For in January, 1757 (Anniversary, or nearly so, of that NEUTRALITY CONVENTION last year), there had been--encouraged by Pitt, as I could surmise, who always likes Friedrich--a definite, much closer TREATY OF ALLIANCE, with "Subsidy of a million sterling," Anti-Russian "Squadron of Observation in the Baltic," "25,000 Prussians," and other items, which I forget.

Forget the more readily, as, owing to the strange state of England (near suffocating in its Constitutional bedclothes), the Treaty could not be kept at all, or serve as rule to poor England's exertions for Friedrich this Year; exertions which were of the willing-minded but futile kind, going forward pell-mell, not by plan, and could reach Friedrich only in the lump,--had there been any "lump" of them to sum together.

But Pitt had gone out;--we shall see what, in Pitt's absence, there was! So that this Treaty 1757 fell quite into the waste-basket (not to say, far deeper, by way of "pavement" we know where!),--and is not mentioned in any English Book; nor was known to exist, till some Collector of such things printed it, in comparatively recent times.

["M.

Koch in 1802," not very perfectly (Scholl, iii.