But hereby rose actual talk of a "Congress;" and wagging of Diplomatic wigs as to where it shall be.

"In Breda," said some; "Breda a place used to Congresses." "Why not in Nanci here ?" said poor old Ex-Polish Stanislaus, alive to the calls of benevolence, poor old Titular soul.

Others said "Leipzig;" others "Augsburg;"-- and indeed in Augsburg, according to the Gazetteers, at one time, there were "upholsterers busy getting ready the apartments." So that, with such rumor in the Diplomatic circles, the Gazetteer and outer world was full of speculation upon Peace; and Friedrich had lively hopes of it, and had been hoping three months before, as we transiently saw, though again it came to nothing.

All to nothing; and is not, in itself, worth the least attention from us here,--a poor extinct fact, loud in those months and filling the whole world, now silent and extinct to everybody,--except, indeed, that it offers physiognomic traits here and there of a certain King, and of those about him.

For which reason we will dwell on it a few minutes longer.
Nobody, in that Winter 1759-1760, could guess where, or from whom, this big world-interesting Peace-Negotiation had its birth; as everybody now can, when nobody now is curious on the question! At Sagan, in September last, we all saw the small private source of it, its first outspurt into daylight; and read Friedrich's ANSWERS to Voltaire and the noble Duchess on it:--for the sake of which Two private Correspondents, and of Friedrich's relation to them, possibly a few more Excerpts may still have a kind of interest, now when the thing corresponded on has ceased to have any.