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