in the mutual admiration, which
one perceives to be sincere on both sides; and also, in the mutual
practical estrangement: "Nothing more of you,--especially of YOU,
Madam,--as a practical domestic article!"

After long reading, with Historical views, in this final section of the
Friedrich-Voltaire Correspondence, at first so barren otherwise and of
little entertainment, one finds that this too, when once you CAN "read"
it (that is to say, when the scene and its details are visible to
you), becomes highly dramatic, Shakspearean-comic or more, for this
is Nature's self, who far excels even Shakspeare;--and that the
inextricably dark condition of these Letters is a real loss to the
ingenuous reader, and especially to the student of Friedrich. Among the
frequently recurring topics, one that oftenest turns up on Voltaire's
side is that of Peace: Oh, if your Majesty would but make Peace! Does it
depend on me? thinks Friedrich always; and is, at last, once provoked to
say so:--

FRIEDRICH TO VOLTAIRE.

"REICH-HENNERSDORF, 2d July, 1759, [shortly before Schmottseifen, while
waiting Daun's slow movements].

"Asking ME for Peace: there is a bitter joke!--[In verse, this; flings
off a handful of crackers on the BIEN-AIME, whose Chamberlain you are,
on the HONGROISE QUI'IL ADORE, on the Russian QUE J'ABHORRE;--then
continues in prose]:

"It is to him," the Well-beloved Louis, "that you must address
yourself, or to his Amboise in Petticoats [his Pompadour, acting the
Cardinal-Premier on this occasion]. But these people have their heads
filled with ambitious projects: these people are the difficulty; they
wish to be the sovereign arbiters of sovereigns;--and that is what
persons of my way of thinking will by no means put up with. I love
Peace quite as much as you could wish; but I want it good, solid and
honorable. Socrates or Plato would have thought as I do on this subject,
had they found themselves placed in the accursed position which is now
mine in the world.

"Think you there is any pleasure in leading this dog of a life [CHIENNE,
she-dog]? In seeing and causing the butchery of people you know nothing
of; in losing daily those you do know and love; in seeing perpetually
your reputation exposed to the caprices of chance; in passing year after
year in disquietudes and apprehensions; in risking, without end, your
life and your fortune?

"I know right well the value of tranquillity, the sweets of society, the
charms of