s Majesty zealously contradicts,--his
Majesty, and some short-sighted private individuals still favorable to
Seckendorf. [Pollnitz, _Memoiren,_ ii. 497-502.] Exactly one week after
that singular drum-and-trumpet operation on Duke Franz, the Last of the
Medici dies at Florence; [9th July (_Fastes de Louis XV._, p. 304).]
and Serene Franz, if he knew it, is Grand Duke of Tuscany, according to
bargain: a matter important to himself chiefly, and to France, who, for
Stanislaus and Lorraine's sake, has had to pay him some 200,000 pounds a
year during the brief intermediate state.

OF BERG AND JULICH AGAIN; AND OF LUISCIUS WITH THE ONE RAZOR.

These remote occurrences are of small interest to his Prussian Majesty,
in comparison with the Pfalz affair, the Cleve-Julich succession, which
lies so near home. His Majesty is uncommonly anxious to have this
matter settled, in peace, if possible. Kaiser and Reich, with the other
Mediating Powers, go on mediating; but when will they decide? This year
the old Bishop of Augsburg, one Brother of the older Kur-Pfalz Karl
Philip, dies; nothing now between us and the event itself, but Karl
Philip alone, who is verging towards eighty: the decision, to be
peaceable, ought to be speedy! Friedrich Wilhelm, in January last, sent
the expert Degenfeld, once of London, to old Karl Philip; and has
him still there, with the most conciliatory offers: "Will leave your
Sulzbachs a part, then; will be content with part, instead of the whole,
which is mine if there be force in sealed parchment; will do anything
for peace!" To which the old Kur-Pfalz, foolish old creature, is
steadily deaf; answers vaguely, negatively always, in a polite manner;
pushing his Majesty upon extremities painful to think of. "We hate war;
but cannot quite do without justice, your Serenity," thinks Friedrich
Wilhelm: "must it be the eighty thousand iron ramrods, then?" Obstinate
Serenity continues deaf; and Friedrich Wilhelm's negotiations, there
at Mannheim, over in Holland, and through Holland with England, not to
speak of Kaiser and Reich close at hand, become very intense; vehemently
earnest, about this matter, for the next two years. The details of
which, inexpressibly uninteresting, shall be spared the reader.

Summary is, these Mediating Powers will be of no help to his Majesty;
not even the Dutch will, with whom he is specially in friendship: nay,
in the third year it becomes fatally manifest, the chief Mediating
Po