predominant fact in his history, was what Feuerbach calls his [Greek:
polupraguoshinae], which, being interpreted, means having a finger
in every pie. We are used to consider him as a man of letters; but
the greater part of his life was spent in labors of quite another
kind. He was more actor than writer. He wrote only for occasions, at
the instigation of others, or to meet some pressing demand of the
time. Besides occupying himself with mechanical inventions, some of
which (in particular, his improvement of Pascal's Calculating Machine)
were quite famous in their day,--besides his project of a universal
language, and his labors to bring about a union of the churches,--
besides undertaking the revision of the laws of the German Empire,
superintending the Hanoverian mines, experimenting in the culture of
silk, directing the medical profession, laboring in the promotion of
popular education, establishing academies of science, superintending
royal libraries, ransacking the archives of Germany and Italy to
find documents for his history of the House of Brunswick, a work of
immense research [11],--besides these, and a multitude of similar and
dissimilar avocations, he was deep in politics, German and European,
and was occupied all his life long with political negotiations. He was
a courtier, he was a _diplomat_, was consulted on all difficult
matters of international policy, was employed at Hanover, at Berlin, at
Vienna, in the public and secret service of ducal, royal, and imperial
governments, and charged with all sorts of delicate and difficult
commissions,--matters of finance, of pacification, of treaty and
appeal. He was Europe's factotum. A complete biography of the man
would be an epitome of the history of his time. The number and variety
of his public engagements were such as would have crazed any ordinary
brain. And to these were added private studies not less multifarious.
"I am distracted beyond all account," he writes to Vincent Placcius.
"I am making extracts from archives, inspecting ancient documents,