is nowhere the least mention of Friedrich's BRESLAU-AND-BERLIN TREATY;
thrice-important Treaty with her Hungarian Majesty on the Silesian
matter! In settling all manner of adjoining and preceding matters, there
is nothing said of Silesia at all. Singular indeed. Treaties enough,
from that of Utrecht downward, are wearisomely mentioned here; but of
the Berlin Treaty, Breslau Treaty, or any Treaty settling Silesia,--much
less, of any Westminster Treaty, guaranteeing it to the King of
Prussia,--there is not the faintest mention! Silesia, then, is not
considered settled, by the high contracting parties? Little George
himself, who guaranteed it, in the hour of need, little more than a year
ago, considers it fallen loose again in the new whirl of contingencies?
'Patience, Madam: what was good to give is good to take!' On what
precise day or month Friedrich got notice of this expressive silence in
the Treaty of Worms, we do not know; but from that day--!"

Friedrich recollects another thing, one of many others: that of those
"ulterior mountains," which Austria had bargained for as Boundary to
Schlesien. Wild bare mountains; good for what? For invading Schlesien
from the Austrian side; if for nothing else conceivable! The small
riddle reads itself to him so, with a painful flash of light. [_OEuvres
de Frederic,_ iii. 34.] Looking intensely into this matter, and putting
things together, Friedrich gets more and more the alarming assurance of
the fate intended him; and that he will verily have to draw sword again,
and fight for Silesia, and as if for life. From about the end of 1743
(as I strive to compute), there was in Friedrich himself no doubt
left of it; though his Ministers, when he consulted them a good while
afterwards, were quite incredulous, and spent all their strength in
dissuading a new War; now when the only question was, How to do said
War? "How to do it, to make ready for doing it? We must silently select
the ways, the methods: silent, wary,--then at last swift; and the more
like a lion-spring, like a bolt from the blue, it will be the better!"
That is Friedrich's fixed thought.

The Problem was complicated, almost beyond example. The Reich, with
a Kaiser reduced to such a pass, has its potentialities of help or of
hindrance,--its thousand-fold formulas, inane mostly, yet not inane
wholly, which interlace this matter everywhere, as with real threads,
and with gossamer or apparent threads,--which it is essential to