She was, notwithstanding these austerities, which she practiced with the utmost secrecy, indefatigable in the discharge of her duties as a wife and an empress.  She often attended the opera with the emperor, but always took with her the Psalms of David, bound to resemble the books of the performance, and while the tragic or the comic scenes of the stage were transpiring before her, she was studying the devout lyrics of the Psalmist of Israel.  She translated all the Psalms into German verse; and also translated from the French, and had printed for the benefit of her subjects, a devotional work entitled, “Pious Reflections for every Day of the Month.”  During the last sickness of her husband she watched with unwearied assiduity at his bed-side, shrinking from no amount of exhaustion or toil, She survived her husband fifteen years, devoting all this time to austerities, self-mortification and deeds of charity.  She died in 1720; and at her express request was buried without any parade, and with no other inscription upon her tomb than—­

  ELEONORA,

  A POOR SINNER,

  Died, January 17, 1720.

Joseph, the eldest son of Leopold, was twenty-five years of age when, by the death of his father, he was called to the throne as both king and emperor.  He immediately and cordially cooeperated with the alliance his father had formed, and pressed the war against France, Spain and Italy.  Louis XIV. was not a man, however, to be disheartened by disaster.  Though thousands of his choicest troops had found a grave at Blenheim, he immediately collected another army of one hundred and sixty thousand men, and pushed them forward to the seat of war on the Rhine and the Danube.  Marlborough and Eugene led Austrian forces to the field still more powerful.  The whole summer was spent in marches, countermarches and bloody battles on both sides of the Rhine.  Winter came, and its storms and snows drove the exhausted, bleeding combatants from the bleak plains to shelter and the fireside.  All Europe, through the winter months, resounded with preparations for another campaign.  There was hardly a petty prince on the continent who was not drawn into the strife—­to decide whether Philip of Bourbon or Charles of Hapsburg, was entitled by hereditary descent to the throne of Spain.

And now suddenly Charles XII. of Sweden burst in upon the scene, like a meteor amidst the stars of midnight.  A more bloody apparition never emerged from the sulphureous canopy of war.  Having perfect contempt for all enervating pleasures, with an iron frame and the abstemious habits of a Spartan, he rushed through a career which has excited the wonder of the world.  He joined the Austrian party; struck down Denmark at a blow; penetrated Russia in mid-winter, driving the Russian troops before him as dogs scatter wolves; pressed on triumphantly to Poland, through an interminable series of battles; drove the king from the country, and placed a new sovereign of his own selection upon the throne; and then, proudly assuming to hold the balance between the rival powers of France and Austria, made demands of Joseph I., as if the emperor were but the vassal of the King of Sweden.  France and Austria were alike anxious to gain the cooeperation of this energetic arm.