Amid the distractions of outward affairs, Maurice had not neglected the internal interests of Saxony.
It was with the Swiss that he hoped to effect this revolution; but the Swiss, now interfering for the first time as principals in Italian affairs, were incapable of more than adding to the already maddening distractions of the people.
The course of his study was for some time seriously interrupted by his father's illness and death in 1770, and by the many distractions connected with the transference of his residence from Buriton to London.
Poetry thus acquired the tone of the world, kept in close connexion with the chief source of national life, while it was cultivated to the highest pitch of artistic perfection under the most favourable conditions of leisure and freedom from the distractions and anxieties of life.
During this period his struggle with the Church had been but one of his distractions.
