with all sorts of men. He was infinitely related;--not an individual
of note in his day but was linked with him by some common interest
or some polemic grapple; not a _savant_ or statesman with whom
Leibnitz did not spin, on one pretence or another, a thread of
communication. Europe was reticulated with the meshes of his
correspondence. "Never," says Voltaire, "was intercourse among
philosophers more universal; _Leibnitz servait a l'animer_." He
writes now to Spinoza at the Hague, to suggest new methods of
manufacturing lenses,--now to Magliabecchi at Florence, urging, in
elegant Latin verses, the publication of his bibliographical
discoveries,--and now to Grimaldi, Jesuit missionary in China, to
communicate his researches in Chinese philosophy. He hoped by means
of the latter to operate on the Emperor Cham-Hi with the _Dyadik_; [9]
and even suggested said _Dyadik_ as a key to the cipher of the book
"Ye Kim," supposed to contain the sacred mysteries of Fo. He
addresses Louis XIV., now on the subject of a military expedition to
Egypt, (a magnificent idea, which it needed a Napoleon to realize,)
now on the best method of promoting and conserving scientific
knowledge. He corresponds with the Landgrave of Hesse-Rheinfels,
with Bossuet, and with Madame Brinon on the Union of the Catholic
and Protestant Churches, and with Privy-Counsellor von Spanheim on
the Union of the Lutheran and Reformed,--with Pere Des Bosses on
Transubstantiation, and with Samuel Clarke on Time and Space,--with
Remond de Montmort on Plato, and with Franke on Popular Education,--
with the Queen of Prussia (his pupil) on Free-will and Predestination,
and with the Electress Sophia, her mother, (in her eighty-fourth year,)
on English Politics,--with the cabinet of Peter the Great on the
Slavonic and Oriental Languages, and with that of the German Emperor
on the claims of George Lewis to the honors of the Electorate,--and
finally, with all the _savans_ of Europe on all possible scientific