the sudden ardour of a victorious soldiery, but by a cool deliberate mandate, in a letter under the king's own hand.

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 selfgratification, 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

In the

which he was not only an universal reader, but an 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. history of the Mohamedan 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 shews 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. "The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone!" *

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.

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 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

* Charlemagne, or Charles the First, king of France and emperor of the west, succeeded his brother Carloman in 771, and died in 814.-ED.

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

See the extraordinary account of Charlemagne's splendid reception of the ambassadors from the emperor of the east.