No wonder they thought him worthy of notice. Every original man of
any magnitude is;--nay, in the long-run, who or what else is?
But how much more if your original man was a king over men;
whose movements were polar, and carried from day to day those of
the world along with them. The Samson Agonistes,--were his life
passed like that of Samuel Johnson in dirty garrets, and the
produce of it only some bits of written paper,--the Agonistes,
and how he will comport himself in the Philistine mill; this is
always a spectacle of truly epic and tragic nature. The rather,
if your Samson, royal or other, is not yet blinded or subdued to
the wheel; much more if he vanquish his enemies, not by suicidal
methods, but march out at last flourishing his miraculous fighting
implement, and leaving their mill and them in quite ruinous
circumstances. As this King Friedrich fairly managed to do.

For he left the world all bankrupt, we may say; fallen into
bottomless abysses of destruction; he still in a paying condition,
and with footing capable to carry his affairs and him. When he
died, in 1786, the enormous Phenomenon since called FRENCH
REVOLUTION was already growling audibly in the depths of the
world; meteoric-electric coruscations heralding it, all round the
horizon. Strange enough to note, one of Friedrich's last visitors
was Gabriel Honore Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau. These two saw one
another; twice, for half an hour each time. The last of the old
Gods and the first of the modern Titans;--before Pelion leapt on
Ossa; and the foul Earth taking fire at last, its vile mephitic
elements went up in volcanic thunder. This also is one of the
peculiarities of Friedrich, that he is hitherto the last of the
Kings; that he ushers in the French Revolution, and closes an