He had left out of his calculation, that the pope, his father, would perish by the very plot which was employed to enrich him; while he, Borgia himself, with the mortal

strange events and extraordinary circumstances, which it was beyond the wisdom of man to foresee, or the power of man to re sist; but naturally, but instantly, on the death of the conqueror, it was at once brok-venom in his veins, should only ecape to drag en in pieces, all his schemes were in a mo⚫ment abolished, and even the dissolution of his own paternal inheritance was speedily accomplished, by the contests of his immediate successors.

on a life of meanness, and misery, in want, and in prison; with the loss of his boundless wealth and power, losing all those adherents which that wealth and power had attracted.

It is of the last importance, that persons of high condition should be preserved from entering on their brilliant career with false principles, false views, and false maxims. It is of the last importance, to teach them not to confound splendor with dignity, justice with success, merit with prosperity, voluptuousness with happiness, refinement in luxury with pure taste, deceit with sagacity, suspicion with penetration, prodigality with a liberal spirit, honour with christian principle, christian principle with fanaticism, or conscientious strictness with hypocrisy.

But we need not look back to ancient Greece for proofs of the danger of erroneous calculation, while Louis XIV. occupies the page of history. This descendant of fifty kings, after a triumphant reign of sixty years, having, like Alexander, been flattered with the name of the greit, and having, doubtless, like him, projected to reign after his decease, was not dead an hour, before bis will was cancelled; a will not made in secret, and like some of his former acts, annulled by its own inherent injustice, but publicly known, and generally approved by princes of the blood, counsellors, and parlia ments. This royal will was set aside with less ceremony, than would have been shown, in this country, to the testament of the meanest individual. All formalities were forgotten; all decencies trodden under foot. This de-petually liable to take up with false way. cree of the new executive power became, in a moment, as absolute as that of the monarch, now so contemptuously treated, had lately been No explanation was given, no arguments were heard, no objections exam ined. That sovereign was totally and instantly forgotten

-whose word

Might yesterday have stood against the world;
And none so poor to do him reverence.

The plans of Cæsar Borgia were so ably laid, that he thought he had put himself out of the reach of Providence It was the boast of this execrable politician, that he had, by the infalliable rules of a wise and foreseeing policy, so surely laid the immutable foundations of his own lasting greatness, that of the several possibilities which he had calculated, not one could shake the stability of his fortune. If the pope, his father, should live, his grandeur was secure; if he died, he had, by his interest, secured the next election. But this deep scheemer had forgotten to take his own mortality into account. He did not calculate on that sickness, which would remove him from the scene where his presence was necessary to secure these events; he did not foresee, that when his father died, his mortal enemy, and not his creature, would succeed, and by succeeding, would defeat every thing. Above all, he did not calculate, that, when he invited to his palace nine cardinals, for whose supper he had prepared a deadly poison, in order to get their wealth into his own hands-he did not, I say, foresee, that

Young persons possess so little clearness in their views, so little distinctness in their perceptions, and are so much inclined to prefer the suggestions of a warm fancy to the sober deductions of reason, that, in their pursuit of glory and celebrity, they are per

marks; and where they have some general good intentions respecting the end, to defeat their own purpose 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

One of the first lessons that should be inculcated on the great is, that God has not sent us into this world to give us consummate happiness, but to train us to those habits which lead to it. High rank lays the mind open to strong temptations; the highest rank to the strongest. The seducing images of luxury and pleasure, of splendor and of homage, of power and independence, are too seldom counteracted by the only adequate preservative, a religious education. The world is too generally entered upon as a scene of pleasure, instead of trial; as a theatre of amusement, not of action. The high born are taught to enjoy the world at an age when they should be learning to know it; and to grasp the prize when they should be 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 supereminent 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. From the dangers of her own peculiar situation she Bloody instructions, which being taught, returned should be guarded, by being early taught to To plague the inventor

-he but taught

consider power and influence, not as exempting her from the difficulties of life or insuring to her a large portion of pleasures, but as engaging her in a peculiarly extended

sphere of duties, and infinitely increasing impossible, that those who urged the condithe demands on her fortitude and vigilance. tion might by the steady perseverance of his The right formation of her judgment will refusal, have been induced to relinquish it; much assist in her acquisition of right prac- and French protestantism, from his conscitical habits; and the art of making a just entious adherence to its principles, might estimate of men and things, will be one of have derived such a strength, as soon to have the most useful lessons she will have to made it paramount in the state: an event learn. Young persons, in their views of the which would probably have saved Europe world, are apt to make a false estimate of from those horrors and agitations, with which character, something in the way in which the the late century closed, and the present has Roman mob decided on that of Cæsar. They commenced, the termination of which reare dazzled with the glitter of a shining ac- mains awfully concealed in the yet unrolled tion, without scrutinizing the character, or volume of eternal Providence. suspecting the motive of the actor. From How much more solid, though neither sung the scene which followed Cæsar's death, they by the poet nor immortalized by the sculpmay learn a salutary lesson. How easily did tor,* was the virtue of his illustrious mother, the insinuating Antony persuade the people, honourably introducing, with infinite labour that the man who had actually robbed them and hazard, the reformation into her small of their liberty, and of those privileges in de- territory! Nothing, says her warm eulofence of which their ancestors had shed their gist, bishop Burnet, was wanting to make best blood, was a prodigy of disinterested the queen of Navarre perfect, but a larger generosity, because he had left them permis-dominion. She not only reformed her

sion to walk in his pleasure-grounds! the court, but her whole principality, to such a bequest of a few drachms to each, was suffi- degree, that the golden age seems to have cient to convince these shallow reasoners, returned under her, or rather Christianity that their deceased benefactor, was the most appeared again, with its pristine purity and disinterested, and least selfish, of mankind. lustre. Nor is there one single abatement In this popular act they forgot, that he had to be made her. Only her sphere was narravaged Greece, depopulated Gaul, plun-row.' But is not this to make greatness dedered Asia, and subverted the common-pend too much on extrinsic accident? That wealth! sphere is large enough which is rounded with perfection. A Christian queen during her troubled life! A martyr in her exemplary death, hastened, as is too probable, by the black devices of one, as much the opprobium, as she herself was the glory of queens; the execrable plotter of the massacre of St. Bartholomew ! Happy for Catherine di Medici, and for France, of which she was regent during the minority of three kings, had her sphere been as contracted as was that of Jane of Navarre !†

The same class of ardent and indiscrimi nating judges will pass over, in the popular character of our fifth Henry, the profligacy of his morals, and the ambition of his temper, and think only of his personal bravery, and his splendid success. They will forget, in the conqueror of Agincourt, the abettor of superstition and cruelty, and the unfeeling persecutor of the illustrious lord Cobham.

But, in no instance has a false judgment been more frequently made, than in the admired and attractive character of Henry IV. of France. The frankness of his man

Henry IV. was chosen by Voltaire for the hero of his Epic Poem, and his statue was for a long time respected in France, when those of other kings were destroyed.

ners, the gallantry of his spirit, and the generosity of his temper, have concurred to unite the public judgment in his favour, and to obtain too much indulgence to his un- Nature, perhaps, never produced a more persteady principles, and his libertine conduct. fect contrast, than these two contemporary queens. But the qualities which insure popularity too The intellectua. subtilty of Catherine's vices seldom stand the scrutiny of truth. Born more resembled those of an mfernal spirit, than of with talents and dispositions to engage alla corrupt woman. She had an exquisite genius for crimes. The arts she employed against those, hearts, Henry was defective in that radical whose destruction she meditated, were varied and principle of conscience, which is the only applied with the nicest appropriation to their case foundation of all true virtue The renunci- and character; and her success was proportioned ation of his religion for the crown of France, to her skill. Power, riches, pleasures, were the which was thought a master stroke of poli- baits which she held out, with exact discrimination, cy, which was recommended by statesmen, to different men, according as their tempers inclijustified by divines, and even approved by ned them to either. Her deep knowledge of manSully, was probably, as most acts of mere traying, and destroying all, against whom she had kind she converted to the purpose of alluring, beworldly policy, often eventually prove to be, designs: and she had the ingenuity to ruin every the source of his subsequent misfortnnes.one in his own way. She not only watched the viHad he preferred his religion to the crown ces and weaknesses, but the very virtues of men, of France, he had not fallen the victim of a in order to work with them to their destruction. fanatical assassin. Had he limited his de- The excess of a good quality, the elevation of a sires to the kingdom of Navarre, when that virtue, was in her hands a better implement for of France could only be obtained by the sa- working the ruin of its possessor than even his crifice of his conscience, the heroism of his faults. Her dissimulation was so exquisite, hercharacter would then have been unequivo-peared too long for nourishing impious projects. patience in evil so persevering, that no time apcal, and his usefulness to mankind might and ripening them to perfection. Aware, at length, have been infinitely extended. Nor is it that that rare combination of deceit and cruelty

ate habits, when even the very desire of happiness, if left merely to its instinctive movements, is almost certain to plunge its votary into final and irremediable wretchedness! But in no instance is the defective judgment which leads to false estimates, more to be regretted, than in the case of those who apply themselves to pursuits, and affect habits for

son of improvement in cultivating talents, which they can rarely bring into exercise, to the neglect of those which they are peculiarly called to acquire; who run out of their proper road in pursuit of false fame, while they renounce the solid glory of a real, an attainable. and an appropriate renown.

For want of having learned to make a just estimate of the relative value of actions, LouB XIV. while he was laying Flanders waste, and depopulating whole provinces, probably persuaded himself, that he was actuated by pure charity and love of the people, because he carried in his military caleche some bags of bread and money, which he distributed, as he passed, to the famished peasantry; be-eign from their station; who spend their seaings, whose hunger was caused by his ambition: ; hunger which the ostentatious distribution of a few loaves and livres could relieve but for a moment. He might have given them peace, and saved his bread. He should have reflected, that the most munificent charities of a prince, commendable as they are in themselves, can be only local and partial; and are almost nothing, in the way of benefit, compared with a deliverance, which it was in his power to have granted them, from the miseries of war. In a prince, to love peace, is to be charitable on a grand scale.-The evils which he personally reheves, in consequence of their presenting themselves to his senses, highly as that species of bounty should be rated, must be out of all proportion few, compared with those which never meet his eyes. If, by compassonating the one, he soothes his own feelings, while he forgets the other, only because they are too remote to come in contact with these feelings, his charity is little better than selflove.

CHAP. XXV.

On erroneous judgment.-Character of queen
Christina of Sweden.-Comparison of
Christina with Alfred.

The danger of a prince often becomes, in this respect, the greater, because, while he sees a path open before him, suppose in the case of the fine arts, by which he beholds others rising into universal notice and celebrity, he feels, perhaps, a natural propensity to the same pursuits, and a consciousness of being able to excel in them. Meanwhile, even his weakest efforts are flattered by those around him, as the sure presages of excellence; and he is easily led to believe, that if he will condescend to enter the lists, he is certain to attain the palm of victory. When we consider the amount of the temptation, we should be almost ready to forgive the emperor Nero, had it been only in displaying his musical or theatrical talents, that he had departed from the line of rectitude. But to see a Roman emperor travelling through Greece in the character of an artist, in order to extort the applauses of a people eminent for their taste, was an indication of farther evils. The infatuation remained to his last hour; for, in his dying moments, instead of thinking how Rome must rejoice to be rid of such a master, he only wondered how the world could submit to the loss of such a performer.

NOTHING leads more to false estimates than our suffering that natural desire of happiness, congenial to the human heart, to mislead us by its eagerness. The object in itself is not only natural, but laudable; but the steps It is one of the many evils which result which are supposed to lead to it, when ill re- from indulging such misplaced propensities, gulated, never attain the end Vice, of that it produces a fatal forgetfulness of all whatever kind, leads to inevitable misery; the proper duties of a sovereign, and of his yet, through a false calculation, even while legitimate sphere of emulation. Having once happiness is intended, vice is pursued. The eaten of the forbidden fruit of this meretrivoluptuous will not be persuaded to set cious praise, he becomes fonder of the relish, bounds to their indulgencies. Thus they his taste is corrupted,-his views are lowercommonly destroy both health of body, and ed,-his ambition is contracted; and indopeace of mind; yet the most voluptuous ne-lence conspires with vanity, in perpetuating ver intend to be miserable. What a neces- his delusion, and in making him take up with sity hence arises, for early infusing right pursuits, and gratifications, far below the principles, and training to safe and temper-level of his high original

For a prince, who has formed a just estiwhich met in her character was detected; in order mate of his own exalted station, will ever ta complete the destruction of the protestants bear in mind, that as its rank, its rights, and more signally, her son, a puppet in her hands. was its privileges. are all of a kind peculiar to ittaught to foster and caress them. Two years did self, so also must be its honours. Providence this pernicious Italian brood over this plot. Its has laid open to a prince an elevated and dire catastrophe who does not know? Queen Jane was poisoned, as a prologue to this bloody capacious field of glory, from which subjects tragedy, a sovereign to whom even the bigoted his- must be ever excluded, by the very circumtorians of the popish communion concur in ascri- stances of their civil condition. A prince bung all that was elegant, accomplished, and pure will but degrade himself, when he descends woman, with all that was wise, heroic, learned, from this vantage ground, which he naturally and intrepid in man! occupies, to mix in the competitions of ordinary men. He engages in a contest in which, though failure may disgrace. success cannot

*For a more detailed character of Catherine, see the Life of Agrippa D'Aubigne.

do him honour. Monarchs, therefore, would bition of a queen born to rule a brave people, do well to remember, and to improve upon and naturally possessed of talents, which the principle of the dignified reply of Alex- might have made that people happy. Thus ander, who being asked whether he would it was that the daughter of the great Gustanot engage in the competition for the prize vus, who might have adorned that throne for at the Olympic games, answered, Yes, which he so bravely fought, for want of the if KINGS are to be my competitors. Nor discretion of a well-balanced mind, and the perhaps would the high-minded answer of virtues of a well-disciplined heart, became Alcibiades be unbecoming in a prince,-It the scorn of those, whose admiration she is not for me to give, but to receive delight.' might have commanded. Her ungoverned Ever therefore, let those whose important tastes were, as is not unusual, connected duty it is, to superintend the education of a with passions equally ungovernable; and royal person, labour to fix in him a just con- there is too much ground for suspecting that ception of the proprieties of his princely char- the mistress of Monaldeschi ended with being acter. Let them teach him how to regulate his murderer. It is not surprising, that she all his judgments and pursuits, by the rule of who abdicated her throne should abjure her reason, by a sound and serious estimate of his religion. Having renounced every thing own condition, and of the peculiar duties, ex- else which was worth preserving, she ended cellencies, and honours, which belong to it, by renouncing the protestant faith. on grounds no less of wisdom than of virtue. It may not be without its uses to the royal We know not how better to illustrate the pupil, to compare the conduct of Christina nature and confirm the truth of these remarks, with that of Alfred, in those points in which than by adducing, as an eminent instance of they agreed, and those in which they exhiba contrary kind, the character of queen Chris-ited so striking an opposition -To contrast tina of Sweden, the memorable tale of her the Swede, who with the advantage of a letfalse judgment, and perverted ambition.—tered education, descended from the throne, Christina, a woman whose whole character abandoned the noblest and wisest sphere of was one mass of contradictions! That same action in which the instructed mind could defect in judgment, which, after she had, desire to employ its stores, and renounced with vast cost and care, collected some of the the highest social duties which a human befinest pictures in Rome, led her to spoil their ing can be called to perform, with Alfred, proportions, by clipping them with sheers, one of the few happy instances in which gentill they fitted her apartment, appeared in all ius and virtue surmounted the disadvantashe did. It led her, while she thirsted for ges of an education so totally neglected, that adulation, to renounce, in abdicating her at twelve years old he did not even know crown, the means of exacting it. It led her, the letters of the alphabet. He did not abdito read almost all books, without digesting cate his crown, in order to cultivate his own any; to make them the theme of her dis- talents, or to gratify his fancy with the talcourse, but not the ground of her conduct. ents of others, but laboured right royally to It led her, fond as she was of magnificence, assemble around the throne all the abilities to reduce herself to such a state of indigence, of his country. Alfred had no sooner tasted as robbed her of the power of enjoying it. the charms of learning, than his great genAnd it was the same inconsistency, which ius unfolded itself He was enchanted with made her court the applause of men, eminent the elegancies of literature to a degree for their religious character, while she valu-which, at first, seemed likely to divert him ed herself on being an avowed infidel.

This royal wanderer roamed from country to country, and from court to court, for the poor purpose of entering the lists with wits, or of discussing knotty points with philosophers proud of aiming to be the rival of Vossius, when her true merit would have consisted in being his protector. Absurdly renouncing the solid glory of governing well, for the sake of hunting after an empty phantom of liberty, which she never enjoyed, and vainly grasping at the shadow of fame, which she never attained.

from all other objects. But he soon reflected that a prince is not born for himself. When, therefore, he was actually called to the throne, did he weakly desert his royal duties, to run into distant lands, to recite Saxon verses, or to repeat that classic poetrv of which he became so enamoured? No. Like a true patriot he devoted his rare genius to the noblest purposes. He dedicated the talenls of the sovereign to the improvement of the people. He did not renounce his learning when he became a king, but he consecrated it to a truly royal purpose. And Nothing is right, which is not in its right while the Swedish vagrant was subsisting on place.-Disorderly wit, even disorderly vir- eleemosynary flattery, bestowed in pity to tues, lose much of their natural value. There her real but misapplied abilities, Alfred was is an exquisite symmetry and proportion in exercising his talents like the father of his the qualities of a well-ordered mind. An ill-country. He did not consider study as a regulated desire of that knowledge, the best mere gratification of his own taste. He part of which she might have acquired with knew that a king has nothing exclusively his dignity, at her leisure hours; an unbounded own, not even his literary attainments. He vanity, eager to exhibit to foreign countries threw his erudition, like other possessions, those attainments which ought to have been into the public stock. He diffused among exercised in governing her own-to be the people his own knowledge, which flowed thought a philosopher by wits, and a wit by in all directions, like streams from their parphilosophers;-this was the preposterous am-ent 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.

CHAP. XXVI.

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,

Observations on the age of Louis XIV. and unobtrusive qualities as justice, charity,

on Voltaire.

temperance, meekness, and purity, will make but a mean figure; or, at best, will be IF in the present work we frequently cite considered only as the virtues of the vulgar, Louis XIV. it is because on such an occa- not as the attributes of kings. While in sion his idea naturally presents itself. His the portrait of the conqueror, ambition, senreign was so long; his character so promi- suality, oppression, luxury, and pride, paintnent; his qualities so ostensible; his affairs ed in the least offensive colours, and blended were so interwoven with those of the other with the bright tints of personal bravery, countries of Europe, and especially with gayety, and profuse liberality, will lead the those of England; the period in which he sanguine and the young to doubt whether the lived produced such a revolution in man- former class of qualities, can be very misners; and, above all, his encomiastic histo-chievous, which is so blended and lost in the rian, Voltaire, has decorated both the period latter, especially when they find that hardly and the king with so much that is great and any abatement is made by the historian for brilliant, that they fill a large space in the the one, while the other is held up to admiraeye of the reader. Voltaire writes as if the tion. 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 in 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.

·

There is no family in which the showy qualities have more blinded the reader, and sometimes the writer also, to their vices, thau 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 him. self 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 whatever other countries may do, Eng- but dishonoured in the persons of their wives land at least is able to look back with tri- and daughters; his unbounded profligacy amph to ages anterior to that which is exclu- not even respecting the sanctity of convents! sively denominated the age of Louis XIV. Another writer, speaking of the house of Nay, in that vaunted age itself we venture to Medici collectively, says, their having redispute with France the palm of glory. To stored knowledge and elegance will, in time, all they boast of arms, we need produce no obliterate their faults. Their usurpation, other proof of superiority than that we con- tyranny, pride, perfidy, vindictive cruelty, quered the boasters. To all that they bring paricides, and incest, will be remembered no in science, and it must be allowed that they more. Future ages will forget their atrobring much, or where would be the honour cious crimes in fond admiration!* Ought of eclipsing them? we have to oppose our historians to teach such lessons to princes? Locke, our Boyle, and our Newton. To Ought they to be told that knowledge and their long list of wits and poets, it would be elegance' cannot be bought too dear, though endless, in the way of competition, to attempt purchased by such atrocious crimes?-The enumerating, star by star, the countless con-illustrious house of Medici seems to have restellation which illuminated the bright con-vived in every point of resemblance, the temporary reign of Anne. Athenian character. With one or two honThe principal reason for which we so of ourable exceptions, it exhibits the same ten cite the conduct, and, in citing the con-union of moral corruption, with mental taste; duct, refer to the errors of Louis, is, that the same genius for the arts, and the same there was a time, when the splendor of his neglect of the virtues; the same polish and character, his imposing magnificence and the same profligacy; the same passion for generosity, made us in too much danger of learning, and the same appetite for pleasure; 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.

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 cen*Noble's Memoirs of the illustrious house of Medici