was thus made one of the great concerns of the government itself; and the power of the Jesuits, which had been for some time on the decline, was finally annihilated.  The rich income of this order was henceforth entirely set apart for the benefit of learned institutions, to which free access was given.  The provincial or departmental schools throughout the whole kingdom received a new organization on a different plan; and the university of Cracow resumed again its former rights.  In respect to the instruction and melioration of the situation of the common people, we find as yet no attention whatever paid to these important subjects.  It was not until 1807, or the foundation of the duchy of Warsaw under the administration of the king of Saxony, that the lower classes obtained their rights as men; and unfortunately even then without the power of availing themselves of these rights.  Stanislaus Augustus, however, and some of his advisers and counsellors, acted in this respect with an honest will and noble intention; and by promoting the general interests of mankind in literature and science, did much for the social improvement of their own country.

Meanwhile, this unhappy country was the scene of the most violent party struggles; during which the heads of the parties conducted themselves with the most revolting selfishness, and an entire forgetfulness of all political consequences and of their own moral responsibility.  The fanaticism of the bishops of Cracow and Warsaw refused to the dissidents the restoration of their rights; and Russia thus acquired the first pretext for intermeddling with Polish affairs.  In the course of a few years, Poland was reduced to that torn and broken state, which induced Catharine II to consider it as a country “where one needed only to stoop, in order to pick up something.”  For a short time this course of things even seemed to be favourable to literature.  The minds of men were in a state of excitement, which gave them power to produce the greatest and most extraordinary things.  But a reaction very naturally followed.  After twenty years of mental and political struggles and combats, to sustain which claimed the whole united powers of mind and soul,—­twenty years numerically productive in every department,—­there followed a mental calm, an intellectual blank, of more than twelve years.

It was, as if with the political dissolution of the kingdom, with the annihilation of the unity of the nation, this latter had sunk back into a state of intellectual paralysis.  The interval from A.D. 1795 to A.D. 1807, in comparison with the years which preceded and have followed, was remarkably poor in productions of value.  The literature of translations rose in an undue proportion, and the purity of the language suffered considerably.  The government of the duchy of Warsaw acted on wise and truly humane principles; and during the short period between 1807 and 1812, all was done for the improvement of the country, which the unfortunate circumstances of the