Friedrich evidently in considerable indignation, finding that public measures would but worsen the uproar, took pen in hand; wrote rapidly the indignant LETTER FROM AN ACADEMICIAN OF BERLIN TO AN ACADEMICIAN OF PARIS: [--OEuvres de Frederic,--xv.

59-64 (not dated; datable "October, 1752").] which Piece, of some length, we cannot give here; but will briefly describe as manifesting no real knowledge of the LAW-OF-THRIFT Controversy; but as taking the above loose view of it, and as directed principally against "the pretended Member of our Academy" (mischievous Voltaire, to wit), whom it characterizes as "such a manifest retailer of lies," a "concocter of stupid libels:" "have you ever seen an action more malicious, more dastardly, more infamous ?"--and other hard terms, the hardest he can find.

This is the privilege of anonymity, on both sides of it.
But imagine now a King and his Voltaire doing witty discourse over their Supper of the gods (as, on the set days, is duly the case); with such a consciousness, burning like Bude light, though close veiled, on the part of Host and Guest! The Friedrich-Voltaire relation is evidently under sore stress of weather, in those winter-autumn months of 1752,--brown leaves, splashy rains and winds moaning outwardly withal.

And, alas, the irrepressibly electric Voltaire, still far from having ended, still only just beginning his Anti-Maupertuis discharges, has, in the interim, privately got his DOCTOR AKAKIA ready.

Compared to which, the former missile is as a popgun to a park of artillery shotted with old nails and broken glass!--Such a constraint, at the Royal dinner-table, amid wine and wit, could not continue.