ich the government passed from the hands of his
dying father, who directed the officer who was to make the daily
bulletin to take his orders from the new military ruler of Prussia.
What judgment was formed of him by his political contemporaries we
discover from the character drawn of him shortly before by an Austrian
agent of the Imperial Court:--"He is agreeable, wears his own hair, has
a slouching carriage, loves the fine arts and good eating, would wish
to begin his government with some _eclat_, is a better friend of the
military than his father, has the religion of a gentleman, believes in
God and the forgiveness of sins, loves splendour and refinement, and
will newly arrange all the court offices, and bring distinguished
people to his court."[12] This prophecy was not fully justified. We
will endeavour to understand other phases of his character at this
time. The new King was a man of fiery, enthusiastic temperament,
quickly excited, and tears came readily to his eyes; with him, as with
his contemporaries, it was a passionate need to admire what was great,
and to give himself up to pathetic, soft moods of mind. With tender and
melting tones he played his adagio on the flute; like other honourable
contemporaries, it was not easy to him to give full expression in words
and verses to his inward feelings, but pathetic passages would move him
to tears. In spite of all his French maxims, the foundation of his
character was in these respects very German.

Those have judged him most unjustly who have ascribed to him a cold
heart. It is not the cold royal hearts which generally wound by their
harshness. Such as these are almost always enabled, by a smooth
graciousness and its suitable expression, to please their entourage.
The strongest expressions of antipathy are generally combined with the
heart-winning tones of a sentimental tenderness. But in Frederic, it
appears to us, there was a striking and strange combination of two
quite opposite tendencies of the spirit, which are usually found on
earth in eternal irreconcilable contention. He had equally the need of
idealising life, and the impulse mercilessly to destroy ideal frames of
mind in himself and others. His first characteristic was perhaps the
most beautiful, perhaps the most sorrowful, that ever man was endowed
with for the struggle of life. He was undoubtedly a poetic nature; he
possessed in a high degree that peculiar power which strives to
transform common realit