There are again other striking improbabilities connected with the Polish nation in the history before us.  Buonaparte is represented as having always expressed the strongest sympathy with that ill-used people; and they, as being devotedly attached to him, and fighting with the utmost fidelity and bravery in his armies, in which some of them attained high commands.  Now he had it manifestly in his power at one period (according to the received accounts), with a stroke of his pen, to re-establish Poland as an independent state.  For, in his last Russian war, he had complete occupation of the country (of which the population was perfectly friendly); the Russian portion of it was his by right of conquest; and Austria and Prussia, then his allies, and almost his subjects, would gladly have resigned their portions in exchange for some of the provinces they had ceded to France, and which were, to him, of little value, but, to them, important.  And, indeed, Prussia was (as we are told) so thoroughly humbled and weakened that he might easily have enforced the cession of Prussian-Poland, even without any compensation.  And the re-establishment of the Polish kingdom would have been as evidently politic as it was reasonable.  The independence of a faithful and devoted ally, at enmity with the surrounding nations—­the very nations that were the most likely to combine (as they often had done) against him,—­this would have given him, at no cost, a kind of strong garrison to maintain his power, and keep his enemies in check.

Yet this most obvious step, the history tells us, he did not take; but made flattering speeches to the Poles, used their services, and did nothing for them!

This is, alone, sufficiently improbable.  But we are required moreover to believe that the Poles,—­instead of execrating this man, who had done them the unpardonable wrong of wantonly disappointing the expectations he had, for his own purposes, excited, thus adding treachery to ingratitude—­instead of this, continued to the last as much devoted to him as ever, and even now idolize his memory!  We are to believe, in short, that this Buonaparte, not only in his own conduct and adventures violated all the established rules of probability, but also caused all other persons, as many as came in contact with him, to act as no mortals ever did act before:  may we not add, as no mortals ever did act at all?

Many other improbabilities might be added to the list, and will be found in the complete edition of that history, from which some extracts will be presently given, and which has been published (under the title of “Historic Certainties”) by Aristarchus Newlight, with a learned commentary (not, indeed, adopting the views contained in these pages, but) quite equal in ingenuity to a late work on the “Hebrew Monarchy.”