e than seven feet high, who was picked up in London by the
Prussian ambassador, received a bounty of near thirteen hundred pounds
sterling, very much more than the ambassador's salary. This extravagance
was the more absurd because a stout youth of five feet eight, who might
have been procured for a few dollars, would in all probability have been
a much more valuable soldier. But to Frederic William, this huge
Irishman was what a brass Otho, or a Vinegar Bible, is to a collector of
a different kind.

It is remarkable that though the main end of Frederic William's
administration was to have a great military force, though his reign
forms an important epoch in the history of military discipline, and
though his dominant passion was the love of military display, he was yet
one of the most pacific of princes. We are afraid that his aversion to
war was not the effect of humanity, but was merely one of his thousand
whims. His feeling about his troops seems to have resembled a miser's
feeling about his money. He loved to collect them, to count them, to see
them increase; but he could not find it in his heart to break in upon
the precious hoard. He looked forward to some future time when his
Patagonian battalions were to drive hostile infantry before them like
sheep; but this future time was always receding; and it is probable
that, if his life had been prolonged thirty years, his superb army would
never have seen any harder service than a sham fight in the fields near
Berlin. But the great military means which he had collected were
destined to be employed by a spirit far more daring and inventive than
his own.

Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Frederic William, was born in
January, 1712. It may safely be pronounced that he had received from
nature a strong and sharp understanding, and a rare firmness of temper
and intensity of will. As to the other parts of his character, it is
difficult to say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or to the
strange training which he underwent. The history of his boyhood is
painfully interesting. Oliver Twist in the parish workhouse, Smike at
Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when compared with this wretched
heir apparent of a crown. The nature of Frederic William was hard and
bad, and the habit of exercising arbitrary power had made him
frightfully savage. His rage constantly vented itself to right and left
in curses and blows. When his Majesty took a walk, every human being
fled b