A mighty reformer he had been, the greatest of his day.

Broke violently in upon quiescent Austrian routine, on every side: monkeries, school-pedantries, trade-monopolies, serfages,--all things, military and civil, spiritual and temporal, he had resolved to make perfect in a minimum of time.
Austria gazed on him, its admiration not unmixed with terror.

He rushed incessantly about; hardy as a Charles Twelfth; slept on his bearskin on the floor of any inn or hut;--flew at the throat of every Absurdity, however broad-based or dangerously armed, "Disappear, I say!" Will hurl you an Official of Rank, where need is, into the Pillory; sets him, in one actual instance, to permanent sweeping of the streets in Vienna.
A most prompt, severe, and yet beneficent and charitable kind of man.
Immensely ambitious, that must be said withal.

A great admirer of Friedrich; bent to imitate him with profit.

"Very clever indeed," says Friedrich; "but has the fault [a terribly grave one!] of generally taking the second step without having taken the first." A troublesome neighbor he proved to everybody, not by his reforms alone;--and ended, pretty much as here in the FURSTENBUND, by having, in all matters, to give in and desist.