IKES OFF TO THE LEFT, AND HAS A VIEW OF STRASBURG FOR TWO
DAYS.

Through Wurzburg, Frankfurt-on-Mayn, speeds Friedrich;--Wilhelmina and
mankind understand that it is homewards and to Cleve; but at Frankfurt,
in deepest privacy, there occurs a sudden whirl southward,--up the
Rhine-Valley; direct towards Strasburg, for a sight of France in that
quarter! So has Friedrich decided,--not quite suddenly, on new Letters
here, or new computations about Cleve; but by forethought taken at
Baireuth, as rather appears. From Frankfurt to Strasburg, say 150 miles;
from Strasburg home, is not much farther than from Frankfurt home: it
can be done, then; husht!

The incognito is to be rigorous: Friedrich becomes COMTE DUFOUR,
a Prussian-French gentleman; Prince August Wilhelm is Graf von
Schaffgotsch, Algarotti is Graf von Pfuhl, Germans these two; what
Leopold, the Young Dessauer, called himself,--still less what the
others, or whether the others were there at all, and not shoved on,
direct towards Wesel, out of the way as is likelier,--can remain
uncertain to readers and me. From Frankfurt, then, on Monday morning,
22d August, 1740, as I compute, through old known Philipsburg Campaign
country, and the lines of Ettlingen and Stollhofen; there the Royal
Party speeds eagerly (weather very bad, as appears): and it is certain
they are at Kehl on Tuesday evening; looking across the long Rhine
Bridge, Strasburg and its steeples now close at hand.

This looks to be a romantic fine passage in the History of the young
King;--though in truth it is not, and proves but a feeble story either
to him or us. Concerning which, however, the reader, especially if
he should hear that there exists precise Account of it, Two Accounts
indeed, one from the King's own hand, will not fail of a certain craving
to become acquainted with details. This craving, foolish rather than
wise, we consider it thriftiest to satisfy at once; and shall give the
King's NARRATIVE entire, though it is a jingling lean scraggy Piece,
partly rhyme, "in the manner of Bachaumont and La Chapelle;" written at
the gallop, a few days hence, and despatched to Voltaire:--"You," dear
Voltaire, "wish to know what I have been about, since leaving
Berlin; annexed you will find a description of it," writes Friedrich.
[_OEuvres,_ xxii. 25 (Wesel, 2d Septemher, 1740).] Out of Voltaire's and
other people's waste-baskets, it has at length been fished up, patch by
patch, and pasted together by vic