INTRODUCTION

In the Austrian and Prussian capitals to-day the traveller may mark the contrast between two great statues, in each of which the meaning of a reign is set forth with happy instinct. In the heart of imperial Vienna is seated the colossal figure of Maria Theresa, the Victoria of an age when a Pompadour could sway the fate of nations. Her effigy presents her as the mother of her people, displaying rather than obscuring the scholars, statesmen, and warriors who cluster round her feet, sharing harmoniously the glory which neither Queen nor people could have won without the other’s aid.

In Berlin the superb monument of the Great Frederick is instinct with a different spirit. Raised high above the throng, the King seems to gaze with his inscrutable mask-face at the astounding works of his successors. At the base of his lofty pedestal are stationed generals and civilians of renown, numerous enough almost to confute the Cassius who should infer of Frederick’s Prussia that there was in it but one2 only man. The statue none the less suggests the truth. Between monarch and people there was ever a great gulf fixed. Through all his life—in his counsels, in his despair, in his triumph, and in his death—Frederick, almost beyond parallel in the record of human history, was alone.