoused fifty thousand French and Saxon troops at Erfurt, about a hundred and seventy miles west of Dresden. He had also, scattered around at different posts, easily accessible, a hundred thousand more well-armed and well-disciplined troops. Frederick took twenty-three thousand men and marched to assail these foes in almost despairing battle. To plunge with so feeble a band into such a mass of enemies seemed to be the extreme of recklessness.

FORE:Voltaire was at this time in Brussels. Frederick wrote him from Wesel, under date of 2d September, 1740, giving a narrative of his adventures, partly in prose, partly in verse. It was a long communication, the rhyme very much like that which a bright school-girl would write upon the gallop. The following specimen of this singular production will give the reader a sufficient idea of the whole:

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