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THE PRUSSIAN KING, HIS COURT AND KITCHEN. 



[LETTER FROM BERLIN.] 



Berlin, July, 1832. 



I CANNOT conceive why you dun me so perseveringly for sketches of 

 what is to be seen here of the court, you say, and its eminent per- 

 sonages. How can that, which is dulness itself to behold, become 

 entertaining upon the page ? And yet since you do set me thinking 

 upon the subject, the dull scene and the dull beings are curious enough 

 curious that twelve millions of subjects should look up to such a 

 centre of government and influence, and that such a centre should not 

 be more worthy of the epoch and of Germany. 



The King of Prussia himself, is just what you saw him at Paris and 

 London ; good, simple, honest, strict in his morals and in his ideas of 

 honour, economical in his expenditure, and generous at times just 

 when and where it is required. He likes his old generals, the sufferers 

 or the heroes of his campaigns, and none can vie with them in his 

 favour. Frederic is the most indolent-minded, active-bodied man in 

 the world the character, say you, of a million of country squires true, 

 and a good country squire the monarch would have been. A never- 

 failing attendant would he have been to hound and horse, for to no 

 other excitement does he seem so much alive as to that of quick loco- 

 motion. But I was speaking of his mind. It is like the Prussian soil, 

 bleak, barren, and little capable of cultivation, bearing little in the 

 shape of root or fruit nought, indeed, save here and there some sturdy 

 fig-trees, finding the firmest root, like prejudices, in the shallowest 

 crevice. He has few ideas, but those are fixed ones ; and to these, as 

 principles, all his acts are referred. 



The routine of his day spent, is, perhaps, the best portraiture of Fre- 

 deric's character. He sleeps in summer at Potsdam; in winter at Charlot- 

 tenberg. I will not say, he dwells, for as the greater part of his tim6 is 

 spent on the road between those palaces and his capital, he lives more 

 on the high road than any where else. Potsdam is six leagues from 

 Berlin ; Charlottenberg two. And yet he will always make two 

 journeys in the day, from the former place twice during the day, and, 

 perhaps, four or five from the latter. Two hours of the morning are 

 always devoted to his ministers, who are stationary in the capital, and 

 he never fails to come in for these two hours. Then he returns. And 

 then comes back again to Berlin in the day, to go about the town, 

 attend parades, reviews, inspections and then be off again for Potsdam 

 in the evening. 



One of his singularities is, that his entire family follow him in this 

 eternal succession of comings and goings. Princes, princesses, cham- 

 berlains all form a queue after him, the old dowagers and the young 1 

 children not excepted. It would be the highest affront for one of the 

 family to remain behind ; and even the princesses, in an inconvenient 

 stage of pregnancy, are not exempted. What is still more odd, the 

 entire culinary establishment of the monarch follows himself in the 

 day backwards and forwards. The court kitchen is on wheels ; cooks 

 and saucepans, fires and spits are whirled along in rapid accompaniment 

 to majesty; and the king's dinner roasts in close attendance upon 

 him. Wherever, therefore, hunger overtakes him, food is ready. At 



