universal war should supervene. She held the Kaiser well at bay,
mankind well in panic; and continually there came on all Europe,
for about twenty years, a terror that war was just about to break
out, and the whole world to take fire. The History so called of
Europe went canting from side to side; heeling at a huge rate,
according to the passes and lunges these two giant figures,
Imperial Majesty and the Termagant of Spain, made at one another,
--for a twenty years or more, till once the duel was decided
between them.

There came next to no war, after all; sputterings of war twice
over,--1718, Byng at Messina, as we saw; and then, in 1727, a
second sputter, as we are to see:--but the neighbors always ran
with buckets, and got it quenched. No war to speak of; but such
negotiating, diplomatizing, universal hope, universal fear, and
infinite ado about nothing, as were seldom heard of before.
For except Friedrich Wilhelm drilling his 50,000 soldiers (80,000
gradually, and gradually even twice that number), I see no Crowned
Head in Europe that is not, with immeasurable apparatus, simply
doing ZERO. Alas, in an age of universal infidelity to Heaven,
where the Heavenly Sun has SUNK, there occur strange
Spectre-huntings. Which is a fact worth laying to heart.--Duel of
Twenty Years with Elizabeth Farnese, about the eventualities of
Parma and Piacensa, and the Shadow of the lost Crown of Spain;
this was the first grand Spectrality of Kaiser Karl's existence;
but this was not the whole of them.


IMPERIAL MAJESTY'S PRAGMATIC SANCTION.