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THIRD ACT AND CATASTROPHE OF THE VOLTAIRE VISIT.
Meantime there has a fine Controversy risen, of mathematical, philosophical and at length of very miscellaneous nature, concerning that Konig-Maupertuis dissentience on the LAW OF THRIFT.

Wonderful Controversy, much occupying the so-called Philosophic or Scientific world; especially the idler population that inhabit there.

Upon this item of the Infinitely Little,--which has in our time sunk into Nothing-at-all, and but for Voltaire, and the accident of his living near it, would be forgotten altogether,--we must not enter into details; but a few words to render Voltaire's share in it intelligible will be, in the highest degree, necessary.

Here, in brief form, rough and ready, are the successive stages of the Business; the origin and first stage of which have been known to us for some time past:-- "SEPTEMBER, 1750, Konig, his well-meant visit to Berlin proving so futile, had left Maupertuis in the humor we saw;--pirouetting round his Apartment, in tempests of rage at such contradiction of sinners on his sublime Law of Thrift; and fulminating permission to Konig: 'No time to read your Paper of Contradictions; publish it in Leipzig, in Jericho; anywhere in the Earth, in Heaven, in the Other Place, where you have the opportunity!' Konig, returning on these terms, had nothing for it but to publish his Paper; and did publish it, in the Leipzig--Acta Eruditorum--for March, 1751.