Herr Fassmann, who wrote Books, by Patronage or for the Leipzig Booksellers, and wandered about the world as a star or comet of some magnitude, is not much known to my readers:--but he is too well known to me, for certain dark Books of his which I have had to read. [_Life of Friedrich Wilhelm,_ occasionally cited here; _Life of August the Strong; _ &c.] A very dim Literary Figure; undeniable, indecipherable Human Fact, of those days; now fallen quite extinct and obsolete; his garniture, equipment, environment all very dark to us. Probably a too restless, imponderous creature, too much of the Gundling type; structure of him GASEOUS, not solid; Perhaps a little of the coxcomb naturally; much of the sycophant on compulsion,--being sorely jammed into corners, and without elbow-room at all, in this world. Has, for the rest, a recognizable talent for "Magazine writing,"--for Newspaper editing, had that rich mine, "California of the Spiritually Vagabond," been opened in those days. Poor extinct Fassmann, one discovers at last a vein of weak geniality in him; here and there, real human sense and eyesight, under those strange conditions; and his poor Books, rotted now to inanity, have left a small seed-pearl or two, to the earnest reader. Alas, if he WAS to become "spiritually vagabond" ("spiritually" and otherwise), might it not perhaps be wholesome to him that the California was NOT discovered?-- Fassmann was by no means such a fool as Gundling; but, he was much of a fool too. He had come to Berlin, about this time, [1726, as he himself says (supra p. 8).] in hopes of patronage from the King or somebody; might say to himself, "Surely I am a better man than Gundling, if the Berlin Court has eyesight." By the King, on some wise General's recommending it, he was, as a preliminary, introduced to the Tabagie at least. Here is the celebrated Gundling; there is the celebrated Fassmann. Positive Leyden-jar, with negative close by: in each of these two men lodges a full-charged fiery electric virtue of self-conceit; destructive each of the other;--could a conductor be discovered. Conductors are discoverable, conductors are not wanting; and many are the explosions between these mutually-destructive human varieties;--welcomed with hilarious, rather vacant, huge horse-laughter, in this Tobacco-Parliament and Synod of the Houyhnhnms.