ismal GUNDLINGIANA as if inspired by Heaven, how
infinitely better!--Courage, courage! I discern, across these hideous
jargons, the reign of greater silence approaching upon repentant men;
reign of greater silence, I say; or else that of annihilation, which
will be the most silent of all....

"Voltaire, if not a great man, is a remarkably peculiar one; and did
such a work in these Ages as will render him long memorable, more or
less. He kindled the infinite dry dung-heap of things; set it blazing
heaven-high;--and we all thought, in the French Revolution time, it
would burn out rapidly into ashes, and then there would a clear Upper
Firmament, if over a blackened Earth, be once more vouchsafed us. The
flame is now done, as I once said; and only the dull dung-heap, smokily
burning, but not now blazing, remains,--for it was very damp, EXCEPT on
the surface, and is by nature slow of combustion:--who knows but it may
have to burn for centuries yet, poisoning by its villanous mal-odors
the life-atmosphere of all men? Eternal Author of this Universe, whose
throne is Truth, to whom all the True are Sons, wilt thou not look down
upon us, then!--Till this sad process is complete? Voltaire is like to
be very memorable."...

To Friedrich the Winter was in general tranquil; a Friedrich busy
preparing all things for his grand Mahren Enterprise, and for "real work
next year." By and by there came to be real Peace-prospects instead.
Meanwhile, the Austrians do try a little, in the small Pandour way,
to dislodge him from the Upper-Silesian or Teschen regions, where the
Erbprinz of Brunswick is in command; a man not to be pricked into gratis
by Pandours. Erbprinz, accordingly, provoked by their Pandourings, broke
out at last; and about Zuckmantel instantly scourged them home, and
had peace after. Foiled here, they next tried upon Glatz; "Get into his
Glatz Country, then;--a snatch of that will balance the account" (which
was one of Newspaper glory only): and a certain Wurmser of theirs,
expert in such things, did burn the Town of Habelschwert one morning;
["18th January, 1779" (Rodenbeck, iii. 195; Schmettau, &c.).] and tried
farther, not wisely this time, a surprisal of Glatz Fortress itself; but
got smitten home by our old friend General Wunsch, without profit there.
This was the same Wurmser who came to bad issues in the Napoleon time
afterwards; a rising man then; not a dim Old-Newspaper ghost as now.

Most shameful this burning of