Enough, enough. We can perceive what kind of Voltaire it was to whom the Crown-Prince now addressed himself; and how luminous an object, shining afar out of the solitudes of Champagne upon the ardent young man, still so capable of admiration. Model Epic, HENRIADE; model History, CHARLES DOUZE; sublime Tragedies, CISAR, ALZIRE and others, which readers still know though with less enthusiasm, are blooming fresh in Friedrich's memory and heart; such Literature as man never saw before; and in the background Friedrich has inarticulately a feeling as if, in this man, there were something grander than all Literatures: a Reform of human Thought itself; a new "Gospel," good-tidings or God's-Message, by this man;--which Friedrich does not suspect, as the world with horror does, to be a new BA'SPEL, or Devil's-Message of bad-tidings! A sublime enough Voltaire; radiant enough, over at Cirey yonder. To all lands, a visible Phoebus Apollo, climbing the eastern steeps; with arrows of celestial "new light" in his quiver; capable of stretching many a big foul Python, belly uppermost, in its native mud, and ridding the poor world of her Nightmares and Mud-Serpents in some measure, we may hope!-- And so there begins, from this point, a lively Correspondence between Friedrich and Voltaire; which, with some interruptions of a notable sort, continued during their mutual Life; and is a conspicuous feature in the Biographies of both. The world talked much of it, and still talks; and has now at last got it all collected, and elucidated into a dimly legible form for studious readers. [Preuss, _OEuvres de Frederic,_ (xxi. xxii. xxiii., Berlin, 1853); who supersedes the lazy French Editors in this matter.] It is by no means the diabolically wicked Correspondence it was thought to be; the reverse, indeed, on both sides;--but it has unfortunately become a very dull one, to the actual generation of mankind. Not without intrinsic merit; on the contrary (if you read intensely, and bring the extinct alive again), it sparkles notably with epistolary grace and vivacity; and, on any terms, it has still passages of biographical and other interest: but the substance of it, then so new and shining, has fallen absolutely commonplace, the property of all the world, since then; and is now very wearisome to the reader. No doctrine or opinion in it that you have not heard, with clear belief or clear disbelief, a hundred times, and could wish rather not to hear again. The common fate of philosophical originalities in this world. As a Biographical Document, it is worth a very strict perusal, if you are interested that way in either Friedrich or Voltaire: finely significant hints and traits, though often almost evanescent, so slight are they, abound in this Correspondence; frankness, veracity under graceful forms, being the rule of it, strange to say! As an illustration of Two memorable Characters, and of their Century; showing on what