through a great part of the year. The soil is in many places very fertile, and although agriculture be in a very unimproved state, yet vast supplies of grain are drawn from this country to other nations, as well by the Baltic as by inlaud communication.

Mountains.-Poland may be considered as one extensive plain, presenting few eminences of note; but the Carpathian mountains, which divide it from Hungary, are one of the great ranges of Europe.

Rivers. The chief rivers of Poland have already been noticed in speaking of Russia and Prussia; for the Duna, the Memel, the Pregel, the Vistula, which discharge themselves into the Baltic, and the Niester, the Nieper, the Bog, which find their way into the Black Sea, although rising within the limits of Poland, pass into other dominions before they close their course.

Lakes. Those in the western and northern parts are numerous, but not of great size: the lake of Gopler, on the west side of the Vistula, is 20 miles in length, on a medium breadth of 2 miles.

Mineral productions.-Mines of gold and silver were formerly opened in Poland; but of late only those of iron, lead, tin, and mercury, are worked: amber and coal are also found in certain places; but the richest mineral is the fossil salt produced in various quarters in the greatest abundance. Of the salt mines, the most eclebrated are those of Wieliczka, a small town a few miles to the southward of Cracow: the mines are sunk deep in the ground, and traced out in various ramifications to a great extent, along the northern extremity of a branch of the Carpathian mountains; the salt is generally of a gray colour, intermingled with white cubes; large blocks are sometimes found inclosed in marl. Other mines are also worked some miles farther off from Cracow, in the same direction; but the salt is less pure than that of Wieliczka.

Animals.-Horned cattle and horses are reared in great numbers, and of valuable kinds: the elk, the bison or urus, a sort of wild cattle, the lynx, the wild goat, are frequently inet with.

Vegetable productions.-Poland has long been noted for the quantities of grain it could afford to export; and the pastures are in many districts of great luxuriance. The forests, of vast extent, consist of oak, beach, pine, and fir, of which great supplies are furnished by the ports on the Baltic, to other parts of Europe. These forests also abound with bees, from whose honey, besides what is exported, the liquor is made which we call mead, a name borrowed from the Polish word miod, signifying honey. Manna and kermes berries are likewise natives of this country.

Religion. By the ancient constitution of the state, the Roman catholic religion was required to be professed by the king and his family, and was in fact the established system of the country; but Lutherans, Calvinists, and the members of the Greek church, were very numerous, and known by the common appellation of Dissidents. So many were the Jews, and so great were the privileges they enjoyed,、 that Poland was usually called the Hebrew Paradise: in 1752 they were estimated at upwards of two millions.

Government.-The whole states included under the general name of Poland, formed one republic, with an elective king at its head, but the power was vested in the senate, and the assemblies of the nobles. The king was elected by the spiritual and temporal counsellors of state, and by representatives from some of the principal cities of the kingdom. In proportion as the nobles were zealous in maintaining the privileges of their order against encroachments on the part of the king, with so much the greater severity did they trample on the peasantry and laborious part of the community, who were deprived of even the shadow of free

dom. The last king of Poland, Stanislaus Augustus, with a spirit and with purposes worthy of better times and of a better fate, projected, with the approbation of the state, many admirable reforms in the government, by means of a new constitution, in which the crown was declared to be hereditary, but not in his own family, and the legislative authority was to be lodged, where alone it can legitimately be lodged, in senates consisting of repre'sentatives elected by the free and deliberate choice of those who were to be governed. Under the influence of such a constitution, Poland, abridged as its territory already was by the repeated usurpations of the neighbouring powers, who failed not to take advantage of the disorders incident to a state governed by an elective sovereign :- with such a constitution it was evident that Poland must speedily have resumed an importance in the balance of Europe to which she had long been a stranger. To crush, therefore, these hopes in the bud, the late monarchs of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, availing themselves of some pretended right to interfere in the interior arrangements of the state, invaded this devoted country, overpowered its gallant defenders, carried away the unfortunate Stanislaus into a foreign land, where his sorrows soon brought him to the grave, and finally, by an act of which these latter days, pregnant às they are with horrors, have furnished few examples, rent the kingdom into three portions, annexing to their own. dominions that which was most conveniently situated for their purposes.

IX.

AUSTRIAN DOMINIONS.

Situation and extent.-These dominions, comprehending Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Hungary, Transylvania, Istria,

Croatia,

Croatia, &c. extend from west to east about 700 English miles, on a general breadth from north to south of about 350 miles, although towards the east the distance from the Danube to the northern extremity of the last acquisitions from Poland is about 420 miles. The House of Austria also possessed the Tyrol, on the north of Italy, and great `part of Suabia, on the north of Switzerland; but by the peace of 1805, those countries were granted to other sovereigns. The name is a Latin imitation of the German term Oestreich, signifying, in allusion to the position of the country with respect to the other parts of Germany, the eastern territory.

Population.-From the various changes in the Austrian dominions, the population has been estimated by different writers from twenty to twenty-five millions. Vienna, the capital of the archduchy of Austria, as well as of the whole dominions of the Austrian Emperor, lies on the south bank of the Danube, in the midst of a fertile and well-cultivated plain. The ancient city is surrounded with fortifications, on the outside of which are erected the suburbs, much more extensive than the city itself, and likewise inclosed with works of defence: the population is reckoned at 254,000. Prague, the capital of the kingdom of Bohemia, seated on the Mulda, contains 80,000 inhabitants. Gratz, in Stiria, has 35,000; Presburg, the capital of the kingdom of Hungary, on the north bank of the Danube, 40 miles below Vienna, contains 27,000 people; but Buda, formerly considered the capital, has only 20,000, unless the population of Pest, on the opposite bank of the Danube, be included, when the amount will be towards 38,000. Hermanstadt, the chief town of Transylvania, contains about 17,000 inhabitants. The population of Cracow, the capital of that portion of Poland now annexed to Austria, was already mentioned in speaking of that kingdom. Trieste, the only sea-port belonging to Austria, seated in the north-east cor

her

ner of the gulf of Venice, contains about 18,000 inhabit

ants.

Climate and soil.-These dominions, occupying the temperate region between latitude 45° and 52', are in general healthy and agreeable, notwithstanding the ranges of mountains forming the northern and southern boundaries, and the marshy plains of Hungary. The soil is in most parts fertile, and in Austria particularly the comfortable appearance of the inhabitants proves at once the productiveness of the ground and the general happiness of their situation. The vast tracts of forest, marsh, and waste land, in the Polish acquisitions, present very different objects to the traveller, and in Hungary too much land seems to be abandoned to pasturage.

Mountains. This country is much more varied in its surface than the northern or western parts of Germany. Bo. hemia is surrounded on all sides by hills, and the great chain of Krapak, called commonly the Carpathian mountains, forms the northern and eastern boundary of Hungary, which itself may be considered as one extensive plain. The south-westerly provinces of Carinthia, Carniola, Croatia, &c. present many mountainous tracts of very considerable elevation.

Rivers.-The Danube, which winds through the Austrian dominions for a space of 700 miles, has already been no ticed. From the north it receives the Teiss, a very considerable stream, which, rising in the north-east corner of Hungary, flows in a semicircular bed through that kingdom, and, after a course of above 400 miles, joins the Danube at no great distance above Belgrade, seated near the influx of the Save, another large river, flowing from west to east, and dividing the Austrian from the Turkish dominions The Drave also falls into the Danube on the south side, after a course of 350 miles from the eastern Alps. The Inn, formerly described, is now connected with Austria

for