and Von Boineburg. He was himself in Paris. But his reputation in Germany was now of the highest. He accepted an offer, tendered for the third time, to reside at the brilliant literary court of Hanover. Thus commenced a connexion which lasted during the remaining forty years of his life, and in which he held a succession of legal and literary offices, under the Duke John Frederic and his successors, the Electors Ernest Augustus, and George Louis,—the latter of whom became George I. of England two years before the death of Leibnitz. The additional means enjoyed by him at Hanover for gratifying the peculiarities of his genius, were used with his characteristic ardour. The variety of his aims during these forty years is marvellous. The development of his speculative genius continued to advance, and his thoughts, stirred from their lowest depths by the cycle of the sciences during that whole period, would present an exceedingly curious spectacle, if we could have these changes in the current of the soul represented to the senses. History, languages, geology, mathematics, chemistry, medicine, politics, and theology, in turn secured his attention, and his busy spirit collected the various learning of each department. His almost superhuman versatility of mind secured for Leibnitz the highest distinction in most of the sciences which come within the range of human thought. In history he laboured for years on the antiquities of the house of Brunswick, and the early annals of Germany. An experience of the extreme difficulty of historical researches suggested to him what may be styled the comparative
