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.

Nothing is right, which is not in its right place. Disorderly wit, even disorderly virtues, lose much of their natural value. There is an exquisite symmetry and proportion in the qualities of a wellordered mind. An ill-regulated desire of that knowledge, the best part of which she might have acquired with dignity, at her leisure hours; an unbounded vanity, eager to exhibit to foreign countries those attainments which ought to have been exercised in governing her own-to be thought a philosopher by wits, and a wit by philosophers-this was the preposterous ambition of a queen born to rule a brave people, and naturally possessed of talents which might have made that people happy. Thus it was that the daughter of the great Gustavus, who might have adorned that throne for which he so bravely fought, for want of the discretion of a wellbalanced mind, and the virtues of a well-disciplined heart, became the scorn of those whose admiration she might have commanded. Her ungoverned tastes were, as is not unusual, connected with passions equally ungovernable; and there is too much ground for suspecting that the mistress of Monaldeschi ended with being his murderer. It is not surprising, that she who abdicated her throne should abjure her religion. Having renounced every thing else which was worth preserving, she ended by renouncing the protestant faith.

* John Gerard Vossius, of Leyden, one of the most learned men of his age, died in 1649.-ED.

It may not be without its uses to the royal pupil, to compare the conduct of Christina with that of Alfred, in those points in which they agreed, and those in which they exhibited so striking an opposition. To contrast the Swede, who, with the advantage of a lettered education, descended from the throne, abandoned the noblest and widest sphere of action in which the instructed mind could desire to employ its stores, and renounced the highest social duties which a human being can be called to perform, with Alfred, one of the few happy instances in which genius and virtue surmounted the disadvantages of an education so totally neglected, that at twelve years old he did not even know the letters of the alphabet. He did not abdicate his crown, in order to cultivate his own talents, or to gratify his fancy with the talents of others, but laboured right royally to assemble around the throne all the abilities of his country. Alfred had no sooner tasted the charms of learning, than his great genius unfolded itself. He was enchanted with the elegancies of literature to a degree which, at first, seemed likely to divert him 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 poetry of which he became so enamoured? No. Like a true patriot, he devoted his rare genius to the noblest purposes. He dedicated the talents 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 while the Swedish vagrant was subsisting on eleemosynary flattery, bestowed in pity to her real but misapplied abilities, Alfred was exercising his talents like the father of his country. He did not consider

study as a mere gratification of his own taste. He knew that a king has nothing exclusively his own, not even his literary attainments. He threw his erudition, like his other possessions, into the public stock. He diffused among the people his own knowledge, which flowed in all directions, like streams from their parent 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.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Observations on the age of Louis XIV. and on Voltaire. IF in the present work we frequently cite Louis XIV. it is because on such an occasion his idea naturally presents itself. His reign was so long; his character so prominent; his qualities so ostensible; his affairs were so interwoven with those of the other countries of Europe, and especially with those of England; the period in which he lived produced such a revolution in manners; and, above all, his encomiastic historian, Voltaire, has decorated both the period and the king with so much that is great and brilliant, that they fill a large space in the eye of the reader. Voltaire writes as if the 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 into 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.

But whatever other countries may do, England at least is able to look back with triumph to ages anterior to that which is exclusively denominated the age of Louis XIV. Nay, in that vaunted age itself, we venture to dispute with France the palm of glory. To all they boast of arms-we need produce no other proof of superiority, than that we conquered the boasters. To all that they bring in science, and it must be allowed that they bring much, or where would be the honour of eclipsing them?-we have to oppose our Locke, our Boyle, and our Newton. To their long list of wits and of poets-it would be endless, in the way of competition, to attempt enumerating, star by star, the countless constellation which illuminated the bright contemporary reign of Anne.

But the principal reason for which we so often cite the conduct, and, in citing the conduct, refer to the errors of Louis, is, that there was a time, when the splendour of his character, his imposing magnificence and generosity, made us in too much danger of 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.

But it is not enough for writers, who wish to promote the best interests of the great, to 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, unobtrusive qualities as justice, charity, temperance, meekness, and purity, will make but a mean figure; or, at best, will be considered only as the virtues of the vulgar, not as the attributes of kings. While in the portrait of the conqueror, ambition, sensuality, oppression, luxury, and pride, painted in the least offensive colours, and blended with the bright tints of personal bravery, gaiety, and profuse liberality, will lead the sanguine and the young to doubt whether the former class of qualities can be very mischievous, which is so blended and lost in the latter; especially when they find that hardly any abatement is made by the historian for the one, while the other is held up to admiration.

There is no family in which the showy qualities have more blinded the reader, and sometimes the writer also, to their vices, than 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 himself 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 dishonoured in the persons of their wives and daughters; his unbounded profligacy not even respecting the sanctity of convents! Another writer, speaking of the house of Medici collectively, says, "their having restored knowledge and elegance will, in time, obliterate their faults. Their usurpation, tyranny, pride,

Alexander, duke of Florence, the natural son of Lorenzo de Medici, obtained that dignity without right, by the interest of his uncle, Pope Clementi VII. He fell by the hand of Philip Strozzi in 1537.-ED.