he age of
reason, that was to culminate with such tremendous and horrible force
in the French Revolution, was beginning to dawn. The encyclopaedists,
with Diderot and d'Alembert in the van, were holding council in
France, mobilizing the intellects of the time, and, like Bacon, taking
all knowledge for their province, for a fierce attack on the old
philosophy, the old statecraft, the old art, and the old religion. Are
such topics and such men to deal with them to be found to-day, or have
all the great problems of humanity and its intellect been started,
studied, and resolved? And are motor-cars, aeroplanes, dances,
Dreadnoughts, millinery, rag-time reviews, auction bridge, the rise
and fall of stocks, and the last extraordinary round of golf, all that
is left for the present generation to discuss?

However, the guardian of the palace has moved on, the other members of
the party are getting bored, and our foreigner follows the guardian's
lead. Thus conducted, he passes through half a dozen rooms, each a
museum of historical associations--the dining-room with its round
table made famous by Menzel's picture (now in the Berlin National
Gallery) in which Frederick and his guests are seen seated, but in
which it is difficult if not impossible to be certain which is the
host; the concert-room with the clock which Frederick was in the habit
of winding up, and which "is said to have stopped at the precise
moment of his death, 2.20 a.m., August 17th, 1786"; the death-chamber
with its eloquent and pathetic statue, Magnussen's "Last Moments of
Frederick the Great"; the library and picture gallery. Strangely
enough, Baedeker has no mention of a female subject portrayed in the
concert-room in all sorts of attitudes and in all sorts and no sort of
costume. Yet every one has heard of La Barberini, the only woman, the
chroniclers (and Voltaire among them) assure us, Frederick ever loved.
She was no woman of birth or wit like the Pompadour, Recamier or
Stael, but of merely ordinary understanding and the wife of a
subordinate official of the Court. She charmed Frederick, however, and
may have loved him. If so, let us remember that the morals of those
days were not those of ours, and not grudge the lonely King his
enjoyment of her beauty and amiability.

One thing only remains for our foreigner to see--the coffin of
Frederick in the old Garrison Church. It lies in a small chamber
behind the pulpit and looks more like the strong box of a m