re especially if rich mines of quizzability turn out to be
workable in them.

OF GUNDLING, AND THE LITERARY MEN IN TOBACCO-PARLIAMENT.

Friedrich Wilhelm had, in succession or sometimes simultaneously, a
number of such Nondescripts, to read his Newspapers and season his
Tabagie;--last evanescent phasis of the old Court-Fool species;--who
form a noticeable feature of his environment. One very famous literary
gentleman of this description, who distanced every competitor, in the
Tabagie and elsewhere, for serving his Majesty's occasions, was Jakob
Paul Gundling; a name still laughingly remembered among the Prussian
People. Gundling was a Country-Clergyman's son, of the Nurnberg quarter;
had studied, carrying off the honors, in various Universities; had read,
or turned over, whole cartloads of wise and foolish Books (gravitating,
I fear, towards the latter kind); had gone the Grand Tour as travelling
tutor, "as companion to an English gentleman." He had seen courts,
perhaps camps, at lowest cities and inns; knew in a manner, practically
and theoretically, all things, and had published multifarious Books
of his own. [List of them, Twenty-one in number, mostly on learned
Antiquarian subjects,--in Forster, ii. 255, 256.] The sublime long-eared
erudition of the man was not to be contested; manifest to everybody;
thrice and four times manifest to himself, in the first place.

In the course of his roamings, and grand and little tours, he had come
to Berlin in old King Friedrich's time; had thrown powder in the eyes of
men there, and been appointed to Professorships in the Ritter-Academy,
to Chief-Heraldships,--"Historiographer Royal," and perhaps other honors
and emoluments. The whole of which were cut down by the ruthless scythe
of Friedrich Wilhelm, ruthlessly mowing his field clear, in the manner
we saw at his Accession. Whereby learned grandiloquent Gundling, much
addicted to liquor by this time, and turning the corner of forty, saw
himself cast forth into the general wilderness; that is to say, walking
the streets of Berlin, with no resources but what lay within himself and
his own hungry skin. Much given to liquor too. How he lived, for a
year or two after this,--erudite pen and braggart tongue his only
resources,--were tragical to say. At length a famous Tavern-keeper, the
"LEIPZIGE POLTER-HANS (Leipzig Kill-Cow, or BOISTEROUS-JACK)," as they
call him, finding what a dungeon of erudite talk this Gundling was,
and h