FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>  
Letter of his to Voltaire, perhaps already known to some readers;--and we can observe he writes rather copiously from those localities at present, and in a cheerful humor with everybody. "INSTERBURG, 27th JULY, 1739 (Crown-Prince to Voltaire).... Prussian Lithuania is a Country a hundred and twenty miles long, by from sixty to forty broad; ["Miles ENGLISH," we always mean, UNLESS &c.] it was ravaged by Pestilence at the beginning of this Century; and they say three hundred thousand people died of disease and famine." Ravaged by Pestilence and the neglect of King Friedrich I.; till my Father, once his hands were free, made personal survey of it, and took it up, in earnest. "Since that time," say twenty years ago, "there is no expense that the King has been afraid of, in order to succeed in his salutary views. He made, in the first place, regulations full of wisdom; he rebuilt wherever the Pestilence had desolated: thousands of families, from the ends of Europe," seventeen thousand Salzburgers for the last item, "were conducted hither; the Country repeopled itself; trade began to flourish again;--and now, in these fertile regions, abundance reigns more than it ever did. "There are above half a million of inhabitants in Lithuania; there are more towns than there ever were, more flocks than formerly, more wealth and more productiveness than in any other part of Germany. And all this that I tell you of is due to the King alone: who not only gave the orders, but superintended the execution of them; it was he that devised the plans, and himself got them carried to fulfilment; and spared neither care nor pains, nor immense expenditures, nor promises nor recompenses, to secure happiness and life to this half-million of thinking beings, who owe to him alone that they have possessions and felicity in the world. "I hope this detail does not weary you. I depend on your humanity extending itself to your Lithuanian brethren, as well as to your French, English, German, or other,--all the more as, to my great astonishment, I passed through villages where you hear nothing spoken but French.--I have found something so heroic, in the generous and laborious way in which the King addressed himself to making this desert flourish with inhabitants and happy industries and fruits, that it seemed to me you would feel the same sentiments in learning the circumstances of such a re-establishment. I daily expect news of you from Enghien" [in
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>  



Top keywords:

Pestilence

 

flourish

 

Voltaire

 
thousand
 
twenty
 

inhabitants

 
million
 

hundred

 

Lithuania

 

Country


French
 

spared

 

expenditures

 

happiness

 

thinking

 
beings
 

secure

 

recompenses

 

immense

 
fulfilment

promises

 
Germany
 

sentiments

 

Enghien

 

wealth

 

productiveness

 

devised

 
execution
 

superintended

 

orders


carried

 

spoken

 

heroic

 

passed

 

villages

 

generous

 

industries

 

fruits

 

desert

 

making


laborious

 

addressed

 

astonishment

 

circumstances

 

depend

 

learning

 
detail
 

possessions

 

expect

 

felicity