the edict of Nantz in 1598; to have gradually ascended for near a century when it touched its meridian in the year of the revocation of that edict, 1685, and to have declined from that day forth till it went down after nearly an equal lapse of time in the stormy sea of the revolution.

The salutary maxims of Henry's administration were somewhat checked in their operation by the machiavelian principles of his queen, for France was twice scourged by matrimonial connexions with the princes of Italy. To Catharine of Medicis, conjointly with the Guises, she owed the massacres and desolations of the Ligue, together with that madness of bigotry and taste for blood, from which she has found it difficult to rid herself. To Maria, she was indebted, if not for the death of Henry, at least for the disgrace of Sully, and the perfidious education of Louis XIII. as well as the suppression of the states general, and as many of the wise regulations of Henry, as were not too firmly dove-tailed into the government, to be separated by her mischievous hands.

In the session of the states general, held in 1614, after the death of Henry, a like spirit of independence to that which began to display itself about that time among the Commons of England, broke out among those of France. One of the first declarations of that assembly was, that no power, either temporal or spiritual, had a right to dispose of the kingdom, or to dispense with the oaths of allegiance; and that to assert that the church might authorise the assassinating of kings, was both impious and detestable. There was something however in this language, too audaciously liberal for the temper of the nobles or clergy, and the court, in spiritless or cunning acquiescence with their sentiments, dissolved the assembly, and not choosing ever afterwards to convene it, the crown gradually usurped its powers. At that time, the French people were not intelligent enough to feel that they had a right to legislate for themselves, nor did the nobles sufficiently understand the science of government, to foresee that the loss of political power condemned them to insignificance.

In England, although the royal prerogative was carried high during the long and prosperous reign of Elizabeth, a number of great men had sprung up to diffuse intelligence over the

nation, and to set it to thinking on political, as well as on theological subjects. The good principles which they disseminated had time to take root during the dreaming reign of king James, so that when his son came to the throne, the love of privilege had acquired sturdiness and vigour enough to resist the shocks of prerogative. When the storm afterwards came on with greater fury, common sense too was sufficiently alive to be aware that nothing could save the nation but a resolution to brave it. The English, therefore, renovated their free principles by a successful rebellion.

In France, on the contrary, the sentiment of civil liberty had not had time to work itself well into the public mind, before the reins of government fell into the hands of one of the most pernicious subduers of the human intellect, that the accidents of modern diplomacy have brought to light. You will readily perceive that I allude to the Cardinal de Richelieu, who came into absolute power in 1624, and continued to hold it near twenty years; who, by very enlarged plans of external policy, dazzled the imaginations of his contemporaries, but who used every insidious stratagem to break down the spirit of liberty and independence at home, and to consolidate on their ruins the foundations of despotism. He possessed, as Mably observed, an inordinate thirst of power, without either the virtues or the lights, that are desirable in the leader of a great nation. But to a lofty demeanor, he united that inflexibility of character which subdues common souls, and which fatigues or astonishes those that are endowed with more than ordinary courage and prudence.

The only sparkles of republicanism that were stricken out by the collision of hostile factions in France, before the late revolution, appeared among the disciples of Calvin during Richelieu's administration. But this lynx-eyed tyrant was among the first to foresee their consequences. He loved despotism for itself, and saw evidently that there would be a general conflagration of the edifice of both church and state tyranny, unless these occasional fires were extinguished before the flame acquired volume ́ enough to throw light on, and reveal the gloomy purposes of his soul. He therefore turned all his engines that way, and extinquished them by a shower of blood.

Henry IV. who had valued no greatness but that which was founded on virtue, because that only could be sound and durable, had encouraged the sentiments of honour, loyalty, and frankness among his nobles, with a view of communicating those qualities through them to the body of the nation; but Richelieu, whose plans were not of a liberal, but of an atrocious character, endeavoured to destroy virtue by converting honest men into courtiers. In order to weaken the influence of the nobles in the provinces, and destroy their popularity, he obliged them to live in Paris, where, unoccupied by the exercise of political functions, or the interests of their tenantry, they had nothing to do but to copy his magnificence, and to idle away their lives in the refinements of luxury, and the giddy amusements of the court. Richelieu intended, by thus breaking down the aristocracy, to simplify the machine of government,-to give a more vigorous and rapid action to its parts, and to cause the whole to perform its evolutions for the advantage only of the crown. His system of policy, which went to invigorate the head at the expense of all the other members of the body politic, created that fatal ascendency of Paris over France-that trembling submission of a whole kingdom to the frantic caprices of a single city, which caused her to exhibit so strange a political phenomenon in all the phases of her late revolution.

Happily, however, for France, the tyranny of this minister, (under whom offences were not judged on the principles of written law, but after the dictates of arbitrary caprice,) did not last long enough to extirpate all the seeds of virtue and independence out of the French character. There were enough left to produce a rich growth in the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. and to have yielded an abundant harvest in the close of it, if he too had not ignobly expended all his powers in advancing the same system of injustice and oppression.

At the death of Richelieu and Louis XIII. which happened before the middle of the seventeenth century, France was beginning to gather some of the fruits of the wise administration of Sully. The general condition of society was improved by the encouragement he had given to industry and by his reduction of taxes; whilst his institutions of education had cherished the abilities of such men as Corneille and Descartes, who came like

the rosy steeds of Apollo to usher in the glorious morning of science. A darkness, however, as profound as that which prevailed when the parliament of Paris forbade, under pain of death, the teaching of any doctrine contrary to that of Aristotle, was not to be dissipated in a moment;-nor could a nation whose prejudices condemned the marechal D'Ancre to the flames for conjuration, and the curate of Laudon for bewitching a convent of nuns, (not to speak of larger enormities) lay any strong claim to a general rectitude of moral sentiment. Richelieu, it is true, is the model of a great minister in the eyes of the advocates of modern legitimacy, but the reign of Louis XIII. is not their darling period of French history, and therefore we may dispense with the nauseous drudgery of recalling its immoralities in order to prove that France was not then more moral than she is at present. An attentive consideration of those of the prouder and more conspicuous reign that followed may be full of instruction; and though the contemplation of the dark side of human nature. is an occupation that I do not love, it may, like the study of anatomy, be justified by the good that may grow out of it.

MY DEAR SIR,

LETTER II.

Paris, Feb 5th, 1820.

There are but few periods in the history of mankind that open themselves with more imposing grandeur on the imagination than the reign of Louis XIV. and not one perhaps better calculated to delude the opinions of superficial observers. The spectacle of a monarch, endowed by nature with the charms of an elegant figure and some of the powers of a subduing mind, naturally carries in itself something imposing along with it. But when in addition to these adventitious advantages we recollect that Louis was called by the accidents of birth at an early age to reign over a large and compact territory, inhabited by a brave and loyal people, pushed up in the scale of civilization by the energy of new institutions; when we remember the brilliancy of his court, the fame of his victories in the field, and of his conquests in the drawing room, we may easily imagine that such a prince should give the utmost illusion to the splendour of absolute power, and become the admiration of those who contemplate government more as a thing of show than of use. Hence, among violent royalists the reign of Louis XIV. is considered the neplus ultra of every thing that is excellent in government. Without treating those gentlemen however with the harshness of the author of the Essay on Despotism, who declares "que tout fauteur du despotisme est un lâche que la terreur ou l'interet conduisent," let us test the truth of their opinions by inquiring into what that government was in reality as well as in appearance. We may thus discover whether he found the materials of a brilliant empire prepared at his hands or created them-and whether the men of genius who flourished in the course of the seventythree years that he swayed the sceptre of France owed their existence, as his flatterers pretend, to the vivifying rays of royal