that part of education on which the whole hap-|nounced his mistresses at home, and his unjust piness of life most materially depends, no occasion should be neglected, no indication slighted, no connteraction omitted, which may contribute to accomplish so important an end. 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 intellectual 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 ex The peculiar defects, not merely such faults as are incident to childhood, but the predomi. nating faults of the individual, should be carefully watched, lest they acquire strength through neglect, when they might have been diminished by a counteracting force. If the temper be restless, ardent, and impetuous, weariness and discontent will, hereafter, fill up the dreary intervals between one animating scene and another, unless the temper be subdued and tran-hibited a striking confirmation of the declaquillized by a constant habit of quiet, though varied, and interesting occupation. Few things are more fatal to the mind, than to depend for happiness on the contingent recurrence of events, business, and diversions, which inflame and agitate it; for as they do not often occur, the intervals which are long are also languid; the enjoyment is factitious happiness; the pri vation is actual misery. ration of Solomon, concerning the unsatisfying nature of all earthly pleasures; and showed, 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 with in himself. CHAP. IV. tion. Reading, therefore, has, especially to a prince, its moral uses, independently of the nature of the study itself. It brings no small The Education of a Sovereign a specific Educa gain, if it secure him from the dominion of turbulent pursuits and agitating pleasures. If it snatch him on the one hand, from public THE formation of the character is the grand schemes of ambition and false glory; and if it object to be accomplished. This should be conrescue him on the other, from the habit of form-sidered to be not so much a separate business, ing petty projects of incessant diversion, the rudiments of a trifling and useless life. Knowledge, therefore, is often the preservative of virtue, and, next to right habits of sentiment and conduct, the best human source of happiness. Could 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 illustrated 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 advanc. ed age to bigotry and intolerance, not only had never been directed by religion, but had never been softened by letters.-After he had re 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 moral being; in short, that they are not a subject of a 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. | and vigorous exercise of necessary authority, may prove as injurious to the interests of a com. munity 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 While, therefore, a prince is taught the use and irresolution, which seems to be little more of those exterior embellishments, which, as was than pardonable weaknesses in private persons, before observed, designate, rather than dignify may, by their consequences, prove in princes his station; while he is led to place the just va- fatal errors; and even produce the effect of great lue on every appendage which may contribute crimes. Vigour to secure, and opportunity to to give him importance in the eyes of the multi-exert their constitutional power, is as essential tude; who not being just judges of what con- as moderation not to exceed it.* stitutes 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.' It serves to show the inestimable value of well-defined laws, and the importance of making the prince acquainted with them, that Louis the thirteenth conceived a jealousy respecting his own power, because he did not understand the nature of it; and his favourites were unable or unwilling to instruct him. But his usurpation of extraordinary power tended to exalt his minister still more than himself; and in setting the king above the laws, he still set the cardinal above the king. The power of the monarchs of France had never been defined by any written law. Charles V. Louis IX. and perhaps a very few other wise and temperate princes, did not conceive their power to be above the laws, but approved of those moderating maxims which had become, by degrees, the received usages of the state, and which, while they seemed, in some measure, a constitutional check upon the absolute power of the crown, formed also a guard against that popular licentiousness, which, in a pure despotism, appears to be the only resource left to the This is not a period when any wise man people. But France has had few monarchs like would wish to diminish either the authority, or Charles V. and still fewer like Louis IX. Henry the splendour of kings. So far from it, he will IV. seems to have found and observed the happy support with his whole weight, an institution medium. He was at once resolute and mild; which the licentious fury of a revolutionary spi- determined and affectionate; politic and humane. rit has rendered more dear to every Englishman. The firmness of his mind, and the active vigour On no consideration, therefore would he pluck of his conduct, always kept pace with the geneven a feather from those decorations of royalty, tleness of his language. He fought for his prewhich, by a long association, have become inti-rogatives bravely, and defended them vigorously; mately connected with its substance. In short, yet, it is said, he ever carefully avoided the use every wise inhabitant of the British isles must of the term. He also loved and sought popular. feel, that he who would despoil the crown of its ity, but he never sacrificed to it any just claim, jewels, would not be far from spoiling the wearer nor ever made a concession which did not also of his crown. And as nothing but domestic tend to guard the real prerogatives of the crown.t folly or frenzy would degrade the monarch from And it seems to be the true wisdom of a prince, his due elevation, so democratic envy alone that, as he cannot be too deliberate in his counwould wish to strip him, not only of a single cils, nor too cautious in his plans, so when those constituent of real greatness, but even of a sin-counsels are well matured, and those plans well gle 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 slight est degree, their well-defined 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 May it not be observed, without risking the impu the world, has any country been so uninterruptedly tation of flattery, that perhaps never, in the history of 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 obviously possessed by our present sovereign? And who does not remember with what good effect his resolute composure and dignified firmness were exerted during a scene of the greatest alarm which has occurred in his reign--the riots of the year 1780. digested he cannot be too decisive in their exe cution. they are the surest guides of action, so are they the surest guards from danger. Well might the view of this well-founded power produce the remark which it drew forth from a sagacious Frenchman,* who was com. paring the solid constitutional authority of the British monarch, with the more specious, but less secure fabric of the despotism of the kings of France- That a king of England, who acted according to the laws, was the greatest of all monarchs!' It was not, indeed, under the actual rule of monarchs, however arbitrary, that royal autho. rity was raised to its highest pitch in France. It was Richelieu, who, under a regency, rapidly established such a system of tyranny, as the boldest sovereign had seldom dared to attempt. He improved on all the anterior corruptions; and, as a lively French author says, tried to conceal their being corruptions, by erecting them into political maxims. Mazarin, with inferior But while the convulsions of other govern. ability, which would not have enabled him toments, built on less permanent principles, have give the impulse, attempted still more to accele- riveted our affection to our own; and while an rate the movement of that machine which his experimental acquaintance with the miseries of predecessor had set a going with such velocity; anarchy most naturally lead us, as subjects, to and a civil war was the consequence. a strong sense of the duty of obedience :-with equal zeal would we wish it to be inculcated on princes, that they should be cautious never to multiply occasions for exacting that obedience; that they should use no unnecessary compulsion by seizing as a debt what good subjects are always willing to pay as a duty: and what is then only to be relied upon, when it is sponta neous and cordial. Happily, the examples of neither the kings, the laws, nor the constitution of France, can be strictly applicable to us. Happily also, we live at a time, when genuine freedom is so completely established among us: when the constitution, powers, and privileges of parliament are so firmly settled; the limits of the royal prerogative so exactly defined, and so fully understood; and the mild, moderate, and equitable It is observable, that those monarchs who have spirit of the illustrious family in which it is in- most sedulously contended for prerogative, have vested, is withall so conspicuous, that as Black-been among the feeblest and the least capable stone observes, topics of government, which, like the mysteries of the Bona Dea, were formerly thought too sacred to be divulged to any but the initiated, may now, without the smallest offence, be fully and temperately discussed.' At this tumultuous period, when we have seen almost all the thrones of Christendom trembling to their foundation; we have witnessed the British constitution, like the British oak, confirmed and rooted by the shaking of that tremendous blast, which has stripped kingdoms of their crowns, levelled the fences and inclosures of law, laid waste the best earthly blessings of mankind, and involved in desolation a large part of the civilized world. When we have beheld absolute monarchies, and republican states, alike ravaged by the tempest, shall we not learn still more highly to prize our own unparalleled political edifice, built with such fair proportions, on principles so harmonious and so just, that one part affords to another that support which, in its turn, it receives; while each lends strength, as well as stability to all? of exercising it; and that those who have struggled most earnestly for unjust power, have seldom enjoyed it themselves, but have made it over to mistresses and favourites. This is par ticularly exemplified in two of our weakest and most unhappy princes, Edward II. and Richard II.-Whether it was that this very imbecility made them more contentious about their prerogative, aud more obstinate in resisting the demands of parliament; or that their favourites stimulated them to exactions, the benefit of which was to be transferred to themselves. The character of Edward III. (notwithstanding his faults) was consistently magnanimous. He was not ore brave than just. He was attentive to the dignity of his crown in proportion to that magnanimity, and to the creation and execution of laws in proportion to that justice; and he took no important steps without the advice of parliament. The wretched reign and miserable catastrophe of each of the two first-named princes, furnish a striking contrast to the energy and popularity of the last; of whom Hume observes, that his domestic government was even more admirable than his foreign conquests;' and of whom Selden says, that one would think by his actions that he never was at home, and by his laws that he never was abroad.' A wise and virtuous prince will ever bear in mind the grand distinction between his own si How slender is the security of unlimited power, let the ephemeral reigns of eastern despots declare! A prince who governs a free people, enjoys a safety which no despotic sovereign ever possessed. The latter rules singly; and where a revolution is meditated, the change of a single person is soon effected. But where a Sovereign's power is incorporated with the pow-tuation and that of his minister. The latter is ers of parliament, and the will of the people who elect parliaments, the kingly state is fenced in with, and intrenched by the other states. He relies not solely upon an army. He relies on his parliament, and on his people, a sure resource, while he involves his interests with theirs! This is the happiness, the beauty, and the strength of that three-fold bond which ties our constitution together. Counsellors may mislead, favourites may betray, even armies may desert, and navies may mutiny, but LAWS, as but the precarious possessor of a transient authority; a mere tenant at will, or, at most, for life. He himself is the hereditary and permanent possessor of the property. The former may be more tempted to adopt measures which, though gainful or gratifying at the present, will be probably productive of future mischief to the estate But surely the latter may be justly expected to take a longer and wider view; and considering * Gourville. THE WORKS OF HANNAH MORE. the interests of his posterity no less than his be an essay on political, but moral instruction, own, to reject all measures which are likely to these remarks are only hazarded, in order to indisparage their inheritance, or injure their te-timate the peculiar turn which the royal educa nure. He will trace the misfortunes of our first Charles to the usurpation of the Tudors; and mark but too natural a connexion between the unprincipled domination and profuse magnificence of Louis XIV., and the melancholy fate of his far better and more amiable successor. He will remember the solid answer of the Spartan king, who being reproached by a superficial observer with having left the regal power impaired to his posterity, replied, 'No; for he had left it more secure, therefore more permanent.' A large and just conception of interest, therefore, no less than of duty, will prompt a wise prince to reject all measures which, while they appear to flatter the love of dominion, naturally inherent in the mind of man, by holding forth the present extension of his power, yet tend obstinately to weaken its essential strength, to make his authority the object of his people's jealousy, rather than of their affection; to cause it to rest on the uncertain basis of military power, rather than on the deep and durable foundations of the constitution. of France, urging as a motive, that he should be der stock has been laid in for it to work upon; dishonoured if the duke did not make him a bi- and where these materials for forming the charac shop- And I,' replied the regent, shall be dis-ter have not been previously prepared. Things honoured if I do.' CHAP. V · On the importance of studying Ancient History. THOSE Plous persons do not seem to understand the true interests of Christianity, who forbid the study of pagan literature. That it is of little value, comparatively with Christian learning, does not prove it to be altogether without its usefulness. In the present period of critical investigation, heathen learning seems to be justly appreciated, in the scale of letters; the wisdom and piety of some of our most eminent contemporaries having successfully applied it to its noblest office, by rendering it subservient to the purposes of Revelation, in multiplying the evidences, and illustrating the proofs. Thus the Christian emperor, when he destroyed the heathen temples, consecrated the golden vessels, to adorn the Christian churches. must be known before they are done. The part should be studied before it is acted, if we expect to have it acted well. Where much is to be learned, time must be economised; and in the judicious selection of pagan literature, the discernment of the preceptor will be particularly exercised. All those writers, however justly celebrated, who have employed much learning, in elaborating points which add little to the practical wisdom or virtue of mankind; all such as are rather curious than useful, or ingenious than instructive, should be passed over; nor need she bestow much attention on points, which, though they may have been accurately discussed, are not seriously important. Dry critical knowledge, though it may be correctly just; and mere chronicles of events, though they may be strictly true, teach not the things she wants. Such authors as Sallust, who, in speaking of turbulent innovators, remarks, that they thought the very disturbance of things established a sufficient bribe to set them at work: those who, like this exquisite historian, unfold the internal principles of action, and dissect the hearts and minds of their personages, who de to trace the labyrinth of causes and effects, and assign to every incident its proper motive, will be eminently useful. But, if she be taught to discern the merits of writers, it is that she may become not a critic in books, but in human nature. In this enlightened period, Religion, our religion at least, does not, as in her days of dark-velope complicated circumstances, furnish a clue ness, feel it necessary to degrade human learning, in order to withdraw herself from scrutiny. The time is past, when it was produced as a serious charge against saint Jerome, that he had read Homer; when a doctor of the Sorbonne penitently confessed, among his other sins, that the exquisite muse of Virgil had made him weep for the woes of Dido; and when the works of Tacitus were condemned to the flames, from the papal chair, because the author was not a Roman Catholic. It is also curious to observe a papist persecuting the memory of a pagan on the ground of his superstition! Pope Gregory the great, expelled Livy from every Christian library on this account! The most acute enemy of Christianity, the emperor Julian, who had himself been bred a Christian and a scholar, well understood what was most likely to hurt its cause. He knew the use which the Christians were making of ancient authors, and of rhetoric, in order to refute error, and establish truth.-They fight us,' said he, 'by the knowledge of our own authors; shall we suffer ourselves to be stabbed with our own swords?' He actually made a law to interdict their reading Homer and Demosthenes; prohibited to their schools the study of antiquity, and ordered that they should confine themselves, to the explanation of Matthew and Luke, in the churches of the Galileans. It can never be too soon, for the royal pupil, to begin to collect materials for reflection, and for action. Her future character will much depend on the course of reading, the turn of temper, the habit of thought now acquired, and the standard of morals now fixed. The acquisition of present taste will form the elements of her subsequent character. Her present acquirements, it is true, will need to be matured by her after experience; but experience will operate to comparatively little purpose, where only a slen History is the glass by which the royal mind should be dressed. If it be delightful for a private individual to enter with the historian into every scene which he describes, and into every event which he relates; to be introduced into the interior of the Roman senate, or the Athenian areopagus; to follow Pompey to Pharsalia, Miltiades to Marathon, or Marlborough to Blenheim; how much more interesting will this be to a sovereign? To him for whom senates debate, for whom armies engage, and who is him. self to be a prime actor in the drama! Of how much more importance is it to him, to possess an accurate knowledge of all the successive governments of that world, in a principal government of which he is one day to take the lead. To possess himself of the experience of ancient states, of the wisdom of every antecedent age! To learn moderation from the ambition of one, caution from the rashness of another, and prudence perhaps from the indiscretion of both! To apply foregone examples to his own use; adopting what is excellent, shunning what is erroneous, and omitting what is irrelevant! Reading and observation are the two grand sources of improvement; but they lie not equal. ly open to all. From the latter, the sex and habits of a royal female, in a good measure, exclude her. She must then, in a greater degree, depend on the formation which books afford, opened and illustrated by her preceptor. Though her personal observation must be limited, her advantages from historical sources may be large and various. If history for a time, especially during the |