joicings on the occasion, have adopted the whole for their own, or, at least, have claimed a large share.

Would any one after this propose passive obedience, and non-resistance, to French protestants? Or, can we wonder, that, abhorring a church, who offered to embrace them with hands reeking with the blood of their brethren, they put on their armor again, and commenced a fourth civil war? The late massacre raised up also another party, called politicians, who proposed to banish the family of Guise from France, to remove the queen-mother and the Italians from the government, and to res tore peace to the nation. This faction was headed by Montmorency, who had an eye to the crown. During these troubles, the king died, in the twenty fifth year of his age, 1574. Charles had a lively little genius, he composed a book on hunting and valued himself on his skill in physiognomy. He thought courage consisted in swearing and taunting at his courtiers. His diversions were hunting, music, women and wine. His court was a common sewer of luxury and impiety, and, while his favorites were fleecing his people, he employed himself in the making of rhymes. The part he acted in the Bartholomewan tragedy, the worst crime that was ever perpetrated in any christian country, will mark his reign with infamy to the end of time.

Henry III. who succeeded his brother Charles, was first despised, and then hated, by all his subjects. He was so proud that he set rails round his table, and affected the pomp of an eastern king: and so mean that he often walked in procession with a beggarly brotherhood, with a string of beads in his hand, and a whip at his girdle. He was so credulous that he took the sacrament with the duke of Guise, and with the Cardinal of Lorrain, his

brother; and so treacherous that he caused the assassination of them both, 1588. He boasted of being a chief adviser of the late massacre, and the protestants abhorred him for it. The papists hated him for his adherence to the Hugonot house of Bourbon, and for the edicts which he sometimes granted in favor of the protestants, though his only aim was to weaken the Guises. The ladies held him in execration for his unnatural practices: and the duchess of Montpensier talked of clipping his hair, and of making him a monk. His heavy taxes, which were consumed by his favorites, excited the populace against him, and, while his kingdom was covering with carnage, and drenching in blood, he was training lapdogs to tumble, and parrots to prate.

In this reign, 1576, was formed the famous league, which reduced France to the most miserable condition that could be. The chief promoter of it was the duke of Guise. The pretence was the preservation of the catholic religion. The chief articles were three. The defence of the catholic religion. The establishment of Henry III. on the throne. The maintaining of the liberty of the kingdom, and the assembling of the states. Those, who entered into the league, promised to obey such a general as should be chosen for the defence of it, and the whole was confirmed by oath. The weak Henry subscribed it at first in hopes of subduing the Hugonots; the queen-mother, the Guises, the Pope, the king of Spain, many of the clergy, and multitudes of the people, became leaguers. When Henry perceived that Guise was aiming by this league to dethrone him, he favored the protestants, and they obtained an edict, 1576, for the free exercise of their religion: but edicts were vain things against the power of the league, and three civil wars raged in this reign.

Guise's pretended zeal for the Romish religion allured the clergy, and France was filled with seditious books and sermons. The preachers of the league were the most furious of all sermon-mongers. They preached up the excellence of the established church, the necessity of uniformity, the horror of hugonotism, the merit of killing the tyrant on the throne, (for so they called the king) the genealogy of the house of Guise, and every thing else that could inflame the madness of party-rage. It is not enough to say that these abandoned clergymen disgraced their office, truth obliges us to add, they were protected, and preferred to dignities in the church, both in France and Spain.

The nearer the Guises approached to the crown, the more were they inflamed at the sight of it. They obliged the king to forbid the exercise of the protestant religion. They endeavored to exclude the King of Navarre, who was now the next heir to the throne, from the succession. They began to act so haughtily that Henry caused both the duke and the cardinal to be assassinated, 1588. The next year 1589, he himself was assassinated by a friar. Religion flourishes where nothing else can grow, and the reformation diffused itself more and more in this reign. The exiles at Geneva filled France with a new translation of the bible, with books, letters, catechisms, hymns, and preachers; and the people, contrasting the religion of Christ with the religion of Rome, entertained a most serious aversion for the latter.

In the last king ended the family of Valois, and the next heir was Henry IV. of the house of Bour bon, King of Navarre. His majesty had been educated a protestant, and had been the protector of the party, and the protestants had reason to expect much from him on his ascending the throne of

France: but he had many difficulties to surmount, for could the men, who would not bear a hugonot subject, bear a hugonot king? Some of the old faction disputed his title, and all insisted on a christian king. Henry had for him on the one side, almost all the nobility, the whole court of the late king, all protestant states and princes, and the old hugonot troops: on the other he had against him, the common people, most of the great cities, all the parliaments except two, the greatest part of the clergy, the Pope, the King of Spain, and most catholic states. Four years his majesty deliberated, negociated, and fought, but could not gain Paris. At length, the league set up a king of the house of Guise, and Henry found that the throne was inaccessable to all but papists, he therefore renounced heresy before Dr. Benoit, a moderate papist, and professed his conversion to popery. Paris opened its gates, 1594, the pope sent an absolution, and Henry became a most christian king. Every man may rejoice that his virtue is not put to the trial of refusing a crown!

When his majesty got to his palace in Paris, he thought proper to conciliate his new friends by shewing them particular esteem, and played at cards the first evening with a lady of the house of Guise, the most violent leaguer in all the party. His old servants who had shed rivers of blood to bring the house of Bourbon to the throne, thought themselves neglected. While the protestants were slighted, and while those, who had followed the league, were disengaging themselves from it on advantageous conditions, one of the king's old friends said, "We do not envy your killing the fatted calf for the prodigal son, provided you do not sacrifice the obedient son to make the better entertainment for the prodigal. I dread those bargains, in which things are

given up, and nothing got but mere words, the words of those who hitherto have had no words at all."

By ascending the throne of France, Henry had risen to the highest degree of wretchedness. He had offered violence to his conscience by embracing popery, and he had stirred up a general discontent among the French protestants. The queen of England, and the protestant states, reproached him bitterly, the league refused to acknowledge him till the pope had absolved him in form, the king of Spain caballed for the crown, several cities held out against him, many of the clergy thought him an hypocrite, and refused to insert his name in the public prayers of the church, the lawyers published libels against him, the jesuits threatened to assassinate him, and actually attempted to do it. In this delicate and difficult situation, though his majesty manifested the frailty of humanity by renouncing protestantism, yet he extricated himself and his subjects from the fatal labyrinths in which they were all involved, so that he deservedly acquired even from his enemies the epithet Great, though his friends durst not give him that of Good.

The king had been so well acquainted with the protestants, that he perfectly knew their principles, and, could he have acted as he would, he would have instantly granted them all they wanted. Their enemies had falsely said, that they were enemies to government: but the king knew better, and he also knew that the claims of his family would have been long ago buried in oblivion, had not the protestants supported them. Marshal Biron had been one chief instrument of bringing him to the throne. The marshal was not a good hugonot, nor did he profess to be a papist: but he espoused the protestant party, for he was a man of great sense, and