erings and convulsive Doings,
which all proved futile, and look almost like Lapland witchcraft now
to us, will have to follow this futility of a War. It is the first of
a long series of enchanted adventures, on which Kaiser Karl,--duelling
with that Spanish Virago, Satan's Invisible World in the rear of
her,--has now embarked, to the woe of mankind, for the rest of his life.
The first of those terrifico-ludicrous paroxysms of crisis into which
he throws the European Universe; he with his Enchanted Barber's-Basin
enterprises;--as perhaps was fit enough, in an epoch presided over by
the Nightmares. Congress of Cambrai is to follow; and much else equally
spectral. About all which there will be enough to say anon! For it was a
fearful operation, though a ludicrous one, this of the poor Kaiser; and
it tormented not the big Nations only, and threw an absurd Europe into
paroxysm after paroxysm; but it whirled up, in its wide-weeping skirts,
our little Fritz and his Sister, and almost dashed the lives out of
them, as we shall see! Which last is perhaps the one claim it now has to
a cursory mention from mankind.

Byng's Sea-fight, done with due dexterity of manoeuvring, and then with
due emphasis of broadsiding, decisive of that absurd War, and almost the
one creditable action in it, dates itself 10th August, 1718. And about
three months later, on the mimic stage at Paris there came out a piece,
OEDIPE the title of it, [18th November, 1718.] by one Francois Arouet,
a young gentleman about twenty-two; and had such a run as seldom
was;--apprising the French Populations that, to all appearance, a new
man of genius had appeared among them (not intimating what work he would
do); and greatly angering old M. Arouet of the Chamber of Accouuts; who
thereby found his Son as good as cast into the whirlpools, and a solid
Law-career thenceforth impossible for the young fool.--The name of
that "M. Arouet junior" changes itself, some years hence, into M. DE
VOLTAIRE; under which latter designation he will conspicuously reappear
in this Narrative.

And now we will go to our little Crown-Prince again;--ignorant, he, of
all this that is mounting up in the distance, and that it will envelop
him one day.

Chapter XI. -- ON THE CROWN-PRINCE'S PROGRESS IN HIS SCHOOLING.

Wilhelmina says, [_Memoires,_ i. 22.] her Brother was "slow" in
learning: we may presume, she means idle, volatile, not always prompt
in fixing his attention to what did no