gentry taking part with the grandees and half with the freemen. ♦Ancestry of John Sobieski.♦ From the highest of these classes was sprung John Sobieski. He belonged to that group of families, whose ancestral device was the Buckler--the most illustrious of the rude Polish coats of arms. Far back in the mist of ages are placed the exploits of Janik--the Polish Hercules--the founder of his house. His immediate ancestors had gained less doubtful laurels. His grandfather, Mark Sobieski, palatine of Lublin, had so great a military reputation that King Stephen Bathori (1575-1586) was wont to say that he would not fear to entrust to his single arm the defence of the fortunes of Poland. His father, James Sobieski, was not only an able general, but a man of cultivated mind, and of some diplomatic skill. To him belonged the real credit of the famous victory of Kotzim in 1621 over a vast host of Turks and Tartars, although the nominal commander of the Poles was the young Prince Wladislas, son of Sigismund III. His success in negotiating the treaty that followed was so conspicuous that he was afterwards sent on several foreign embassies to the Western Powers. Such eminence in peace as in war doubtless procured for him the post of castellan of Cracow[12]--the first secular senator of Poland, inferior only to the archbishop of Guesna. He had also been four times elected Marshal of the Diet--an office resembling that of Speaker of the House of Commons. In or about 1620 he married Theophila Danilowiczowna, grand-daughter[13] of the famous Zolkiewski. That heroic general, after taking Moscow (1610), and carrying off to Poland the Czar Basil VI., met his death (October 5th, 1620) at Kobylta on the Dniester, with a band of 8,000 men, at the hands of 70,000[14] Turks and Tartars. Thus on both sides the ancestors of Sobieski were worthy of his subsequent fame. ♦Birth.♦ The circumstances of his birth are romantic; but they rest on no less an authority than a manuscript in his own hand. On the 17th of June, 1624,[15] his father’s castle of Zloçkow in the palatinate of Red Russia[16] was visited by a storm of unprecedented violence. The old mansion, which stood exposed on the bare summit of a vast “mohila” or Slavonic tumulus, was shaken to its foundations, and some of the attendants were rendered deaf for life. Amid the raging of the elements was born John Sobieski, in the presence of the widow of the conqueror of Moscow; and the respect for prodigies,[17] which distinguishes the Poles above all other modern nations, must have marked him out in their eyes for an exceptional career. Yet his youth was singularly peaceful. Except for the war against Gustavus Adolphus, which was terminated by the peace of Altmark (September 15th, 1629), and an incursion of the Tartars (1636), successfully repelled by Wladislas VII., Poland enjoyed from the time of his birth an unexampled respite of more than twenty years.