Poland

POLAND (the Polish Polska, German Polen, French Pologne) was till towards the end of the 18th century a large and powerful kingdom, extending, with Lithuania, which was incorporated with it, over the basins of the Warta, Vistula, Dwina, Dnieper, and upper Dniester, and having under its dominion, besides the Poles proper and the Baltic Slavs, the Lithuanians, the White Russians, and the Little Russians or Ruthenians.

If Schafarik is correct in seeing the name of the Poles in the Bulanes of the geographer Ptolemy, we should have this Slavonic people mentioned as early as the 2d century after Christ. There can be no doubt about the derivation of the name; the country is one vast plain, and thus the Poles come to mean dwellers of the plain or field (pole). Jordanes has no distinct name for them, although he speaks of Slavs inhabiting the banks of the Vistula. About the 6th or 7th century we find a people called Lekhs settled near that river, and this appears to be the oldest name which we can positively assign to the Poles. These Lekhs are considered by Szaj nocha and some of the modern school of historians to have been a Norse tribe who in the 6th century ruled over the Slavonic peoples from the Baltic to the Carpathians. And, if this were the case, the origin of the Polish kingdom would be traced to the same source as the Russian empire. No satisfactory etymology has been given as yet of the word Lekh or Lech; we cannot accept Schafarik’s attempt to connect it with szlachta, nobility, as that word is in all probability derived from the German geschlecht. From the form of the word Lech, Russian Liakh, we can see that the vowel represents a suppressed nasal, and this is further proved by the change which it undergoes in the neighbouring languages; thus in Lithuanian we get Lenkas and in Magyar Lengyel. The chronicle of Thomas, archdeacon of Spalato, calls them Lingones (Bielowski, Mon. Hist. Pol.), the Polish chronicles of Mierzwa and of Vincent Kadlubek Lenchitae, Linchitae. The loss of the nasal in the modern Polish form is curious, and contrary to the analogy of the language; it is supposed to have disappeared under the influence of Russian pronunciation. In the 13th century Kadlubek invented the imaginary heros eponymus Lekh, supposed to have been the father of the Poles, and two brothers were found for him, Czech and Rus. A great similarity has been noticed between these early heroes and others among the Czechs. Thus we may compare Cracus and Krok, Piast and Premysl. Many of the legendary tales greatly resemble Scandinavian sagas, as indeed much of the early Russian history does which is contained in the chronicle of Nestor. Gradually the name Lekh was superseded by Poliani or Polaki. Nestor, the old Russian chronicler, or at least the work which goes under his name, knows both appellations and distinguishes between Poliane Liakhove on the Vistula and Poliane Rousove on the Dnieper. When we first become acquainted with the Poles we find them like the other Slavonic peoples living in a kind of democratic communism, to which we need not assign the patriarchal simplicity and happiness in which some of their chroniclers, e.g., Dlugosz, would make us believe. All the early period of Polish history is mixed up with fables. Their first writers Gallus, Kadlubek, Dlugosz, Kromer, and others, who were ecclesiastics and used the Latin language as their literary medium and handled it with considerable dexterity, have treated these stories as genuine history,—just as Holinshed, Milton, Sir Richard Baker, and others did the Arthurian legends. The careful criticism, however, of modern times has relegated them to their proper place, and Lelewel has classified all the period of Polish history from the earliest times to the reign of Mieczystaw I. as belonging to the era of myths. We are hardly likely to believe in the existence of a Duke Lech or a beautiful Princess Wanda, who flourished in the 8th century, or in Cracus, said to have been the founder of Cracow. All these are obviously only generic and national names individualized. Many of the quaint and striking stories of these princes have done duty in all the legendary history of Europe. It cannot be doubted that poems corresponding to the Russian bîlîni are imbedded in the writings of these early chroniclers. The good peasant Piast, from whom was derived the celebrated line of kings, reminds us of the Mikoula Selianinovich of the Russians and the Premysl of the Czechs. Kromer has tricked out the legend of his call to the throne in all the graces of his elegant Latinity.

Bielowski, the editor of the Monumenta Poloniae Historica, in his Wstep Krytyczny do Dziejaw Polski (il Critical Introduction to Polish History ”) endeavoured to prove that the original Poles dwelt on the banks of the Danube, from which they were driven by the Romans. He also attempts to trace them in the 2d and 3d centuries after Christ. According to the whimsical theory of this author—a man to whom Slavonic history in other respects owes so much—the original habitation of the Poles was by the Lake of Ochrida. The Lçchites (Lyncestae) in the 3d century before Christ were driven by the Celts beyond the Danube, and there the kingdom of Dacia was founded. King Boirebista is Leszek II., Decebalus is Semowit, <fcc. Lelewel and Bielowski seem to have identified all the Thracian peoples with the Slavs.

All that we are told of the early Slavs shows them to have been a quiet agricultural people. We find them at first living in village communities with a tribal government. Nestor says, “The Poliani lived in separate groups, and each governed his family.” Gradually a class of serfs sprung up, whose origin cannot be clearly traced. Röpell in his history supposes that they were the descendants of rival tribes who had been conquered. At all events we soon find the following divisions of society among the Poles :—(1) the nobility, szlachta, who throughout Polish history constitute the nation properly so-called; (2) a superior class of peasants who were personally free, but bound to perform certain services (these are always called in the old Polish documents cmetones, or kmetones, Polish Aemeci); and (3) the peasants strictly so called, who were the property of their masters and had no rights. We shall see how there was gradually formed in Poland a proud military aristocracy, which circumscribed the power of the king by the pacta conventa, so that he became a mere puppet in their hands. The nobles had absolute power over their serfs, as each separate palatinate had its tribunals. In course of time the kmieci became mere bondsmen. The miserable condition of the latter is seen in such books as Connor’s Letters on Poland, published at the conclusion of the 17th century. Connor, who was physician to John Sobieski, had good opportunities for forming an opinion. Thus the trade of the country fell wholly into the hands of foreigners and Jews.

With the reign of Mieczystaw I. (962-992) we begin to have something firmer in our grasp. He became a suitor for the hand of D⅝br0wka, the daughter of the king of Bohemia. Being a’Christian she refused to give her hand to a pagan, and Mieczystaw consented to be baptized in 965. He had been previously conquered by the Germans, who seem to have enforced conversion from all whom they brought into subjection. After this he proceeded to extirpate the worship of idols in as autocratic a manner as Vladimir had employed, when at Kieff Peroun, the god of war, was thrown from his pedestal and ignominiously cast into the Dnieper. In 980 an edict was issued that every Pole who had not already submitted to baptism should immediately undergo it. No opposition was offered to this strange decree, which from its easy adoption would seem to have left but little impression upon the neophytes, and probably the chroniclers have some reason for their assertion that Mieczystaw himself subsequently relapsed into gross sins. This complete conversion of the nation appears to have been aided by the labours of St Adalbert, bishop of Prague. Such traces as remained of the early Orthodox creed which had been introduced from Moravia were effaced, although they remained for some time in the sister kingdom of Bohemia, and we find a monastery established by the emperor Charles IV. for Greek monks at Prague. Mieczystaw acknowledged himself to be the feudatory of Otho of Germany; he also resisted the encroachments of Vladimir of Russia, for already the feud between the two nations was commencing. He died in 992 universally regretted, as we are told, and was succeeded by his son Bolestaw, surnamed the Great. During his reign Otho III. of Germany paid him a visit, and the Polish prince received him with such magnificence that the emperor elevated his duchy into a kingdom, probably intending that it should always remain a fief of the empire. Dlugosz and Kromer vie with each other in describing the splendour of this meeting; they are, however, far outdone by their predecessor Gallus, who speaks of magnificent military manoeuvres prepared by Bolestaw to delight his guest, and of the gorgeous array of the lords and court ladies; “for gold,” he adds, “was at this time held as common as silver and silver as cheap as straw.” Finally, Otho hailed Bolestaw as king, and himself put the diadem upon his head. At his departure he presented the Polish king with the lance of St Maurice, still to be seen, as Kromer tells us, in the cathedral of Cracow; and Bolestaw in turn offered as a gift the arm of St Adalbert, the patron saint of Poland. Lelewel treats the whole story of this coronation as a myth, because, as he observes, at that time kings were always crowned by bishops. Bolestaw afterwards defeated the Russian prince, and spent the latter part of his reign in administering justice throughout his kingdom. By the commencement of the 11th century he had absorbed nearly all the western Slavonic states, including Bohemia. He enjoyed among his subjects the epithet of Chrobry^ or brave. The Germans, however, in derision of his corpulence, which he endeavoured to lessen by hunting, called him Trinkbier. To him is due the foundation of the archbishopric of Gniezno (Gnesen), the chief see in Poland.

Towards the end of his life he sought to aggrandize himself at the expense of Russia. He had previously, in 1013 according to Thietmar, given his daughter in marriage to Sviatopolk, the nephew of Vladimir. His expedition against Kieff is alluded to by Nestor, but narrated more in detail by Thietmar and Martin Gallus. According to the latter he entered Kieff with the Polovtzi as his auxiliaries, and struck the golden gate with his sword. He was succeeded by Mieczystaw his son, who abandoned himself to pleasure and left the kingdom in a disordered state. He is said to have first divided Poland into palatinates, a term which will be explained shortly. On his death an interregnum ensued and his queen Ryxa, niece of Otho of Germany, held the regency. Owing, however, to the continual feuds between the Slavs and Germans, she was driven out of the kingdom and betook herself to Saxony, whither her son soon followed her. During their absence Poland presented a spectacle of anarchy, the commencement of the long series of miseries of this unhappy country. The serfs are said to have risen everywhere and massacred their lords, and even the priests were not spared. Moreover, two foreign wars, with Bohemia on the one hand and Russia on the other, increased their miseries. The pious Kromer chiefly laments the sacred relics carried off by the ferocious Bohemians which were never restored. To heal the universal wounds it was resolved to send for Kazimierz (Casimir), the son of Mieczystaw and Ryxa. But it required some time to find him, for he was hidden in Germany, although the story of his having become a monk in the abbey of Cluny in Burgundy has been shown by Röpell to be groundless. We shall see afterwards that a Polish king did actually seek in a cloister rest from the turbulence of his subjects. Kazimiérz married Maria the sister of Yaroslav, the prince of Kieff, who was willing to abjure the Greek faith, and embracing the Latin took the name of Dobrogniewa. By this marriage he became the brother-in-law of Henry I. of France, who had married another sister. This king induced several monks to come from Cluny, and founded two monasteries for them, one near Cracow and the other in Silesia, at this time forming part of the kingdom of Poland. From the earliest period we find the country inundated with foreign ecclesiastics; and to this cause we may probably trace the long use among the Poles of the Latin language. Kazimiérz was succeeded by a second Bolestaw (1058-1101), of whom many curious stories are told. In an expedition against Iziaslav, the prince of Kieff, he took that city and remained in it some time with his troops. The stay of Bolestaw and his soldiers at Kieff is said to have been attended with the same deleterious effects as befell Hannibal and the Carthaginians at Capua; and the conduct of the Polish ladies during the absence of their lords, unless the chroniclers belie them, cannot be held up as an example to wives. The whole story, however, has a very mythical air.

The most remarkable event, however, of the reign of Bolestaw was the murder of St Stanistaw. In this respect he emulated Henry II. of England; he dared to come into collision with the ecclesiastical power, but he did not suggest the assassination of so prominent a person to others; he accomplished the deed with his own hand. His excesses had long drawn upon him the censure of Stanistaw, who concluded by putting all the churches of Cracow under an interdict. Upon this the king vowed vengeance on his denunciator. The Polish chroniclers tell us that, on hearing that the saint was to celebrate mass in a chapel, he took with him a few determined followers and hurried to the place. He, however, forbore to break in upon the scene till the service was concluded. This being over, he ordered some of his attendants to enter and slay the prelate. They were restrained, however, by a miracle, for, endeavouring to strike Stanistaw to the earth, they all suddenly fell backward. Again and again Bolestaw urged them on, and the miracle was repeated a third time, until the king rushed in and with one blow clove the skull of the ecclesiastic. Kromer tells us that immediately after the murder the king and his impious satellites slashed the body, separated it into many pieces, and cast it to be devoured by dogs and birds of prey. It was, however, guarded by eagles who kept off the assailants; and, some monks collecting the remains, they all became mysteriously reunited and were afterwards honourably interred at Cracow. Such a crime was not likely to go unpunished in those days. Gregory VII. (Hildebrand) placed the whole kingdom under an interdict. Bolestaw, regarded with hatred by all his subjects, fled into Hungary, but of his end we have no certain information. After the disappearance of Bolestaw, who had taken his son with him, the state remained nearly a year without a sovereign. Finally, being afraid of a Russian or Hungarian invasion, the Poles called to the throne Wtadystaw (Ladislaus), the brother of Bolestaw. Anxious to remove the interdict, he at once despatched ambassadors to the pope; but, although the churches were allowed to be reopened, so great was the authority of the occupant of the chair of St Peter, who refused again to ratify the title of king, that for two hundred years from this time no Polish ruler could legitimately assume such a dignity, but was obliged to consent to the humbler appellation of duke. Wtadystaw, who was engaged in constant wars with the Russians and the heathen inhabitants of Prussia, died in 1202 at Ptock,—as was suspected, of poison. The power of Poland was diminished in his reign, as many provinces were occupied by the Russians. He was succeeded by his son, Bolestaw III., to whom the Poles have affixed the surname of Krzywousty, or the Wry-mouthed. Kromer tells us, u Fuit autem Boleslaus hic, habitudine corporis satis firma, vegeta, et laborum patiente, colore fusco, statura mediocri, os ei carbunculus morbus ab ineunte adolescentia distorserat, atque inde Criuousti cognomentum habuit.” He married Sbislava, the daughter of Sviatopolk, the prince of Kieff, and was successful in many wars, till, having eventually been defeated by the Hungarians on the banks of the Dniester, he is said to have died of grief. He seems to have been a redoubtable warrior, and to have distinguished himself in some very hard fighting. His expeditions against the Pomeranians were characterized by much cruelty, for we are told that Gniewomir, one of their chiefs, was beaten to death in the presence of the Polish army. Besides his attack upon the Pomeranians we learn from Gallus that he also marched against the Prussians, whom he utterly defeated, returning with a large spoil of cattle and other booty. His most important war, however, was with the German emperor Henry V., the husband of Matilda, the daughter of our Henry I. He had probably become jealous of the rising power of Bolestaw, for the Germans at that time affected to regard Poland as a fief of the empire. The only event of much interest in this war is the gallant defence of Glogau, where the imperialists were driven off, in spite of their furious onslaught, and were ultimately routed near Breslau. The emperor fled precipitately, and the Poles gave little or no quarter. The field, says Kromer, where the battle took place was full of corpses, and exhibited a sorry and lamentable spectacle. The bodies of the Poles were carefully sought out and interred, but the Germans were unburied and lay as food for dogs and birds. In consequence of this the number of dogs who frequented the spot was so great that the road was rendered difficult to travellers. The place was called the Field of the Dog both by the Poles and Germans, a name which has obtained till the present day. Kromer, however, tells us that some of the German historians claimed the victory for their nation. Whatever the result may have been, peace was soon afterwards made between the emperor and the duke, a peace which was further consolidated by the marriage of Bolestaw and his son Wtadystaw to members of the imperial family. Before his death the Polish duke, following the same fatal course which in Russia paved the way for its subjugation by the Mongols, parcelled out his territories to his sons Wtadystaw, Bolestaw, Mieczystaw, and Henry. There remained a fifth and youngest son, at that time of tender age, Kazimierz. The duke being asked why he had left him portionless is said to have declared that the four-wheeled chariot must have a driver, thus, as it were, prophesying the future pre-eminence of this child. The prediction, which looks very much like a prophecy after the event, reminds us of William the Conqueror distributing his kingdom to his sons. The quarrels of these princes are very tedious. Wtadystaw was ultimately driven out and Bolestaw became supreme. His subjects gave him the nickname of Kçdzierzawy, or the curly. He was drawn into a contest with the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who invaded Poland in the year 1158. It would have been impossible for Bolestaw to meet so formidable a foe in the field; he, however, succeeded in forcing him to make peace by continually harassing his army, and laying waste the territory before it. Frederick again attempted to convert Poland into a fief of the German empire, but failed. Bolestaw signed a peace by which he consented to give Silesia to his brother Wladystaw, and the Poles were to furnish three hundred spearmen to assist the emperor Frederick against Milan. An expedition which he undertook against the Prussians in 1167 was unsuccessful; in consequence, as Kromer assures us, of treachery, the Poles became entangled in the marshes of the country and were cut to pieces. On his death Bolestaw was succeeded by his brother Mieczystaw, who was so unpopular that he was expelled from the country in 1177. The crown, therefore, according to the prophecy, devolved upon Kazimierz, the youngest son of Bolestaw Krzywousty. During his reign many judicious laws were passed in Poland; among other improvements he abolished the evil custom of purveyance. His reign was tranquil, and by summoning a council of the bishops and nobles at Eçczyca he may be said to have instituted the Polish senate, at all events to have laid the foundations of it. At this time the third crusade was preached in Poland, and the order of the Cistercians was introduced into the country. We shall pass rapidly over the reigns of Leszek V. (the White), Wtadystaw III., and another Bolestaw. Conrad, duke of Masovia and brother of Leszek, introduced the order of Teutonic knights into the Polish territories on the Baltic, from whom the Prussian monarchy, one of the great enemies of the republic, was afterwards to develop itself. In the reign of Bolestaw V. (1227-1279) the Mongols made an incursion into Poland, but were subsequently diverted into Hungary, having gained a victory at Lig-nica (Liegnitz) in Silesia in 1241. They carried off great quantities of booty. It is said that on this occasion nine sacks were filled with the ears of the slain. During their stay Bolestaw, like Ivan the Terrible at a later period, remained cloistered in a monastery Lelewel dwells pathetically upon the many evils suffered by Poland during the long reign of this prince, and says he was an unjust judge, a soldier who had aversion to fighting, and a sovereign who neglected the government. At this time also commenced the introduction of Germans into the country in such numbers as to threaten to denationalize it. The trade was almost entirely in their hands, and instead of being governed by Polish laws they enjoyed the benefit of the Jus Magdeburgicum. The wide influence of these foreigners is shown by the many words of German origin to be found in the Polish language.

An unfortunate and uninteresting prince, Leszek the Black, succeeded, but the dignity of the house of Piast was fully restored when Przemystaw, without condescending to solicit the title of sovereign from the hands of the pope, received the crown from his nobles and clergy at Gniezno (Gnesen). Thus did Poland again become a kingdom. This unfortunate prince, however, was afterwards murdered by the margrave of Brandenburg at Rogozno (1295). The reign of Wactaw (Wenceslaus) (1300-5) was not of great importance. He united the crowns of Poland and Bohemia, but soon became unpopular on account of his preference of his Bohemian subjects. Shortly after his election he left the country, and, confiding the control of Poland to the Bohemian garrisons, retreated with his wife to Prague, having been invited to take the crown of Hungary, which he soon abandoned to his son. His death in the year 1305 was accompanied by suspicious circumstances which rendered it probable that it had been brought about by poison. With him expired the race of the holy peasant Premysl, which had ruled Bohemia according to the ancient chronicles for nearly six hundred years. The relations of the latter country to the German empire were now to become much closer. Wladyslaw Loketiek, who succeeded Wactaw, was constantly engaged in wars with the Teutonic knights. In three expeditions against them he allowed his troops to commit great excesses. A full account of them may be found in Kromer, who has given us a florid speech said to have been uttered by Wladyslaw before one of the battles. Several heretics at this time made their appearance in Poland, advocating among other things communistic doctrines. They were severely repressed, and from this time dates the establishment of the Inquisition in the country which lasted till the days of Sigismund I. About 1312 Cracow appears to have been made the capital of the kingdom, and continued so till the reign of Sigismund III.

Wladyslaw was succeeded by his son Kazimiérz (Casimir) III., justly surnamed the Great, whose reign was a golden period for Poland. The material prosperity of the country increased very much at this time. Commerce was active; the Russians supplied the inhabitants with furs; the southern parts of Europe sent wines, carpets, silks, cotton, &c. The principal towns of Poland, Dantzic and Cracow, to assist the development of their commerce, joined the Hanseatic league. The towns on the Vistula now began to increase in number and importance, and we first hear of Warsaw, which, however, was not made the capital of the kingdom till the reign of Sigismund III. In 1364 Kazimiérz laid the foundation of the university of Cracow, but it was reserved for Queen Jadwiga to carry out his plans. One of the most important events of his reign was the passing of the statute of Wislica (1347). In this legal document the palatines and castellans are mentioned, and the authority possessed by them is carefully defined. It may be well to enumerate here some of the chief functionaries of the republic. The duty of a palatine was to lead the troops of his palatinate on any military expedition, and to preside in the little diets or assemblies of the nobility of his province. Immediately after the palatines came the castellans, who, like the former, were all senators. They were lieutenants of the palatines in time of war, leading the nobility of their jurisdiction into the field, under the command of the palatines. Both the palatines and castellans held judicial tribunals in their respective provinces. The nuntii {posty) were the deputies returned by the various districts of the palatinates. There were sixteen ecclesiastical senators, including the primate (the archbishop of Gniezno) and the archbishop of Lemberg. They all sat in one house. The starostas, employed in collecting the revenue and other functions, had no seat in the house. There are many things in the statute of Wislica favourable to the peasant; thus the power of life and death over him, which his master had previously enjoyed, was abolished. The peasant was not glébx ascriptus, and if ill-treated by one lord could move to the estate of another. The inhabitants of the towns, foreign and chiefly German artisans were governed by the Jus Magdeburgicum ; but appeals to Magdeburg itself were prohibited; for this purpose a Teutonic tribunal was established at Cracow, consisting of a judge properly acquainted with foreign law, and of seven citizens nominated by the starosta. Kromer, in his Polonia, says, “Legum scriptarum nullus fuit usus apud Polonos vetustioribus temporibus; nec ullae extant antiquiores iis quas Cazimirus magnus rex condidit.” A national diet was now being formed. It consisted of the upper clergy and the nobles, but the inferior clergy and the citizens seem sometimes to have been admitted. Gradually questions of peace and war were introduced and even the election of kings, the principle of departing from the hereditary line being admitted—a concession afterwards attended with great evils to Poland. The improvements of Kazimiérz were not confined to law-making; he fortified the chief towns of his kingdom, and built many of their most handsome edifices. He also introduced many artisans from Germany. By his marriage with his first wife Anna Aldona of Lithuania, he had only a daughter. He therefore convoked a diet at Cracow on the 8th May 1339, in which he proposed as his successor his nephew Louis of Hungary, the son of his sister. This was to concede to the diet a very important privilege, as the throne became virtually elective. The nobles were not slow in availing themselves of the concession which had been made to them. Before they allowed Louis to succeed they exacted some very important terms from him which became the foundation of the celebrated pacta conventa. The year after the appointment of a successor his wife died. According to Kromer she was passionately fond of music, and took musicians with her wherever she travelled. The wars of Kazimiérz against the hereditary enemies of the country, the Russians, Lithuanians, and Mongols, were successful. His private life was stained with licentiousness, but his reign marks a distinct epoch in the political and legislative development of the country. With him the glory of Poland begins, and he is well worthy of the glowing eulogy of the national historian Dlugosz. We cannot wonder also that the Poles dwell with pleasure upon the splendour of the court of Kazimiérz, but he certainly squandered the royal treasures too freely. We are told that at one time he entertained at Cracow the emperor of Germany and the kings of Denmark, Hungary, and Cyprus. His death was occasioned by a fall from his horse while hunting near Cracow on the 5th November 1370, and with him expired the line of the Piasts. Casimir was succeeded, as had been arranged, by Louis of Hungary, who held the crown for twelve years only, and of that period spent but a short time in the country. Louis showed too great a fondness for his own subjects; he had also the misfortune to be unacquainted with the Polish language. After his death his second daughter Jadwiga was elected queen, but she was to accept as husband any prince whom the diet might propose to her. Her election is declared by Kromer to have been due to the eloquence of one Jan Tçnczyn (a member of a celebrated Polish family), whose speech, or an imaginary reproduction of it, is given at great length in very classical Latinity. Jadwiga is said to have been a woman of great beauty and worth. As a matter of state policy she was induced to marry Jagielto, the prince of Lithuania, a man of savage manners; but Lithuania was thus annexed-to Poland, with which it remained joined ever afterwards,—a more complete federation having taken place at Lublin in the year 1569. Jagielto was a pagan, but he offered to renounce his creed and to introduce the Christian faith into his dominions; although not educated in that religion he was born of a Christian mother, and its doctrines were not entirely strange to him. The principality of Lithuania at that time stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and eastwards to within a short distance of Moscow. Its religion was Greek Church, and its official language White Russian. The Lithuanian tongue, so interesting to the philologist, seems never to have been anything more than a peasants’ language, and no official documents whatever have come down to us in it. This was not the first marriage between the sovereigns of the two countries, as the first wife of Casimir the Great, Anna Aldona, had been a daughter of Gedymin, a Lithuanian prince. Originally Jadwiga felt a repugnance to the marriage with Jagielto on account of the coarse and repulsive manners of the barbarian, and also because she had previously plighted herself to the archduke William of Austria. The matter was referred to her mother Elizabeth of Hungary, who expressed herself favourable to the marriage. The archduke, however, did not abandon his hopes without a struggle; he made his appearance with a splendid retinue at Cracow, but eventually retired on finding that the prosecution of his suit would lead to no favourable result. The new candidate arrived at the metropolis after him, and Jadwiga accepted his proposals. In 1386 they were married, and from that year we may date the commencement of the dynasty of the Jagieltos in Poland, which lasted for nearly two centuries, terminating in 1572,—indeed, we may say nearly a century longer, omitting the short and brilliant period of Batory (1576-1586), for Sigismund III. was the son of Catherine daughter of Sigismund II., and Wladyslaw IV. and John Casimir were his sons; after the death of the latter the throne became entirely elective. The new sovereign was baptized by the name of Wladyslaw. Having been converted himself, he forced his subjects to be converted by the simple process which seems to have prevailed over all Slavonic countries. Wladyslaw is said to have assisted in these pious labours with persuasion as well as command, and by these means Lithuania, which had remained heathen longer than any other part of Europe, was finally Christianized. We are told, however, by travellers of heathen customs remaining long afterwards. Although owing so much to his consort, the king seems to have treated her with jealousy and suspicion. On his impugning her chastity, she insisted on being confronted with her calumniators. The investigation resulted in Jadwiga’s triumphant acquittal; and we are told by Dlugosz that her accuser was compelled in the singular fashion of the country to prostrate himself under a table and declare that he had lied like a dog, and at the same time to imitate the barking of that animal. We are further informed that this punishment for defamation continued in force in Poland until the close of the 18th century. The nobles wrested several important privileges from Wladyslaw; and from this time we can trace step by step the rise of that fierce oligarchy which brought so much trouble upon the unfortunate kingdom. They secured for themselves exemption from all contributions when called to serve beyond the frontiers, and an allowance of five marks for every horseman; they also procured the exclusion of members of the royal family from all the higher offices of the state, reserving these for themselves. In the reign of Wtadystaw many expeditions were undertaken against those inhabitants of Lithuania who preferred to remain pagans. In 1410 also occurred the great battle of Grünwald near Tanneberg in Prussia, in which the Teutonic knights were completely defeated and Ulrich von Jungingen, the grand master, killed. Wtadystaw died in 1434, and was succeeded by his son of the same name. His queen Jadwiga had died in 1399; she appears to have been greatly beloved by the Poles, and was canonized after death,—miracles, it is said, being wrought at her intercession. The consolidation of Lithuania with Poland was destined to be a much more tedious and protracted matter than its somewhat violent union. Great as may have been the grief of Wtadystaw at the death of Jadwiga, it did not prevent him from contracting three subsequent marriages,—the third wife being Sophia, a princess of Kieff.

The younger Wtadystaw was able soon after his accession to add (by election) both Bohemia and Hungary to his dominions. He then commenced an expedition against the Turks, who under their sultan Amurath II. were pressing the siege of Belgrade, having already annihilated the ill-starred Lazar and his army at the battle of Kossovo in 1389. At first Wtadystaw was everywhere successful, and had instilled such terror into the Turks that Amurath proposed a truce for ten years and offered to cede all his conquests except Bulgaria. The conditions, having been accepted, were ratified by mutual pledges; unfortunately Wtadystaw was induced by Cardinal Cesarini to recommence the war and violate his oaths. The sultan on hearing of this perjury at once prepared for battle at the head of a formidable army. The encounter took place at Varna, in the present principality of Bulgaria. After performing prodigies of valour, Wtadystaw was defeated and slain. Hardly a fifth part of the Polish army escaped from the battle, and of these many perished in the swamps of the Dobrudja. This melancholy engagement, which formed, as the Polish chroniclers tell us, the subject of so many lays—whereof it is a great pity that none have come down to us—is fully described by Kromer (p. 327-8), who adds many omens and pious reflexions. He dwells with delight upon the conspiracy of twelve noble captives, who would have murdered Amurath if their plot had not been revealed by a Bulgarian, whereupon they committed suicide: “In necem ejus conjurarunt, peregissentque facinus prae-clarum et omnibus seculis memorabile nisi in ipso articulo a Bulgaro, quem unum consilii socium adhibuerant, proditi essent.” There is also another curious account in the Memoirs of a Janissary, an early Polish work which will be further described in the section devoted to literature. The memory of the unhappy young prince, who was only in his twenty-first year, was long cherished amongst his countrymen, although, as Kromer tells us, during his short reign he almost drained the treasury and was so busied with the Turkish war that he had but little time to attend to the wants of his Polish subjects. The votaries of Mohammed were now beginning to make themselves a great name in Europe, and were already marching triumphant over the ruins of the effete Eastern empire. The imperial city itself was soon to fall, and the crescent to be placed upon the domes of Saint Sophia.

After a brief interregnum Kazimiérz, brother of the deceased king, Was chosen to succeed him; he had previously been grand-duke of Lithuania. In this reign the Poles carried on successful wars with the Teutonic knights, which resulted in a peace, by which western Prussia, including Pomerania and the cities Dantzic, Thorn, and others, were to belong to Kazimiérz, while eastern Prussia was left to the knights, who were, however, to hold it as a fief of the crown, and each subsequent grand master was to be the vassal (holdownik) of the Polish king and senate. Permanent encroachments were made, however, upon the dominions of the “Republic” (Rzeczpospolita) by Ivan III., who reannexed to the Russian crown Novgorod, which had been incorporated by the Lithuanians; he also appropriated a considerable portion of White Russia. The great Muscovite empire was now just becoming welded into a compact whole; with Ivan III. was to commence the era of consolidation, with Ivan IV. that of absolutism. In this reign the nobles first elected nuntii or deputies (posh/) to attend at the diet, when they themselves were unable to be present in person. They also passed some mischievous laws, aggravating the bondage of the miserable serfs. Previously it was possible for a peasant who had been ill-treated to fly from his lord; now it was enacted that he must be surrendered upon demand, and whoever harboured him incurred severe penalties. The researches of recent Polish historiographers have shown the importance of the reign of this monarch, who may be said to have consolidated the Polish kingdom; from his time the influence of the diet began. The statute of Nieszawa in 1454 has been called as important in Polish law as Magna Charta in English; it is the great charter of the rights and privileges of the Polish nobility.

Kazimiérz was succeeded by his son John I., surnamed Albert (in Polish, Jan Olbracht), a feeble prince, most of whose wars were unsuccessful. He led an expedition against Stephen the hospodar of Wallachia, which resulted in a complete defeat. In this reign, at one of the diets (at Piotrkow in 1496,—for, as was the case with the parliaments anciently in England, they were held at various places), the nobles decreed that henceforth no burgher or peasant should aspire to any of the higher offices in the church; all such appointments they reserved to themselves. Thus they constituted their clergy a mere aristocratic caste, and imitated the prince-bishops and other spiritual potentates of the Germans. The peasantry were now obliged to bring all their cases before tribunals presided over by their own masters, where they were likely at best to get but a scant measure of justice. Finally, this memorable diet still further limited the power of the king by enacting that none of their sovereigns should in future declare war without their permission. Short as was the reign of John Albert, it saw him involved in many disputes with his nobility. An Italian refugee, Buonacorsi, who had been his tutor, gave him many suggestions with a view to limit the power of the nobility. About the same time, in 1497, some nobles were killed in an unfortunate expedition in Bukowina, and a report was spread that this disaster had been caused by the king himself through the bad counsels of Buonacorsi. In this reign also laws were passed in the diets further limiting the powerof the burghers and the peasantry, who were now forbidden to possess any landed property. John Albert was succeeded by his brother Alexander, an utterly insignificant king; in his reign, however, we trace the first germ of the detestable liberum veto, which ruined Poland. In a diet held at Radom it was settled that the decision of the deputies was not to depend upon the majority, but must imply unanimity of suffrages. At a diet in 1652, as we shall afterwards see, it occurred for the first time that a single nuntius annulled by his liberum veto the decisions of the whole body present and broke up the assembly. By this absurd custom an element of confusion and disintegration was introduced into all the meetings; it was possible to hire a venal nuntius, for the majority of the Polish nobles seem to have had their price; and as soon as such a man appeared, however important the subjects to be debated might be, he could put an end to all further discussion. The lord high treasurer had the complete control of public finance; he was appointed by the king, but could not be removed. According to the strict letter of the constitution, he must give in his accounts to the diet, but he might easily evade doing so. As the diets only lasted six weeks he might bring them in too late, or if the scrutiny became somewhat tiresome he would probably be able to find a convenient nuntius who would veto the whole proceedings. The story told by Connor of a certain Count Morsztyn, whom we shall find afterwards mentioned among Polish authors, is certainly a very painful one. He says—“I may here give an account of a passage that happened when Count Morsztyn was great treasurer of Poland, who, having more regard to his own private interest than the public benefit, sent all the riches of the treasury into France, when, fearing that the diet would soon think fit to call him to account, he retired privately with all his effects out of the kingdom and went to settle in France, where he purchased the whole county of Chateau-Villain, which is worth above one hundred thousand livres a year.” Such was the corrupt character of the Polish parliament. Other details are given of an equally painful description. We are told that these meetings rarely happened without bloodshed. A serious fracas occurred among the turbulent nobles—who themselves, while dictating laws, embodied every principle of anarchy—when Sigismund III. was elected. Blood flowed in torrents, and the booths erected for the accommodation of the senators were burnt. At the election of King Michael balls from pistols flew about the tents of the senators, and nuntii were actually killed. Even worse scenes occurred at the election of Augustus II., as will be shown subsequently. In the reign of Alexander we find an instance where a few deputies from the towns were admitted, but their presence was only invited on rare occasions, reminding us how Ivan ΓV. now and then summoned the Russian citizens to his despotic douma. “He was of a middle stature,” says Connor, “had a long visage and black hair, was very strong built but exceeding dull-witted, and consequently but a little talker. He exceeded all his brothers in generosity, and was wont to delight much in musicians and such trifling artists. Nevertheless, this his liberality was generally esteemed but prodigality, insomuch that some were so bold as to say that he died in time, or else both Poland and Lithuania might have been lavished away. To prevent the like pernicious generosity for the future, the diet made a law, calling it Statutum Alexandrinum, by which they revoked all this king’s profuse gifts.” In the reign of this sovereign the former statutes of Wislica, Warta, Nieszawa, and many others were confirmed and published in a single volume under the superintendence of the chancellor Laski. The feeble Alexander was succeeded by his brother Sigismund (in Polish, Zygmunt), another son of Kazimierz. Sigismund was engaged in constant wars with Basil, the czar of Russia; his court was also filled with factions fomented by his wife Bona Sforza, the daughter of the duke of Milan, a woman thoroughly hated in her adopted country, on whom the Poles made the following epigram—

Si parcunt Parcae, si luci lumine lucent, Si bellum bellum, tum bona Bona fuit.

When she left the country in the reign of her son Sigismund II., she carried large sums of money with her to Italy.

In this reign the order of Teutonic Knights embraced the doctrines of Luther; their dominions were already a fief of the Polish kingdom. Gradually this small principality was to absorb the Slavonic elements which surrounded it, and to rise triumphant over the ruins of Poland. The doctrines of the Reformation were now becoming widely spread over Europe, and the element of religious animosity was largely infused into this land of perpetual anarchy and tumults. Sigismund, however, was a man of remarkable ability, and under his rule the country flourished. He survived to the age of eighty-two, and his memory is still cherished with affection by the Poles. His broad heavy physiognomy may be seen accurately represented in the old editions of Kromer, who dwells much upon his merits. In 1538 occurred the first rokosz, as it is termed in Polish, or rebellion of the nobility against the king. The affairs of Wallachia caused Sigismund to undertake a military expedition. Accordingly he appealed to the rzeczpospolita, or commonwealth, as the Polish republic was called. One hundred and fifty thousand nobles assembled at Lemberg, but instead of marching to the war they laid their complaints before the king and refused to serve, and the old man was obliged to put them off with promises. The Lithuanians had not yet become reconciled to their union with Poland, even after so long a time, and one of their chief men, Glinski, taking advantage of this feeling, attempted to restore its former independence to the country. Sigismund, however, succeeded in defeating Glinski, who fled to Russia. He then persuaded the grand-duke to invade Lithuania, and assisted him in getting possession of Smolensk in 1514. Sigismund made a treaty with the grand-duke, but he did not succeed in getting back Smolensk. In 1526, by the death of the last of the dukes of Masowsze (Masovia), this duchy was reunited to the crown of Poland. In 1533 Sigismund concluded a treaty with the Turks, then at the height of their power. This peace guaranteed to Poland the free navigation of the Black Sea, with the sovereignty of Moldavia, and prevented the irruption of the Mongols into Podolia, where they were in the habit of committing great excesses, as the Little-Russian national ballads pathetically tell us. The reign of Sigismund was a period of great peace for Poland, and we may truly say that its glory at this time culminated. It seems a rule that the great men of a country are produced at periods of national prosperity, so we now find Copernicus flourishing, the one man of genius produced by Poland whose glory has resounded throughout the world. In 1529 Sigismund published his code of laws for Lithuania, which was issued in the White-Russian language, and forms one of the most important monuments of Polish law.

He was succeeded by his son Sigismund II. (1548-72), otherwise called Sigismund Augustus, but this prince was not elected till a very stormy debate had ensued as to whether he should repudiate his wife or not. He had married, as a widower (his first wife having been Elizabeth, daughter of Ferdinand of Austria), a fair widow of the house of Radziwitt one of the most illustrious of the families of Lithuania. The nobles, however, who already treated their sovereign as a chief magistrate and nothing more, and had begun to control all his movements, required at the diet of Piotrkow that the marriage should be annulled, merely on the grounds that the country would gain more by his alliance with the daughter of a foreign potentate. But Sigismund, by sowing discord in the ranks of his opponents—proposing among other things to destroy pluralities in church and state—contrived to carry his point. His wife was crowned in 1550, but died within six months after, not without suspicions of having been poisoned by her mother-in-law. She is said to have made herself universally beloved during the short period in which the Poles had beheld her as queen. In three years’ time Sigismund married a third wife, the sister of the first, and widow of Francis Gonzaga, duke of Mantua. During this reign the quarrels between Protestants and Romanists raged fiercely in Poland, and the latter were very severe in their persecutions. A priest was burnt to death for administering the sacrament in both kinds, and a lady suffered the same terrible fate for denying the real presence. Many of the nobles were infected with the new teaching, but Sigismund was disingenuous and inconsistent in his conduct. He is himself supposed to have been inclined to the doctrines of the Reformation; he certainly permitted Calvin to dedicate to him a commentary on one of the epistles of Paul, and Luther an edition of his German Bible. Finally, realizing that the majority of his subjects were Catholics, he abandoned a faith to which he had perhaps given but a half-hearted adherence, and allowed the bishops to suppress with severity all promulgation of the new doctrines.

The religious question was keenly debated in a diet held at Wola near Warsaw the year after the death of Sigismund. It was resolved not to allow the sword to settle any religious differences. According to the language then used there was to be universal toleration. We shall soon see how little this was carried out. We find from it that the Polish peers were supposed to be masters of the spiritual as well as the material condition of their serfs, for it was expressly stated that their power over them was to be unlimited, “tarn in saecularibus quam in spiritualibus.”

In his wars with Ivan the Terrible, in which the subject of quarrel was the Baltic provinces, Sigismund was not very fortunate; he was not able to prevent the Russians from acquiring the palatinate of Polotsk, nor could he subsequently hinder the Swedes from making themselves masters of Livonia. He died in 1572, leaving no issue by his three wives; and with him became extinct the race of the Jagieltos, the second great family which had ruled over Poland. His reign was very favourable to the development of Polish literature. Then, too, the laws were first authoritatively promulgated in the native language, which was spoken at court, although Latin continued to be extensively employed. During the reign of Sigismund Augustus, Poland reached the height of outward prosperity. It included Lithuania and western Prussia, and by the addition of Masovia and Livonia extended its limits from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and almost from the Oder to the Don. The seeds of disintegration, however, had long been sown; since the marriage of Jadwiga with Wtadystaw Jagielto the crown of Poland had been more or less elective, although it continued in the same family. One important event which marked this reign must not be forgotten; in 1569 took place the celebrated diet of Lublin. By this a close union was effected between Poland and Lithuania, which up to this time had been ill united, and indeed there were continual jealousies breaking out during the existence of Poland as a nation—two great points being the difference of religion and language. Even the union of Lublin was not effected without considerable resistance. The following were its conditions :—Lithuania gives Podlasie to Poland; Livonia, under the title of duchy, belongs equally to the two states; Volhynia and the duchy of Kieff—that is to say, the Ukraine—are incorporated with Poland; the kingdom of Poland and the grand-duchy of Lithuania are to form a single indivisible republic, and are to have a single head, elected by their common votes; the senate is to be composed of nobles of both nationalities. Warsaw was fixed upon as the seat of the diet, since, being part of Masovia (Masowsze), it was, strictly speaking, neither Polish nor Lithuanian. It afterwards became the regular capital of the country in the reign of Sigismund III.; as we have seen, the first two capitals of Poland were Gniezno (Gnesen) and Cracow. Warsaw is of comparatively late origin. It is said to have been founded by Conrad, the duke of Masovia, in 1269. The old dukes of Masovia resided at Czersk near Warsaw, of which some of the ruins might be seen one hundred and fifty years ago (C. H. Erndtel, Warsavia physice illustrata, Dresden, 1730). The city is most advantageously situated, and with a better railway system and fewer fiscal restrictions would be one of the greatest emporiums in Europe. An interregnum now occurred on the failure of the line of the Jagieltos, and the throne was publicly offered for competition. Four candidates appeared :—Ernest, archduke of Austria; Henry of Valois, duke of Anjou, brother of the French king; a Swedish prince; and finally Ivan the Terrible of Russia. The contest, however, really lay between the first two; the Swedish alliance was despised as likely to bring with it no solid advantage; the czar was hated both as coming from a race which had ever been hostile to Poland, and also on account of his detestable cruelties, which were well known throughout Europe. The political importance of France and the astute diplomacy of Montluc, the ambassador from that country, caused the decision to be given in favour of the French candidate. But, just as his name was brought forward as their probable king, the Poles, many of whom, we must remember, had embraced the Reformed doctrines, were startled by the news of the massacre of St Bartholomew (August 24, 1572). From the awkward dilemma in which he was placed by his complicity in this act, Henry endeavoured to escape by a falsehood,—impudently denying at first that anything of the sort had happened. Finding, however, but little credence given to his assertions, he attempted to explain away the affair and to lower the number of its victims, which he reduced to fifty, alleging that they had been really executed for a conspiracy. The Polish ambassadors duly made their appearance in Paris, showing their gay equipages, quaint and semi-Asiatic; their bows and arrows and shaven crowns with a single tuft of hair greatly amused the inquisitive French. Loose flowing robes, high boots, and a sword resembling a scimitar completed the tout ensemble of a Polish nobleman.

Readers of French history must be well acquainted with the character of this duke of Anjou, one of the most detestable of the house of Valois, who afterwards became king of France under the title of Henry III. The articles, some of which the Polish nobles required Henry to sign, called the pacta conventa so well illustrate the extraordinary influence of the aristocracy, and the shadow to which they had reduced the regal authority, that they are worth quoting in extenso. From this time every Polish king was compelled to accept them, together with the additions subsequently made.

(1) The king was to have no voice in the election of his successor; the appointment was to depend entirely upon the nobles. (2) He was to keep rigidly the terms of the treaty made with the Dissidents, as the Polish Protestants λvere called. (3) No war was to be declared nor military expedition undertaken without the consent of the diet. (4) No taxes were to be imposed without the consent of the diet. (5) The king was not to appoint ambassadors to foreign courts. (6) If different opinions prevailed among the members of the diet, the king was to adopt only such as were in accordance with the laws or advantageous to the nation. (7) The sovereign must have a permanent council, consisting of five bishops, four palatines, and eight castellans, who were to be changed every year and elected by the diet. (8) A general diet was to be convoked every two years, or offener, if there were any need. The assembling of these diets seems to have depended upon the will of the king. (9) The duration of each diet was not to exceed six weeks. (10) None but a native could hold any dignity or benefice. (11) The king must neither marry nor divorce a wife without the consent of the diet.

Thus the regal shadow who was to sit upon the throne of Poland was able to interfere but little in questions either of peace or war. The latter, we have seen, he could not declare; and, as each of the palatines held nearly supreme power in his own territories, the king could interfere in little relating to the former. A vexatious control was exercised even over his private relations; his wife could not be of his own choosing, and, however odious she might become to him, she must remain attached as a state appendage till his nobles consented to release him. Not that Henry was likely to trouble himself with any scruples on the score of marriage. He arranged all those matters very easily. What was left for the Polish king was chiefly to eat and drink at the expense of his subjects, and to form a glittering addition to their costly and semi-barbarous pageants. Still his revenue was ample, and when he commanded the army in the field his power was unchecked; he had also the nomination to the highest ecclesiastical and military appointments.

Even before the severe terms of the pacta conventa had been presented to Henry, Montluc had agreed to all, but probably felt convinced that his sovereign would carry out no more of them than he could possibly help. He even promised that France should send a fleet into the Baltic, so that its dominion might be secured to the Poles, and that in the event of a war with Russia she should supply four thousand of her best troops, and herself pay their expenses; in all cases of war she was to aid Poland with money. Henry was to spend a large portion of the rents which he drew from his estates in France for the benefit of his adopted country; he was also to pay the crown debts, and to educate one hundred young Polish nobles either at Paris or Cracow. Probably no sovereign in the world ever signed such galling stipulations. Henry, however, had no intention of observing them, and had so little relish for his new kingdom that he did not set out till he had almost been driven from France by his brother, and the Polish nobles already talked of a new election. He proceeded on his way slowly, with all the dignity of a royal progress, but did not escape the gibes of the German princes through whose dominions he passed, for his connexion with the massacre of St Bartholomew. He was feasted at Heidelberg opposite a large picture which delineated the tragedy in all its horrors, and attendants were allotted him selected from French Huguenot refugees. He was crowned at Cracow in February 1574, but soon began to repent of his choice. The effeminate king relished but little the throne he had chosen among a warlike and turbulent people, where he seemed to enjoy but the shadow of sovereignty—a people also in every way inferior in civilization to the agreeable Parisians he had left behind. He felt himself a mere puppet in their hands, and, burying himself in the recesses of his palace, led a life of dissipation. But release was at hand in an unexpected way; he was destined to be king of Poland for five months only. By the death of his brother Charles IX. he became heir to the French crown. This delightful piece of news he attempted at first to conceal, and to escape before it could get noised abroad in Poland, principally to avoid the ambitious designs of his brother, the duke of Alençon; but unfortunately the report oozed out. He refused to follow the counsel of his advisers that he should convoke a general diet to see what measures should be taken. On the evening of the 18th July he gave a grand entertainment in honour of the sister of the late king Sigismund. The conviviality was great; and never had Henry assumed a more pleasing manner or seemed more genially to identify himself with his new subjects. At the usual hour, to all appearance, he retired to his apartment and the lights were extinguished; but already the king had flown. He was led by an attendant through secret passages to a chapel in the suburbs of the city, as some say—but according to a more probable account to the royal stables, where a rendezvous had been appointed. Here horses had been prepared; and with a few chosen attendants he rode precipitately from his kingdom, reaching the frontiers of Silesia early on the following day. Great was the consternation in Cracow when it was known that he had fled, and hot the pursuit of the authorities. The probability of the king’s flight, gathered perhaps from his ill-concealed uneasiness, had caused it to be suspected before it was known as an actual fact. The grand chamberlain, anxious to calm the universal excitement, returned to the palace to which by virtue of his office he had general access. At first he knocked at the king’s door, but no answer was forthcoming; he then tried the chambers of the gentlemen-inwaiting; there equally he fodnd a dead silence. Again, he returned to the king’s bedroom, and, not being able to force the door, entered by the window—for even in matters of etiquette they seem in Poland to have treated their kings somewhat roughly. The candles were burning as usual in the room; the two pages were near the bed; the curtains of the bed were drawn, but there was no Henry to be found. The grand chamberlain, amazed, rushed in pursuit, attended by five hundred cavaliers. Probably such a ludicrous sight had never been seen before as a monarch flying from his kingdom and subjects without being driven out by them. Owing to his ignorance of the route the horsemen were soon on his track, and many of his companions, to save themselves, deserted him. One of them named Pibrac hid himself in a bog, and was even obliged to make several dives to escape the infuriated peasants, who pelted him with stones, unconscious of what he had done, but satisfied, from his efforts at concealment, that he must be flying from justice. In vain did Henry cause the bridges to be broken down behind him; the Slavs on his track forded the rivers on horseback, and the king was at last overtaken on the very boundaries of the German empire. There Tçnczyn, the grand chamberlain, and five horsemen came up with the fugitives and shouted after the king, “Serenissima Majestas, cur fugis?” Finding that he was quite safe, Henry admitted Tçnczyn to an audience, who remonstrated with him on account of the manner in which he was leaving the kingdom, and recommended him to return and convoke a diet so that with the consent of his subjects he might take possession of his new kingdom. But he refused to be influenced by their entreaties, and merely promised in a vague manner that he would return as soon as he had placed France in a state of tranquillity— a promise which, it need hardly be said, he had no intention whatever of carrying out. Nor did the king show any special alacrity in repairing to France, for before reaching that country he lingered a considerable time at Vienna and Venice, trifling with the highest interests of his country, and devoted only to frivolous amusement. The Poles, however, were well rid of one of the most corrupt sovereigns of a corrupt house. In 1589 the knife of the Dominican friar terminated his life, and with it the line of the Valois.

The Poles, piqued at the contempt with which their crown had been treated, assembled at Stçzyca and resolved to declare the throne vacant if the king did not return by the 12th May 1575. During the interregnum the Mongols made incursions into Podolia and Volhynia, and grievously devastated those countries. The appointed period having elapsed, Stephen Batory, prince of Transylvania, was elected, having previously stipulated to marry the princess Anne, sister of Sigismund Augustus. There were some difficulties, however, before he succeeded in obtaining the royal authority. The primate Ucharski nominated the emperor Maximilian king. This caused considerable opposition, and the city of Dantzic did not recognize the new sovereign till compelled. To conciliate the nobility Batory was obliged to consent to some serious diminutions of the royal prerogative. This king was a great soldier, successful against both Prussians and Russians, the latter of whom he compelled, in 1582, to evacuate Livonia, which was thus again annexed to Poland. He also did much to encourage letters, having founded the university of Vilna, which has, however, been suppressed in more recent times. His great fondness for the Latin language is said by Schafarik to have had a bad effect upon Polish; for from this time may be dated the classical words and idioms which have been thrust upon the language, and have disfigured Polish more than her Slavonic sisters. It was Stephen Batory who first organized the regiments of Cossacks who play such an important part in Polish history. Before his death, foreseeing the constant anarchy which the system of elective sovereignty would cause, he in vain urged the nobility to make the crown hereditary. Sarnicki, the Polish historian, says of him— “Fuit vir tam in pace quam in bello excelso et forti animo, judicii magni, praesertim ubi ab affectibus liber erat; in victu et amictu parcus, et omni jactantia et ostentatione alienus, eruditione insigniter tinctus, sermonis Latini valde studiosus et prorsus Terentianus.” It would naturally be concluded that before the election of Batory the royal power had been sufficiently curtailed, but it was to undergo further mutilations. Sixteen senators were now chosen at each diet to attend the king and give their opinion in important matters, and no decree could be issued without their consent. Besides this, in 1578 the right of final appeal to the king, which had always been a royal prerogative, was taken away. The king could now only give the ultimate decision in a small district within a certain radius of his residence. The courts exercising judgments within these narrow limits were called Assessoria Regni, and even these judicial powers, slight as they were, were gradually abandoned after the time of Augustus II., and were exercised by the high chancellor of the realm. The king was supposed to have some control of the courts which were governed by the Jus Magdeburgicum ; but, Batory being busy with foreign wars, these were generally managed by the chancellor also. The palatines had the right of electing their own judges in their dietines or petty diets, who formed supreme courts of justice called Tribunalia Regni ; here the causes of the nobles, for the peasants had no voice in the matter, were decided finally and without option of any appeal.

On the death of Batory in 1586, after many quarrels among the leading families, the throne was again brought into the market. The candidates were, among others, the archduke Maximilian of Austria; Feodore Ivanovich, the feeble Russian czar; and Sigismund, a Swedish prince, son of Catherine, sister of Sigismund Augustus. The last of the three was finally elected, although not without considerable opposition from Maximilian, who was only driven from his candidature by main force. The Zborowskis, a very powerful family always in opposition to Zamoiski, the chancellor of the kingdom, invited him. But Zamoiski defeated him at Byczyna in Silesia, and he was there made prisoner, and was only released on the promise of desisting from being a candidate. The Austrians, however, were always interfering in the affairs of Poland, and, if they could not procure the admission of any of their family to the headship of the republic, we shall observe that during four generations the house of Hapsburg furnished queens to Poland. A very serious riot occurred at the election on this occasion, as Lengnich tells us in his Jus Publicum, Regni Poloni∙, the booths erected for the senators were burnt to the ground. Such proceedings were only to be expected in a country where each noble might keep as many armed retainers as he pleased.

The new king signed the pacta conventa, and an alliance offensive and defensive between Poland and Sweden; the navigation of the Baltic was secured, and the debts of the nation were to be discharged. Sigismund, however, soon became unpopular among his new subjects, and among other causes of offence he violated the pacta conventa by marrying an Austrian princess, Anne, daughter of the archduke Charles, without their consent. In 1595, at Brzesc in Lithuania, took place the so-called union of the Greek and Latin Churches, but this union was not brought about without considerable violence. The disputes between the king and the diet were destined to be renewed when (his wife being dead) he married her sister Constantia in 1605. This union was also entered into without the consent of his subjects, and caused the cup of their wrath, already full, to overflow. On this occasion Jan Zamoiski, the chancellor already mentioned, addressed a vehement oration to the king, which is quoted at full length by Lelewel, in which he brought his marriage against him among many other charges. When Zamoiski had finished, Sigismund rose from his throne in a moment of anger and seized his sword. At this gesture a murmur of indignation ran through the diet, and Zamoiski cried in the midst of the crowd, “Rex, ne move gladium; ne te Caium Caesarem, nos Brutos sera posteritas loquatur. Sumus electores regum, destructores tyrannorum; regna, sed ne impera.” A great rokosz or secession, as the phrase was in Polish, was the result of this. But the rebels wanted able leaders, and the king defeated them at Guzow, near Radom, on the 6th July 1607, and thus his throne, already tottering, seemed to become a little stronger. He pardoned the insurgents; and the country, on the verge of civil war, seemed pacified; but the rebellion was a fatal precedent. The most important events in this reign were the transactions which took place between Poland and Russia. The renegade monk Otrepieff personated the young Dmitri of Russia, who had been assassinated, probably by the orders of Boris Godounoff, and aspired to seat himself upon the throne of the czars. This wonderful plot was concocted at Cracow, and seems to have been a plan of the Jesuits to bring over the Russians to the Latin Church. In 1606 the pretender was killed in a tumult, and many of the Poles who had accompanied him to Moscow were murdered. In 1617 Sigismund sent his son Wladyslaw to Moscow, which had been taken by the Polish general Zolkiewski. Wladyslaw was elected czar by a certain faction; but the Russians, disliking to have a heretic for their emperor, rose against the newly appointed sovereign; and the patriotism which was lacking to the boyars was found in the unselfish devotion of a provincial butcher. Russia was freed, and a new dynasty was established in the person of Michael Romanoff. Sigismund had many wars with the Turks, which led to no very important results; the great victory, however, of Chodkiewicz at Khotin (September 28, 1622) has become ever memorable in Polish annals, and has formed the subject of several poems. Lengnich, in his Jus Publicum Regni Poloni, tells us that in 1632 the Cossacks petitioned to be allowed to take part in the diets. Their request was refused in an insulting manner; and the Poles had soon to pay dear for their insolence. Sigismund died in 1632; his statue still ornaments the city of Warsaw, which he made the capital in the place of Cracow. He was unceasing in his efforts to extirpate Protestantism from his dominions.

The luxury of the nobles at this period has been described at great length by Lelewel. He has also much to tell us about the small armies of retainers kept up by the Poles, which it is a pity there was no statute of maintenance, as in England, to check. These private troops, however much bravery they may have occasionally shown, prevented all unity of action. The reign of Sigismund III. was on many grounds a disastrous one for Poland, and it was a very long one. There were constant military revolts and religious tumults. The king and his Austrian wife were so foolish as to be partly drawn into the Thirty Years’ War. They thought that, supported by the emperor and the king of Spain, they might be able to regain the crown of Sweden. They therefore permitted the emperor to enrol troops in Poland, and even sent him some regiments of Cossacks; they also got ready a fleet in the Baltic—strange as it may seem to hear of Poland as a naval power. All these plans, however, ended miserably. By the treaty of Malborg (Marienburg), in 1623, Sweden gained Livonia, Elbing, and part of Prussia.

He was succeeded by his son Wladyslaw IV., who was elected by the diet. During his reign the usual wars took place with the ancient enemies of the republic,— the Swedes, Russians, and Turks. Before its close the revolt of Bogdan Chmielnicki had broken out, which cost Poland her Cossack subjects, who had been so happily gained over by the more vigorous policy of Batory. The Zaρor-ogians, or Cossacks of the Dnieper, now transferred their allegiance to Alexis of Russia. They had long felt uncomfortable under the Polish government owing to the proselytizing tendencies of the bigoted Sigismund III. Fresh alarms were caused by the erection of the fortress of Kudak on the Dnieper, and they broke out into open rebellion. In 1638 they were deprived of the right of having a hetman; and Pawluk, their chief, was decapitated in spite of an express promise that his life should be spared. Wladyslaw was in constant collision with his nobles. He fretted under the restrictions placed upon his power, and attempted to carry on wars without the consent of the diet. But the nobles compelled him to break all his engagements. He died at Merecz in Lithuania, between Grodno and Vilna, May 20, 1648, and was succeeded by his brother John Casimir (Jan Kazimiérz), the other candidates being the czar Alexis, father of Peter the Great, and Ragotzi, prince of Transylvania. One of the first acts of the new king was to endeavour to negotiate with Bogdan, but the negotiations were brought to an abrupt termination by the treachery of Wisniowiecki, the Polish general, who fell upon the unsuspecting Cossacks while they were deliberating about the terms of the convention. After this massacre Bogdan raised another army, but was completely defeated by John Casimir at Beresteczko in 1651. The kingdom, however, was thrown into the greatest confusion by the disputes of the nobles, and all vigorous action was paralysed. The blood-stained annals of these wars are full of horrors: the population in many districts was entirely extirpated; everywhere murder and plunder were rampant; and tortures too horrible to mention were inflicted upon the unhappy prisoners.

At a diet held in 1652 a single nuntius for the first time annulled by his liberum veto the united resolutions of the whole assembly,—Sicinski, from Upita in Lithuania, stopping the diet with the simple word “niepozwalam” (I forbid). As soon as he had uttered this ominous protest he quitted the assembly. Those who were present were puzzled as to what construction they ought to put upon such a proceeding, but Sicinski had not acted without confederates on whom he could rely. An angry debate ensued, but the principle was finally carried by a majority and firmly established. Ruptures of this kind became more frequent, as Lelewel tells us, and the queen Louise Marie, who had great influence over the king, frequently made use of them. Lengnich, in his Jus Publicum Regni Poloni (1742), enumerates thirteen occasions on which this baleful practice had broken up the diet. It was not finally abolished till 1791. The reasons why it was popular have already been spoken of. Among other causes may be mentioned the anxiety of the great officers of the realm—the commanderin-chief, treasurer, marshal, and others—to be free from the control of the diet. These important functionaries held their appointments for life, and were under no supervision during the intervals between the sessions of the diet. Again, it was only before the diet that a noble accused of capital crimes could be brought to trial, for the nobility exercised, as has already been said, supreme judicial powers in their own palatinates. If, therefore, as was frequently the case, a criminal of this rank happened to be brought forward, it was very convenient for him to be able to procure a dissolution of the only tribunal by which he could be convicted. Again, it was an admirable way to oppose the levying of taxes, which could only be raised by the consent of the diet; and taxes, owing to the constant wars in which she was engaged, were very heavy in Poland. There were emissaries of foreign powers, too, who fomented these internal discords and profited by fomenting them.

The ill effects of the liberum veto soon began to be felt. In 1670 the members of the diet bound themselves by an oath not to make use of the privilege. In spite, however, of this resolution that very diet was brought to an end by the appeal of Zabokrzycki, the nuntius from Braclaw in Podolia. In 1667, by the treaty of Andruszowo, Poland lost to Russia Smolensk, Vitebsk, Polotsk, and other towns, the Dnieper now becoming the boundary; Kieff, the interesting old historical city, was to go two years later. In the midst of all these misfortunes the exhausted country was attacked by a new enemy, Sweden, in consequence of the Polish monarch asserting a right to the Swedish crown, as the heir of the house of Vasa—a claim which he had no possibility of enforcing. Hampered as he was by a war with Russia, John could effect nothing against his new enemies, who took both Warsaw and Cracow, and ended by entirely subjugating the country, while the wretched king fled to Silesia. Although these new enemies were afterwards expelled, yet the war was protracted for some years, and ended disastrously for Poland. Charles Gustavus, the Swedish king, is said to have proposed the partition of the country; he offered Great Poland to the elector of Brandenburg, Little Poland to the duke of Transylvania, and a part of Lithuania to a Polish nobleman named Radziwitt. But Poland’s hour had not yet come. The elector of Brandenburg procured the release of East Prussia from all seignorial rights in 1657. Livonia was also another loss, having been ceded to Sweden in 1660. An army of Cossacks and Mongols, which had invaded Podolia, was defeated by the celebrated John Sobieski, who now first appears in history and was made commander-in-chief of the Polish troops. Worn out with age, and disgusted with his repeated failures, the king abdicated in 1668. At a previous diet he had warned his turbulent subjects that the partition of the kingdom must be the inevitable consequence of their dissensions. John Casimir had already been an ecclesiastic; he had been absolved from his vows by the pope when he became a candidate for the throne. He now resolved to betake himself again to the cloister,—his wife, Louise Marie, daughter of the duke of Nevers, a woman of beauty and spirit, being dead. He took his leave of the Poles in an affectionate and dignified address, which is still preserved, and has been pronounced by Coxe to be “the finest piece of pathetic eloquence that history has ever recorded.” There was something very touching in the fact that Jan Kazimiérz represented the last of the Jagieltos and Vasas, the former of whom had so long ruled over Poland. He was son, as previously mentioned, of Sigismund III., and great-grandson of Sigismund I., whose daughter Catherine had married John, king of Sweden. Connor says, “While 1 was at Warsaw I spoke with several old gentlemen, who told me that Casimir, the day after his resignation, observing the people hardly paid him the respect due to a gentleman, much less to a king, seemed to have repented heartily of the folly he had committed” (i. 135). He now returned to France, a country in which some years previously he had suffered a strange captivity, having been detained in the reign of Louis XIII. while passing its coasts; but the story is too long to be narrated in these pages. Here he became abbé of St Germain and St Martin, and drew his means of subsistence from these ecclesiastical foundations; for the Poles, although to all appearance abundantly moved by his melancholy rhetoric, refused to continue his pension. Nor does he appear to have spent the short remainder of his life entirely in the cloister, as we are told that he contracted a secret marriage with an amiable widow who had formerly been a laundress. He, however, survived only four years, dying in 1672, forgotten by the world but not forgetting it,—his disease, according to some accounts, being greatly aggravated by his receiving the intelligence that Kamenets in Podolia had been ceded to the Turks. His body was afterwards brought to Cracow and buried in the cathedral. The diet, which met on his abdication, passed a decree that for the future no Polish king should be allowed to abdicate. During this reign, in the year 1658, the Socinians were banished from Poland, in consequence of which Pope Alexander II. gave to the king and his successors on the Polish throne the title Rex Orthodoxus. In due time three candidates for the vacant throne made their appearance—the prince of Condé, the prince of Neuburg, supported by Louis XIV., and Charles of Lorraine, who was put forward by Austria. The first of these could rely upon the cooperation of the great Sobieski, but eventually none of the three was chosen. The election fell upon a native Pole—Prince Michael Korybut Wisniowiecki, of a noble family indeed, but so impoverished that he may be said to have had regal honours thrust upon him against his will, and we are even told that he was offered the crown half in derision. A graphic picture of this extraordinary scene is given in Pasek’s contemporary memoirs. Michael soon became a mere puppet in the hands of his turbulent subjects. His reign, however, was rendered illustrious by the great successes of Sobieski against the Turks, although the Poles suffered the loss of the important town of Kamenets, and Michael, powerless to make head against them, concluded the treaty of Buczacz, by which he even stipulated to pay them tribute. By the great victory of Khotin in 1673, Sobieski did much to repair these losses, and was about to follow up his glorious campaign when he heard of the death of Wisniowiecki at Lemberg in Galicia; so sudden was the end of Michael that some have even supposed that he was poisoned,—“by a Frenchman,” says Connor. The diet met at Warsaw; there were several candidates; and among others Charles of Lorraine and Philip of Neuburg again put forward their claims. While the nobles were still in session, Sobieski, fresh from his glorious victory, entered and proposed the prince of Condé. A stormy discussion ensued, and in the midst of it one of the nobles, Jablonowski, was heard to say, “Let a Pole rule over Poland.” The cry found a magic echo among those who were present, and the gallant Sobieski, the greatest of Polish generals, and one of the first soldiers of his time, was appointed king under the title of John III., although not without con-. siderable opposition from Michael Pac, the general-in-chief < of Lithuania, who was, however, ultimately induced to ' withdraw his protest. This king signed the same pacta conventa as the preceding monarchs; there was, however, a trifling addition made to them, but that a very absurd one. To the article declaring that offices should only be conferred on native nobles it was added, “and on such only as have had their honours during three generations.” The leading idea of Sobieski was to drive the Turks out of Europe, and if possible to resuscitate the Byzantine empire. He was soon roused to action by a new invasion of the Turks and Mongols, whose united armies are said to have amounted to 210,000 men, commanded by the Seraskier Ibrahim, whose ferocious character was sufficiently indicated by his soubriquet, Shaitan or Devil. We are told that Sobieski had only 10,000 men to oppose to this vast host; he, however, set out from Lemberg, and was soon hemmed in by his adversaries at Zurawno, in Galicia, but by consummate bravery and adroitness succeeded in rescuing himself and his soldiers, even concluding a treaty with the Porte on favourable terms, by which Poland received back a part of the Ukraine and Podolia.

Some years of peace followed, during which the king in vain endeavoured to raise supplies for an army to reconquer the provinces which Russia had appropriated. All his plans were neutralized by the absurd practice of the liberum veto. In 1683 the Turks made their grand invasion which they had long been preparing. After scouring the plains of Hungary, they advanced to the very walls of Vienna. The emperor Leopold at once fled with his court, but had great difficulty to avoid falling into the hands of the Mongols. The imperial party made no stay till it reached the Bavarian fortress of Passau. Quick in its track followed also the wealthier portion of the inhabitants; their selfish desertion aroused murmurs of disapprobation, and also considerably thinned the number of the population capable of bearing arms; many of these fugitives fell into the hands of the invaders, who were capable of any cruelty. The command of the city was taken by Count Stahremberg; he had already approved himself a brave soldier, and had been nominated to the post by the emperor. All classes at once—including even priests and women—laboured diligently at the fortifications, the burgomaster Von Liebenberg himself setting an excellent example. The imperial archives had al ready been removed; nothing now remained for the devoted city but to await the approach of the enemy. The inhabitants could see the desolated villages, and the fire and smoke of the burning cottages were conspicuous for miles around. At sunrise on July 14 the vast hordes of the invaders, a promiscuous crowd of soldiers, camp-followers, camels, and baggage-waggons made their appearance. The camp was arranged in the form of a crescent; splendid above all other things was the tent of the vizier, Kara Mustapha, made of green silk, worked with gold and silver, set with precious stones, and containing inside the holy standard of the prophet. Marvellous stories are told of the fountains, baths, gardens, and all the appliances of Oriental luxury which it contained. Many painful incidents characterized the siege before the arrival of Sobieski; a fire at one time broke out in the city, which was only suppressed with difficulty. Diseases raged among the townspeople owing to their being compelled to spend their days in such close quarters and to live chiefly upon salt meat. Relief, however, was rapidly approaching. The elector of Saxony, John George, marched out of Dresden on the 22d July with twelve thousand men and eighteen guns, and reached Krems on the 28th August. The Polish king, who had been solicited by the emperor himself, and to whom all Europe looked now as its saviour, left Cracow accompanied by his son, and succeeded in reaching the quarters of Prince Charles of Lorraine. He was to act in concert with a man who had been competitor with him for the Polish crown; their meeting passed off amicably, and no subsequent jealousies seem to have marred their operations. The Polish and German troops effected their junction at Krems on the Danube, near Vienna; there were about seventy-seven thousand men ready for active operations in the field. On the 12 th September, after mass, Sobieski descended from the city to encounter the dense masses of the Moslems in the plains below. He appeared with his hair partly shaven in the Polish fashion, and, although plainly attired himself, was accompanied by a brilliant retinue. In front went an attendant bearing the king’s arms emblazoned, and with him another who carried a plume on the point of his lance. On his left rode his son James, unfortunate in afterwards incurring the hatred of his mother, who perhaps prevented him from being elected to the throne of Poland; on his right was his old rival, Charles of Lorraine. Before the battle the king knighted his son and made a patriotic address to his troops, in which he told them that on that occasion they did not defend Vienna alone, but rather all Christendom, and that they were not fighting for an earthly sovereign but for the King of kings. The shouts of the soldiers bore to the enemy the dreaded name of Sobieski, familiar to them on many a well-fought field. He is said to have been provoked to give the order for battle by seeing Kara Mustapha, the Turkish commander, tranquilly taking coffee with his two sons in his splendid tent.

The assault was made simultaneously on the wings and centre of the enemy. The king himself dashed forward to the pasha’s tent, bearing down all opposition and repeating with a loud voice, “Non nobis, non nobis, Domine exercituum, sed nomini Tuo da gloriam.” “Allah !” said the Mongol khan, “the king is surely among them.” In spite of the bravery of the Turks they were overpowered by the élan of the Poles. Six pashas were slain, and the vizier fled with the remnant of his army. The booty taken was· immense. The details of the battle may be gathered from the interesting letters which Sobieski wrote to his wife in the Polish language. She was a Frenchwoman, daughter of Henri de la Grange, captain of the guard to Philip, duke of Orleans, and had been originally maid of honour to Louisa, queen of Wtadystaw IV., was then married to Count Zamoiski, and after his death became the wife of Sobieski. It is said that chiefly on her account the Polish king was induced to assist Austria. The selfish policy of Louis XIV. would have allowed this outpost of Christian Europe to be taken by the Turks, and he used all the secret springs of his diplomacy to divert Sobieski from his purpose. He had, however, given mortal offence to this ambitious woman in refusing the title of duke to her father. After the complete rout of the Moslem, Sobieski and his troops entered Vienna, and divine service was performed in the cathedral; a priest read aloud the text, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.” In spite of his success, the brave Pole was doomed to meet with ingratitude at the hands of the emperor Leopold, and through the selfishness of his own troops and the Lithuanian contingent, who seem to have been always at cross purposes with the Poles, he was not able to follow up his victory to its legitimate end.

The king, after this brilliant achievement, showed some inclination to be reconciled to Louis XIV., but the emperor succeeded in diverting him by holding out hopes of securing the government of Moldavia and Wallachia for his son. By the treaty of Moscow, which Sobieski concluded in 1686 with Sophia, the regent of Russia, Smolensk, Severia, Tchernigoff, and Kieff were definitely annexed to the latter country. The private life of Sobieski was embittered by family dissensions; he was very much under the influence of his wife, a woman of great beauty, but avaricious, fond of power, and revengeful. Thus the illustrious soldier had not peace in his own house, nor was he likely to meet with it in the stormy debates of the diet, several of which were broken off by the exercise of the liberum veto ; and so wearisome had his position become that he several times thought of abdicating, and the Austrian party (such was the gratitude he met with) sought to effect this. He finally sank under an accumulation of disorders, and expired on the 17th June 1696, at his favourite castle of Willanow. Many incidents of his death-bed have been recorded by Zatuski, the bishop of Ptock, which show that the king died ill at ease, being filled with the gravest apprehensions concerning the future of his country. The family is now extinct. With him sank the glory of Poland, which was rapidly hastening to its fall.

After a time the diet met as usual to elect the new sovereign. The three chief candidates were James Sobieski, the son of the late king; the prince of Condé, a nephew of Louis XIV.; and the elector of Saxony. The elector was appointed, and, in order to qualify for the throne, abjured Protestantism. In 1699, by the peace of Carlowitz, the Turks renounced all claim over the Ukraine and Podolia, but the king was foolish enough to allow himself to be drawn into a war with the Swedes, in consequence of which Cracow was taken in 1702. Charles XII. of Sweden became master of the country, and deposed the newly elected Frederick Augustus, in whose place was chosen Stanislaw Leszczynski, palatine of Posen, a man of benevolence and learning. AU the courts of Europe recognized this new king except the czar Peter, and when the latter defeated Charles at the battle of Poltava in 1709 Leszczynski was compelled to leave the country, and Augustus II., as he was styled, was restored. Stanislaw at the approach of the Russian troops retired to Lorraine, which he governed till his death at an advanced age. In this reign Poland lost Courland, which had long been one of its fiefs, but was now seized by the Russians and given by the empress Anne to her favourite Biren. The Dissidents, as the Protestants were called, were slowly decreasing in number, and in an émeute which occurred at Thorn in 1724 many were cruelly put to death. A little later, in 1733, a law was passed by which they were declared incapable of holding any office or enjoying any dignity. Augustus II. died at Warsaw in the last-mentioned year. He was a contemptible king, notorious for his private vices. At the instigation of many of the Poles, Stanislaw Leszczynski, who was now residing in Lorraine, and had become the father-in-law of Louis XV., was induced to return to Poland, and was elected king at Warsaw by a large majority. This election, however, was displeasing to Austria and Russia, who resolved to resist his pretensions and to secure the election of Frederick Augustus, the son of the late king. A Russian army arrived in the neighbourhood of Warsaw, and a party of the nobles opposed to the French influence proclaimed the Saxon. He accordingly swore to the pacta conventa, and was crowned king at Cracow in 1734. Meanwhile the unfortunate Stanislaw fled to Dantzic, where he hoped to hold out till assistance should arrive from France. The city, however, was obliged to capitulate after a siege of five months; and Stanislaw, after many adventures and narrow escapes, reached the Prussian dominions. In 1736 a diet of pacification was held at Warsaw, which was followed by a general amnesty. The condition of the country during this reign was deplorable, although Poland was engaged in no wars. Factions rent the government, and the peasantry, crushed and suffering, betook themselves to robbery and pillage. The king was a man of low tastes, and abandoned himself to pleasure. One of his favourite amusements was shooting dogs from the windows of his palace at Warsaw, in consequence of which dogs became very scarce in the city. He was too idle to learn a word of Polish, and left everything to the management of his minister Brühl. Frederick died on October 3, 1763, at Dresden, where he was buried. In 1764 Stanislaw August Poniatowski was elected king, chiefly through the machinations of the Russian empress Catherine. The new monarch was a man of refined manners and elegant mind, but weak, and a mere puppet in Muscovite hands. He caused the liberum veto to be abolished, but it was soon restored (in 1766), in consequence, it is said, of Russian influence, as the ruin of Poland had been resolved upon. In 1768 a few patriots met at the little town of Bar in Podolia, and formed what was called the Confederation of Bar, their object being to free the country from foreign influence. Among the members of this confederation were the Pulawskis (Casimir and Joseph), Joachim Potocki, and Adam Krasinski, bishop of Kamenets. Their military operations extended over all Poland and Lithuania, but the Russian troops stationed round the capital prevented the junction of the confederates with the national army. Moreover the confederates, whose number amounted to about eight thousand fighting men, were badly organized. In spite of a few trifling successes they saw their efforts gradually growing weaker. Nor did a bold attempt to carry off the king result in success. Their party speedily broke up, and Casimir Pulawski, one of the leading spirits, left the country and joined the Americans in their War of Independence, in which he soon afterwards perished. In consequence of the efforts of these patriots the pernicious liberum veto was put a stop to, though afterwards for a short time restored; but the partition of the country had already been secretly agreed upon by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The idea appears to have been first suggested by Frederick the Great. Μ. Rambaud, in his Histoire de la Russie, gives the following as the chief causes which led to the destruction of Poland, which, in addition, had always suffered from the want of natural frontiers :—

1. The national movement in Russia, which fostered the idea of recovering the provinces in the west which had formerly been Russian territory, and spoke a language but little differing from Russian. To this was to be added the fact that the majority of the inhabitants were members of the Greek Church. This feeling had already led to the conquest of some of the western provinces in the time of Alexis Mikhailovich as previously mentioned. Moreover, the members of the Greek Church were being constantly persecuted by the Jesuits, who had done so much mischief to the country.

2. The great desire of Prussia to become possessed of the lower part of the Vistula, with the towns of Thorn and Dantzic. A reason for Prussian interference was afforded by the Polish persecution of the “Dissidents,” as a sample of which the cruelties committed at Thorn may be cited.

3. The general political condition of Poland—an anachronism among the nations of Europe. They had become strong by centralized power and by harmonizing their governments with the spirit of the age. In Poland there was no middle class; for the trade in the towns was in the hands of foreigners, and especially Jews.

There were to be seen a proud nobility, the members of which were engaged in constant feuds among themselves, and far below them miserable serfs deprived of all political rights. There was no national spirit in the country, no sympathy between the nobility and peasantry. It was the Jews who chiefly busied themselves with commerce; they distributed the products, selling at the same time to the serfs and their masters, and preventing the two classes of the natives of the country to a great extent from coming into contact with each other. By their efforts the economic functions of every-day life were carried on, and yet they could not be considered a real part of the nation. In the moment of danger they were not at hand to bring together distinct classes and to establish a common bond of interest; the nation, thus consisting of men who did not understand each other, remained perplexed and divided. The peasants, who had at one time communal possession of the land, according to the old Slavonic custom, had long ago lost all their rights. Those Poles who struggled for liberty themselves were not willing to extend it to their unhappy serfs. Kosciuszko desired to see serfdom abolished; but the peasants who followed him only enjoyed their liberty during the war, and his decree of emancipation was so vaguely expressed that it was ineffectual It is strange to think that the real liberators of the peasant were the Russians, who in the revolt of 1863 gave him a portion of the land which he cultivated.

In 1772 Prussia took the palatinates of Malborg, Pomeria, and Warmia, Culm, except Dantzic and Thorn, and a part of Great Poland; Austria took Red Russia or Galicia, with a part of Podolia, Sandomir, and Cracow; and Russia took White Russia, with all the part beyond the Dnieper. The Poles were obliged to sanction this plundering of their country in a diet held in 1778. The only real benefit conferred on the nation by this diet was the introduction of a better system of education; the Jesuits were also suppressed, and their immense estates became national property. Although the country had been mutilated in this fashion, it yet enjoyed tranquillity for a short time, and even made some material progress. Thus some useful manufactures were introduced. In 1788 a remarkable diet was opened which lasted four years,—the longest on record, for the others had only endured a few days or a few weeks at most. At this many important changes were introduced, such as the amelioration of the condition of the burghers and peasants; but it was now too late. On this occasion the liberum, veto was decisively suppressed and the throne declared hereditary. The elector of Saxony, grandson of the wretched and incapable Augustus III., was declared the successor of Stanislaus. The Roman Catholic was to be the dominant religion, but the Dissidents were to be tolerated. The burghers were to send deputies to the diet on the same footing as the nobles. The peasants were not yet emancipated, but their condition was improved. The new constitution was finally promulgated on the 3d May 1791. The king and the two chambers took the oaths to preserve it. The country now seemed to breathe afresh, and to be established upon a new. basis. But the selfishness of the Polish nobles, who had always been the evil genius of the country, overturned all the arrangements. Among the most prominent non-contents was Felix Potocki, who was anxious to restore to the nobility the privileges they had lost by the new constitution. In concert with him were Francis Xavier Branicki and Severin Rzewuski, who sought the assistance of foreign powers, and especially Russia. These enemies of their country formed, in 1792, the Confederation of Targovica, and soon afterwards at their instigation Russian troops invaded Poland and Lithuania. The feeble king, Stanislaus Augustus, made no resistance; he signed the convention of Targovica, and the Russians occupied Warsaw. In 1793 another treaty of partition was signed, by which Prussia acquired the remainder of Great and a portion of Little Poland, and the Russian boundary was advanced to the centre of Lithuania and Volhynia. An insurrection now broke out under the leadership of Thaddeus Kosciuszko, which at first made head against the Prussians and Russians, who had invaded the country from all quarters: but the successes of the insurgents were stained by the murders committed by the popular party at Warsaw. Suwaroff now entered the country, and Kosciuszko was finally defeated and made prisoner at the battle of Maciejowice in 1794; there is no truth, however, in the assertion that he cried out on that occasion, “Finis Poloniae ”; this he always denied till the day of his death. After storming the suburb Praga, Suwaroff took Warsaw, and the city was sacked with great cruelty. The kingdom of Poland was now at an end, and the third division took place. Austria had Cracow, with the country between the Pilica, the Vistula, and the Bug; Prussia had the capital, with the territory as far as the Niemen; and the rest went to Russia. Stanislaus resigned the crown at Grodno on April 25, 1795; he was summoned to St Petersburg, where he is said to have endured many indignities from the emperor Paul, who never allowed him to remain seated in his presence. There he died in 1798.

Many of the Poles now entered foreign services, as, for instance, the legion which followed the fortunes of France; but the fate of these exiled patriots was often a sad one. Many perished on the burning sands of St Domingo. Many were killed in the famous expedition to Moscow. The Poles looked anxiously to the success of Napoleon. But all that the conqueror did for them was to form the duchy of Warsaw, consisting of six departments—Posen, Kalisz, Ptock, Warsaw, Lomza, and Bydgoszcz—with a population of more than two millions, which he united with Saxony.

A resettlement of Poland took place by the treaty of Vienna (1814). (1) Austria was to have Galicia and the salt-mines of Wieliczka. (2) Posen was to belong to Prussia. This power was also confirmed in what it had gained at the first partition. (3) The city and district of Cracow were to form an independent republic under the guarantee of the three powers. This historical town was annexed by Austria in 1846 in defiance of all international law. (4) The remainder of ancient Poland, comprising the chief parts of the recent grand-duchy of Warsaw (embracing a tract bounded by a line drawn from Thorn to near Cracow on the west, to the Bug and Niemen in the east), reverted to Russia, and was to form a constitutional kingdom subject to the czar. This constitution, considering the circumstances, was a very liberal one. Poland was to be governed by responsible ministers, a senate, and a legislative chamber. There were to be a national army under the national flag and a separate budget. Polish was to be the official language; personal liberty and the freedom of the press were also guaranteed. It was obvious from the first that it would be difficult to unite a country with such a liberal constitution to another still governed by a patriarchal despotism. Zajacek was named viceroy, and the grand-duke Constantine, brother of the emperor Alexander, took the command of the army.

The rebellions of the Poles in 1830 and 1863 more properly belong to Russian history; perhaps, however, a few facts connected with them may be appropriately introduced here.

Considering the delicate position of affairs in Russian Poland, things had worked fairly well. The impulse to the Polish revolution was undoubtedly given by the French. It was begun by some students, who hoped to seize the grand-duke Constantine at his residence, Belvedere, in the vicinity of Warsaw. In the evening of November 29, 1830, they accordingly proceeded to the palace, but did not succeed in capturing the grand-duke. The city, however, rose, the troops fraternized with the people, and the chief command was entrusted to General Chlopicki, a veteran of the wars of Napoleon. Early in 1831 a large Russian army, commanded by Diebitsch, advanced to reduce them to submission. Chlopicki laid down his dictatorship, but the Poles pursued the insurrection with vigour under the command of Prince Adam Czartoryski. They were disappointed in their hopes of assistance from foreign powers. On the 8th September Warsaw surrendered to Paskewitch, who had taken the command, Diebitsch having died of cholera (June 10th), and a few weeks afterwards the grand-duke Constantine died at Vitebsk. On February 26, 1832, Poland was declared a Russian province.

L No other outbreak occurred till 1863, but for some time previously the country had been disturbed. On the 29th November 1860, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the revolution of 1830, many political manifestations took place both in the churches and streets, and portraits of Kosciuszko and Kilinski, a patriot of the time of the last partition, were distributed. Some riots took place, and unfortunately several persons were killed. These proceedings were followed by concessions from the emperor Alexander, who established municipal institutions in Warsaw and the chief cities of the kingdom. The Russian czar was acting under the advice of Wielopolski, a Pole, who was appointed director of public instruction and worship. Riots, however, still continued, and in 1862 the grand-duke Constantine was named viceroy. On the night of January 15, 1863, a secret conscription was held, and the persons suspected of being most hostile to the Government were dragged from their beds and enlisted as soldiers. Immediately after this the insurrection broke out, which was directed by a secret committee (Rzad), the proceedings of which were as mysterious as those of the Fehmgerichte. Soon after bands of rebels began to make their appearance in the Polish forests. There were, however, no regular battles between the Russian troops and the Poles,—only guerilla fighting, in which the Poles, under the greatest disadvantages, showed splendid heroism. The secret emissaries of the revolutionary Government, armed with daggers, succeeded in putting to death many Russian spies—not the least memorable case being that of the Jew Hermani, stabbed while on the staircase of the Hôtel de l’Europe at Warsaw. On the other hand the chiefs of the insurgents captured were shot or hanged. Langiewicz held out for some time, but was defeated by the Russians, and succeeded in making his escape into Galicia. A reign of terror was inaugurated by General Mouravieff, and all attempts at reconciliation made by the great powers of Europe were useless. By May 1864 the rebellion was quite suppressed, and it will be seen by the results that it cost Poland dear. The kingdom of Poland now ceased to exist; it has been parcelled out into six governments. The Russian language was ordered to be used in all public documents instead of Polish, and the university of Warsaw has been Russified, all lectures now being delivered in that language.

We have not dwelt upon the terrible massacres of the Polish nobles by the peasants in Galicia in 1846, said to have been instigated by the Austrian Government. This province has been tolerably quiet since, but the Poles have to struggle with the large Ruthenian or Red-Russian population, speaking a different language, and adherents of the Greek Church or Uniates.

In Prussian Poland, though it is but fair to add that we hear no stories of massacres, the Germanization of the province has been more complete. Posen will soon be lost as a Polish town, and many historical places have had their names obliterated for such substitutes as Bismarcksdorf and Sedan.

Polish Litebatuee.

The Polish Language, according to the latest statistics, is still spoken by nearly ten millions of people, distributed, according to the Revue Slave (Warsaw, 1878, vol. i. p. 78), as follows:—in Russia, 4,640,000; in Austria, 2,444,200; in Prussia, 2,405,800; in Turkey, 10,000. It belongs to the western branch of the Slavonic tongues, and exhibits the closest affinities with the Czech or Bohemian and Lusatian Wendish (see Slavonic Languages). Unlike the people of other Slavonic countries, the Poles are comparatively poor in popular and legendary poetry, but such compositions undoubtedly existed in early times, as may be seen by the writings of their chroniclers; thus Gallus translated into Latin a poem written on Boleslaw the Brave, and a few old Polish songs are included in Wojcicki’s Library of Ancient Writers. A great deal of the early literature written in Poland is in Latin. The earliest specimen of the Polish language is the so-called Psalter of Queen Margaret, discovered in 1826 at the convent of St Florian. The date of the MS. appears to be the middle of the 14th century, and probably in its present form it is only a copy of a much older text; there is also a translation of the fiftieth psalm belonging to the 13th century. The ancient Polish hymn or war song, “Piesn Boga Rodzica,” was an address to the Virgin, sung by the Poles when about to fight. The oldest manuscript of this production is dated 1408, and is preserved at Cracow. By a legend which subsequently grew up the composition of it was assigned to St Adalbert. John Lodzia, bishop of Posen from 1335 to 1346, composed several religious songs in Latin.

The next monument of Polish literature to which we come is the Bible of Queen Sophia or Bible of Szarosz-patak. It is imperfect, and only contains the early books, viz., the Pentateuch, Joshua, Ruth, and Kings; there are, however, fragments of three others. It is said to have been written for Sophia, the fourth wife of Jagielto, about the year 1455. It has been edited with great care by Matecki. Five religious songs in Polish dating from the 15th century have been preserved; they are ascribed to Andrew Slopuchowski, prior of the monastery of the Holy Cross on Lysa Gôra. There is also the fragment of a hymn in praise of Wickliffe. To these fragments may be added the prayer book of a certain Waciaw, a sermon on marriage, and some Polish glosses. These are all the existing memorials of the Polish language before the 16th century.

Perhaps a few words should be said concerning the writers in Latin. Martin Gallus lived in Poland between 1110 and 1135. From his name he has been supposed by some to have been a Frenchman, and we must remember that Poland swarmed at that time with foreign ecclesiastics. Lelewel, the Polish historian, considers that it is merely a translation into Latin of some such name as Kura, signifying “a fowl.” Others suppose him to have been an Italian, or a monk from the convent of St Gall in Switzerland. He has plenty of legends to tell us, and writes altogether in a poetical style, so that his prose seems to fall into rhythm unconsciously. His quotations from the classics, Sallust, Lucan, and others, show the extent of his reading. Gallus was followed by Matthew Cholewa and Vincent Kadlubek, two bishops of Cracow, and Bogufal or Boguchwal (Gottlob), bishop of Posen, who all used Latin. The work of Kadlubek is more ornate in diction than that of Bogufal and for a long time enjoyed great popularity. He was born in 1160, educated at the university of Paris, and died in Poland in 1223, as a Cistercian monk. His Latin, like that of Gallus, is far from classical, but he writes with spirit and throws a good deal of light upon the events of his time. The education of the country was wholly in the hands of the ecclesiastics, many of whom were foreigners. In this way we must explain the great prevalence of the Latin language. Such a system would be sure to stifle all national outgrowth, and accordingly we have among the

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Poles none of those early monuments of the language which other countries boast. For instance, there are no bîlinî or legendary poems, such as are found among the Russians, although many passages in the ancient chroniclers from their poetical colouring seem to be borrowed from old songs or legends, and the first verses of some of these compositions have been preserved. Mention may here be made of other chroniclers such as Martin the Pole (Polonus), who died in 1279 or 1280, and Jan of Czarnkow, who died in 1389; the latter was the historian and panegyrist of Kazimiérz the Great. With the reign of Kazimierz III. (1333-1370) must be associated the statutes of Wislica. Jadwiga, the wife of Jagielto, was mainly instrumental in creating the university of Cracow, which was not founded, however, till 1400. In this institution for many years all the great men of Poland were trained—among others Gregory of Sanok, Dlugosz, and Copernicus. Kazimiérz the Great may be said to have laid the foundation of this university. Having obtained the consent of Pope Urban V., he established at Cracow a studium, generale on the model of the university of Bologna. It consisted of three faculties—Roman law, medicine, and philosophy. But the aristocratic youth still preferred frequenting the universities of Prague, Padua, and Paris, and accordingly the newly-founded studium languished. Jadwiga, however, obtained from Boniface IX. permission to create a new chair, that of theology; and the university of Cracow was remodelled, having been reorganized on the same basis as that of Paris. Another university was founded later at Vilna by Batory, and one at Zamoéé by the chancellor Zamoiski. There were also good schools in various places, such as the Collegium Lubranskiego of Posen and the school of St Mary at Cracow. In the year 1474 a press was set up in the latter city, where Giinther Zainer printed the first book. The first press from which books in the Polish language appeared was that of Hieronymus Wietor, a Silesian, who commenced publishing in 1515. A few fragments printed in Polish had appeared before this, as the Lord’s Prayer in the statutes of the bishops of Breslau in 1475, the story of Pope Urban in Latin, German, and Polish in 1505, &c.; but the first complete work in the Polish language appeared from the press of this printer at Cracow in 1521, under the title Speeches of the Wise King Solomon. The translation was executed by Jan Koszycki, as the printer informs us in the preface, and the work is dedicated to Anna Wojnicka, the wife of a castellan. In 1522, a Polish translation of Ecclesiastes appeared from that press, and before the conclusion of that year The Life of Christ, with woodcuts, translated into Polish by Balthasar Opec. Many other presses were soon established. Printers of repute at Cracow, during the 16th and beginning of the 17 th century, were Sybeneicher and Piotrkowczyk.

Little as yet had been produced in Polish, as the chroniclers still adhered to Latin; and here mention must be made of Jan Dlugosz, who called himself Longinus. He was bishop of Lemberg, the capital of Galicia, and has left us a very valuable history which has merits of style and shows considerable research. So anxious was Dlugosz to make his work as perfect as he could that he learned Russian so as to be able to read the Chronicle of Nestor. The best part of his book is that which treats of the period between 1386 and 1480. About 1500 was written an interesting little work entitled “Memoirs of a Polish Janissary” {Pamietniki Ianczara Polak a). Although written in the Polish language, it was probably the production of a Serb, Michael Konstantinovich of Ostro-vitza. He was taken prisoner by the Turks in 1455 and served ten years among the Janissaries, after which he escaped into Hungary. About this time also flourished Nicholas Copernicus, a native of Thorn, one of the few Poles who have made themselves known beyoud the limits of their country.

The Poles call the period between 1548 and 1606 their golden age. Poland was the great land of eastern Europe, and owing to the universal toleration encouraged by the Government Protestantism was widely spread. Many of the chief nobility were Calvinists, and the Socini came to reside in the country. All this, however, was to pass away under the great Jesuit reaction. At Rakow in Poland was published the catechism of the Socinian doctrines in 1605. The Jesuits made their appearance in Poland in 1564, and soon succeeded in getting the schools of the country into their hands. Besides extirpating the various sects of Protestants, they also busied themselves with destroying the Greek Church in Lithuania. Latin poetry was cultivated with great success by Clement Janicki (1516-1543), but the earliest poet of repute who wrote in Polish is Rej of Nagtowice (1505-69). After a somewhat idle youth he betook himself to poetry. He was a Protestant, and among other religious works translated the Psalms. His best work was Zwierciadio albo zywot Poczciwego Cdowieka (“The Mirror or Life of an Honourable Man”),—a somewhat tedious didactic piece. He was also the author of a kind of play—a mystery we may term it, and productions of this sort seem to have been common in Poland from a very early time—entitled Life of Joseph in Egypt. This piece is interesting merely from an antiquarian point of view; there is but little poetry in it. It teems with anachronisms; thus we have mention of the mass and organs, and also of a German servant.

Jan Kochanowski (1530-1584), called the prince of Polish poets, came of a poetical family, having a brother, a cousin, and a nephew who all enriched the literature of their country with some productions. Kochanowski studied for some time at the university of Padua, and also resided in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Ronsard, then one of the most, celebrated poets. He exercised his talents in various ways; thus he has left The Game of Chess, an imitation of Vida, and Proporzec albo Hold Pruski (“The Standard or Investiture of Prussia ”), where he describes the fealty done by Albert of Brandenburg to Sigismund Augustus. He also wrote the first regular, play, and executed a translation of the Psalms. The title of his play—a piece of one act, with twelve scenes—is The Despatch of the Greek Ambassadors. It is written in rhymeless five-foot iambics, and is altogether a product of the Renaissance, reminding us of some of the productions of George Buchanan. Rhyme is employed in the choruses only. It was acted on the marriage of the chancellor Jan Zamoiski with Christine Radziwitt, in the presence.of King Stephen and his wife, at Ujazdowo near Warsaw, in 1578. The poet’s most popular work, however, is his Treny or “Lamentations,” written on the death of his daughter Ursula. These beautiful elegies have been justly praised by Mickiewicz; they are enough to raise Kochanowski far above the level of a merely artificial poet. Besides poems in Polish, he also wrote some in Latin. It will be observed that we get this double-sided authorship in many Polish writers. They composed for an exclusive and learned circle, certainly not for the Jew, the German trader of the town, or the utterly illiterate peasant. It may be said with truth of Kochanowski that, although the form of his poetry is classical and imitated from classical writers, the matter is Polish, and there is much national feeling in what he has left us. Mention must also be made of his epigrams, which he styled “Trifles ” (Fraszki); they are full of spirit and geniality. Stanislaus Grochowski (1554-1612) was a priest; but his poetry is of little merit, although he was celebrated in his time as a writer of panegyrics. His satire Babie Kolo (f The Women’s Circle ”) gave offence on account of its personalities. A great partisan of the Catholics in the time of Sigismund III. was Caspar Miaskowski, whose Waleta Wloszczonowska (“Farewell to his Native Country”) deserves mention. Szarzynski, who died young in 1581, deserves notice as having introduced the sonnet to the Poles. This species of poetry was afterward to be carried to great perfection by Mickiewicz and Gaszynski.

Szymonowicz (1554-1624) was a writer of good pastorals. Although they are imitated from classical writers, he has introduced many scenes of national life, which he describes with much vigour. Among the best are “The Lovers,” “The Reapers,” and “The Cake” (Koiacz). Mickiewicz is very loud in his praise, and considers him one of the best followers of Theocritus. The condition, however, of the Polish peasants was too miserable to admit of their being easily made subjects for bucolic poetry. There is an artificial air about the idyls of Szymonowicz which makes one feel too keenly that they are productions of the Renaissance; one of their best features is the humane spirit towards the miserable peasantry which they everywhere display. Another excellent writer of pastorals was Zimorowicz, a native of Lemberg, who died at the early age of twenty-five. Some of his short lyrics are very elegant, and remind us of Herrick and Carew,— e,g., that beginning “Ukochana Lancelloto! Ciebie nie proszç o ztoto.” Another writer of pastorals, but not of equal merit, was Jan Gawinski, a native of Cracow. Some good Latin poetry was written by Casimir Sarbiewski, better known in the west of Europe as Sarbievius (d. 1640). He was considered to have approached Horace more nearly than any other modern poet, and a gold medal was given him by Pope Urban VIII. Martin Kromer (1512-1589) wrote a history of Poland in thirty books, and another volume, giving a description of the country and its institutions,—both in Latin. The history is written in an easy style and is a work of great merit. A poet of some importance was Klonowicz (1545-1602), who Latinized his name into Acernus, Klon being the Polish for maple, and wrote in both Latin and Polish. Sometimes he is descriptive, as in his Polish poem entitled Flis (“ The Boatman ”), in which he gives a detailed account of the scenery on the banks of the Vistula. There is some poetry in this composition, but it alternates with very prosaic details. In another piece, Ehoxolania, in Latin, he describes the beauties of Galicia. Occasionally he is didactic, as in Worek Judaszow (“ The Bag of Judas”) and Victoria Deorum, where, under the allegory of the gods of Olympus, he represents the struggles of parties in Poland, not without severely satirizing the nobility and ecclesiastics. A curious work called Quincunx, written by Orzechowski, is concerned with religious polemics. Andrew Modrzewski, a Protestant, in his work De Kepublica Emendanda (1551), recommended the establishment of a national church which should be independent of Rome, something upon the model of the Anglican.

A florid Jesuitical style of oratory became very popular in the time of Sigismund III., not without rhetorical power, but frequently becoming tawdry. The chief representative of this school was Peter Skarga, one of the main agents in extirpating Calvinism in Poland and the Greek Church in Lithuania. Among his numerous writings may be mentioned Lives of the Saints, Discourses on the Seven Sacraments, and especially his sermons preached before the diet, in which he lashed the Poles for their want of patriotism and prophesied the downfall of the country. Mecherzynski, in his “History of Eloquence in Poland” {Hixtorya Wymowy w Polsce), especially praises his two funeral sermons on the burial of Anna Jagieltonka, widow of Stephen Batory, and Anna of Austria, first wife of

Sigismund HI. Besides the Latin histories of Wapowski and Gwagnin (Guagnini, of Italian origin), we have the first historical work in Polish by Martin Bielski, a Protestant, viz., Kronika Polska, which was afterwards continued by his son. The author was born in 1495 on his father’s estate, Biata, and was educated, like so many other of his illustrious contemporaries, at the university of Cracow. He lived to the age of eighty; but, however great were the merits of his Chronicle, it was long considered a suspicious book on account of the leanings of the author to Calvinism. After his death his work was continued by his son Joachim (1540-1599). There is also a Chronicle by Bartholomew Paprocki. In 1582 was also published the Chronicle of Stryjkowski, full of curious learning, and still of great use to the student of history. Five years later appeared the Annales Polonix of Sarnicki. The last three works are in Latin.

A few words may be said here about the spread of Protestantism in Poland, which is so intimately mixed up with the development of the national language. The doctrines of Huss had entered the country in very early times, and we find Polish recensions of Bohemian hymns; even the hymn to the Virgin previously mentioned is supposed to have a Czech basis. The bishops were soon active against those who refused to conform to the doctrines of the Roman Church. Thus we find that Bishop Andrew of Bnin seized five Hussite priests and caused them to be burnt in the market of Posen in 1439. A hundred years afterwards a certain Katharina Malcher, on account of her Utraquist opinions, was condemned by Gamrat, the bishop of Cracow, to be burnt, which sentence was accordingly carried out in the ragmarket at Cracow. As early as 1530 Lutheran hymns were sung in the Polish language at Thorn. In Königsberg John Seklucyan, a personal friend of Luther, published a collection of Christian Songs. He was born in Great Poland, and was at first a Roman Catholic priest in Posen, but afterwards embraced the Protestant faith and was invited by Duke Albert as a preacher to Königsberg, where he died in 1578. He executed the first translation of the New Testament in 1551. Four years afterwards appeared a complete Polish Bible published by Scharffenberg at Cracow. In 1553 appeared at Brzesé the Protestant translation of the whole Bible made by a committee of learned men and divines, and published at the expense of Nicholas Radziwitt, a very rich Polish magnate who had embraced the Protestant doctrines. This book is now of great rarity because his son Christopher, having been induced to become a Roman Catholic by the Jesuit Skarga, caused all copies of his father’s Bible which he could find to be burnt. One, however, is to be seen in the Bodleian Library, and another in the library of Christ Church, at Oxford. A Socinian Bible was issued by Simon Budny in 1570 at Nieéwiez, as he professed to find many faults in the version issued under the patronage of Radziwill; in 1597 appeared the Roman Catholic version of the Jesuit Wujek; and in 1632 the so-called Dantzic Bible, which is in use among Protestants and is still the most frequently reprinted.

Up to this time Polish literature, although frequently rhetorical and too much tinctured with classical influences, had still exhibited signs of genius. But now, owing to the frivolous studies introduced by the Jesuits, the so-called macaronic period supervened, which lasted from 1606 to 1764, and was a time of great degradation for the language and literature. The former was now mixed with Latin and classical expressions; much of the literature consists of fulsome panegyric, verses written on the marriages and funerals of nobles, with conceits and fantastic ideas, devoid of all taste, drawn from their coats of arms. The poets of this period are, as may be imagined, in most cases mere rhymsters; there are, however, a few whose names are worth recapitulating, such as Waclaw Potocki (c. 1622-c. 1696), now known to have been the author of the Wojna Chocimska, or “War of Khotin,” the same campaign which afterwards formed the subject of the epic of Krasicki. At first the author was supposed to have been Andrew Lipski, but the real poet was traced by the historian Szajnocha. The epic, which remained in manuscript till 1850, is a genuine representation of Polish life; no picture so faithful appeared till the Pan Tadeusz of Mickiewicz. Moreover Potocki had the good taste to avoid the macaronic style so much in vogue; his language is pure and vigorous. He does not hesitate to introduce occasionally satirical remarks on the luxury of the times, which he compares, to its disadvantage, with the simplicity of the old Polish life. There is also another poem attributed to Potocki called the New Mercury. In one passage he censures King Michael for ceding Podolia to the Turks. Samuel Twardowski (1600-1660) was the most prolific poet of the period of the Vasas. His most important poem is Wladyslaw IV., King of Poland, in which he sings in a very bombastic strain the various expeditions of the Polish monarch. A bitter satirist appeared in the person of Christopher Opalinski (1609-1656). His works were published under the title of Juvenalis Redivivus, and, although boasting but little poetical merit, give us very curious pictures of the times. Vespasian Kochowski (born between 1630 and 1633, died in 1699) was a soldier-poet, who went through the campaigns against the Swedes and Cossacks; he has left several books of lyrics full of vivacity. Another poet was Andrew Morsztyn (born about 1620, died about the commencement of the 18th century), an astute courtier, who was finance minister (podskdrbι) under John Casimir, and was a devoted adherent of the French party at court, in consequence of which, in the reign of Sobieski, he was compelled to leave his native country and settle in France (see p.290). His poems are elegant and free from the conceits and pedantry of the earlier writers. In fact, he introduced into Poland the easy French manner of such writers as Voiture. He translated the Cid of Corneille, and wrote a poem on the subject of Psyche, based upon the well-known Greek myth. History in the macaronic period made a backward step: it had been written in the Polish language in the golden age; it was now again to take a Latin form, as in the Chronica Gestarum in Europa Singularium of the ecclesiastic Paul Piasecki (1580-1649), who is an authority for the reigns of Sigismund III. and Wtadystaw IV., and Rudawski, who describes events from the accession of John Casimir to the peace of 01iwa (1648-1660); and as valuable materials for history may be mentioned the five huge volumes of Andrew Chrysostom Zatuski (1711), bishop of Warmia. This work is entitled Epistolae Historico-Familiares. It would be impossible to recapitulate here the great quantity of material in the shape of memoirs which has come down, but mention must be made of those of John Chrysostom Pasek, a nobleman of Masovia, who has left us very graphic accounts of life and society in Poland; after a variety of adventures and many a well-fought battle, he returned to the neighbourhood of Cracow, where he died between 1699 and 1701. Some of the most characteristic stories illustrating Polish history are drawn from this book. A later period, that of the miserable epoch of Augustus III., is described very graphically in the memoirs of Matuszewicz, first edited by Pawinski at Warsaw in 1876. Relating to the same period are also the memoirs of Bartholomew Michalowski (Pamιetniki Bartlomieja Michalowskiegd). A curious insight into the course of education which a young Polish nobleman underwent is furnished by the instructions which James Sobieski, the father of the celebrated John, gave to Orcho wski the tutor of his sons. This has been twice printed in comparatively recent times (Instrukcya Jakoba Sobieskiego kasztelana Krakowskiego dana panu Orchowskiemu ze strong synôw, Vilna, 1840). The old gentleman in his aristocratic imperiousness frequently reminds us of the amusing directions given by Sir John Wynne to his chaplain, quoted in Pennant’s Tour in Wales.

A History of the Lithuanians in Latin was published by the Jesuit Koiatowicz; the first volume appeared at Dantzic in 1650. A valuable work on the condition of Poland was written by Stanislaw Leszczynski, who was twice chosen king, entitled Glos wolny wolnoéé ubezpieczajgcg (“A Free Voice Guaranteeing Freedom”), where he tells the Poles some homely and perhaps disagreeable truths illustrating the maxim Summa libertat etiam perire volentibus.

A notable man was Joseph Andrew Zatuski, bishop of Kieff, a Pole who had become thoroughly Frenchified,—so much so that he preached in French to the fashionable congregations of Warsaw. He collected a splendid library of about 300,000 volumes and 15,000 manuscripts, which he bequeathed to the Polish nation; but it was afterwards carried off to St Petersburg, where it formed the foundation of the imperial public library. According to Nitschmann in his Geschichte der Polnischen Litteratur— a work which has been of service in the preparation of this article—the books were transported to Russia very carelessly, and many of them injured by the way. It was especially rich in works relating to Polish history. Kon-arski edited in six volumes a valuable work entitled Volumina Legum, containing a complete collection of Polish laws from the time of the statute of Wislica. He did much good also in founding throughout the country schools for the education of the sons of the upper classes, but as yet nothing had been done for popular education properly so-called. About the close of this period we have some valuable writers on Polish history, which now began to be studied critically, such as Hartknoch in his Alt- und Neues Preussen (1684), a work in which are preserved interesting specimens of the old Prussian language, and Lengnich (1689-1774), author of the valuable Jus Publicum Regni Poloniae, which appeared in 1742.

We now come to the reign of the last Polish king, Stanislaw Poniatowski, and the few quiet years before the final division of the country, during which the French taste was all-powerful. This is the second great period of the development of Polish literature, which has known nothing of mediaeval romanticism. The literature of the first or Renaissance period gives us some good poets, who although occasionally imitators are not without national feeling, and a goodly array of chroniclers, most of whom made use of Latin. In the second or French period we get versemakers rather than poets, who long to be Frenchmen, and sigh over the barbarism of their country; but the study of history in a critical spirit is beginning under the influence of Naruszewicz, Albertrandi, and others. In the third period, that of modern romanticism, we get true nationalism, but it is too often the literature of exile and despair. Here may be mentioned, although living a little time before the reign of Stanislaw, a Polish poetess, Elizabeth Druzbacka (1695-1760), whose writings show a feeling for nature at a time when verse-making of the most artificial type was prevalent throughout the country. The portrait prefixed to the Leipsic edition of her works is a striking one, representing a handsome, intellectual-looking woman, dressed in the garb of some religious order. Her Life of David in verse appears tedious, but many of the descriptions in the Seasons are elegant. Unfortunately she introduces Latinisais, so that her Polish is by no means pure. A national theatre was founded at Warsaw in 1765 under the influence of the court, but it was not till long afterwards that anything really national connected with the drama appeared in Poland. Thomas Kajetan Wçgierski, who was chamberlain to the king, enjoyed a considerable reputation among his countrymen for his satirical writing. He was a kind of Polish Churchill, and like his English parallel died young (1755-1787). His life also appears to have been as irregular as Churchill’s. In consequence of an attack on the empress of Russia, he was compelled to leave Poland, and accordingly made a tour in Italy, France, America, and England, dying at Marseilles at the early age of thirty-three. His poetry shows the influence of the French taste, then prevalent throughout Europe. In times of great national disasters he deserves to be remembered as a true patriot; but the spirit of his poetry is altogether unwholesome. It is the wailing cry of a moribund nation. The great laureate of the court of Stanislaus was Trembecki (1722-1812), whose sympathies were too much with the Russian invaders of his country. He was little more than a fluent poetaster, and is now almost forgotten. One of his most celebrated pieces was Zofjou>ka, written on the country seat of Felix Potocki, a Polish magnate, for this was the age of descriptive as well as didactic poetry. Perhaps the English gave the hint in such productions as “Cooper’s Hill.” The old age of Trembecki appears to have been ignoble and neglected; he had indeed “fallen upon evil days and evil tongues”; and when he died at an advanced age all the gay courtiers of whom he had been the parasite were either dead or had submitted to the Muscovite yoke. He comes before us as a belated epicurean, whose airy trifles cannot be warbled in an atmosphere surcharged with tempests and gunpowder. The end of the 18th century was not the period for a court poet in Poland.

The most conspicuous poet, however, of the time was Ignatius Krasicki, bishop of Warmia (1735-1801). He was the friend of Frederick the Great and a prominent member of the king’s literary club at Sans Souci. Krasicki wrote an epic on the war of Khotin,—the same as had furnished the subject of the poem of Potocki, of which Krasicki in all probability had never heard, and also that of the Dalmatian Gunduli<S. Krasicki’s poem is at best but a dull affair, in fact a pale copy of a poor original, the Henriade oi Voltaire. His mock heroics are, to say the least, amusing, and among these may be mentioned Myszeis, where he describes how King Popiel, according to the legend, was eaten up by rats. His Monacho r nιaclιιa is in six cantos, and is a satire upon the monks. The bishop was also the writer of some pretty good comedies. In fact most styles of composition were attempted by him,—of course satires and fables among the number. He presents himself to us much more like a transplanted French abbé than a Pole. In the year 1801 he travelled to Berlin, and died there after a short illness. Among his other works the bishop published in 1781-82 in two volumes a kind of encyclopaedia of belles lettres entitled Zbiôr Wiadomosci. His estimates of various great poets are not very accurate. Of course he finds Shakespeare a very “incorrect” author, although he is willing to allow him considerable praise for his vigour. Another bishop-poet was Adam Naruszewicz. The existence of so many ecclesiastical writers was a natural feature in Polish literature; they formed the only really cultured class in the community, which consisted besides of a haughty ignorant nobility living among their serfs, and (at a vast distance) those serfs themselves, in a brutalized condition. Burghers there were, properly speaking, none, for most of the citizens in the large towns were foreigners governed by the Jus Magdeburgicum. Naruszewicz has not the happy vivacity of Krasicki; he attempts all kinds of poetry, especially satire and fable. He is at best but a mediocre poet; but he has succeeded better as a historian, and especially to be praised is his “History of the Polish Nation” (Historya Narodu Polskiego), which, however, he was not able to carry further than the year 1386. He also wrote an account of the Polish general Chodkiewicz and translated Tacitus and Horace. Interesting memoirs have been published by Kilinski, a Warsaw shoemaker, and Kosmian, state referendary, who lived about this time and saw much of the War of Independence and other political affairs. Among the smaller poets of this period may be mentioned Karpifiski (1741-1828), a writer of sentimental elegies in the style then so very much in fashion, and Kniaznin, who nourished his muse on classical themes and wrote some odes; but his poetry is not of a high order. He was the court poet of Prince Adam Czartoryski at Pulawy, and furnished odes in commemoration of all the important events which occurred in the household. He lost his reason on the downfall of Poland, and died after eleven years’ insanity in 1807. Julian Ursin Niemcewicz (1757— 1841) was one of the most popular of Polish poets at the commencement of the present century (see Niemcewicz). His.most popular work is the “Collection of Historical Songs” (Spiewy Historyczne'), where he treats of the chief heroes of Polish history. Besides these he wrote one or two good plays, and a novel in letters, on the story of two Jewish lovers. John Paul Woronicz (1757-1829) born in Volhynia, and at the close of his life bishop of Warsaw and primate of Poland, was a very eloquent divine, and has been called the modern Skarga. A valuable worker in the field of Slavonic philology was Linde, the author of an excellent Polish dictionary in six volumes. For a long time the cultivation of Polish philology was in a low state, owing to the prevalence of Latin in the 17th century and French in the 18th. No Polish grammar worthy of the name appeared till that of Kopczynski at the close of the 18th century, but the reproach has been taken away in modern times by the excellent works of Matecki and Malinowski. Rakowiecki, who edited the Rousskaia Pravda, and Macieiowski (who died in 1883, aged ninety), author of a valuable work on Slavonic law, may here be mentioned. Here we have a complete survey of all the leading codes of Slavonic jurisprudence. At a later period (in 1856) appeared the work of Helcel, Starodawne prawa polskiego pomniki (“ Ancient Memorials of Polish Law”). Aloysius Felinski (1771-1820) produced an historical tragedy, Barbara Radziwill, and some good comedies were written by Count Alexander Fredro (1793- 1876). In fact Fredro may be considered the most entertaining writer for the stage which Poland has produced. He introduced genuine comedy among his countrymen. The influence of Moliere can be very clearly seen in his pieces; his youth was spent chiefly in France, where he formed one of the soldiers of the Polish legion of Napoleon and joined in the expedition to Russia. His first production was Pan Geldhab, written in 1819 and produced at Warsaw in 1821. From 1819 to 1835 he wrote about seventeen pieces and then abandoned publishing, having taken offence at some severe criticisms. At his death he left several comedies, which were issued in a posthumous edition. There is a good deal of local colouring in the pieces of Fredro; although the style is French, the characters are taken from Polish life. From him may be said to date the formation of anything like a national Polish theatre, so that his name marks an epoch. The Poles, like many of the other nations of Europe, had religious plays at an early period. They were originally performed in churches; but, Pope Innocent III. finding fault with this arrangement, the acting was transferred to churchyards. Mention has already been made of plays written by Rej and Kochanowski; they are mere fruits of the Renaissance, and cannot in any way be considered national. The wife of John Casimir, a Frenchwoman, Marie Louise, hired a troop of French actors and first familiarized the Poles with something which resembled the modern stage. The Princess Franciszka Radziwitt composed plays which were acted at her private residence, but they are spoken of as inartistic and long and tedious. The national theatre was really founded in the reign of Stanislaus Augustus; and good plays were produced by Bohomolec, Kaminski, Kropiiiski, Boguslawski, Zablocki, and others. Perhaps, however, with the exception of the works of Fredro, the Poles have not produced anything of much merit in this line. A great statesman and writer of the later days of Polish nationality was Koltataj, born at Sandomir in 1750. He was a man of liberal sentiments, and, had his plans been carried out, Poland might have been saved. He wished to abolish serfdom and throw open state employments to all. The nobility, however, were too infatuated to be willing to adopt these wise measures. Like the French aristocrats with the reforms of Necker, they would not listen till ruin had overtaken them. During the last war of Poland as an independent country Koltataj betook himself to the camp of Kosciuszko, but when he saw that there was no longer hope he went to Galicia, but was captured by the Austrians and imprisoned at Olmiitz till 1803. He died in 1812. An active co-operator with Koltataj was Salesius Jezierski, who founded clubs for the discussion of political questions, and Stanislaus Staszic, who did much for education and improved the condition of the university of Warsaw.

The reputation of all preceding poets in Poland was now destined to be thrown into the shade by the appearance of Mickiewicz (1798-1855), the great introducer of romanticism into the country (see Mickiewicz). Poland, as has been said before, is not rich in national songs and legendary poetry, in which respect it cannot compare with its sister Slavonic countries Russia and Servia. Collections have appeared, however, by Wactaw Zaleski, who writes under the pseudonyms of Wactaw z Oleska, Wojcicki, Roger, Zegota Pauli, and especially Oskar Kolberg. Poland and Lithuania, however, abounded with superstitions and legends which only awaited the coming poet to put them into verse. In the year 1851 Romuald Zienkie-wicz published Songs of the People of Pinsk, and collections have even appeared of those of the Kashoubes, a remnant of the Poles living near Dantzic. Mickiewicz had had a predecessor, but of far less talent, Casimir Brodzinski (1791-1835). He served under Napoleon in the Polish legion, and has left a small collection of poems, the most important being the idyl Wieslaw, in which the manners of the peasants of the district of Cracow are faithfully portrayed. The second great poet of the romantic school who appeared in Poland after Mickiewicz was Julius Stowacki (1809-1849), born at Krzemieniec. In 1831 he left his native country and chose Paris as his residence, where he died. His writings are full of the fire of youth, and show great beauty and elegance of expression. We can trace in them the influence of Byron and Victor Hugo. He is justly considered one of the greatest of the modern poets of Poland. His most celebrated pieces are Hugo; Mnich (“The Monk ”); Lambro, a Greek corsair, quite in the style of Byron; Anhelli, a very Dantesque poem expressing under the form of an allegory the sufferings of Poland; Krol Duck ( u The Spirit King ”), another mysterious and allegorical poem; Wactaw, on the same subject as the Marya, of Malczewski, to be afterwards noticed; Beniowski, a long poem in ottava rima on this strange adventurer, something in the style of Byron’s humorous poems; Kordyan, of the same school as the English poet’s Manfred·, LUla Weneda, a poem dealing with the early period of Slavonic history. The life of Stowacki has been published by Professor Anton Matecki in two volumes.

Mickiewicz and Stowacki were both more or less mystics, but even more we may assign this characteristic to Sigismund Krasiιiski, who was born in 1812 at Paris, and died there in 1859. It would be impossible to analyse here his extraordinary poem Nieboska Komedja (“The Undivine Comedy”), Irydion, and others. In them Poland, veiled under different allegories, is always the central figure. They are powerful poems written with great vigour of language, but enveloped in clouds of mysticism. The life of Krasiιiski was embittered by the fact that he was the son of General Vincent Krasinski who had become unpopular among the Poles by his adherence to the Russian Government; the son wrote anonymously in consequence, and was therefore called “The Unknown Poet.” Among his latest productions are his “Psalms of the Future” (Psalmy Przysztoscï), which were attacked by the democratic party as a defence of aristocratic views which had already ruined Poland. His friend Slowacki answered them in some taunting verses, and this led to a quarrel between the poets. One of the most striking pieces of Krasinski has the title “Resurrecturis.” The sorrows of his country and his own physical sufferings have communicated a melancholy tone to the writings of Krasinski, which read like a dirge, or as if the poet stood always by an open grave—and the grave is that of Poland. He must be considered as, next to Mickiewicz, the greatest poet of the country. Other poets of the romantic school of considerable merit were Gorecki, Witwicki, Odyniec, and Gaszynski; the last-named wrote many exquisite sonnets, which ought alone to embalm his name. Witwicki (1800-1847) was son of a professor at Krzemieniec. He was a writer of ballads and poems dealing with rural life, which enjoyed great popularity among his countrymen and had the good fortune to be set to music by Chopin. The historical works of Lelewel have already .had separate mention (see Lelewel) ; but here may be specified the labours of Narbutt, Dzieje Starozytne Narodu Litewskiego (“Early History of the Lithuanian People”), published at Vilna in nine volumes, and the valuable Monumenta Poloniae Historica, edited at Lemberg by Bielowski, of which four volumes have appeared, containing reprints of most of the early chroniclers. Bielowski died in 1876.

A further development of romanticism was the so-called Ukraine school of poets, such as Malczewski, Goszczynski, and Zaleski. Anton Malczewski (1793-1826), who died at the early age of thirty-three, wrote one poem, Marya, which passed unnoticed at the time of its publication, but after its author’s death became very popular. Malczewski led a wandering life and became intimate with Byron at Venice; he is said to have suggested to the latter the story of Mazeppa. Marya is a narrative in verse, written with much feeling and elegance, and in a most harmonious metre. The chief poem of Goszczynski is Zamek Kaniowski (“The Tower of Kanioff”). The most interesting poem of Bogdan Zaleski is his “Spirit of the Steppe” {Duch od Stepu). Other poets of the so-called Ukraine school, which has been so well inspired by the romantic legends of that part of Russia, are Thomas or Timko Padoura (who also wrote in the Malo-Russian, or Little-Russian, language), Alexander Groza, and Thomas Olizarowski. For many of the original songs and legends we must turn to the work of Messrs Antonovich and Dragomanoff. Bogdan Joseph Zaleski was born in 1802 in the Ukraine village, Boha-terka. In 1820 he was sent to the university of Warsaw, where he had Goszczynski as a fellow-student. Since 1830 he has resided in Paris. Besides the longer poem previously mentioned, he is the author of many charming lyrics in the style of the Little-Russian poems, such as Shevchenko has written in that language. Michael Grabowski (1805- 1863) belongs also to this school by his fine Melodies of the Ukraine. A poet of great vigour was Stephen Garczynski (1806-1833), the friend of Mickiewicz, celebrated for his War Sonnets and his poem entitled The Deeds of Wactaw.

Among later authors, some of whom still survive, may be mentioned Wincenty Pol, born in 1807 at Lublin. He wrote a fine descriptive work, Obrazy z Zycia i Podr6zy (“Pictures of Life and Travel”), and also a poem, Piesn o Ziemi Naszej (“Song of our Land”). For about three years from 1849 he was professor of geography in the university of Cracow. In 1855 he published Mohort, a poem relating to the times of Stanislaus Poniatowski. Ludwik Wtadystaw Kondratowicz (who wrote chiefly under the name of Syrokomla) was born in 1823 in the government of Minsk. His parents were poor, and he received a meagre education, but made up for it by careful self-culture. One of his most remarkable poems is his Jan Dqborog, in which, like Mickiewicz, he has well described the scenery of his native Lithuania. He everywhere appears as the advocate of the suffering peasants, and has consecrated to them many beautiful lyrics. In Kaczkowski the Poles have a novelist who has treated many periods of their history with great success. His sympathies, however, are mostly aristocratic, though modified by the desire of progress. An important writer of history is Karl Szajnocha, born in Galicia of Czech parents in 1818. He began his labours with The Age of Casimir the Great (1848), and Bolesiaw the Brave (1849), following these with Jadwiga and Jagielio, in three volumes (1855-1856),—a work which Spasovich, in his Russian History of Slavonic Literature, compares in vigour of style and fulness of colour with Macaulay’s History of England and Thierry’s Norman Conquest. Our author was still further to resemble the latter writer in a great misfortune; from overwork he lost his sight in 1857. Szajnocha, however, like Thierry and the American Prescott, did not abandon his studies. His excellent memory helped him in his affliction. In 1858 he published a work in which he traced the origin of Poland from the Varangians (Lechicki poczytek Polski), thus making them identical in origin with the Russians. He began to write the history of John Sobieski, but did not live to finish it, dying in 1868, soon after completing a history of the Cossack wars, Dwa lata dziejôw naszych (“Two Years of Our History”). A writer of romances of considerable power was Joseph Korzeniowski, tutor in early youth to the poet Krasinski, and afterwards director of a school at Kharkoff. Besides some plays now forgotten, he was author of some popular novels, such as Wedrôwki oryginaia (“Tours of an Original”), 1848; Garbaty (“The Hunchback”), 1852, &c. He died at Dresden in 1863. But the most fertile of Polish authors beyond all question is Kraszewski (born in 1812). His works constitute a library in themselves; they are chiefly historical novels, some of which treat of early times in Poland and some of its condition under the Saxon kings. Up to 1879, when he celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his commencing authorship, he had written two hundred and fifty separate works in four hundred and forty volumes. One of the most popular of his novels is Jermoia the Potter, a pathetic and noble story, which much resembles George Eliot’s Silas Marner, but appeared in 1857, some time before the publication of that work. A charge of treason was recently brought against Kraszewski by the German Government, and he is now (1885) undergoing a sentence of imprisonment at Madgeburg. Among the various works of Kraszewski may be mentioned an interesting one on Lithuania (Litwa), which contains many valuable accounts of Lithuanian customs; perhaps, however, the historical and philological parts of the work are not always very critically treated. He is the author of two volumes of poetry. As lyrical poets may also be mentioned Jachowicz, Jaskowski, author of a fine poem The Beginning of Winter, Wasilewski, and Holowinski, archbishop of Moghileff (1807-1855), author of religious poems. The style of poetry in vogue in the Polish parts of Europe at the present time is chiefly lyrical. Other writers deserving mention are Cornelius Ujejski (born in 1823), the poet of the last revolt of 1863; Theophilus Lenartowicz (born 1822), who has written some very graeeful poetry; Sigismund Milkowski (born in 1820), author of romances drawn from Polish history, for the novel of the school of Sir Walter Scott still flourishes vigorously among the Poles. Among the very numerous writers of romances may be mentioned Henry Rzewuski (1791-1866); Joseph Dzierzkowski wrote novels on aristocratic life, and Michael Czajkowski tales of adventure; Valerius Wielogtowski (1865) gave pictures of country life. Of course at the head of all writers in this department must be considered the unfortunate Kraszewski.

In 1882 the Poles lost, in the prime of life, a very promising historian Szujski (born in 1835), and also Schmitt, who died in his sixty-sixth year. Szujski commenced his literary career in 1859 with poems and dramas; in 1860 appeared his first historical production, Rzut oka na Historye Polski (“A Glance at Polish History”), which attracted universal attention; and in 1862 he commenced the publication in parts of his work Dzieje Polski ( “The History of Poland ”) the printing of which ceased in 1866. The Value of this book is great both on account of the research it displays and its philosophical and unprejudiced style. One of the last works of Szujski, written in German, Die Polen und Ruthenen in Galizien, attracted a great deal of attention at the time of its appearance. Schmitt got mixed up with some of the political questions of the day—he was a native of Galicia and therefore a subject of the Austrian emperor—and was sentenced to death in 1846, but the penalty was commuted into imprisonment in Spielberg, whence he was released by the revolution of 1848. In 1863 he took part in the Polish rebellion, and was compelled to fly to Paris, whence he only returned in 1871. His chief works are History of the Polish People from the Earliest Times to the year 1763 (1854), History of Poland in the 13 th and 12th Centuries (1866), and History of Poland from the time of the Partition (1868), which he carried down to the year 1832. In opposition to the opinion of many historians, his contemporaries, that Poland fell through the nobility and the diets, Schmitt held (as did Lelewel) that the country was brought to ruin by the kings, who always preferred dynastic interests to those of the country, and by the pernicious influence to the Jesuits. Adalbert Kçtrzynski, who succeeded Bielowski in 1877 in his post of director of the Ossolinski Institute at Lemberg, is the author of some valuable monographs on the history of Poland. He λvas born in 1838. Kasimir Stadnicki has treated of the period of the Jagieltons; and Szaraniewicz, professor at the university of Lemberg, has written on the early history of Galicia. Thaddeus Wojciechowski has published a clever work on Slavonic antiquities. Xavier Liske, born in 1838, and now professor of universal history at Lemberg, has published many historical essays of considerable value, and must be a linguist of great attainments, as separate works by him have appeared in the German, Polish, Swedish, Danish, and Spanish languages. The “Sketch of the History of Poland” (Dzieje Polskie w Zarysie) by Michael Bobrzynski, born in 1849 in Cracow (where he is professor of Polish and German law), is a very spirited work, and has given rise to a great deal of controversy on account of the opposition of many of its views to those of the school of Lelewel. Vincent Zakrzewski, now professor of history at Cracow, has written some works which have attracted considerable attention, such as On the Origin and Growth of the Reformation in Poland, and After the Flight of King Henry, in which he describes the condition of the country during the period between that king’s departure from Poland and the election of Stephen Batory. Smotka has published a history entitled Mieszko the Elder and his Age. Wtadystaw Wistocki has prepared a catalogue of manuscripts in the Jagielton library at Cracow. Dr Joseph Casimir Plebafiski is now editor of the Biblioteka Warszawska, a very valuable literary journal which stands at the head of all works of the kind in Poland. He has also written a dissertation (in Latin) on the liberum veto, which puts that institution in a new light. Felix Jezierski, the previous editor of the above-mentioned journal, published in it translations of parts of Homer, and is also the author of an excellent version of Faust.

The history of Polish literature has not been neglected. We first have the early history of Felix Bentkowski (1781-1852), followed by that of Michael Wiszniewski (1794-1865), which, however, only extends to the 17th century, and is at best but a quarry of materials for subsequent writers, the style being very heavy. A “History of Eloquence” (Historya Wymoυry w Polsce) was published by Karl Mecherzynski. An elaborate history of Polish literature is now in course of preparation by Anton Matecki, who is the author of the best Polish grammar (Gramatyka Historycznc- Porôwnawcza Jezyka Pqlskiego, 2 vols., Lemberg, 1879). The Polish bibliography of Karl Estreicher, now director of the Jagielton library at Cracow, is a work of the highest importance. One of the most active writers on Polish philology and literature is Wladystaw Nehring, whose numerous contributions to the Archiv für Slawische Philologie of Professor Jagic entitle him to the gratitude of all who have devoted themselves to Slavonic studies. Wladimir Spasowicz, a lawyer of St Petersburg, has assisted Pipin in his valuable work on Slavonic literature. The lectures of Professor Cybulski (ob. 1867) on Polish literature in the first half of the 19th century are written with much spirit and appreciation. The larger poetical works which appear during that time are carefully analysed.

In recent times many interesting geological and anthropological investigations have been carried on in Poland. In 1868 Count Constantine Tyszkiewicz published a valuable monograph on the Tombs of Lithuania and Western Ruthenia. A diligent searcher for antiquities is Prof. Joseph Eepkowski of Cracow, who has greatly enriched the archaeological museum of his native citv.

In philosophy the Poles (as the Slavs generally) have produced but few remarkable names. Goluchowski, the brothers Andrew and John Suiadecki, the latter of whom has gained a reputation almost European, Bronislaw Trentowski, Karol Liebelt, and Joseph Kremer deserve mention. August Cieszkowski has written on philosophical and economic subjects. Moritz Straszewski, the present professor of philosophy at the university of Cracow, has also published some remarkable works.

Mention has already been made of the poetess Elizabeth Druzbacka. Female writers are not very common among Slavonic nations. Perhaps the most celebrated Polish authoress was Klementina Hoffmann, whose maiden name was Tanska, born at Warsaw in 1798. She married Karl Boromäus Hoffmann, and accompanied her husband, in 1831, to Passy near Paris, where she died in 1845. Her novels still enjoy great popularity in Poland. Of the poetesses of later times Gabriele Narzyssa Zmichowska (1825-1878), Maria lluicka, translator of Scott’s Lord of the Isles, and Jadwiga Luszczewska may be mentioned.

A poet of considerable merit is Adam Asnyk, born in 1838. In his poetry we seem to trace the steps between romanticism and the modern realistic school, such as we see in the Russian poet Nekrasoff. In some of the flights of his Muse he reminds us of Stowacki, in the melody of his verse of Zaleski. Besides showing talent as a poet, he has also written some good plays, as “The Jew” (Zid), Cola di Rienzi, and Kiejstut. Other living poets worthy of mention are Zagorski, Czerwienski, and Maria Konop-nicka, who has published two volumes of poems that have been very favourably noticed. Mention must also be made of Baiucki, born at Cracow in 1837, and Narzymski (1839-1872), who was educated in France, but spent part of his short life in Cracow, author of some very popular tales.

The four centres of Polish literature, which, in spite of the attempts which have been made to denationalize the country, is fairly active, are Cracow, Posen, Lemberg, and Warsaw. A few years ago a cheap edition of the leading Polish classics, well adapted for dissemination among the people, was published, under the title of Biblioteka Polska, at Cracow, which shows a great deal of vitality and is an interesting city. Not only are the professors of its university some of the most eminent living Poles, but it has been chosen as a place of residence by many Polish literary men. The academy of sciences, founded in 1872, celebrated the bicentenary of the raising of the siege of Vienna by Sobieski by publishing the valuable Ada Joannis III. Regis Polonia. Some good Polish works have been issued at Posen, but it is becoming extremely Germanized, and no part of the original kingdom of Poland has undergone so much change as this. At Lemberg, the capital of Austrian Galicia, there is an active Polish press. Here appeared the Monumenta Polonia Historica of Bielowski, previously mentioned; but Polish in this province has to struggle with the Red-Russian or Ruthenian, a language or dialect which for all practical purposes is the same as the Southern or Little Russian. At Warsaw, since the last insurrection, the university has become entirely Russianized, and its Transactions are published in Russian; but Polish works of merit still issue from the press, —among others the leading Polish literary journal, Biblioteka Warszawska. (W. R. Μ.)