no-interpretation, you find, in these vacant circumstances,
a great promptitude to interpret. Whereby judgments and
prepossessions exist among us on that subject, especially on
Friedrich's character, which are very ignorant indeed.

To Englishmen, the sources of knowledge or conviction about
Friedrich, I have observed, are mainly these two. FIRST, for his
Public Character: it was an all-important fact, not to IT, but to
this country in regard to it, That George II., seeing good to
plunge head-foremost into German Politics, and to take Maria
Theresa's side in the Austrian-Succession War of 1740-1748,
needed to begin by assuring his Parliament and Newspapers,
profoundly dark on the matter, that Friedrich was a robber and
villain for taking the other side. Which assurance, resting on
what basis we shall see by and by, George's Parliament and
Newspapers cheerfully accepted; nothing doubting. And they have
re-echoed and reverberated it, they and the rest of us, ever
since, to all lengths, down to the present day; as a fact quite
agreed upon, and the preliminary item in Friedrich's character.
Robber and villain to begin with; that was one settled point.

Afterwards when George and Friedrich came to be allies, and the
grand fightings of the Seven-Years War took place, George's
Parliament and Newspapers settled a second point, in regard to
Friedrich: "One of the greatest soldiers ever born." This second
item the British Writer fully admits ever since: but he still adds
to it the quality of robber, in a loose way;--and images to
himself a royal Dick Turpin, of the kind known in Review-Articles,
and disquisitions on Progress of the Species, and labels it
FREDERICK; very anxious to collect new babblement of lying