sprung from the ranks in this adventurous war, seeing on every side, and in the highest quarters, princes as well as supreme commanders, the uttermost contempt of justice and moral principle, - he had fought his way to distinction and fortune through every species of ignoble cruelty. He had passed from service to service, as he saw an opening for his own peculiar interest or merit, everywhere valued as a soldier of desperate enterprise, everywhere abhorred as a man. By birth a Croatian, he had exhibited himself as one of the most savage leaders of that order of barbarians in the sack of Magdeburgh, where he served under Tilly: but, latterly, he had taken service again under his original patron the Landgrave, who had lured him back to his interest by the rank of general and the governorship of Lovenstein. This brutal officer, who had latterly lived in a state of continual intoxication, was the judge before whom the lovely and innocent Paulina was now arraigned on a charge affecting her life. In fact, it became obvious that the process was not designed for any other purpose than to save appearances, - and, if that should seem possible, to extract further discoveries from the prisoner. The general acted as supreme arbiter in every question of rights and power that arose to the court in the administration of their almost unlimited functions. Doubts he allowed of none; and cut every knot of jurisprudence, whether form or substance, by his Croatian sabre. Two assessors, however, he willingly received upon his bench of justice, to relieve him from the fatigue and difficulty of conducting a perplexed examination. These assessors were lawyers of a low class, who tempered the exercise of their official duties with as few scruples of justice, and as little regard to the restraints of courtesy, as their military principal. The three judges were almost equally ferocious, and tools equally abject of the unprincipled sovereign whom they served. A sovereign, however, he was; and Paulina was well aware that in his own states he had the power of life and death. She had good reason to see that her own death was resolved on; still she neglected no means of honourable self-defence. In a tone of mingled sweetness and dignity she maintained her innocence of all that was alleged against her; protested that she was unacquainted with the tenor of any papers which might have been found in her trunks; and claimed her privilege, as a subject of the Emperor, in bar of all right on the Landgrave's part to call her to account. These pleas were overruled; and, when she further acquainted the