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-- LAST YEAR OF REINSBERG: TRANSIT OF BALTIMORE AND OTHER.
PERSONS AND THINGS.
Friedrich had not been long home again from Trakehnen and Preussen, when the routine of things at Reinsberg was illuminated by Visitors, of brilliant and learned quality; some of whom, a certain Signor Algarotti for one, require passing mention here.

Algarotti, who became a permanent friend or satellite, very luminous to the Prince, and was much about him in coming years, first shone out upon the scene at this time,--coming unexpectedly, and from the Eastward as it chanced.
On his own score, Algarotti has become a wearisome literary man to modern readers: one of those half-remembered men; whose books seem to claim a reading, and do not repay it you when given.

Treatises, of a serious nature, ON THE OPERA; setting forth, in earnest, the potential "moral uses" of the Opera, and dedicated to Chatham; _Neutonianismo per le Donne_ (Astronomy for Ladies): the mere Titles of such things are fatally sufficient to us; and we cannot, without effort, nor with it, recall the brilliancy of Algarotti and them to his contemporary world.
Algarotti was a rich Venetian Merchant's Son, precisely about the Crown-Prince's age; shone greatly in his studies at Bologna and elsewhere; had written Poesies (RIME); written especially that _Newtonianism for the Dames_ (equal to Fontenelle, said Fame, and orthodox Newtonian withal, not heterodox or Cartesian); and had shone, respected, at Paris, on the strength of it, for three or four years past: friend of Voltaire in consequence, of Voltaire and his divine Emilie, and a welcome guest at Cirey; friend of the cultivated world generally, which was then laboring, divine Emilie in the van of it, to understand Newton and be orthodox in this department of things.
Algarotti did fine Poesies, too, once and again; did Classical Scholarships, and much else: everywhere a clear-headed, methodically distinct, concise kind of man.

A high style of breeding about him, too; had powers of pleasing, and used them: a man beautifully lucent in society, gentle yet impregnable there; keeping himself unspotted from the world and its discrepancies,--really with considerable prudence, first and last.
He is somewhat of the Bielfeld type; a Merchant's Son, we observe, like Bielfeld; but a Venetian Merchant's, not a Hamburg's; and also of better natural stuff than Bielfeld.