Wilder Son of Nature seldom came into the artificial world; into a royal throne there, probably never.

A wild man, wholly in earnest, veritable as the old rocks,--and with a terrible volcanic fire in him too.

He would have been strange anywhere; but among the dapper Royal gentlemen of the Eighteenth Century, what was to be done with such an Orson of a King ?--Clap him in Bedlam, and bring out the ballot-boxes instead?
The modern generation, too, still takes its impression of him from these rumors,--still more now from Wilhelmina's Book; which paints the outside savagery of the royal man, in a most striking manner; and leaves the inside vacant, undiscovered by Wilhelmina or the rumors.
Nevertheless it appears there were a few observant eyes even of contemporaries, who discerned in him a surprising talent for "National Economics" at least.

One Leipzig Professor, Saxon, not Prussian by nation or interest, recognizes in Friedrich Wilhelm "DEN GROSSEN WIRTH (the great Manager, Husbandry-man, or Landlord) of the epoch;" and lectures on his admirable "works, arrangements and institutions" in that kind.

[Rodenbeck's _Beitrage_ (p.