death, and died in that condition. He left one son, called Casimir.

The Poles, who hated Rixa, and by reason of his tender years, could not fear Casimir, refused to acknowledge him for king, under pretence of his not being of age, and instituted a Regency, consisting of Rixa, and some Senators and Barons, who were to govern jointly till Casimir should come of age; but the Regents differing among themselves, the Barons drove Rixa and Casimir out of the kingdom, and she fled with her son to Paris, where she took great care of his education, and where, at last, he went into orders and became a Monk in the Abbey of Cluny, and she retired into Saxony.

In the mean time Poland fell into vast confusion. Maslas, a Pole, seized all Massovia ; and the Bohemians took Silesia, upon which the Poles began to find the want of their king, and sent a deputation to the Abbey of Cluny to desire Casimir to return to his own country,

and take possession of his hereditary kingdom.

He received with great joy the offers of his subjects; but there remained a difficulty that was necessary to be removed before he could comply with their desires, which was, the Pope's dispensation for him to quit the habit of the order which he had taken. The Pope, according to the custom of Rome, granted the demand with the usual paternal goodness of those who fill that See, at the same time taking care, for the glory of God and his Church, to make it turn in some way to his own advantage. He, therefore, dispensed with Casimir's vows, upon condition that all the Poles (the nobility and clergy excepted) should pay what we formerly in England called Peter-pence, in order to keep a lamp perpetually burning in St. Peter's church. Besides which, the Pope'obliged every Pole to shave all round his head, and cut the hair short at top that they might all look like monks, which custom is still used by every

person that wears the Polish dress, and by the king himself at his coronation.

I must confess, for my own part, that I believe this part of the Pope's bargain, the ordering the Poles to shave their heads, is either all fiction, or done to give a Christian varnish to a heathen institution. Whoever has read Dr. Middleton's Letter from Rome, may see the great connection between the present Roman Catholic functions and ceremonies and those of the Pagan Romans; and, I believe, that the Poles have only constantly continued the old custom they had of shaving their heads when their names were given them, or that the Popes seeing they could not hinder them from going on in that heathenish custom, ordered the Poles, by virtue of their supreme authority, to do a thing which the same authority could not have prevented them from doing.

I was vastly surprised the first time I saw a Polish nobleman with his head so trimmed, in

a night-gown and boots, and over the gown a blue ribband and a star; and I believe the description of it appears strange to you.

Casimir being at last seated upon the throne of Poland, behaved well both in war and peace, and retook Massovia and Silesia, and re-united them to Poland. He died in the year 1058, and was succeeded by his son,

Boleslaus the Second, who, either from courage or ferocity, was called the Bold. He waged successful wars against the Russians, the Prussians, the Bohemians, Pomeranians, and Hungarians; but all these victories were attended with nothing but bloodshed, and I do not find that he extended his dominions or reaped any permanent fruits of his conquests.

He was the first king of Poland that declared himself independent of the German Emperors; and, without asking their leave, he had himself crowned at Gnesna in the year 1070.

But, after having praised him for his great

ness of mind and warlike achievements, I must add, that all the Polish historians say, he was a most cruel and libidinous Prince.

They farther say, that, after having conquered the Russians, he fell into all the debaucheries of that people; and from them he learned those pleasures that afterwards made him inclined to idleness, and rendered him the abomination of his subjects.

I have read that Rome was debauched by Greece, which she had overcome; and that the delights of Capua ruined Hanibal in the midst of his conquests; but little expected to find that Boleslaus had been undone by a taste of the soft pleasures he found in Moscovy.

However, I must follow my guides, and tell

you

that this king persisting in his cruelty and lust (though no historian tells us in what that cruelty consisted), Stanislaus, Bishop of Cracow, like a holy, pious, meddling, insolent, priest, thought it became his office to reprimand his Prince, which he did, as my author says, in the