Louis the Fourteenth have read, probably the edict of Nantz had not been revoked. But a restless temper, and a vacant mind, unhappily lighting on absolute power, present, in this monarch, a striking instance of the fatal effects of ignorance, and the calamity of a neglected education. He had a good natural understanding, loved business, and seemed to have a mind capable of comprehending it. Many of his recorded expressions are neat and elegant. But he was uninstructed upon system; Cardinal Mazarine,* with a view to secure his own dominion, having withheld from him all the necessary means of education. Thus he had received no ideas from books; he even hated in others the learning which he did not himself possess: the terms wit and scholar were, in his mind, terms of reproach; the one as implying satire, the other pedantry. He wanted not application to public affairs; and habit had given him some experience in them. But the apathy which marked his latter years strongly illustrate the infelicity of an unfurnished mind. This, in the tumult of his brighter days, amidst the succession of intrigues, the splendour of festivity, and the bustle of arms, was scarcely felt. But ambition and voluptuousness cannot always be gratified. Those ardent passions, which in youth were devoted to licentiousness, in the meridian of life to war, in a more advanced age to bigotry and intolerance, not only had never been directed by religion, but had never been softened by letters. After he had renounced his mistresses at home, and his unjust wars abroad, even though his mind seems to have acquired some pious tendencies, his life became a scene of such inanity and restlessness, that he was impatient at being, for a moment, left alone. He had no intel

* Julius Mazarine, was born at Piscina, in Italy, in 1602, and died in 1661, after governing France with an absolute sway, as prime minister, during the minority of Louis XIV.-ED.

lectual resources. The agitation of great events had subsided. From never having learned either to employ himself in reading or thinking, his life became a blank, from which he could not be relieved by the sight of his palaces, his gardens, and his aqueducts, the purchase of depopulated villages and plundered cities.

Indigent amid all his possessions, he exhibited a striking confirmation of the declaration of Solomon, concerning the unsatisfying nature of all earthly pleasures; and shewed, that it is in vain even for kings to hope to obtain from others those comforts, and that contentment, which man can derive only from within himself.

CHAPTER IV.

The education of a sovereign a specific education. THE formation of the character is the grand object to be accomplished. This should be considered to be not so much a separate business, as a sort of centre to which all the rays of instruction should be directed. All the studies, it is presumed, of the royal pupil should have some reference to her probable future situation. Is it not, therefore, obviously requisite that her understanding be exercised in a wider range than that of others of her sex; and that her principles be so established, on the best and surest foundation, as to fit her at once for fulfilling the peculiar demands, and for resisting the peculiar temptations, of her station? Princes have been too often inclined to fancy, that they have few interests in common with the rest of mankind, feeling themselves placed by Providence on an eminence so much above them. But the great aim

should be, to correct the haughtiness which may attend this superiority, without relinquishing the truth of the fact. Is it not, therefore, the business of those who have the care of a royal education, not so much to deny the reality of this distance, or to diminish its amount, as to account for its existence, and point out the uses to which it is subservient?

A prince is an individual being, whom the hand of Providence has placed on a pedestal of peculiar elevation but he should learn, that he is placed there as the minister of good to others; that the dignity being hereditary, he is the more manifestly raised to that elevation, not by his own merit, but by providential destination; by those laws, which he is himself bound to observe with the same religious fidelity as the meanest of his subjects. It ought early to be impressed, that those appendages of royalty, with which human weakness may too probably be fascinated, are intended not to gratify the feelings, but to distinguish the person, of the monarch; that, in themselves, they are of little value; that they are beneath the attachment of a rational, and of no substantial use to a mortal being; in short, that they are not a subject of triumph, but are to be acquiesced in for the public benefit, and from regard to that weakness of our nature, which subjects so large a portion of every community to the influence of their imagination and their senses.

While, therefore, a prince is taught the use of those exterior embellishments, which, as was before observed, designate rather than dignify his station; while he is led to place the just value on every appendage which may contribute to give him importance in the eyes of the multitude; who, not being just judges of what constitutes true dignity, are consequently apt to reverence the royal person

exactly so far as they see outward splendour connected with it; should not a royal pupil himself be taught, instead of overvaluing that splendour, to think it a humbling, rather than an elevating consideration, that so large a part of the respect paid to him, should be owing to such extrinsic causes, to causes which make no part of himself? Let him then be taught to gratify the public with all the pomp and circumstance suitable to royalty; but let him never forget, that though his station ought always to procure for him respect, he must ever look to his own personal conduct, for inspiring veneration, attachment, and affection; and ever let it be remembered, that this affection is the strongest tie of obedience; that subjects like to see their prince great, when that greatness is not produced by rendering them less; and, as the profound Selden observes, "the people will always be liberal to a prince who spares them, and a good prince will always spare a liberal people.'

This is not a period when any wise man would wish to diminish either the authority or the splendour of kings. So far from it, he will support with his whole weight, an institution which the licentious fury of a revolutionary spirit has rendered more dear to every Englishman. On no consideration, therefore, would he pluck even a feather from those decorations of royalty, which, by a long association, have become intimately connected with its substance, In short, every wise inhabitant of the British isles must feel, that he who would despoil the crown of its jewels, would not be far from spoiling the wearer of his crown. And as nothing but democratic folly or frenzy would degrade the monarch from his due elevation, so democratic envy

See Selden's" Table Talk;" one of the best compendiums of aphorisms in any language. The author was born in 1584, and died in 1654.-ED.

alone would wish to strip him, not only of a single constituent of real greatness, but even of a single ornamental appendage, on which the people have been accustomed to gaze with honest joy.

Nevertheless, those outrages which have lately been committed against the sanctity of the throne, furnish new and most powerful reasons for assiduously guarding princes, by every respectful admonition, against any tendency to exceed their just prerogatives, and for checking every rising propensity to overstep, in the slightest degree, their welldefined rights.

At the same time, it should be remembered, that there may be no less dangerous faults on the other side, and that want of firmness in maintaining just rights, or of spirit in the prompt and vigorous exercise of necessary authority, may prove as injurious to the interests of a community as the most lawless stretch of power. Defects of this very kind were evidently among the causes of bringing down on the gentlest of the kings of France, more calamities than had ever resulted from the most arbitrary exertion of power in any of his predecessors. Feebleness and irresolution, which seem to be little more than pardonable weaknesses in private persons, may, by their consequences, prove in princes fatal errors; and even produce the effect of great crimes. Vigour to secure, and opportunely to exert their constitutional power, is as essential as moderation not to exceed it.*

May it not be observed, without risking the imputation of flattery, that, perhaps never, in the history of the world, has any country been so uninterruptedly blessed with that very temperament of government, which is here implied, as this empire has been, under the dominion of the house of Hanover? There has, on no occasion, been a want of firmness: but with that firmness, there has been a conscientious regard to the principles of the constitution. Who can at this moment pretend to pronounce how much we owe to the steady integrity which is so