He fleeps contented in the guiltlefs arms
Of his unjealous confort:-Frightful dreams
Break not his flumbers, with the shocking fight
Of bloody daggers, and ideal murders.
True, he's a ftranger to the power of kings;
But then again, he is as much a ftranger
To kingly cares and miferies.-Hill.

SOME kings the name of conquerors affum'd;
Some to be great, fome to be gods prefum❜d.
But boundless pow'r and arbitrary luft,
Made tyrants ftill abhor the name of just :
They fhunn'd the praife this God-like virtue gives,
And fear'd a title that reproach'd their lives.-Dryden.
HOW much do they mistake, how little know
Of kings, of kingdoms, and the pains which flow
From royalty, who fancy that a crown,
Because it glillens, must be lin'd with down.
With outside show, and vain appearance caught,
They look no farther; and by folly taught,
Prize high the toys of thrones; but never find
One of the many cares which lurk behind
The gem they worship, which a crown adorns,
Nor once fufpect, that a crown is lin❜d with thorns.
Oh! might reflection folly's place fupply-
Would we one moment ufe her piercing eye,
Then should we learn what woe from grandeur fprings,
And learn to pity, not to envy kings ! — Churchill.
THE king-with anxious cares opprefs'd,
His bofom labours and admits no reft.

A glorious wretch, he fweats beneath the weight
Of majefty, and gives up eafe for state.

E'en when he fmiles, which, by the fools of pride,
Are treafur'd and preferv'd, from fide to fide,
Fly round the court, e'en when, compell'd by form,
He feems moft calm, his foul is in a ftorm!
Care, like a spectre, feen by him alone,
With all her neft of vipers, round his throne
By day crawls full in view; when night bids fleep,
Sweet nurfe of nature, o'er the fenfes creep,
When mifery herfeif no more complains,
And flaves, if poffible, forget their chains,
Tho' his fenfe weakens, tho' his eves grow dim,
That reft, which comes to all, comes not to him.

1

King.

E'en at that hour, Care, tyrant Care, forbids
The dew of fleep to fall upon his lids;
From night to night the watches at his bed;
Now, as one mop'd, fits brooding o'er his head,
Anon fhe ftarts, and, borne on raven's wings,
Croaks forth aloud-Sleep was not made for kings!-Idem.
GREAT princes have great playthings. Some have play'd
At hewing mountains into men, and fome
At building human wonders mountains high.
Some have amus'd the dull fad years of life
(Life fpent in indolence, and therefore fad,)
With fchemes of monumental fame, and fought
By pyramids, and maufoleum pomp,
Short-liv'd themfelves, t' immortalize their bones.
Some feek diverfion in the tented field,
And make the forrows of mankind their sport.
But war's game, which, were their fubjects wise,
Kings would not play at. Nations would do well
T'extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whofe infirm and baby minds
Are gratify'd with mifchief, and who fpoil,
Because men fuffer it, their toy, the world.-Cowper.

THE ftudies of princes feldom produce great effects; for princes draw, with meaner mortals, the lot of understanding; and fince of many ftudents not more than one can be hoped to advance to perfection, it is fcarce to be expected to find that one a prince.-Johnfon.

153.

TO enlarge dominions, has been the boaft of many princes; to diffufe happiness and fecurity through wide regions, has been granted to few.-Idem.

MONARCHS are always furrounded with refined spirits, fo penetrating, that they frequently difcover in their masters great qualities, invifible to vulgar eyes, and which, did not they publish them to mankind, would be unobferved for ever. -Idem.

KINGS, who have weak understandings, bad hearts, and ftrong prejudices, and all thefe, as it often happens, inflamed by their paffions, and rendered incurable by their felf-conceit and prefumption; fuch kings are apt to imagine, and they conduct themselves fo as to make many of their fubjects imagine, that the king and the people in free governments are rival powers, who ftand in competition with one another, who have different interefts, and muft of courfe have different views;

that the rights and privileges of the people are fo many fpoils taken from the rights and prerogatives of the crown; and that the rules and laws, made for the exercife and fecurity of the former, are fo many diminutions of their dignity, and restraints on their power. A patriot king will fee all this in a far different and much truer light. He will make one and but one diftinction between his rights and thofe of the people: he will look on his to be a truft, and theirs property; and that his people who had an original right to the whole by the law of nature, can have the fole indefeasible right to any part.

As well might we fay that a fhip is built, and loaded, and manned, for the fake of any particular pilot, instead of acknow ledging that the pilot is made for the fake of the fhip, her lading, and her crew, who are always the owners in the political veffel, as to fay that kingdoms were inftituted for kings, not kings for kingdoms. To carry our allufion higher, majefty is not an inherent, but a reflected right.-Bolingbroke. KINGS are naturally lovers of low company. They are fo elevated above all the reft of mankind, that they must look upon all their fubjecs as on a level. They are rather apt to hate than to love their nobility, on account of the occafional refistance to their will, which will be made by their virtue, their petulance, or their pride. It muft indeed be admitted, that many of the nobiliy are as perfectly willing to act the part of flatterers, tale-bearers, parafites, pimps, and buffoons, as any of the lowest and vileft of mankind can poffibly be. But they are not properly qualified for this object of their ambition. The want of a regular education, and early habits, and fome lurking remains of their dignity, will never permit them to become a match for an Italian eunuch, a mountebank, a fidler, a player, or any regular practitioner of that tribe. The Roman Emperors, almoft from the beginning, threw themselves into fuch hands; and the mischief increafed every day till the decline and final ruin of the empire.-Burke.

IF kings were republicans in the proper fenfe, all the people would be royalifts. But when brilliant honors and minifterial employments are beftowed on fools and knaves, because they were begotten by ancestors whom they difgrace, or poffefs riches which they abuse, government becomes a nuifance, and the people feel an aristocracy to be little better than an automa ton machine, for promoting the purposes of royal or ministerial defpotifm.-Spirit of Defpotifm.

King.

155

INSTEAD of wondering that fo many kings, unfit and unworthy to be trusted with the government of mankind, appear in the world, I have been tempted to wonder that there are any tolerable, when I have confidered the flattery that environs them most commonly from the cradle, and the tendency of all thofe falfe notions that are inftilled into them by precept and by example, by the habits of courts, and by the interested selfish views of courtiers. They are bred to esteem themselves of a diftinct and fuperior fpecies among men, as men are among animals.

Louis the Fourteenth was a strong inftance of the effect of this education, which trains up kings to be tyrants, without knowing that they are fo. That oppreffion under which he kept his people, during the whole courfe of a long reign, might proceed, in fome degree, from the natural haughtiness of his temper; but it proceeded, in a greater degree from the principles and habits of his education. By this he had been brought to look on his kingdom as a patrimony that defcended to him from his ancestors, and that was to be confidered in no other light fo that when a very confiderable man had discoursed to him at large of the miferable condition to which his people was reduced, and had frequently used this word, l'etat, [the ftate ;] though the king approved the fubftance of all he had faid, yet he was shocked at the frequent repetition of this word, and complained of it as of a kind of indecency to himself.

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This capital error, in which almost every prince is confirmed by his education, has fo great extent and fo general influence, that a right to do every thing iniquitous in government may be derived from it. But, as if this was not enough, the characters of princes are fpoiled many more ways by their education.Bolingbroke.

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I AM not at all furprised that in monarchies, especially in our own, there fhould be fo few princes worthy of eftcem. Incircled by corrupters, knaves, and hypocrites, they accustom themselves to look upon their fellow creatures with difdain, and to fet no value on any but the fycophants, who caress their vices, and live in perpetual inactivity and idlenefs. Such is generally the condition of a monarch. Great men are always fcarce, and great kings ftill more fo.- Montefquicu.

LOUIS XIV. at once the greatest and meanest of mankind, would have excelled all the monarchs in the univerfe, if he had not been corrupted in his youth by bafe and ambitious Batterers. A flave during his whole life to pride and vain

glory, he never in reality loved his fubjects even for a moment; yet expected at the fame time, like a true defpotic prince, that they fhould facrifice themselves to his will and pleasure. Intoxicated with power and grandeur, he imagined the whole world was created folely to promote his happiness. He was feared, obeyed, idolized, hated, mortified, and abandoned. He lived like a fultan, and died like a woman.

It is therefore impoffible there fhould ever be a great man among our kings, who are made brutes and fools of all their lives, by a fet of infamous wretches who furround and befet them from the cradle to the grave.-Idem.

PRINCES in their infancy, childhood, and'youth, are faid to discover prodigious parts and wit, to fpeak things that furprife and aftonish: ftrange, fo many hopeful princes, and fo many fhameful kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wifdom and virtue; if they live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another fort.-Swift.

HOW dangerous a fituation is royalty, in which the wifeft are often the tools of deceit! A throne is furrounded by the train of subtlety and felf-interest: integrity retires, because fhe will not be introduced by importunity or flattery: virtue, conscious of her own dignity, waits at a diftance till she is fought, and princes feldom know where she may be found; but vice and her attendants are impudent and fraudful, infinuating and officious, fkilful in diffimulation, and ready to renounce all principles, and to violate every tie when it becomes neceffary to the gratification of the appetites of a prince. How wretched is the man who is thus perpetually expofed to the attempts of guilt, by which he muft inevitably perish, if he do not renounce the music of adulation, and learn not to be offended by the plainness of truth!—Fenelon.

THE leaft fault a king commits produces infinite mischief; for it diffufes mifery through a whole people, and fometimes for many generations.--Idem.

KINGS are generally mistrustful and indolent: mistrustful, by perpetually experiencing the artifices of the defigning and corrupt; and indolent, by the pleafures that folicit them, and a habit of leaving all bufinefs to others, without taking the trouble fo much as to think for themfelves.-Idem.

TO princes who have been spoiled by flattery, every thing that is fincere and honeft appears to be ungracious and auftere. Such princes are even weak enough to fufpect a want of zeal for their fervice and refpect for their authority, where they