the Fourteenth, in violation of the second treaty of partition, just signed and ratified by him.  Philip the Fifth quietly and cheerfully received in Spain, and acknowledged as King of it, by most of those powers, who afterward joined in an alliance to dethrone him.  I cannot help making this observation upon that occasion:  That character has often more to do in great transactions, than prudence and sound policy; for Lewis the Fourteenth gratified his personal pride, by giving a Bourbon King to Spain, at the expense of the true interest of France; which would have acquired much more solid and permanent strength by the addition of Naples, Sicily, and Lorraine, upon the footing of the second partition treaty; and I think it was fortunate for Europe that he preferred the will.  It is true, he might hope to influence his Bourbon posterity in Spain; he knew too well how weak the ties of blood are among men, and how much weaker still they are among princes.  The Memoirs of Count Harrach, and of Las Torres, give a good deal of light into the transactions of the Court of Spain, previous to the death of that weak King; and the Letters of the Marachal d’Harcourt, then the French Ambassador in Spain, of which I have authentic copies in manuscript, from the year 1698 to 1701, have cleared up that whole affair to me.  I keep that book for you.  It appears by those letters, that the impudent conduct of the House of Austria, with regard to the King and Queen of Spain, and Madame Berlips, her favorite, together with the knowledge of the partition treaty, which incensed all Spain, were the true and only reasons of the will, in favor of the Duke of Anjou.  Cardinal Portocarrero, nor any of the Grandees, were bribed by France, as was generally reported and believed at that time; which confirms Voltaire’s anecdote upon that subject.  Then opens a new scene and a new century; Lewis the Fourteenth’s good fortune forsakes him, till the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene make him amends for all the mischief they had done him, by making the allies refuse the terms of peace offered by him at Gertruydenberg.  How the disadvantageous peace of Utrecht was afterward brought on, you have lately read; and you cannot inform yourself too minutely of all those circumstances, that treaty ’being the freshest source from whence the late transactions of Europe have flowed.  The alterations that have since happened, whether by wars or treaties, are so recent, that all the written accounts are to be helped out, proved, or contradicted, by the oral ones of almost every informed person, of a certain age or rank in life.  For the facts, dates, and original pieces of this century, you will find them in Lamberti, till the year 1715, and after that time in Rousset’s ‘Recueil’.