the king. "At the beginning of the war," said Frederic, "I might have been contented with this proposal, but not now. Shall I again give the Austrians battle, and drive them from Silesia? You will then see I shall have better proposals. At present I will have four duchies, and not one. Do not, my lord," said the king, "talk to me of magnanimity; a prince ought first to consult his own interests. I am not averse to peace, but I expect to have four duchies, and will have them."

At a subsequent period the same scene was to be renewed, and Mr. Robinson, the English ambassador, who was very naturally captivated with the attractions and spirit of Maria Theresa, endeavoured to rouse her to a sense of her danger. "Not only for political reasons," replied the queen, “but from conscience and honour, I will not consent to part with much in Silesia. No sooner is one enemy satisfied than another starts up; another and then another must be contented, and all at my expense."

"You must yield to the hard necessity of the times," said Mr. Robinson.

"What would I not give, except in Silesia!" replied the impatient queen. "Let him take all we have in Guelderland if he is not gained by that sacrifice, others may be. Let the king your master speak to the Elector of Bavaria. Oh! the king your master! Let him only march! Let him march only!"

But England could not be prevailed upon to declare war. The dangers of Maria Theresa became more and more imminent, and a consent to further offers was extorted from her. "I am afraid," said Mr. Robinson, "some of these proposals will be rejected by the king." "I wish he may reject them," said the queen. "Save Linburgh if possible, were it only for the quiet of my conscience. God knows how I shall answer for the cession, having sworn to the states of Brabant never to alienate any part of this country."

Mr. Robinson, who was an enthusiast in the cause of the queen, is understood to have made some idle experiment of his own eloquence on the King of Prussia; to have pleaded her cause in his next interview; to have spoken, not as if he was addressing a cold-hearted, bad man, but as if speaking

in the House of Commons of his own country, in the assembly of a free people, with generosity in their feelings and uprightness and honour in their hearts. The king, in all the malignant security of triumphant power, in all the composed consciousness of great intellectual talents, affected to return him eloquence for eloquence; said his ancestors would rise out of their tombs to reproach him if he abandoned the rights that had been transmitted to him; that he could not live with reputation if he lightly abandoned an enterprise which had been the first act of his reign; that he would sooner be crushed with his whole army, &c. &c. And then, descending from his oratorical elevation, declared that he would now not only have four duchies, but all Lower Silesia, with the town of Breslau. If the queen does not satisfy me in six weeks, I will have four duchies more. They who want peace will give me what I want. I am sick of ultimatums; I will hear no more of them. My part is taken; I will have all Lower Silesia. This is my final answer, I will give no other. He then abruptly broke off the conference, and left Mr. Robinson to his own reflections.

The situation of the young queen now became truly deplorable. The King of Prussia was making himself the entire master of Silesia; two French armies poured over the countries of Germany; the Elector of Bavaria, joined by one of them, had pushed a body of troops within eight miles of Vienna, and the capital had been summoned to surrender. The King of Sardinia threatened hostilities; so did the Spanish army. The Electors of Saxony, Cologne, and Palatine, joined the grand confederacy; and abandoned by all her allies but Great Britain, without treasure, without an army, and without ministers, she appealed, or rather fled, for refuge and compassion to her subjects in Hungary.

These subjects she had at her accession conciliated by taking the oath which had been abolished by her ancestor Leopold, the confirmation of their just rights, privileges, and approved customs. She had taken this oath at her accession, and she was now to reap the benefit of that sense of justice and real magnanimity which she had displayed, and which, it may fairly be pronounced, sovereigns and governments will always find it their interest, as well as their duty, to display, while

the human heart is constituted, as it has always been, proud and eager to acknowledge with gratitude and affection the slightest condescensions of kings and princes; the slightest marks of attention and benevolence in those who are illustrious by their birth or elevated by their situation.

When Maria Theresa had first proposed to. repair to these subjects, a suitor for their protection, the grey-headed politicians of her court had, it seems, assured her that she could not possibly succeed; that the Hungarians, when the Pragmatic Sanction had been proposed to them by her father, had declared that they were accustomed to be governed only by men, and that they would seize the opportunity of withdrawing from her rule, and from their allegiance to the house of Austria.

Maria Theresa, young and generous and high spirited herself, had confidence in human virtue. She repaired to Hungary; she summoned the states of the diet; she entered the hall, clad in deep mourning; habited herself in the Hungarian dress; placed the crown of St. Stephen on her head, the scimitar at her side; showed her subjects that she could herself cherish and venerate whatever was dear and venerable in their sight; separated not herself in her sympathies and opinions from those whose sympathies and opinions she was to awaken and direct; traversed the apartment with a slow and majestic step; ascended the tribune from whence the sovereigns had been accustomed to harangue the states, committed to her chancellor the detail of her distressed situation, and then herself addressed them in the language which was familiar to them, the immortal language of Rome; which was not now for the first time to be employed against the enterprises of injustice, and the wrongs of the oppressor. Agitur de regno Hungariæ," said the queen, "de persona nostrâ, prolibus nostris et coronâ; ab omnibus derelicti, unicè ad inclytorum statuum fidelitatem, arma et Hungarorum priscam virtutem, confugimus*."

"The business before you," said the queen, "affects the kingdom of Hungary, our royal person, our issue, and our crown; deserted on all sides, it is to the illustrious attachment of the states, to the arms and the long tried valour of the Hungarians that we now fly for assistance."

To the cold and relentless ambition of Frederic, to a prince whose heart had withered at thirty, an appeal like this had been made in vain; but not so to the free-born warriors, who saw no possessions to be coveted like the conscious enjoyment of honourable and generous feelings; no fame, no glory, like the character of the protectors of the helpless and the avengers of the innocent. Youth, beauty, and distress obtained that triumph which, for the honour of the one sex, it is to be hoped will never be denied to the merits and afflictions of the other. A thousand swords leaped from their scabbards, and attested the unbought generosity and courage of untutored nature. "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Mariâ Theresâ," was the voice that resounded through the hall"Moriamur pro rege nostro, Mariâ Theresâ." The queen, who had hitherto preserved a calm and dignified deportment, burst into tears (I tell but the facts of history). Tears started to the eyes of Maria Theresa when standing before her heroic defenders; those tears which no misfortunes, no sufferings would have drawn from her in the presence of her enemies and oppressors. "Moriamur pro rege nostro, Mariâ Theresâ," was again and again heard. The voice, the shout, the acclamation, that reechoed around her, and enthusiasm and frenzy in her cause was the necessary effect of this union of every dignified sensibility which the heart can acknowledge and the understanding honour.

It is not always that in history we can pursue the train of events, and find our moral feelings gratified as we proceed: but in general we may. Philip II. overpowered not the Low Countries, nor Louis, Holland; and even on this occasion, of the distress and danger of Maria Theresa, we may find an important, though not a perfect and complete triumph. The resolutions of the Hungarian Diet were supported by the nation; Croats, Pandours, Sclavonians, flocked to the royal standard, and they struck terror into the disciplined armies of Germany and France. The genius of the great General Kevenhuller was called into action by the queen; Vienna was put into a state of defence; divisions began to arise among the queen's enemies; a sacrifice was at last made to Frederic, he was bought off by the cession of Lower Silesia and Breslau; and the queen and her generals, thus obtaining

a respite from this able and enterprising robber, were enabled to direct, and successfully direct, their efforts against the remaining hosts of plunderers that had assailed her. France, that with her usual perfidy and atrocity had summoned every surrounding power to the destruction of the house of Austria, in the moment of the helplessness and inexperience of the new sovereign, France was at least, if Frederic was not, defeated, disappointed, and disgraced.

The remaining pages of Coxe, to the end of his volume, are not less worthy of perusal. The administration of Maria Theresa occupies the greater part of it; and the interest that belongs to a character like hers, of strong feelings and great abilities, never leaves the narrative of which she is, in fact, the heroine. The student cannot expect that he should always approve the conduct or the sentiments that but too naturally flowed from qualities like these, when found in a princess like Maria Theresa, a princess placed in situations so fitted to betray her into violence and even rancour; a princess who had been a first-rate sovereign of Europe at four and twenty, and who had never been admitted to that moral discipline to which ordinary mortals, who act in the presence of their equals, are so happily subjected.

That the loss of Silesia should never be forgotten; the King of Prussia never forgiven; that his total destruction would have been the highest gratification to her, can be no object of surprise.

The mixed character of human nature seldom affords, when all its propensities are drawn out by circumstances, any proper theme for the entire and unqualified praises of a moralist but every thing is pardoned to Maria Theresa, when she is compared, as she must constantly be, with her great rival Frederic. Errors and faults we can overlook when they are those of our common nature; intractability, impetuosity, lofty pride, superstition, even bigotry, an impatience of wrongs, furious and implacable, all these, the faults of Maria Theresa, may be forgiven, may at least be understood. But Frederic had no merits, save courage and ability; these, great as they are, cannot reconcile us to a character with which we can have no sympathy; of which the beginning, the middle, and the end, the foundation and the