e at Peace; oh, come to Peace!"--and finds that the benevolent
Public and he have been mistaken in their hopes. For the next Two Years,
we say:--for the first Year (or till about August, 1743), with hope
not much abated, and little actual interference needed; for the latter
Twelvemonth, with hope ever more abating; interference, warning, almost
threatening ever more needed, and yet of no avail, as if they had been
idle talking and gesticulation on his part:--till, in August, 1744, he
had to--But the reader shall gradually see it, if by any method we can
show it him, in something of its real sequence; and shall judge of it by
his own light.

Friedrich's Domestic History was not of noisy nature, during this
interval:--and indeed in the bewildered Records given of it, there is
nothing visible, at first, but one wide vortex of simmering inanities;
leading to the desperate conclusion that Friedrich had no domestic
history at all. Which latter is by no means the fact! Your poor Prussian
Dryasdust (without even an Index to help you) being at least authentic,
if you look a long time intensely and on many sides, features do at last
dawn out of those sad vortexes; and you find the old Reinsberg Program
risen to activity again; and all manner of peaceable projects going on.
Friedrich visits the Baths of Aachen (what we call Aix-la-Chapelle);
has the usual Inspections, business activities, recreations, visits
of friends. He opens his Opera-House, this first winter. He enters
on Law-reform, strikes decisively into that grand problem; hoping to
perfect it. What is still more significant, he in private begins writing
his MEMOIRS. And furthermore, gradually determines on having a little
Country House, place of escape from his big Potsdam Palace; and gets
plans drawn for it,--place which became very famous, by the name of
SANS-SOUCI, in times coming. His thoughts are wholly pacific; of Life to
Minerva and the Arts, not to Bellona and the Battles:--and yet he knows
well, this latter too is an inexorable element. About his Army, he is
quietly busy; augmenting, improving it; the staff of life to Prussia and
him.

Silesian Fortress-building, under ugly Walrave, goes on at a
steadily swift rate. Much Silesian settlement goes on; fixing of the
Prussian-Austrian Boundaries without; of the Catholic-Protestant limits
within: rapid, not too rough, remodelling of the Province from Austrian
into Prussian, in the Financial, Administrative and every