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ng, and the immeasurable Night drawing nigh. Well does Voltaire himself, at all moments, know this; and his bearing under it, one must say, is rather beautiful. There is a tenderness, a sadness, in these his later Letters to Friedrich; instead of emphasis or strength, a beautiful shrill melody, as of a woman, as of a child; he grieves unappeasably to have lost Friedrich; never will forgive Maupertuis:--poor old man! Friedrich answers in a much livelier, more robust tone: friendly, encouraging, communicative on small matters;--full of praises,--in fact, sincerely glad to have such a transcendent genius still alive with him in this world. Praises to the most liberal pitch everything of Voltaire's,--except only the Article on WAR, which occasionally (as below) he quizzes a little, to the Patriarch or his Disciple. As we have room for nothing of all this, and perhaps shall not see Voltaire again,--there are Two actual Interviews with him, which, being withal by Englishmen, though otherwise not good for much, we intend for readers here. In these last twenty years D'Alembert is Friedrich's chief Correspondent. Of D'Alembert to the King, it may be or may not, some opportunity will rise for a specimen; meanwhile here is a short Letter of the King's to D'Alembert, through which there pass so many threads of contemporaneous flying events (swift shuttles on the loud-sounding Loom of Time), that we are tempted to give this, before the two Interviews in question. Date of the Letter is two months after that apparition of the Duchess of Wurtemberg at Ferney. Of "Crillon," an ingenious enough young Soldier, rushing ardently about the world in his holiday time, we have nothing to say, except that he is Son of that Rossbach Crillon, who always fancies to himself that once he perhaps spared Friedrich's life (by a glass of wine judiciously given) long since, while the Bridge of Weissenfels was on fire, and Rossbach close ahead. [Supra, x. 6.] Colonel "Guibert" is another Soldier, still young, but of much superior type; greatly an admirer of Friedrich, and subsequently a Writer upon him. [Of Guibert's visit to Friedrich (June, 1773), see Preuss, iv. 214; Rodenbeck, iii. 80.] In regard to the "Landgravine of Darmstadt," notice these points. First, that her eldest Daughter is Wife, second Wife, to the dissolute Crown-Prince of Prussia; and then, that she has Three other Daughters,--one of whom has just been disposed of in an important
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