Bright little Prince Eugene, who dictated square miles of Letters
and DIplomacies on the subject (Letters of a steady depth of
dulness, which at last grows almost sublime), was wont to tell his
Majesty: "Treatying, your Majesty? A well-trained Army and a full
Treasury; that is the only Treaty that will make this Pragmatic
Sanction valid!" But his Majesty never would believe. So the
bright old Eugene dictated,--or, we hope and guess, he only gave
his clerks some key-word, and signed his name (in three languages,
"Eugenio von Savoye") to these square miles of dull epistolary
matter,--probably taking Spanish snuff when he had done. For he
wears it in both waistcoat-pockets;--has (as his Portraits still
tell us) given up breathing by the nose. The bright little soul,
with a flash in him as of Heaven's own lightning; but now growing
very old and snuffy.

Shadow of Pragmatic Sanction, shadow of the Spanish Crown,--it was
such shadow-huntings of the Kaiser in Vienna, it was this of the
Pragmatic Sanction most of all, that thwarted our Prussian
Double-Marriage, which lay so far away from it. This it was that
pretty nearly broke the hearts of Friedrich, Wilhelmina, and their
Mother and Father. For there never was such negotiating; not for
admittance to the Kingdom of Heaven, in the pious times. And the
open goings-forth of it, still more the secret minings and
mole-courses of it, were into all places. Above ground and below,
no Sovereign mortal could say he was safe from it, let him agree
or not. Friedrich Wilhelm had cheerfully, and with all his heart,
agreed to the Pragmatic Sanction; this above ground, in sight of
the sun; and rashly fancied he had then done with it. Till, to his
horror, he found the Imperial moles, by way of keeping assurance
doubly sure, had been under the foundations of his very house for