for everybody within wind of it,--my poor
readers included. Readers remember--what reader can ever forget?--that
extraordinary Duke of Mecklenburg, the "Unique of Husbands," as we had
to call him, who came with his extraordinary Duchess, to wait on her
Uncle Peter, the Russian (say rather SAMOEIDIC) Czar, at Magdeburg, a
dozen years ago? We feared it was in the fates we might meet that man
again; and so it turns out! The Unique of Husbands has proved also to
be the unluckiest of Misgoverning Dukes in his Epoch; and spreads mere
trouble all round him. Mecklenburg is in a bad way, this long while,
especially these ten years past. "Owing to the Charles-Twelfth Wars," or
whatever it was owing to, this unlucky Duke had fallen into want of more
money; and impoverished Mecklenburg alleged that it was in no condition
to pay more. Almost on his accession, while the tar-barrels were still
blazing, years before we ever saw him, he demanded new subvention
from his RITTERS (the "Squires" of the Country); subvention new in
Mecklenburg, though common in other sovereign German States, and at
one time in Mecklenburg too. The Ritters would not pay; the Duke would
compel them: Ritters appeal to Kaiser in Reichshofrath, who proves
favorable to the Ritters. Duke still declines obeying Kaiser; asserts
that "he is himself in such matter the sovereign:" Kaiser fulminates
what of rusty thunder he has about him; to which the Duke, flung on
his back by it, still continues contumacious in mind and tongue: and so
between thunder and contumacy, as between hammer and stithy, the poor
Country writhes painfully ever since, and is an affliction to everybody
near it.

For ten years past, the unluckiest of Misgoverning Dukes has been in
utter controversy with his Ritters;--at law with them before the Courts
of the Empire, nay occasionally trying certain of them himself, and
cutting off their heads; getting Russian regiments, and then obliged to
renounce Russian regiments;--in short, a very great trouble to
mankind thereabouts. [Michaelis, ii. 416-435.] So that the Kaiser in
Reichshofrath, about the date indicated (Year 1719), found good to
send military coercion on him; and intrusted that function to the
Hanover-Brunswick people, to George I. more especially; to whom, as
"KREIS-HAUPTMANN" ("Captain of the Circle," Circle of Lower-Saxony, where
the contumacy had occurred), such function naturally fell. The Hanover
Sovereignty, sending 13,000 men, horse, f