This is the Brandenburg Spartan King; acquainted with National Economics.

Alone of existing Kings he lays by money annually; and is laying by many other and far more precious things, for Prussia and the little Boy he has here.
Friedrich Wilhelm's passion for drilling, recruiting and perfecting his army attracted much notice: laughing satirical notice; in the hundred months of common rumor, which he regarded little; and notice iracund and minatory, when it led him into collision with the independent portions of mankind, now and then.

This latter sort was not pleasant, and sometimes looked rather serious; but this too he contrived always to digest in some tolerable manner.

He continued drilling and recruiting,--we may say not his Army only, but his Nation in all departments of it,--as no man before or since ever did: increasing, by every devisable method, the amount of potential-battle that lay in him and it.
In a military, and also in a much deeper sense, he may be defined as the great Drill-sergeant of the Prussian Nation.

Indeed this had been the function of the Hohenzollerns all along; this difficult, unpleasant and indispensable one of drilling.