Anarchy in the shape of Revolt against Authorities was what Friedrich and Voltaire had never dreamed of as possible, and had not in their minds the least idea of.

In one, or perhaps two places you may find in Voltaire a grim and rather glad forethought, not given out as prophecy, but felt as interior assurance in a moment of hope, How these Priestly Sham Hierarchies will be pulled to pieces, probably on the sudden, once people are awake to them.

Yes, my much-suffering M.de Voltaire, be pulled to pieces; or go aloft, like the awakening of Vesuvius, one day,--Vesuvius awakening after ten centuries of slumber, when his crater is all grown grassy, bushy, copiously "tenanted by wolves" I am told; which, after premonitory grumblings, heeded by no wolf or bush, he will hurl bodily aloft, ten acres at a time, in a very tremendous manner! [First modern Eruption of Vesuvius, A.D.1631, after long interval of rest.] A thought like this, about the Priestly Sham-Hierarchies, I have found somewhere in Voltaire: but of the Social and Civic Sham-Hierarchies (which are likewise accursed, if they knew it, and indeed are junior co-partners of the Priestly; and, in a sense, sons and products of them, and cannot escape being partakers of their plagues), there is no hint, in Voltaire, though Voltaire stood at last only fifteen years from the Fact (1778-1793); nor in Friedrich, though he lived almost to see the Fact beginning.
Friedrich's History being henceforth that of a Prussian King, is interesting to Prussia chiefly, and to us little otherwise than as the Biography of a distinguished fellow-man, Friedrich's Biography, his Physiognomy as he grows old, quietly on his own harvest-field, among his own People: this has still an interest, and for any feature of this we shall be eager enough; but this withal is the most of what we now want.
And not very much even of this; Friedrich the unique King not having as a man any such depth and singularity, tragic, humorous, devotionally pious, or other, as to authorize much painting in that aspect.

Extreme brevity beseems us in these circumstances: and indeed there are,--as has already happened in different parts of this Enterprise (Nature herself, in her silent way, being always something of an Artist in such things),--other circumstances, which leave us no choice as to that of detail.

Available details, if we wished to give them, of Friedrich's later Life, are not forthcoming: masses of incondite marine-stores, tumbled out on you, dry rubbish shot with uncommon diligence for a hundred years, till, for Rubbish-Pelion piled on Rubbish-Ossa, you lose sight of the stars and azimuths; whole mountain continents, seemingly all of cinders and sweepings (though fragments and remnants do lie hidden, could you find them again):---these are not details that will be available! Anecdotes there are in quantity; but of uncertain quality; of doubtful authenticity, above all.