nceived himself secure from the power of his late master,
when he was arrested by order of the Prussian president. The precious
volume was delivered up. But the Prussian agents had, no doubt, been
instructed not to let Voltaire escape without some gross indignity. He
was confined twelve days in a wretched hovel. Sentinels with fixed
bayonets kept guard over him. His niece was dragged through the mire by
the soldiers. Sixteen hundred dollars were extorted from him by his
insolent jailers. It is absurd to say that this outrage is not to be
attributed to the King. Was anybody punished for it? Was anybody called
in question for it? Was it not consistent with Frederic's character? Was
it not of a piece with his conduct on other similar occasions? Is it not
notorious that he repeatedly gave private directions to his officers to
pillage and demolish the houses of persons against whom he had a grudge,
charging them at the same time to take their measures in such a way that
his name might not be compromised? He acted thus towards Count Bruhl in
the Seven Years' War. Why should we believe that he would have been more
scrupulous with regard to Voltaire?

When at length the illustrious prisoner regained his liberty, the
prospect before him was but dreary. He was an exile both from the
country of his birth and from the country of his adoption. The French
government had taken offence at his journey to Prussia, and would not
permit him to return to Paris; and in the vicinity of Prussia it was not
safe for him to remain.

He took refuge on the beautiful shores of Lake Leman. There, loosed from
every tie which had hitherto restrained him, and having little to hope
or to fear from courts and churches, he began his long war against all
that, whether for good or evil, had authority over man; for what Burke
said of the Constituent Assembly was eminently true of this its great
forerunner: Voltaire could not build; he could only pull down; he was
the very Vitruvius of ruin. He has bequeathed to us not a single
doctrine to be called by his name, not a single addition to the stock of
our positive knowledge. But no human teacher ever left behind him so
vast and terrible a wreck of truths and falsehoods, of things noble and
things base, of things useful and things pernicious. From the time when
his sojourn beneath the Alps commenced, the dramatist, the wit, the
historian, was merged in a more important character. He was now the
patriarch, the fo