lhelmina. For the
rest, here is a King "becoming truly unpopular [or, we fancy so, in
our deflected state, and judging by the rumor of cliques]; a general
discontent reigning in the Country, love of his subjects pretty much
gone; people speaking of him in no measured terms [in certain cliques].
Cares nothing about those who helped him as Prince Royal, say some;
others complain of his avarice [meaning steady vigilance in outlay]
as surpassing the late King's; this one complained of his violences of
temper (EMPORTEMENS); that one of his suspicions, of his distrust, his
haughtinesses, his dissimulation" (meaning polite impenetrability
when he saw good). Several circumstances, known to Wilhelmina's own
experience, compel Wilhelmina's assent on those points. "I would
have spoken to him about them, if my Brother of Prussia [young August
Wilhelm, betrothed the other day] and the Queen Regnant had
not dissuaded me. Farther on I will give the explanation of all
this,"--never did it anywhere. "I beg those who may one day read these
MEMOIRS, to suspend their judgment on the character of this great Prince
till I have developed it." [Wilhelmina, ii. 326.] O my Princess, you
are true and bright, but you are shrill; and I admire the effect of
atmospheric electricity, not to say, of any neighboring marine-store
shop, or miserable bit of broken pan, on one of the finest magnetic
needles ever made and set trembling!

Wilhelmina is incapable of deliberate falsehood; and this her impression
or reminiscence, with all its exaggeration, is entitled to be heard in
evidence so far. From this, and from other sources, readers will assure
themselves that discontents were not wanting; that King Friedrich was
not amiable to everybody at this time,--which indeed he never grew to be
at any other time. He had to be a King; that was the trade he followed,
not the quite different one of being amiable all round. Amiability is
good, my Princess; but the question rises, "To whom?--for example,
to the young gentleman who shot himself in Lobegun?" There are young
gentlemen and old sometimes in considerable quantities, to whom, if you
were in your duty, as a King of men (or even as a "King of one man and
his affairs," if that is all your kingdom), you should have been
hateful instead of amiable! That is a stern truth; too much forgotten by
Wilhelmina and others. Again, what a deadening and killing circumstance
is it in the career of amiability, that you are bo