CHAPTER II .-- REPAIRING OF A RUINED PRUSSIA.
That of Friedrich's sitting wrapt in a cloud of reflections Olympian-Abysmal, in the music-chapel at Charlottenburg, while he had the Ambrosian Song executed for him there, as the preliminary step, was a loose myth; but the fact lying under it is abundantly certain.

Few Sons of Adam had more reason for a piously thankful feeling towards the Past, a piously valiant towards the Future.

What king or man had seen himself delivered from such strangling imbroglios of destruction, such devouring rages of a hostile world?
And the ruin worked by them lay monstrous and appalling all round.

Friedrich is now Fifty-one gone; unusually old for his age; feels himself an old man, broken with years and toils; and here lies his Kingdom in haggard slashed condition, worn to skin and bone: How is the King, resourceless, to remedy it?
That is now the seemingly impossible problem.

"Begin it,--thereby alone will it ever cease to be impossible!" Friedrich begins, we may say, on the first morrow morning.