ing
for some years, with the fighting Peterboroughs, Galways, Stahrembergs;
but did no good there, neither he nor his Peterboroughs. At length, his
Brother Joseph, Father Leopold's successor, having died, [17th April,
1711.] Karl came home from Spain to be Kaiser. At which point, Karl
would have been wise to give up his Titular Kingship in Spain; for he
never got, nor will get, anything but futile labor from hanging to it.
He did hang to it nevertheless; and still, at this date of George's
visit and long afterwards, hangs,--with notable obstinacy. To the woe of
men and nations: punishment doubtless of his sins and theirs!--

Kaiser Karl shrieked mere amazement and indignation, when the English
tired of fighting for him and it. When the English said to their great
Marlborough: "Enough, you sorry Marlborough! You have beaten Louis XIV.
to the suppleness of wash-leather, at our bidding; that is true, and
that may have had its difficulties: but, after all, we prefer to have
the thing precisely as it would have been without any fighting. You,
therefore, what is the good of you? You are a--person whom we fling
out like sweepings, now that our eyesight returns, and accuse of common
stealing. Go and be--!"

Nothing ever had so disgusted and astonished Kaiser Karl as this
treatment,--not of Marlborough, whom he regarded only as he would
have done a pair of military boots or a holster-pistol of superior
excellence, for the uses that were in him,--but of the Kaiser Karl his
own sublime self, the heart and focus of Political Nature; left in this
manner, now when the sordid English and Dutch declined spending blood
and money for him farther. "Ungrateful, sordid, inconceivable souls,"
answered Karl, "was there ever, since the early Christian times, such
a martyr as you have now made of me!" So answered Karl, in diplomatic
groans and shrieks, to all ends of Europe. But the sulky English and
Allies, thoroughly tired of paying and bleeding, did not heed him; made
their Peace of Utrecht [Peace of Utrecht, 11th April, 1713; Peace of
Rastadt (following upon the Preliminaries of Baden), 6th March, 1714.]
with Louis XIV., who was now beaten supple; and Karl, after a year of
indignant protests and futile attempts to fight Louis on his own score,
was obliged to do the like. He has lost the Spanish crown; but still
holds by the shadow of it; will not quit that, if he can help it. He
hunts much, digests well; is a sublime Kaiser, though interna