talk; loves Voltaire and the
Philosophies in a light way;--knows the arts of Society, especially
the art of flattering; and would fain make himself agreeable to the
Crown-Prince, being anxious to rise in the world. His Father is a
Hamburg Merchant, Hamburg "Sealing-wax Manufacturer," not ill off
for money: Son has been at schools, high schools, under tutors,
posture-masters; swashes about on those terms, with French ESPRIT in his
mouth, and lace ruffles at his wrists; still under thirty; showy enough,
sharp enough; considerably a coxcomb, as is still evident. He did
transiently get about Friedrich, as we shall see; and hoped to have sold
his heart to good purpose there;--was, by and by, employed in slight
functions; not found fit for grave ones. In the course of some years,
he got a title of Baron; and sold his heart more advantageously, to some
rich Widow or Fraulein; with whom he retired to Saxony, and there lived
on an Estate he had purchased, a stranger to Prussia thenceforth.

His Book (_Lettres Familieres et Autres,_ all turning on Friedrich),
which came out in 1763, at the height of Friedrich's fame, and was
much read, is still freely cited by Historians as an Authority. But the
reading of a few pages sufficiently intimates that these "Letters"
never can have gone through a terrestrial Post-office; that they are an
afterthought, composed from vague memory and imagination, in that fine
Saxon retreat;--a sorrowful ghost-like "TRAVELS OF ANACHARSIS," instead
of living words by an eye-witness! Not to be cited "freely" at all,
but sparingly and under conditions. They abound in small errors,
in misdates, mistakes; small fictions even, and impossible
pretensions:--foolish mortal, to write down his bit of knowledge in that
form! For the man, in spite of his lace ruffles and gesticulations, has
brisk eyesight of a superficial kind: he COULD have done us this little
service (apparently his one mission in the world, for which Nature gave
him bed and board here); and he, the lace ruffles having gone into his
soul, has been tempted into misdoing it!--Bielfeld and Bielfeld's
Book, such as they are, appear to be the one conquest Friedrich got of
Freemasonry; no other result now traceable to us of that adventure in
Korn's Hotel, crowning event of the Journey to Loo.

SECKENDORF GETS LODGED IN GRATZ.

Feldmarschall Seckendorf, after unheard-of wrestlings with the Turk
War, and the Vienna War-Office (HOFKRIEGSRATH), is sit