On the fifth morning, 9th November,--after much work done during this short visit, much ceremonial audiencing, latterly, and raising to the peerage,--Friedrich rolled on to Glogau. Took accurate survey of the engineering and other interests there, for a couple of days; thence to Berlin (noon of the llth), joyfully received by Royal Family and all the world;--and, as we might fancy, asking himself: "Am I actually home, then; out of the enchanted jungles and their devilries; safe here, and listening, I alone in Peace, to the universal din of War?" Alas, no; that was a beautiful hypothesis; too beautiful to be long credible! Before reaching Berlin,--or even Breslau, as appears,--Friedrich, vigilantly scanning and discerning, had seen that fine hope as good as vanish;and was silently busy upon the opposite one.
In a fortnight hence, Hyndford, who had followed to Berlin, got transient sight of the King one morning, hastening through some apartment or other: "'My Lord,' said the King, (the Court of Vienna has entirely divulged our secret. Dowager Empress Amelia [Kaiser Joseph's widow, mother of Karl Albert's wife] has acquainted the Court of Bavaria with it; Wasner [Austrian Minister at Paris] has told Fleury; Sinzendorf [ditto at Petersburg] has told the Court of Russia; Robinson, through Mr. Villiers [your Saxon Minister], has told the Court of Dresden; and several members of your Government in England have talked publicly about it!' And, with a shrug of the shoulders, he left me,"--standing somewhat agape there. [Hyndford's Despatch, Berlin, 28th November, 1741; Ib. Breslau, 28th October (secret already known).]
Chapter VI.
NEW MAYOR OF LANDSHUT MAKES AN INSTALLATION SPEECH.
The late general Homaging at Breslau, and solemn Taking Possession of the Country by King Friedrich, under such peaceable omens, had straightway, as we gather, brought about, over Silesia at large, or at least where pressingly needful, various little alterations,--rectifications, by the Prussian model and new rule now introduced.
Of which, as it is better that the reader have some dim notion, if easily procurable, than none at all, I will offer him one example;--itself dim enough, but coming at first-hand, in the actual or ccncrete form, and beyond disputing in whatever light or twilight it may yield us.
At Landshut, a pleasant little Mountain Town, in the Principality of Schweidnitz, high up, on the infant River Bober, near the Bohemian Frontier--(English readers may see QUINCY ADAMS'Sdescription of it, and of the long wooden spouts which throw cataracts on you, if walking the streets in rain [John Quincy Adams (afterwards President of the United States), Letters on Silesia (London, 1804). "The wooden spouts are now gone" ( Tourist's Note, of 1858).]): at Landshut, as in some other Towns, it had been found good to remodel the Town Magistracy a little; to make it partly Protestant, for one thing, instead of Catholic (and Austrian), which it had formerly been. Details about the "high controversies and discrepancies"which had risen there, we have absolutely none; nor have the special functions of the Magistracy, what powers they had, what work they did, in the least become distinct to us: we gather only that a certain nameless Burgermeister (probably Austrian and Catholic) had, by "Most gracious Royal Special-Order," been at length relieved from his labors, and therewith "the much by him persecuted and afflicted Herr Theodorus Spener" been named Burgermeister instead. Which respectable Herr Theodorus Spener, and along with him Herr Johann David Fischer as RATHS-SENIOR, and Herr Johann Caspar Ruffer, and also Herr Johann Jacob Umminger, as new Raths (how many of the old being left I cannot say), were accordingly, on the 4th of December, 1741, publicly installed, and with proper solemnity took their places; all Landshut looking on, with the conceivable interest and astonishment, almost as at a change in the obliquity of the ecliptic,--change probably for the better.
