country must have
exhibited many a diplomatic scene of intricate intrigue, which although
they could not appear in its public, have no doubt been often consigned
to its secret, history. With us the corruption of a rotten borough has
sometimes exposed the guarded proffer of one party, and the dexterous
chaffering of the other: but a masterpiece of diplomatic finesse and
political invention, electioneering viewed on the most magnificent
scale, with a kingdom to be canvassed, and a crown to be won and lost,
or lost and won in the course of a single day, exhibits a political
drama, which, for the honour and happiness of mankind, is of rare and
strange occurrence. There was one scene in this drama which might appear
somewhat too large for an ordinary theatre; the actors apparently were
not less than fifty to a hundred thousand; twelve vast tents were raised
on an extensive plain, a hundred thousand horses were in the
environs--and palatines and castellans, the ecclesiastical orders, with
the ambassadors of the royal competitors, all agitated by the ceaseless
motion of different factions during the six weeks of the election, and
of many preceding months of preconcerted measures and vacillating
opinions, now were all solemnly assembled at the diet.--Once the poet,
amidst his gigantic conception of a scene, resolved to leave it out:

So vast a throng the stage can ne'er contain--
Then build a new, or _act it in a plain_!

exclaimed "La Mancha's knight," kindling at a scene so novel and so
vast!

Such an electioneering negotiation, the only one I am acquainted with,
is opened in the "Discours" of Choisin, the secretary of Montluc, Bishop
of Valence, the confidential agent of Catharine de' Medici, and who was
sent to intrigue at the Polish diet, to obtain the crown of Poland for
her son the Duke of Anjou, afterwards Henry the Third. This bold
enterprise at first seemed hopeless, and in its progress encountered
growing obstructions; but Montluc was one of the most finished
diplomatists that the genius of the Gallic cabinet ever sent forth. He
was nicknamed in all the courts of Europe, from the circumstance of his
limping, "le Boiteux;" our political bishop was in cabinet intrigues the
Talleyrand of his age, and sixteen embassies to Italy, Germany, England,
Scotland, and Turkey, had made this "connoisseur en hommes" an
extraordinary politician!

Catharine de' Medici was infatuated with the dreams of judicial
astrology; her