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 years caused Leibniz to become a frequent visitor at Berlin. This Princess (a woman of perhaps bolder mind than her mother, though less distinguished by the kindly humour which in the latter almost invariably tempered the expression of an acute intelligence) was, in her turn, much attached to Leibniz and glad of his frequent presence where 'the infinitely small,' (as it is to be feared she paraphrased the idiosyncrasy of her consort) was the ordinary pabulum of existence. Moreover, he was fully aware of the long-standing friction between the two electoral Houses, and he did his best, both by a skilful exposition of means by which pettly grievances between them could be removed, and in every other way in his power, to aid Sophia Charlotte in accomplishing the purpose for which she had been married to so uninspiring a husband. There can be no doubt of the loyalty of his exertions on this head, and he greeted the attainment by Sophia Charlotte s consort of the object of his life—the Prussian Crown—with cordial sympathy; but it seems to me little short of absurd to represent him as actuated by the belief that the future of Germany lay with Prussia, and not with Austria. Not only was he afterwards attracted to Vienna, as it is impossible to ignore, more potently than he ever had been to any other capital; not only is it probable that but for certain ecclesiastical influences he would have found a permanent place in the Emperor's service; but there is no political principle more consistently upheld by him than that the strengthening, not the weakening, of the imperial authority, of which in this age there was no thought of divesting the House of Habsburg, was essential to the preservation of the European system.

It is from this point of view, as much from that of preventing the overthrow of that system by the undue aggrandisement of France that he treats the question of the Spanish Succession, and comments on the progress of the war carried on (from 1702 onwards) during thirteen years for its settlement. In the first of his pamphlets