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many years afterwards, when he (Maurice) was seeking the Duchy of Courland, and Countess Löwenhaupt speaks of him as a near relation. In the Count of Saxony's letters to his mother, he only twice names their relationship, though he always writes to her as to a mother, to wit, as to the person upon whose love he implicitly relies, from whom he expects every thing. And though the different governors who had the care of him write to her as governors would to a mother, only one plainly calls her so. The others merely insinuate as much, the one speaking of Count Maurice as "what she best loves," another as "the dear

secret."

There is one other circumstance which we know not whether to take as a proof of the skilful concealment of Countess Aurora's misfortune, as servants call such awkward accidents, or of the prevalent indifference to a trifling faux pas. It is, that the lady, subsequently to her son's birth, received many offers of marriage. Most of these she declined as inferior to her pretensions; and one, that she would probably have gladly accepted, from the reigning Duke of Würtemberg, appears to have been thwarted by the lover who had discarded her, Augustus of Saxony and Poland.

To return to Quedlinburg and the coadjutrixship. Augustus zealously supported his cast-off mistress's endeavours to attain this maiden sovereignty expectant, until they clashed with his own views upon Poland. The contest for the Polish crown was to be waged with gold, not steel; and the Elector of Saxony, from the moment of his becoming a candidate for this elective crown, thought only of what could be turned into hard cash, to bribe his intended subjects and electors. Amongst other saleable commodities, he laid his hand upon the hereditary protectorate of Quedlinburg. This he sold for ready money to the King of Prussia, stipulating, however, for the new protector's sanction of Countess Königsmark's nomination as coadjutrix. It is averred that the Elector afterwards underhand prevented her appointment, in order to have a pretext, in the purchaser's failure to fulfil his engagement, for cancelling the bargain.

Whatever were the cause, Aurora of Königsmark failed of the coadjutrixship and consequent succession; but obtained the second situation in the abbey, both as to rank and emolument, that of prioress. As such she incurred censure by her habitual non-residence-it should seem that the gay court lady found the abbey a dull abode. But we hear of no other objection to her conduct, although it can hardly be doubted, from some of the letters addressed to her by men of high rank, that this was as inconsistent as the birth of her son with her station in a vestal

community. And if we explain this silence by the veil of mystery that would, of course, be sedulously thrown over these her meaner transgressions, we must say that to us it appears strangely indecorous that the prioress of a religious establishment should, as Countess Aurora did, without any plea of natural connexion or necessity, have frequented the Court of Augustus, the licentiousness of which soon became so grossly flagrant that the two dowager Electresses, his mother and his sister-in-law, together with his consort, the Queen of Poland, collectively withdrew from it, leaving their places to be supplied by his numerous successive and contemporaneous mistresses. We extract a description by an eye-witness, of one of the most decorous of the courtly festivities of Dresden, in which the Quedlinburg prioress was too often a partaker :

"Field Marshal Count Flemming gave an entertainment which was to offer to the court the spectacle of a regular engagement. Here war appeared in its beauty. The hosts attacked each other with a wellmatched fire. Their manœuvres, charges, retreats, in short all their movements, had something in them fearfully comic, since no one was hurt. The King appeared on horseback, with Countess Dönhof and the wife of the Lithuanian General, Potzki (the rival mistresses of the day), dressed as Amazons; the other ladies were in coaches and six. After the battle the King sat down to table in a large tent, with the most distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Two other large tables were laid in two other tents, for the rest of the company. During the meal the music of cannons, drums, and trumpets, relieved each other's harmony. The merriest scene was after dinner. The tables were not removed, but the victuals upon them were abandoned to the soldiers. As the bread fell short, the Field Marshal, in compensation, ordered a thousand gulden to be severally stuck into as many little bits of bread. Then the bands sounded a charge, and the soldiers, drawn up in order of battle, boldly stormed the well-provided tables, the foremost being overthrown and trampled upon by the hindmost, &c. &c.

"Then all was cleared away, and dancing followed until seven o'clock in the evening. The Field Marshal drank stoutly with his guests, and was thoroughly intoxicated. The King was not sober, but committed no degrading indecency. I pitied a poor chamberlain who had to stand behind his Majesty with a glass of water, and was so unsteady upon his feet that the touch of a finger would have upset him. Count Flemming was beside himself with joy. When the King prepared to depart, Flemming fell familiarly upon his neck, saying, Brother, I break with thee if thou goest.' Countess Dönhof, who never left the King's side, tried to repress such improprieties; but Flemming was too happy for decorum. He endeavoured to embrace her, affectionately addressing her by the coarsest term in the language. She, who is used to such compliments from the Field Marshal when drunk, only laughed, and endeavoured to keep him from the King. On their way home, both King

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and Countess fell from their horses,-but, thank God, without hurting themselves."

Profuse as was Augustus upon his own pleasures, his liberality towards ex-favourites was small; and the income of the prioress of Quedlinburg was utterly inadequate to support the magnificence and the extravagance of our Countess Aurora. It was ostensibly to solicit the possession of her vanished brother's estates for herself and her sister, as also the pardon of her brother-in-law's treasons, that she repaired to the head-quarters of Charles XII., being further secretly commissioned by Augustus to negotiate a peace for him, if possible. It is well known that the rugged Swedish hero, whether fearing her reputed fascinations, or merely in his accustomed contempt for the female sex, refused to see his admired countrywoman; and, although she made herself friends amongst his ministers, she failed in all her objects. In fact, much as has been said of this celebrated lady's permanent influence over her faithless lover, of her talents for business, and of her genius for the arts, to all which we apprehend Voltaire's expression adverts, no evidence, as far as we or her posthumous admirer, Dr. Cramer, can discover, remains to attest their existence. Her political attempts, and her efforts in behalf of herself and her family, were alike unsuccessful; and if her music and her poetry aided her conquests during the period of her youth and beauty, they do not appear to have yielded any power of captivation that could in later years serve as a substitute for those failing charms, or afford to herself any source of solitary and permanent enjoyment, that could console her for the loss of the universal admiration which her beauty had long commanded.

Countess Aurora of Königsmark never obtained her portion of her patrimonial heritage. We know not whether Countess Löwenhaupt was subsequently more successful, or what became of the ill-acquired Königsmark estates. Aurora spent the remainder of her life in pecuniary embarrassments and involvements, and died deeply in debt.

As to Quedlinburg-to our mind a more interesting subjectthe few words we have to add concerning it are far from satisfactory. The Kings of Prussia appointed Princesses of their own family, although Calvinists, abbesses of this Lutheran community. Those abbesses drew their income from Quedlinburg, and resided at court. The community, like the abbesses, deserted the abbey, and the town languished for want of the accustomed abbey expenditure. In 1802 the abbey principality was secularized, and given as an indemnification to Prussia. It was afterwards transferred to the transitory kingdom of Westphalia, and declined yet

more as part of that ill-compiled State. On the fall of Napoleon and his vassal kingdoms, Quedlinburg was restored to Prussia, but not to its pristine consequence, or even to the provincial dignity which it enjoyed upon its secularization. It is no longer the residence of the provincial authorities, the seat of provincial administration. It has been despoiled even of the abbey archives, which are removed to Magdeburg; and Quedlinburg is now a mere country town of little trade and less importance.

ART. VI.-Manuel des Consuls. Par Alex. de Miltitz, Chambellan de S. M. le Roi de Prusse, tom. i. Berlin, 1836.

A GOOD work on the duties of consular agents was a real desideratum. That of De Steele, published at Berlin in 1790, is not without merit, but is deficient in fulness of details and illustrations. Those of Borel and Warden, though compiled from very good materials, are also deficient in arrangement and clearness. The theory of the consular office, and a systematical delineation of its practical duties, still require the labours of a new builder. The work, the first volume of which is now before us, is intended to supply these deficiencies, and is particularly destined for the instruction of that numerous class of consular agents who have not been prepared by special studies for the performance of their official duties. The present volume contains a valuable mass of information on the historical origin and development of the consular institution in the interior of the countries where it was formerly established; of the judicial and administrative institutions created to supply its place, and to promote the interests of commerce; and the commercial and maritime legislation of the different countries of Europe and America from the earliest times to the present day. The second volume will complete the work, and will be divided into two parts; first, the origin, development, and actual organization of consulates established in foreign countries; with the stipulations contained in treaties and other international compacts since the sixteenth century respecting the consulate; second, the laws and ordinances of different states concerning consuls, with the theory of the consulate. It will be terminated by a bibliographical catalogue of the authors cited.

In the course of their official duties, consuls are frequently called upon to consider and decide questions arising under foreign laws. In order to fulfil this important part of their duties, it is essential that they should have some notion of the judicial and administrative institutions created for the advantage

of commerce and navigation, and that they should be fully informed respecting the commercial and maritime legislation of the countries where they reside. The learned author has therefore very justly deemed it not beside the object of his work to give a complete view of the principal monuments of maritime and commercial legislation anterior to the seventeenth century, with the successive alterations and improvements in each country since that period, and bibliographical notices of the principal authors to be consulted, under each of those chronological divisions. In this manner he has successively traced the history of this branch of legislation in France, the Italian States, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, Austria, the Germanic Empire, Turkey, and the United States of North America.

Little is known of the commercial legislation of the maritime nations of antiquity previously to the establishment of the Roman empire. The earlier Roman jurists adopted the maritime laws of Rhodes, not by incorporating them into the text of their own code, but in the same manner as the Roman law is now used by some modern nations, as supplementary to their own institutions, and as containing a collection of rules consecrated by the wisdom and experience of a great maritime nation. The Emperor Augustus first formally incorporated the Rhodian laws into the Roman code, and the Emperor Antoninus Pius, being called upon to decide a maritime controversy, declared that it was to be determined" according to the Rhodian laws, by which the seas were governed, as his predecessor Augustus had decreed." This adoption of the Rhodian laws was confirmed by Justinian in the Code and Pandects it survived the invasion of the western empire by the nations called Barbarians by the Greeks and Romans. These barbarians infused new life and vigour into the nations subdued by their heroic valour, and the efforts of this new creation soon became manifest in the institutions of the Italian republics of the middle age. Among these, the little commonwealth of Amalfi took the lead at a very early period in establishing commercial relations with the still-surviving eastern empire, and with that of the Arabian caliphs. Amalfi was also illustrated by the discovery, in the twelfth century, of the celebrated MS. of the Pandects, of which no complete copy then existed in the West, although the Roman law was never entirely extinguished in what has been called the midnight darkness of the middle age. This MS. had been imported in the course of trade by the Amalfitans from the Levant, and was taken by the Pisans in the sack of Amalfi in 1137. Pisa itself was sacked by the Florentines in 1406, and this copy of the Pandects taken to Florence, where it is still

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