states may be gradually
absorbed by irresistible despotism, like that of the Romans, whose final
and logical development proves fatal to all other nationalities and
liberties,--yea, to literature and art and science and industry, the
extinction of which is the moral death of an empire, however grand and
however boastful, only to be succeeded by new creations, through the
fires of successive wars and hateful anarchies.

In one point, and one alone, I see the Providence which permitted the
military aggrandizement to which Frederic and his successors aimed; and
that is, in furnishing a barrier to the future conquests of a more
barbarous people,--I mean the Russians; even as the conquests of
Charlemagne presented a barrier to the future irruptions of barbarous
tribes on his northern frontier. Russia--that rude, demoralized,
Slavonic empire--cannot conquer Europe until it has first destroyed the
political and military power of Germany. United and patriotic, Germany
can keep at present the Russians at bay, and direct the stream of
invasion to the East rather than the south; so that Europe will not
become either Cossack or French, as Napoleon predicted. In this light
the military genius and power of Germany, which Frederic did so much to
develop, may be designed for the protection of European civilization and
the Protestant religion.

But I will not speculate on the aims of Providence, or the evil to be
overruled for good. With my limited vision, I can only present facts and
their immediate consequences. I can only deduce the moral truths which
are logically to be drawn from a career of wicked ambition. These truths
are a part of that moral, wisdom which experience confirms, and which
alone should be the guiding lesson to all statesmen and all empires. Let
us pursue the right, and leave the consequences to Him who rules the
fate of war, and guides the nations to the promised period when men
shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and universal peace shall
herald the reign of the Saviour of the world.

AUTHORITIES.

The great work of Carlyle on the Life of Frederic, which exhausts the
subject; Macaulay's Essay on the Life and Times of Frederic the Great;
Carlyle's Essay on Frederic; Lord Brougham on Frederic; Coxe's History
of the House of Austria; Mirabeau's Histoire Secrete de la Cour de
Berlin; Oeuvres de Frederic le Grand; Ranke's Neuc Buecher Preussischer
Geschichte; Poellnitz's Memoirs and Letters; Walpole's Remini