mind, all the graces of his attractive person,-all that he had or could, or was,-to the single-hearted, self-devoted advancemen of his country's good and his country's glory.

Before, however, considering that high course of undying re nown, we must summon to the platform some of those distin guished personages whose character and conduct had an influence upon the fame and fortunes of the Duke of Marlborough.

And, first, we summon to the bar his great antagonist, the mightiest monarch, and, if we except his conqueror, the greates man, of the age-the able statesman-the consummate courtie -the graceful host-the gallant soldier-the devout debaucheethe pitiless persecutor-Louis XIV. of France. Never has the Church of Rome, prolific though she be in sanguinary saints and pious profligates,-never has his native land, fruitful alike in folly and in vice, in grace and gallantry,--never has the race of Bour bon, distinguished for its continuous and intense realization, its constant and multiform development of "the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,"-produced such a transcendent example of accursed glory as in the case of him whom succeeding ages as well as his own time dignified with the title of "Le Grand Monarque."

We summon this exalted culprit first, because he was the primum mobile, as it were, of the whole course of events which moved onwards by his boundless ambition and vast abilities, his bigotry, his cruelty, his wilfulness, and his falsehood, at length culminated in the war of the Spanish succession.

"That he was a great man, as well as a successful sovereign, is deci sively demonstrated by the mighty changes which he effected in his own realm, as well as in the neighbouring states of Europe. When he ascended the throne, France, though it contained the elements of greatness, had not yet become great. It had been alternately wasted by the ravages of the English, and torn by the fury of the religious wars The insurrection of the Fronde had shortly before involved the capital in all the horrors of a civil conflict: barricades had been erected in the streets, alternate victory and defeat had by turns elevated and depressed the rival factions. Never had the monarchy been depressed to a greater pitch of weakness than during the reign of Louis XIII. and the minority of Louis XIV. But from the time that the latter ascended the throne, order seemed to arise out of chaos. The ascendancy of a great mind—as in India, when Marquis Wellesley assumed the governmentsoon made itself felt in every department. Civil war ceased; rival factions disappeared; even the bitterness of religious hatred seemed for a time to be stilled by the influence of patriotic feeling. The energies of France drawn forth during the agonies of civil conflict were turned to public objects and the career of national aggrandizement. . . . From a pitiable state of anarchy that glorious realm at once appeared on the

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theatre of Europe great, powerful, and united. It is no common capacity which can thus seize the helm and right the ship when it is reeling most violently, and the fury of contending elements has all but torn it in pieces. It is the highest proof of political capacity to discern the bent of the public mind when most strongly excited, and, by falling in with the prevailing desire of the majority, to convert the desolating vehemence of social conflict into the steady passion for national advancement. . . . . It was because his character and turn of mind coincided with the national desires, at the moment of his ascending the throne, that this great monarch was enabled to achieve this marvellous transformation. The feudal spirit, modified but not destroyed by the changes of time, appeared to be concentrated with its highest lustre in his person. He was still the head of the Franks: the lustre of the historic families yet surrounded his throne; but he was the head of the Franks only, that is, of a hundred and fifty thousand conquering warriors. Twenty millions of conquered Gauls were no further considered in his administration than in so far as they augmented the national strength or added to the national resources. But this distinction was then neither perceived nor regarded. Worn out with civil dissension, torn to pieces by religious passions, the fervent minds and restless ambition of the French longed for a national field for exertion, an arena in which social dissensions might be forgotten. Louis XIV. gave them this field: he opened this arena; he ascended the throne at the time when this desire had become so strong and general as in a manner to concentrate on its objects the national will. His character, equally in all its parts, was adapted to the general want. He took the lead alike in the greatness and the foibles of his subjects. Were they ambitious?-so -so was he; were they desirous of renown? -so was he; were they desirous of protection to industry?—so was he; were they prone to gallantry?—so was he. His figure stately, and countenance majestic; his manner lofty and commanding; his conversation dignified, but enlightened; his spirit ardent, but patriotic: he was thus qualified to take the lead and preserve his ascendancy among a proud body of ancient nobles whom the disasters of preceding reigns and the astute policy of Cardinal Richelieu had driven into the ante-chambers of Paris, but who preserved in their ideas and habits the pride and recollections of the conquerors who followed the banners of Clovis. And the great body of the people-proud of their sovereign, proud of his victories, proud of his magnificence, proud of his fame, proud of his national spirit, proud of the literary glory which environed his throne, in secret proud of his gallantries,-joyfully followed their nobles in the brilliant career which his ambition opened, and submitted to his government with as much docility as they had once ranged themselves round the banners of their respective chiefs on the day of battle."-Vol. i. pp. 51-54.

We need not dwell upon the clearness of conception and the propriety of expression which characterize these pages. Mr. Ali

son has seized upon all the prominent characteristics of the por trait, and delineated with equal accuracy and skill the minor portions of his picture. The great feature, however, of Louis's character, that which put the seal upon his greatness,—that which enabled him to raise and to leave behind him a monument of lasting renown, whilst at the same time it engaged him in that fatal crime which sealed his doom,-is thus ably depicted by our author.

That was the secret of

"Louis XIV. was essentially monarchical. his success; it was because he first gave the powers of unity to the monarchy, that he rendered France so brilliant and powerful. All his changes, and they were many, from the dress of soldiers to the instructions to ambassadors, were characterized by the same spirit. He firs introduced a uniform in the army. Before his time the soldiers merely wore a banderole over their steel breastplates, and ordinary dresses That was a great and symptomatic improvement; it at once induced ar esprit de corps, and a sense of responsibility. He first made the troop march with a measured step, and caused large bodies of men to move with the precision of a single company. The artillery and enginee service, under his auspices, made astonishing progress. Never was man who more thoroughly possessed that quality, invaluable in a sove reign, which discerns, and at once selects, ability in the public service Here no prejudice misled, no jealousy arrested, no partiality blinded him. His discriminating eye selected the genius of Vauban, which invented, as it were, the modern system of fortification, and well nig brought it to its greatest elevation, and raised to the highest command that of Turenne, which carried the military art to the most consummat perfection. Skilfully turning the martial and enterprizing genius o the Franks into the career of conquest, he multiplied tenfold thei power, by conferring on them the inestimable advantages of skilled discipline and unity of action. He gathered the feudal array around his banner; he roused the ancient barons from their chateaux, the old retainers from their villages. But he arranged them in disciplined battalions of regular troops, who received the pay and obeyed the order of government, and never left their colours. His regular army was al enrolled by voluntary enlistment, and served for pay. The militi alone was raised by conscription. The same unity which the genius of Louis and his minister communicated to the military powe of France, he gave also to its naval forces and internal strength. T such a pitch of greatness did he raise the marine of the monarchy, tha it all but outnumbered that of England: and the battle of La Hogue in 1692, alone determined, as Trafalgar did a century after, to which of these rival powers the dominion of the seas was to belong. Hi ordinances of the marine, promulgated in 1681, form the best code o maritime law yet known, and one which is still referred to ... as a ruling authority in all commercial states. He introduced astonishing reforms into the courts of law; and to his efforts the great perfection o

the French law, as it now appears in the admirable works of Pothier, is in a great degree to be ascribed. He reduced the government of the interior to that regular and methodical system of governors of provinces, mayors of cities, and other subordinate authorities, all receiving their instructions from the Tuileries, which under no subsequent change of government, imperial or royal, has been abandoned, and which has in every succeeding age formed the main source of its strength.

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"He arrayed the scholars, philosophers, and poets of his dominions, like soldiers and sailors; almost all the academies of France, which have since become so famous, were of his institution: he sought to give discipline to thought as he had done to his fleets and armies, and rewarded successive literary efforts not less than warlike achievements. No monarch ever knew better the magical influence of intellectual strength on general opinion, or felt more strongly the expedience of enlisting it on the side of authority; he aimed at drawing not over his own country alone, but over the whole of Europe, the meshes of regulated and centralized thought. The religious persecution, which constitutes the great blot on his reign, and caused its brilliant career to close in mourning, was the result of the same desire. He longed to give the same unity to the Church which he had done to the army, navy, and civil strength of the monarchy. He saw no reason why the Huguenots should not, at the royal command, face about like one of Turenne's battalions. Schism in the Church was viewed by him in exactly the same light as rebellion in the state. No efforts were spared by inducements, good deeds, and fair promises, to make proselytes; but when 1,200,000 Protestants resisted his seductions, the sword, the faggot, and the wheel were resorted to without mercy for their destruction."-Vol. i. pp. 55—58.

Yes, the despot knew right well that civil and religious liberty must live and die together. The life of the one involves that of the other: no nation is really free, even in a civil point of view, whose thoughts are subject to the control of the civil power; no nation will long continue in a state of absolute slavery which does possess freedom of thought. For thoughts naturally lead to their own expression in words, their own expansion in deeds; and liberty of conscience prepares the mind for liberty of action.

It was not then from a single-hearted devotion to the errors and claims of his false creed and faithless Church, that this amiable Nero devoted men to torture and women to infamy, outdoing in extent as well as atrocity the foulest and fiercest persecutions of Pagan Rome. No! though lawless lust and gloomy idolatry struggled in his heart for dominion, SELF was the Jove of his Ida, the Lord of his soul; his rule, his standard, his motive, his end, his god. By a fearful accumulation, and, as it were, amalgamation of evils, he combined the most unrelenting fanaticism with the most intense selfishness; and thus, when

men were burned, and children butchered, and women violated by his orders, it is difficult to say whether the sacrifice were offered by Louis the sovereign or Louis the saint.

Mr. Alison speaks with a criminal mildness of the licentious ness of this man, and even, we regret to say, attempts to gloss over his heartless profligacy by a pitiable sentimentalism. Nay he is so far dazzled by the halo of glory which surrounds the Grand Monarque, that he is far too lenient to his many faults; in fact, he views in him a hero, and, like the generality of the world is tempted to kneel down and worship him.

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The following remarks, however, are worthy of all considera tion they are written in the spirit in which an Englishma ought to write, and in which he will write, unless he be Romanist or a Romanizer.

"The expulsion of 400,000 innocent human beings from thei country, for no other cause but difference of religious opinion; th destruction of nearly 100,000, of whom, it is said, a tenth perished by the frightful tortures of the wheel and the stake; the wholesale desola tion of provinces and destruction of cities, for conscience sake, neve will, and never should be forgotten. It is the eternal disgrace of th Roman Catholic religion—a disgrace to which the execrations of age have not yet affixed an adequate censure'-that all these infamou State crimes took their origin in the bigoted zeal, or sanguinary ambi tion of the Church of Rome."-Vol. i. p. 61.

With a candour, the more generous because it is not the resul of any mawkish sentimentalism or spurious liberality, or hidde hankering after either the creed, or the principles of the exile prince, Mr. Alison has done justice to the high qualities an great abilities of one, whom succeeding generations have heape with that cowardly abuse which is generally allotted to the last o a fallen dynasty.

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"James II.," says he, was not destitute of abilities, and he wa actuated by that sincerity of intention and earnestness of purpose, whic is so important an element in every elevated character... Jame was not without his personal frailties as well as Charles, but they di not form a ruling part of his character. Cast in a ruder mould, move by more serious feelings, he was actuated in every period of life b lofty and respectable, because generous and disinterested, passion Patriotism at first was his ruling motive-England had not a mu gallant admiral; and in his combats with De Ruyter and Van Trom he exhibited a degree of nautical skill rarely witnessed in those wh have been bred in palaces. Nelson or Collingwood did not mor gallantly steer into the midst of the enemy's fleet, or engage with mo dogged resolution, yard-arm to yard-arm, with a powerful and redoub able foe. Nor was he without capacity in the direction of such com