am told; which, after premonitory grumblings, heeded by no wolf or
bush, he will hurl bodily aloft, ten acres at a time, in a very
tremendous manner! [First modern Eruption of Vesuvius, A.D. 1631,
after long interval of rest.] A thought like this, about the
Priestly Sham-Hierarchies, I have found somewhere in Voltaire:
but of the Social and Civic Sham-Hierarchies (which are likewise
accursed, if they knew it, and indeed are junior co-partners of the
Priestly; and, in a sense, sons and products of them, and cannot
escape being partakers of their plagues), there is no hint, in
Voltaire, though Voltaire stood at last only fifteen years from the
Fact (1778-1793); nor in Friedrich, though he lived almost to see
the Fact beginning.

Friedrich's History being henceforth that of a Prussian King, is
interesting to Prussia chiefly, and to us little otherwise than as
the Biography of a distinguished fellow-man, Friedrich's Biography,
his Physiognomy as he grows old, quietly on his own harvest-field,
among his own People: this has still an interest, and for any
feature of this we shall be eager enough; but this withal is the
most of what we now want. And not very much even of this;
Friedrich the unique King not having as a man any such depth and
singularity, tragic, humorous, devotionally pious, or other, as to
authorize much painting in that aspect. Extreme brevity beseems us
in these circumstances: and indeed there are,--as has already
happened in different parts of this Enterprise (Nature herself, in
her silent way, being always something of an Artist in such
things),--other circumstances, which leave us no choice as to that
of detail. Available details, if we wished to give them, of
Friedrich's later Life, are not forthcoming: masses of incondite
marine-stores, tumbled out on you, dry rubbish shot with uncommon