an Estate of Land (small enough, I fancy, but with
country-house on it) for solace to the leisure of so useful a
man,--studious of chemistry too, as I have heard. Seven in all, besides
the King. [Rodenbeck, p. 19 (and for Chamberlain Fredersdorf's estate,
p. 15).] Direct towards Baireuth, incognito, and at the top of their
speed. Wednesday, 17th, they actually arrive. Poor Wilhelmina, she finds
her Brother changed; become a King in fact, and sternly solitary; alone
in soul, even as a King must be! [Wilhelmina, ii. 322, 323.]--

"Algarotti, one of the first BEAUX-ESPRITS of this age," as Wilhelmina
defines him,--Friend Algarotti, the young Venetian gentleman of
elegance, in dusky skin, in very white linen and frills, with his fervid
black eyes, "does the expenses of the conversation." He is full of
elegant logic, has speculations on the great world and the little,
on Nature, Art, Papistry, Anti-Papistry, and takes up the Opera in an
earnest manner, as capable of being a school of virtue and the moral
sublime. His respectable Books on the Opera and other topics are now
all forgotten, and crave not to be mentioned. To me he is not supremely
beautiful, though much the gentleman in manners as in ruffles, and
ingeniously logical:--rather yellow to me, in mind as in skin, and
with a taint of obsolete Venetian Macassar. But to Friedrich he is
thrice-dear; who loves the Sharp faceted cut of the man, and does not
object to his yellow or Extinct-Macassar qualities of mind. Thanks to
that wandering Baltimore for picking up such a jewel and carrying
him Northward! Algarotti himself likes the North: here in our hardy
climates,--especially at Berlin, and were his loved Friedrich NOT a
King,--Algarotti could be very happy in the liberty allowed. At
London, where there is no King, or none to speak of, and plenty of free
Intelligences, Carterets, Lytteltons, young Pitts and the like, he is
also well, were it not for the horrid smoke upon one's linen, and the
little or no French of those proud Islanders.

Wilhelmina seems to like him here; is glad, at any rate, that he does
the costs of conversation, better or worse. In the rest is no hope.
Stille, Borck are accomplished military gentlemen; but of tacit
nature, reflective, practical, rather than discursive, and do not
waste themselves by incontinence of tongue. Stille, by his military
Commentaries, which are still known to soldiers that read, maintains
some lasting remembrance of himself