nt strokes, indicate, under features true so far as they went,
the great wide fire-flood that was raging round the world; if we could,
carefully omitting very many things, omit of the things intelligible and
decipherable that concern Friedrich himself, nothing that had meaning:
IF indeed--! But it is idle preluding. Forward again, brave reader,
under such conditions as there are!

Friedrich's Winter in Breslau was of secluded, silent, sombre character,
this time; nothing of stir in it but from work only: in marked contrast
with the last, and its kindly visitors and gayeties. A Friedrich given
up to his manifold businesses, to his silent sorrows. "I have passed my
winter like a Carthusian monk," he writes to D'Argens: "I dine alone; I
spend my life in reading and writing; and I do not sup. When one is sad,
it becomes at last too burdensome to hide one's grief continually; and
it is better to give way to it by oneself, than to carry one's gloom
into society. Nothing solaces me but the vigorous application required
in steady and continuous labor. This distraction does force one to put
away painful ideas, while it lasts: but, alas, no sooner is the work
done, than these fatal companions present themselves again, as if
livelier than ever. Maupertuis was right: the sum of evil does certainly
surpass that of good:--but to me it is all one; I have almost nothing
more to lose; and my few remaining days, what matters it much of what
complexion they be?" ["Breslau, 1st March, 1759," To D'Argens (_OEuvres
de Frederic,_ xix. 56).]

The loss of his Wilhelmina, had there been no other grief, has darkened
all his life to Friedrich. Readers are not prepared for the details of
grief we could give, and the settled gloom of mind they indicate. A loss
irreparable and immeasurable; the light of life, the one loved heart
that loved him, gone. His passionate appeals to Voltaire to celebrate
for him in verse his lost treasure, and at least make her virtues
immortal, are perhaps known to readers: [ODE SUR LA MORT DE S. A. S.
MADAME LA PRINCESSE DE BAREITH (in _OEuvres de Voltaire,_ xviii. 79-86):
see Friedrich's Letter to him (6th November, 1758); with Voltaire's
VERSES in Answer (next month); Friedrich's new Letter (Breslau, 23d
January 1759), demanding something more,--followed by the ODE just
cited (Ib. lxxii. 402; lxxviii. 82, 92; or _OEuvres de Frederic,_
xxiii. 20-24: &c.) alas, this is a very feeble kind of immortality, and
Friedrich too