The sixth apartment abounds in figures carved in ivory and wood, many of them caricatures of men and animals, which express the grotesqueness of the German mind. Single pearls of extraordinary size, nearly all found in the River Elster, are cut into odd shapes, some of them representing rustics, jesters, and elves. A pearl, large as a hen’s egg, is intended to portray a Spanish court dwarf, and is superbly done. Trinket as it is, it could not be purchased for twenty-five thousand dollars. There is, besides, any number of costly trifles, on which a vast deal of ingenuity and money must have been expended, and which are interesting from their artistic merit. The seventh apartment is radiant with the splendid regalia used at the coronation of Augustus II. Augustus is inseparably associated with the history of Saxony, and the antecedents of Dresden. He succeeded his father, John George III., as Elector of Saxony, though not until after his elder brother’s death, in 1694, and was elected to the throne of Poland, made vacant, two years later, by the decease of John Sobieski. The Polish nobles were unwilling to be ruled over by anybody but a Roman Catholic, and Augustus, whose theology was of a very accommodating quality, abandoned Protestantism for the sake of the crown. Between his wars, his intrigues, and his parades, his sixty-three years of life were superlatively busy. He was highly educated for his time, and so much interested in art that he began the collection of pictures in the Dresden Gallery, and purchased many of the valuable curiosities now in the Green Vaults. His reign was marked by luxury and splendor, and his court was the constant resort of artists, alchemists, and adventurers of both sexes, on whom he lavished countless favors. The celebrated Countess of Königsmark was one of his many mistresses, and bore him a son, who subsequently figured so prominently in French history as Maurice, Count de Saxe. [Sidenote: ROMANTIC STORIES OF A KING.] Augustus was such a prodigal that he loaded Saxony with debt, and inspired the magnates of Poland to imitate his improvident example in Warsaw. Elegant, accomplished, daring, and unscrupulous, he made war on men and love to women to the end of his days. If all the accounts be true, he was as charming as Apollo and as strong as Hercules. The archives of Dresden attest his wonderful muscle to such a degree that Samson would have been no match for him. One of his pastimes was to become enamoured of some distinguished lady he had never seen; go in search of her; throw her husband, father, or brother, just as it happened, over high walls, and then carry her off in his arms as if she had been a feather weight.