place at Halle; and there,
with little other work that was heard of, but we hope in warm shoes and
without much mounting of stairs, lived peaceably victorious the rest of
his days. Friedrich's thoughts are not of a German home-built Academy,
but of a French one: and for this he already knows a builder; has
silently had him in his eye, these two years past,--Voltaire giving
hint, in the LETTER we once heard of at Loo. Builder shall be that
sublime Maupertuis; scientific lion of Paris, ever since his feat in the
Polar regions, and the charming Narrative he gave of it. "What a feat,
what a book!" exclaimed the Parisian cultivated circles, male and
female, on that occasion; and Maupertuis, with plenty of bluster in him
carefully suppressed, assents in a grandly modest way. His Portraits are
in the Printshops ever since; one very singular Portrait, just coming
out (at which there is some laughing): a coarse-featured, blusterous,
rather triumphant-looking man, blusterous, though finely complacent for
the nonce; in copious dressing-gown and fur cap; comfortably SQUEEZING
the Earth and her meridians flat (as if HE had done it), with his left
hand; and with the other, and its outstretched finger, asking mankind,
"Are not you aware, then?"--"Are not we!" answers Voltaire by and
by, with endless waggeries upon him, though at present so reverent.
Friedrich, in these same days, writes this Autograph; which who of men
or lions could resist?

TO MONSIEUR DE MAUPERTUIS, at Paris.

(No date;--datable, June, 1740.)

"My heart and my inclination excited in me, from the moment I mounted
the throne, the desire of having you here, that you might put our Berlin
Academy into the shape you alone are capable of giving it. Come, then,
come and insert into this wild crab-tree the graft of the Sciences, that
it may bear fruit. You have shown the Figure of the Earth to mankind;
show also to a King how sweet it is to possess such a man as you.

"Monsieur de Maupertuis,--votre tres-affectionne

"FEDERIC" (SIC). [_OEuvres,_ xvii. i. 334. The fantastic "Federic,"
instead of "Frederic," is, by this time, the common signature to French
Letters.]

This Letter--how could Maupertuis prevent some accident in such a
case?--got into the Newspapers; glorious for Friedrich, glorious for
Maupertuis; and raised matters to a still higher pitch. Maupertuis is on
the road, and we shall see him before long.

AND EVERY ONE SHALL GET TO HEAVEN IN HIS OWN