The philosopher at length set out for Berlin, and his reception must have reached his highest expectations. We have no intention to repeat the account of this singular episode in his life, which has been so often narrated. Evenings of the most agreeable kind, abundance of wit, unrestrained conversation, the society of some of the most distinguished men of science of the time, the unbounded adoration of a royal host, eager, above all things, to retain so brilliant a guest--such were the pleasures of this palace of Alcina, as he calls it. But the imperious tempers of the two unequal friends soon proved the impossibility of a lasting _entente_, and rivalries amongst the literary courtiers hastened, if they did not effect, the final rupture. After his escape from Berlin Voltaire passed a few weeks with the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, “the best of princesses, full of gentleness, discretion, and equanimity, and who, God be thanked, did not make verses” (alluding to his late host’s proclivities), and some days with the Landgrave of Hesse on his way to Frankfort. Literature had not suffered during the life at Berlin. Finishing touches were put to many of the tragedies--the _Âge de Louis XIV._ was completed, part of the _Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations_ written, _La Pucelle_ (the least worthy of all his productions) corrected, and a poem, _Sur la Loi Naturelle_, composed (a work of a far better inspiration than the poem just mentioned, but which was publicly burned at Paris by the misdirected zeal of the bigots). In a later poem on the destruction of Lisbon, as well as in the romance of _Candide_, fired with indignation at the hypocrisies and mischiefs of the easy-going creed of Optimism (as generally understood), so welcome to self-complacent orthodoxy, he displayed all his vast powers of sarcasm in exposing its fatal absurdities. Leibnitz had been one of its most strenuous apologists. In the person of the wretched Pangloss the theory of “the best of all possible worlds,” and of the “eternal fitness of things,” is overwhelmed, indeed, with an excess of ridicule. It is to be lamented that the satirist allowed his _sæva indignatio_ to overpower a proper sense of the proprieties of language and expression.