But the character of the princes was a more potent factor than the location of their country or the race-character of their people; for the way in which the Hohenzollerns molded their state was different from that of any other princes since the days of Charlemagne.  Many a princely family can show a number of rulers who have successfully built up their state—­the Bourbons, for instance, united a wide expanse of territory into one great political body;—­or who have been brave warriors through several generations,—­there never were any braver than the Vasas or the Protestant Wittelsbachs in Sweden.  But none have been the educators of their people as were the early Hohenzollerns, who as great landed proprietors in a devastated country drew new men into their service and guided their education; who for almost a hundred and fifty years, as strict managers, worked, schemed, and endured, took risks, and even did injustice—­all that they might build up for their state a people like themselves—­hard, economical, clever, bold, with the highest civic ambitions.

In this sense we are justified in admiring the providential character of the Prussian State.  Of the four princes who ruled it from the Thirty Years’ War to the day when the “hoary-headed abbot in the monastery of Sans Souci” closed his weary eyes, each one, with his virtues and vices, was the natural complement of his predecessor—­Elector Frederick William, the greatest statesman produced by the school of the Thirty Years’ War, the splendor-loving King Frederick I., the parsimonious despot Frederick William I., and finally, in the eighteenth century, he in whom were united the talents and great qualities of almost all his ancestors—­the flower of the family.

Life in the royal palace at Berlin was cheerless in Frederick’s childhood; poorer in love and sunshine than in most citizens’ households at that rude time.  It may be doubted whether the king his father, or the queen, was more to blame for the disorganization of the family life—­in either case through natural defects which grew more pronounced in the constant friction of the household.  The king, an odd tyrant with a soft heart but a violent temper, tried to compel love and confidence with a cudgel; he possessed keen insight into human nature, but was so ignorant that he always ran the risk of becoming the victim of a scoundrel.  Dimly aware of his weakness, he had grown suspicious and was subject to sudden fits of violence.  The queen, in contrast, was a rather insignificant woman, colder at heart, but with a strong sense of her princely dignity; with a tendency to intrigue, without prudence or discretion.  Both had the best of intentions, and took honest pains to bring up their children to a capable and worthy maturity; but both unintelligently interfered with the sound development of the childish souls.  The mother was so tactless as to make the children, even at a tender age, the confidants of her annoyances and intrigues.  The undignified parsimony of the