the class which Frederic quitted, and the
civil scorn of the class into which he intruded himself, were marked in
very significant ways. The Elector of Saxony at first refused to
acknowledge the new Majesty. Louis the Fourteenth looked down on his
brother King with an air not unlike that with which the Count in
Moliere's play regards Monsieur Jourdain, just fresh from the mummery of
being made a gentleman. Austria exacted large sacrifices in return for
her recognition, and at last gave it ungraciously.

Frederic was succeeded by his son, Frederic William, a prince who must
be allowed to have possessed some talents for administration, but whose
character was disfigured by odious vices, and whose eccentricities were
such as had never before been seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and
diligent in the transacting of business; and he was the first who formed
the design of obtaining for Prussia a place among the European powers,
altogether out of proportion to her extent and population, by means of a
strong military organization. Strict economy enabled him to keep up a
peace establishment of sixty thousand troops. These troops were
disciplined in such a manner that, placed beside them, the household
regiments of Versailles and St. James's would have appeared an awkward
squad. The master of such a force could not but be regarded by all his
neighbors as a formidable enemy and a valuable ally.

But the mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated that all his
inclinations became passions, and all his passions partook of the
character of moral and intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated
into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp and order became a
mania, like that of a Dutch burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member
of the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons. While the envoys of the Court of
Berlin were in a state of such squalid poverty as moved the laughter of
foreign capitals, while the food placed before the princes and
princesses of the blood-royal of Prussia was too scanty to appease
hunger, and so bad that even hunger loathed it, no price was thought too
extravagant for tall recruits. The ambition of the King was to form a
brigade of giants, and every country was ransacked by his agents for men
above the ordinary stature. These researches were not confined to
Europe. No head that towered above the crowd in the bazaars of Aleppo,
of Cairo, or of Surat, could escape the crimps of Frederic William. One
Irishman mor