sometimes, but always for a fixed term; and
at last their day comes. Poland had got to great lengths, two centuries
ago, when poor John Casimir abdicated his Crown of Poland, after a
trial of twenty years, and took leave of the Republic in that remarkable
SPEECH to the Diet of 1667.

This John is "Casimir V.," last Scion of the Swedish House of
Vasa,--with whom, in the Great Elector's time, we had some slight
acquaintance; and saw at least the three days' beating he got (Warsaw,
28th-30th July, 1656) from Karl Gustav of Sweden and the Great Elector,
[Supra, v. 284-286.] ancestors respectively of Karl XII. and of our
present Friedrich. He is not "Casimir the Great" of Polish Kings; but he
is, in our day, Casimir the alone Remarkable. It seems to me I once had
IN EXTENSO this Valedictory Speech of his; but it has lapsed again into
the general Mother of Dead Dogs, and I will not spend a week in fishing
for it. The gist of the Speech, innumerable Books and Dead Dogs tell
you, [HISTOIRE DES TROIS DEMEMBREMENS does, and many others do;--copied
in _Biographie Universelle,_ vii. 278 (? Casimir).] is "lamentation over
the Polish Anarchies" and "a Prophecy," which is very easily remembered.
The poor old Gentleman had no doubt eaten his peck of dirt among those
Polacks, and swallowed chagrins till he felt his stomach could no more,
and determined to have done with it. To one's fancy, in abridged form,
the Valediction must have run essentially as follows:--

"Magnanimous Polack Gentlemen, you are a glorious Republic, and have NIE
POZWALAM, and strange methods of business, and of behavior to your Kings
and others. We have often fought together, been beaten together, by our
enemies and by ourselves; and at last I, for my share, have enough of
it. I intend for Paris; religious-literary pursuits, and the society of
Ninon de l'Enclos. I wished to say before going, That according to all
record, ancient and modern, of the ways of God Almighty in this world,
there was not heretofore, nor do I expect there can henceforth be, a
Human Society that would stick together on those terms. Believe me, ye
Polish Chivalries, without superior except in Heaven, if your glorious
Republic continue to be managed in such manner, not good will come
of it, but evil. The day will arrive [this is the Prophecy, almost
IN IPSISSIMIS VERBIS], the day perhaps is not so far off, when this
glorious Republic will get torn into shreds, hither, thither; be stuffed
in