ich Wilhelm he is much the
reverse, perhaps too much. This is he who ran away with poor Prince
Sobieski's Bride from Berlin, at starting in life; who fell upon his own
poor Protestant Heidelbergers and their Church of the Holy Ghost (being
himself Papist, ever since that slap on the face to his ancestor); and
who has been in many quarrels with Friedrich Wilhelm and others. A
high expensive sovereign gentleman, this old Karl Philip; not, I should
suppose, the pleasantest of men to lodge with. One apprehends, he
cannot be peculiarly well disposed to Friedrich Wilhelm, after that sad
Heidelberg passage of fence, twelve or eleven years ago. Not to
mention the inextricable Julich-and-Berg business, which is a standing
controversy between them.

Poor old Kurfurst, he is now within a year of seventy. He has had
crosses and losses; terrible campaignings against the Turk, in old
times; and always such a stock of quarrels, at home, as must have
been still worse to bear. A life of perpetual arguing, squabbling and
battling,--one's neighbors being such an unreasonable set! Brabbles
about Heidelberg Catechism, and Church of the Holy Ghost, so that
foreign Kings interfered, shaking their whips upon us. Then brabbles
about boundaries; about inheritances, and detached properties very
many,--clearly mine, were the neighbors reasonable! In fact this
sovereign old gentleman has been in the Kaiser's courts, or even on the
edge of fight, oftener than most other men; and it is as if that
first adventure, of the Sobieski wedding turned topsy-turvy, had been
symbolical of much that followed in his life.

We remember that unpleasant Heidelberg affair: how hopeful it once
looked; fact DONE, Church of the Holy Ghost fairly ours; your CORPUS
EVANGELICORUM fallen quasi-dead; and nothing now for it but protocolling
by diplomatists, pleading in the Diets by men in bombazine, never like
ending at all;--when Friedrich Wilhelm did suddenly end it; suddenly
locked up his own Catholic establishments and revenues, and quietly
inexorable put the key in his pocket; as it were, drew his own whip,
with a "Will you whip MY Jew?"--and we had to cower out of the affair,
Kaiser himself ordering us, in a most humiliated manner! Readers can
judge whether Kur-Pfalz was likely to have a kindly note of Friedrich
Wilhelm in that corner of his memory. The poor man felt so disgusted
with Heidelberg, he quitted it soon after. He would not go to Dusseldorf
(in the Berg-an