What shades of his armed ancestors of the House of
Brandenburg will the committee of _Illumines_ raise up in the
opera-house of Berlin, to dance a grand ballet in the rejoicings for
this auspicious event? Is it a grand master of the Teutonic order, or is
it the great Elector? Is it the first king of Prussia, or the last? or
is the whole long line (long, I mean, _a parte ante_) to appear like
Banquo's royal procession in the tragedy of Macbeth?
How can I prevent all these arts of royal policy, and all these displays
of royal magnificence? How can I prevent the successor of Frederick the
Great from aspiring to a new, and, in this age, unexampled kind of
glory? Is it in my power to say that he shall not make his confessions
in the style of St. Austin or of Rousseau? that he shall not assume the
character of the penitent and flagellant, and, grafting monkery on
philosophy, strip himself of his regal purple, clothe his gigantic limbs
in the sackcloth and the _hair-shirt_, and exercise on his broad
shoulders the disciplinary scourge of the holy order of the
_Sans-Culottes_? It is not in me to hinder kings from making new orders
of religious and martial knighthood. I am not Hercules enough to uphold
those orbs which the Atlases of the world are so desirous of shifting
from their weary shoulders. What can be done against the magnanimous
resolution of the great to accomplish the degradation and the ruin of
their own character and situation?
What I say of the German princes, that I say of all the other dignities
and all the other institutions of the Holy Roman Empire.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131