On stiller evenings we can fancy him there in solitude; reading meditative, or musically fluting;--looking out upon the silent death of Day: how the summer gloaming steals over the moorlands, and over all lands; shutting up the toil of mortals; their very flocks and herds collapsing into silence, and the big Skies and endless Times overarching him and them.

With thoughts perhaps sombre enough now and then, but profitable if he face them piously.
His Father's affection is returning; would so fain return if it durst.
But the heart of Papa has been sadly torn up: it is too good news to be quite believed, that he has a son grown wise, and doing son-like! Rumor also is very busy, rumor and the Tobacco-Parliament for or against; a little rumor is capable of stirring up great storms in the suspicious paternal mind.

All along during Friedrich's abode at Ruppin, this is a constantly recurring weather-symptom; very grievous now and then; not to be guarded against by any precaution;--though steady persistence in the proper precaution will abate it, and as good as remove it, in course of time.

Already Friedrich Wilhelm begins to understand that "there is much in this Fritz,"-- who knows how much, though of a different type from Papa's ?--and that it will be better if he and Papa, so discrepant in type, and ticklishly related otherwise, live not too constantly together as heretofore.

Which is emphatically the Crown-Prince's notion too.
I perceive he read a great deal at Ruppin: what Books I know not specially: but judge them to be of more serious solid quality than formerly; and that his reading is now generally a kind of studying as well.