read and
carefully forgotten; what mountains of dust and ashes are to be dug
through, and tumbled down to Orcus, to disengage the smallest fraction
of truly memorable! Well if, in ten cubic miles of dust and ashes, you
discover the tongue of a shoe-buckle that has once belonged to a man
in the least heroic; and wipe your brow, invoking the supernal and
the infernal gods. My heart's desire is to compress these Strehlen
Diplomatic horse-dealings into the smallest conceivable bulk. And yet
how much that is not metal, that is merely cinders, has got through:
impossible to prevent,--may the infernal gods deal with it, and reduce
Dryasdust to limits, one day! Here, however, are important Public News
transpiring through the old Gazetteers:--

"MUNCHEN, JULY 1st [or in effect a few days later, when the Letters
DATED July 1st had gone through their circuitous formalities], [Adelung,
ii. 421.] Karl Albert Kur-Baiern publicly declares himself Candidate for
the Kaisership; as, privately, he had long been rumored and believed to
be. Kur-Baiern, they say, has of militias and regulars together about
30,000 men on foot, all posted in good places along the Austrian
Frontier; and it is commonly thought, though little credible at Vienna,
that he intends invading Austria as well as contesting the Election. To
which the Vienna Hofrath answers in the style of 'Pshaw!'

"VERSAILLES, 11th JULY. Extraordinary Council of State; Belleisle being
there, home from Frankfurt, to take final orders, and get official
fiat put upon his schemes. 'All the Princes of the Blood and all the
Marechals of France attend;' question is, How the War is to be, nay,
Whether War is to be at all,--so contingent is the French-Prussian
Bargain, signed five weeks ago. Old Fleury, to give freedom of
consultation and vote, quits the room. Some are of opinion, one Prince
of the Blood emphatically so, That Pragmatic Sanction should be kept, at
least War AGAINST it be avoided. But the contrary opinion triumphs, King
himself being strongly with it; Belleisle to be supreme in field and
cabinet; shall execute, like a kind of Dictator or Vice-Majesty, by his
own magnificent talent, those magnificent devisings of his, glorious to
France and to the King. [Ib. 417, 418; see also Baumer, p. 104 (if you
can for his date, which is given in OLD STYLE as if it were in New; a
very eclipsing method!).] These many months, the French have been arming
with their whole might. The Vienna people