, it is instructive
to compare the following character-sketch of the successor of
Frederick the Great with the idealist portrait of Treitschke ("Germany
History," vol. i.), who would make us believe that Frederick William
II. was a paragon of all the private virtues.

I.

Frederick the Great's base tolerance produced dissolvent effects. Not
proceeding from respect of religious beliefs, it engendered contempt
for them. As, apart from the curb of religion, the new society of
Prussia had no tradition of social morals to rely upon, corruption
entered in and consumed it. The King's scepticism took possession of
his subjects, who translated it into deeds. It was good "form";
everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himself accordingly. The
leaven of licence and sensuality which mars all the literature of the
century fermented without let or hindrance in those coarse souls. An
immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses
without abating the brutality of the primitive passions. In Prussia
people lacked the delicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit,
which in France qualified the depravity of the age. A heavy
dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women,
all fed their minds on d'Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their
doctrines seriously and applying them to the very letter.

Add to this that in the newly built Prussian capital society, utterly
artificial as it was, an improvised amalgam of incongruous elements,
was predisposed, so to speak, to dissoluteness. Berlin swarmed with
army men who had no family life and whose whole day was not occupied
with military duties. Men of letters, adventurers of the pen and of
the sword, attracted by Frederick's reputation and reduced to intrigue
and all sorts of expedients for a living; a nobility, very poor, very
proud, very exclusive, weighed down by royal discipline and thoroughly
bored; a bourgeoisie enlightened, enriched, but relegated to a place
of its own; between these groups, separated one from the other by
etiquette or prejudice, a sort of demi-monde where they met, chatted
and enjoyed themselves at their ease, the foyer of "French ideas," the
hub of affairs and intrigues--Jewish society, the richest and most
elegant in Berlin. With the marvellous pliancy of their race the Jews
had assimilated the new civilization and took their revenge from the
political exclusion of which they were the victims by bringing
together in their sa