er and cognate
Highnesses.

Another small fact, still more memorable at present, is, That Voltaire
now made him a Third Visit,--privately on Fleury's instance, as is
evident this time. Of which Voltaire Visit readers shall know duly, by
and by, what little is knowable. But, alas, there is first an immense
arrear of War-matters to bring up; to which, still more than to
Voltaire, the afflicted reader must address himself, if he would
understand at all what Friedrich's Environment, or circumambient
Life-element now was, and how Friedrich, well or ill, comported himself
in the same. Brevity, this Editor knows, is extremely desirable,
and that the scissors should be merciless on those sad Paper-Heaps,
intolerable to the modern mind; but, unless the modern mind chance to
prefer ease and darkness, what can an Editor do!

Chapter II.--AUSTRIAN AFFAIRS ARE ON THE MOUNTING HAND.

Austrian affairs are not now in their nadir-point; a long while now
since they passed that. Austria, to all appearance dead, started up, and
began to strike for herself, with some success, the instant Walpole's
SOUP-ROYAL (that first 200,000 pounds, followed since by abundance more)
got to her lips. Touched her poor pale lips; and went tingling through
her, like life and fiery elasticity, out of death by inanition! Cardinal
moment, which History knows, but can never date, except vaguely, some
time in 1741; among the last acts of judicious Walpole.

Austria, thanks to its own Khevenhullers and its English guineas, was
already rising in various quarters: and now when the Prussian Affair
is settled, Austria springs up everywhere like an elastic body with the
pressure taken from it; mounts steadily, month after month, in practical
success, and in height of humor in a still higher ratio. And in
the course of the next Two Years rises to a great height indeed.
Here--snatched, who knows with what difficulty, from that shoreless
bottomless slough of an Austrian-Succession War, deservedly forgotten,
and avoided by extant mankind--are some of the more essential phenomena,
which Friedrich had to witness in those months. To witness, to scan
with such intense interest,--rightly, at his peril;--and to interpret as
actual "Omens" for him, as monitions of a most indisputable nature! No
Haruspex, I suppose, with or without "white beard, and long staff for
cutting the Heavenly Vault into compartments from the zenith downwards,"
could, in Etruria or elsewhere, "wa