Yet the former history of Poland hardly palliates the position which the sovereigns and states of Europe have assumed towards her. In the days of her republican pride, was she not the chosen ally of France and the rightful mistress of Prussia? The crowns of Sweden and of Bohemia have at separate times been worn by her kings; the Danube was hardly the limit of her southern frontier; the coasts of the Euxine were hers; and when Vienna itself was about to yield to the yoke of Turkish barbarism, it was a Polish king that stayed the wave and rescued Christendom from the danger of Turkish supremacy. If France had on the one side saved Europe from the Saracens, Poland had in its turn protected it against the Turks; and John Sobieski alone deserves to be named with Charles Martel, as the successful defenders of Christendom in the moments of its greatest danger. But in the foreign politics of European powers, generosity and gratitude have usually prevailed no more than other moral considerations. The interests of the state have sometimes disputed the ascendency with the intrigues of courtiers, or the cabals of ecclesiastics; but the voice of justice has rarely been heard in its own right. Political vice has usually been counteracted by political vice; and if the right of the stronger has been sometimes resisted, it was only from the multiplication of jealousies. Thus, we shall see, that the crisis of Poland was delayed, not by its intrinsic strength, but by the collision of foreign interests. A consideration of the revolutions in Polish history is full of instruction for our nation. The inquirer finds, that the causes of the decline of that unhappy country were deeply rooted in its constitution; that it yielded to foreign aggression, only because it had been reduced to anarchy by the licentious vehemence of domestic feuds. The Poles themselves struck the wounds of which their republic bled; and their efforts at resistance would have been ample and effectual, if they had not continued their factions till the ruin was complete; if the alarums which aroused them to united action, had not been the knell of their country. The Poles are a branch of the great Slavonian family of nations. No history reveals, no tradition reports their origin. The plains upon the Vistula were at a very early period the seat of their abode; and when, in the seventh century, the Bulgarians excited movements on the Danube, new tribes crossed the Carpathian mountains, and perhaps contributed to the development of the political condition among their brethren whom they joined.