dic for
human speech! and would excel belief, were not the testimony so strong.
[Pollnitz (_Memoiren,_ ii. 95) gives Friedrich Wilhelm as voucher,
"who used to relate it as from eye-and-ear witnesses."] A Duke of
Mecklenburg, it would appear, who may count himself the NON-PLUS-ULTRA
of husbands in that epoch;--as among Sovereign Rulers, too, in a small
or great way, he seeks his fellow for ill-luck!

Duke and Duchess accompanied the Czar to Berlin, where Wilhelmina
mentions them, as presentees; part of those "four hundred" anomalies.
They took the Czar home with them to Mecklenburg: where indeed some
Russian Regiments of his, left here on their return from Denmark, had
been very useful in coercing the rebellious Ritterschaft (KNIGHTAGE,
or Landed-Gentry) of this Duke,--till at length the general outcry,
and voice of the Reich itself, had ordered the said Regiments to get on
march again, and take themselves away. [The LAST of them, "July, 1717;"
two months ago. (Michaelis, ii. 418.)] For all is rebellion, passive
rebellion, in Mecklenburg; taxes being so indispensable; and the Knights
so disinclined; and this Duke a Sovereign,--such as we may construe from
his quarrelling with almost everybody, and his NOT quarrelling with
an Uncle Peter of that kind. [One poor hint, on his behalf, let us
not omit: "WIFE quitted him in 1719, and lived at Moscow afterwards!"
(General Mannstein, _Memoirs of Russia,_ London, 1770, p. 27 n.)] His
troubles as Sovereign Duke, his flights to Dantzig, oustings, returns,
law-pleadings and foolish confusions, lasted all his life, thirty years
to come; and were bequeathed as a sorrowful legacy to Posterity and the
neighboring Countries. Voltaire says, the Czar wished to buy his Duchy
from him. [Ubi supra, xxxi. 414.] And truly, for this wretched Duke, it
would have been good to sell it at any price: but there were other words
than his to such a bargain, had it ever been seriously meditated. By
this extraordinary Duchess he becomes Father (real or putative) of
a certain Princess, whom we may hear of; and through her again is
Grandfather of an unfortunate Russian Prince, much bruited about, as
"the murdered Iwan," in subsequent times. With such a Duke and Duchess
let our acquaintance be the MINIMUM of what necessity compels.

Wilhelmina goes by hearsay hitherto; and, it is to be hoped, had
heard nothing of these Magdeburg-Mecklenburg phenomena; but after the
Czarina's arrival, the little creature sa