Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 131.djvu/381

Rh The other two interesting things in the book are the two parallel love-stories — that between the heroine and Frederic's brother, Prince August Wilhelm, and that between her niece Julie and King Frederic William the Second. In the history of the Hohenzollern house, these two stories are really not unimportant, and the more so because they run parallel to each other. In both cases, the lady is pursued with the most ungovernable passion. In the first case, she makes her escape from the royal addresses by a marriage without affection; in the latter case she yields. But both the lovers, at the time of falling in love, bear the title of Prince of Prussia, and one is the father of the other. King Frederic William the Second is a person who, as soon as it becomes part of a proper English education to learn something about Continental, especially about Prussian history, will be recognized as having a great historical importance. His peculiar ungovernableness, his total want of the stern self-discipline which has made the greatness of his house, had great consequences in the world, for they produced that demoralization of the Prussian State and army which ended in Jena and the Peace of Tilsit. His character is the more worth studying because it was not without strong and remarkable qualities, so much so that Kant could describe him as a "brave, honest, humane, and — putting aside certain peculiarities of temperament — a thoroughly excellent prince." We seem to get some light upon his character from the way in which in this book it is set over against that of his unfortunate father. Ungovernableness is equally the characteristic of both father and son. The elder prince of Prussia, at the celebration of the marriage which he has forced our diarist into contracting, actually falls down in a fainting fit, and has to be carried out. The same unrestrained sensibility is shown in the circumstances of his death. In this volume is printed a letter from a Fraulein von Kleist, describing the persistency with which, when attacked by illness, he, broken-hearted by the harshness with which his brother treated him, refused to listen to medical advice or take remedies, until, in spite of all the care of those about him, he succeeded in rendering his illness fatal. The family likeness is plain in the notes which the diarist makes of the behavior of his son, Frederic's successor. He pursues Julie as his father had pursued our diarist, until she consents to a left-handed marriage, and, in the remarks here made, both on this persecution and on his other amours, we see how different was the Prussian Charles the Second from the English one. We see a man of passion rather than a man of pleasure, a sentimentalist rather than a cynic; that is, a man not wanting in the feelings so much as in the discipline of virtue.

Just so much we seem to learn from this book, though, indeed, it would not be safe to treat as serious historic testimony a document so exceedingly light and so conventional in its tone as the diary of the Countess Voss. But the time will come when King Frederic William the Second of Prussia — the king who made the treaty of Reichenbach, the second and third partitions of Poland, the invasion of France, and the treaty of Basle — will be a better-known historical character than he now is; and it will then be interesting to observe that the faults of his public career were of the same kind as those which were observed in his private life, that is, very great and scandalous faults, but not faults of will so much as of impulse, the irregularities of a warm temperament joined to a somewhat confused understanding.

 

 From The Pall Mall Gazette.

Philadelphia, August 30. visitors in Philadelphia this summer have experienced the feelings and have had the general appearance during the past month of those unfortunate Polar bears one sees now and then in a zoological garden. While enjoying the gentle pleasures of a spring and summer upon the Thames last year, I was constantly surprised by complaints of unusual heat, with the thermometer at a mild 75° or 80°. It seemed to me that the complainants hardly appreciated the climatic blessings of Providence in their own country, and that a visit to America in July and August would be an excellent experience for them. Some Englishmen have had this experience in the present season, and none who have, I think, will ever complain of the heat in England again. Even a residence in a warm southern latitude does not prepare a person for the discomforts of what is called a "heated term" in this country. There are no forewarnings of these terms; their coming is so uncertain that no efficient means in the way of appliances or 