readily change along with her, so easy was it. Whereupon the
young Lady made the big leap; abjured her religion; [1st May, 1707, at
Bamberg.]--went to Spain as Queen (with sad injury to her complexion,
but otherwise successfully more or less);--and sits now as Empress
beside her Karl VI. in a grand enough, probably rather dull, but not
singularly unhappy manner.

She, a Brunswick Princess, with Nephews and Nieces who may concern us,
is Kaiserinn to Kaiser Karl: for aught I know of her, a kindly simple
Wife, and unexceptionable Sovereign Majesty, of the sort wanted; whom
let us remember, if we meet her again one day. I add only of this poor
Lady, distinguished to me by a Daughter she had, that her mind still had
some misgivings about the big leap she had made in the Protestant-Papist
way. Finding Anton Ulrich still continue Protestant, she wrote to him
out of Spain:--"Why, O honored Grandpapa, have you not done as you
promised? Ah, there must be a taint of mortal sin in it, after all!"
Upon which the absurdly situated old Gentleman did change his
religion; and is marked as a Convert in all manner of Genealogies and
Histories;--truly an old literary gentleman ducal and serene, restored
to the bosom of the Church in a somewhat peculiarly ridiculous manner.
[Michaelis, i. 131.]--But to return.

IMPERIAL MAJESTY AND THE TERMAGANT OF SPAIN.

Ever after the Peace of Utrecht, when England and Holland declined to
bleed for him farther, especially ever since his own Peace of Rastadt
made with Louis the year after Kaiser Karl had utterly lost hold of
the Crown of Spain; and had not the least chance to clutch that bright
substance again. But he held by the shadow of it, with a deadly Hapsburg
tenacity; refused for twenty years, under all pressures, to part with
the shadow: "The Spanish Hapsburg Branch is dead; whereupon do not I,
of the Austrian Branch, sole representative of Kaiser Karl the Fifth,
claim, by the law of Heaven, whatever he possessed in Spain, by law of
ditto? Battles of Blenheim of Malplaquet, Court-intrigues of Mrs. Masham
and the Duchess: these may bring Treaties of Utrecht, and what you are
pleased to call laws of Earth;--but a Hapsburg Kaiser knows higher laws,
if you would do a thousand Utrechts; and by these, Spain is his!"

Poor Kaiser Karl: he had a high thought in him really though a most
misguided one. Titular King of Men; but much bewildered into mere
indolent fatuity, inane solemnity, high sniff