LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH.

Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not a great statesman; but he was in one sense of the words, a great king. Never was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would have called kingcraft-of all those arts which most advantageously display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects. Though his internal administration was bad, though the military triumphs which gave splendor to the early part of his reign were not achieved by himself, though his later years were crowded with defeats and humiliations, though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood the Latin of his massbook, though he fell under the control of a cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman, he succeeded in passing himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the more extraordinary, because he did not seclude himself from the public gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose very names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no man is a hero to his valet; and all the world saw as much of Louis the Fourteenth, as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then kneeled down at the side of his bed, and said his prayer, while the whole assembly awaited the end in solemn silence, the ecclesiastics on their knees, and the laymen with their hats before

their faces. He walked about his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels. All Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in the midst of a crowd as great as that which had met to see him rise in the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees. Yet though he constantly exposed himself to the public gaze in situations in which it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity, he to the last impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshippers, can be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially subject during the season of courtship. It was an illusion which affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought him tall. Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of the most distinguished members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his majestic stature. Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he was rather below than above the middle size. He had, it seems, a way of holding himself, a way of walking, a way of swelling his chest and rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty years after his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists; his coffin was opened; his body was dragged out; and it appeared that the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled, was in truth a little man.* That fine expression of Juvenal is sin

Even M. de Chateaubriand, to whom, we should have thought, all the Bourbons would have seemed at least six feet

gularly applicable, both in its literal and in its metaphorical sense, to Louis the Fourteenth :

"Mors sola fatetur

Quantula sint hominum corpuscula.”

His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of making both appear grand and august, in spite of the clearest evidence that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time have exposed both the deceptions. The body of the great king has been measured more justly than it was measured by the courtiers who were afraid to look above his shoetye. His public character has been scrutinised by men free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Moliere. In the grave, the most majestic of princes is only five feet eight. In history, the hero and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant, the slave of priests and women, little in war, little in government, little in everything but the art of simulating greatness..

CHARACTER OF HORACE WALPOLE.

He was, unless we have formed a very erroneous judgment of his character, the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most fastidious, the most capricious, of men. His mind was a bundle of inconsistent whims and affectations. His features were

high, admits this fact. "C'est une erreur, says he in his strange memoirs of the Duke of Berri, "de croire que Louis XIV. étoit d'une haute stature. Une cuirasse qui nous reste de lui, et les exhumations de St. Denys, n'ont laissé sur ce point aucun doute."

covered by mask within mask. When the outer disguise of obvious affectation was removed, you were still as far as ever from seeing the real man. He played innumerable parts, and overacted them all. When he talked of misanthropy, he out-Timoned Timon. When he talked philanthropy, he left Howard at an immeasurable distance. He scoffed at Courts, and kept a chronicle of their most trifling scandal; at Society, and was blown about by its slightest veerings of opinion; at Literary fame, and left fair copies of his private letters, with copious notes, to be published after his decease; at Rank, and never for a moment forgot that he was an Honorable; at the practice of Entail, and tasked the ingenuity of conveyancers to tie up his villa in the strictest settlement.

The conformation of his mind was such, that whatever was little, seemed to him great, and whatever was great, seemed to him little. Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his serious business. To chat with blue stockings; to write little copies of complimentary verses on little occasions; to superintend a private press; to preserve from natural decay the perishable topics of Ranelagh and White's; to record divorces and bets, Miss Chudleigh's absurdities, and George Selwyn's good sayings; to decorate a grotesque house with pie-crust battlements; to procure rare engravings and antique chimney-boards; to match odd gauntlets; to lay out a maze of walks within five acres of ground-these were the grave employments of his long life. From these he turned to politics as to an amusement. After the labors of the print-shop and

the auction-room, he unbent his mind in the House of Commons. And, having indulged in the recreation of making laws and voting millions, he returned to more important pursuits-to researches after Queen Mary's comb, Wolsey's red hat, the pipe which Van Tromp smoked during his last seafight, and the spur which King William struck into the flank of Sorrel.

In everything in which he busied himself—in the fine arts, in literature, in public affairs-he was drawn by some strange attraction from the great to the little, and from the useful to the odd. The po-. litics in which he took the keenest interest, were politics scarcely deserving of the name. The growlings of George the Second, the flirtations of Princess Emily with the Duke of Grafton, the amours of Prince Frederic with Lady Middlesex, the squabbles between Gold Stick and the Master of the Buck-hounds, the disagreements between the tutors of Prince George-these matters engaged almost all the attention which Walpole could spare from matters more important still;-from bidding for Zinckes and Pettitots, from cheapening fragments of tapestry, and handles of old lances, from joining bits of painted glass, and from setting up memorials of departed cats and dogs. While he was fetching and carrying the gossip of Kensington Palace and Carlton House, he fancied that he was engaged in politics, and when he recorded that gossip, he fancied that he was writing history.

He was, as he has himself told us, fond of faction as an amusement. He loved mischief: but he loved quiet; and he was constantly on the watch for opportunities of gratifying both his tastes at once. He