This is strange to some readers; but it is true,--and ought to alter certain current notions.

Friedrich, flashing like clear steel upon evildoers and mendacious unjust persons and their works, is not by nature a cruel man, then, or an unfeeling, as Rumor reports?
Reader, no, far the reverse;--and public Rumor, as you may have remarked, is apt to be an extreme blockhead, full of fury and stupidity on such points, and had much better hold its tongue till it know in some measure.

Extreme sensibility is not sure to be a merit; though it is sure to be reckoned one, by the greedy dim fellows looking idly on: but, in any case, the degree of it that dwelt (privately, for most part) in Friedrich was great; and to himself it seemed a sad rather than joyful fact.

Speaking of this matter, long afterwards, to Garve, a Silesian Philosopher, with whom he used to converse at Breslau, he says;--or let dull Garve himself report it, in the literal third-person:-- "And herein, I," the Herr Garve (venturing to dispute, or qualify, on one of his Majesty's favorite topics), "believe, lies the real ground of 'happiness:' it is the capacity and opportunity to accomplish great things.

This the King would not allow; but said, That I did not sufficiently take into account the natural feelings, different in different people, which, when painful, imbittered the life of the highest as of the lowest.