sion there, that is the point to be attended to:--Balance, I
believe, will somehow shift for itself!" On these principles, Friedrich
Wilhelm signed, while ostensibly hunting. [Fassmann, p. 368; Forster,
_ Urkundenbuch,_ p. 67.] Treaty of Hanover, which was to trim the ship
again, or even to make it heel the other way, dates itself 3d September,
1725, and is of this purport: "We three, France, England, Prussia to
stand by each other as one man, in case any of us is attacked,--will
invite Holland, Denmark, Sweden and every pacific Sovereignty to join us
in such convention,"--as they all gradually did, had Friedrich Wilhelm
but stood firm.

For it is a state of the Balances little less than awful. Rumor goes
that, by the Ripperda bargain, fatal to mankind, Don Carlos was to
get the beautiful young Maria Theresa to wife: that would settle the
Parma-Piacenza business and some others; that would be a compensation
with a witness! Spain and Austria united, as in Karl V.'s time; or
perhaps some Succession War, or worse, to fight over again!--

Fleury and George, as Duc de Bourbon and George had done, though
both pacific gentlemen, brandished weapons at the Kaiser; strongly
admonishing him to become less formidable, or it would be worse for him.
Possible indeed, in such a shadow-hunting, shadow-hunted hour! Fleury
and George stand looking with intense anxiety into a certain spectral
something, which they call the Balance of Power; no end to their
exorcisms in that matter. Truly, if each of the Royal Majesties and
Serene Highnesses would attend to his own affairs,--doing his utmost to
better his own land and people, in earthly and in heavenly respects, a
little,--he would find it infinitely profitabler for himself and others.
And the Balance of Power would settle, in that case, as the laws
of gravity ordered: which is its one method of settling, after all
diplomacy!--Fleury and George, by their manifestoing, still more by
their levying of men, George I. shovelling out his English subsidies
as usual, created deadly qualms in the Kaiser; who still found it
unpleasant to "admit Spanish Garrisons in Parma;" but found likewise his
Termagant Friend inexorably positive on that score; and knew not what
would become of him, if he had to try fighting, and the Sea-Powers
refused him cash to do it.

Hereby was the ship trimmed, and more; ship now lurching to the
other side again. George I. goes subsidying Hessians, Danes; sounding
manifest