ic Sanction once acceded to, would probably
propitiate the Kaiser? For which, and other reasons, Polish Majesty
still keeps that card in his hand. Friedrich Wilhelm's alliance, with
such an army and such a treasury, the uses of that are evident to the
Polish Majesty.--By the blessing of Heaven, however, his marriage with
Wilhelmina never came to anything: his Electoral Prince, Heir-Apparent,
objected to the jointures and alienations, softly, steadily; and the
project had to drop before Wilhelmina ever knew of it.

And this man is probably one of the "Four Kings" she was to be asked by?
A Swedish Officer, with some skill in palmistry, many years ago, looked
into her innocent little hand, and prophesied, "She was to be in terms
of courtship, engagement or as good as engagement, with Four Kings, and
to wed none of them." Wilhelmina counts them in her mature days. The
FIRST will surprise everybody,--Charles XII. of Sweden;--who never can
have been much of a suitor, the rather as the young Lady was then
only six gone; but who, might, like enough, be talked of, by transient
third-parties, in those old Stralsund times. The SECOND,--cannot WE
guess who the second is? The THIRD is this August the dilapidated
Strong. As to the SECOND, Wilhelmina sees already, in credulous moments,
that it may be Hanover Fred, whom she will never marry either;--and does
not see (nor did, at the time of writing her _Memoires,_ "in 1744"
say the Books) that Fred never would come to Kingship, and that the
Palmistry was incomplete in that point. The FOURTH, again, is clearly
young Czar Peter II.; of whom there was transient talk or project, some
short time after this of the dilapidated THIRD. But that too came to
nothing; the poor young lad died while only fifteen; nay he had already
"fallen in love with his Aunt Elizabeth" (INFAME CATIN DU NORD in time
coming), and given up the Prussian prospect. [He was the Great Peter's
Grandson (Son having gone a tragical road )]; Czar, May, 1727--January,
1730: Anne Iwanowna (Great Peter's Niece, elder Brother's Daughter), our
Courland friend with the big cheek, succeeded; till her death, October,
1740: then, after some slight shock of revolution, the Elizabeth just
mentioned, who was Daughter of the Great Peter by his little brown
Czarina Catherine whom we once met. See Mannstein, _Memoirs of Russia_
(London, 1770), pp. 1-23, for some account of Peter II.; and the rest
of the Volume for a really intelligent Histo