le man
entered, loftily serene as a martyr Preacher of the Word, something
of an ancient Seigneur de Beausobre in him, too; for the rest, soft as
sunset, and really with fine radiances, in a somewhat twisted state,
in that good old mind of his. "What have you been reading lately, M. de
Beausobre?" said the Prince, to begin conversation. "Ah, Monseigneur,
I have just risen from reading the sublimest piece of writing that
exists."--"And what?" "The exordium of St. John's Gospel: _In the
Beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the Word was--"_
Which somewhat took the Prince by surprise, as Formey reports; though he
rallied straightway, and got good conversation out of the old gentleman.
To whom, we perceive, he writes once or twice, [_OEuvres de Frederic,_
121-126. Dates are all of 1737; the last of Beausobre's years.]--a copy
of his own verses to correct, on one occasion,--and is very respectful
and considerate.

Formey tells us of another French sage, personally known to the Prince
since Boyhood; for he used to be about the Palace, doing something.
This is one La Croze; Professor of, I think, "Philosophy" in the French
College: sublime Monster of Erudition, at that time; forgotten now, I
fear, by everybody. Swag-bellied, short of wind; liable to rages, to
utterances of a coarse nature; a decidedly ugly, monstrous and rather
stupid kind of man. Knew twenty languages, in a coarse inexact way.
Attempted deep kinds of discourse, in the lecture-room and elsewhere;
but usually broke off into endless welters of anecdote, not always of
cleanly nature; and after every two or three words, a desperate sigh,
not for sorrow, but on account of flabbiness and fat. Formey gives a
portraiture of him; not worth copying farther. The same Formey, standing
one day somewhere on the streets of Berlin, was himself, he cannot
doubt, SEEN by the Crown-Prince in passing; "who asked M. Jordan, who
that was," and got answer:--is not that a comfortable fact? Nothing
farther came of it;--respectable Ex-Parson Formey, though ever
ready with his pen, being indeed of very vapid nature, not wanted at
Reinsberg, as we can guess.

There is M. Achard, too, another Preacher, supreme of his sort, in the
then Berlin circles; to whom or from whom a Letter or two exist. Letters
worthless, if it were not for one dim indication: That, on inquiry, the
Crown-Prince had been consulting this supreme Achard on the difficulties
of Orthodoxy; [_OEuvres de