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

humblest, modest, and most Christian manner imaginable; and to prove this, he makes a speech for the bishop, which is what a priest, speaking of a priest, may call humble and modest, but what a layman would call a saucy, insolent, reprimand.

However, let the speech be what it will, it had no other effect upon Boleslaus, but to make him extremely angry with the prelate; and he immediately turned his thoughts to revenge, and soon found the following occasion:

The bishop had bought an estate from a person who had not long before purchased it from another proprietor of another family. The king, to plague the bishop, stirred up the heirs of the first possessor to begin a law suit at his tribunal against the prelate; and their plea was, that their ancestor had never sold the estate to the family from whom Stanislaus had purchased it; and that, therefore, the right remained in them. At the day of trial, Stanislaus appeared, but his witnesses had been so terrified by the

threats of Boleslaus that none of them came, and the king decided the suit against the "he bishop: upon which that prelate said, would soon make the goodness of his cause appear by a witness that could not be frightened from doing his duty, and speaking truth;" and after having said this, he returned to Cracow where he summoned all the members of the Church, and having made them fast and pray for three days, he went with them to the tomb of the first proprietor, whose name was Peter, and commanded him to rise out of his grave and follow him. Peter immediately obeyed, and followed the bishop to the king's palace; and there declared that he had sold, and had power to sell the estate to those from whom the bishop had bought it. After having given this evidence, Stanislaus and Peter, returned to Peter's grave, but before Peter buried himself, the bishop asked him very civilly whether he had a mind to live any longer, and that if he had, life was at his service, upon which Peter