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Lay in the wild luxuriant soil;
No sign of travel-none of toil;
The very air was mute;

And not an insect's shrill small horn,
Nor matin bird's new voice was borne
From herb nor thicket. Many a werst,
Panting as if his heart would burst,
The weary brute still staggered on;
And still we were or seemed - alone:
At length, while reeling on our way,
Methought I heard a courser neigh,
From out yon tuft of blackening firs.
Is it the wind those branches stirs ?
No, no! from out the forest prance

A trampling troop; I see them come!
In one vast squadron they advance!

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I strove to cry - my lips were dumb.
The steeds rush on in plunging pride;
But where are they the reins to guide?
A thousand horse and none to ride!
With flowing tail, and flying mane,
Wide nostrils-never stretched by pain,
Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein,
And feet that iron never shod,
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,
A thousand horse, the wild, the free,
Like waves that follow o'er the sea,

Came thickly thundering on,
As if our faint approach to meet;
The sight renerved my courser's feet,
A moment staggering, feebly fleet,
A moment, with a faint low neigh,
He answered, and then fell;
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay,
And reeking limbs immovable,

His first and last career is done!
On came the troop- they saw him stoop,
They saw me strangely bound along
His back with many a bloody thong:
They stop-they start they snuff the air,
Gallop a moment here and there,
Approach, retire, wheel round and round,
Then plunging back with sudden bound,
Headed by one black mighty steed,
Who seemed the patriarch of his breed,

Without a single speck or hair
Of white upon his shaggy hide;

They snort-they foam neigh― swerve aside,
And backward to the forest fly,

By instinct, from a human eye.

They left me there to my despair,
Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch,
Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch,
Relieved from that unwonted weight,
From whence I could not extricate
Nor him nor me and there we lay
The dying on the dead!

CHARLES XII. AT BENDER.

BY VOLTAIRE.

[FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET, who assumed the name Voltaire, was born in Paris, November 21, 1694, and died there, May 30, 1778. He was educated in the Jesuit college Louis-le-Grand, and though intended by his parents for a lawyer he determined to become a writer. From the beginning of his career he was keen and fearless, and by his indiscreet but undeniably witty writing incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Orleans, regent of France, by whom he was imprisoned in the Bastille, 1717-1718. His life was full of action and vicissitude, and though his denunciations of wrong or tyranny from any quarter frequently brought upon him persecution from those in authority, he was acknowledged by the world the greatest writer in Europe. His writings are far too numerous for individual mention, some editions of his collected works containing as many as ninety-two volumes. They include poetry, dramas, and prose. Among his more famous works are: "Edipus" (1718), "History of Charles XII., King of Sweden" (1730), "Philosophical Letters" (1732), "Century of Louis XIV." (1751), 66 History of Russia under Peter I." (1759), "Republican Ideas" (1762), "The Bible at Last Explained" (1766), and the "Essay on Manners."]

THE king of Sweden was continually soliciting the Porte to send him back through Poland with a numerous army. The divan, in fact, resolved to send him back with a simple guard of seven or eight thousand men, not as a king whom they wished to assist, but as a guest whom they wanted to get rid of. For this purpose, the Sultan Achmet wrote to him in these

terms:

Most powerful among the kings, adorer of Jesus, redresser of wrongs and injuries, and protector of justice in the ports and republics of the South and North; shining in majesty, friend of honor and glory, and of our Sublime Porte, CHARLES KING OF SWEDEN, whose enterprises God crown with success!

As soon as the most illustrious Achmet, formerly Chiaux-Pachi, shall have the honor to present you with this letter, adorned with our imperial seal, be persuaded and convinced of the truth of our intentions therein contained, to wit, that though we did propose, once more, to march our ever victorious army against the czar, yet that prince, to avoid the just resentment which we had conceived at his delaying to execute the treaty concluded on the banks of the Pruth, and afterwards renewed at our Sublime Porte, having surrendered into our hands the castle and city of Azoph, and endeavored, through the mediation of the ambassadors of England and Holland, our ancient allies, to cultivate a lasting peace with us, we have granted his request, and given to his plenipotentiaries, who remain with us as hostages, our imperial ratification, after having received his from their hands.

We have given to the most honorable and valiant Delvet Gherai, kam of Budziack, Crim Tartary, Nagay, and Circassia, and to our most sage counselor and generous seraskier of Bender, Ismael (may God perpetuate and augment their magnificence and wisdom), our inviolable and salutary order for your return through Poland, according to your first desire, which hath been renewed to us in your name. You must, therefore, prepare to depart under the auspices of Providence, and with an honorable guard, before the approaching winter, in order to return to your own territories, taking care to pass as a friend through those of Poland.

Whatever shall be necessary for your journey shall be furnished you by my Sublime Porte, as well in money, as in men, horses, and wagons. We above all things exhort and recommend to you, to give the most positive and precise orders to all the Swedes and other persons in your retinue, to commit no outrage, nor be guilty of any action that may tend directly or indirectly to violate this peace and alliance.

You will by these means preserve our good will, of which we shall endeavor to give you as great and as frequent marks as occasion shall offer. Our troops destined to accompany you shall receive orders conformable to our imperial intentions.

Given at our Sublime Porte of Constantinople, the fourteenth of the moon Rebyul Eurech, 1214, which answers to the nineteenth of April, 1712.

:

This letter did not yet deprive the king of Sweden of his hopes he wrote to the sultan, that he should ever retain a grateful remembrance of the favors his highness had bestowed on him, but that he believed the sultan too just to send him back with the simple guard of a flying camp into a country still

overrun by the czar's troops. In effect, the emperor of Russia, notwithstanding the first article of the peace of Pruth, by which he engaged himself to withdraw all his troops from Poland, had sent fresh ones into that kingdom; and what appears surprising, the grand seignior knew nothing of the matter.

The bad policy of the Porte in having always, through vanity, ambassadors from the Christian princes at Constantinople, and not maintaining a single agent at the Christian courts, is the cause that these discover and sometimes conduct the most secret resolutions of the sultan, and that the divan is always in profound ignorance of what is publicly going on in the Christian world.

The sultan, shut up in his seraglio among his women and eunuchs, can see only with the eyes of the grand vizier: that minister, as inaccessible as his master, wholly engrossed with the intrigues of the seraglio, and having no foreign correspondence, is commonly deceived himself, or else deceives the sultan, who deposes or orders him to be strangled for the first fault, in order to choose another minister as ignorant or as perfidious, who behaves like his predecessor, and soon shares the same fate.

Such, for the most part, is the inactivity and the profound security of this court, that were the Christian princes to league themselves against it, their fleets might be at the Dardanelles, and their land forces at the gates of Adrianople, before the Turks would dream of defending themselves; but the different interests which will ever divide the Christian world will preserve the Turks from a fate to which, by their want of policy, and by their ignorance of the art of war, both by sea and land, they seem at present exposed.

Achmet was so little informed of what passed in Poland, that he sent an aga to see whether it was true that the czar's troops were still in that country; the king of Sweden's two secretaries, who understood the Turkish language, accompanied the aga, and were to serve as witnesses against him, in case he should make a false report.

This aga saw the truth of the king's assertion with his own eyes, and informed the sultan of every particular. Achmet, fired with indignation, was going to strangle the grand vizier; but the favorite, who protected him, and who thought he should have occasion for him, obtained his pardon, and supported him some time longer in the ministry.

The Russians were now openly espoused by the vizier, and secretly by Ali Coumourgi, who had changed sides; but the sultan was so provoked, the infraction of the treaty was so manifest, and the janizaries, who often make the ministers, the favorites, and even the sultans tremble, demanded war with such clamor that no one in the seraglio durst offer a more moderate proposal.

The grand seignior immediately committed to the seven towers the Russian ambassadors, who were now as much accustomed to go to prison as to an audience. War was declared afresh against the czar, the horsetails were displayed, and orders were given to all the pashas to assemble an army of two hundred thousand men. The sultan himself quitted Constantinople, and went to fix his court at Adrianople, that he might be nearer to the seat of war.

In the mean time, a solemn embassy sent to the grand seignior by Augustus, and the republic of Poland, was advancing on the road to Adrianople. At the head of the embassy was the palatine of Mazovia, with a retinue of above three hundred persons.

Every one that composed the embassy was seized and imprisoned in one of the suburbs of the city: never was the king of Sweden's party more sanguine than on this occasion; and yet this great preparation was rendered useless, and all their hopes were again disappointed.

If we may believe a public minister, a man of sagacity and penetration, who resided at that time at Constantinople, young Coumourgi had already other designs in his head than that of disputing a desert country with the czar by a doubtful war. He had proposed to strip the Venetians of the Peloponnesus, now called the Morea, and to make himself master of Hungary.

He waited only for the execution of his great designs till he should have attained the post of grand vizier, from which he was still excluded on account of his youth. In this view it was more for his advantage to be the ally than the enemy of the czar. It was neither his interest nor his inclination to keep the king of Sweden any longer, and still less to arm the Turkish empire in his favor. He not only desired to dismiss that prince, but he openly said that, for the future, no Christian ambassador ought to be suffered at Constantinople; that all these ministers in ordinary were but so many honorable spies, who corrupted or betrayed the viziers, and had too long

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