cription. He was kindly and
gracious, and his mother said of him that he was like the prince in a
fable whom all the fairies had endowed with gifts, except one malignant
sprite who had prevented any favour being of use to him. In the general
exhaustion produced by the wars of Louis XIV., a Scotchman named James
Law began the great system of hollow speculation which has continued
ever since to tempt people to their ruin. He tried raising sums of money
on national credit, and also devised a company who were to lend money to
found a great settlement on the Mississippi, the returns from which were
to be enormous. Every one speculated in shares, and the wildest
excitement prevailed. Law's house was mobbed by people seeking
interviews with him, and nobles disguised themselves in liveries to get
access to him. Fortunes were made one week and lost the next, and
finally the whole plan proved to have been a mere baseless scheme; ruin
followed, and the misery of the country increased. The Duke of Orleans
died suddenly in 1723. The king was now legally of age; but he was dull
and backward, and little fitted for government, and the country was
really ruled by the Duke of Bourbon, and after him by Cardinal Fleury,
an aged statesman, but filled with the same schemes of ambition as
Richelieu or Mazarin.

13. War of the Austrian Succession.--Thus France plunged into new
wars. Louis XV. married the daughter of Stanislas Lecksinsky, a Polish
noble, who, after being raised to the throne, was expelled by Austrian
intrigues and violence. Louis was obliged to take up arms on behalf of
his father-in-law, but was bought off by a gift from the Emperor Charles
VI. of the duchy of Lorraine to Stanislas, to revert to his daughter
after his death and thus become united to France. Lorraine belonged to
Duke Francis, the husband of Maria Theresa, eldest daughter to the
Emperor, and Francis received instead the duchy of Tuscany; while all
the chief Powers in Europe agreed to the so-called Pragmatic Sanction,
by which Charles decreed that Maria Theresa should inherit Austria and
Hungary and the other hereditary states on her father's death, to the
exclusion of the daughters of his elder brother, Joseph. When Charles
VI. died, however, in 1740, a great European war began on this matter.
Frederick II. of Prussia would neither allow Maria Theresa's claim to
the hereditary states, nor join in electing her husband to the Empire;
and France took part against