mass money. Has to be in boots and uniform every three
days. Three months of the year practically with his regiment: but the
shifts he has for avoiding expense are astonishing."...

What an illuminative "Idea" are the Walpole-Selwyn Circles picking up
for their money!--

Chapter XI. THIRD ACT AND CATASTROPHE OF THE VOLTAIRE VISIT.

Meantime there has a fine Controversy risen, of mathematical,
philosophical and at length of very miscellaneous nature, concerning
that Konig-Maupertuis dissentience on the LAW OF THRIFT. Wonderful
Controversy, much occupying the so-called Philosophic or Scientific
world; especially the idler population that inhabit there. Upon
this item of the Infinitely Little,--which has in our time sunk into
Nothing-at-all, and but for Voltaire, and the accident of his living
near it, would be forgotten altogether,--we must not enter into details;
but a few words to render Voltaire's share in it intelligible will be,
in the highest degree, necessary. Here, in brief form, rough and ready,
are the successive stages of the Business; the origin and first stage of
which have been known to us for some time past:--

"SEPTEMBER, 1750, Konig, his well-meant visit to Berlin proving so
futile, had left Maupertuis in the humor we saw;--pirouetting round his
Apartment, in tempests of rage at such contradiction of sinners on his
sublime Law of Thrift; and fulminating permission to Konig: 'No time to
read your Paper of Contradictions; publish it in Leipzig, in Jericho;
anywhere in the Earth, in Heaven, in the Other Place, where you have the
opportunity!' Konig, returning on these terms, had nothing for it but
to publish his Paper; and did publish it, in the Leipzig--Acta
Eruditorum--for March, 1751. There it stands, legible to this day: and
if any of the human species should again think of reading it, I believe
it will be found a reasonable, solid and decisive Paper; of steadfast,
openly articulate, by no means insolent, tone; considerably modifying
Maupertuis's Law of Thrift, or Minimum of Action;--fatal to the claim
of its being a 'Sublime Discovery,' or indeed, so far as TRUE, any
discovery at all. [In--Acta Eruditorum--(Lipsiae, 1751):--"De universali
Principio AEquilibrii et Motus."--By no means uncivil to Maupertuis;
though obliged to controvert him. For example:--"Quoe itaque de Minima
Actionis in modificationibus modum obtinente in genere proferuntur
vehementer laudo;" "continent nempe facundum longeque