much impression on the public. It came too late. All attention was turned to the field of Grochow; to those stately woods, which, in a wide semi-circle, gird the capital of Poland; those woods, dark and gloomy as the nation's fate, through which the savages of Suwaroff had once come to butcher the population of Praga. Still the deposition, though so unheeded, was an heroic reply to the insulting language of Diebitch.

After a discussion of four days, the Diet, on the 29th, completed their arrangements concerning the government, which they resolved should be called the National Government of the kingdom of Poland. The constitutional royalty was conferred on five persons. Measures were to be decided upon by a majority, and in case of the votes being equal, in the absence of the president, a member of the government, elected by the smallest sum of votes, was to go out. The same member was also to cede his place to the Generalissimo, whenever the latter should think proper to make use of his privilege. Prince Czartoryski, ever the zealous advocate for a vigorous government, objected to this arrangement, as inadequate to realize this paramount condition. Yet he gave his consent to it for the moment, in the conviction that the Diet would not contrive any thing better. The deputies, indeed, impressed with the fatal consequences of the dictatorship, so much dreaded concentrated power, that they even desired to establish a committee, consisting of thirteen

ADDRESS OF PRINCE CZARTORYSKI. 217

members, to superintend the government. Prince Czartoryski was unanimously elected president of the government, and the other members chosen were the deputies Vincent Niemeiowski, Theophile Morawski, the Kalishians, Stanislaus Barzykowski, the aristocrat, and Lelewel, the revolutionist ;— the smallest number of votes were for the latter, and he would probably not have been elected at all, but for the fear entertained by the deputies that he might otherwise prove a Robespierre to them. A groundless fear, for Lelewel was still, even in the midst of the political storm, nothing more or less than an historian and an antiquarian— at best, a tool in the hands of others.

The next day (30th of January), at a meeting of both chambers, Prince Czartoryski thanked the representatives of the nation for the high trust they had reposed in him; and, in an eloquent address, exposed his political profession, which was, at that time, an object of much attention in Europe. During his long career of public life, it had been his constant aim to re-establish Poland by the instrumentality of Russia herself. The late events, he said, had entirely destroyed this expectation. The benefits his policy had procured to his country, were great. The guarantee of her nationality by the treaty of Vienna, the national spirit in the sister-countries fostered by education, the liberal charter and institutions of the kingdom; in short, the gradual preparation of a force adequate to the accomplish

ment of the crowning act, national independence, were the fruits of his long and arduous labours. "Heaven," said the minister Kaunitz, " is a hun"dred years in forming a great mind for the resto"ration of an empire." Poland would have been restored in half that time, had Heaven blessed her in Chlopicki with a warrior as great as Czartoryski was a statesman. He was educated in England, in the principles of the enlightened Fox, then in their ascendancy. To a profound knowledge of the world, as well as to that derived from study, he joins courage superior to all trials. Virtuous, penetrating in his judgment of human affairs, remarkable for his modesty and want of pretension, notwithstanding his lofty descent; without ambition, or ambitious only of doing good ;-possessing an attractive and imposing person, with a certain expression of melancholy in his countenance, especially in the eyes; the last of those Poles who preferred electing kings to being themselves elected ;-Prince Adam Czartoryski is a noble type of the misfortunes of his country, and of the services she has rendered to the world.

The Diet completed its insurrectionary legislation on the 4th of February, by declaring Poland a Constitutional Monarchy; and that throne, once desired by all the sovereigns of Europe, was again vacant. But it had now no charms for foreign princes. The road to it lay through bloody battles. Military absolutism, too, was out of credit; the idea of a

revolutionary commune was abhorred; the only wise measure would have been to proclaim one of the nation king, and this would have tripled the strength of the insurrection, and rendered it at once intelligible to the world. Instead of which, the constitutional monarchy, rendered inefficient by the distribution of its administration amongst five persons, influenced by as many different opinions, was the feeble engine opposed to the absolutism and jacobinical measures of the Russian cabinet--that cabinet which never despairs of obtaining its object, and hesitates not to lie, to poison, and to bribe in the pursuit of it. But gunpowder possesses a revivifying power, and Polish bayonets may yet repair the errors of Polish policy.

CHAPTER VI.

Impression produced in Europe by the Insurrection. Result of Diplomatic Negociations.

THE first report of the transactions of the 29th of November, caused much amazement in Europe. The temerity of the Poles was the theme of all discourse. Ignorance had exaggerated the number of the Russian troops to at least a million of men, and it was believed that the Czar's nod would suffice to bring the Poles to obedience. The continental press was silent, partly from deficiency of correct information, partly from want of encouragement. In Germany, the land of literature, par excellence, it laboured under a strict censorship; and all idea of awakening, through its medium, public opinion in favour of the Poles, as on a former occasion for the Greeks, was at the moment wholly out of the question. In France, too, even the most liberal papers spoke with extreme reserve of their insurrection, and treated it as "a mere sign of the times to "monarchs." A few well-turned phrases of sympathy with the brave Poles constituted all the tribute paid by the French journalists to their once glorious companions in arms.

Next to Russia, Prussia was the state most