AVELS FOR HIS
IMPROVEMENT.--HIS OUTWARD APPEARANCE AND STATE OF HEALTH.

THE art which had attracted the child took every day a stronger hold of
the youth. Frederick was not always in that sportive humour in which
we have seen him repeatedly. At times he would wander about silent and
solitary, wrapped in his musical meditations. He would sit up late, busy
with his beloved music, and often, after lying down, rise from his bed
in the middle of the night in order, to strike a few chords or try a
short phrase--to the horror of the servants, whose first thought was of
ghosts, the second that their dear young master was not quite right in
his mind. Indeed, what with his school-work and his musical studies,
our young friend exerted himself more than was good for him. When,
therefore, in the holidays of 1826 his youngest sister, Emilia, was
ordered by the physicians to go to Reinerz, a watering-place in
Prussian Silesia, the parents thought it advisable that the too diligent
Frederick should accompany her, and drink whey for the benefit of his
health. The travelling party consisted of the mother, two sisters,
and himself. A letter which he wrote on August 28, 1826, to his friend
William Kolberg, furnishes some information about his doings there. It
contains, as letters from watering-places usually do, criticisms of the
society and accounts of promenadings, excursions, regular meals, and
early hours in going to bed and in rising. As the greater part of the
contents can be of no interest to us, I shall confine myself to picking
up what seems to me worth preserving. He had been drinking whey and the
waters for a fortnight and found he was getting somewhat stouter and at
the same time lazy. People said he began to look better. He enjoyed
the sight of the valleys from the hills which surround Reinerz, but
the climbing fatigued him, and he had sometimes to drag himself down
on all-fours. One mountain, the rocky Heuscheuer, he and other delicate
persons were forbidden to ascend, as the doctor was afraid that the
sharp air at the top would do his patients harm. Of course, Frederick
tried to make fun of everything and everyone--for instance, of the
wretched wind-band, which consisted of about a dozen "caricatures,"
among whom a lean bassoon-player with a snuffy hook-nose was the most
notable. To the manners of the country, which in some respects seem to
have displeased him, he got gradually accustomed.

At first I was astonished