with fine sympathy, always prettily, in the enthusiasm
of the moment;--and at other times he writes a good deal about
Friedrich, oftenest in rather a mischievous dialect. "The traitor!"
exclaim some Prussian writers, not many or important, in our time. In
fact, there is a considerable touch of grinning malice (as of Monkey
VERSUS Cat, who had once burnt HIS paw, instead of getting his own
burnt), in those utterances of Voltaire; some of which the reader will
grin over too, without much tragic feeling,--the rather as they did
our Felis Leo no manner of ill, and show our incomparable SINGE with a
sparkle of the TIGRE in him; theoretic sparkle merely and for moments,
which makes him all the more entertaining and interesting at the
domestic hearth.

Of Friedrich's Lamentation-Psalms we propose to give the First and the
Last: these, with certain Prose Pieces, intermediate and connecting, may
perhaps be made intelligible to readers, and throw some light on these
tragic weeks of the King's History:--

1. EPITRE A MA SOEUR (First of the Lamentation-Psalms).--This is
the famed "Epistle to Wilhelmina," already spoken of; which the King
despatched from Bernstadt "August 24th," just while quitting those
parts, on the Erfurt Errand;--though written before, in the tedium of
waiting for Keith. The Piece is long, vehement, altogether sincere;
lyrically sings aloud, or declaims in rhyme, what one's indignant
thought really is on the surrounding woes and atrocities. We faithfully
abridge, and condense into our briefest Prose;--readers can add water
and the jingle of French rhymes AD LIBITUM. It starts thus:--

"O sweet and dear hope of my remaining days; O Sister, whose friendship,
so fertile in resources, shares all my sorrows, and with a helpful
arm assists me in the gulf! It is in vain that the Destinies have
overwhelmed me with disasters: if the crowd of Kings have sworn my ruin;
if the Earth have opened to swallow me,--you still love me, noble
and affectionate Sister: loved by you, what is there of misfortune?
[Branches off into some survey of it, nevertheless.]

"Huge continents of thunder-cloud, plots thickening against me [in those
Menzel Documents], I watched with terror; the sky getting blacker, no
covert for me visible: on a sudden, from the deeps of Hell, starts forth
Discord [with capital letter], and the tempest broke.

Ce fut dans ton Senat, O fouqueuse Angleterre!
Ou ce monstre inhumain fit eclater