STATE OF THE POWERS AT WAR.

The war in Germany still raged with unrelenting fury, and the mutual rancour of the contending parties seemed to derive fresh force from their mutual disappointments; at least the house of Austria seemed still implacable, and obstinately bent upon terminating the war with the destruction of the Prussian monarch. Her allies, however, seemed less actuated by the spirit of revenge. The French king had sustained so much damage and disgrace in the course of the war, that his resources failed, and his finances fell into disorder; he could no longer afford the subsidies he had promised to different powers; while his subjects clamoured aloud at the burden of impositions, the ruin of trade, and the repeated dishonour entailed upon the arms of France. The czarina’s zeal for the alliance was evidently cooled by the irregular and defective payments of the subsidies she had stipulated. Perhaps she was disappointed in her hope of conquest, and chagrined to see her armies retire from Germany at the approach of every winter; and the British ministry did not fail to exert all their influence to detach her from the confederacy in which she had embarked. Sweden still languished in an effectual parade of hostilities against the house of Bran-denburgh; but the French interest began to lose ground in the diet of that kingdom. The king of Prussia, howsoever exhausted in the article of men, betrayed no symptom of apprehension, and made no advance towards a pacification with his adversaries. He had employed the winter in recruiting his armies by every expedient his fertile genius could devise; in levying contributions to reinforce the vast subsidy he received from England, in filling magazines, and making every preparation for a vigorous campaign. In Westphalia, the same foresight and activity were exerted by prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, who in the beginning of summer found himself at the head of a very numerous army, paid by Great Britain, and strengthened by two-and-twenty thousand national troops.