He
will teach the Prussians to think, to feel, and to act like them, and to
emulate the glories of the _regiment de l'echafaud_. He will employ the
illustrious Citizen Santerre, the general of his new allies, to instruct
the dull Germans how they shall conduct themselves towards persons who,
like Louis the Sixteenth, (whose cause and person he once took into his
protection,) shall dare, without the sanction of the people, or with it,
to consider themselves as hereditary kings. Can I arrest this great
potentate in his career of glory? Am I blamable in recommending virtue
and religion as the true foundation of all monarchies, because the
protector of the three religions of the Westphalian arrangement, to
ingratiate himself with the Republic of Philosophy, shall abolish all
the three? It is not in my power to prevent the grand patron of the
Reformed Church, if he chooses it, from annulling the Calvinistic
sabbath, and establishing the _decadi_ of atheism in all his states. He
may even renounce and abjure his favorite mysticism in the Temple of
Reason. In these things, at least, he is truly despotic. He has now
shaken hands with everything which at first had inspired him with
horror. It would be curious indeed to see (what I shall not, however,
travel so far to see) the ingenious devices and the elegant
transparencies which, on the restoration of peace and the commencement
of Prussian liberty, are to decorate Potsdam and Charlottenburg
_festeggianti_.
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