e
etiquette. The same laborious habits attended him everywhere, in prison
and in freedom, in his own country and in other lands. It was in Germany
that he conceived the idea of his treatise on "The Reform of the Jews,"
which is acknowledged to be one of his best works.

Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. Feeling that he could do
nothing useful, Mirabeau resolved at the close of 1786 to quit Berlin.
He was urged also by a special motive in which he took pride, and which
he thus described in a letter: "My heart has not grown old, and if my
enthusiasm is damped, it is not extinguished. I have fully experienced
this to-day. I consider one of the best days of my life that on which I
received an account of the convocation of the notables, which no doubt
will not long precede that of the National Assembly. In this I see a new
order of things which may regenerate the monarchy. I should deem myself
a thousand times honoured in being even the junior secretary of this
assembly, of which I had the happiness of giving the first idea."

Mirabeau was prodigiously occupied at Berlin. He often did not retire to
rest till one in the morning, but regularly rose at five, even in the
midst of severe winter. Without anything on but a simple quilted
dressing-gown, without stockings or waistcoat, he worked away without
even calling up his servant to light a fire. Besides his correspondence
in cypher, which occupied him much, he worked assiduously at his
"Prussian Monarchy," which was published in 1788.

On departing from Berlin the count wrote a most eloquent letter of
counsel to King Frederick William, appealing to him to cultivate peace,
reminding him that his illustrious predecessor had conquered the
admiration of mankind but never won their love, commending him not to
extend the direct action of the royal power to matters which did not
require it, advising him not to govern too much, and exhorting him to
abolish military slavery; that is to say, the obligation then imposed on
every Prussian to serve as a soldier from the age of eighteen to sixty
or more, which forced men to go to the battle-field like cattle to the
slaughterhouse.

In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the
harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the
country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement
protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of
seizing the pr