A suitable boon, such Permission, till Law-Reform take effect.

And after Law-Reform had finished, it was a thing found suitable; and continued to the end,--curious to a British reader to consider! Again: on Friedrich's birthday, 24th January, 1744, the new Academy of Sciences had, in the Schloss of Berlin, its first Session.

But of this,--in the absence of Maupertuis, Flattener of the Earth, who is still in France, since that Mollwitz adventure; by and for behoof of whom, when he did return, and become "Perpetual First President," many changes were made,--I will not speak at present.

Nor indeed afterwards, except on good chance rising;--the new Academy, with its Perpetual First President, being nothing like so sublime an object now, to readers and me, as it then was to itself and Perpetual President and Royal Patron! Vapid Formey is Perpetual Secretary; more power to him, as the Irish say.

Poor Goldstick Pollnitz is an Honorary Member;--absent at this time in Baireuth, where those giggling Marwitzes of Wilhelmina's have been contriving a marriage for the old fool.