spare room
for the underwritten extract, from a letter of his to Mr. Garrick, dated
Paris, March, 1762, and which may be seen in Vol I. of Mrs. Medalle's
"Letters of the late L. Sterne."

My object in thus troubling you is, in the hope (perhaps you will say an
almost forlorn, or distant one) that _possibly_ some one of your
readers, either here or abroad, maybe able to suggest where it is likely
the under-mentioned _whole-length_ portrait may now be of that once
very distinguished man.

A CONSTANT READER.

"I shandy it away fifty times more than I was ever wont, talk more
nonsense than ever you heard me talk in your days--and to all sorts of
people. _Qui le diable est cet homme la_ ... said Choiseul, t'other
day. You'll think me as vain as a devil, was I to tell you the rest of
the dialogue.... The Duke of Orleans has suffered my portrait to be
added to the number of some odd men in his collection; and a gentleman
who lives with him has taken it _most expressively_, at full
length. I purpose to obtain an etching of it, and to send it to you."

* * * * *

EPITOME OF THE ANCIENT KINGDOM OF POLAND.

(_For the Mirror._)

Poland was once the country of the Vandals, who left it to invade the
Roman Empire. The kingdom began, by favour of Otho III., Emperor of
Germany, under Boleslaus, 999; Red Russia was added to it in 1059;
Pomerania, that had been separated 180 years, again united with it,
1465; embraced Christianity, 965; the order of the White Eagle
instituted in 1705. The peasants in Poland were serfs or slaves, and
the value of an estate was not estimated from its extent, but from the
number of the peasants who were transferred, like cattle, from one
master to another. The first person who granted freedom to his peasants
was Zamoiski, formerly grand chancellor, who in 1760 enfranchised six
villages. The Jews were first introduced into Poland about the time of
Casimir the Great; they were indulged with great privileges, and became
so numerous that Poland was styled the Paradise of the Jews. So late as
the thirteenth century, the Poles retained the custom of killing old men
when past their labour, and such children as were born imperfect. "The
natural strength of Poland, if properly exerted, (says a modern writer)
would have formed a more certain bulwark against the ambition of her
neighbours than the faith of treaties;" and it is worthy of remark, that
of the three partitioning p