bring Army matters to a footing; and is no doubt shocked to find
them still in such backwardness, with a Friedrich at hand. The Kaiser's
Letter, we perceive, is pilot-balloon to the Kaunitz episcopal Document,
and to an actual meeting of Prussian and Austrian Ministers on the
Bavarian point; and had been seen to be a salutary measure by an Austria
in alarm. It asks, as the Kaunitz Memorial will, though in another
style, "Must there be war, then? Is there no possibility left in
negotiation and mutual concession? I am your Majesty's friend and
admirer; let us try." This was an unexpected and doubtless a welcome
thing to Friedrich; who answers eagerly, and in a noble style both of
courtesy and of business sense: upon which there followed two other
Imperial Letters with their two Royal answers; [In _OEuvres de
Frederic,_ (vi. 183-193), Three successive Letters from the Kaiser (of
dates, "Olmutz," "Litau," "Konigsgratz," 13th-19th April, 1778),
with King's Answers ("Schonwalde," all of them, and 14th-20th
April),--totally without interest to the general reader.] and directly
afterwards the small Austrian-Prussian Congress we spoke of, Finkenstein
and Hertzberg on the Prussian part, Cobenzl on the Austrian (Congress
sitting at Berlin), which tried to agree, but could not; and to which
Kaunitz's Memorial of April 24th was meant as some helpful sprinkling of
presidential quasi-episcopal oil.

Oil merely: for it turned out, Kaunitz had no thought at present of
partitioning the German Reich with Friedrich; but intended merely to
keep his own seized portion of Baiern, and in return for Friedrich's
assent intended to recompense Friedrich with--in fact, with Austria's
consent, That if Anspach and Baireuth lapsed home to Prussia (as it
was possible they might, the present Margraf, Friedrich's Nephew, the
Lady-Craven Margraf, having a childless Wife), Prussia should freely
open the door to them! A thing which Friedrich naturally maintained
to be in need of nobody's consent, and to lie totally apart from this
question; but which Austria always considered a very generous thing,
and always returned to, with new touches of improvement, as their
grand recipe in this matter. So that, unhappily, the Hertzberg-Cobenzl
treatyings, Kaiser's Letters and Kaunitz's episcopal oil, were without
effect,--except to gain for the Austrians, who infinitely needed it,
delay of above two months. The Letters are without general interest:
but, for Friedrich'