Don Agustin Garcia de Arrieta published in 1814 an inedited comic novel of Cervantes, styled ‘La Tia Fingida,’ or ‘The Feigned Aunt,’ to which he added a dissertation on the spirit of Cervantes and his works. The best biographers of Cervantes are Pellicer and Navarrete, already mentioned. [Illustration: [Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. From one of a series of designs by Vanderbanck.] ] [Illustration: _Engraved by E. Scriven._ FREDERICK II. _From the original by Carlo Vanloo in the Private Collection of the King of the French._ Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. _London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._ ] [Illustration] FREDERIC II. The celebrated King of Prussia was in no respect indebted for his personal greatness to the virtues or example of his immediate progenitors. His grandfather Frederic I., the first of the House of Brandenburg who assumed the title of King, was a weak and empty prince, whose character was taken by his own wife to exemplify the idea of infinite littleness. His father, Frederic William, was a man of a violent and brutal disposition, eccentric and intemperate, whose principal, and almost sole pleasure and pursuit, was the training and daily superintendence of an army disproportionately greater than the extent of his dominions seemed to warrant. It is however to the credit of Frederic William as a ruler, that, notwithstanding this expensive taste, his finances on the whole were well and economically administered; so that on his death he left a quiet and happy, though not wealthy country, a treasure of nine millions of crowns, amounting to more than a year’s revenue, and a well-disciplined army of 76,000 men. Thus on his accession, Frederic II. (or as, in consequence of the ambiguity of his father’s name, he is sometimes called, Frederic III.) found, ready prepared, men and money, the instruments of war; and for this alone was he indebted to his father. He was born January 24, 1712. From Frederic William, parental tenderness was not to be expected. His treatment of his whole family, wife and children, was brutal: but he showed a particular antipathy to his eldest son, from the age of fourteen upwards, for which no reason can be assigned, except that the young prince manifested a taste for literature, and preferred books and music to the routine of military exercises. From this age, his life was embittered by continual contradiction, insult, and even personal violence. In 1730, he endeavoured to escape by flight from his father’s control: but this intention being revealed, he was arrested, tried as a deserter, and condemned to death by an obedient court-martial; and the sentence, to all appearance, would have been carried into effect, had it not been for the interference of the Emperor of Germany, Charles VI. of Austria. The king yielded to his urgent entreaties, but with much