[ 4 ] [JAN. 



VOLAXi), VAST AND 



Poland in the beginning of the eighteenth century was one of the 

 largest kingdoms of Europe. It was divided into four Grand Districts. 

 1. Great Poland, bordered by Lithuania, Silesia, and Pomerania. 2. 

 Little Poland, bordered by Great Poland, Silesia, Hungary, and Red 

 Russia. 3. Royal Prussia, lying to the north* east of Great Poland, 

 and bordered by Pomerania and Ducal Prussia, which formerly belonged 

 to Poland. 4. Red Russia, bordered on the east by the Dnieper, on the 

 south by the Dneister and the Crapack Mountains, on the north by 

 part of Lithuania, and on the west by Little Poland. In addition to 

 those was the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, rather an allied principality 

 than a portion of the kingdom. The Duchy furnished one third of the 

 troops composing the army of the crown, and one quarter of the money 

 granted for the support of the monarch. The Duchy of Courland also 

 was under the protection of Poland. 



The Poles, like all other nations, claim an extravagant antiquity : but 

 the first accounts of the country are from Tacitus, who probably received 

 them from the vague rumours of the Roman soldiery, or the exagge- 

 rated narratives of the Germans at Rome. He tells us that, however 

 derived from the same general stock of the northern nations, their 

 customs differed largely from those of the German tribes, the Poles 

 living in a state of singular rudeness. While he gives testimony to the 

 more regular habits, and even to the lofty and chivalric conceptions of 

 private and public life among the Germans, to their deference for 

 women, their obedience to a chief, their personal rights, and their he- 

 roic faith in battle, he describes the Poles as living almost in a state of 

 nature, and supporting their existence only by the chase and by plun- 

 der. But as they fought on foot, and with the lance and shield, he dis- 

 tinguishes them from the Scythians or Tartars, who fought on horseback. 

 Tacitus speaks of this wild, but not joyless, life of the tribes of the 

 desert, with the natural surprise of a man living in the central region 

 of the civilized earth ; yet who perhaps often envied the naked freedom, 

 where there was no Nero or Domitian, no bloody and malignant despot 

 to embitter existence. " Those barbarians," says he, (f live in a state of 

 liberty ; they have no idea of hope or fear ; and they prefer living in 

 this manner, to cultivating the earth, and taking care of their property, 

 or that of their relations and neighbours." But to this character, in 

 which he probably says all that he dared say of freedom, under the 

 fierce and suspicious tyranny of Rome, he adds " They have no fear 

 of their fellow-creatures, nor even of the gods ; which is very extra- 

 ordinary in human beings. They are not accustomed to make laws nor 

 vows, because they are not accustomed to desire any thing which they 

 cannot procure for themselves." 



Such is the contradictory character conjectured, rather than described, 

 by the great historian ; and which, without any idle attempt of our's to 

 vindicate the morals of a nation of the third century, betrays some igno- 

 rance of human nature. If the Poles desired nothing from others, they 

 could not be a nation of robbers. All the Gothic nations, too, had a 

 singular reverence for their gods ; and their defence of them was long 

 and desperate. 



