and the idle brains of men, have been very many,-- no limit to
their numbers; it MAY be anybody: an intending purchaser, though
but possessed of sixpence, is in a sense proprietor of the whole
Fair! Through Schulenburg we heard his own account of them, last
Autumn;--but the far noblest of the lot was hardly glanced at, or
not at all, on that occasion. The Kaiser's eldest Daughter, sole
heiress of Austria and these vast Pragmatic-Sanction operations;
Archduchess Maria Theresa herself,--it is affirmed to have been
Prince Eugene's often-expressed wish, That the Crown-Prince of
Prussia should wed the future Empress [Hormayr,
Allgemeine Geschichte der neueslen Zeit (Wien, 1817),
i. 13; cited in Preuss, i. 71.] Which would indeed have saved
immense confusions to mankind! Nay she alone of Princesses,
beautiful, magnanimous, brave, was the mate for such a Prince,--
had the Good Fairies been consulted, which seldom happens:--and
Romance itself might have become Reality in that case: with high
results to the very soul of this young Prince! Wishes are free:
and wise Eugene will have been heard, perhaps often, to express
this wish; but that must have been all. Alas, the preliminaries,
political, especially religious, are at once indispensable and
impossible: we have to dismiss that daydream. A Papal-Protestant
Controversy still exists among mankind; and this is one penalty
they pay for not having settled it sooner. The Imperial Court
cannot afford its Archduchess on the terms possible in
that quarter.

What the Imperial Court can do is, to recommend a Niece of theirs,
insignificant young Princess, Elizabeth Christina of
Brunswick-Bevern, who is Niece to the Empress; and may be made
useful in this way, to herself and us, think the Imperial