from the Seidlitz and others, we
have to omit in these two Saxon Campaigns!)--Seidlitz was of it; he and
another still more special acquaintance of ours, the learned Quintus
Icilius; who also did his best in it, but lost his "AMUSETTE" (small bit
of cannon, "Plaything," so called by Marechal de Saxe, inventor of the
article), and did not shine like Seidlitz.

Henri's quarters being notably widened in this way, and nothing but
torpid Serbellonis and Prince Stollbergs on the opposite part, Henri
"drew himself out thirty-five miles long;" and stood there, almost
looking into Plauen region as formerly. And with his fiery Seidlitzes,
Kleists, made a handsome Summer of it. And beat the Austrians and
Reichsfolk at Freyberg (OCTOBER 29th) a fine Battle, and his sole
one),--on the Horse which afterwards carried Gellert, as is pleasantly
known.

But we are omitting the news from Petersburg,--which came the very day
after that gloomy LETTER TO D'ARGENS; months before the TIFF OF QUARREL
with Henri, and the brilliant better destinies of that Gentleman in his
Campaign.

BRIGHT NEWS FROM PETERSBURG (certain, Jan. 19th); WHICH GROW EVER
BRIGHTER; AND BECOME A STAR-OF-DAY FOR FRIEDRICH.

To Friedrich, long before all this of Henri, indeed almost on the very
day while he was writing so despondently to D'Argens, a new phasis
had arisen. Hardly had he been five weeks at Breslau, in those gloomy
circumstances, when,--about the middle of January, 1762 (day not given,
though it is forever notable),--there arrive rumors, arrive news,--news
from Petersburg; such as this King never had before! "Among the thousand
ill strokes of Fortune, does there at length come one pre-eminently
good? The unspeakable Sovereign Woman, is she verily dead, then, and
become peaceable to me forevermore?" We promised Friedrich a wonderful
star-of-day; and this is it,--though it is long before he dare quite
regard it as such. Peter, the Successor, he knows to be secretly his
friend and admirer; if only, in the new Czarish capacity and its chaotic
environments and conditions, Peter dare and can assert these feelings?
What a hope to Friedrich, from this time onward! Russia may be counted
as the bigger half of all he had to strive with; the bigger, or at least
the far uglier, more ruinous and incendiary;--and if this were at once
taken away, think what a daybreak when the night was at the blackest!

Pious people say, The darkest hour is often nearest the daw