The world talked much of it, and still talks; and has now at last got it all collected, and elucidated into a dimly legible form for studious readers.

[Preuss, _OEuvres de Frederic,_ (xxi.xxii.xxiii., Berlin, 1853); who supersedes the lazy French Editors in this matter.] It is by no means the diabolically wicked Correspondence it was thought to be; the reverse, indeed, on both sides;--but it has unfortunately become a very dull one, to the actual generation of mankind.

Not without intrinsic merit; on the contrary (if you read intensely, and bring the extinct alive again), it sparkles notably with epistolary grace and vivacity; and, on any terms, it has still passages of biographical and other interest: but the substance of it, then so new and shining, has fallen absolutely commonplace, the property of all the world, since then; and is now very wearisome to the reader.

No doctrine or opinion in it that you have not heard, with clear belief or clear disbelief, a hundred times, and could wish rather not to hear again.

The common fate of philosophical originalities in this world.