in it; done by somebody (your friend, the
Excellency Herr von Hartmann, shall we guess?), wishing to curry favor
with ambitious foolish persons!" Such was the Austrian story. Perhaps in
Munchen itself their Copyist was not known;--for aught I learn, the Copy
was made long since, and the Copyist dead. Hartmann, named as Copyist by
the Vienna people, made emphatic public answer: "Never did I copy it, or
see it!" And there rose great argument, which is not yet quite ended,
as to the question, "Original falsified, or Copy falsified?"--and the
modern vote, I believe, rather clearly is, That the Austrian Officials
had done it--in a case of necessity. [Adelung, ii. 150-154 (14th-20th
November, 1740), gives the public facts, without commentary. Hormayr
(_Anemonen aus dem Tagebuch eines alten Pilgersmannes,_ Jena, 1845, i.
162-169,--our old Hormayr of the AUSTRIAN PLUTARCH, but now Anonymous,
and in Opposition humor) considers the case nearly proved against
Austria, and that Bartenstein and one Bessel, a pillar of the Church,
were concerned in it.] Possible? "But you will lose your soul!" said the
Parson once to a poor old Gentlewoman, English by Nation, who refused,
in dying, to contradict some domestic fiction, to give up some domestic
secret: "But you will lose your soul, Madam!"--"Tush, what signifies my
poor silly soul compared with the honor of the family?"--

2. KING FRIEDRICH;--King Friedrich may be taken as the Anti-Pragmatic
next in order of time. He too lost not a moment, and proceeded openly;
no quirking to be charged upon him. His account of himself in this
matter always was: "By the Treaty of Wusterhausen, 1726, unquestionably
Prussia undertook to guarantee Pragmatic Sanction; the late Kaiser
undertaking in return, by the same Treaty, to secure Berg and Julich
to Prussia, and to have some progress made in it within six months from
signing. And unquestionably also, the late Kaiser did thereupon, or even
had already done, precisely the reverse; namely, secured, so far as in
him was possible, Berg and Julich to Kur-Pfalz. Such Treaty, having
in this way done suicide, is dead and become zero: and I am free, in
respect of Pragmatic Sanction, to do whatever shall seem good to me. My
wish was, and would still be, To maintain Pragmatic Sanction, and even
to support it by 100,000 men, and secure the Election of the Grand-Duke
to the Kaisership,--were my claims on Silesia once liquidated. But these
have no concern with Pragma