him in war to prevent him from criticising the windows of the Trianon, and who signed an order to lay waste, with fire and sword, the beautiful country of the Palatinate, in order to heighten the terror of his name, and animate the flagging conversation of his court? There is not in all the code of the revolutionary convention, an act of more cold-blooded cruelty than that. Indeed it is scarcely possible, even at this time, after the lapse of so many years, and the restoration of the unfortunate country which was entirely devastated in the depth of winter, to read the cruel mandate, which delivered up so many towns, and villages, and chateaux, and cottages, to the flames, and the very tombs themselves to be torn open by the rapacity of the soldiers, without feeling one's blood run cold with horror? It should be taken into consideration too, that at the moment he thus spurned the obligations of humanity and honor, in committing this atrocious crime, (1688,) he had enjoyed an uninterrupted course of prosperity from the beginning of his reign; that he was superior to all his enemies united, and the terror of Europe. It was then, that after having driven near half a million of Protestants from his kingdom, by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, (1685,) having suffered the members of that sect to be hunted down like wild beasts in a forest, and delivered to torture before they were consigned to the flames; having confiscated their property for the good of those who denounced them; having declared their children illegitimate, and torn them from their families to be educated in another faith, or hurried to the gallies; it was then, in fine, that his painters and his poets were ordered to Versailles, to represent him as the sun irradiating the globe; or, as we may yet behold him on the walls of that palace, as a sort of beautiful Vulcan, forging chains for the cities he ordered to be besieged; or leaping over the Rhine in the character of the God of War, with the lightning of Jupiter in his hand, and the laurels of Apollo on his brow.

It is from this epoch, however, that the decline of the relative power of the French monarchy takes its date; that the government became impoverished at home by the loss of its artizans, and disgraced abroad by the defeat of its armies. The distresses of the treasury, from the scandalous prodigality of the court, became so pressing, in ten years after the repeal of the toleration

act, that 1200 dollars might purchase admittance into the ranks of nobility. The number of those tickets of exemption from taxation was so terribly augmented too about that time, that it gave rise to the pleasant sarcasm of "what a pity father Adam did not think to buy a title-we should have been all noble.”

Even Voltaire, after remarking that war renders the conqueror in a few years as miserable as the vanquished, fixes on the close of 1688, as the era at which Louis XIV. touched the highest point of his greatness. It is certainly true, that France continued to rise in the scale of European nations as long as she enjoyed religious toleration, and that she began visibly to lose her elevation from the moment she was deprived of it. I know not whether this coincidence of circumstances ever struck the imagination of Voltaire; if it did, I believe he suppressed it, because it could not heighten the colouring of his picture, nor flatter the national vanity of the people, on whose pleasure the reputation of his work was to depend. Yet, in pointing out the fatal consequences of the spirit of persecution on the prosperity of France, he remarks, that by a sort of singular fatality at the very moment the court was becoming polished to excess, the wrath of intolerance rendered it more familiar with the hideous practice of empoisoning than at any previous epoch of its history. The world is perhaps indebted to Madame de Stael for the first true sketch of the character of this hero of the toilette -this grand performer in what Boileau calls "les nobles douceurs d'un sejour plein de charmes." In commenting on his coming with a whip in his hand to the parliament of Paris, to forbid them the exercise of the last remnant of their power, (the right of remonstrance,) I think she observes that he could never conceive the idea of a nation, nor imagine any property to exist in France which did not belong to him, nor entertain a respect for any thing but himself.

The magnificent buildings erected during his reign, have been imagined by some to be the monuments of his greatness, yet I confess I cannot see how the wasting the treasures tyrannically wrested from his people, on works of mere ostentation, can redound to the credit of a voluptuous despot. Voltaire himself, in the heat of panegyric, admits, that if he had expended one

* 1696.

fifth of the money on Paris, which was wasted in erecting hills, and making rivers at Versailles, that he might have rendered every part of the capital as magnificent as the neighbourhood of the Tuilleries, and the whole more superb than any thing of the kind on earth. Now, when we remember that the situation of Versailles is in itself mean and detestable, and was selected only because it was not within view of the steeple of St. Denis, which covers the tomb of the Bourbons-when we recal the enchanting beauties of the scenery that nature has so gracefully scattered along the banks of the Seine, from the lovely heights of Meudon, to the more tranquil terrace of St. Germains, and when we recollect also that the embellishments of Versailles might have adorned any of these hills at one tenth of the expense; I ask what indulgence is the monarch entitled to who thus wastes the resources of his people?

I have entered much more widely into the merits of this bon vieux temps as it is considered of France than I had intended, and have no other apology for having done so than the conviction that the flood of moral evil by which France has been recently deluged, had the channels of inundation opened for it by the follies of the reign of Louis XIV. Like Augustus, my dear Sir, he owes his reputation to the happy accident which called him to reign over a people replete with genius, whose immortal productions have enchanted the public mind, and dropt a curtain over the crimes and infirmities of the monarch.

But may it not serve to rectify the judgments of those who think that the system of morals was pure in France before it was deranged by the disorders of the revolution, to remind them that it is admitted by the historians of this period that the spirit of cruelty and savage thirst of blood among the French people was so far from being glutted by the war of the Cevennes, that it was not even slacked by the dragonnade of the protestants. Yet since the people are next to nothing in the eyes of these philanthropic professors of the doctrine of legitimacy, let us enquire a little into the spirit of loyalty and chivalrous devotion to their idol, which this new and splendid despotism had infused into their own ranks. The last scene of the life of Louis XIV. is an apt illustration of the disinterestedness of their loyalty. We are told by historians that from the very moment the physician pro

nounced that his majesty could not survive the following Wednesday, the palace of Versailles was so completely deserted by the flock of titled courtiers, that his bed was left to be guarded by a few hired domestics! But at the moment of this entire abandonment a quack arrived from Provence with a remedy which it was pretended was infallible for the gangrene. The scene was now changed-Versailles, which a few hours before was all silence and solitude, became of a sudden all bustle and confusion. The nobles who had fallen off with such precipitancy from the dying monarch, now rushed back with such impatient eagerness to felicitate him on his probable restoration that the Duke of Orleans observed "if the king eats a second time there will be nobody left in our palace." But fate had fixed it otherwise-his doom was inevitable-the disease was past remedy, and now the loyal gang of ultras, (leaving the eyes of the king to be closed by mercenary hands) were seen flying back again with increased vivacity to sell themselves as fast as possible to the Due D'Orleans." Such was the honest zeal and magnanimous loyalty which rewarded the last hours of this splendid despot-such the change from rough independence to polished servility which six_ ty years of arbitrary government had effected, and such the fidelity of the times which the whining sycophants of power are perpetually obtruding on us as the golden age of France and the millenium of monarchy! Louis lived long enough to perceive the fluctuations of the current, and to lament the errors of his reign. In his last moments he is said, to have exclaimed in the bitterness of humiliated pride, I am tired of life "je ne desire ni espère la

conserver."

The reign of Louis XIV. as I have suggested before, bears a strong resemblance to that of Augustus, except that the latter began in troubles, and ended in the tranquillity of permanent good fortune, whilst the first half of the former was spent in a blaze, of prosperity, and the last under the cloud of adversity.Both, however, commenced after a long period of domestic discord and civil war; both had their years of massacre and proscription; both were conducted with splendour, and ennobled by talents, nursed, if not created, by the liberal spirit of institutions to which the agitations of preceding times had given rise; both broke down independence of mind and fidelity of heart

among the nobles, and conducted the nation to a state of servility and corruption. In the century which followed these reigns over Rome and France, each suffered the extremes of despotism and anarchy; each was trampled on by a set of the bloodiest monsters that heaven ever sent forth in its wrath to scourge mankind; and if the spirit of liberty was not in France as it was in Rome, smothered in the stagnant pool of despotism, it is to the redeeming intelligence of the times, diffused by the art of printing, that she owes its preservation.

Anne, of Austria, it is said, advised her son to imitate his grandfather in preference to his father, because at the death of Henry IV. the people wept, and at that of Louis XIII. they laughed. He pursued a very different course of policy from either, and the day of his death was a day of rejoicing and gladness, in which his subjects sang songs of joy in the streets, insulting his memory, and loading it with obloquy. Henry IV. entered Paris by force and stratagem, amid the imprecations of swinish bigots, who would have rent the air with shouts at his immolation; but he exercised his power with such wisdom and benevolence, that for several days after his death Paris exhibited such a scene of lamentation, that, we are assured by historians, the excess of grief produced the same effect as a contagious disease. Louis XIV. quietly ascended the throne of his ancestors to govern a brave nobility, and a people devoted to his interest and ready to die in his defence; he exercised power however with such a contemptuous disdain of the rights of his subjects, that his death was not only followed by a scene of dissolute gayety and intemperance, but his remains were hissed and hooted at on their way to St. Denis. This ebullition of joy was, if possible, increased a few days after, when by orders from the Regent, the dungeons of Vincennes and the Bastile were unlocked, and the numberless martyrs that he had incarcerated for theological enigmas, came forth with pallid countenances and emaciated forms, to excite the compassion of the multitude.

Louis XIV. after fifty-six years of war, left the finances of France in so foundering a condition, that the embarrassments of the treasury under the regency, led to the proposition of national bankruptcy The deficiencies of the revenue for the current expenses of the year are said to have been seventy-seven millions of livres.