life, so have they consigned his memory to perpetual detestation.. A royal person should early be taught that it is no small part of wisdom and virtue to repel improper requests. But while firm In habituating princes to delight to confer in the principle, as Christian duty requires, favours on the deserving, it should be reit is no violation of that duty to be as gentle membered, that where it is right to bestow in the expression, as christian kindness de- them at all, it is also right not to wait till they mands; never forgetting the well known are solicited. But while the royal person is circumstance, that of two sovereigns of the taught to consider munificence as a truly house of Stuart, one refused favours in a princely virtue, yet an exact definition of more gracious manner than the other grant- what true, and especially what royal, munied them. It is, therefore, not enough that ficence is, will be one of the most salutary a prince should acquire the disposition to lessons he can learn. Liberality is one of confer favours, he should also cultivate the the brightest stars in the whole constellation talent. He should not only know how and of virtues; but it shines most benignantly, when to commend, and how and when to be- when it does not depend on its own solitary stow, but also how and when to refuse; and lustre, but blends its rays with the conflushould carefully study the important and ent radiance of the surrounding lights. The happy art of discriminating between those individual favour must not intrench on any whose merit deserves favour, and those superior claim; no bounty must infringe on whose necessities demand relief. It should its neighbouring virtues, justice, or discrebe established into a habit, to make no va- tion; nor must it take its character from its gue promises, raise no false hopes, and dis-outwardly resembling vices, ostentation, appoint no hopes which have been fairly vanity or profusion. Real merit of every raised, kind should be remunerated; but those who levant to the profession, be made a motive for placing a man in it. Louis XIV, chose father la Chaise for his confessor, because he understood something of medals! Princes should never shelter their mean-possess merits foreign from their own proing under ambiguous expressions: nor use fession, though they should be still rewarded, any of those equivocal or general phrases, should not be remunerated out of the rewhich may be interpreted any way, and sources of that profession. Nor should tawhich, either from their ambiguity, or inde-lents, however considerable, which are irreterminate looseness, will be translated into that language, which happens to suit the hopes or the fears of the petitioner. It should ever be remembered that a hasty promise given to gain time, to save appear- There is an idea of beautiful humanity ances, to serve a pressing emergency, or to suggested to princes in the Spectator,* in a avoid a present importunity, and not per- fictitious account of the emperor Pharaformed when the occasion occurs, does as mond, who made it his refreshment from much harm to the promiser in a political, as the toils of business, and the fatigues of cerein a moral view. For the final disappoint-mony, to pass an hour or two in the apartment of such raised expectations will do an injury more than equivalent to any temporary advantage, which could be derived from making the promise. Even the wiser worldly politicians have been aware of this. Cardinal Richelieu, overbearing as he was, still preserved the attachment of his adherents by never violating his engagements; while Mazarin, whose vices were of a baser strain, was true to no man, and therefore, attached to no man. There was no set of people on whom he could depend, because there was none whom he had not deceived. Though his less elevated capacity, and more moderate ambition, enabled him to be less splendidly mischievous than his predecessor, yet his bad faith and want of honour, his falsehood and low cunning, as they prevented all men from confiding in him during his got no answer again. The lord treasurer was then pres- when the beggar notieeth not his gilt stirrups?" Now ment of his favourite, in giving audience to the claim of the meritorious, and in drying the tears of the afflicted. The entrance by which the sorrowful obtained access, was called THE GATE OF THE UNHAPPY. Á munificent prince may, in some degree, realize this idea. And what proportions in architecture, what magnificence in dimensions, what splendour of decoration, can possibly adorn a royal palace, so gloriously as such a gate of the unhappy. A royal person should be carly taught, by an invincible love of justice, and a constant exercise of kindness, feeling, and gratitude, to invalidate that maxim, that in a court les absens et les mourans ont toujours tort. He should possess the generosity, not to expect his favourites to sacrifice their less fortunate friends in order to make their court to him. Examples of this ungenerous selfishness should be commented on in reading. Madame de Maintenon sacrificed the exemplary cardinal de Noailles, and the elegant and virtuous Racine, to the unjust resentment of the king, and refused to incur the risk of displeasing him by defending her oppressed and injured friends. We have already mentioned the remune • Number 84. the attention to questions of taste, morals, ingenuity, and literature. Under such auspicious influence, every talent will not only be elicited, but directed to its true end. Every taste for what is excellent will be awakened; every mental faculty, and moral feeling will be quickened; and the royal person, by the urbanity and condescension with which he thus calls forth abilities to their best exercise, will seem to have infused new powers into his honoured and delighted guests. ration of services. In a reign where all was ness or wit in the conversation, insensibly baseness, it is not easy to fix on a particular divert its current into the purest channels. instance; else the neglect manifest by The standard of society may be gracefully, Charles II. towards the author of Hudibras, and almost imperceptibly raised by exciting carries on it a stain of peculiar ingratitude. It is the more unpardonable, because the monarch had taste enough to appreciate, and frequently to quote with admiration the wit of Butler: a wit not transiently employed to promote his pleasure, or to win his favour; but loyally and laboriously exercised in composing one of the most ingenious and original, and unquestionably, the most learned poem in the English language. A poem, which independently of its literary merit, did more to advance the royal cause, by stigmatizing with unparalleled powers of A prince is the maker of manners ;' and irony and ridicule, the fanaticism and hypo- as he is the model of the court, so is the crisy of the usurper's party, than had per-court the model of the metropolis, and the haps been effected by all the historians, mo- metropolis of the rest of the kingdom. He ralists, divines, and politicians put together. should carefully avail himself of the rare adIt is not meant, however, to give unqualified vantage which his station affords, of giving, praise to this poem. From the heavy char- through this widely extended sphere, the ges of levity, and even of profaneness, Hu-tone to virtue, as well as to manners. He dibras cannot be vindicated; and a scrupulons sovereign would have wished that his cause had been served by better means.Such a sovereign was not Charles. So far from it, may it not be feared, that these grievous blemishes, instead of alienating the We have given an instance of the powerKing from the poet, would too probably have ful effect of example in princes, in the influbeen an additional motive for his approba-ence which the sincerity of Henry IV. of tion of the work and consequently, could not have been his reason for neglecting the author.* A somewhat similar imputation of ingratitude towards Philip de Comnines, though on different grounds of service, detracts not a little from the far more estimable character of Louis XII. As it was this monarch's honourable boast, on another occasion, that the king of France never resented the injuries offered to the duke of Orleans, it should have been equally his care, that the services performed for the one should never have been forgotten by the other. should bear in mind, that high authority becomes a most pernicious power, when, either by example or countenance, it is made the instrument of extending and establishing corruptions. France had on those about him. An instance equally striking may be adduced of the eagerness with which the same monarch was imitated in his vices. Henry was passionately addicted to gaming, and the contagion of the king's example unhappily spread with the utmost rapidity, not only through the whole court, but the whole kingdom. And when, not gaming only, but other irregularities; when whatever is notoriously wrong, by being thus countenanced and protected, becomes thoroughly established and fashionable, few will be ashamed of doing To confer dignity and useful elegance on wrong. Every thing, indeed, which the the hours of social pleasure and relaxation, court reprobates will continue to be stigmais a talent of peculiar value, and one of tized; but unhappily, every thing which it which an highly educated prince is in more countenances will cease to be disreputable. complete possession than any other human And that which was accounted infamous unbeing. He may turn even the passing to-der a virtuous, would cease to be dishonourpics of the day to good account, by collect-able under a corrupt reign. For, while ing the general opinion; and may gain vice is discouraged by the highest authority, clearer views of ordinary events and opinions, notwithstanding it may be practised, it will by hearing them faithfully related, and fairly still be accounted disgraceful; but when that canvassed. Instead of falling in with the discountenance is withdrawn, shame and prevailing taste for levity and trifles, he may, dishonour will no longer attend it. The without the smallest diminution of cheerful-contamination will spread wider, and descend lower, and purity will insensibly lose Dryden also materially served the royal cause by his admirable poem of Absalom and Achitophel, which ground, when even notorious deviations from determined the conquest of the tories, after the exclu-it are no longer attended with disgrace. sion parliaments. But Dryden was a profligate, whom no virtuous monarch could patronise. Though, when a prince refuses to remunerate the actual services of a first rate genius, because he is an unworthy man, it would be acting consistently to withhold all favour from those who bave only the vices without the talents. Anne of Austria has been flattered by historians, for having introduced a more refined politeness into the court of France, and for having multiplied its amusements. We hardly know whether this remark is meant to convey praise or censure. It is certain that her cardinal, and his able predecessor, | value of things; and to adjust their respechad address enough to discover, that the tive claims; assigning to each that due promost effectual method of establishing a des- portion of time and thought to which cach potic government, was to amuse the people, will, on a fair valuation, be found to be entiby encouraging a spirit of dissipation, and tled. It will also teach the habit of setting sedulously providing objects for its gratifica- the concerns of time, in contrast with those tion. These dexterous politicians knew, of eternity. This last is not one of these that to promote a general passion for plea- speculative points on which persons may difsure and idleness, would, by engaging the fer without danger, but one in which an erminds of the people, render them less dan- roneous calculation involves inextricable gerous observers, both of the ministers and misfortunes. of their sovereigns. This project, which It is prudent to have a continual reference had perhaps only a temporary view, had not only to the value of the object, but also lasting consequences. The national charac- to the probability there is of attaining it; ter was so far changed by its success, that not only to see that it is of sufficient importhe country seems to have been brought to tance to justify our solicitude; but also to the unanimous conclusion, that it was plea- take care, that designs of remote issue, and santer to amuse than to defend themselves, projects of distant execution, do not superIt is also worth remarking, that even sede present and actual duties. Providence, where the grossest licentiousness may not be by setting so narrow limits to life itself, in pursued, an unbounded passion for exquisite which these objects are to be pursued, has refinement in pleasure, and for the luxuri- clearly suggested to us, the impropriety of ous gratification of taste, is attended with forming schemes, so disproportionate in their more deep and serious mischiefs than are dimensions, to our contracted sphere of acperhaps intended. It stagnates higher ener-tion. Nothing but this doctrine of moral gies; it becomes itself the paramount prin- calculation, will keep up in the mind a conciple, and gradually by debasing the heart, stant sense of that future reckoning, which, both disinclines and disqualifies it for nobler even to a private individual, is of unspeakapursuits. The court of Louis XIV. exhi- ble moment: but, which to a prince, whose bited a striking proof of this degrading per-responsibility is so infinitely greater, infection. The princes of the blood were so creases to a magnitude, the full sum of enchanted with its fascinating splendours, that they ignominiously submitted to the loss of all power, importance, and influence in the state, because with a view to estrange them from situations of real usefulness and dignity, they were graciously permitted to preside in matters of taste and fashion, and to become the supreme arbiters in dress, spectacles, and decoration.* CHAP. XXIV. which, the human mind would in vain attempt to estimate. This principle will afford the most salutary check to those projects of remote vain-glory, and posthumous ambition, of which in almost every instance, it is difficult to pronounce, whether they have been more idle, or more calamitous. History, fertile as it is in similar lessons, does not furnish a more striking instance of the mischiefs of erroneous calculation, than in the character of Alexander. How falsely did he estimate the possible exertions of one On the art of moral calculation, and making man, and the extent of human life, when, in a true estimate of things and persons. the course of his reign, which eventually A ROYAL person should early be taught to the face of the world; to conquer its kingproved a short one, he resolved to change act on that maxim of one of the ancients doms, to enlighten its ignorance, and to rethat the chief misfortunes of men arise from dress its wrongs! a chimera, indeed, but a their never being learned the true art of calculation. This moral art should be employ-time, and to the last hour of his life, indulged glorious chimera, had he not, at the same ed to teach him how to pay the comparative passions inconsistent with his own resoluIt is humiliating to the dignity of a prince when his tions, and subversive of his own schemes. subjects believe that they can recommend themselves to His thirty-third year put a period to projects, his favour by such low qualifications as a nice attention for which many ages would have been into personal appearance, and modish attire. Of this we sufficient and the vanity of his ambition shall produce an instance from another passage of Lord forms a forcible contrast to the grandeur of Thomas Howard's Letters to Sir John Harrington his designs. His gigantic empire, acquired The king,' says he, doth admire good fashion in cloaths. I pray you give good heed hereunto. I would by unequalled courage, ambition, and sucwish you to be well trimmed; get a good jerkin well cess, did not gradually decay by the lapse of bordered, and not too short: The king saith, be liketh time; it did not yield to the imperious cona flowing garment. Be sure it be not all of one sort, but trol of strange events and extraordinary cirdiversely coloured; the collar falling somewhat down, cumstances, which it was beyond the wisand your ruff well stiffened and bushy. We have late-dom of man to foresee, or the power of man ly had many gallants who have failed in their suit for want of due observance in these matters. The king is nicely beedful of such points, and dwelleth on good looks and handsome accoutrements.'-Noga Antiquæ. to resist ; but naturally, but instantly, on the death of the conqueror, it was at once broken in pieces, all his schemes were in a moment abolished, and even the dissolution of his own paternal inheritance was speedily plot which was employed to enrich him; accomplished, by the contests of his imme- while he, Borgia himself, with the mortal diate successors. venom in his veins, should only escape to drag But we need not look back to ancient on a life of meanness, and misery, in want, Greece for proofs of the danger of errone-and in prison; with the loss of his boundless ous calculation, while Louis XIV. occupies wealth and power, losing all those adherents the page of history. This descendant of which that wealth and power had attracted. fifty kings, after a triumphant reign of sixty It is of the last importance, that persons of years, having, like Alexander, been flattered high condition should be preserved from enwith the name of the great, and having, tering on their brilliant career with false doubtless, like him, projected to reign after principles, false views, and false maxims. his decease, was not dead an hour before it is of the last importance, to teach them his will was cancelled; a will not made in not to confound splendour with dignity, jussecret, and like some of his former acts, an- tice with success, merit with prosperity, vonulled by its own inherent injustice, but pub-luptuousness with happiness, refinement in licly known and generally approved by luxury with pure taste, deceit with sagacity, princes of the blood, counsellors, and parlia-suspicion with penetration, prodigality with ments. This royal will was set aside with less a liberal spirit, honour with christian princiceremony, than would have been shown, in ple, christian principle with fanaticism, or this country, to the testament of the meanest conscientious strictness with hypocrisy. individual. All formalities were forgotten; Young persons possess so little clearness all decencies trodden under foot. This de- in their views, so little distinctness in their cree of the new executive power became, perceptions, and are so much inclined to in a moment, as absolute as that of the mo- prefer the suggestions of a warm fancy to the narch, now so contemptuously treated, had sober deductions of reason, that, in their lately been. No explanation was given, no pursuit of glory and celebrity, they are perarguments were heard, no objections exa-petually liable to take up with false waymined. That sovereign was totally and in-marks; and where they have some general stantly forgotten whose word Might yesterday have stood against the world; of his fortune. good intentions respecting the end, to defeat their own purposes by a misapplication of means; so that, very often, they do not so much err through the seduction of the senses, as by accumulating false maxims into a sort of system, on which they afterward act through life. The plans of Caesar Borgia were so ably laid, that he thought he had put himself out of the reach of Providence. It was the One of the first lessons that should be inboast of this execrable politician, that he had, by the infallible rules of a wise and culcated on the great is, that God has not foreseeing policy, so surely laid the immuta-sent us into this world to give us consumble foundations of his own lasting greatness, bits which lead to it. High rank lays the mate happiness, but to train us to those hathat of the several possibilities which he had calculated, not one could shake the stability mind open to strong temptations; the highest rank to the strongest. The seducing images If the pope, his father, should live, his grandeur was secure; if he of luxury and pleasure, of splendour and of died, he had, by his interest secured the homage, of power and independence, are next election. But this deep schcemer had too seldom counteracted by the only adeforgotten to take his own mortality into acquate preservative, a religious education, count. He did not calculate on that sickness, The world is too generally entered upon as a which would remove him from the scene scene of pleasure, instead of trial; as a theawhere his presence was necessary to secure tre of amusement, not of action. The high these events; he did not foresee, that whenborn are taught to enjoy the world at an age his father died, his mortal enemy, and not when they should be learning to know it; his creature, would succeed, and by succeed-and to grasp the prize when they should be ing, would defeat every thing. Above all he did not calculate, that, when he invited to his palace nine cardinals, for*whese supper he had prepared a deadly poison, in order to get their wealth into his own handshe did not, I say, foresee, that he but taught Bloody instructions, which being taught, returned exercising themselves for the combat. They consequently look for the sweets of victory, when they should be enduring the hardness of the conflict, From some of these early corruptions, a young princess will be preserved, by that very super-eminent greatness, which, in other respects, has its dangers. Her exalted station, by separating her from miscellaneous society, becomes her protection from many of its maxims and practices. the dangers of her own peculiar situation she should be guarded by being early taught to consider power and influence, not as exemptHe had left out of his calculation, that the ing her from the difficulties of life or insurpope, his father, would perish by the verying to her a large portion of pleasures, but He did not think that literally --Even-handed justice From as engaging her in a peculiarly extended crifice of his conscience, the heroism of his sphere of duties, and infinitely increasing character would then have been unequivothe demands on her fortitude and vigilance. cal, and his usefulness to mankind might The right formation of her judgment will have been infinitely extended. Nor is it much assist in her acquisition of right prac-impossible, that those who urged the conditical habits; and the art of making a just tion might by the steady perseverance of his estimate of men and things, will be one of refusal, have been induced to relinquish it; the most useful lessons she will have to and French protestantism, from his conscilearn. Young persons, in their views of the entious adherence to its principles, might world, are apt to make a false estimate of have derived such a strength, as soon to have character, something in the way in which made it paramount in the state: an eyent the Roman mob decided on that of Cæsar, which would probably have saved Europe They are dazzled with the glitter of a shining from those horrors and agitations, with which action, without scrutinizing the character, or the late century closed, and the present has suspecting the motive of the actor. From commenced, the termination of which rethe scene which followed Cæsar's death, mains awfully concealed in the yet unrolled they may learn a salutary lesson. How easi-volume of eternal Providence. ly did the insinuating Antony persuade the How much more solid, though neither people, that the man who had actually rob- sung by the poet nor immortalized by the bed them of their liberty, and of those privi- sculptor, was the virtue of his illustrious leges in defence of which their ancestors had mother, honourably introducing, with infished their best blood, was a prodigy of disin- nite labour and hazard, the reformation into. terested generosity, because he had left her small territory! Nothing, says her warm. them permission to walk in his pleasure- eulogist, bishop Burnet, was wanting to grounds! the bequest of a few drachms to make the queen of Navarre perfect, but a each, was sufficient to convince these shal- larger dominion. She not only reformed low reasoners, that their deceased benefac- her court, but her whole principality, to such tor, was the most disinterested, and least sel- a degree, that the golden age seems to have fish, of mankind. In this popular act they returned under her, or rather Christianity forgot, that he had ravaged Greece, depo-appeared again, with its pristine purity and pulated Gaul, plundered Asia, and subvert- lustre. Nor is there one single abatement ed the commonwealth! to be made her. Only her sphere was nar The same class of ardent and indiscrimi-row.' But is not this to make greatness denating judges will pass over, in the popular pend too much on extrinsic accident? That character of our fifth Henry, the profligacy sphere is large enough which is rounded of his morals, and the ambition of his tem-with perfection. A Christian queen during per, and think only of his personal bravery, her troubled life! A martyr in her exemand his splendid success. They will forget, plary death, hastened, as is too probable, by in the conqueror of Agincourt, the abettor the black devices of one, as much the opproof superstition and cruelty, and the unfeeling bium, as she herself was the glory of queens; persecutor of the illustrious lord Cobham. Henry IV. was chosen by Voltaire for the hero of his Epic Poem, and his statue was for a long time re spected in France, when those of other kings were de stroyed. the execrable plotter of the massacre of St. But, in no instance has a false judgment Bartholomew Happy for Catherine di been more frequently made, than in the ad- Medici, and for France, of which she was mired and attractive character of Henry regent during the minority of three kings, IV. of France. The frankness of his man-had her sphere been as contracted as was ners, the gallantry of his spirit, and the ge- that of Jane of Navarre !† nerosity of his temper, have concurred to unite the public judgment in his favour, and to obtain too much indulgence to his unsteady principles, and his libertine conduct. But the qualities which insure popularity too seldom stand the scrutiny of truth. Born + Nature, perhaps, never produced a more perfect with talents and dispositions to engage all contrast, than these two contemporary queens. The hearts, Henry was defective in that radical intellectual subtilty of Catherine's vices more resembled principle of conscience, which is the only those of an infernal spirit, than of a corrupt woman. foundation of all true virtue. The renunci-She had an exquisite genius for crimes. The arts she ation of his religion for the crown of France, employed against those, whose destruction she medita which was thought a master-stroke of poli-ted, were varied and applied with the nicest appropria cy, which was recommended by statesmen, justified by divines, and even approved by Sully, was probably, as most acts of mere nation, to different men, according as their tempers inworldly policy, often eventually prove to be, clined them to either. Her deep knowledge of man. the source of his subsequent misfortunes.- kind she converted to the purpose of alluring, betrayHad he preferred his religion to the crowning, and destroying all, against whom she had designs: of France, he had not fallen the victim of a and she had the ingenuity to ruin every one in his own fanatical assassin. Had he limited his de-way. She not only watched the vices and weaknesses, sires to the kingdom of Navarre, when that but the very virtues of men, in order to work with them of France could only be obtained by the sa- to their destruction.-The excess of a good quality, the tion to their case and character: and her success was proportioned to her skill. Power, riches, pleasures, were the baits which she held out, with exact discrimi |