This is not English." Frederick the Great, being a king, was a privileged blasphemer.

In some unquotable verses written after the battle of Rossbach, where he routed the French and drove them off the field pell-mell, he sings, as Carlyle says, "with a wild burst of spiritual enthusiasm, the charms of the rearward part of certain men; and what a royal ecstatic felicity there is in indisputable survey of the same." "He rises," adds Carlyle, "to the heights of Anti-Biblical profanity, quoting Moses on the Hill of Vision." To Soubise and Company the poet of Potsdam sings-- "Je vous ai vu comme Moise Dans des ronces en certain lieu Eut l'honneur de voir Dieu." Frederick's verse is halting enough, but it has "a certain heartiness and epic greatness of cynicism"; and so his biographer continues justifying this royal outburst of racy profanity with Rabelaisian gusto.

I dare not follow him; but I am anxious to know why Carlyle's "Frederick" circulates with impunity and even applause, while the _Freethinker_ is condemned and denounced.

Judge North may be ignorant of Carlyle's masterpiece, but I can hardly presume the same ignorance in Sir William Harcourt.

He probably sinned against a greater light.