Open-hearted Antique populations would have much worshipped such an Appearance;--Voltaire, too, for the artificial Moderns, has made a myth of him, of another type; one of those impossible cast-iron gentlemen, heroically mad, such as they show in the Playhouses, pleasant but not profitable, to an undiscerning Pub1ic.

[See Adlerfeld (_Military History of Charles XII._ London, 1740, 3 vols., "from the Swedish," through the French) and Kohler (_Munzbelustigungen,_ ubi supra), for some authentic traits of his life and him.] The last of the Swedish Kings died in this way; and the unmuzzled Official Persons have not made much of kinging it in his stead.

Charles died; and, as we may say, took the life of Sweden along with him; for it has never shone among the Nations since, or been much worth mentioning, except for its misfortunes, spasmodic impotences and unwisdoms.
Stralsund instantly beat the chamade, as we heard; and all was surrender and subjection in those regions.

Surrender; not yet pacification, not while Charles lived; nor for half a century after his death, could Mecklenburg, Holstein-Gottorp, and other his confederates, escape a sad coil of calamities bequeathed by him to them.

Friedrich Wilhelm returned to Berlin, victorious from his first, which was also his last Prussian War, in January, 1716; and was doubtless a happy man, NOT "to be buried in the Schlosskirche (under penalty of God's curse)," but to find his little Fritz and Feekin, and all the world, merry to see him, and all things put square again, abroad as at home.