study as a mere gratification of his own taste. He knew that a king has nothing exclusively his own, not even his literary attainments. He threw his erudition, like his other possessions, into the public stock. He diffused among the people his own knowledge, which flowed in all directions, like streams from their parent fountain, fertilizing every portion of the human soil, so as to produce, if not a rapid growth, yet a disposition both for science and virtue, where shortly before there had been a barbarous waste, a complete moral and mental desolation.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Observations on the age of Louis XIV. and on Voltaire. If in the present work we frequently cite Louis XIV. it is because on such an occasion his idea naturally presents itself. His reign was so long; his character so prominent; his qualities so ostensible; his affairs were so interwoven with those of the other countries of Europe, and especially with those of England; the period in which he lived produced such a revolution in manners; and, above all, his encomiastic historian, Voltaire, has decorated both the period and the king with so much that is great and brilliant, that they fill a large space in the eye of the reader. Voltaire writes as if the age of Louis XIV. bounded the circle of human glory; as if the antecedent history of Europe were among those inconsiderable and obscure annals, which are either lost in fiction, or sunk into insignificance; as if France, at the period he celebrates, bore the same relation to the modern, that Rome did to the ancient world, when she divided the globe into two portions, Romans and barbarians; as if Louis were

the central sun from which all the lesser lights of the European firmament borrowed their feeble radiance.

But whatever other countries may do, England at least is able to look back with triumph to ages anterior to that which is exclusively denominated the age of Louis XIV. Nay, in that vaunted age itself, we venture to dispute with France the palm of glory. To all they boast of arms-we need produce no other proof of superiority, than that we conquered the boasters. To all that they bring in science, and it must be allowed that they bring much, or where would be the honour of eclipsing them?-we have to oppose our Locke, our Boyle, and our Newton. To their long list of wits and of poets-it would be endless, in the way of competition, to attempt enumerating, star by star, the countless constellation which illuminated the bright contemporary reign of Anne.

But the principal reason for which we so often cite the conduct, and, in citing the conduct, refer to the errors of Louis, is, that there was a time, when the splendour of his character, his imposing magnificence and generosity, made us in too much danger of considering him as a model. The illusion has in a good degree vanished; yet the inexperienced reader is not only still liable, by the dazzling qualities of the king, to be blinded to his vices, but is in danger of not finding out that those very qualities were themselves little better than vices.

But it is not enough for writers, who wish to promote the best interests of the great, to expose vices, they should also consider it as part of their duty to strip off the mask from false virtues, especially those to which the highly born and the highly flattered are peculiarly liable. To those who are captivated with the shining annals of the ambitious

and the magnificent; who are struck with the glories with which the brows of the bold and the prosperous are encircled; such calm, unobtrusive qualities as justice, charity, temperance, meekness, and purity, will make but a mean figure; or, at best, will be considered only as the virtues of the vulgar, not as the attributes of kings. While in the portrait of the conqueror, ambition, sensuality, oppression, luxury, and pride, painted in the least. offensive colours, and blended with the bright tints of personal bravery, gaiety, and profuse liberality, will lead the sanguine and the young to doubt whether the former class of qualities can be very mischievous, which is so blended and lost in the latter; especially when they find that hardly any abatement is made by the historian for the one, while the other is held up to admiration.

There is no family in which the showy qualities have more blinded the reader, and sometimes the writer also, to their vices, than the princes of the house of Medici. The profligate Alexander,* the first usurper of the dukedom of Florence, is declared, by one of his historians, Sandoval, "to be a person of excellent conduct;" and though the writer himself acknowledges his extreme licentiousness, yet he says, "he won the Florentines by his obliging manners;" those Florentines whom he not only robbed of their freedom, but dishonoured in the persons of their wives and daughters; his unbounded profligacy not even respecting the sanctity of convents! Another writer, speaking of the house of Medici collectively, says, "their having restored knowledge and elegance will, in time, obliterate their faults. Their usurpation, tyranny, pride,

* Alexander, duke of Florence, the natural son of Lorenzo de Medici, obtained that dignity without right, by the interest of his uncle, Pope Clementi VII. He fell by the hand of Philip Strozzi in 1537.-ED.

perfidy, vindictive cruelty, parricides, and incest, will be remembered no more. Future ages will forget their atrocious crimes in fond admiration !"* Ought historians to teach such lessons to princes? Ought they to be told that " knowledge and elegance" cannot be bought too dear, though purchased by such atrocious crimes? The illustrious house of Medici seems to have revived, in every point of resemblance, the Athenian character. With one or two honourable exceptions, it exhibits the same union of moral corruption with mental taste; the same genius for the arts, and the same neglect of the virtues; the same polish, and the same profligacy; the same passion for learning, and the same appetite for pleasure; the same interchange of spectacles and assassinations; the same preference of the beauty of a statue to the life of a citizen.

So false are the estimates which have ever been made of human conduct; so seldom has praise been justly bestowed in this life; so many wrong actions not only escape censure, but are accounted reputable, that it furnishes one strong argument for a future retribution. This injustice of human judgment led even the pagan Plato, in the person of Socrates, to assign, in an ingenious fiction, a reason why a judgment after death was appointed. He accounts for the necessity of this, by observing, that in a preceding period each person had been judged in his lifetime, and by living judges. The consequence was, that false judgments were continually passed. The reason of these unjust decisions, he observes, is, that men being judged in the body, the blemishes and defects of their minds are overlooked, in consideration of their beauty, their high. rank, or their riches: and being also surrounded by a multitude who are always ready to extol their

Noble's Memoirs of the illustrious house of Medici.

virtues, the judges of course are biassed; and being themselves also in the body, their own minds likewise are darkened. It was therefore determined, that men should not be called to their trial till after death, when they shall appear before the judge, himself a pure ethereal spirit, stripped of that body and those ornamental appendages which had misled earthly judges.* The spirit of this fable is as applicable to the age of Louis XIV. as it was to that of Alexander, in which it was written.

Liberality is a royal virtue; a virtue too, which has its own immediate reward in the delight which accompanies its exercise. All wealth is in order to diffusion. If novelty be, as has been said, the great charm of life, there is no way of enjoying it so perfectly as by perpetual acts of beneficence. The great become insensible to the pleasure of their own affluence, from having been long used to it: but, in the distribution of riches, there is always something fresh and reviving; and the opulent add to their own stock of happiness all that their bounty bestows on others. It is pity, therefore, on the mere score of voluptuousness, that neither Vitellius nor Eliogabalus, nor any of the other imperial gourmands, was ever so fortunate as to find out this multiplied luxury of " eating with many mouths at once." Homage must satiate, intemperance will cloy, splendour will fatigue, dissipation exhaust, and adulation surfeit; but the delights of beneficence will be always new and refreshing. And there is no quality in which a prince has it more in his power to exhibit a faint resemblance of that great Being whose representative he is, than in the capacity and the love of this communicative good

ness.

But, it is the perfection of the Christian virtues, that they never intrench on each other. It is a See Guardian, No. 27.