History of Friedrich II of Prussia, appendix | Page 4

own expense, for the benefit of poor soldiers' children." ["Gleim's edition, brought out in 1786, the year of Friedrich's death, is now quite gone,--the Book undiscoverable. But the Paper was reprinted in an ANEKDOTEN- SAMMLUNG (Collection of Anecdotes, Berlin, 1787, 8tes STUCK, where I discover it yesterday (17th July, 1852) in a copy of mine, much to my surprise; having before met with it in one Hildebrandt's ANEKDOTEN-SAMMLUNG (Halberstadt, 1830, 4tes STUCK, a rather slovenly Book), where it is given out as one of the rarest of all rarities, and as having been specially 'furnished by a Dr. W. Korte,' being unattainable otherwise! The two copies differ slightly here and there,--not always to Dr. Korte's advantage, or rather hardly ever. I keep them both before me in translating" (MARGINALE OF 1852).
"The RHYN" or Rhin, is a little river, which, near its higher clearer sources, we were all once well acquainted with: considerable little moorland river, with several branches coming down from Ruppin Country, and certain lakes and plashes there, in a southwest direction, towards the Elbe valley, towards the Havel Stream; into which latter, through another plash or lake called GULPER SEE, and a few miles farther, into the Elbe itself, it conveys, after a course of say 50 English miles circuitously southwest, the black drainings of those dreary and intricate Peatbog-and-Sand countries. "LUCH," it appears, signifies LOCH (or Hole, Hollow); and "Rhyn-Luch" will mean, to Prussian ears, the Peatbog Quagmire drained by the RHYN.--New Ruppin, where this beautiful black Stream first becomes considerable, and of steadily black complexion, lies between 40 and 50 miles northwest of Berlin. Ten or twelve miles farther north is REINSBERG (properly RHYNSBERG), where Friedrich as Crown-Prince lived his happiest few years. The details of which were familiar to us long ago,--and no doubt dwell clear and soft, in their appropriate "pale moonlight," in Friedrich's memory on this occasion. Some time after his Accession, he gave the place to Prince Henri, who lived there till 1802. It is now fallen all dim; and there is nothing at New Ruppin but a remembrance.
To the hither edge of this Rhyn-Luoh, from Berlin, I guess there may be five-and-twenty miles, in a northwest direction; from Potsdam, whence Friedrich starts to-day, about, the same distance north-by-west; "at Seelenhorst," where Fromme waits him, Friedrich has already had 30 miles of driving,--rate 10 miles an hour, as we chance to observe. Notable things, besides the Spade- husbandries he is intent on, solicit his remembrance in this region. Of Freisack and "Heavy-Peg" with her didactic batterings there, I suppose he, in those fixed times, knows nothing, probably has never heard: Freisack is on a branch of this same Rhyn, and he might see it, to left a mile or two, if he cared.
But Fehrbellin ("Ferry of BellEEN"), distinguished by the shining victory which "the Great Elector," Friedrich's Great-Grandfather, gained there, over the Swedes, in 1675, stands on the Rhyn itself, about midway; and Friedrich will pass through it on this occasion. General Ziethen, too, lives near it at Wusterau (as will be seen): "Old Ziethen," a little stumpy man, with hanging brows and thick pouting lips; unbeautiful to look upon, but pious, wise, silent, 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