ief Counsellor, at present and afterwards, is a
Count von Bruhl, once page to August the Strong; now risen to such
height: Bruhl of the three hundred and sixty-five suits of clothes; whom
it has grown wearisome even to laugh at. A cunning little wretch, they
say, and of deft tongue; but surely among the unwisest of all the Sons
of Adam in that day, and such a Palinurus as seldom steered before.
Kur-Sachsen, being Reichs-Vicar in the Northern Parts,--(Kur-Baiern and
Kur-Pfalz, as friends and good Wittelsbacher Cousins surely ought, in a
crisis like this, have agreed to be JOINT-Vicars in the Southern Parts,
and no longer quarrel upon it),--Kur-Sachsen has a good deal to do
in the Election preludings, formalities and prearrangements; and is
capable, as Kur-Pfalz and Cousin always are, of serving as chisel to
Belleisle's mallet, in such points, which will plentifully turn up.
5. KING OF SARDINIA.--Reichs-Vicar in the Italian Parts is Charles
Amadeus King of Sardinia (tough old Victor's Son, whom we have heard
of): an office mostly honorary; suitable to the important individual
who keeps the Door of the Alps. Charles Amadeus had signed the Pragmatic
Sanction; but eats his Covenant, like the others, on example of
France;--having, as he now bethinks himself, claims on the Milanese.
There are two claimants on the Milanese, then; the Spanish Termagant,
and he? Yes; and they will have their difficulties, their extensive
tusslings in Italian War and otherwise, to make an adjustment of it;
and will give Belleisle (at least the Doorkeeper will) an immensity of
trouble, in years coming.
In this way do the Pragmatic people eat their own Covenant, one after
the other, and are not ashamed;--till all have eaten, or as good as
eaten; and, almost within year and day, Pragmatic Sanction is a vanished
quantity; and poor Kaiser Karl's life-labor is not worth the sheepskin
and stationery it cost him. History reports in sum, That "nobody kept
the Pragmatic Sanction; that the few [strictly speaking, the one] who
acted by it, would have done precisely the same, though there had never
been such a Document in existence." To George II., it is, was and will
be, the Keystone of Nature, the true Anti-French palladium of mankind;
and he, dragging the unwilling Dutch after him, will do great things for
it: but nobody else does anything at all. Might we hope to bid adieu to
it, in this manner, and never to mention it again!--
Document more futile th
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