For he left the world all bankrupt, we may say; fallen into bottomless abysses of destruction; he still in a paying condition, and with footing capable to carry his affairs and him. When he died, in 1786, the enormous phenomenon since called FRENCH REVOLUTION was already growling audibly in the depths of the world, meteoric-electric coruscations heralding it all round the horizon. Strange enough to note, one of Friedrich’s last visitors was Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau. These two saw one another; twice, for half an hour each time. The last of the old gods and the first of the modern Titans--before Pelion leaped on Ossa, and the foul earth taking fire at last, its vile mephitic elements went up in volcanic thunder. This also is one of the peculiarities of Friedrich, that he is hitherto the last of the kings; that he ushers in the French Revolution, and closes an epoch of world-history. Finishing off forever the trade of king, think many, who have grown profoundly dark as to kingship and him. The French Revolution may be said to have, for about half a century, quite submerged Friedrich, abolished him from the memories of men; and now, on coming to light again, he is found defaced under strange mud incrustations, and the eyes of mankind look at him from a singularly changed, what we must call oblique and perverse point of vision. This is one of the difficulties in dealing with his history--especially if you happen to believe both in the French Revolution and in him--that is to say, both that real kingship is eternally indispensable, and also that the destruction of sham kingship (a frightful process) is occasionally so. On the breaking out of the formidable explosion and suicide of his century, Friedrich sank into comparative obscurity, eclipsed amid the ruins of that universal earthquake, the very dust of which darkened all the air, and made of day a disastrous midnight--black midnight, broken only by the blaze of conflagrations--wherein, to our terrified imaginations, were seen, not men, French and other, but ghastly portents, stalking wrathful, and shapes of avenging gods.