o be ever mentioned again by mankind. As there was
no performance, nor an intention of any, in that Julich-Berg matter,
Excellenz Seckendorf had the task henceforth of keeping, by art-magic
or the PRETERnatural method,--that is, by mere help of Grumkow and the
Devil,--his Prussian Majesty steady to the Kaiser nevertheless.
Always well divided from the English especially. Which the Excellency
Seckendorf managed to do. For six or seven years coming; or, in fact,
till these Spectre-chasings ended, or ran else-whither for consummation.
Steady always, jealous of the English; sometimes nearly mad, but always
ready as a primed cannon: so Friedrich Wilhelm was accordingly managed
to be kept;--his own Household gone almost into delirium; he himself
looking out, with loyally fierce survey, for any Anti-Kaiser War: "When
do we go off, then?"--though none ever came. And indeed nothing came;
and except those torments to young Friedrich and others, it was all
Nothing. One of the strangest pieces of Black-Art ever done.

Excellenz Seckendorf, whom Friedrich Wilhelm so loves, is by no means a
beautiful man; far the reverse. Bodily,--and the spirit corresponds,--a
stiff-backed, petrified, stony, inscrutable-looking, and most
unbeautiful old Intriguer. Portraits of him, which are frequent, tell
all one story. The brow puckered together, in a wide web of wrinkles
from each temple, as if it meant to hide the bad pair of eyes, which
look suspicion; inquiry, apprehension, habit of double-distilled
mendacity; the indeterminate projecting chin, with its thick, chapped
under-lip, is shaken out, or shoved out, in mill-hopper fashion,--as if
to swallow anything there may be, spoken thing or other, and grind it
to profitable meal for itself. Spiritually he was an old Soldier let for
hire; an old Intriguer, Liar, Fighter, what you like. What we may call
a human Soul standing like a hackney-coach, this half-century past, with
head, tongue, heart, conscience, at the hest of a discerning public and
its shilling.

There is considerable faculty, a certain stiff-necked strength in the
old fellow; in fact, nature had been rather kind to him; and certainly
his Uncle and Guardian--the distinguished Seckendorf who did the
HISTORIA LUTHERANISMI, a RITTER, and man of good mark, in Ernst THE
PIOUS of Saxe-Gotha's time--took pains about his education. But Nature's
gifts have not prospered with him: how could they, in that hackney-coach
way of life? Considerable