Staatsgeschichte_ (Gotha,
1762-1767), ii. 120. JOHANN CHRISTOPH Adelung; the same who did the
DICTIONARY and many other deserving Books; here is the precise Title:
_"Pragmatische Staatsgeschichte Europens,"_ that is, "Documentary
History of Europe, from Kaiser Karl's Death, 1740, till Peace of Paris,
1763." A solid, laborious and meritorious Work, of its kind; extremely
extensive (9 vols. 4to, some of which are double and even treble),
mostly in the undigested, sometimes in the quite uncooked or raw
condition; perhaps about a fifth part of it consists of "Documents"
proper, which are shippable. It cannot help being dull, waste, dreary,
but is everywhere intelligible (excellent Indexes too),--and offers an
unhappy reader by far the best resource attainable for survey of that
sad Period.]

A good affectionate Kaiserin, I do believe; honorable, truthful, though
unwitty of speech, and converted by Grandpapa in a peculiar manner,
For her Kaiser too, after all, I have a kind of love. Of brilliant
articulate intellect there is nothing; nor of inarticulate (as
in Friedrich Wilhelm's case) anything considerable: in fact his
Shadow-Hunting, and Duelling with the Termagant, seemed the reverse of
wise. But there was something of a high proud heart in it, too, if we
examine; and even the Pragmatic Sanction, though in practice not
worth one regiment of iron ramrods, indicates a profoundly fixed
determination, partly of loyal nature, such as the gods more or less
reward. "He had been a great builder," say the Histories; "was a great
musician, fit to lead orchestras, and had composed an Opera,"--poor
Kaiser. There came out large traits of him, in Maria Theresa again,
under an improved form, which were much admired by the world. He looks,
in his Portraits, intensely serious; a handsome man, stoically grave;
much the gentleman, much the Kaiser or Supreme Gentleman. As, in life
and fact, he was; "something solemn in him, even when he laughs," the
people used to say. A man honestly doing his very best with his poor
Kaisership, and dying of chagrin by it. "On opening the body, the
liver-region proved to be entirely deranged; in the place where the
gall-bladder should have been, a stone of the size of a pigeon's egg was
found grown into the liver, and no gall-bladder now there."

That same morning, with earliest daylight, "Thursday, 20th, six A.M.,"
Maria Theresa is proclaimed by her Heralds over Vienna: "According
to Pragmatic Sanction,