No want of brilliant social life here, which can shine, more or less, and appreciate one's shining.

The King's Supper-parties--Yes, and these, though the brightest, are not the only bright things in our Potsdam-Berlin world.

Take with you, reader, one or two of the then and there Chief Figures; Voltaire's fellow-players; strutting and fretting their hour on that Stage of Life.

They are mostly not quite strangers to you.
We know the sublime Perpetual President in his red wig, and sublime supremacy of Pure Science.

A gloomy set figure; affecting the sententious, the emphatic and a composed impregnability,--like the Jove of Science.