iv.

308.] A joyful meeting, for the kindred: cheerful light-gleam in the dark time, so suddenly eclipsed to them and others by those hurricanes that have risen.

His Majesty seems to be in perfect health; and wears no look of gloom.

At Berlin is no Carnival this year; all are grave, sunk in sad contemplations of the future.

Of his businesses in this interval, which were many, I will say nothing; only of one little Act he did, the day before his departure: the writing of this SECRET LETTER OF INSTRUCTIONS to Graf Finck von Finkenstein, his chief Home Minister, one of his old boy-comrades, as readers may recollect.