t correspondence,
"betokens depth and finesse. He speaks with eloquence and precision: he
is prodigiously well-informed, industrious, and clear-sighted: he has a
vast correspondence, which he owes to his merit alone: he is even
economical of his amours. His mistress, Madame de Hartfeld, is the most
sensible woman of his court. A real Alcibiades, he loves pleasure, but
never allows it to intrude on business. When acting as the Prussian
general, no one so early, so active, so precisely exact as he. Under a
calm aspect, which arises from the absolute control he has over his
mind, his brilliant imagination and ambitious aspirations often carry
him away; but the circumspection which he imposes on himself, and the
satisfactory reflection of his fame, restrain him and lead him to
doubts, which, perhaps, constitute his sole defect."

Mirabeau predicted to the Duke of Brunswick, from this moment, leading
influence in the affairs of Germany after the death of the king of
Prussia, whom Germany called the Great King.

The duke was then fifty years of age. He defended himself, in his
conversations with Mirabeau, from the charge of loving war. "Battles are
games of chance," said he to the French traveller: "up to this time I
have been fortunate. Who knows if to-day, although more lucky, I should
be as well used by fortune?" A year after this remark he made the
triumphant invasion of Holland, at the head of the troops of England.
Some years later Germany nominated him generalissimo.

But war with France, however it might be grateful to his ambition as a
soldier, was repugnant to his mind as a philosopher. He felt he should
but ill carry out the ideas in which he had been educated. Mirabeau had
made that profound remark, which prophesied the weaknesses and defects
of a coalition guided by that prince: "This man is of a rare stamp, but
he is too much of a sage to be feared by sages."

This phrase explains the offer of the crown of France made to the Duke
of Brunswick by Custine, in the name of the monarchical portion of the
Assembly. Freemasonry, that underground religion, into which nearly all
the reigning princes of Germany had entered, concealed beneath its
mysteries secret understandings between French philosophy and the
sovereigns on the banks of the Rhine. Brothers in a religious
conspiracy, they could not be very bitter enemies in politics. The Duke
of Brunswick was in the depth of his heart more the citizen than the
prince--