e Doctors, and were futile
to help farther. The strong body, and its life, was done; and nothing
remained but to call in the Archbishop, with his extreme unctions and
soul-apparatus.

August made no moaning or recalcitrating; took, on the prescribed terms,
the inevitable that had come. Has been a very great sinner, he confesses
to the Archbishop: "I have not at present strength to name my many and
great sins to your Reverence," said he; "I hope for mercy on the"--on
the usual rash terms. Terms perhaps known to August to be rash; to have
been frightfully rash; but what can he now do? Archbishop thereupon
gives absolution of his sins; Archbishop does,--a baddish, unlikely kind
of man, as August well knows. August "laid his hand on his eyes," during
such sad absolution-mummery; and in that posture had breathed his last,
before it was well over. ["Sunday, 1st February, 1733, quarter past
4 A.M." (Fassmann, _Leben Frederici Augusti Konigs in Pohlen,_ pp.
994-997).] Unhappy soul; who shall judge him?--transcendent King of
edacious Flunkies; not without fine qualities, which he turned to such a
use amid the temptations of this world!

POLAND HAS TO FIND A NEW KING.

His death brought vast miseries on Poland; kindled foolish Europe
generally into fighting, and gave our Crown-Prince his first actual
sight and experience of the facts of War. For which reason, hardly for
another, the thing having otherwise little memorability at present,
let us give some brief synopsis of it, the briefer the better. Here,
excerpted from multifarious old Note-books, are some main heads of the
affair:--

"On the disappearance of August the Strong, his plans of Partitioning
Poland disappeared too, and his fine trains in the Diet abolished
themselves. The Diet had now nothing to do, but proclaim the coming
Election, giving a date to it; and go home to consider a little whom
they would elect. ["Interregnum proclaimed," 11th February; Preliminary
Diet to meet 21st April;--meets; settles, before May is done, that the
Election shall BEGIN 25th August: it must END in six weeks thereafter,
by law of the land.] A question weighty to Poland. And not likely to be
settled by Poland alone or chiefly; the sublime Republic, with LIBERUM
VETO, and Diets capable only of anarchic noise, having now reached such
a stage that its Neighbors everywhere stood upon its skirts; asking,
'Whitherward, then, with your anarchy? Not this way;--we say, that
way!'-and we