receive them; and so he traceth them with his pen in
their natural appearance; turning his little Tent round by degrees, till
he hath designed the whole Aspect of the Field." [_Reliqui Wottonianae,_
(london 1672), p. 300.]--In fact he hath a CAMERA OBSCURA, and is
exhibiting the same for the delectation of Imperial gentlemen lounging
that way. Mr. John invents such toys, writes almanacs, practises
medicine, for good reasons; his encouragement from the Holy Roman Empire
and mankind being only a pension of 18 pounds a year, and that hardly
ever paid. An ingenious person, truly, if there ever was one among
Adam's Posterity. Just turned of fifty and ill off for cash. This
glimpse of him, in his little black tent with perspective glasses, while
the Thirty-Years War blazes out, is welcome as a date.

WHAT BECAME OF THE CLEVE-JULICH HERITAGE, AND OF THE PREUSSEN ONE.

In the Cleve Duchies joint government had now become more difficult than
ever: but it had to be persisted in,--under mutual offences, suspicions
and outbreaks hardly repressed;--no final Bargain of Settlement proving
by any method possible. Treaties enough, and conferences and pleadings,
manifestoings:--Could not some painful German collector of Statistics
try to give us the approximate quantity of impracticable treaties,
futile conferences, manifestoes correspondences; in brief, some
authentical cipher (say in round millions) of idle Words spoken by
official human creatures and approximately (in square miles) the extent
of Law Stationery and other Paper written, first and last, about this
Controversy of the Cleve Duchies? In that form it might have a momentary
interest.

When the Winter-King's explosion took place, [Crowned at Prag, 4th
November N.S. 1619; beaten to ruin there, and obliged to gallop
(almost before dinner done), Sunday, 8th November, 1620.] and his
own unfortunate Pfalz (Palatinate) became the theatre of war (Tilly,
Spinola, VERSUS Pfalzers, English, Dutch), involving all the neighboring
regions, Cleve-Julich did not escape its fate. The Spaniards and the
Dutch, who had long sat in gloomy armed-truce, occupying with obstinate
precaution the main Fortresses of these Julich-Cleve countries, did now
straightway, their Twelve-Years' truce being out (1621), [Pauli, vi.
578-580.] fall to fighting and besieging one another there; the huge
War, which proved of Thirty Years, being now all ablaze. What the
country suffered in the interim may be im