Derschau, General Flans; these, and the other nameless Generals
and Officials, are a curious counterpart to the Camases, the
Hautcharmoys and Forcades, with their nimble tongues and rapiers;
still more to the Beausobres, Achards, full of ecclesiastical
logic, made of Bayle and Calvin kneaded together; and to the
high-frizzled ladies rustling in stiff silk, with the shadow of
Versailles and of the Dragonnades alike present to them.

Born Hyperboreans these others; rough as hemp, and stout of fibre
as hemp; native products of the rigorous North. Of whom, after all
our reading, we know little.--O Heaven, they have had long lines
of rugged ancestors, cast in the same rude stalwart mould, and
leading their rough life there, of whom we know absolutely
nothing! Dumb all those preceding busy generations; and this of
Friedrich Wilhelm is grown almost dumb. Grim semi-articulate
Prussian men; gone all to pipe-clay and mustache for us.
Strange blond-complexioned, not unbeautiful Prussian honorable
women, in hoops, brocades, and unintelligible head-gear and
hair-towers,--ACH GOTT, they too are gone; and their musical talk,
in the French or German language, that also is gone; and the
hollow Eternities have swallowed it, as their wont is, in a very
surprising manner!--

Grumkow, a cunning, greedy-hearted, long-headed fellow, of the old
Pomeranian Nobility by birth, has a kind of superficial polish put
upon his Hyperboreanisms; he has been in foreign countries, doing
legations, diplomacies, for which, at least for the vulpine parts
of which, he has a turn. He writes and speaks articulate
grammatical French; but neither in that, nor in native Pommerish
Platt-Deutsch, does he show us much, except the depths of his own