ll of ardor, never abler for fight" (insists
Schmettau), which indeed seems to have been the fact on every small
occasion;--"but fatally forbidden to try." Not so fatally perhaps, had
Schmettau looked beyond his epaulettes: was not the thing, by that slow
method, got done? By the swifter method, awakening a new Seven-Years
business, how infinitely costlier might it have been!

Schmettau's NARRATIVE, deducting the endless lamentings, especially the
extensive didactic digressions, is very clear, ocular, exact; and, in
contrast with Friedrich's own, is really amusing to read. A Schmettau
giving us, in his haggard light and oblique point of vision, the naked
truth, NAKED and all in a shiver; a Friedrich striving to drape it a
little, and make it comfortable to himself. Those bits of Anecdotes in
SCHMETTAU, clear, credible, as if we had seen them, are so many crevices
through which it is curiously worth while to look.

Chapter VII.--MILLER ARNOLD'S LAWSUIT.

About the Second Law-Reform, after reading and again reading much dreary
detail, I can say next to nothing, except that it is dated as beginning
in 1776, near thirty years after Cocceji's; ["In 1748" Cocceji's was
completed; "in 1774-1775," on occasion of the Silesian Reviews, Von
Carmer, Chancellor of Silesia, knowing of the King's impatience at the
state of Law, presented successively Two MEMORIALS on the subject; the
Second of which began "4th January, 1776" to have visible fruit.] that
evidently, by what causes is not stated, but may be readily enough
conjectured (in the absence of Cocceji by death, and of a Friedrich
by affairs of War), the abuses of Law had again become more or less
unendurable to this King; that said abuses did again get some reform
(again temporary, such the Law of Nature, which bids you sweep
vigorously your kitchen, though it will next moment recommence the
gathering of dirt upon it); and that, in fine, after some reluctance in
the Law circles, and debating PRO and CONTRA, oral some of it, and done
in the King's presence, who is so intent to be convinced and see his
practical way in it, [At Potsdam, "4th January, 1776," Debate, by
solemn appointment, in the King's presence (King very unwell), between
Silesian-Chancellor von Carmer and Grand-Chancellor von Furst, as to the
feasibility of Carmer's ideas; old Furst strong in the negative;--King,
after reflection, determining to go on nevertheless. (Rodenbeck, iii.
131, 133.)]--there was, a