One of the most dangerous Diseases of National Adolescence;extremely prevalent over the world at this time,--indeed unavoidable, for reasons obvious enough. "SIC ITUR AD ASTRA;"all Nations certain that the way to Heaven is By voting, by eloquently wagging the tongue "within those walls"! Diseases, real or imaginary, await Nations like individuals; aud are not to be resisted, but must be submitted to, and got through the best you can. Measles and mumps; you cannot prevent them in Nations either.
Nay fashions even; fashion of Crinoline, for instance (how infinitely more, that of Ballot-Box and Fourth-Estate!),--are you able to prevent even that? You have to be patient under it, and keep hoping!
2. In regard to England. Her JENKINS'S-EAR CONTROVERSY is at last settled. Not only liberty of the Seas, but, if she were not wiser, dominion of them; guardianship of liberty for all others whatsoever: Dominion of the Seas for that wise object. America is to be English, not French; what a result is that, were there no other! Really a considerable Fact in the History of the World.
Fact principally due to Pitt, as I believe, according to my best conjecture, and comparison of probabilities and circumstances.
For which, after all, is not everybody thankful, less or more?
O my English brothers, O my Yankee half-brothers, how oblivious are we of those that have done us benefit!--These are the results for England. And in the rear of these, had these and the other elements once ripened for her, the poor Country is to get into such merchandisings, colonizings, foreign-settlings, gold-nuggetings, as lay beyond the drunkenest dreams of Jenkins (supposing Jenkins addicted to liquor);--and, in fact, to enter on a universal uproar of Machineries, Eldorados, "Unexampled Prosperities," which make a great noise for themselves in the very days now come. Prosperities evidently not of a sublime type:
which, in the mean while, seem to be covering the at one time creditably clean and comely face of England with mud-blotches, soot-blotches, miscellaneous squalors and horrors; to be preaching into her amazed heart, which once knew better, the omnipotence of SHODDY; filling her ears and soul with shriekery and metallic clangor, mad noises, mad hurries mostly no-whither;--and are awakening, I suppose, in such of her sons as still go into reflection at all, a deeper and more ominous set of Questions than have ever risen in England's History before. As in the foregoing case, we have to be patient and keep hoping.
3. In regard to France. It appears, noble old Teutschland, with such pieties and unconquerable silent valors, such opulences human and divine, amid its wreck of new and old confusions, is not to be cut in Four, and made to dance to the piping of Versailles or another. Far the contrary! To Versailles itself there has gone forth, Versailles may read it or not, the writing on the wall:
"Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting" (at last even "FOUND wanting")! France, beaten, stript, humiliated;sinful, unrepentant, governed by mere sinners and, at best, clever fools (FOUS PLEINS D'ESPRIT),--collapses, like a creature whose limbs fail it; sinks into bankrupt quiescence, into nameless fermentation, generally into DRY-ROT. Rotting, none guesses whitherward;--rotting towards that thrice-extraordinary Spontaneous-Combustion, which blazed out in 1789. And has kindled, over the whole world, gradually or by explosion, this unexpected Outburst of all the chained Devilries (among other chained things), this roaring Conflagration of the Anarchies; under which it is the lot of these poor generations to live,--for I know not what length of Centuries yet. "Go into Combustion, my pretty child!" the Destinies had said to this BELLE FRANCE, who is always so fond of shining and outshining: "Self-Combustion;--in that way, won't you shine, as none of them yet could?" Shine; yes, truly,--till you are got to CAPUT MORTUUM, my pretty child (unless you gain new wisdom!)--But not to wander farther:--WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16th, Friedrich, all Saxon things being now settled,--among the rest, "eight Saxon Schoolmasters" to be a model in Prussia,--quitted Leipzig, with the Seven-Years War safe in his pocket, as it were. Drove to Moritzburg, to dinner with the amiable Kurprinz and still more amiable Wife: "It was to your Highness that we owe this Treaty!" A dinner which readers may hear of again.
At Moritzburg; where, with the Lacys, there was once such rattling and battling. After which, rapidly on to Silesia, and an eight days of adjusting and inspecting there.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30th, Friedrich arrives in Frankfurt-on-Oder, on the way homeward from Silesia: "takes view of the Field of Kunersdorf" (reflections to be fancied); early in the afternoon speeds forward again; at one of the stages (place called Tassdorf)has a Dialogue, which we shall hear of; and between 8 and 9 in the evening, not through the solemn receptions and crowded streets, drives to the Schloss of Berlin. "Goes straight to the Queen's Apartment," Queen, Princesses and Court all home triumphantly some time ago; sups there with the Queen's Majesty and these bright creatures,--beautiful supper, had it consisted only of cresses and salt; and, behind it, sound sleep to us under our own roof-tree once more. [Rodenbeck, ii. 211, 212; Preuss, ii. 345, 346; &c. &c.]
Next day, "the King made gifts to," as it were, to everybody;"to the Queen about 5,000 pounds, to the Princess Amelia 1,000pounds," and so on; and saw true hearts all merry round him,--merrier, perhaps, than his own was.