s of designing priests. There is a melancholy gloom hanging
over the annals of the Middle Ages, especially in reference to kings.
And yet their reigns, though stained by revolting crimes, generally
were to be preferred to the anarchy of an interregnum, or the
overgrown power of nobles.

The brightest period in the history of Poland was during the reigns of
the Jagellon princes, especially when Casimir I. held the sceptre of
empire. During his reign, Lithuania, which then comprised Hungary,
Bohemia, and Silesia, was added to his kingdom. The university of
Cracow was founded, and Poland was the great resort of the Jews, to
whom were committed the trade and commerce of the land. But the rigors
of the feudal system, and the vast preponderance of the aristocracy,
proved unfortunate for the prosperity of the kingdom. What in England
was the foundation of constitutional liberty, proved in Poland to be
subversive of all order and good government. In England, the
representative of the nation was made an instrument in the hands of
the king of humbling the great nobility. Absolutism was established
upon the ruins of feudalism. But, in Poland, the Diet of the nation
controlled the king, and, as the representatives of the nobility
alone, perpetuated the worst evils of the feudal system.

[Sidenote: The Crown of Poland Made Elective.]

When Sigismund II., the last male heir of the house of Jagellon, died,
in 1572, the nobles were sufficiently powerful to make the crown
elective. From this period we date the decline of Poland. The
Reformation, so beneficent in its effects, did not spread to this
Sclavonic country; and the barbarism of the Middle Ages received no
check. On the death of Sigismund, the nobles would not permit the new
sovereign to be elected by the Diet, but only by the whole body of the
nobility. The plain of Praga was the place selected for the election;
and, at the time appointed, such a vast number of nobles arrived, that
the plain, of twelve miles in circumference, was scarcely large enough
to contain them and their retinues. There never was such a sight seen
since the crusaders were marshalled on the field of Chalcedon, for all
the nobles were gorgeously apparelled, and decked with ermine, gold,
and jewels. The Polish horseman frequently invests half his fortune in
his horse and dress. In the centre of the field was the tent of the
late king, capable of accommodating eight thousand men. The candidates
for the cro