_All Subjects have a desire to know something of their Sovereign; and private Men in every State have this Curiosity, with respect to their Ministers and Courtiers. These are the Characters which I have ventured to draw, tho’ I own, that I don’t think I have always hit the Life, for want of that Penetration and Delicacy of Imagination which Nature, to me a Step-Mother, has deny’d me; and also because it would have been necessary for me to have stay’d longer than I did at +Dresden+. Three Months Residence at so great a Court, are hardly sufficient to make a Man acquainted with it, were his Fund of Knowledge even as deep as mine is shallow. Then what a Presumption would it be for me to think I have attained to it!_ _I must not dissemble, that this Book with all its Imperfections, has cost me more trouble in composing than one much larger would have done upon a Subject that had been more familiar to me. There was a necessity for me to make Inquiry into many Particulars, and to get some of my Information from a private hand. I own my Obligation to the Civility of M. +Konig+, the Counsellor of the Court, for the Intelligence I wanted relating to some of the Court-Nobility. If I had been so happy as to have found out but one or two Persons more as active for me as he was, my Work would have been more correct and more extensive. Such as it is, I intreat the Reader to accept it, and to forgive any Errors in it, in consideration that I am the first who has ventured to treat of such a Subject. I own, there is a certain degree of Rashness in the Undertaking, but the noble Motive that has induc’d me to it, seems to plead for my excuse._ _All +Saxony+ knows in general, that ’tis govern’d by a Sovereign, gracious, and vigilant to render it happy. It were needless to set the King’s Virtues and Actions before their Eyes, which the People already admire, and pray for him. But as this Great Prince does not want those who envy his Glory, they are the Persons whom I have chose to make asham’d of themselves; and have endeavoured, if possible, to reclaim others whom a fatal blindness keeps at a distance from his Majesty’s Person[1]._ _All that ever had the honour of approaching +Augustus III.+ will agree with me that he adorns that Throne, upon which a respectful Nation has plac’d him; and that whatever I have said of this Monarch is short of what might be mention’d. How is it possible to give the true Portraiture of a King born without Vice, by Principle virtuous, and religiously good? To admire him in silence is the only way to please him, which I know too well, not to conform to it; and therefore I have not presum’d to expatiate so far in his Praise as the Sublimity of the Subject demands._