A man better not be meddled with, if he will be at peace, as he professes to wish being.
Friedrich accordingly is not meddled with, or not openly meddled with; and has, for the Ten or Eleven Years coming, a time of perfect external Peace.

He himself is decided "not to fight with a cat," if he can get the peace kept; and for about eight years hopes confidently that this, by good management, will continue possible;--till, in the last three years, electric symptoms did again disclose themselves, and such hope more and more died away.

It is well known there lay in the fates a Third Silesian War for him, worse than both the others; which is now the main segment of his History still lying ahead for us, were this Halcyon Period done.

Halcyon Period counts from Christmas-day, Dresden, 1745,--"from this day, Peace to the end of my life!" had been Friedrich's fond hope.

But on the 9th day of September, 1756, Friedrich was again entering Dresden (Saxony some twelve days before); and the Crowning Struggle of his Life was, beyond all expectation, found to be still lying ahead for him, awfully dubious for Seven Years thereafter!-- Friedrich's History during this intervening Halcyon or Peace Period must, in some way, be made known to readers: but for a great many reasons, especially at present, it behooves to be given in compressed form; riddled down, to an immense extent, out of those sad Prussian Repositories, where the grain of perennial, of significant and still memorable, lies overwhelmed under rubbish-mountains of the fairly extinct, the poisonously dusty and forgettable;--ACH HIMMEL! Which indispensable preliminary process, how can an English Editor, at this time, do it; no Prussian, at any time, having thought of trying it! From a painful Predecessor of mine, I collect, rummaging among his dismal Paper-masses, the following Three Fragments, worth reading here:-- 1.