purpose that he was assured by the officers of the grand seignior that if he delayed to depart from their dominions, he would be compelled by military force. He braved the whole power of the Ottoman empire, and declared his determined purpose to defend his little camp to the last drop of his blood. His own officers employed supplications, remonstrances, and at length menaces, to make him depart from this frantic design. Charles was inflexi ble; and the slender remains of his army, who, by desertions, were now reduced to 300 men, were determined not to abandon their sovereign. They fortified the camp in the best manner possible. The Turkish general, astonished at so daring a resolution, gave them three days to deliberate whether to die or capitulate. At the end of the third day the Swedes were as resolute as ever. The attack was begun, and the intrenchments, invested at once on every quarter, were broken in an instant. A small house whin the camp became the citadel and last resort of Charles and his intrepid Swedes. Their number was now reduced to a very few, whom personal regard attached to their sovereign. They did not fail, however, to remonstrate with him against the madness of his resolution; and in consulting how to sustain a siege in this last retreat, there was but one man who declared a positive opinion that the place might be defended. This was his majesty's cook. "Then, Sir," says the king, "I name you my chief engineer." They now proceeded to barricade the doors and windows, and kept up an incessant fire from within upon the whole Turkish army. The besiegers, exasperated at length at the numbers killed by this handful of madmen, threw fire upon the roof of the house, which in a moment was all in flames. It was now necessary to quit their post: a desperate sally was made; and this handful of Swedes, armed with their swords and pistols, were cutting their passage through an army of several thousand men, when Charles, entangled with his spurs, and accidentally falling to the ground, was surrounded by a body of janizaries. In short, the whole troop, after making an incredible carnage, were seized and taken prisoners. An attempt of this kind is only to be paralleled in the romances of knighterrantry.

This obstinacy and infatuation was the occasion of the loss of Charles's dominions in Germany, and almost of his kingdom of Sweden. The czar, king Augustus, the king of Denmark, and the elector of Hanover, entered into an alliance, and wrested from him all the conquests formerly gained by Gustavus Adolphus.

Charles, now a prisoner near Adrianople, was at length willing to return to his own dominions, and desired the grand seignior's permission for what he before so obstinately refused. After having remained above five years in Turkey, he set out in the beginning of October; 1714. Dismissing his Turkish escort on the frontiers, and parting even from his own people, he travelled in

disguise, with two of his officers, through the whole of Germany. He arrived at length at Stralsund in Pomerania, one of the mos* 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 remamed 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 govern· ment 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 employments, 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 consent. All 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 c 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 ir 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. iudges of approved knowledge, education, and integrity. In ecclesiastical matters, instead of the office of Patriarch, which he had 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 be ng 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 END of the SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: Progress of Philosophy-Lord Bacon-Experimental Philosophy-Descartes Galileo-Kepler-Logarithms-Circulation of the Blood-Royal Society of London Instituted-Sir Isaac Newton-Locke-Progress of Literature-Epic Poetry Ariosto - Tasso - Milton 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 endeavored, 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 comprehensive 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