disguise, with two of his officers, through the whole of Germany. He arrived at length at Stralsund in Pomerania, one of the most important of his towns upon the Baltic. He knew the designs of Denmark and Prussia to attack this city, and he prepared for a vigorous defence. An incident is recorded of this siege which strongly marks the character of Charles. The town was bombarded, and a shell penetrated the roof of his house, and fell into the apartment where he was dictating his dispatches. The secretary, terrified out of his senses, having let fall his pen-"Go on," said the king, gravely; "what has the bombshell to do with the letter which I am dictating?" The city, however, was taken, and Charles obliged to escape in a small bark to Carlescroon, where he passed the winter. At this time he had not seen his capital of Stockholm for fifteen years. In this situation, in which any other monarch would have thought of providing as well as possible for the security of what remained of his kingdom, Charles projected to wrest the kingdom of Norway from Denmark. He invaded that country with an army of 20,000 men; but having failed to provide for their subsistence, he was obliged very soon to abandon the enterprise. He had at this time for his prime minister the baron de Gortz, a native of Franconia, a man of an artful, active, and very comprehensive genius. His fertile head had projected an immense revolution, of which the first step was to conclude a peace and alliance with the czar. George I., king

of England, had purchased Bremen and Verden, with their dependencies, from the king of Denmark. Gortz's plan was not only to deprive George of these provinces, but to set the pretender James upon the throne of England. The czar, who was to be secured in all his conquests, readily joined in the scheme; and the Swedish minister at the court of London was promoting the conspiracy among the jacobites of England, when the plot was discovered by intercepted letters. Charles, however, and the czar continued their negotiations, and matters, notwithstanding this discovery, would probably have been brought to an issue by an open declaration of war on their parts against England, but for one fatal event, which broke all their measures. The king of Sweden, in the prosecution of his views against Norway, had laid siege to Frederickschal in the middle of winter. Walking on the parapet of one of his batteries, and in conversation with his engineer, he was struck on the head by a cannon ball, and instantly expired.

His character, in a few words, is well summed up by Voltaire. "He carried all the virtues of a hero to that excess that they became as dangerous as their opposite vices. The obstinacy of his resolution occasioned all his misfortunes in the Ukraine, and kept him five years in Turkey. His liberality degenerating into profusion ruined his kingdom of Sweden. His courage pushed to temerity was the occasion of his death. His justice often amounted

to cruelty; and in the last years of his life the maintenance of his authority approached to tyranny. His many great qualities, of which a single one might have immortalized another prince, were the ruin of his country. He never was the first to attack, but he was not always as prudent as he was implacable in his revenge. He was the first who had the ambition to be a conqueror without the desire of aggrandizing his dominions. He wished to gain empires only to give them away. His passion for glory, for war, and for revenge, prevented his being a good politician, a quality, without which there can be no great conqueror. Before he gave battle, and after he gained a victory, he was all modesty; after a defeat he was all resolution, rigid to others as to himself; counting for nothing the fatigues or the lives of his subjects any more than his own. He was, in short, a singular man rather than a great one; a character more to be admired than imitated. His life ought to teach kings how much a pacific government is superior to the acquisition of the greatest glory."

The kingdom of Sweden gained by the death of Charles. She recovered her liberty by the abolition of the arbitrary power of her sovereigns, and new-modelled the form of her government. His sister succeeded him in the throne, and raised to it her husband Frederick the landegrave of Hesse Cassel.

The following was the form prescribed for the Swedish government in future. The legislative authority was to be in the diet, which consisted of a certain number of deputies chosen by the nobles, the clergy and the burgesses, and even the peasantry. The executive power was properly in the senate, composed of sixteen persons, where the king presided, and had only the casting vote in certain cases. It was the diet which named to vacancies in the senate, by presenting three subjects for the king to choose one. The principal employinents, both civil and military, were filled up by the senate from the king's recommendation. The diet was appointed to be held every three years, in the month of January. If it were not assembled at the usual time, every thing done in the interval was declared to be null. They could not declare war without the king's consent. When assembled they could neither conclude peace, truce, nor alliance, without his conAll laws and ordinances were appointed to be published in the name of the king: but if he absented himself, or delayed his signature too long, the senate were empowered to supply the want of it and sign for him. On ascending the throne, he must take the oath of government before the diet, and was to be declared an enemy of the states, and ipso facto deprived of the throne, in case he violated his engagements.

When the new government was established, the great plans of the baron de Gortz were of necessity laid aside. He was adjudged a traitor to his country, for having projected a dangerous war when the nation was exhausted and ruined; and he lost his

nead for the bad counsels he had given to his late sovereign. The states of Sweden concluded a peace with the king of England, to whom, as sovereign of Hanover, they ceded for a sum of money the duchies of Bremen and Verden. They likewise made peace with Denmark, and soon after with the czar, who kept all the provinces he had won.

Peter the Great, ever intent on projects of real utility, was at this time preparing for an expedition into Persia, with the design of securing the command of the Caspian Sea, and thus bringing the commerce of Persia, and a part of India, into Russia. In 1722, he had gained three provinces of the Persian empire, by concession of the Sophi, to secure his protection against an usurper. Peter was at this time far advanced in life, and was without a child. His only son, Alexis Petrowitz, he had put to death some time before, in a very tragical manner. This youth would have undone all the works of his father. He was a barbarian by nature. He had declared himself an enemy to all improvement and innovation, and consumed his life in the practice of the meanest debaucheries. His father, seeing his disposition to be incorrigible, had ordered him to go into a monastery. The son corresponded with others disaffected as himself. He was at length arrested and condemned by the voice of one hundred and forty judges, to suffer death as a traitor.

Peter the Great died in the year 1724, and was succeeded by the czarina Catharine, formerly a young Livonian captive, whom he had taken in his first expedition into those provinces, and who certainly possessed merit equal to the station to which she was raised.

Besides these various establishments, which we have already taken notice of as made by this illustrious man, in the beginning of his reign, he had during the course of it accomplished a variety of the most useful designs. A court of police was erected at St. Petersburg, a city which he had reared from a despicable collection of fisherman's huts to be one of the most magnificent towns in Europe. This court of police extended its jurisdiction over the whole provinces of the empire, regulating every thing which regarded the maintenance of good order, watching over the improvement of trades and manufactures, and fixing the laws of commerce. The public laws of the empire were promulgated in a printed code. The courts of justice which were formerly filled with the nobility, without any trial of their capacity, or previous education requisite for that office, were supplied by Peter with judges of approved knowledge, education, and integrity. In ecclesiastical matters, instead of the office of Patriarch, which he hat very early abolished, he instituted a perpetual synod of twelve members, over whom he himself occasionally presided; and to this tribunal was allotted the supreme ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

With respect to the government, or political constitution, of the

empire of Russia, it must be considered as an absolute monarchy. Peter the Great, being the founder of a new constitution, was sovereign without limitation. His will was law. He aimed, however, at setting some bounds to the power of his successors; and in that view he instituted a senate, which, like the parliament of Paris, should possess the power of ratifying or giving authority to the acts of the sovereign; but, in fact, there has ever been so strict a conformity between the will of the prince and the decrees of this assembly, that the imperial power, instead of being abridged, seems rather to have been strengthened by it.

Such is a brief sketch of the rise of this extraordinary power, which the singular genius of one man was able to rear from the most unpromising materials. By the influence of his single mind, an obscure and barbarous people, almost unknown to history,without arts; without laws; under no regular organization of gov ernment; occupying a thinly-peopled and ill-cultivated country; possessed, in fact, of no political existence,-have, within the course of a single century, overleaped all the intermediate steps of progressive civilization, and mounted at once to the highest rank among the powers of Europe.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

VIEW of the PROGRESS of SCIENCE and LITERATURE in EUROPE, from the END of the FIFTEENTH to the rsp of the SEVENTEENTH CENTURY :Progress of Philosophy --Lord Bacon-Experimental Philosophy-Descartes —Galileo- Kepler-Loginthins - Circulation of the Blood--Royal Society of London Instituted - Sir Isaac Newton-Locke-Progress of Literature-Ep.c Poetry - Ariosto — Tass0 — Maton Lyric Poetry Drama - English and French History.

As one of the most useful objects of the study of history is to mark the progress of the human mind in those sciences and arts which either contribute to the great purposes of public utility, or conduce to the rational enjoyments of social life, we have endeav ored, through the course of this work, to exhibit, from time to time, a progressive picture of the state of the sciences and of literature. A former chapter on this subject embraced a very com prehensive period, from the revival of literature in Europe, to the end of the fifteenth century.

We have there observed how much literature was indebted to the discovery of the art of printing for its advancement and dissemination. Classical learning, the art of criticism, poetry and

history, among the sciences, began from that time to make a rapid progress in most of the kingdoms of Europe. It was not so, however, with philosophy, and the more abstract sciences; and the reason was obvious; the remains of ancient learning are to this day the models of a good taste in the "Belles Lettres," and the knowledge of the classical authors, poets, and historians, was no sooner revived, and their works disseminated, than they were successfully imitated by the moderns. In philosophy, on the contrary, the light which was borrowed from the works of the ancients served only to mislead and bewilder. The philosophy of Aristotle, which then had possession of the schools, or even the more pleasing systems of Plato, which began to be opposed to his scholastic subtleties, were fetters upon all real improvement in philosophical researches. It was not till these were removed, till all the rubbish of the ancient philosophy was entirely cleared away, that men began to perceive, that, to understand the laws of nature, it was necessary to observe her phenomena, and to study her works; and that all systems and theories antecedent to such study were idle and absurd chimeras. We formerly remarked the commendable attempt which was made by our countryman, Roger Bacon, so early as the middle of the thirteenth century, to undermine the fabric of the Aristotelian philosophy, and to substitute experiment and observation for system and conjecture; but his attempt was ineffectual. There is nothing so difficult to be removed as dogmatism and pedantry. Conviction is a severe mortification of pride to a man who values himself upon his wisdom; besides, the philosophy of Aristotle had at this time become a part of the tenets of the church, and it was reckoned equally impious to combat any of the doctrines of that philosopher as to attack the fundamental articles of the Christian faith.

The learning of the schools continued then to reign triumphant, even down to the middle of the sixteenth century, when it received, at least in England, a mortal blow from a second philosopher of the same name, Francis Bacon, lord Verulam, who flourished in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, and was afterwards chancellor of England under James I. When we consider the vast variety of researches to which this great man has turned his attention, employed alternately in the study of nature, of the operations of the mind, of the sciences of morals, politics, and economics, we must allow him the praise of the most universal genius that any age has produced. But when, on an acquaintance with these works, we discern the amazing views which he has opened; the just estimate he has formed of the knowledge of the preceding ages in every one of the sciences, the immense catalogue which he has given of the desiderata still to be known in each department, and the methods he has pointed out for prosecuting discoveries, and attaining that improvement of knowledge, we regard the intellect of Bacon as that of a superior being. In