n.1. The ducal palace, a couple of miles from the centre of Hanover. The palace itself no longer exists, apart from the brewery, which produces one of the finest lagers in the world. The formal gardens have been preserved, and I suspect that what Leibniz had in mind was the progression from the baroque pattern of the global layout from a distance, to a closer view when you can discern individual plants such as the miniature box trees bordering the beds, and finally to inspecting the leaves of individual box trees. The leaves of box trees do look very similar.

n.2. Eclats, which can mean the brightness of the sun, or a thunderclap. In the Monadology §47, Leibniz uses the word fulguration (usually translated ‘fulguration’), which means a lightning flash. The metaphor is neoplatonic. The idea is that individual created beings are like concentrations of light from the sun (=God): their existence is continuously dependent on the sun; whatever there is positive in them is due to the sun; and whatever there is negative in them is due to their distance from the sun, or the dilution of the sun’s being with not-being.

n.3. Who published the first results of observations through the newly invented microscope.