In the year 1745, Bruhl had made a partition-treaty with the Empress-queen, by which part of the King of Prussia’s dominions were to be allotted to Saxony. That treaty had produced nothing but the seizure of Dresden by Frederic. He palliated the violent possession he had taken of Silesia, to which he thought he had a right, by the moderation with which he restored Saxony, to which he had no title but provocation. Yet Augustus had scarce sworn to the articles of a peace by which he recovered his dominions, before he was tempted to a violation of them by the Court of Vienna. As eager as Bruhl was to close with perfidy, yet he could not forget the invasion of Dresden: he suggested that a previous treaty between the Courts of Vienna and Petersburg would expedite and secure their common wishes. To facilitate this union, the Saxon Ministers in every Northern Court received secret instructions to spread suggestions and alarms of great machinations at Berlin against the Czarina. As Bruhl was not penurious of lies, he took the pains to dictate these slanders himself in the blackest terms. In his intercepted despatches one sees how successfully he administered his calumnies, till the Czarina believed herself aimed at even by assassination--and this project of terrifying her into an attack upon the King of Prussia, Bruhl had the modesty to call _a somewhat artful, though good intention_. The Czarina was an amiable woman, of no great capacity. She had been deprived of a throne to which she had pretensions, and had passed her youth in the terror which must accompany such a claim in a despotic empire, where, if civilized manners were stealing in, humanity to a competitor was one of the last arts of which they were likely to find or adopt a pattern. Yet she had been treated with great lenity, and, which perhaps was still more extraordinary, as the addition of gratitude, another virtue, made the imitation still more difficult, returned it. Her first transport on her rapid elevation was devout mercy; she made a vow never to put any person to death, and adhered to it; Siberia and the prisons, during her reign, were crowded with criminals, tortured, but never executed. She not only spared the little dethroned Czar, John, and had him educated with great care, but was as indulgent as she could be with safety to her rival the Princess Anne, his mother. With so much tenderness of heart, it was not wonderful that her heart was entirely tender--and how slight was that unbounded abuse of power, which only tended to gratify an unbounded inclination! Let us compare the daughters of two ferocious men, and see which was sovereign of a civilized nation, which of a barbarous one. Both were Elizabeths. The daughter of Peter was absolute, yet spared a competitor and a rival; and thought the person of an Empress had sufficient allurements for as many of her subjects as she chose to honour with the communication. Elizabeth, of England, could neither