Possession
of the Country by King Friedrich, under such peaceable omens, had
straightway, as we gather, brought about, over Silesia at
large, or at least where pressingly needful, various little
alterations,--rectifications, by the Prussian model and new rule now
introduced. Of which, as it is better that the reader have some dim
notion, if easily procurable, than none at all, I will offer him one
example;--itself dim enough, but coming at first-hand, in the actual or
concrete form, and beyond disputing in whatever light or twilight it may
yield us.

At Landshut, a pleasant little Mountain Town, in the Principality of
Schweidnitz, high up, on the infant River Bober, near the Bohemian
Frontier--(English readers may see QUINCY ADAMS'S description of it, and
of the long wooden spouts which throw cataracts on you, if walking the
streets in rain [John Quincy Adams (afterwards President of the United
States), _Letters on Silesia_ (London, 1804). "The wooden spouts are
now gone" (_Tourist's Note, of_ 1858).]): at Landshut, as in some other
Towns, it had been found good to remodel the Town Magistracy a little;
to make it partly Protestant, for one thing, instead of Catholic
(and Austrian), which it had formerly been. Details about the "high
controversies and discrepancies" which had risen there, we have
absolutely none; nor have the special functions of the Magistracy, what
powers they had, what work they did, in the least become distinct to us:
we gather only that a certain nameless Burgermeister (probably Austrian
and Catholic) had, by "Most gracious Royal Special-Order," been
at length relieved from his labors, and therewith "the much by him
persecuted and afflicted Herr Theodorus Spener" been named Burgermeister
instead. Which respectable Herr Theodorus Spener, and along with him
Herr Johann David Fischer as RATHS-SENIOR, and Herr Johann Caspar
Ruffer, and also Herr Johann Jacob Umminger, as new Raths (how many
of the old being left I cannot say), were accordingly, on the 4th of
December, 1741, publicly installed, and with proper solemnity took
their places; all Landshut looking on, with the conceivable interest
and astonishment, almost as at a change in the obliquity of the
ecliptic,--change probably for the better.

Respectable Herr Theodorus Spener (we hope it is SpeNer, for they print
him SPEER in one of the two places, and we have to go by guess) is ready
with an Installation Speech on the occasion; and his Speech w