FORE:These sufferings bound the brother and sister very intimately together. This dear brother, Wilhelmina writes, passed all his afternoons with me. We read and wrote together, and occupied ourselves in cultivating our minds. The king now never saw my brother without threatening him with the cane. Fritz repeatedly told me that he would bear any thing from the king except blows; but that, if he ever came to such extremities with him, he would regain his freedom by flight.
FORE:On Saturday, the 25th of October of this year, George II., King of England, died. The poor old gentleman, who had been endowed with but a very ordinary share of intelligence, was seventy-seven years of age. On Monday he had presided at a review of troops in Hyde Park. On Thursday he stood upon the portico of his rural palace in Kensington to see his Guards march by for foreign service. Saturday morning he rose at an early hour, took his cup of chocolate as usual, and, opening his windows, said the morning was so fine he would take a walk in his garden. It was then eight oclock. His valet withdrew with the cup and saucer. He had hardly shut the door when he heard a groan and a fall. Hurrying back, he found the king upon the floor. Faintly the death-stricken monarch exclaimed, Call Amelia, and instantly died.
FORE:But the exertion, and the emotion occasioned by the interview with his son, prostrated him again. He was taken back into his palace and to his bed more dead than alive. Reviving a little in the afternoon, he dictated to Frederick all the arrangements he wished to have adopted in reference to his funeral. This curious document is characteristic, in every line, of the strange man. His coffin, which was of massive oak carpentry, had been made for some time, and was in the kings chamber awaiting its occupant. He not unfrequently, with affected or real complacency, fixed his eyes upon it, saying, I shall sleep right well there. In the minute directions to his son as to his burial, he said,May you never be disgusted with the sciences by the quarrels of their cultivators; a race of men no better than courtiers; often enough as greedy, intriguing, false, and cruel as these.
THREE:
THREE:Happy the people, says Montesquieu, whose annals are blank in history books. The annals of the nations are mainly composed of wars, tumult, and woe. For ten years Prussia enjoyed peace. During this happy period, when the days and the years glided by in tranquillity, there is little left for the historian to record. Frederick engaged vigorously in repairing the ruins left by the war. The burned Silesian villages were rebuilt; debts were paid; agriculture and commerce encouraged; the laws revised and reformed. A decree was issued that all lawsuits should be brought to a decision within a year after their beginning.
