It was an appropriate preface to the terrible epic of Prussia that it began with an unnatural tragedy of the loss of youth.

That blind and narrow savage who was the boy's father had just sufficient difficulty in stamping out every trace of decency in him, to show that some such traces must have been there.

If the younger and greater Frederick ever had a heart, it was a broken heart; broken by the same blow that broke his flute.

When his only friend was executed before his eyes, there were two corpses to be borne away; and one to be borne on a high war-horse through victory after victory: but with a small bottle of poison in the pocket.

It is not irrelevant thus to pause upon the high and dark house of his childhood.