George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[454] avowed what had long been resolved on, that a stand-

chap. XX.} 1763.

ing army of twenty battalions was to be kept up in America after the peace;¹ and, as the ministry were all the while promising great things in point of economy, it was designed that the expense should be defrayed by the colonists themselves.

On the tenth day of February, 1763, the treaty was ratified; and five days afterwards, at the hunting-castle of Hubertsburg, a definitive treaty closed the war of the empress queen and the Elector of Saxony against the great Frederic. The year of 1761 had ended for Frederic in gloom. Hardly sixty thousand men remained to him to resist the whole circle of his enemies. He has himself described the extremity of his distress, and has proudly bid the world learn from his example, that, in great affairs, perseverance lifts statesmen above perils.² To the firm man the moment of deliverance assuredly comes. Deserted most unexpectedly by George the Third, the changes in Russia had been equally marvellous. That empire from an enemy had become an ally, desirable from its strength, yet dangerous from the indiscretions of its sovereign. But when the arbitrary seizure of the domains of the Russian clergy by Peter the Third, and the introduction into the army of an unwonted system, had provoked the clergy and the army to effect a revolution by his dethronement and murder, his wife, Catharine,—a German princess who had adopted the religion and carefully studied the language, the customs and institutions of Russia; a woman of such endowments, that