importance now. One glance I may
perhaps commend to the reader, out of these multifarious Note-books in
my possession:--

"August, by change of his religion, and other sad operations, got to be
what they called the King of Poland, thirty five years ago; but,
though looking glorious to the idle public, it has been a crown of
stinging-nettles to the poor man,--a sedan-chair running on rapidly,
with the bottom broken out! To say nothing of the scourgings he got,
and poor Saxony along with him, from Charles XII., on account of this
Sovereignty so called, what has the thing itself been to him? In Poland,
for these thirty-five years, the individual who had least of his real
will done in public matters has been, with infinite management, and
display of such good-humor as at least deserves credit, the nominal
Sovereign Majesty of Poland. Anarchic Grandees have been kings over him;
ambitious, contentious, unmanageable;--very fanatical too, and never
persuaded that August's Apostasy was more than a sham one, not even when
he made his Prince apostatize too. Their Sovereignty has been a mere
peck of troubles, disgraces and vexations: for those thirty-five
years, an ever-boiling pot of mutiny, contradiction, insolence, hardly
tolerable even to such nerves as August's.

"August, for a long time back, has been thinking of schemes to clap
some lid upon all that. To make the Sovereignty hereditary in his House:
that, with the good Saxon troops we have, would be a remedy;--and in
fact it is the only remedy. John Casimir (who abdicated long ago, in
the Great Elector's time, and went to Paris,--much charmed with Ninon
de l'Enclos there) told the Polish Diets, With their LIBERUM VETO, and
'right of confederation' and rebellion, they would bring the country
down under the feet of mankind, and reduce their Republic to zero one
day, if they persisted. They have not failed to persist. With some
hereditary King over it, and a regulated Saxony to lean upon: truly
might it not be a change to the better? To the worse, it could hardly
be, thinks August the Strong; and goes intent upon that method, this
long while back;--and at length hopes now, in few days longer, at the
Diet just assembling, to see fruits appear, and the thing actually
begin.

"The difficulties truly are many; internal and external:--but there
are calculated methods, too. For the internal: Get up, by bribery,
persuasion, some visible minority to countenance you; with these
man