of Sobieski has rendered free (for it is a tract of his extensive
domains I am describing), reminded me of Somerset. Villages repose in
the green hollows of the vales, and cottages are seen peeping from
amidst the thick umbrage of the woods which cover the face of the
hills. The irregular forms and thatched roofs of these simple
habitations, with their infant inhabitants playing at the doors,
compose such lovely groups, that I wish for our dear Mary's pencil
and fingers (for, alas! that way mine are motionless!) to transport
them to your eyes.

"The palace of Villanow, which is castellated, now burst upon my
view. It rears its embattled head from the summit of a hill that
gradually slopes down towards the Vistula, in full view to the south
of the plain of Vola, a spot long famous for the election of the
kings of Poland. [Footnote: It was from this very assumption by the
nation, on the extinction of the male line of the monarchs of the
house of Jaghellon, that all their subsequent political calamities
may be dated. The last two sovereigns of this race were most justly
styled good and great kings---father and son--Sigismund I. and II.
But on the death of the last, about the middle of the sixteenth
century, certain nobles of the nation, intoxicated with their wealth
and privileges, run wild for dictation in all things; and as the
foundation for such rule, they determined to make the succession of
their future kings entirely dependent on the free vote of public
suffrage; and the plain of Vola was made the terrible arena. So it
may be called; for, from the time of the first monarch so elected,
Henry of Valois, a stranger to the country, and brother to the
execrable Charles IX. of France, bribery or violence have been the
usual keys to the throne of Poland. For the doors of the country
being once opened by the misguided people themselves to the influence