rstanding honor.

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, Slavonians, 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 rise among
the Queen's enemies; a sacrifice was at last made to Frederick--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 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 Frederick was not, defeated, disappointed, and
disgraced.

The interest that belongs to a character like that of Maria Theresa, of
strong feelings and great abilities, never leaves the narrative, of
which she is 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 rancor--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, cannot be
objects 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
everything is pardoned to Maria Theresa, when she is compared