768-814 741-987 the Queen-mother Bertha returned from Pavia,the Palace of which the general form is still retraced in the massy quadrangle, flanked by the desolated Visconti towers,-conducting with her that fair one so anxiously sought, her namesake, the young Bertha, daughter of Desiderius, King of Italy, the Lombard King. The Princess had not been easily won. Scarcely covered at this period by a grudging friendship, the rivalry between the Franks and Lombards may have occasioned the obstacles; but Queen Bertha's persevering anxiety overcame them, and the Frankish nobles sanctioned and confirmed the marriage-compact by their oaths: a proceeding indicating some distrust on the part of Name of the Desiderius. When the Lombard Lady reached Princess the dominions of her future husband, and the union was accomplished, the name of Desiderata was given to her, doubly appropriate, suggested equally by her father's name and by the sentiments which had brought her there. Lombard changed to Desiderata. This marriage began in wrong and ended in wrong. Himmeltruda his wife, the mother of his eldest son, Pepin-le-bossu, was discarded by Charlemagne's impetuous passions and volatile affection. The Frankish Chroniclers, some kinsmen like Eginhard his son-in-law, and all of them his favourites, his admirers or his friends, speak under their breath concerning these transactions: we get at them obscurely. No colourable pre 768-814 tence is alleged, no allusion made, even to a 741-987 causeless divorce. Possibly Pepin's deformity was the reason why Charlemagne excluded him, the first-born, from the Throne; and his subsequent rebellion against his father may have been instigated by the injury he and his mother had sustained. A year had scarcely elapsed when Charlemagne, adding evil to evil, deeply grieving his mother and causing his nobles to violate their oaths, put away Desiderata, no longer desired. Childless, she found no favour in her husband's Charleeyes, and Pope Stephen, as we are told, sanc-pudiates tioned the dissolution of the unhappy union. and marries Charlemagne then took another wife, Hildegarda, mother of his three sons, Charles, Pepin King of Italy, and Louis, the Emperor now upon the throne. Charlemagne may have received some private rebukes from his Clergy, but never did they openly oppose his unbridled indulgence. There are seasons when popular sins are so universally condonated, so attractive, so recommended by national pride, so palliated by fashion, so fascinating to intellect, so intimately conducive to the material interests and resources of society, so thoroughly assimilated into the body politic, that it seems as if the Priesthood must, out of mere charity, yield to the universal hardness of heart: refraining from their duty lest rebuke should aggravate iniquity, by occasioning the worse * 771. magne re Desiderata, Hildegarda. 741-987 transgression, of sinning against warning and knowledge. Faith failing through irremovable 768-814 ignorance, inveterate habit, or unsurmountable temptation, it appears impossible to correct the perceptions of the sinner, in whom a moral polarization of light has taken place-the black looks couleur-de-rose. Take home instances, familiar instances, stale, vulgar instances, disagreeable instances, humiliating instances, they shew the truth more clearly. Can we conceive the possibility of any Parochial Minister gifted with the firmness, zeal, kindness, talent and earnestness, which fifty years ago, combining in due proportions, would have enabled him to exhort against wrecking on the Cornish Coast? Did any one incumbent of Newmarket or Epsom ever reprove the crowds who, to their temporal or eternal ruin, so thickly congregate upon the verdant turf of the Heath or the Downs: or chide the pestilential profligacy fostered by the race-course-stand, the betting-room and the roulette-table?-Influence and station may environ the offenders by circumstances which deter all but those who are raised up as special ministers of holiness. Whether a Charles, a James, or a William, listened or were supposed to listen in the Royal Closet, no voice was ever heard from the pulpit of Whitehall which could trouble the lovers of such charmers as Nell Gwynne or Mademoiselle de Querouaille, my Lady Cas 768-814 tlemaine, Mistress Arabella Churchill, Miss Lucy 741-987 Walters or my Lady Orkney. Ward and Sheldon were lulled into dutiful somnolence. Stillingfleet and Tillotson, waging an uncompromising warfare against Socinian Heresy and Popish corruption, knew nothing whatever of the debaucheries perpetrated by King and Duke, which made the Wapping sailors cry, Shame! The Revolution did not diminish their mildness; and smiling over their velvet cushions, they practised the same toleration towards the phlegmatic amours of him of the "glorious memory." Hoadly, gently creeping up the Palace back-stairs in search of the successive mitres of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester, and fully impressed with "the unreasonableness of nonconformity" to a Monarch's liaison, never startled during his ascent at the patched and painted Countesses of Yarmouth or of Suffolk, the bulky Baroness Killmansegg, or the gawky Duchess of Kendal.-The awe inspired by Charlemagne, the respect for his active piety and zeal, his personal energy in the good cause, the gratitude earned by his munificence, the prestige of his poetical grandeur, subdued the Clergy into a practical connivance, which would receive a harder name were it not for the indulgence with which man is bound to judge of human infirmity. Nor can we escape from similar examples of moral debility in any era. Cranmer's docility reflects the accommo * 741-987 dation given by Pope Stephen. Desiderata is repeated in Anne of Cleves. Adelhard divorce of -becomes a monk at Corbey. 768-814 Adelhard, young, ardent, conscientious, was resents the rendered indignant by Desiderata's wrongs. Was Desiderata not Hildegarda an intrusive queen? Could he render to her that respect which his station in the Court required? He spoke loudly, honestly, boldly-spared not the Frankish nobles, reproached them with their flagrant untruth, till at length, sickened and disgusted with the world, he fled its trials and temptations and became a monk in the newly-founded Abbey of Corbey, afterwards called vieux-Corbey, near Amiens. You see the Abbey Towers from the parapet of Amiens Cathedral. During Adelhard's noviciate they put him to work in the garden; he became Abbot in course of time, and founded in Westphalia the Monastery called New Corbey, or Corvey, on the banks of the Weser. 774. Desiderius King of Lombardy, About four years after Adelhard had professed, another fugitive, an unwilling fugitive, a prisoner, dethroned found refuge from trouble in the same sanctuary by Charle shorn as a monk at Corbey. magne, and of Corbey. The repudiation of Desiderata had been followed by a war between the aggressive Franks and the yet warlike Lombards. Charlemagne invaded the dominions of Desiderius. The Alpine passes were well though unsuccessfully defended; but a series of victories gave to Charlemagne the Exarchate of Ravenna, the Venetian and Istrian provinces, Spoleto and Benevento, |