mern, Brandenburg, Saxony,
Frontiers of Silesia, alike in danger, often enough all at one time.
If I escaped absolute destructiou, I must impute it chiefly to the
misconduct of my enemies; who gained such advantages, but had not the
sense to follow them up. Experience often corrects people of their
blunders: I cannot expect to profit by anything of that kind; on their
part, in the course of this Campaign:" judge if it will be a light
one, MON CHER. [To Mitchell, one evening, "Camp of Schlettau, May 23d"
(Mitchell, ii. 159).]

The symptoms we decipher in these Letters, and otherwise, are those of
a man drenched in misery; but used to his black element, unaffectedly
defiant of it, or not at the pains to defy it; occupied only to do
his very utmost in it, with or without success, till the end come.
Prometheus, chained on the Ocean-cliffs, with the New Ruling-Powers in
the upper hand, and their vultures gradually eating him; dumb Time and
dumb Space looking on, apparently with small sympathy: Prometheus and
other Titans, now and then, have touched the soul of some AEschylus,
and drawn tones of melodious sympathy, far heard among mankind. But with
this new Titan it is not so: nor, upon the whole, with the proper
Titan, in this world, is it usually so; the world being a--what shall
we say?--a poorish kind of world, and its melodies and dissonances,
its loves and its hatreds worth comparatively little in the long-run.
Friedrich does wonderfully without sympathy from almost anybody; and
the indifference with which he walks along, under such a cloud of sulky
stupidities, of mendacities and misconceptions from the herd of mankind,
is decidedly admirable to me.

But let us look into the Campaign itself. Perhaps--contrary to the
world's opinion, and to Friedrich's own when, in ultra-lucid moments, he
gazes into it in the light of cold arithmetic, and finds the aspect of
it "frightful"--this Campaign will be a little luckier to him than the
last? Unluckier it cannot well be:--or if so, it will at least be final
to him!

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of History of Friedrich II. of Prussia,
Vol. XIX. (of XXI.), by Thomas Carlyle

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. ***

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