Dumb and furious; which could bring no settlement; but which did astonish the Pope's Decree, slashing it with cutlasses and sea-cannon, in that manner, and circuitously forwarded a settlement.

Settlement was becoming yearly more needful: and, ever since the Treaty of Utrecht especially, there had been an incessant haggle going on, to produce one; without the least effect hitherto.

What embassyings, bargainings, bargain-breakings; what galloping of estafettes; acres of diplomatic paper, now fallen to the spiders, who always privately were the real owners! Not in the Treaty of Utrecht, not in the Congresses of Cambray, of Soissons, Convention of Pardo, by Ripperda, Horace Walpole, or the wagging of wigs, could this matter be settled at all.

Near two hundred years of chronic misery;--and had there been, under any of those wigs, a Head capable of reading the Heavenly Mandates, with heart capable of following them, the misery might have been briefly ended, by a direct method.

With what immense saving in all kinds, compared with the oblique method gone upon! In quantity of bloodshed needed, of money, of idle talk and estafettes, not to speak of higher considerations, the saving had been incalculable.