s;
reckless what dangerous breakage and spilth it may occasion. Friedrich
Wilhelm looked aside to it indignantly. "What is that?" inquired he, in
metallic tone still high. "Pooh, a toy I bought for the little Prince
August, your Majesty: am only trying it!" His Majesty understood the
hint, Seckendorf still better; and a jolly touch of laughter, on both
sides, brought the matter back into the safe tobacco-clouds again.
[Forster, ii. 110.]

This Smoking Parliament or TABAKS-COLLEGIUM of his Prussian Majesty
was a thing much talked of in the world; but till Seckendorf and Grumkow
started their grand operations there, its proceedings are not on record;
nor indeed till then had its political or parliamentary function become
so decidedly evident. It was originally a simple Smoking-Club; got
together on hest of Nature, without ulterior intentions:--thus English
PARLIAMENTA themselves are understood to have been, in the old Norman
time, mere royal Christmas-Festivities, with natural colloquy or
PARLEYING between King and Nobles ensuing thereupon, and what
wisest consultation concerning the arduous things of the realm the
circumstances gave rise to. Such parleyings or consultations,--always
two in number in regard to every matter, it would seem, or even three;
one sober, one drunk, and one just after being drunk,--proving of
extreme service in practice, grew to be Parliament, with its three
readings, and what not.

A Smoking-room,--with wooden furniture, we can suppose,--in each of his
Majesty's royal Palaces, was set apart for this evening service, and
became the Tabagie of his Majesty. A Tabagie-room in the Berlin Schloss,
another in the Potsdam, if the cicerone had any knowledge, could still
be pointed out:--but the Tobacco-PIPES that are shown as Friedrich
Wilhelm's in the KUNSTKAMMER or Museum of Berlin, pipes which no
rational smoker, not compelled to it, would have used, awaken just doubt
as to the cicerones; and you leave the Locality of the Tabagie a thing
conjectural. In summer season, at Potsdam and in country situations,
Tabagie could be held under a tent: we expressly know, his Majesty held
Tabagie at Wusterhausen nightly on the Steps of the big Fountain, in
the Outer Court there. Issuing from Wusterhausen Schloss, and its little
clipped lindens, by the western side; passing the sentries, bridge and
black ditch, with live Prussian eagles, vicious black bears, you come
upon the royal Tabagie of Wusterhausen; covere