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duced his character, and aggravated all his faults. But time, the test of truth, has fully unveiled him to mankind; and, after the lapse of near two centuries, posterity has justly assigned him one of the highest places among those, whom Providence in its bounty sometimes raises up for the felicity and ornament of the human race.

WRAXALL.

LOUIS XVI.

THUS fell Louis XVI. in the thirty-ninth year of his age, and nineteenth of his reign; and with him fell the monarchy of France, which, under three dynasties, had existed nearly fifteen centuries. So strong, at the time of his accession, was the general sentiment in his favour, that he was greeted with the title of Louis the Desired. Nor, though afterwards branded with every term of obloquy, did he ever merit the hatred of his subjects. In some measure he resembled our Charles I.; to whose history he paid great attention. A comparison, however, of their conduct, when involved in difficulties, is highly favourable to the English sovereign. Charles maintained, with vigour and by arms, a contest of some years duration; and, when at length overcome, still preserving his native dignity, uniformly refused to acknowledge the authority of that usurped jurisdiction by which he was arraigned. He lost his crown and life; but he preserved inviolate the reputation of active courage and unconquerable spirit. Louis may, perhaps with more

propriety, be compared to the sixth Henry. With greater abilities than Henry, he had, in some parts of his character and situation, a strong similarity to that monarch. Both were pious; both, diffident of themselves, and therefore easily swayed by others, espoused princesses of elevated minds; both were driven from their thrones by rebellion; and both perished by an untimely death.

The understanding of Louis was much above mediocrity; he had acquired a vast fund of knowledge by reading; his memory was remarkably tenacious; and his judgment, in arranging, combining, and applying what his memory had retained, was often displayed in a manner that was highly creditable to him. On the relative state and interest of France and the European powers, his information was by no means inconsiderable. History and geography were two of his favourite studies. To the former he paid much attention; and such was his proficiency in the latter, that the detailed instructions to the ill fated navigator, Perouse, were drawn up by his own hand: he was, indeed, supposed to be the best geographer in his kingdom. With some of the mechanical arts he was also well acquainted, and even occasionally practised them.

In his moral conduct he was unimpeachable. Just, beneficent; a good husband, a good father, and a lover of his people, he would, had he lived in an age less turbulent, when the higher talents are not required in a ruler, have done honour to a throne. But he did not satisfy himself with mere morality, which, when unsupported

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by religion, is little to be depended upon. piety too was exemplary. The faith in which he and his ancestors had been educated, he followed with sincerity and warmth, but without any mixture of ill directed and uncharitable zeal. On the mercy and goodness of the Deity he relied with an unfeigned confidence. That reliance afforded him consolation in the latter stormy period of his reign, and fortitude in the hour of death. It enabled him to triumph over slander, captivity, and the grave.

But, numerous as his virtues certainly were, there was one master fault which ran through and vitiated the whole of his conduct. He wanted that firmness and decision, without which the greatest virtues are sometimes worse than useless. A monarch should know as well how to make himself feared as loved. In vulgar minds mere affection soon degenerates into something bordering upon contempt. His lawful orders can never be disobeyed or slighted without prejudice to himself. Louis yielded at those very moments when he should most rigorously have enforced obedience; when he should fully have asserted his authority, or have abandoned life and authority together. Passive courage he

possessed; but not active.

Yet even this had its rise in a fault; but it was a fault of so amiable a nature that it can hardly be censured without pain. It arose from the extreme horror which he always felt of shedding human blood. Looking, however, to the high situation in which they are placed, and the high purposes for which they hold that situation,

sovereigns ought to consult not their feelings, but their duties. Blind and indiscriminate mercy is, in its effects, the worst of cruelties. Humanity itself imperiously commands the punishment of those who wantonly and wickedly violate the laws on which social order is founded; and by giving a loose to the most violent passions of man, reduce him to a state of worse than savage nature; since it has all the bad qualities of savage existence, without any of its virtues. The monarch is the guardian of the state; and the safety of the state is put to hazard, when traitors are allowed to conspire with impunity. Nor will the king who tolerates treason long remain a king.

The unfortunate Louis fell a victim to his ignorance of this truth. In his fall he drew down the greatest evils not only upon his country, but also upon a considerable part of Europe. That clemency, which he so injudiciously showed to rebellious subjects, cost the lives of the bravest, the wisest, and noblest characters of the time in which they lived; covered France with scaffolds and blood; shook, to their foundations, some of the oldest established governments; and involved others in total destruction. His fate will operate as a lesson to all sovereigns, to extinguish, with a decided hand, the first embers of sedition; and happy will it be for mankind, if the caution thus inspired does not, sooner or later, degenerate into a gloomy and suspicious tyranny, which, under the pretence of resisting innovation, may discourage all reform, and strike the safest and most deadly blows at the very existence of free

dom itself. History, while it ranks Louis with those who were worthy of being enrolled among saints and martyrs, must lament that he lived in an age, and among a people, when all the vigorous talents of a Henry IV. would not have been more than sufficient to preserve unimpaired the dignity of the sovereign, and, by that dignity, the peace and welfare of his subjects.

R. A. DAVENPORT.

NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE.

OF Napoleon Buonaparte the historian, in a succeeding generation, will record, that, with extraordinary intellect to discern and to combine, he possessed a mind, strong, ardent, comprehensive, and sublime, which could soar and stoop, at once capacious of immensity and submitting to vulgar limitation: that his virtues were many and illustrious; his vices few, but fatally pernicious; that he betrayed the trust which was reposed in him, and crushed the cause by which he had been elevated: that he bartered the solid greatness, within his grasp, for a specious bauble which escaped from it; and, when he might have been a Washington at the head of Europe, preferred to be a Cromwell for the puerilities of royalty that he was the friend of toleration, the patron of the arts and sciences, a usurper, with whose prosperity his country flourished, and by whose ruin alone she was oppressed: that he lived to demonstrate the vanity of regal alliances; to be proscribed by monarchs who were indebted

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