Letter of his to Voltaire, perhaps already
known to some readers;--and we can observe he writes rather copiously
from those localities at present, and in a cheerful humor with
everybody.

"INSTERBURG, 27th JULY, 1739 (Crown-Prince to Voltaire).... Prussian
Lithuania is a Country a hundred and twenty miles long, by from sixty
to forty broad; ["Miles ENGLISH," we always mean, UNLESS &c.] it was
ravaged by Pestilence at the beginning of this Century; and they say
three hundred thousand people died of disease and famine." Ravaged by
Pestilence and the neglect of King Friedrich I.; till my Father, once
his hands were free, made personal survey of it, and took it up, in
earnest.

"Since that time," say twenty years ago, "there is no expense that the
King has been afraid of, in order to succeed in his salutary views.
He made, in the first place, regulations full of wisdom; he rebuilt
wherever the Pestilence had desolated: thousands of families, from the
ends of Europe," seventeen thousand Salzburgers for the last item, "were
conducted hither; the Country repeopled itself; trade began to flourish
again;--and now, in these fertile regions, abundance reigns more than it
ever did.

"There are above half a million of inhabitants in Lithuania; there are
more towns than there ever were, more flocks than formerly, more wealth
and more productiveness than in any other part of Germany. And all
this that I tell you of is due to the King alone: who not only gave the
orders, but superintended the execution of them; it was he that devised
the plans, and himself got them carried to fulfilment; and spared
neither care nor pains, nor immense expenditures, nor promises nor
recompenses, to secure happiness and life to this half-million of
thinking beings, who owe to him alone that they have possessions and
felicity in the world.

"I hope this detail does not weary you. I depend on your humanity
extending itself to your Lithuanian brethren, as well as to your French,
English, German, or other,--all the more as, to my great astonishment,
I passed through villages where you hear nothing spoken but French.--I
have found something so heroic, in the generous and laborious way in
which the King addressed himself to making this desert flourish with
inhabitants and happy industries and fruits, that it seemed to me you
would feel the same sentiments in learning the circumstances of such
a re-establishment. I daily expect news of you from Enghien" [in