and with a terrible blaze of fighting-talent in him; full of
obedience, of endurance, and yet of unsubduable "silent rage"
(which has brooked even the vocal rage of Friedrich, on occasion);
a really curious old Hussar General. He is now a kind of mythical
or demigod personage among the Prussians; and was then (1779), and
ever after the Seven-Years War, regarded popularly as their Ajax
(with a dash of the Ulysses superadded),--Seidlitz, another Horse
General, being the Achilles of that service.

The date of this drive through the moors being "23d July, 1779," we
perceive it is just about two months since Friedrich got home from
the Bavarian War (what they now call "POTATO WAR," so barren was it
in fighting, so ripe in foraging); victorious in a sort;--and that
in his private thought, among the big troubles of the world on both
sides of the Atlantic, the infinitesimally small business of the
MILLER ARNOLD'S LAWSUIT is beginning to rise now and then.
[Supra 415, 429. Preuss, i. 362; &c. &c.]

Friedrich is now 67 years old; has reigned 39: the Seven-Years War
is 16 years behind us; ever since which time Friedrich has been an
"old man,"--having returned home from it with his cheeks all
wrinkled, his temples white, and other marks of decay, at the age
of 51. The "wounds of that terrible business," as they say, "are
now all healed," perhaps above 100,000 burnt houses and huts
rebuilt, for one thing; and the "ALTE FRITZ," still brisk and wiry,
has been and is an unweariedly busy man in that affair, among
others. What bogs he has tapped and dried, what canals he has dug,
and stubborn strata he has bored through,--assisted by his Prussian
Brindley (one Brenkenhof, once a Stable-boy at Dessau);--and ever
planting "Colonies" on the reclaimed land, and watching how they