In one point, and one alone, I see the Providence which permitted the military aggrandizement to which Frederic and his successors aimed; and that is, in furnishing a barrier to the future conquests of a more barbarous people,--I mean the Russians; even as the conquests of Charlemagne presented a barrier to the future irruptions of barbarous tribes on his northern frontier. Russia--that rude, demoralized, Slavonic empire--cannot conquer Europe until it has first destroyed the political and military power of Germany. United and patriotic, Germany can keep at present the Russians at bay, and direct the stream of invasion to the East rather than the south; so that Europe will not become either Cossack or French, as Napoleon predicted. In this light the military genius and power of Germany, which Frederic did so much to develop, may be designed for the protection of European civilization and the Protestant religion. But I will not speculate on the aims of Providence, or the evil to be overruled for good. With my limited vision, I can only present facts and their immediate consequences. I can only deduce the moral truths which are logically to be drawn from a career of wicked ambition. These truths are a part of that moral, wisdom which experience confirms, and which alone should be the guiding lesson to all statesmen and all empires. Let us pursue the right, and leave the consequences to Him who rules the fate of war, and guides the nations to the promised period when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and universal peace shall herald the reign of the Saviour of the world. AUTHORITIES. The great work of Carlyle on the Life of Frederic, which exhausts the subject; Macaulay's Essay on the Life and Times of Frederic the Great; Carlyle's Essay on Frederic; Lord Brougham on Frederic; Coxe's History of the House of Austria; Mirabeau's Histoire Secrète de la Cour de Berlin; Oeuvres de Frédéric le Grand; Ranke's Neuc Bücher Preussischer Geschichte; Pöllnitz's Memoirs and Letters; Walpole's Reminiscences; Letters of Voltaire; Voltaire's Idée du Roi de Prusse; Life of Baron Trenck; Gillies View of the Reign of Frederic II.; Thiebault's Mémoires de Frédéric le Grand; Biographic Universelle; Thronbesteigung; Holden.