HISTORY OF FRIEDRICH II. OF PRUSSIA
Page: 51

Margraf, our eldest Half-Brother, Dorothee's eldest Son, sitting
on the coach-box, in correct insignia, as similitude of Driver.
So strict are we in etiquette; etiquette indeed being now upon its
apotheosis, and after such efforts. Six or seven years of efforts
on Elector Friedrich's part; and six or seven hundred years,
unconsciously, on that of his ancestors.

The magnificence of Friedrich's processionings into Konigsberg,
and through it or in it, to be crowned, and of his coronation
ceremonials there: what pen can describe it, what pen need!
Folio volumes with copper-plates have been written on it;
and are not yet all pasted in bandboxes, or slit into spills.
[British Museum, short of very many necessary Books on this
subject, offers the due Coronation Folio, with its prints,
upholstery catalogues, and official harangues upon nothing,
to ingenuous human curiosity.] "The diamond buttons of his
Majesty's coat [snuff-colored or purple, I cannot recollect] cost
1,500 pounds apiece;" by this one feature judge what an expensive
Herr. Streets were hung with cloth, carpeted with cloth, no end of
draperies and cloth; your oppressed imagination feels as if there
was cloth enough, of scarlet and other bright colors, to thatch
the Arctic Zone. With illuminations, cannon-salvos, fountains
running wine. Friedrich had made two Bishops for the nonce.
Two of his natural Church-Superintendents made into Quasi-Bishops,
on the Anglican model,--which was always a favorite with him,
and a pious wish of his;--but they remained mere cut branches,
these two, and did not, after their haranguing and anointing
functions, take root in the country. He himself put the crown on
his head: "King here in my own right, after all!"--and looked his
royalest, we may fancy; the kind eyes of him almost partly fierce
for moments, and "the cheerfulness of pride" well blending with
something of awful.

In all which sublimities, the one thing that remains for human
memory is not in these Folios at all, but is considered to be a
fact not the less: Electress Charlotte's, now Queen Charlotte's,
very strange conduct on the occasion. For she cared not much about