Voltaire has expressed his astonishment that these decrees, which he himself allows to have been "cruel and merciless," should proceed from the bosom of a court distinguished for softness of manners, and sunk in voluptuous indulgences. We might rather wonder at any such expression of astonishment in so ingenious a writer, were we not well assured that no acuteness of genius can give that deep insight into the human heart, which our religion alone teaches, in teaching us the corruption of our nature; much less can it inspire the infidel with that quickness of moral taste which enables the true disciples of Christianity to appreciate, as if by a natural instinct, human characters.

It is indeed obvious to all who have sound views of religion, and a true knowledge of mankind, that this cruelty, so far from being inconsistent with, actually sprung from that very spirit of voluptuousness, which, by concentrating all feeling into self, totally hardens the heart to the happiness of others. Who does not know, that a soul dissolved in sensual pleasure is naturally dead to all compassion, and all kindness, which has not fame, or interest, or self-gratification, for its object? Who are they of whom the prophet declares, that "they are not moved by the affliction of their brethren?" It is they "who lie in beds of ivory, that chant to the sound of the viol, that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with ointments." Selfishness was the leading charge brought by the apostle against the enemies of religion. It stands foremost in that catalogue of sins assigned by him as the mark of the apostate times, that men should be lovers of their own selves."

But even without this divine teaching, Voltaire might have been informed by general history, of which he was not only a universal reader, but a universal writer, of the natural connexion between despotism and licentiousness. The annals of all nations bear their concurrent testimony to this glaring truth. It would be endless to enumerate exemplifications of it from the melancholy catalogue of Roman emperors. Nero, who claims among the monarchs of the earth the execrable precedency in cruelty, was scarcely less pre-eminent in voluptuousness. Tiberius was as detestable for profligacy at Caprea as infamous for tyranny at Rome. In the history of the Mohammedan kings, barbarity and selfindulgence generally bear a pretty exact proportion to each other. Sensuality and tyranny equally marked the character of our eighth Henry. Shall we then wonder, if, under Louis, feasts at Versailles, which eclipsed all former splendour, and decorations at Trianon and Marli, which exhausted art and beggared invention, were the accompaniments to the flight, despair, and execution of the Hugonots? So exactly did luxury keep pace with intolerance, and voluptuousness with cruelty.

Even many of the generally admired qualities of Louis, which assumed the air of more solid virtues, were not sterling. His resolution and spirit of perseverance were nothing better than that obstinacy and self-sufficiency which are the common attributes of ordinary characters. Yet, this pride and stubbornness were extolled in the measure they were persisted in, and in proportion to the evils of which they were the cause: and his parasites never failed to elevate these defects to the dignity of fortitude, and the praise of firmness.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Farther observations on Louis XIV.-An examination of the claims of those princes who have obtained the appellation of the great.

IN considering the character of Louis XIV. in the foregoing chapter, we are led, by the imposing appellation of THE GREAT, which has been conferred on this monarch, to inquire how far a passion for shows and pageants; a taste for magnificence and the polite arts; a fondness for war, the theatre of which he contrived to make a scene of the most luxurious accommodation; together with a profuse and undistinguishing liberality, entitled Louis to that appellation, which should seem to imply the possession of all the heroic qualities of which he appears to have been utterly destitute.

We are aware, that the really heroic virtues are growing into general disesteem. The age of chivalry is gone! said a great genius of our own time; one who laboured, though with less effect, to raise the spirit of true chivalry as much as Cervantes had done to lay the false. unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone* !"

"The

Selfishness is scarcely more opposite to true religion than to true gallantry. Men are not fond of establishing a standard so much above ordinary practice. Selfishness is become so predominant a principle, especially among the rich and luxurious, that it gives the mind an uneasy sensation to look up to models of exalted and disinterested virtue. Habits of indulgence cloud the spiritual faculties, and darken those organs of mental vision which should contemplate truth with unobstructed distinctness. Thus, in characters which do not possess one truly heroic virtue, superficial qualities are blindly adopted as substitutes for real grandeur of mind.

But, in pursuing our inquiry into the claims of those princes who have acquired the title of THE GREAT, many difficulties occur. It requires, not only clearness of sight, but niceness of position, to enable us to determine. Perhaps the fifty years which the church of Rome wisely ordained should elapse before she allows inquiries to be made into the characters of her intended saints, previous to their canonization, pass away to an opposite purpose in the case of ambitious princes; and the same period which is required to make a saint would probably unmake a hero, and thus annul the posthumous possession of that claim which many living kings have put in for the title of the great.

From all that we are able to collect of the annals of so obscure a period, it must be allowed that the emperor Charlemagne appears to have had

We cannot pass over the brilliant passage of Mr. Burke, of which this is a part, without hazarding a censure on the sentiment which closes it. He winds up the paragraph by asserting, that, under the old system, "vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness." Surely one of the great dangers of vice is its attractiveness. Now, is not grossness rather repulsive than attractive ? So thought the Spartans, when they exposed their drunken slaves to the eyes of their children. Had Mr. Burke said, that those who add grossness to vice make it more odious, it would have been just. Not so when he declares that its absence mitigates the evil.

higher claims to this appellation than many on whom we have been accustomed to bestow it. But, while this illustrious conqueror gallantly defeated the renowned pagan prince, and his Saxons; while he overthrew their temples, destroyed their priests, and abolished their worship; while he made kings in one country and laws in another; while he seems to have governed with justice, as well his hereditary realms as those which he obtained by the sword; while, in a subsequent engagement with the same pagan prince, he not only obtained fresh conquests, but achieved the nobler victory of bringing his captive to embrace Christianity, and to become its zealous defender; while he vigorously executed, in time of peace, those laws which he enacted even in the tumult of war; and while he was the great restorer and patron of letters, though he could not write his name; and while, as Alfred is the boast of the English, for having been the founder of their constitution by some of his laws; so the French ascribe to Charlemagne the glory of having suggested, by those learned conferences which he commanded to be held in his presence, the first idea of their academies of sciences and letters; while he seemed to possess the true notion of royal magnificence, by employing it chiefly as a political instrument*; and though, for his various merits, the ancient Romans would have deified him, and the French historians seem to have done little less; yet this destroyer of paganism, this restorer of learning, this founder of cities, laws, schools, colleges, and churches, by the unprovoked murder of nearly five thousand Saxons, for no crime but their allegiance to their own legitimate prince, must ever stand excluded, by the Christian censor, from a complete and unqualified right to the appellation of the great; a title to which the pretensions of our Alfred seem to have been, of all princes, the least questionable.

Nor can we dismiss the character of Charlemagne, without producing him as a fresh instance of the political mischief arising from the private vices of princes. The licentiousness of this monarch's conduct proved an irreparable injury to the state; the number of natural children which he left behind him, being the occasion of long contentions respecting the division of the empire.

In not a few respects, the emperor Charles V. possesses a considerable claim to the name of Great, while yet there is an invincible flaw in his title: so eminent in the field as to have equalled the most skilful, and to have vanquished the most successful generals of his age: so able in the cabinet, that he formed his plans with as much wisdom, deliberation, and foresight, as he afterwards executed them with promptitude and vigour ; and constantly manifesting a prudence which secured his superiority over his pleasure-loving contemporaries, the unguarded Francis and the jovial Henry. But his principal claim to greatness arises from that species of wisdom, which his admirable historian allows him to have possessed in the highest degree; that science which, of all others, is the most important in a monarch, "the exact knewledge of mankind, and the great art of adapting their talents to the departments to which he allotted them. So that he employed," continues Robertson, "no general in the field, no minister in the cabinet, no ambassador to a foreign court, no governor of * See the extraordinary account of Charlemagne's splendid reception of the ambassadors from the emperor of the cast.

a province, whose abilities were inadequate to the trust reposed in them.” Yet the grandeur of Charles consisted entirely in the capacity of his mind, without any consonant qualities of the heart. And it was the misfortune of this renowned politician and warrior to fail of the character of true greatness, alike when he pursued, and when he renounced, human glory; to err, both when he sought happiness in the turmoil of war and politics, and when he at last looked for it in the quiet shelter of religious retreat. In the latter, his object was indeed far more pure; but his pursuit was almost equally mistaken. In the bustling scenes of life, he was sullen, cruel, insidious, malignant; the terror of mankind by his ambition, the scourge of Protestantism by his intolerance. In his solitude he was the tormentor of himself, by unhappily mistaking superstitious observances for repentance, and uncommanded austerities for religion.

Who can figure to himself a more truly pitiable state, than that of a capacious mind, which, after a long possession of the plenitude of power, and an unbounded field for the indulgence of ambition, begins to discover the vanity of its loftiest aims, and actually resolves to renounce its pursuits, but without substituting in its stead any nobler object, without replacing the discarded attachment with any better pursuit, or any higher hope? To abandon what may almost be called the empire of this world, without a well-grounded expectation of happiness in the world to come! To renounce the full-blown honours of earthly glory, without any reasonable hope of that glory which fadeth not away; this perhaps is, of all human conditions, that which excites the deepest commiseration in the bosom of a Christian!

There are few things which more strikingly evince the value of true religion, than the despondency and misery experienced by great but perverted minds, when, after a long and successful course of ambition, they are thus brought to a deep feeling of its emptiness. Alexander weeping for more worlds! Dioclesian weary of that imperial power, which had been exercised in acts of tyranny and persecution; abdicating his throne, and retiring to labour in a little garden at Salona, forgetting that solitude requires innocence to make it pleasant, and piety to make it profitable! And though the retreat was voluntary, and though he deceived himself in the first moments of novelty, by declaring that he found more pleasure in cultivating cabbages than in governing Rome; yet he soon gave the lie to this boast, by terminating his life in a way more congenial to the manner in which it had been spent, by poison, or madness, or, as some assert, by both! The emperor Charles, after having, for a long series of years, alarmed and agitated Europe by his restless ambition, yet, just when its objects were accomplished, flying to a gloomy retreat, devoting himself to severe austerities and useless self-discipline, and mournfully acting the weak but solemn farce of his own living funeral !

How does the reflecting mind regret that these great but misguided princes, Charles especially, in whose heart deep remorse seems to have been awakened, should fail finally of that only consolation which could have poured balm into their aching bosoms, and administered relief to their lacerated consciences! Had Charles, instead of closing his days with ignorant and bigoted monks, been surrounded by enlightened Christians, they would have prevented his attempting to heal his wounded spirit by

fruitless and unexpiating self-inflictions. Instead of "laying this flattering unction to his soul," he might have been led to sound and rational repentance. His weary and heavy-laden spirit might have been conducted thither, where alone true rest is to be found. He might have been directed to the only sure source of pardon for sin, and have closed his guilty and perturbed life with a hope full of immortality. Peace might have been restored to his mind, not by lessening his sense of his own offences, but, on the only true ground, by exalting the mercies of God, as displayed in the Christian dispensation.

It must be confessed, however, that there seems to be something sublime in the motive of his abdication, as far as related to himself. Yet, might he not far better have made his peace with Heaven, by remaining on a throne, where he would have retained the power of making some compensation to the world, for the wrongs which he had done it; and of holding out his protection to the reformed faith, of which he had been so unrelenting an enemy, and to which his dying sentiments are suspected to have been favourable?

From a view of such striking examples, one important lesson is held out to princes in the bloom of life, who have yet their path to choose in the world that lies before them. It is is this.-Though it is good to repent of ambition and injustice, it is still better never to have been guilty of either.

If we were to estimate the true greatness of a prince, not so much by the virtues attached to his own personal character, as by the effects which the energy of that character produced on the most enormous empire in the world, there is, perhaps, no monarch, ancient or modern, who could produce a fairer claim to the title of Great, than Peter the First, emperor of Russia. It was said of Augustus, that he had found Rome built of brick, and had left it of marble. It may be said, with more truth of Peter, that he found Muscovy a land of savages, and left it a land of men; of beings at least rapidly advancing, in consequence of his exertions, to that character.

This monarch early gave many of those sure indications of a great capacity, which consist in catching, from the most trivial circumstances, hints for the most important enterprises. The casual sight of a Dutch vessel from a summer-house on one of his lakes, suggested at once to his creative mind the first idea of the navy of Russia. The accidental discourse of a foreigner of no great note, in which he intimated, that there were countries in a state of knowledge, light, and comfort, totally dissimilar to the barbarism and misery of Russia, kindled in the czar an instantaneous wish to see and judge of this difference for himself; not merely as a matter of curiosity, but with a resolution to bring home whatever advantages he might find abroad. With the same instinctive greatness, his natural dread of the sea, which was extreme, was made at once to give way, when voyages of improvement were to be made abroad, or a marine established at home.

Having resolved to procure for his country this necessary instrument of strength and defence, a navy: fired by true genius and genuine patriotism, he quitted for a time his throne and country, not like Sesostris, Alexander, or Cæsar, to despoil other nations, but to acquire the best means of