Great Leaders

Every one perusing the pages of the historians must have been impressed with the graphic and singularly penetrative character of many of the sketches of the distinguished persons whose doings form the staple of history. These pen-portraits often stand out from the narrative with luminous and vivid effect, the writers seeming to have concentrated upon them all their powers of penetration and all their skill in graphic delineation. Few things in literature are marked by analysis so close, discernment so keen, or by effects so brilliant and dramatic. In some of the later historians this feature is specially noticeable, but it was Hume’s admirable portrayal of the character of Alfred the Great that suggested the compilation of the present volume.

A selection such as this of the more striking passages in the great historians will serve, it is believed, a double purpose—first as a suitable introduction to these distinguished writers for those not acquainted with them, and next as a means of stimulating a taste for the study of history itself. It must be remembered that it is largely through their sympathies for persons that readers generally find pleasure in history. The sometimes noble and sometimes startling personality of great leaders exerts a fascinating effect upon all susceptible minds, and whatever brings this personality vividly before us greatly strengthens our interest in the records of the past. For these reasons this compilation will be found well adapted for the reading class in high schools and seminaries.

It is desirable to explain that in some instances the selections do not appear here exactly in the form of the original. Passages from different pages are sometimes brought together, so as to give completeness to the portrait, but in no other way has any liberty been taken with the text of the authors.

In making the selections, the primary object was to secure, in each instance, the most vivid and truthful portrait obtainable, but it was also thought desirable to render the volume as representative of historical literature as possible, and hence to include a wide range of writers. The work will be found to be tolerably representative in this particular, but some well-known historians do not appear, for the reason that their methods did not yield suitable material.

The selections terminate with the period of Waterloo, because, while great leaders have flourished since those days, the historical perspective is not sufficient to permit that judicial estimate so necessary for a truly valuable portrait.

	PAGE
THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES. By George Grote	1
(From the “History of Greece.”)
PERICLES. By Ernst Curtius	6
(From the “History of Greece.”)
EPAMINONDAS. By Ernst Curtius	10
(From the “History of Greece.”)
ALEXANDER THE GREAT. By George Grote	14
(From the “History of Greece.”)
HANNIBAL. By Theodor Mommsen	19
(From the “History of Rome.”)
THE GRACCHI. By Plutarch	23
(From “Plutarch’s Lives.”)
CAIUS MARIUS. By James Anthony Froude	27
(From “Julius Cæsar—A Sketch.”)
MITHRIDATES, KING OF PONTUS. By Theodor Mommsen	32
(From the “History of Rome.”)
LUCIUS SYLLA. By James Anthony Froude	37
(From “Julius Cæsar—A Sketch.”)
POMPEY. By Thomas Kerchever Arnold	41
(From the “History of Rome.”)
SERTORIUS. By Plutarch	44
(From “Plutarch’s Lives.”)
JULIUS CÆSAR. By James Anthony Froude	49
(From “Julius Cæsar—A Sketch.”)
TRAJAN. By Charles Merivale	53
(From the “History of the Romans under the Empire.”)
THE ANTONINES. By Edward Gibbon	56
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
ZENOBIA, QUEEN OF PALMYRA. By Edward Gibbon	60
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
CONSTANTINE, THE FIRST CHRISTIAN EMPEROR. By Edward Gibbon	65
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
JULIAN THE APOSTATE. By Edward Gibbon	70
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
THEODOSIUS THE GREAT. By Edward Gibbon	77
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
ATTILA, THE SCOURGE OF GOD. By Edward Gibbon	83
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
BELISARIUS. By Lord Mahon	88
(From the “Life of Belisarius.”)
MOHAMMED, THE FOUNDER OF ISLAM. By Edward Gibbon	92
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
CHARLEMAGNE. By Sir James Stephen	100
(From “Lectures on the History of France.”)
ALFRED THE GREAT, OF ENGLAND. By David Hume	107
(From the “History of England.”)
OLAF TRYGGVESON, KING OF NORWAY. By Thomas Carlyle	111
(From the “Early Kings of Norway.”)
CNUT OR CANUTE OF ENGLAND, ALSO KING OF DENMARK.By John Richard Green	116
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. By John Richard Green	120
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
ROBERT GUISCARD. By Edward Gibbon	126
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
THOMAS À BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. By David Hume	130
(From the “History of England.”)
SALADIN. By Edward Gibbon	135
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
HENRY II, KING OF ENGLAND. By David Hume	138
(From the “History of England.”)
GENGHIS OR ZINGIS KHAN. By Edward Gibbon	142
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
SIMON DE MONTFORT, EARL OF LEICESTER. By John Richard Green	148
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
EDWARD I, KING OF ENGLAND. By John Richard Green	153
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
ROBERT BRUCE. By Sir Archibald Alison	157
(From “Essays.”)
EDWARD III, KING OF ENGLAND. By David Hume	163
(From the “History of England.”)
RIENZI. By Edward Gibbon	167
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
TIMOUR OR TAMERLANE. By Edward Gibbon	173
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
JEANNE D’ARC. By John Richard Green	180
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
MAHOMET OR MOHAMMED II. By Edward Gibbon	186
(From the “History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”)
LORENZO DE’ MEDICI. By John Addington Symonds	190
(From the “Italian Renaissance.”)
GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. By John Addington Symonds	195
(From the “Italian Renaissance.”)
CÆSAR BORGIA. By Charles Yriarte	201
(From “Cæsar Borgia.”)
CARDINAL WOLSEY. By John Richard Green	208
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
FRANCISCO PIZARRO.[1] By John Richard Green	211
(From the “Conquest of Peru.”)
HERNANDO CORTÉS. By William Hickling Prescott	216
(From the “History of the Conquest of Mexico.”)
MARTIN LUTHER. By Thomas Carlyle	222
(From the “Life of Martin Luther.”)
IGNATIUS DE LOYOLA (SAINT), FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF JESUS. By Sir James Stephen	230
(From “Stephen’s Essays.”)
THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX. By John Richard Green	235
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
CHARLES V, EMPEROR OF GERMANY.[2] By John Lothrop Motley	240
(From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”)
WILLIAM OF NASSAU, PRINCE OF ORANGE. By John Lothrop Motley	248
(From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”)
JOHN KNOX. By James Anthony Froude	255
(From the “History of England.”)
DUKE OF ALVA. By John Lothrop Motley	259
(From the “Rise of the Dutch Republic.”)
QUEEN ELIZABETH. By John Richard Green	265
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS. By David Hume	275
(From the “History of England.”)
JOHN PYM. By John Richard Green	280
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
HENRY IV, KING OF FRANCE. By John Lothrop Motley	284
(From the “History of the United Netherlands.”)
WALLENSTEIN, DUKE OF FRIEDLAND. By Friedrich von Schiller	291
CARDINAL RICHELIEU. By Sir James Stephen	299
(From the “Lectures on the History of France.”)
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, KING OF SWEDEN. By Friedrich von Schiller	303
(From the “History of the Thirty Years’ War.”)
EARL OF STRAFFORD. By David Hume	310
(From the “History of England.”)
OLIVER CROMWELL. By Thomas Babington Macaulay	315
(From the “History of England.”)
LORD HALIFAX. By Thomas Babington Macaulay	322
(From the “History of England.”)
LOUIS XIV OF FRANCE. By Thomas Babington Macaulay	327
(From “Essays.”)
WILLIAM III OF ENGLAND. By Thomas Babington Macaulay	329
(From the “History of England.”)
PETER THE GREAT, CZAR OF RUSSIA. By Thomas Babington Macaulay	339
(From the “History of England.”)
DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH. By William E. H. Lecky	344
(From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”)
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE. By William E. H. Lecky	351
(From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”)
FREDERICK THE GREAT. By Thomas Carlyle	357
(From the “Life of Frederick the Great.”)
WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM. By John Richard Green	364
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
EDMUND BURKE. By William E. H. Lecky	369
(From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”)
GEORGE WASHINGTON. By William E. H. Lecky	378
(From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”)
MIRABEAU. By Thomas Carlyle	384
(From Carlyle’s “Essays.”)
CHARLES JAMES FOX. By William E. H. Lecky	389
(From the “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.”)
JEAN PAUL MARAT. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine	396
(From the “French Revolution.”)
PRINCE TALLEYRAND. By Archibald Alison	400
(From the “History of Europe.”)
GEORGE JACQUES DANTON. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine	405
(From the “French Revolution.”)
ROBESPIERRE. By Hippolyte Adolphe Taine	410
(From the “French Revolution.”)
WILLIAM PITT THE YOUNGER. By John Richard Green	417
(From the “Short History of the English People.”)
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. By Louis Adolphe Thiers	423
(From the “History of the Consulate and Empire.”)
DUKE OF WELLINGTON. By Archibald Alison	432
(From the “History of Europe.”)

	FACE PAGE
Pericles	6
(From antique bust, copy in the British Museum.)
Alexander the Great	14
(From antique bust.)
Hannibal	20
(From antique gem.)
Julius Cæsar	49
(From antique statue, Rome.)
Mohammed	92
(From old print, likeness traditional.)
Charlemagne	100
(From old line engraving.)
Alfred the Great	107
(From old line engraving.)
William the Conqueror	120
(Copy of painting from an ancient effigy.)
Martin Luther	222
(From painting by Cranach.)
Ignatius de Loyola	230
(From portrait by Rubens.)
Charles V.	240
(From portrait by Titian.)
William of Nassau	248
Richelieu	299
(From line engraving by Nanteuil.)
Oliver Cromwell	315
Peter the Great	339
(From line engraving by Petrus Anderloni.)
Frederick the Great	357

Neither Themistocles nor Aristides could boast of a lineage of gods and heroes like the Æacid Miltiades;[3] both were of middling station and circumstances. Aristides, son of Lysimachus, was on both sides of pure Athenian blood. But the wife of Neocles, father of Themistocles, was a foreign woman of Thrace or Caria; and such an alliance is the less surprising since Themistocles must have been born in the time of the Peisistratids,[4] when the status of an Athenian citizen had not yet acquired its political value. There was a marked contrast between these two eminent men—those points which stood most conspicuous in one being comparatively deficient in the other.

In the description of Themistocles, which we have the advantage of finding briefly sketched by Thucydides, the circumstance most emphatically brought out is his immense force of spontaneous invention and apprehension, without any previous aid either from teaching or actual practice. The might of unassisted nature was never so strikingly exhibited as in him; he conceived the complications of a present embarrassment and divined the chances of a mysterious future with equal sagacity and equal quickness. The right expedient seemed to flash on his mind extempore, even in the most perplexing contingencies, without the least necessity for premeditation.

Nor was he less distinguished for daring and resource in action. When engaged on any joint affairs his superior competence marked him out as the leader for others to follow; and no business, however foreign to his experience, ever took him by surprise or came wholly amiss to him. Such is the remarkable picture which Thucydides draws of a countryman whose death nearly coincided in time with his own birth. The untutored readiness and universality of Themistocles probably formed in his mind a contrast to the more elaborate discipline and careful preliminary study with which the statesmen of his own day—and Pericles specially the greatest of them—approached the consideration and discussion of public affairs. Themistocles had received no teaching from philosophers, sophists, and rhetors, who were the instructors of well-born youth in the days of Thucydides, and whom Aristophanes, the contemporary of the latter, so unmercifully derides—treating such instruction as worse than nothing, and extolling in comparison with it the unlettered courage, the more gymnastic accomplishments of the victors at Marathon.

The general character given in Plutarch, though many of his anecdotes are both trifling and apocryphal, is quite consistent with the brief sketch just cited from Thucydides. Themistocles had an unbounded passion, not merely for glory—insomuch as the laurels of Miltiades acquired at Marathon deprived him of rest—but also for display of every kind. He was eager to vie with men richer than himself in showy exhibition—one great source, though not the only source of popularity at Athens; nor was he at all scrupulous in procuring the means of doing it. Besides being scrupulous in attendance on the ecclesia and dicastery, he knew most of the citizens by name, and was always ready for advice to them in their private affairs. Moreover, he possessed all the tactics of the expert party-man in conciliating political friends and in defeating personal enemies; and though in the early part of his life sincerely bent upon the upholding and aggrandizement of his country, and was on some most critical occasions of unspeakable value to it, yet on the whole his morality was as reckless as his intelligence was eminent.

He was grossly corrupt in the exercise of power and employing tortuous means, sometimes, indeed, for ends in themselves honorable and patriotic, but sometimes also merely for enriching himself. He ended a glorious life by years of deep disgrace, with the forfeiture of all Hellenic esteem and brotherhood—a rich man, an exile, a traitor, and a pensioner of the Great King, pledged to undo his own previous work of liberation accomplished at the victory of Salamis.

Of Aristides, unfortunately, we possess no description from the hand of Thucydides; yet his character is so simple and consistent that we may safely accept the brief but unqualified encomium of Herodotus and Plato, expanded as it is in the biography of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, however little the details of the latter can be trusted. Aristides was inferior to Themistocles in resource, quickness, flexibility, and power of coping with difficulties; but incomparably superior to him—as well as to other rivals and contemporaries—in integrity, public as well as private; inaccessible to pecuniary temptation as well as to other seductive influences, and deserving as well as enjoying the highest measure of personal confidence.

He is described as the peculiar friend of Clisthenes, the first founder of the democracy; as pursuing a straight and single-handed course in political life, with no solicitude for party-ties, and with little care either to conciliate friends or to offend enemies; as unflinching in the exposure of corrupt practices by whomsoever committed or upheld; as earning for himself the lofty surname of the Just, not less by his judicial decisions in the capacity of archon, than by his equity in private arbitrations, and even his candor in public dispute; and as manifesting throughout a long public life, full of tempting opportunities, an uprightness without a flaw and beyond all suspicion, recognized equally by his bitter contemporary the poet Timocreon, and by the allies of Athens, upon whom he first assessed the tribute.

Few of the leading men in any part of Greece were without some taint on their reputation, deserved or undeserved, in regard to pecuniary probity; but whoever became notoriously recognized as possessing this vital quality, acquired by means of it a firmer hold on the public esteem than even eminent talents could confer. Thucydides ranks conspicuous probity among the first of the many ascendant qualities possessed by Pericles; and Nicias, equal to him in this respect, though immeasurably inferior in every other, owed to it a still larger proportion of that exaggerated confidence which the Athenian people continued so long to repose in him.

The abilities of Aristides, though apparently adequate to every occasion on which he was engaged, and only inferior when we compare him with so remarkable a man as Thucydides, were put in the shade by this incorruptible probity, which procured for him, however, along with the general esteem, no inconsiderable amount of private enmity from jobbers, whom he exposed, and even some jealousy from persons who heard it proclaimed with offensive ostentation.

We are told that a rustic and unlettered citizen gave his ostracizing vote and expressed his dislike against Aristides on the simple ground that he was tired of hearing him always called the Just. Now the purity of the most honorable man will not bear to be so boastfully talked of, as if he were the only honorable man in the country; the less it is obtruded the more deeply and cordially will it be felt; and the story just alluded to, whether true or false, illustrates that natural reaction of feeling produced by absurd encomiasts or perhaps by insidious enemies under the mask of encomiasts, who trumpeted for Aristides as the Just man at Attica so as to wound the legitimate dignity of every one else.

Neither indiscreet friends nor artful enemies, however, could rob him of the lasting esteem of his countrymen, which he enjoyed with intervals of their displeasure to the end of his life. Though he was ostracized during a part of the period between the battles of Marathon and Salamis—at a time when the rivalry between him and Themistocles was so violent that both could not remain at Athens without peril—yet the dangers of Athens during the invasion of Xerxes brought him back before the ten years of exile were expired. His fortune, originally very moderate, was still further diminished during the course of his life, so that he died very poor, and the state was obliged to lend aid to his children.

Aspasia came to Athens when everything new and extraordinary, everything which appeared to be an enlargement of ancient usage, a step forward and a new acquisition, was joyously welcomed. Nor was it long before it was recognized that she enchanted the souls of men by no mere arts of deception of which she had learned the trick. Hers was a lofty and richly endowed nature with a perfect sense of all that is beautiful, and hers a harmonious and felicitous development. For the first time the treasures of Hellenic culture were found in the possession of a woman surrounded by the graces of her womanhood—a phenomenon which all men looked on with eyes of wonder. She was able to converse with irresistible grace on politics, philosophy, and art, so that the most serious Athenians—even such men as Socrates—sought her out in order to listen to her conversation.

But her real importance for Athens began on the day when she made the acquaintance of Pericles, and formed with him a connection of mutual love. It was a real marriage, which only lacked the civil sanction because she was a foreigner; it was an alliance of the truest and tenderest affection which death alone dissolved—the endless source of a domestic felicity which no man needed more than the statesman, who lived retired from all external recreations and was unceasingly engaged in the labors of his life.

Doubtless the possession of this woman was in many respects invaluable for Pericles. Not only were her accomplishments the delights of the leisure hours which he allowed himself and the recreation of his mind from its cares, but she also kept him in intercourse with the daily life around him. She possessed what he lacked—the power of being perfectly at ease in every kind of society; she kept herself informed of everything that took place in the city; nor can distant countries have escaped her attention, since she is said to have first acquainted Pericles with Sicilian oratory, which was at that time developing itself.

She was of use to him through her various connections at home and abroad as well as by the keen glance of her feminine sagacity and by her knowledge of men. Thus the foremost woman of her age lived in the society of the man whose superiority of mind had placed him at the head of the first city of the Hellenes, in loyal devotion to her friend and husband; and although the mocking spirits at Athens eagerly sought out every blemish which could be discovered in the life of Pericles, yet no calumny was ever able to vilify this rare union and to blacken its memory.

Pericles had no leisure for occupying himself with the management of his private property. He farmed out his lands and intrusted the money to his faithful slave Evangelus, who accurately knew the measure which his master deemed the right one, and managed the household accordingly; which, indeed, presented a striking contrast to those of the wealthy families of Athens, and ill corresponded to the tastes of Pericles’s sons as they grew up. For in it there was no overflow, no joyous and reckless expenditure, but so careful an economy that everything was calculated down to drachm and obolus.

Pericles was perfectly convinced that nothing short of a perfectly blameless integrity and the severest self-abnegation could render possible the permanency of his influence over his fellow-citizens and prevent the exposure of even the smallest blot to his cavilers and enemies. After Themistocles had for the first time shown how a statesman and general might enrich himself, Pericles was in this respect the admirer and most faithful follower of Aristides, and in the matter of conscientiousness went even much further than Cimon, spurning on principle every opportunity offered by the office of general for a perfectly justifiable personal enrichment.

All attempts to bribe him remained useless. His lofty sentiments are evidenced by the remark which he addressed to Sophocles, who fell in love even in his old age: “Not only the hands, but the eyes also of a general should practice continence.” The more vivid the appreciation he felt for female charms the more highly must we esteem the equanimity to which he had attained by means of a self-command which had become a matter of habit with him; nor did anything make so powerful an impression upon the changeable Athenians as the immovable calm of this great man.

Pericles was neither a lengthy nor a frequent speaker. He avoided nothing more scrupulously than superfluous words, and therefore as often as he appeared before the people he prayed to Zeus to guard him from useless words. But the brief words which he actually spoke made a proportionately deep impression upon the citizens. His conception of his calling was too solemn and lofty to permit him to consent to talk as the multitude liked. He was not afraid when he found the citizens weak and irresolute to express to them bitter truths and serious blame.

His speeches always endeavored to place every case in connection with facts of a more general kind, so as to instruct and elevate the minds of the citizens; he never grew weary of pointing out how no individual happiness was conceivable from the welfare of the entire body; he proved to the citizens the claim which he had established upon their confidence; he clearly and concisely developed his political views, endeavoring not to talk over his hearers, but to convince them; and when the feeling of his own superiority was about to tempt him to despise the multitude, he admonished himself to be patient and long suffering. “Take heed, Pericles,” he cried to himself, “those whom thou rulest are Hellenes, citizens of Athens.”

The principles of the statesmanship of Pericles were so simple that all citizens were perfectly capable of understanding them; and he attached a particular value to the idea that the Athenians instead of, like the Lacedæmonians, seeking their strength in an affectation of secrecy, were unwilling to overcome their enemies by deception and cunning stratagems. As the Persian war had seemed inevitable to Themistocles, so the struggle with Sparta loomed as certain before the eyes of Pericles. The term of peace allowed before its outbreak had accordingly to be employed by Athens in preparing herself for the struggle awaiting her forces. When at last the critical hour arrived Athens was to stand before her assailants firm and invincible, with her walls for a shield and her navy for a sword.

The long schooling through which Pericles had passed in the art of war and the rare combination of caution and energy which he had displayed in every command held by him had secured him the confidence of the citizens. Therefore they for a succession of years elected him general, and as such invested him with an extraordinary authority, which reduced the offices of the other nine generals to mere posts of honor which were filled by persons agreeable to him. During the period of his administration the whole centers of gravity of public life lay in this office.

Inasmuch as Pericles, besides the authority of a “strategy” prolonged to him in an extraordinary degree, also filled the office of superintendent of the finances; inasmuch as he was repeatedly and for long periods of years superintendent of public works; inasmuch as his personal influence was so great that he could in all important matters determine the civic elections according to his wish; it is easy to understand how he ruled the state in time of war and peace, and how the power of both the council and of the whole civic body in all essentials passed into his hands.

He was the type of temperance and sobriety. He made it a rule never to assist at a festive banquet; and no Athenian could remember to have seen Pericles, since he stood at the head of the state, in the company of friends over the wine-cup. He was known to no man except as one serious and collected, full of grave thoughts and affairs. His whole life was devoted to the service of the state, and his power accompanied by so thorough a self-denial and so full a measure of labor that the multitude in its love of enjoyment could surely not regard the possession of that power as an enviable privilege. For him there existed only one road, which he was daily seen to take, the road leading from his house to the market-place and the council-hall, the seat of the government, where the current business of state was transacted.

It would be difficult to find in the entire course of Greek history any two statesmen who, in spite of differences in character and outward conditions of life, resembled one another so greatly and were as men so truly the peers of one another as Pericles and Epaminondas. In the case of both these men the chief foundation of their authority was their lofty and varied mental culture; what secured to them their intellectual superiority was the love of knowledge which pervaded and ennobled the whole being of either. Epaminondas like Pericles directs his native city as the man in whom the civic community places supreme confidence, and whom it therefore re-elects from year to year as general. Like Pericles, Epaminondas left no successor behind him, and his death was also the close of an historical epoch.

Epaminondas stood alone from the first; and while Pericles with all his superiority yet stood essentially on the basis of Attic culture, Epaminondas, on the other hand, was, so to speak, a stranger in his native city. Nor was it ever his intention to be a Theban in the sense in which Pericles was an Athenian. The object of his life was rather to be a perfect Hellene, while his efforts as a statesman were likewise simply an endeavor to introduce his fellow-citizens to that true Hellenism which consisted in civic virtue and in love of wisdom.

In the very last hour of his life, when he was delighted by the preservation of his shield, he showed himself a genuine Hellene; thus again it was a genuinely Greek standpoint from which he viewed the war against Sparta and Athens as a competitive contest for the honor of the hegemony in Hellas, an honor which could only be justly won by mental and moral superiority. The conflict was inevitable; it had become a national duty, because the supremacy of Sparta had become a tyranny dishonorable to the Hellenic nation. After Epaminondas liberated the Greek cities from the Spartan yoke it became the object of his Bœotian patriotism to make his own native city worthy and capable of assuming the direction.

How far Epaminondas might have succeeded in securing a permanent hegemony[5] over Greek affairs to the Thebans who shall attempt to judge? He fell in the full vigor of his manhood on the battle-field where the states, which withstood his policy, had brought their last resources to bear. Of all statesmen, therefore, he is least to be judged by the actual results of his policy. His greatness lies in this—that from his childhood he incessantly endeavored to be to his fellow-citizens a model of Hellenic virtue. Chaste and unselfish he passed, ever true to himself, through a most active life, through all the temptations of the most unexampled success in war, through the whole series of trials and disasters.

Epaminondas was not merely the founder of a military organization. He equally proved the inventiveness of his mind in contriving to obtain for his country, which was wealthy neither by trade nor manufactures, pecuniary resources sufficient for maintaining a land-army and a war-navy commensurate with the needs of a great power. He made himself master of all the productive ideas of earlier state administrations; and in particular the Athenians naturally stood before his eyes as models and predecessors.

On the one hand, he turned to account for his native city the improvements made in arms and tactics, which were due to Xenophon, Chabrias, and Iphicrates; on the other, the example of the Athenians taught him that the question of the hegemony over Greece could only be settled by sea. Finally, Epaminondas, more than any other Greek statesman, followed in the footsteps of Periclean Athens in regarding the public fostering of art and science as a main duty of that state which desired to claim a position of primacy.

Personally he did his utmost to domesticate philosophy at Thebes, not only as intellectual discourse carried on in select circles, but as the power of higher knowledge which elevates and purifies the people. Public oratory found a home at Thebes, together with the free constitution; and not only did Epaminondas personally prove himself fully the equal of the foremost orators in Athens—of Callistratus in particular—in power of speech and in felicitous readiness of mind, but, as the embassy at Susa shows, his friends too learned in a surprisingly short time to assert the interests of Thebes by the side of the other states, which had long kept up foreign relations with vigor, skill, and dignity.

In every department there were perceptible intellectual mobility and vigorously sustained effort. Of the fine arts painting received a specially successful development, distinguished by a thoughtful and clear treatment of intellectual ideas. Of the architecture of this period honorable evidence is to this day given by the well-preserved remains of the fortifications of Messene, constructed under the direction of Epaminondas—typical specimens of architecture constructed in the grandest style. Plastic art likewise found a home at Thebes. It was the endeavor of Epaminondas—although with prudent moderation—to transfer the splendor of Periclean Athens to Thebes.

Through Epaminondas Thebes was raised to an equality with the city of the Athenians, as a seat of a policy aiming at freedom and national greatness. It thus became possible for the two cities to join hands in the subsequent struggle for the independence of Greece. And, in this sense, Epaminondas worked beforehand for the objects of Demosthenes. If it is considered how, with his small resources, Epaminondas founded or helped to found Mantinea, Messene, and Megalopolis; how through him other places, such as Corone and Heraclea, likewise received Theban settlers—the honor will not be denied him of having been in the royal art of the foundation of cities the predecessor of Alexander and his successors.

But he was also their predecessor in another point. By spreading Greek manners and ways of life he enlarged the narrow boundaries of the land of the Greeks, and introduced the peoples of the North into the sphere of Greek history. In his own person he represented the ideas of a general Hellenic character, which, unconditioned by local accidents, was freely raised aloft above the distinction of states and tribes. Hitherto only great statesmen had appeared who were great Athenians or Spartans. In Epaminondas this local coloring is of quite inferior importance; he was a Hellene first, and a Theban only in the second place. Thus he prepared the standpoint from which to be a Hellene was regarded as an intellectual privilege, independent of the locality of birth; and this is the standpoint of Hellenism.

The first growth and development of Macedonia during the twenty-two years preceding the battle of Chæronea, from an embarrassed secondary state into the first of all known powers, had excited the astonishment of contemporaries and admiration for Philip’s organizing genius; but the achievements of Alexander during the twelve years of his reign, throwing Philip into the shade, had been on a

scale so much grander and vaster, and so completely without serious reverse or even interruption, as to transcend the measure, not only of human expectation, but almost of human belief. All antecedent human parallels—the ruin and captivity of the Lydian Crœsus, the expulsion and mean life of the Syracusan Dionysius, both of them impressive examples of the mutability of human condition—sunk into trifles compared with the overthrow of the towering Persian Colossus.

Such were the sentiments excited by Alexander’s career even in the middle of 330 B.C., more than seven years before his death. During the following seven years his additional achievements had carried astonishment yet further. He had mastered, in defiance of fatigue, hardship, and combat, not merely all the eastern half of the Persian Empire, but unknown Indian regions beyond its easternmost limits. Besides Macedonia, Greece, and Thrace, he possessed all that immense treasure and military force which had once made the Great King so formidable. By no contemporary man had any such power ever been known or conceived. With the turn of imagination then prevalent, many were doubtless disposed to take him for a god on earth, as Grecian spectators had once supposed with regard to Xerxes, when they beheld the innumerable Persian host crossing the Hellespont.

Exalted to this prodigious grandeur, Alexander was at the time of his death little more than thirty-two years old—the age at which a citizen of Athens was growing into important commands; ten years less than the age for a consul at Rome; two years younger than the age at which Timour first acquired the crown and began his foreign conquests. His extraordinary bodily powers were unabated; he had acquired a large stock of military experience; and, what was still more important, his appetite for further conquest was as voracious, and his readiness to purchase it at the largest cost of toil or danger as complete as it had been when he first crossed the Hellespont. Great as his past career had been, his future achievements with such increased means and experience were likely to be yet greater. His ambition would have been satisfied with nothing less than the conquest of the whole habitable world as then known; and, if his life had been prolonged, he probably would have accomplished it.

The patriotic feelings of Livy dispose him to maintain that Alexander, had he invaded Italy and assailed Romans and Samnites, would have failed and perished like his relative Alexander of Epirus. But this conclusion can not be accepted. If we grant the courage and discipline of the Roman infantry to have been equal to the best infantry of Alexander’s army, the same can not be said of the Roman cavalry as compared with the Macedonian companions. Still less is it likely that a Roman consul, annually changed, would have been a match for Alexander in military genius and combination; nor, even if personally equal, would he have possessed the same variety of troops and arms, each effective in its separate way, and all conspiring to one common purpose; nor, the same unbounded influence over their minds in stimulating them to full effort.

Among all the qualities which go to constitute the highest military excellence, either as a general or as a soldier, none was wanting in the character of Alexander. Together with his own chivalrous courage—sometimes, indeed, both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect which can be fairly imputed to him—we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organization on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects.

Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other personage of antiquity by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force—as an individual warrior and as organizer and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodized, and all-subduing compression which he personifies in Athene. But all his great qualities were fit for use only against enemies, in which category, indeed, were numbered all mankind, known and unknown, except those who chose to submit to him. In his Indian campaigns amid tribes of utter strangers, we perceive that not only those who stand on their defense, but also those who abandon their property and flee to the mountains are alike pursued and slaughtered.

Apart from the transcendent merits of Alexander as a general, some authors give him credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government and for intentions highly favorable to the improvement of mankind. I see no ground for adopting this opinion. As far as we can venture to anticipate what would have been Alexander’s future, we see nothing in prospect except years of ever repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded till he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. The acquisition of universal dominion—conceived not metaphorically but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time—was the master-passion of his soul.

“You are a man like all of us, Alexander, except that you abandon your home,” said the naked Indian to him, “like a medlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions; enduring hardship yourself and inflicting hardship on others.” Now, how an empire thus boundless and heterogeneous, such as no prince as has yet ever realized, could have been administered with any superior advantages to subjects, it would be difficult to show. The mere task of acquiring and maintaining, of keeping satraps and tribute-gatherers in authority as well as in subordination, of suppressing resistances ever liable to recur in regions distant by months of march, would occupy the whole life of a world conquerer, without leaving any leisure for the improvements suited to peace and stability—if we give him credit for such purposes in theory.

In respect of intelligence and combining genius, Alexander was Hellenic to the full; in respect of disposition and purpose, no one could be less Hellenic. The acts attesting his Oriental violence of impulse, unmeasured self-will, and exaction of reverence above the limits of humanity, have been recounted. To describe him as a son of Hellas, imbued with the political maxims of Aristotle, and bent on the systematic diffusion of Hellenic culture for the improvement of mankind is in my judgement an estimate of his character contrary to the evidence.

Alexander is indeed said to have invited suggestions from Aristotle as to the best mode of colonizing; but his temper altered so much after a few years of Asiatic conquest, that he came not only to lose all deference for Aristotle’s advice, but even to hate him bitterly. Instead of “Hellenizing” Asia, he was tending to “Asiatize” Macedonia and Hellas. His temper and character as modified by a few years of conquest rendered him quite unfit to follow the course recommended by Aristotle toward the Greeks—quite as unfit as any of the Persian kings, or as the French Emperor Napoleon, to endure that partial frustration, compromise, and smart from personal criticism, which is inseparable from the position of a limited chief.

Plutarch states that Alexander founded more than seventy new cities in Asia. So large a number of them is neither verifiable nor probable, unless we either reckon up simple military posts or borrow from the list of foundations established by his successors. Except Alexandria in Egypt, none of the cities founded by Alexander himself can be shown to have attained any great development. The process of “Hellenizing” Asia, in as far as Asia was ever “Hellenized,” which has so often been ascribed to Alexander, was in reality the work of the successors to his great dominion.

We read that Alexander felt so much interest in the extension of science that he gave to Aristotle the immense sum of eight hundred talents in money, placing under his direction several thousand men, for the purpose of prosecuting zoölogical researches. These exaggerations are probably the work of those enemies of the philosopher who decried him as a pensioner of the Macedonian court; but it is probable enough that Philip, and Alexander in the earlier part of his reign, may have helped Aristotle in the difficult process of getting together facts and specimens for observation from esteem toward him personally rather than from interest in his discoveries.

The intellectual turn of Alexander was toward literature, poetry, and history. He was fond of the “Iliad” especially, as well as of the Attic tragedians; so that Harpalus, being directed to send some books to him in Upper Asia, selected as the most acceptable packet various tragedies of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, with the dithyrambic poems of Telestes and the histories of Philistus.

When Hamilcar departed to take command in Spain, he enjoined his son Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the Supreme God eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his younger sons, Hasdrubal and Mago—the “lion’s brood,” as he called them—in the camp, as the inheritors of his projects, of his genius, and of his hatred.

The man whose head and heart had in a desperate emergency and amid a despairing people paved the way for their deliverance, was no more when it became possible to carry out his design. Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack because the proper moment seemed to him not yet to have arrived, or whether, a statesman rather than a general, he believed himself unequal to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine. When, at the beginning of 219 B.C., he fell by the hand of an assassin, the Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar.

He was still a young man, born in 247 B.C., and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year; but his life had already been fraught with varied experience. His first recollections picture to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering on Ercte; he shared that unconquered father’s fortunes and sympathized with his feelings on the peace of Catulus, on the bitter return home, and throughout the horrors of the Libyan war. While still a boy he had followed his father to the camp, and he soon distinguished himself.

His light and firmly built frame made him an excellent runner and boxer and a fearless rider; the privation of sleep did not affect him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to want his food. Although his youth had been spent in

the camp, he possessed such culture as was bestowed on the noble Phœnicians of the time; in Greek, apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under the guidance of his intimate friend Sasilus of Sparta as to be able to compose state papers in that language.

As he grew up, he entered the army of his father to perform his first feats of arms under the paternal eye, and to see him fall in battle by his side. Thereafter he had commanded the cavalry under his sister’s husband Hasdrubal and distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his talents as a leader. The voice of his comrades now summoned him—their tried and youthful leader—to the chief command, and he could now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law had died.

He took possession of the inheritance, and was worthy of it. His contemporaries tried to cast stains of all sorts on his character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and stores can hardly have been other than covetous. Nevertheless, though anger and envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to mar the pure and noble image which it presents.

Laying aside wretched inventions which furnished their own refutation, and some things which his lieutenants Hannibal Monomachus, and Mago the Samnite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the accounts regarding him which may not be justified in the circumstances and by the international law of the times; and all agree in this—that he combined in rare perfection discretion and enthusiasm, caution and energy.

He was peculiarly marked by that inventive craftiness which forms one of the leading traits of the Phœnician character—he was fond of taking singular and unexpected routes; ambushes and strategems of all sorts were familiar to him; and he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented care. By an unrivaled system of espionage—he had regular spies even in Rome—he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair in order to procure information on some point or another.

Every page of history attests his genius as a general; and his gifts as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution and in the unparalleled influence which as an exiled strength he exercised in the cabinets of the Eastern powers. The power which he wielded over men is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations and many tongues—an army which never in the worst times mutinied against him. He was a great man; wherever he went he riveted the eyes of all.

Hannibal’s cautious and masterly execution of his plan of crossing the Alps into Italy, instead of transporting his army by sea, in its details, at all events, deserves our admiration, and, to whatever causes the result may have been due—whether it was due mainly to the favor of fortune or mainly to the skill of the general—the grand idea of Hamilcar, that of taking up the conflict with Rome in Italy, was now realized. It was his genius that projected the expedition; and the unerring tact of historical tradition has always dwelt on the last link in the great chain of preparatory steps, the passage of the Alps, with a greater admiration than on the battles of the Trasimene Lake and of the plain of Cannæ.

Hannibal knew Rome better, perhaps, than the Romans knew it themselves. It was clearly apparent that the Italian federation was in political solidity and in military resources far superior to an adversary who received only precarious and irregular support from home; and that the Phœnician foot-soldier was, notwithstanding all the pains taken by Hannibal, far inferior in point of tactics to the legionary, had been completely proved by the defensive movements of Scipio. From these convictions flowed two fundamental principles which determined Hannibal’s whole method of operations in Italy, viz., that the war should be carried on somewhat adventurously, with constant changes in the plan and in the theatre of operations; and that its favorable issue could only be looked for as the result of political and not of military successes—of the gradual loosening and breaking up of the Italian federation.

This aim was the aim dictated to him by right policy, because mighty conqueror though he was in battle, he saw very clearly that on each occasion he vanquished the generals but not the city, and that after each new battle, the Romans remained as superior to the Carthaginians as he was personally superior to the Roman commanders. That Hannibal, even at the height of his fortune, never deceived himself on this point is a fact more wonderful than his wonderful battles.

Cornelia, taking upon herself the care of the household and the education of her children, approved herself so discreet a matron, so affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a woman, that Tiberius seemed to all men to have done nothing unreasonable in choosing to die for such a woman, who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her his crown and would have married her, refused it and chose rather to live a widow. In this state she continued and lost all her children, except one daughter, who was married to Scipio the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius.

These she brought up with such care, that though they were without dispute in natural endowments and disposition the first among the Romans of their day, yet they seemed to owe their virtues even more to their education than to their birth. And, as in the statues and pictures made of Castor and Pollux, though the brothers resemble one another, yet there is a difference to be perceived in their countenances between the one who delighted in the cestus, and the other that was famous in the course; so between these two youths, though there was a strong general likeness in their common love of fortitude and temperance, in their liberality, their eloquence, and their greatness of mind, yet in their actions and administrations of public affairs, a considerable variation showed itself.

Tiberius, in the form and expression of his countenance and in his gesture and motion, was gentle and composed; but Caius, earnest and vehement. And so in their public speeches to the people, the one spoke in a quiet, orderly manner, standing throughout on the same spot; the other would walk about on the hustings and in the heat of his orations pull his gown off his shoulders, and was the first of all the Romans to use such gestures. Caius’s oratory was impetuous and passionate, making everything tell to the utmost, whereas Tiberius was gentle and persuasive, awakening emotions of pity. His diction was pure and carefully correct, while that of Caius was rich and vehement.

So likewise in their way of living and at their tables; Tiberius was frugal and plain, Caius, compared with others, temperate and even austere, but contrasting with his brother in a fondness for new fashions and varieties. The same difference that appeared in their diction was observable also in their tempers. The one was mild and reasonable; the other rough and passionate, and to that degree that often in the midst of speaking he was so hurried away by his passion against his judgment that his voice lost its tone and he began to pass into mere abusive talking, spoiling his whole speech.

As a remedy to this excess he made use of an ingenious servant of his, one Licinius, who stood constantly behind him with a sort of pitch-pipe, or instrument to regulate the voice by, and whenever he perceived his master’s tone alter and break with anger, he struck a soft note with his pipe, on hearing which Caius immediately checked the vehemence of his passion and his voice grew quieter, and he allowed himself to be recalled to temper.

Such are the differences between the two brothers, but their valor in war against their country’s enemies, their justice in the government of its subjects, their care and industry in office, and their self-command in all that regarded their pleasures, were equally remarkable in both. Tiberius was the elder by nine years; owing to which their actions as public men were divided by the difference of the times in which those of the one and those of the other were performed. The power they would have exercised, had they both flourished together, could scarcely have failed to overcome all resistance.

Their greatest detractors and their worst enemies could not but allow that they had a genius to virtue beyond all other Romans, which was improved also by a generous education. Besides, the Gracchi, happening to live when Rome had her greatest repute for honor and virtuous actions, might justly have been ashamed if they had not also left to the next generation the whole inheritance of the virtues of their ancestors.

The integrity of the two Romans, and their superiority to money was chiefly remarkable in this—that in office and the administration of public affairs they kept themselves from the imputation of unjust gain. The chief things in general which they aimed at were the settlement of cities and mending the highways; and in particular the boldest design which Tiberius is famed for is the recovery of the public land; and Caius gained his greatest reputation by the addition, for the exercise of judicial powers, of three hundred of the order of knights to the same number of senators.

Tiberius was the first who attempted to scale the walls of Carthage, which was no mean exploit. We may add the peace which he concluded with the Numantines, by which he saved the lives of twenty thousand Romans, who otherwise had certainly been cut off. And Caius, not only at home, but in war in Sardinia, displayed distinguished courage. So that their early actions were no small argument that afterward they might have rivaled the best of the Roman commanders if they had not died so young.

Of the Gracchi, neither the one nor the other was the first to shed the blood of his fellow-citizens; and Caius is reported to have avoided all manner of resistance, even when his life was aimed at, showing himself always valiant against a foreign enemy, but wholly inactive in a sedition. This was the reason that he went from his own house unarmed, and withdrew when the battle began, and in all respects showed himself anxious rather not to do any harm to others than not suffer any himself. Even the very flight of the Gracchi must not be looked on as an argument of a mean spirit, but an honorable retreat from endangering others.

The greatest crime that can be laid to Tiberius’s charge was the disposing of his fellow-tribune, and seeking afterward a second tribuneship for himself. Tiberius and Caius by nature had an excessive desire for glory and honors. Beyond this, their enemies could find nothing to bring against them; but as soon as the contention began with their adversaries, their heat and passions would so far prevail beyond their natural temper that by them, as by ill-winds, they were driven afterward to all their rash undertakings. What would be more just and honorable than their first design, had not the power and faction of the rich, by endeavoring to abrogate that law, engaged them both in those fatal quarrels, the one for his own preservation, the other to avenge his brother’s death who was murdered without law or justice.

Marius was born at Arpinum, a Latin township, seventy miles from the capital. His father was a small farmer, and he was himself bred to the plow. He joined the army early, and soon attracted notice by the punctual discharge of his duties. In a time of growing looseness, Marius was strict himself in keeping discipline and in enforcing it as he rose in the service. He was in Spain when Jugurtha [6] was there, and made himself specially useful to Scipio;[7] he forced his way steadily upward by his mere soldier-like qualities to the rank of military tribune. Rome, too, had learned to know him, for he was chosen tribune of the people the year after the murder of Caius Gracchus. Being a self-made man, he naturally belonged to the popular party. While in office he gave offense in some way to the men in power, and was called before the senate to answer for himself. But he had the right on his side, it is likely, for they found him stubborn and impertinent, and they could make nothing of their charges against him.

He was not bidding, however, at this time for the support of the mob. He had the integrity and sense to oppose the largesses of corn, and he forfeited his popularity by trying to close the public granaries before the practice had passed into a system. He seemed as if made of a block of hard Roman oak, gnarled and knotted but sound in all its fibers. His professional merit continued to recommend him. At the age of forty he became prætor,[8] and was sent to Spain, where he left a mark again by the successful severity by which he cleared the provinces of banditti. He was a man neither given himself to talking nor much talked about in the world; but he was sought for wherever work was to be done, and he had made himself respected and valued; for after his return from the peninsula he had married into one of the most distinguished of the patrician families.

Marius by this marriage became a person of social consequence. His father had been a client of the Metelli; and Cæcelius Metellus, who must have known Marius by reputation and probably in person, invited him to go as second in command in the African campaign.[9] The war dragged on, and Marius, perhaps ambitious, perhaps impatient at the general’s want of vigor, began to think he could make quicker work of it. There was just irritation that a petty African prince could defy the whole power of Rome for so many years; and though a democratic consul had been unheard of for a century, the name of Marius began to be spoken of as a possible candidate. Marius consented to stand. The patricians strained their resources to defeat him, but he was chosen with enthusiasm.

A shudder of alarm ran, no doubt, through the senate house when the determination of the people was known. A successful general could not be disposed of as easily as oratorical tribunes. Fortunately Marius was not a politician. He had no belief in democracy. He was a soldier and had a soldier’s way of thinking on government and the methods of it. His first step was a reformation in the army. Hitherto the Roman legions had been no more than the citizens in arms, called for the moment from their various occupations to return to them when the occasion for their services was past. Marius had perceived that fewer men, better trained and disciplined, could be made more effective and be more easily handled. He had studied war as a science. He had perceived that the present weakness need be no more than an accident, and that there was a latent force in the Roman state which needed only organization to resume its ascendancy.

“He enlisted,” it was said, “the worst of the citizens”—men, that is to say, who had no occupation, and became soldiers by profession; and as persons without property could not have furnished themselves at their own cost, he must have carried out the scheme proposed by Gracchus, and equipped them at the expense of the state. His discipline was of the sternest. The experiment was new; and men of rank who had a taste for war in earnest, and did not wish that the popular party should have the whole benefit and credit of the improvements were willing to go with him; among them a dissipated young patrician, called Lucius Sylla, whose name was also destined to be memorable.

Marius had formed an army barely in time to save Italy from being totally overwhelmed. A vast migratory wave of population had been set in motion behind the Rhine and Danube. The hunting-grounds were too strait for the numbers crowded into them, and two enormous hordes were rolling westward and southward in search of some new abiding-place. The Teutons came from the Baltic down across the Rhine into Luxemburg. The Cimbri crossed the Danube near its sources into Illyria. Both Teutons and Cimbri were Germans, and both were making for Gaul by different routes. Each division consisted of hundreds of thousands. They traveled with their wives and children, their wagons, as with the ancient Scythians and with the modern South African Dutch, being their homes. Two years had been consumed in these wanderings, and Marius was by this time ready for them.

Marius was continued in office, and was a fourth time consul. He had completed his military reforms, and the army was now a professional service with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were henceforth to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as well as with sword and javelin, and the soldiers learned the use of tools as well as of arms. The Teutons were destroyed on the twentieth of July, 102 B.C. In the year following the same fate overtook their comrades. The victories of Marius mark a new epoch in Roman history. The legions were no longer the levy of the citizens in arms, who were themselves the state for which they fought. The legionaries were citizens still. They had votes and they used them; but they were professional soldiers with the modes of thought which belong to soldiers, and besides the power of the hustings was now the power of the sword.

The danger from the Germans was no sooner gone than political anarchy broke loose again. Marius, the man of the people, was the savior of his country. He was made a consul a fifth time, and then a sixth. An indifferent politician, however, he stood aloof in the fierce faction contest between the aristocrats and the popular party. At last he had almost withdrawn from public life, as he had no heart for the quarrel, and did not care to exert his power. For eight years both he and his rival Sylla kept aloof from politics and were almost unheard of.

When Sylla came to the front, it was as leader of the aristocratic power in the state. Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the senate and the most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people, and as tribune demanded the deposition of Sylla. The latter replied by leading his legionaries to Rome. Sulpicius was killed; Marius, the savior of his country, had to fly for his life, pursued by assassins, with a price set upon his head.

While Sylla was absent in the East prosecuting that magnificent campaign against Mithridates, King of Pontus, which stamped him the first soldier of his time, the popular party again raised its head. Old Marius, who had been hunted through marsh and forest, and had been hiding with difficulty in Africa, came back at the news that Italy had risen again. Marius and Cinna joined their forces, appeared together at the gates of the capital, and Rome capitulated. There was a bloody score to be wiped out. Marius bears the chief blame for the scenes which followed. A price had been set on his head, his house had been destroyed, his property had been confiscated, he, himself, had been chased like a wild beast, and he had not deserved such treatment. He had saved Italy, when but for him it would have been wasted by the swords of the Germans.

His power had afterward been absolute, but he had not abused it for party purposes. The senate had no reason to complain of him. His crime in their eyes had been his eminence. They had now shown themselves as cruel as they were worthless; and if public justice was disposed to make an end of them, he saw no cause to interfere. From retaliatory political vengeance the transition was easy to plunder and wholesale murder; and for many days the wretched city was made a prey to robbers and cut-throats.

So ended the year 87, the darkest and bloodiest which the guilty city had yet experienced. Marius and Cinna were chosen consuls for the ensuing year and a witch’s prophecy was fulfilled that Marius should hold a seventh consulate. But the glory had departed from him. His sun was already setting, redly, among crimson clouds. He lived but a fortnight after his inauguration, and died in his bed at the age of seventy-one. “The mother of the Gracchi,” said Mirabeau, “cast the dust of her murdered sons into the air, and out of it sprang Caius Marius.”

Partly through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the Roman revolution—in the seizure, for instance, of the property of the soil in the province of Asia by Caius Gracchus, in the Roman tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of revenue added to their other avocations there—the Roman rule, barely tolerable from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia, that neither the king’s crown nor the peasant’s hut there was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn seemed to grow for Roman tribute, and every child of free parents seemed born for the Roman slave-driver.

It is true that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his inexhaustible passive endurance; but it was not patience or reflection that made him bear it peacefully. It was rather the peculiarly Oriental want of power to take the initiative; and in these peaceful lands, among these effeminate nations, strange and terrible things might happen if once there should appear among them a man who knew how to give the signal for revolt.

There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithridates VI, surnamed Eupator, who traced back his lineage on the father’s side, in the sixteenth generation to King Darius, son of Hystaspes, in the eighth to Mithridates I, the founder of the Pontic Empire, and was on the mother’s side descended from the Alexandridæ and the Seleucidæ. After the early death of his father, Mithridates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Synope, he had received the title of king when a boy of eleven years old; but the diadem had only brought to him trouble and danger. It is said that in order to escape from the daggers of his legal protectors, he became of his own accord a wanderer; and during seven years, changing his resting-place night after night, a fugitive in his own kingdom, led the life of a lonely hunter.

Thus the boy grew into a mighty man. Although our accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to written records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradition, which is generated with the rapidity of lightning in the East, early adorned the mighty king with many of the traits of its Samson and Rustem. These traits, however, belong to his character just as the crown of clouds belong to the highest mountain peaks; the outline of the figure appears in both cases only more colored and fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered.

The armor which fitted the gigantic frame of King Mithridates excited the wonder of the Asiatics, and still more that of the Italians. As a runner he overtook the swiftest deer; as a rider he broke in the wildest steed, and was able by changing horses to accomplish one hundred and twenty miles in a day; as a charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand, and gained in competition many a prize—it was dangerous, no doubt, in such sport to carry off victory from the king.

In hunting on horseback he hit the game at full gallop, and never missed his aim. He challenged competition at the table also; he arranged banqueting matches and carried off in person the prizes proposed for the most substantial eater and the hardest drinker. His intellectual wants he satisfied by the wildest superstition—the interpretation of dreams and of the Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king’s hours—and by a rude adoption of the Hellenic civilization. He was fond of Greek art and music—that is to say, he collected precious articles, rich furniture, old Persian and Greek articles of luxury—his cabinet of rings was famous—he had constantly Greek historians, philosophers, and poets in his train; and proposed prizes at his court festivals, not only for the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest jester and the best singer.

Such was the man; the sultan corresponded. In the East, where the relation between the ruler and the ruled bears the relation of natural rather than of moral law, the subject resembles the dog alike in fidelity and in falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful. In both respects Mithridates has hardly been surpassed. By his orders there died or pined in perpetual captivity, for real or alleged treason, his mother, his brother, his sister espoused to him, three of his sons, and as many of his daughters. Still more revolting, perhaps, is the fact that among his secret papers were found sentences of death, drawn up beforehand, against his most confidential servants.

In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan that he afterward, for the mere purpose of depriving his enemy of trophies of victory, caused his whole harem to be killed, and distinguished his favorite concubine, a beautiful Ephesian, by allowing her to choose the mode of death. He prosecuted the experimental studies of poisons and antidotes as an important branch of the business of government, and tried to inure his body to particular poisons. He had early learned to look for treason and assassination at the hands of everybody, especially his nearest relations, and he had early learned to practice them against everybody, and most of all against those nearest him; of which the necessary consequence—attested by history—was that all his undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom he trusted.

At the same time we meet with isolated traits of high-minded justice. When he punished traitors, he ordinarily spared those who were involved in the crime solely through their personal relations with the leading culprits; but such fits of equity are to be met with in every barbarous tyrant. What really distinguishes Mithridates amid the multitude of similar sultans is his boundless activity. He disappeared one fine morning from his palace, and remained unheard of for months, so that he was given over as lost; when he returned, he had wandered incognito through all anterior Asia, and reconnoitered everywhere the country and the people.

In like manner he was not only generally fluent in speech, but he administered justice to each of the twenty-two nations over which he ruled in its own language, without needing an interpreter—a trait significant of the versatile East. His whole activity as a ruler bears the same character. So far as we know, his energies, like those of every other sultan, were spent in collecting treasures, in assembling armies—which were usually, in his earlier years at least, led against the enemy not by the king in person, but by some Greek condottiere—in efforts to add new satrapies to the old.

Of higher elements—desire to advance civilization, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special gifts of genius—there are found, in our traditional accounts at least, no distinct traces in Mithridates, and we have no reason to place him on a level even with the great rulers of the Osmans, such as Mohammed II and Suleiman. Notwithstanding his Hellenic culture, which sat on him not much better than his Roman armor on his Cappadocians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary stamp, coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, superstitious, cruel, perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous in organization, so powerful in physical endowments, that his defiant laying about him and his unshaken courage in resistance frequently look like talent, sometimes even like genius.

Granting even that during the death-struggle of the republic it was easier to offer resistance than in the times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only in the complication of the Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy that rendered it possible for Mithridates to resist the Romans twice as long as Jugurtha did, it nevertheless remains true that before the Parthian war he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in the East, and that he defended himself as the lion of the desert defends himself against the hunter.

But whatever judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king, his historical position remains in a high degree significant. The Mithridatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political opposition offered by Hellas to Rome and the beginning of a revolt against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper grounds of antagonism—the national reaction of the Asiatics against the Occidentals, a new passage in the huge duel between the West and the East which has been transmitted from the struggle of Marathon to the present generation, and will, perhaps, reckon its future by thousands of years as it has reckoned its past.

Lucius Sylla, a patrician of the purest blood, had inherited a moderate fortune, and had spent it like other young men of rank, lounging in theatres and amusing himself with dinner-parties. He was a poet, an artist, and a wit, but each and everything with the languor of an amateur. His favorite associates were actresses, and he had neither obtained nor aspired to any higher reputation than that of a cultivated man of fashion.

His distinguished birth was not apparent in his person. He had red hair, hard blue eyes, and a complexion white and purple, with the colors so ill-mixed, that his face was compared to a mulberry sprinkled with flour. Ambition, he appeared to have none, and when he exerted himself to be appointed quæstor[11] to Marius on the African expedition, Marius was disinclined to take him as having no recommendation beyond qualifications which the consul of the plebeians disdained and disliked. Marius, however, soon discovered his mistake. Beneath his constitutional indolence Sylla was by nature a soldier, a statesman, a diplomatist. He had been too contemptuous of the common objects of politicians to concern himself with the intrigues of the forum, but he had only to exert himself to rise with easy ascendancy to the command of every situation in which he might be placed.

The war of factions which exiled Marius, placed Sylla at the head of the expedition against the King of Pontus. He defeated Mithridates, he drove him back out of Greece and pursued him into Asia. He left him still in possession of his hereditary kingdom; but he left him bound, so far as treaties could bind so ambitious a spirit, to remain thenceforward on his own frontiers. He recovered Greece, the islands, and the Roman provinces in Asia Minor. He extorted an indemnity of five millions, and executed many of the wretches who had been active in the murders. He raised a fleet in Egypt with which he drove the pirates out of the archipelago back into their own waters. He restored the shattered prestige of Roman authority, and he won for himself a reputation which his later cruelties could stain but not efface. During his Eastern campaign, a period of more than four years, the popular party had recovered ascendancy at Rome.

The time was come when Sylla was to demand a reckoning for what had been done in his absence. No Roman general had deserved better of his country; his task was finished. He had measured the difficulty of the task which lay before him, but he had an army behind him accustomed to victory, and recruited by thousands of exiles who had fled from the rule of the democracy. He intended to re-enter Rome with the glories of his conquests about him, for revenge, and a counter-revolution. Sylla had lingered at Athens, collecting paintings and statues and manuscripts—the rarest treasures on which he could lay his hands—to decorate his Roman palace. On receiving the consul’s answer he sailed for Brindisi in the spring of 83 with forty thousand legionaries and a large fleet.

The war lasted for more than a year. At length the contest ended in a desperate fight under the walls of Rome itself on the first of November, B.C., 82. The popular army was at last cut to pieces, a few thousand prisoners taken, but they were murdered afterward in cold blood. Young Marius killed himself. Sertorius fled to Spain, and Sylla and the aristocracy were masters of Rome and Italy. Sylla was under no illusions. He understood the problem which he had in hand. He knew that the aristocracy were detested by nine tenths of the people; he knew that they deserved to be detested, but they were at least gentlemen by birth and breeding.

The democrats, on the other hand, were insolent upstarts who, instead of being grateful for being allowed to live and work and pay taxes and serve in the army, had dared to claim a share in the government, had turned against their masters, and had set their feet upon their necks. They were ignorant, and without leaders could be controlled easily. The guilt and danger lay with the men of wealth and intellect, the country gentlemen, the minority of knights and patricians like Cinna,[12] who had taken the popular side and deserted their own order. There was no hope for an end of agitation till every one of these men had been rooted out.

Appointed dictator, at his own direction, by the senate, he at once outlawed every magistrate, every public servant, civil or municipal, who had held office under the rule of Cinna. It mattered little to Sylla who were included if none escaped who were really dangerous to him; and an order was issued for a slaughter of the entire number, the confiscation of their property, and the division of it between the informers and Sylla’s friends and soldiers. It was one of those deliberate acts, carried out with method and order, which are possible only in countries in an advanced stage of civilization, and which show how thin is the film spread over human ferocity by what is called progress and culture. Four thousand seven hundred persons fell in the proscription of Sylla, all men of education and fortune. Common report or private information was at once indictment and evidence, and accusation was in itself condemnation.

The political reform enforced by the dictator gave the senate complete restrictive control over legislation and administration. All constitutional progress which had been made in the interests of the people was utterly swept away. The senate was made omnipotent and irresponsible. Sylla’s career was drawing to its close, and the end was not the least remarkable feature of it. He resigned the dictatorship and became a private citizen again, amusing the leisure of his age, as he had abused the leisure of his youth, with theatres and actresses and dinner-parties.

He too, like so many of the great Romans, was indifferent to life; of power for the sake of power he was entirely careless; and if his retirement had been more dangerous to him than it really was, he probably would not have postponed it. He was a person of singular character, and not without many qualities which were really admirable. He was free from any touch of charlatanry. He was true, simple, and unaffected, and even without ambition in the mean and personal sense. His fault, which he would have denied to be a fault, was that he had a patrician disdain of mobs and suffrages and the cant of popular liberty.

The type repeats itself era after era. Sylla was but Graham of Claverhouse in a Roman dress and with an ampler stage. His courage in laying down his authority has often been commented on, but the risk which he incurred was insignificant. Of assassination he was in no greater danger than when dictator, while the temptation to assassinate him was less. His influence was practically undiminished, and as long as he lived he remained, and could not but remain, the first person in the republic. He lived a year after his retirement and died 78 B.C., being occupied at the time in writing his memoirs, which have been unfortunately lost. He was buried gorgeously in the Campus Martius, among the old kings of Rome.

The tears shed for Pompey were not only those of domestic infliction; his fate called forth a more general and honorable mourning. No man had ever gained at so early an age the affections of his countrymen; none had enjoyed them so largely, or preserved them so long with so little interruption; and at the distance of eighteen centuries the feeling of his contemporaries may be sanctioned by the sober judgment of history.

He entered upon life as a distinguished member of an oppressed party, which was just arriving at its hour of triumph and retaliation; he saw his associates plunged into rapine and massacre, but he preserved himself pure from the contagion of their crimes; and when the death of Sylla left him almost at the head of the aristocratical party, he served them ably and faithfully with his sword, while he endeavored to mitigate the evils of their ascendancy by restoring to the commons of Rome, on the earliest opportunity, the most important of those privileges and liberties which they had lost under the tyranny of their late master.

He received the due reward of his honest patriotism in the unusual honors and trusts that were conferred on him; but his greatness could not corrupt his virtue; and the boundless powers with which he was repeatedly invested he wielded with the highest ability and uprightness to the accomplishment of his task, and then, without any undue attempts to prolong their duration, he honestly resigned them. At a period of general cruelty and extortion toward the enemies and subjects of the commonwealth, the character of Pompey in his foreign commands was marked by its humanity and spotless integrity.

His conquest of the pirates was effected with wonderful rapidity, and cemented by a merciful policy, which, instead of taking vengeance for the past, accomplished the prevention of evil for the future. His presence in Asia, when he conducted the war with Mithridates, was no less a relief to the provinces from the tyranny of their governors, than it was their protection against the arms of the enemy. It is true that wounded vanity led him, after his return from Asia, to unite himself for a time with some unworthy associates; and this connection, as it ultimately led to all his misfortunes, so did it immediately tempt him to the worst faults of his political life, and involved him in a career of difficulty, mortification, and shame.

But after this disgraceful fall, he again returned to his natural station, and was universally regarded as the fit protector of the laws and liberties of his country when they were threatened by Cæsar’s rebellion. In the conduct of the civil war he showed something of weakness and vacillation; but his abilities, though considerable, were far from being equal to those of his adversary. His inferiority was most seen in that want of steadiness in the pursuit of his own plans which caused him to abandon a system already sanctioned by success, and to persuade himself that he might yield with propriety to the ill-judged impatience of his followers for battle.

His death is one of the few tragical events of those times which may be regarded with unmixed compassion. It was not accompanied, like that of Cato and Brutus, with the rashness and despair of suicide; nor can it be regarded like that of Cæsar, as the punishment of crimes, unlawfully inflicted, indeed, yet suffered deservedly. With a character of rare purity and tenderness in his domestic relations, he was slaughtered before the eyes of his wife and son; while flying from the ruin of a most just cause he was murdered by those whose kindness he was entitled to claim.

His virtues have not been transmitted to posterity with their deserved fame; and while the violent republican writers have exalted the memory of Cato and Brutus; while the lovers of literature have extolled Cicero; and the admirers of successful ability have lavished their praises on Cæsar; Pompey’s many and rare merits have been forgotten in the faults of his triumvirate, and in the weakness of temper which he displayed in conduct of the last campaign.

But he must have been in no ordinary degree good and amiable for whom his countrymen professed their enthusiastic love, unrestrained by servility and unimpelled by faction; and though the events of his life must now be gathered for the most part from unfriendly sources, yet we think that they who read them impartially will continually cherish his memory with a warmer regard.

Sertorius at last utterly despaired of Rome, and hastened into Spain, that by taking possession there beforehand he might secure a refuge to his friends from their misfortunes at home. He armed all the Romans who lived in those countries that were of military age, and undertook the building of ships and the making of all sorts of warlike engines, by which means he kept the cities in due obedience, showing himself gentle in all peaceful business, and at the same time formidable to his enemies by his great preparations for war.

When Sertorius was called to Mauritania to assist the enemies of Prince Ascalis, and had made himself absolute master of the whole country, he acted with great fairness to those who had confided in him, and who yielded to his mercy. He restored to them their property, cities, and government, accepting only of such acknowledgments as they themselves freely offered. While he considered which way next to turn his arms, the Lusitanians sent ambassadors to desire him to be their general. For being terrified with the Roman power, and finding the necessity of having a commander of great authority and experience in war; being also sufficiently assured of his worth and valor by those who formerly had known him, they were desirous to commit themselves specially to his care.

In fact, Sertorius is said to have been of a temper unassailable either by fear or pleasure, in adversity and dangers undaunted, and no ways puffed up with prosperity. In straightforward fighting no commander of his time was more bold and daring; and in whatever was to be performed in war by stratagem, secrecy, or surprise, if any strong place was to be secured, any pass to be gained speedily, for deceiving and overreaching an enemy, there was no man equal to him in subtlety and skill.

In bestowing rewards and conferring honors upon those who had performed good service in the wars he was bountiful and magnificent, and was no less sparing and moderate in inflicting punishment. The Lusitanians having sent for Sertorius, he left Africa, and being made general, with absolute authority, he put all in order among them, and brought the neighboring parts of Spain into subjection. Most of the tribes voluntarily submitted themselves, won by the fame of his clemency and of his courage; and to some extent also, he availed himself of cunning artifices of his own devising to impose on them, and gain influence over them.

Among which certainly that of the hind was not the least. Spanus, a countryman who lived in those parts, meeting by chance a hind that had recently calved flying from the hunters, let the dam go, and pursuing the fawn took it, being wonderfully pleased with the rarity of the color, which was all milk white. At that time Sertorius was living in the neighborhood, and accepted gladly any presents of fruits, fowl, or venison that the country afforded, and rewarded liberally those who presented them.

The countryman brought him his young hind, which he took and was well pleased with at first sight; but when in time he made it so tame and gentle that it would come when he called, and follow him wherever he went, and could endure the noise and tumult of the camp, knowing well that uncivilized people are naturally prone to superstition, by little and little he raised it to something supernatural, saying it was given him by the goddess Diana, and that it revealed to him many secrets.

If he had received private intelligence that the enemies had made an incursion into any part of the district under his command, or had solicited any city to revolt, he pretended that the hind had informed him of it in his sleep, and charged him to keep his forces in readiness. Or, again, if he had notice that any of the commanders under him had got a victory, he would hide the messengers and bring forth the hind crowned with flowers, for joy of the good news that was to come, and would encourage them to rejoice and sacrifice to the gods for the good account they should soon receive of their prosperous success.

He was also highly honored for his introducing discipline and good order among them, for he altered their furious mode of fighting, and brought them to make use of Roman armor, taught them to keep their ranks, and observe signals and watch-words; and out of a confused number of thieves and robbers he constituted a well-disciplined army. That which delighted them most, however, was the care he took of their children. He sent for all the boys of noblest parentage out of all their tribes, and placed them in the great city of Osca, where he appointed masters to instruct them in the Latin and Greek learning.

His method of conducting the war against the Romans showed his military skill and foresight. By rapidly assaulting them, by alarming them on all sides, by ensnaring, circumventing, and laying ambushes for them, he cut off all provisions by land, while with his piratical vessels he kept all the coast in awe and hindered their supplies by sea. He thus forced the Roman generals to dislodge and to separate from one another at the last; Metellus departed into Gaul and Pompey wintered among the Vaccæans in a wretched condition, where, being in extreme want of money, he wrote a letter to the senate, to let them know that if they did not speedily supply him he must draw off his army. To these extremities the chiefest and most powerful commanders of the age were brought by the skill of Sertorius; and it was the common opinion in Rome that he would be in Italy before Pompey.

Sertorius showed the loftiness of his temper in calling together all the Roman senators who had fled from Rome and had come and resided with him, giving them the name of a senate. Out of these he chose prætors and quæstors, and adorned his government with all the Roman laws and institutions, and though he made use of the arms, riches, and cities of the Spaniards, yet he never would even in word remit to them the imperial authority, but set Roman officers and commanders over them, intimating his purpose to restore liberty to the Romans, not to raise up the Spaniards’ power against them.

He was a sincere lover of his country and had a great desire to return home; but in his adverse fortune he showed undaunted courage, and behaved himself toward his enemies in a manner free from all dejection and mean spiritedness. In his prosperity and the height of his victories he sent word to Metellus and Pompey that he was ready to lay down his arms and lead a private life if he were allowed to return home, declaring that he had rather live as the meanest citizen in Rome than, exiled from it, be supreme commander of all other cities together.

His negotiations with Mithridates further argue the greatness of his mind. For when Mithridates, recovering himself from his overthrow by Sylla—like a strong wrestler that gets up to try another fall—was again endeavoring to re-establish his power in Asia, at this time the great fame of Sertorius was celebrated in all places. Accordingly, Mithridates sends messengers into Spain with letters and instructions and commission to promise ships and money toward the charge of the war if Sertorius would confirm his pretensions on Asia, and authorize him to possess all that he had surrendered to the Romans in his treaty with Sylla.

Sertorius would by no means agree to it; declaring that King Mithridates should exercise all royal power and authority over Bithynia and Cappadocia—countries accustomed to a monarchical government and not belonging to Rome—but that he could never consent that he should seize or detain a province which, by the justest right and title, was possessed by the Romans. For he looked upon it as his duty to enlarge the Roman possessions by his conquering arms, and not to increase his power by the diminution of Roman territories.

When this was related to Mithridates he was struck with amazement, and said to his intimate friends: “What will Sertorius enjoin on us to do when he comes to be seated in the Palatium at Rome, who, at present, when he is driven out to the borders of the Atlantic Sea, sets bounds to our kingdoms in the East, and threatens us with war if we attempt the recovery of Asia?”

In person Cæsar was tall and slight. His features were more refined than was usual in Roman faces; the forehead was wide and high, the nose large and thin, the lips full, the eyes dark gray, like an eagle’s, the neck extremely thick and sinewy. His complexion was pale. His beard and mustache were kept carefully shaved. His hair was short and naturally scanty, falling off toward the end of his life, and leaving him partially bald. His voice, especially when he spoke in public, was high and shrill. His health was uniformly good, until his last year when he became subject to epileptic fits.

He was a great bather, and scrupulously neat in his habits, abstemious in his food, and careless in what it consisted, rarely or never touching wine, and noting sobriety as the highest of qualities in describing any new people. He was an athlete in early life, admirable in all manly exercises, and especially in riding. From his boyhood it was observed of him that he was the truest of friends, that he avoided quarrels, and was easily appeased when offended. In manner he was quiet and gentleman-like, with the natural courtesy of high breeding.

Like Cicero, Cæsar entered public life at the bar. It was by accident that he took up the profession of the soldier; yet, perhaps, no commander who ever lived showed greater military genius. The conquest of Gaul was effected by a force numerically insignificant, which was worked with the precision of a machine. The variety of uses to which it was capable of being turned implied, in the first place, extraordinary forethought in the selection of materials. Men whose nominal duty was merely to fight were engineers, architects, and mechanics of the highest order. In a few hours they could extemporize an impregnable fortress on the highest hill-side. They bridged the Rhine in a week. They built a fleet in a month.

The legions at Alesia held twice their number pinned within their works, while they kept at bay the whole force of insurgent Gaul by scientific superiority. The machine, which was thus perfect, was composed of human beings who required supplies of tools and arms and clothes and food and shelter; and for all these it depended on the forethought of its commander. Maps there were none. Countries entirely unknown had to be surveyed; routes had to be laid out; the depths and courses of rivers, the character of mountain-passes had all to be ascertained. Allies had to be found in tribes as yet unheard of.

He was rash, but with a calculated rashness which the event never failed to justify. His greatest successes were due to the rapidity of his movements, which brought him to the enemy before they heard of his approach. No obstacles stopped him when he had a definite end in view. Again and again by his own efforts he recovered a day that was half lost. He once seized a panic-stricken standard-bearer, turned him around, and told him that he had mistaken the direction of the enemy.

Yet he was singularly careful of his soldiers. He rarely fought a battle at a disadvantage. When a gallant action was performed, he knew by whom it had been done, and every soldier, however humble, might feel assured that if he deserved praise he would have it. The army was Cæsar’s family. In discipline, he was lenient to ordinary faults, and not careful to make curious inquiries into such things. He liked his men to enjoy themselves. Military mistakes in his officers he always endeavored to excuse, never blaming them for misfortunes unless there had been a defect of courage as well as of judgment.

Cicero has said of Cæsar’s oratory that he surpassed those who had practiced no other art. His praise of him as a man of letters is yet more delicately and gracefully emphatic. Most of his writings are lost; but there remain seven books of commentaries on the wars in Gaul (the eighth was added by another hand) and three books on the civil war, containing an account of its causes and history. Of these it was that Cicero said, in an admirable image, that fools might think to improve on them, but that no wise man would try it; they were bare of ornament, the dress of style dispensed with, like an undraped human figure in all its lines as nature made it. In his composition, as in his actions, Cæsar is entirely simple. He indulges in no images, no labored descriptions, no conventional reflections. His art is unconscious, as the highest art always is.

Of Cæsar it may be said that he came into the world at a special time and for a special object. The old religions were dead from the Pillars of Hercules to the Euphrates and the Nile, and the principles on which human society had been constructed were dead also. There remained of spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of justice and morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of government had to be constructed, under which quiet men could live and labor and eat the fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there can be no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life was about to dawn for mankind.

Poetry and faith and devotion were to spring again out of the seeds which were sleeping in the heart of humanity. But the life which is to endure grows slowly; and as the soil must be prepared before the wheat can be sown, so before the Kingdom of Heaven could throw up its shoots, there was needed a kingdom of this world where the nations were neither torn in pieces by violence, nor were rushing after false ideals and spurious ambitions. Such a kingdom was the empire of the Cæsars, a kingdom where peaceful men could work, think, and speak as they pleased, and travel freely among provinces ruled for the most part by Gallios[13] who protected life and property, and forbade fanatics to tear each other to pieces for their religious opinions.

“It is not lawful for us to put any man to death,” was the complaint of the Jewish priests to the Roman governor. Had Europe and Asia been covered with independent nations, each with a local religion represented in its ruling powers, Christianity must have been stifled in its cradle. If St. Paul had escaped the Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, he would have been torn to death by the silversmiths at Ephesus. The appeal to Cæsar’s judgment-seat was the shield of his mission, and alone made possible his success.

And this spirit which confined government to its simple duties, while it left opinion unfettered, was specially present in Julius Cæsar himself. From cant of all kinds he was totally free. He was a friend of the people, but indulged in no enthusiasm for liberty. He never dilated on the beauties of virtue, or complimented, as Cicero did, a Providence in which he did not believe. He was too sincere to stoop to unreality. He held to the facts of this life and to his own convictions; and as he found no reason for supposing that there was a life beyond the grave, he did not pretend to expect it. He respected the religion of the Roman state as an institution established by the laws.

He encouraged or left unmolested the creeds and practices of the uncounted sects and tribes who were gathered under the eagles. But his own writings contain nothing to indicate that he himself had any religious belief at all. He saw no evidence that the gods practically interfered in human affairs. He never pretended that Jupiter was on his side. He thanked his soldiers after a victory, but he did not order Te Deums to be sung for it; and in the absence of these conventionalisms he perhaps showed more real reverence than he could have displayed by the freest use of the formulas of piety. He fought his battles to establish some tolerable degree of justice in the government of this world; and he succeeded though he was murdered for doing it.

The princely prodigality of Trajan’s taste was defrayed by the plunder or the tribute of conquered enemies, and seems to have laid at least no extraordinary burden on his subjects. His rage for building had the further merit of being directed for the most part to works of public utility and interest. He built for the gods, the senate, and the people, and not for himself; he restored the palaces, enlarged the halls and places of public resort; but he was content himself with the palaces of his predecessors. A writer three centuries later declares of Trajan that he built the world over; and the wide diffusion and long continuance of his fame beyond that of so many others of the imperial series may be partly attributed to the constant recurrence of his name conspicuously inscribed on the most solid and best known monuments of the empire.

The care of this wise and liberal ruler extended from the harbors, aqueducts, and bridges to the general repair of the highways of the empire. He was the great improver, though not the inventor of the system of posts on the chief roads, which formed a striking feature of Roman civilization as an instrument for combining the remotest provinces under a central organization.

The legislation of this popular emperor is marked generally by a special consideration for Italian interests. The measures by which he secured a constant supply of grain from the provinces, exempting its exportation from all duties, and stimulating the growers at one extremity of the empire to relieve the deficiencies of another, were directed to the maintenance of abundance in Rome and Italy. Thus, on the casual failure of the harvest in Egypt, her empty granaries were at once replenished from the superfluous stores of Gaul, Spain, or Africa.

Though Trajan’s mind did not rise to wide and liberal views for the advantages of the provinces, he neglected no favorable opportunity for the benefit of particular localities. His hand was open to bestow endowments and largesses, to relieve public calamities, to increase public enjoyments, to repair the ravages of earthquakes and tempests, to construct roads and canals, theatres and aqueducts. The activity displayed through the empire in works of this unproductive nature shows a great command of money, an abundant currency, easy means of transacting business, ample resources of labor, and well devised schemes of combining and unfolding them. Judicious economy went ever hand in hand with genuine magnificence.

The monuments of Roman jurisprudence contain many examples of Trajan’s legislation. Like the great statesmen of the republic, he returned from the camp to the city to take his seat daily on the tribunals with the ablest judges for his assessors. He heard appeals from the highest courts throughout his dominion, and the final sentence he pronounced assumed the validity of a legal enactment. The clemency of Trajan was as conspicuous as his love of justice, and to him is ascribed the noble sentiment, that it is better that the guilty should escape than the innocent suffer.

The justice, the modesty, the unwearied application of Trajan were deservedly celebrated, no less than his valor in war and his conduct in political affairs. But a great part of his amazing popularity was owing, no doubt, to his genial demeanor and to the affection inspired by his qualities as a friend and associate. The remains still existing of his correspondence in the letters of Pliny bring out not only the manners of the time, but in some degree the character of the prince also; and bear ample testimony to his minute vigilance and unwearied application, his anxiety for his subjects’ well-being, the ease with which he conducted his intercourse with his friends, and the ease with which he inspired them in return.

Trajan’s letters bespeak the polished gentleman no less than the statesman. He was fond of society, and of educated and literary society. He was proud of being known to associate with the learned, and felt himself complimented when he bestowed on the rhetorician Dion the compliment of carrying him in his own chariot. That such refinement of taste was not incompatible with excess in the indulgences of the table was the fault of the times, and more particularly of the habits of camp life to which he had been accustomed. Intemperance was always a Roman vice.

The affability of the prince, and the freedom with which he exchanged with his nobles all the offices of ordinary courtesy and hospitality, bathing, supping, or hunting as an equal in their company, constituted one of his greatest charms in the eyes of a jealous patriciate which had seen its masters too often engrossed by the flatteries of freedmen and still viler associates.

But Trajan enjoyed also the distinction dear in Roman eyes of a fine figure and a noble countenance. In stature he exceeded the common height, and on public occasions, when he loved to walk bareheaded in the midst of the senators, his gray hairs gleamed conspicuously above the crowd. His features, as we may trace them unmistakably on his innumerable busts and medals, were regular; and his face was the last of the imperial series that retained the true Roman type—not in the aquiline nose only, but in the broad and low forehead, the angular chin, the firm, compressed lips, and generally in the stern compactness of its structure.

The thick and straight-cut hair, smoothed over the brow without a curl or parting, marks the simplicity of the man’s character in a voluptuous age which delighted in the culture of flowing or frizzed locks. But the most interesting characteristic of the figure I have so vividly before me is the look of painful thought, which seems to indicate a constant sense of overwhelming responsibilities, honorably and bravely borne, yet, notwithstanding much assumed cheerfulness and self-abandonment, ever irritating the nerves and weighing upon the conscience.

Under Hadrian’s reign the empire flourished in peace and prosperity. He encouraged the arts, reformed the laws, assisted military discipline, and visited all his provinces in person. His vast and active genius was equally suited to the most enlarged views and the minute details of civil policy. But the ruling passions of his soul were curiosity and vanity. As they prevailed and as they were attracted by different objects, Hadrian was by turns an excellent prince, a ridiculous sophist, and a jealous tyrant. The general tenor of his conduct deserved praise for its equity and moderation. Yet in the first days of his reign he put to death four consular senators, his personal enemies, and men who had been deemed worthy of empire; and the tediousness of a painful illness at last made him peevish and cruel.

The senate doubted whether they should pronounce him a god or a tyrant, and the honors decreed to his memory were granted to the prayers of the pious Antonines. The caprice of Hadrian influenced his choice of a successor. After revolving in his mind several men of distinguished merit whom he esteemed and hated, he adopted Ælius Verus, a gay and voluptuous nobleman, recommended by uncommon beauty. But while Hadrian was delighting himself with his own applause and the acclamations of the soldiers, whose consent had been secured by an immense donative, the new Cæsar was reft from imperial friendship by an untimely death.

He left only one son. Hadrian recommended the boy to the gratitude of the Antonines. He was adopted by Pius, and on the accession of Marcus was invested with an equal share of sovereign power. Among the many vices of this younger Verus, he possessed one virtue—a dutiful reverence for his wiser colleague, to whom he willingly abandoned the ruder cares of empire. The philosophic emperor dissembled his follies, lamented his early death, and cast a decent veil over his memory.

As soon as Hadrian’s caprice in friendship had been gratified or disappointed, he resolved to deserve the thanks of posterity by placing the most exalted merit on the Roman throne. His discerning eye easily discovered a senator about fifty years of age, blameless in all the offices of life, and a youth about seventeen, whose riper years opened the fair prospect of every virtue. The elder of these was declared the son and successor of Hadrian, on condition, however, that he himself should immediately adopt the younger. The two Antonines (for it is of them we are now speaking) governed the Roman world forty-two years with the same invariable spirit of wisdom and virtue.

Although Pius had two sons, he preferred the welfare of Rome to the interests of his family; gave his daughter Faustina in marriage to young Marcus, obtained from the senate the tribunitial and consular powers and pro-consular powers, and with a noble disdain, or rather ignorance of jealousy, associated him to all the labors of government.

Marcus, on the other hand, revered the character of his benefactor, loved him as a parent, obeyed him as his sovereign, and, after he was no more, regulated his own administration by the example and maxims of his predecessor. Their united reigns are possibly the only period in history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.

Titus Antoninus Pius has been justly denominated a second Numa. The same love of religion, justice, and peace was the distinguishing characteristic of both princes. But the situation of the latter opened a much larger field for the exercise of these virtues. Numa could only prevent a few neighboring villages from plundering each other’s harvests. Antoninus diffused order and tranquillity over the greater part of the earth. His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

In private life he was an amiable as well as a good man. The native simplicity of his virtue was a stranger to vanity or affectation. He enjoyed with moderation the conveniences of his fortune and the innocent pleasures of society; and the benevolence of his soul displayed itself in a cheerful serenity of temper.

The virtue of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was of a severer and more laborious kind. It was the well-earned harvest of many a learned conference, of many a patient lecture, and many a midnight lucubration. At the age of twelve years he embraced the rigid doctrines of the Stoics, which taught him to submit his body to his mind, his passions to his reason; to consider virtue as the only good, vice as the only evil, all things external as things indifferent. His “Meditations,” composed in the tumult of a camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons on philosophy in a more public manner than was perhaps consistent with the modesty of a sage or the dignity of an emperor. But his life was the noblest commentary on the philosophy of Zeno.

He was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind. He regretted that the death of Ovidius Cassius, who excited a rebellion in Syria, had disappointed him, by a voluntary death, of the pleasure of converting an enemy into a friend; and he justified the sincerity of that statement by moderating the zeal of the senate against the adherents of the traitor.

War he detested as the disgrace and calamity of human nature; but when the necessity of a just defense called on him to take up arms, he readily exposed his person to eight winter campaigns on the frozen banks of the Danube, the severity of which was at last fatal to the weakness of his constitution. His memory was revered by a grateful posterity, and above a century after his death, many persons preserved the image of Marcus Antoninus among those of their household gods.

If a man were called on to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of five successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded universal respect.

The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. Such princes deserved the honor of restoring the republic had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom. The labors of these monarchs were overpaid by the immense reward that inseparably waited on their success, by the honest pride of virtue, and by the exquisite delight of beholding the general happiness of which they were the authors.

Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women who have sustained with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters. But if we except the doubtful achievements of Semiramis, Zenobia is perhaps the only female whose superior genius broke through the servile indolence imposed on her sex by the habits and climate of Asia. She claimed her descent from the Macedonian kings of Egypt, equaled in beauty her ancestor Cleopatra, and far surpassed that princess in chastity and valor.

Zenobia was esteemed the most lovely as well as the most heroic of her sex. She was of a dark complexion (for in speaking of a lady these trifles become important); her teeth were of a pearly whiteness; and her large black eyes sparkled with uncommon fire tempered by the most attractive sweetness. Her voice was strong and harmonious. Her manly understanding was strengthened and adorned by study. She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, but possessed in equal perfection the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages. She had drawn up for her own use an epitome of Oriental history, and familiarly compared the beauties of Homer and Plato under the tuition of the sublime Longinus. This accomplished woman gave her hand to Odenathus, who from a private station raised himself to the dominion of the East. She soon became the friend and companion of a hero. In the intervals of war Odenathus passionately delighted in the exercise of hunting. He pursued with ardor the wild beasts of the desert—lions, panthers, and bears—and the ardor of Zenobia in that dangerous amusement was not inferior to his own. She had inured her constitution to fatigue, disdained the use of a covered carriage, generally appeared on horseback in a military habit, and sometimes marched several miles on foot at the head of the troops.

The success of Odenathus was in great measure ascribed to her incomparable prudence and fortitude. Their splendid victories over the Great King, whom they twice pursued as far as the gates of Ctesiphon, laid the foundation of their united fame and power. The armies which they commanded and the provinces which they had saved acknowledged not any other sovereigns than their invincible chiefs. The senate and people of Rome revered a stranger who had avenged their captive emperor, and even the insensible son of Valerian accepted Odenathus for his legitimate colleague.

After a successful expedition against the Gothic plunderers of Asia the Palmyrenian prince returned to the city of Emesa in Syria. Invincible in war, he was there cut off by domestic treason, and his favorite amusement of hunting was the cause, or at least the occasion, of his death. His nephew Mæonius presumed to dart his javelin before that of his uncle; and, though admonished of his error, repeated his insolence. As a monarch and as a sportsman Odenathus was provoked, took away his horse—a mark of ignominy among barbarians—and chastised his rash youth by a short confinement. The offense was soon forgot, but the punishment was remembered; and Mæonius, with a few daring associates, assassinated his uncle in the midst of a great entertainment. Herod, the son of Odenathus, though not of Zenobia, a young man of soft and effeminate temper, was killed with his father. But Mæonius obtained only the pleasures of revenge by this bloody deed. He had scarcely time to assume the title of Augustus before he was sacrificed by Zenobia to the memory of her husband. With the assistance of his most faithful friends she immediately filled the vacant throne and governed with manly counsels Palmyra, Syria, and the East above five years. By the death of Odenathus, that authority was at an end which the senate had granted him only as a personal distinction; but his widow, disdaining both the senate and Gallienus, obliged one of the Roman generals who was sent against her to retreat into Europe with the loss of his army and his reputation.

Instead of the little passions which so frequently perplex a female reign, the administration of Zenobia was guided by the most judicious maxims of policy. If it was expedient to pardon, she could calm her resentment; if it were necessary to punish, she could impose silence on the voice of pity. Her strict economy was accused of avarice; yet on every proper occasion she appeared magnificent and liberal. The neighboring states of Arabia, Armenia, and Persia dreaded her enmity and solicited her alliance. To the dominions of Odenathus, which extended from the Euphrates to the frontiers of Bithynia, his widow added the inheritance of her ancestors, the populous and fertile kingdom of Egypt. The Emperor Claudius acknowledged her merit, and was content that while he pursued the Gothic war, she should pursue the dignity of the empire in the East. The conduct, however, of Zenobia was attended with some ambiguity; nor is it unlikely that she had conceived the design of erecting an independent and hostile monarchy. She blended with the popular manners of Roman princes the stately pomp of the courts of Asia, and exacted from her subjects the same adoration that was paid to the successors of Cyrus. She bestowed on her three sons a Latin education, and often showed them to the troops adorned with the imperial purple. For herself she reserved the diadem with the splendid but doubtful title of Queen of the East.

When Aurelian passed over into Asia, against an adversary whose sex alone could render her an object of contempt, his presence restored obedience to the province of Bithynia, already shaken by the arts and the arms of Zenobia. Advancing at the head of his legions, he accepted the submission of Ancyra, and was admitted into Tyana after an obstinate siege, by the help of a perfidious citizen. Zenobia would have ill deserved her reputation had she indolently permitted the Emperor of the West to approach within a hundred miles of her capital. The fate of the East was decided in two great battles, so similar in almost every circumstance that we can scarcely distinguish them from each other, except by observing that the first was fought near Antioch and the second near Emesa. After the defeat of Emesa Zenobia found it impossible to collect a third army. Palmyra was the last resource of the widow of Odenathus. She retired within the walls of her capital, made every preparation for a vigorous resistance, and declared with the intrepidity of a heroine that the last moment of her reign and of her life should be the same. The siege of Palmyra was an object far more difficult and important; and the emperor, who with incessant vigor pressed the attacks in person, was himself wounded with a dart. “The Roman people,” says Aurelian in an original letter, “speak with contempt of the war which I am waging against a woman. They are ignorant both of the character and power of Zenobia. It is impossible to enumerate her warlike preparations of stones, of arrows, and of every species of missile weapons. Every part of the walls is provided with two or three balistæ, and artificial fires are thrown from her military engines. The fear of punishment has armed her with a desperate courage. Yet still I trust in the protecting deities of Rome, who have hitherto been favorable to all my undertakings.” The firmness of Zenobia was supported by the hope that in a very short time famine would compel the Roman army to repass the desert. But from every part of Syria a regular succession of convoys safely arrived in the camp, which was increased by the return of Probus with his victorious troops from the conquest of Egypt. It was then that Zenobia resolved to fly. She mounted the fleetest of her dromedaries, and had already reached the banks of the Euphrates, about sixty miles from Palmyra, when she was overtaken by the pursuit of Aurelian’s light-horse, seized, and brought back a captive to the feet of the emperor. Her capital soon afterward surrendered, and was treated with unexpected lenity.

When the Syrian queen was brought into the presence of Aurelian he sternly asked her how she had presumed to rise in arms against the Emperor of Rome? The answer of Zenobia was a prudent mixture of respect and firmness: “Because I disdained to consider as Roman emperors an Aureolus or a Gallienus. You alone I acknowledge as my conqueror and sovereign.”

However, in the treatment of his unfortunate rivals, Aurelian might indulge his pride, he behaved toward them with a generous clemency which was seldom exercised by the ancient conquerors. The emperor presented Zenobia with an elegant villa at Tibur, or Tivoli, about twenty miles from the capital. The Syrian queen insensibly sunk into a Roman matron, her daughters married into noble families, and her race was not yet extinct in the fifth century.

The character of the prince who removed the seat of empire and introduced such important changes into the civil and religious constitution of his country has fixed the attention and divided the opinions of mankind. By the grateful zeal of the Christians, the deliverer of the Church has been decorated with every attribute of a hero, and even of a saint; while the discontent of the vanquished party has compared Constantine to the most abhorred of those tyrants who, by their vice and weakness, dishonored the imperial purple. The same passions have in some degree been perpetuated to succeeding generations, and the character of Constantine is considered, even in the present age, as an object either of satire or of panegyric. By the impartial union of those defects which are confessed by his warmest admirers and of those virtues which are acknowledged by his most implacable enemies we might hope to delineate a just portrait of that extraordinary man which the truth and candor of history should adopt without a blush. But it would soon appear that the vain attempt to blend such discordant colors and to reconcile such inconsistent qualities must produce a figure monstrous rather than human, unless it is viewed in its proper and distinct lights, by a careful separation of the different periods of the reign of Constantine.

The person as well as the mind of Constantine had been enriched by Nature with her choicest endowments. His stature was lofty, his countenance majestic, his deportment graceful; his strength and activity were displayed in every manly exercise, and from his earliest youth to a very advanced season of life he preserved the vigor of his constitution by a strict adherence to the domestic virtues of chastity and temperance. He delighted in the social intercourse of familiar conversation; and though he might sometimes indulge his disposition to raillery with less reserve than was required by the severe dignity of his station, the courtesy and liberality of his manners gained the hearts of all who approached him. The sincerity of his friendship has been suspected; yet he showed on some occasions that he was not incapable of a warm and lasting attachment. The disadvantage of an illiterate education had not prevented him from forming a just estimate of the value of learning, and the arts and sciences derived some encouragement from the munificent protection of Constantine. In the dispatch of business, his diligence was indefatigable; and the active powers of his mind were almost continually exercised in reading, writing, or meditating, in giving audience to ambassadors, and in examining the complaints of his subjects. Even those who censured the propriety of his measures were compelled to acknowledge that he possessed magnanimity to conceive and patience to execute the most arduous designs without being checked either by the prejudices of education or by the clamors of the multitude. In the field he infused his own intrepid spirit into the troops, whom he conducted with the talents of a consummate general; and to his abilities, rather than to his fortune, we may ascribe the signal victories which he obtained over the foreign and domestic foes of the republic. He loved glory as the reward, perhaps as the motive of his labors.

The boundless ambition which, from the moment of his accepting the purple at York, appears as the ruling passion of his soul, may be justified by the dangers of his own situation, by the character of his rivals, by the consciousness of superior merit, and by the prospect that his success would enable him to restore peace and order to the distracted empire. In his civil wars against Maxentius and Licinius, he had engaged on his side the inclinations of the people, who compared the undissembled vices of those tyrants with the spirit of wisdom and justice which seemed to direct the general tenor of the administration of Constantine.

Had Constantine fallen on the banks of the Tiber, or even in the plains of Adrianople, such is the character which, with a few exceptions, he might have transmitted to posterity. But the conclusion of his reign (according to the moderate and indeed tender sentence of a writer of the same age) degraded him from the rank which he had acquired among the most deserving of the Roman princes. In the life of Augustus, we behold the tyrant of the republic converted almost by imperceptible degrees into the father of his country and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero who had so long inspired his subjects with love and his enemies with terror degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune or raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace which he maintained during the last fourteen years (A.D. 323-337) of his reign was a period of apparent splendor rather than of real prosperity; and the old age of Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet reconcilable vices of rapaciousness and prodigality. The accumulated treasures found in the palaces of Maxentius and Licinius were lavishly consumed; the various innovations introduced by the conqueror were attended with an increasing expense; the cost of his buildings, his court, and his festivals, required an immediate and plentiful supply; and the oppression of the people was the only fund which could support the magnificence of the sovereign.

His unworthy favorites, enriched by the boundless liberality of their master, usurped with impunity the privilege of rapine and corruption. A secret but universal decay was felt in every part of the public administration, and the emperor himself, though he still retained the obedience, gradually lost the esteem of his subjects. The dress and manners which, toward the decline of life, he chose to affect, served only to degrade him in the eyes of mankind. The Asiatic pomp, which had been adopted by the pride of Diocletian, assumed an air of softness and effeminacy in the person of Constantine. He is represented with false hair of various colors laboriously arranged by the skillful artists of the times, a diadem of a new and more expensive fashion, a profusion of gems and pearls, of collars and bracelets, and a variegated flowing robe of silk, most curiously embroidered with flowers of gold. In such apparel, scarcely to be excused by the youth and folly of Elagabalus, we are at a loss to discover the wisdom of an aged monarch and the simplicity of a Roman veteran. A mind thus relaxed by prosperity and indulgence was incapable of rising to that magnanimity which disdains suspicion and dares to forgive. The deaths of Maximian and Licinius may, perhaps, be justified by the maxims of policy, as they are taught in the schools of tyrants; but an impartial narrative of the executions, or rather murders, which sullied the declining age of Constantine will suggest to our most candid thoughts the idea of a prince who could sacrifice without reluctance the laws of justice and the feelings of nature to the dictates either of his passions or of his interest.

The same fortune which so invariably followed the standard of Constantine seemed to secure the hopes and comforts of his domestic life. Those among his predecessors who had enjoyed the longest and most prosperous reigns—Augustus, Trajan, and Diocletian—had been disappointed of posterity; and the frequent revolutions had never allowed sufficient time for any imperial family to grow up and multiply under the shade of the purple. But the royalty of the Flavian line, which had been first ennobled by the Gothic Claudius, descended through several generations; and Constantine himself derived from his royal father the hereditary honors which he transmitted to his children. Besides the females and the allies of the Flavian house, ten or twelve males, to whom the language of modern courts would apply the title of princes of the blood, seemed, according to the order of their birth, to be destined either to inherit or to support the throne of Constantine. But in less than thirty years this numerous and increasing family was reduced to the persons of Constantius and Julian, who alone had survived a series of crimes and calamities such as the tragic poets have deplored in the devoted lines of Pelops and of Cadmus.

The retired scholastic education of Julian, in which he had been more conversant with books than with arms, with the dead than with the living, left him in profound ignorance of the practical arts of war and government; and when he awkwardly repeated some military exercise which it was necessary for him to learn, he exclaimed, with a sigh, “Oh Plato, Plato, what a task for a philosopher!” Yet even this speculative philosophy, which men of business are too apt to despise, had filled the mind of Julian with the noblest precepts and the most shining examples; had animated him with the love of virtue, the desire of fame, and the contempt of death. The habits of temperance recommended in the schools are still more essential in the severe discipline of a camp. The simple wants of nature regulated the measure of his food and sleep. Rejecting with disdain the delicacies provided for his table, he satisfied his appetite with the coarse and common fare which was allotted to the meanest soldiers. During the rigor of a Gallic winter he never suffered a fire in his bed-chamber; and after a short and interrupted slumber, he frequently rose in the middle of the night from a carpet spread on the floor, to dispatch any urgent business, to visit his rounds, or to steal a few moments for the prosecution of his favorite studies.

The precepts of eloquence, which he had hitherto practiced on fancied topics of declamation, were more usefully applied to excite or assuage the passions of an armed multitude; and though Julian, from his early habits of conversation and literature, was more familiarly acquainted with the beauties of the Greek language, he had attained a competent knowledge of the Latin tongue. Since Julian was not originally designed for the character of a legislator or a judge, it is probable that the civil jurisprudence of the Romans had not engaged any considerable share of his attention; but he derived from his philosophic studies an inflexible regard for justice, tempered by a disposition to clemency; the knowledge of the general principles of equity and evidence; and the faculty of patiently investigating the most intricate and tedious questions which could be proposed for his discussion. The measures of policy and the operations of war must submit to the various accidents of circumstance and character, and the unpracticed student will often be perplexed in the application of the most perfect theory. But, in the acquisition of this important science, Julian was assisted by the active vigor of his own genius, as well as by the wisdom and experience of Sallust, an officer of rank, who soon conceived a sincere attachment for a prince so worthy of his friendship; and whose incorruptible integrity was adorned by the talent of insinuating the harshest truths, without wounding the delicacy of a royal ear.

Julian was not insensible of the advantages of freedom. From his studies he had imbibed the spirit of ancient sages and heroes; his life and fortunes had depended on the caprice of a tyrant, and when he ascended the throne his pride was sometimes mortified by the reflection that the slaves who would not dare to censure his defects were not worthy to applaud his virtues. He sincerely abhorred the system of Oriental despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of fourscore years had established in the empire. A motive of superstition prevented the execution of the design which Julian had frequently meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but he absolutely refused the title of Dominus, or Lord—a word which was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans that they no longer remembered its servile and humiliating origin. The office, or rather the name, of consul was cherished by a prince who contemplated with reverence the ruins of the republic; and the same behavior which had been assumed by the prudence of Augustus was adopted by Julian from choice and inclination. On the calends of January (A.D. 363, January 1st), at break of day, the new consuls, Mamertinus and Nevitta, hastened to the palace to salute the emperor. As soon as he was informed of their approach he leaped from his throne, eagerly advanced to meet them, and compelled the blushing magistrates to receive the demonstrations of his affected humility. From the palace they proceeded to the senate. The emperor, on foot, marched before their litters; and the gazing multitude admired the image of ancient times, or secretly blamed a conduct which, in their eyes, degraded the majesty of the purple. But the behavior of Julian was uniformly supported. During the games of the Circus he had, imprudently or designedly, performed the manumission of a slave in the presence of the consul. The moment he was reminded that he had trespassed on the jurisdiction of another magistrate, he condemned himself to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, and embraced this public occasion of declaring to the world that he was subject, like the rest of his fellow-citizens, to the laws, and even to the forms of the republic. The spirit of his administration and his regard for the place of his nativity induced Julian to confer on the senate of Constantinople the same honors, privileges, and authority which were still enjoyed by the senate of ancient Rome.[14] A legal fiction was introduced, and gradually established, that one half of the national council had migrated into the East; and the despotic successors of Julian, accepting the title of senators, acknowledged themselves the members of a respectable body which was permitted to represent the majesty of the Roman name. From Constantinople, the attention of the monarch was extended to the municipal senates of the provinces. He abolished, by repeated edicts, the unjust and pernicious exemptions which had withdrawn so many idle citizens from the service of their country; and, by imposing an equal distribution of public duties, he restored the strength, the splendor, or, according to the glowing expression of Libanius, the soul of the expiring cities of his empire. The venerable age of Greece excited the most tender compassion in the mind of Julian, which kindled into rapture when he recollected the gods, the heroes, and the men superior to heroes and to gods, who had bequeathed to the latest posterity the monuments of their genius or the example of their virtues. He relieved the distress, and restored the beauty of the cities of Epirus and Peloponnesus. Athens acknowledged him for her benefactor; Argos, for her deliverer. The pride of Corinth, again rising from her ruins with the honors of a Roman colony, exacted a tribute from the adjacent republics for the purpose of defraying the games of the Isthmus, which were celebrated in the amphitheatre with the hunting of bears and panthers. From this tribute the cities of Elis, of Delphi, and of Argos, which had inherited from their remote ancestors the sacred office of perpetuating the Olympic, the Pythian, and the Nemean games, claimed a just exemption. The immunity of Elis and Delphi was respected by the Corinthians, but the poverty of Argos tempted the insolence of oppression, and the feeble complaints of its deputies were silenced by the decree of a provincial magistrate, who seems to have consulted only the interest of the capital in which he resided. Seven years after this sentence Julian allowed the cause to be referred to a superior tribunal, and his eloquence was interposed—most probably with success—in the defense of a city which had been the royal seat of Agamemnon and had given to Macedonia a race of kings and conquerors.

The laborious administration of military and civil affairs, which were multiplied in proportion to the extent of the empire, exercised the abilities of Julian; but he frequently assumed the two characters of orator and of judge, which are almost unknown to the modern sovereigns of Europe. The arts of persuasion, so diligently cultivated by the first Cæsars, were neglected by the military ignorance and Asiatic pride of their successors; and if they condescended to harangue the soldiers, whom they feared, they treated with silent disdain the senators, whom they despised. The assemblies of the senate, which Constantius had avoided, were considered by Julian as the place where he could exhibit, with the most propriety, the maxims of a republican and the talents of a rhetorician. He alternately practiced, as in a school of declamation, the several modes of praise, of censure, of exhortation; and his friend Libanius has remarked that the study of Homer taught him to imitate the simple, concise style of Menelaus, the copiousness of Nestor, whose words descended like the flakes of a winter’s snow, or the pathetic and forcible eloquence of Ulysses.

The functions of a judge, which are sometimes incompatible with those of a prince, were exercised by Julian, not only as a duty, but as an amusement; and, although he might have trusted the integrity and discernment of his prætorian prefects, he often placed himself by their side on the seat of judgment. The acute penetration of his mind was agreeably occupied in detecting and defeating the chicanery of the advocates, who labored to disguise the truth of facts and to pervert the sense of the laws. He sometimes forgot the gravity of his station, asked indiscreet or unseasonable questions, and betrayed, by the loudness of his voice and the agitation of his body, the earnest vehemence with which he maintained his opinion against the judges, the advocates, and their clients. But his knowledge of his own temper prompted him to encourage, and even to solicit, the reproof of his friends and ministers; and whenever they ventured to oppose the irregular sallies of his passions, the spectators could observe the shame, as well as the gratitude, of their monarch. The decrees of Julian were almost always founded on the principles of justice; and he had the firmness to resist the two most dangerous temptations which assault the tribunal of a sovereign, under the specious forms of compassion and equity. He decided the merits of the cause without weighing the circumstances of the parties; and the poor, whom he wished to relieve, were condemned to satisfy the just demands of a noble and wealthy adversary. He carefully distinguished the judge from the legislator; and, though he meditated a necessary reformation of the Roman jurisprudence, he pronounced sentence according to the strict and literal interpretation of those laws which the magistrates were bound to execute and the subjects to obey.

The generality of princes, if they were stripped of their purple and cast naked into the world, would immediately sink to the lowest rank of society, without a hope of emerging from their obscurity. But the personal merit of Julian was, in some measure, independent of his fortune. Whatever had been his choice of life, by the force of intrepid courage, lively wit, and intense application, he would have obtained, or at least he would have deserved, the highest honors of his profession; and Julian might have raised himself to the rank of minister, or general, of the state in which he was born a private citizen. If the jealous caprice of power had disappointed his expectations, if he had prudently declined the paths of greatness, the employment of the same talents in studious solitude would have placed beyond the reach of kings his present happiness and his immortal fame. When we inspect with minute, or perhaps malevolent attention the portrait of Julian, something seems wanting to the grace and perfection of the whole figure. His genius was less powerful and sublime than that of Cæsar; nor did he possess the consummate prudence of Augustus. The virtues of Trajan appear more steady and natural, and the philosophy of Marcus is more simple and consistent. Yet Julian sustained adversity with firmness, and prosperity with moderation. After an interval of one hundred and twenty years from the death of Alexander Severus, the Romans beheld an emperor who made no distinction between his duties and his pleasures; who labored to relieve the distress and to revive the spirit of his subjects; and who endeavored always to connect authority with merit, and happiness with virtue. Even faction, and religious faction, was constrained to acknowledge the superiority of his genius, in peace as well as in war; and to confess, with a sigh, that the apostate Julian was a lover of his country, and that he deserved the empire of the world.

The character of apostate has injured the reputation of Julian, and the enthusiasm which clouded his virtues has exaggerated the real and apparent magnitude of his faults. The vehement zeal of the Christians, who despised the worship, and overturned the altars of those fabulous deities, engaged their votary in a state of irreconcilable hostility with a very numerous party of his subjects; and he was sometimes tempted, by the desire of victory or the shame of a repulse, to violate the laws of prudence, and even of justice. The triumph of the party which he deserted and opposed, has fixed a stain of infamy on the name of Julian; and the unsuccessful apostate has been overwhelmed with a torrent of pious invectives, of which the signal was given by the sonorous trumpet of Gregory Nazianzen.[15]

The same province, and, perhaps, the same city, which had given to the throne the virtues of Trajan and the talents of Hadrian, was the original seat of another family of Spaniards, who, in a less fortunate age, possessed, near fourscore years, the declining Empire of Rome. They emerged from the obscurity of municipal honors by the active spirit of the elder Theodosius—a general whose exploits in Britain and Africa have formed one of the most splendid parts of the annals of Valentinian.[16] The son of that general, who likewise bore the name of Theodosius, was educated, by skillful preceptors, in the liberal studies of youth; but he was instructed in the art of war by the tender care and severe discipline of his father. Under the standard of such a leader, young Theodosius sought glory and knowledge in the most distant scenes of military action; inured his constitution to the difference of seasons and climates; distinguished his valor by sea and land; and observed the various warfare of the Scots, the Saxons, and the Moors. His own merit, and the recommendation of the conqueror of Africa, soon raised him to a separate command; and, in the station of Duke of Mæsia, he vanquished an army of Sarmatians, saved a province, deserved the love of the soldiers, and provoked the envy of the court. His rising fortunes were soon blasted by the disgrace and execution of his illustrious father; and Theodosius obtained, as a favor, the permission of retiring to a private life in his native province of Spain. He displayed a firm and temperate character in the ease with which he adapted himself to this new situation. His time was almost equally divided between the town and country; the spirit which had animated his public conduct was shown in the active and affectionate performance of every social duty; and the diligence of the soldier was profitably converted to the improvement of his ample patrimony, which lay between Valladolid and Segovia, in the midst of a fruitful district, still famous for a most exquisite breed of sheep. From the innocent, but humble labors of his farm, Theodosius was transported, in less than four months, to the throne of the Eastern Empire; and the whole period of the history of the world will not perhaps afford a similar example of an elevation at the same time so pure and so honorable.

The princes who peaceably inherit the scepter of their fathers claim and enjoy a legal right, the more secure as it is absolutely distinct from the merits of their personal characters. The subjects who, in a monarchy or a popular state, acquire the possession of supreme power may have raised themselves, by the superiority either of genius or virtue, above the heads of their equals; but their virtue is seldom exempt from ambition, and the cause of the successful candidate is frequently stained by the guilt of conspiracy or civil war. Even in those governments which allow the reigning monarch to declare a colleague, or a successor, his partial choice, which may be influenced by the blindest passions, is often directed to an unworthy object. But the most suspicious malignity can not ascribe to Theodosius, in his obscure solitude of Caucha, the arts, the desires, or even the hopes, of an ambitious statesman; and the name of the exile would long since have been forgotten if his genuine and distinguished virtues had not left a deep impression in the imperial court. During the season of prosperity he had been neglected, but in the public distress his superior merit was universally felt and acknowledged. What confidence must have been reposed in his integrity, since Gratian could trust that a pious son would forgive, for the sake of the republic, the murder of his father! What expectations must have been formed of his abilities, to encourage the hope that a single man could save and restore the Empire of the East! Theodosius was invested with the purple in the thirty-third year of his age. The vulgar gazed with admiration on the manly beauty of his face and the graceful majesty of his person, which they were pleased to compare with the pictures and medals of the Emperor Trajan; while intelligent observers discovered, in the qualities of his heart and understanding, a more important resemblance to the best and greatest of the Roman princes.

The orator, who may be silent without danger, may praise without difficulty and without reluctance; and posterity will confess that the character of Theodosius might furnish the subject of a sincere and ample panegyric. The wisdom of his laws and the success of his arms rendered his administration respectable in the eyes both of his subjects and of his enemies. He loved and practiced the virtues of domestic life, which seldom hold their residence in the palaces of kings. Theodosius was chaste and temperate; he enjoyed without excess the sensual and social pleasures of the table, and the warmth of his amorous passions was never diverted from their lawful objects. The proud titles of imperial greatness were adorned by the tender names of a faithful husband, an indulgent father; his uncle was raised, by his affectionate esteem, to the rank of a second parent. Theodosius embraced as his own the children of his brother and sister, and the expressions of his regard were extended to the most distant and obscure branches of his numerous kindred. His familiar friends were judiciously selected from among those persons who, in the equal intercourse of private life, had appeared before his eyes without a mask; the consciousness of personal and superior merit enabled him to despise the accidental distinction of the purple; and he proved by his conduct that he had forgotten all the injuries while he most gratefully remembered all the favors and services which he had received before he ascended the throne of the Roman Empire. The serious or lively tone of his conversation was adapted to the age, the rank, or the character of his subjects whom he admitted into his society, and the affability of his manners displayed the image of his mind. Theodosius respected the simplicity of the good and virtuous; every art, every talent of a useful, or even of an innocent nature, was rewarded by his judicious liberality; and, except the heretics, whom he persecuted with implacable hatred, the diffusive circle of his benevolence was circumscribed only by the limits of the human race.

The government of a mighty empire may assuredly suffice to occupy the time and the abilities of a mortal; yet the diligent prince, without aspiring to the unsuitable reputation of profound learning, always reserved some moments of his leisure for the instructive amusement of reading. History, which enlarged his experience, was his favorite study. The annals of Rome, in the long period of eleven hundred years, presented him with a various and splendid picture of human life; and it has been particularly observed that whenever he perused the cruel acts of Cinna, of Marius, or of Sylla, he warmly expressed his generous detestation of those enemies of humanity and freedom. His disinterested opinion of past events was usefully applied as the rule of his own actions; and Theodosius has deserved the singular commendation that his virtues always seemed to expand with his fortune—the season of his prosperity was that of his moderation; and his clemency appeared the most conspicuous after the danger and success of the civil war. The Moorish guards of the tyrant had been massacred in the first heat of the victory, and a small number of the most obnoxious criminals suffered the punishment of the law. But the emperor showed himself much more attentive to relieve the innocent than to chastise the guilty. The oppressed subjects of the West, who would have deemed themselves happy in the restoration of their lands, were astonished to receive a sum of money equivalent to their losses; and the liberality of the conqueror supported the aged mother and educated the orphan daughters of Maximus. A character thus accomplished might almost excuse the extravagant supposition of the orator Pacatus, that, if the elder Brutus could be permitted to revisit the earth, the stern republican would abjure, at the feet of Theodosius, his hatred of kings, and ingenuously confess that such a monarch was the most faithful guardian of the happiness and dignity of the Roman people.

Yet the piercing eye of the founder of the republic must have discerned two essential imperfections, which might, perhaps, have abated his recent love of despotism. The virtuous mind of Theodosius was often relaxed by indolence, and it was sometimes inflamed by passion. In the pursuit of an important object, his active courage was capable of the most vigorous exertions; but, as soon as the design was accomplished, or the danger was surmounted, the hero sunk into inglorious repose; and, forgetful that the time of a prince is the property of his people, resigned himself to the enjoyment of the innocent but trifling pleasures of a luxurious court. The natural disposition of Theodosius was hasty and choleric; and, in a station where none could resist and few would dissuade the fatal consequence of his resentment, the humane monarch was justly alarmed by the consciousness of his infirmity and of his power. It was the constant study of his life to suppress or regulate the intemperate sallies of passion; and the success of his efforts enhanced the merit of his clemency. But the painful virtue which claims the merit of victory is exposed to the danger of defeat; and the reign of a wise and merciful prince was polluted by an act of cruelty which would stain the annals of Nero or Domitian. Within the space of three years, the inconsistent historian of Theodosius must relate the generous pardon of the citizens of Antioch and the inhuman massacre of the people of Thessalonica.[17]

Attila, the son of Mundzuk, deduced his noble, perhaps his regal descent from the ancient Huns, who had formerly contended with the monarchs of China. His features, according to the observation of a Gothic historian, bore the stamp of his national origin; and the portrait of Attila exhibits the genuine deformity of a modern Calmuck; a large head, a swarthy complexion, small, deep-seated eyes, a flat nose, a few hairs in the place of a beard, broad shoulders, and a short, square body, of nervous strength, though of a disproportioned form. The haughty step and demeanor of the king of the Huns expressed the consciousness of his superiority above the rest of mankind; and he had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes, as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired. Yet this savage hero was not inaccessible to pity; his suppliant enemies might confide in the assurance of peace or pardon; and Attila was considered by his subjects as a just and indulgent master. He delighted in war; but, after he had ascended the throne in a mature age, his head rather than his hand achieved the conquest of the North; and the fame of an adventurous soldier was usefully exchanged for that of a prudent and successful general. The effects of personal valor are so inconsiderable, except in poetry or romance, that victory, even among barbarians, must depend upon the degree of skill with which the passions of the multitude are combined and guided for the service of a single man. The Scythian conquerors, Attila and Zingis, surpassed their rude countrymen in art rather than in courage; and it may be observed that the monarchies, both of the Huns and of the Moguls, were erected by their founders on the basis of popular superstition. The miraculous conception which fraud and credulity ascribed to the virgin mother of Zingis raised him above the level of human nature; and the naked prophet who, in the name of the Deity, invested him with the empire of the earth, pointed the valor of the Moguls with irresistible enthusiasm. The religious arts of Attila were not less skillfully adapted to the character of his age and country. It was natural enough that the Scythians should adore with peculiar devotion the god of war; but as they were incapable of forming either an abstract idea or a corporeal representation, they worshiped their tutelar deity under the symbol of an iron cimeter. One of the shepherds of the Huns perceived that a heifer who was grazing had wounded herself in the foot, and curiously followed the track of the blood till he discovered among the long grass the point of an ancient sword, which he dug out of the ground and presented to Attila.

That magnanimous or rather that artful prince accepted with pious gratitude this celestial favor, and, as the rightful possessor of the sword of Mars, asserted his divine and indefeasible claim to the dominion of the earth. If the rites of Scythia were practiced on this solemn occasion, a lofty altar, or rather a pile of faggots, three hundred yards in length and in breadth, was raised in a spacious plain, and the sword of Mars was placed erect on the summit of this rustic altar, which was annually consecrated by the blood of sheep, horses, and of the one hundredth captive. Whether human sacrifices formed any part of the worship of Attila, or whether he propitiated the god of war with the victims which he continually offered in the field of battle, the favorite of Mars soon acquired a sacred character, which rendered his conquests more easy and more permanent; and the barbarian princes confessed, in the language of devotion or flattery, that they could not presume to gaze with a steady eye on the divine majesty of the king of the Huns. His brother, Bleda, who reigned over a considerable part of the nation, was compelled to resign his scepter and his life. Yet even this cruel act was attributed to a supernatural impulse; and the vigor with which Attila wielded the sword of Mars convinced the world that it had been reserved alone for his invincible arm. But the extent of his empire affords the only remaining evidence of the number and importance of his victories; and the Scythian monarch, however ignorant of the value of science and philosophy, might perhaps lament that his illiterate subjects were destitute of the art which could perpetuate the memory of his exploits.

If a line of separation were drawn between the civilized and the savage climates of the globe, between the inhabitants of cities who cultivated the earth and the hunters and shepherds who dwelt in tents, Attila might aspire to the title of supreme and sole monarch of the barbarians. He alone among the conquerors of ancient and modern times united the two mighty kingdoms of Germany and Scythia; and those vague appellations, when they are applied to his reign, may be understood with an ample latitude. Thuringia, which stretched beyond its actual limits as far as the Danube, was in the number of his provinces; he interposed, with the weight of a powerful neighbor, in the domestic affairs of the Franks; and one of his lieutenants chastised and almost exterminated the Burgundians of the Rhine. He subdued the islands of the ocean, the kingdoms of Scandinavia, encompassed and divided by the waters of the Baltic; and the Huns might derive a tribute of furs from that northern region which has been protected from all other conquerors by the severity of the climate and the courage of the natives. Toward the East, it is difficult to circumscribe the dominion of Attila over the Scythian deserts; yet we may be assured that he reigned on the banks of the Volga; that the king of the Huns was dreaded, not only as a warrior but as a magician; that he insulted and vanquished the Khan of the formidable Geougen; and that he sent ambassadors to negotiate an equal alliance with the Empire of China.

In the proud review of the nations who acknowledged the sovereignty of Attila, and who never entertained during his lifetime the thought of a revolt, the Gepidæ and the Ostrogoths were distinguished by their numbers, their bravery, and the personal merit of their chiefs. The renowned Ardaric, king of the Gepidæ, was the faithful and sagacious counselor of the monarch, who esteemed his intrepid genius, while he loved the mild and discreet virtues of the noble Walamir, king of the Ostrogoths. The crowd of vulgar kings, the leaders of so many martial tribes who served under the standard of Attila, were ranged in the submissive order of guards and domestics round the person of their master. They watched his nod, they trembled at his frown, and at the first signal of his will they executed, without murmur or hesitation, his stern and absolute commands. In time of peace, the dependent princes, with their national troops, attended the royal camp in regular succession; but when Attila collected his military force he was able to bring into the field an army of five, or, according to another account, of seven hundred thousand barbarians.

In all their invasions of the civilized empires of the South, the Scythian shepherds have been uniformly actuated by a savage and destructive spirit. The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest; the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy’s country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations. The Huns of Attila may, without injustice, be compared to the Moguls and Tartars before their primitive manners were changed by religion and luxury; and the evidence of Oriental history may reflect some light on the short and imperfect annals of Rome. After the Moguls had subdued the northern provinces of China, it was seriously proposed, not in the hour of victory and passion, but in calm, deliberate council, to exterminate all the inhabitants of that populous country, that the vacant land might be converted to the pasture of cattle. The firmness of a Chinese mandarin, who insinuated some principles of rational policy into the mind of Zingis, diverted him from the execution of this horrid design. But in the cities of Asia, which yielded to the Moguls, the inhuman abuse of the rights of war was exercised with a regular form of discipline which may with equal reason, though not with equal authority, be imputed to the victorious Huns. The inhabitants, who had submitted to their discretion, were ordered to evacuate their houses, and to assemble in some plain adjacent to the city, where a division was made of the vanquished into three parts. The first class consisted of the soldiers of the garrison and of the young men capable of bearing arms, and their fate was instantly decided; they were either enlisted among the Moguls, or they were massacred on the spot by the troops, who, with pointed spears and bended bows, had formed a circle round the captive multitude. The second class, composed of the young and beautiful women, of the artificers of every rank and profession, and of the more wealthy or honorable citizens, from whom a private ransom might be expected, was distributed in equal or proportionable lots. The remainder, whose life or death was alike useless to the conquerors, were permitted to return to the city—which, in the mean while, had been stripped of its valuable furniture—and a tax was imposed on those wretched inhabitants for the indulgence of breathing their native air. Such was the behavior of the Moguls when they were not conscious of any extraordinary rigor. But the most casual provocation, the slightest motive, of caprice or convenience, often provoked them to involve a whole people in an indiscriminate massacre; and the ruin of some flourishing cities was executed with such unrelenting perseverance that, according to their own expression, horses might run without stumbling over the ground where they had once stood. The three great capitals of Khorasan, Maru, Neisabour, and Herat were destroyed by the armies of Zingis; and the exact account which was taken of the slain amounted to 4,347,000 persons. Timur, or Tamerlane, was educated in a less barbarous age, and in the profession of the Mohammedan religion; yet if Attila equaled the hostile ravages of Tamerlane, either the Tartar or the Hun might deserve the title of “the Scourge of God.”

In person Belisarius was tall and commanding, and presented a remarkable contrast to the dwarfish and ungainly aspect of his rival Narses. His features were regular and noble, and his appearance in the streets of Constantinople after the Vandal and Gothic victories never failed to attract the admiration of the people. His character may not unaptly be compared to that of Marlborough, whom he equaled in talents and closely resembled in his uxoriousness and love of money. As a military leader he was enterprising, firm, and fearless; his conception was clear, and his judgment rapid and decisive. His conquests were achieved with smaller means than any other of like extent recorded in history. He frequently experienced reverses in the field, but in no case did he fail without some strong and sufficient reason for his failure, such as the mutiny of his soldiers, the overwhelming number of his antagonists, or his total want of necessary supplies; and it may be observed of him, as of Arminius, that sometimes beaten in battle he was never overcome in war. His superior tactics covered his defeats, retrieved his losses, and prevented his enemies from reaping the fruits of victory; and it is particularly mentioned that even in the most dangerous emergencies he never lost his presence of mind.

Among the circumstances which contributed most strongly to his success were the kindness which his adversaries met with at his hands, and the strict discipline which he maintained among his soldiers. The moderation of Belisarius appears the more entitled to praise from the fierceness and disorder usual in his age. It was his first care after every victory to extend mercy and protection to the vanquished, and to shield their persons and, if possible, their property from injury. During a march the trampling of the corn-fields by the cavalry was carefully avoided, and the troops, as Procopius tells us, seldom ventured even to gather an apple from the trees, while a ready payment to the villagers for any provisions that they bought made them bless the name of Belisarius and secured to the Roman camp a plentiful supply. To the soldiers who transgressed these rules the general was stern and unforgiving; no rank could defy, no obscurity could elude his justice; and, because he punished severely, he had to punish but seldom. But while the licentious and turbulent were repressed by the strong arm of Belisarius, his liberality cheered and animated the deserving. The gift of a gold bracelet or collar rewarded any achievement in battle; the loss of a horse or weapon was immediately supplied out of his private funds, and the wounded found in him a father and a friend. His private virtues promoted and confirmed the discipline of his men; none ever saw him overcome with wine, and the charms of the fairest captives from the Goths or Vandals could not overcome his conjugal fidelity.

But the most striking and peculiar feature in the character of Belisarius, as compared with that of other illustrious generals, was his enduring and unconquerable loyalty. He was doubtless bound to Justinian by many ties of gratitude, and the suspicion entertained of him in Africa may be considered as fully counterbalanced by the triumph and other honors which awaited his return. But from the siege of Ravenna till his final departure from Italy he was, almost without intermission, exposed to the most galling and unworthy treatment; he was insulted, degraded, and despised; he was even attacked in his fame, when restored to an important station, without any means for discharging its duties and for sustaining his former reputation. It would be difficult to repeat another instance of such signal and repeated ingratitude unless in republics, where from the very nature of the government no crime is so dangerous or so well punished as serving the state too well. When we consider the frequency and therefore the ease of revolutions in this age, the want of hereditary right in the imperial family, the strong attachment of the soldiers to their victorious general, while the person of Justinian was hateful even to his own domestic guards, it will, I think, be admitted that a rebellion by Belisarius must have proved successful and secure. On no occasion was he roused into the slightest mark of disobedience or resentment; he bore every injury with unchanged submission; he resisted the feelings of indignation, of revenge, of self-interest, and even the thirst for glory, which, according to Tacitus, is of all frailties the longest retained by the wise. Besides him, no more than six generals have been named by one of our most judicious critics as having deserved, without having worn a crown;[18] and the smallness of this number should display the difficulty of withstanding this brilliant temptation and enhance the reputation of those who have withstood it.

The chief fault of Belisarius seems to have been his unbounded deference and submission to his wife, which rendered him strangely blind and afterward weakly forgiving to her infidelity. But its mischievous effects were not confined to private life, and nearly all the errors which can be charged upon his public career are imputed to this cause. It was Antonina who assumed the principal part in the deposition of the Pope, who urged the death of Constantine, who promoted the prosecution of Photius; and in his whole conduct with regard to that worthless woman Belisarius appears alternately the object of censure or ridicule. His confidence in her must have tended to lower his official character, to fetter and mislead his judgment, and to prevent his justice and impartiality whenever her passions were concerned. The second reproach to which the character of Belisarius appears liable is that of rapacity in the latter part of his career. How highly would his fame have been exalted by an honorable poverty, and how much would the animosity of his enemies at court have abated, had they seen no spoils to gather from his fall!

The life of Belisarius produced most important effects on the political and social revolutions of the world. I have already endeavored to show that his reduction of Africa probably contributed to the rapid progress of the Mussulmans, but this and his other victories probably saved his country from impending ruin. During the fifth century more than half the provinces of the ancient empire had been usurped by the barbarians, and the rising tide of their conquests must soon have overwhelmed the remainder. The decline of the Byzantine Romans was threatened by the youthful vigor of the Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms. Although the founders of these mighty monarchies had been wisely solicitous for peace, they left their successors fully able to undertake any projects of invasion; and an alliance of these states against the Romans must have been fatal to the last. Had not Belisarius arisen at this particular juncture the Vandals, Goths, and Persians would in all likelihood have divided the imperial provinces among them. The Arian doctrines, of which the two former were zealous partisans, would then probably have prevailed in the Christian world, the whole balance of power in Europe would have undergone incalculable changes, and the treasures of Greek and Roman genius would never have enlightened modern times.

The plebeian birth of Mahomet is an unskillful calumny of the Christians, who exalt instead of degrading the merit of their adversary. His descent from Ishmael was a national privilege or fable; but if the first steps of the pedigree are dark and doubtful, he could produce many generations of pure and genuine nobility; he sprung from the tribe of Koreish and the family of Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs, the princes of Mecca, and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba. The grandfather of Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a wealthy and generous citizen who relieved the distress of famine with the supplies of commerce. Mecca, which had been fed by the liberality of the father, was saved by the courage of the son. The kingdom of Yemen was subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their vassal Abrahah was provoked by an insult to avenge the honor of the cross; and the holy city was invested by a train of elephants and an army of Africans. A treaty was proposed, and in the first audience the grandfather of Mahomet demanded the restitution of his cattle. “And why,” said Abrahah, “do you not rather implore my clemency in favor of your temple, which I have threatened to destroy?” “Because,” replied the intrepid chief, “the cattle is my own; the Caaba belongs to the gods, and they will defend their house from injury and sacrilege.” The want of provisions, or the valor of the Koreish, compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful retreat; their discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous flight of birds, who showered down stones on the heads of the infidels; and the deliverance was long commemorated by the era of the elephant.

The glory of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with domestic happiness, his life was prolonged to the age of one hundred and ten years, and he became the father of six daughters and thirteen sons. His best beloved Abdallah was the most beautiful and modest of the Arabian youth. Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed, the only son of Abdallah and Amina, of the noble race of the Zahrites, was born at Mecca, four years after the death of Justinian. In his early infancy he was deprived of his father, his mother, and his grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous; and in the division of the inheritance the orphan’s share was reduced to five camels and an Ethiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad, in peace and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles, was the guide and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth year he entered into the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune. The marriage contract, in the simple style of antiquity, recites the mutual love of Mahomet and Cadijah; describes him as the most accomplished of the tribe of Koreish; and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle. By this alliance the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of his ancestors, and the judicious matron was content with his domestic virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age, he assumed the title of a prophet and proclaimed the religion of the Koran.

According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet was distinguished by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke, the orator engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his country; his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca; the frankness of his manner concealed the artifice of his views, and the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive, his wit easy and social, his imagination sublime, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and, although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of Arabia; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and seasonable silence. With these powers of eloquence Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian; his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing; the common ignorance exempted him from shame or reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian traveler. He compares the nations and the religions of the earth; discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds, with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of the times; and resolves to unite, under one God and one king, the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest that, instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the East, the two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra and Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of Cadijah. In these hasty and superficial excursions the eye of genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser companions; some seeds of knowledge might be cast upon a fruitful soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language must have checked his curiosity, and I can not perceive in the life or writings of Mahomet that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits of the Arabian world.

From every region of that solitary world the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled by the calls of devotion and commerce; in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some useful strangers might be tempted, or forced, to implore the rights of hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the composition of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet was addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world and from the arms of Cadijah; in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction, that there is only one God, and that Mahomet is the apostle of God.

It may, perhaps, be expected that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would still be difficult, and the success uncertain; at the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of religious incense; and could I truly delineate the portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to the solitary of Mount Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to have been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition; so soon as marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he avoided the paths of ambition and avarice; and till the age of forty he lived with innocence, and would have died without a name. The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestions of the understanding or the fancy would be felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labor of thought would expire in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an angel of God.

From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the demon of Socrates affords a memorable instance how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud. Charity may believe that the original motives of Mahomet were those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his claims, despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he might forgive his personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies of God; the stern passions of pride and revenge were kindled in the bosom of Mahomet, and he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh, for the destruction of the rebels whom he had condemned. The injustice of Mecca and the choice of Medina transformed the citizen into a prince, the humble preacher into the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated by the example of the saints, and the same God who afflicts a sinful world with pestilence and earthquakes might inspire for their conversion or chastisement the valor of his servants. In the exercise of political government he was compelled to abate of the stern rigor of fanaticism, to comply in some measure with the prejudices and passions of his followers, and to employ even the vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation of the faith; and Mahomet commanded or approved the assassination of the Jews and idolaters who had escaped from the field of battle. By the repetition of such acts the character of Mahomet must have been gradually stained, and the influence of such pernicious habits would be poorly compensated by the practice of the personal and social virtues which are necessary to maintain the reputation of a prophet among his secretaries and friends.

Of his last years ambition was the ruling passion; and a politician will suspect that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at the enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of his proselytes. A philosopher will observe that their cruelty and his success would tend more strongly to fortify the assurance of his divine mission, that his interest and religion were inseparably connected, and that his conscience would be soothed by the persuasion that he alone was absolved by the Deity from the obligation of positive and moral laws. If he retained any vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mahomet may be allowed as an evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth the arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal, and he would have started at the foulness of the means had he not been satisfied of the importance and justice of the end. Even in a conqueror or a priest, I can surprise a word or action of unaffected humanity; and the decree of Mahomet that, in the sale of captives, the mothers should never be separated from their children, may suspend or moderate the censure of the historian.

The good sense of Mahomet despised the pomp of royalty; the apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands his shoes and his woolen garment. Disdaining the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious diet of an Arab and a soldier. On solemn occasions he feasted his companions with rustic and hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life, many weeks would elapse without a fire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet. The interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was appeased with a sparing allowance of barley bread; he delighted in the taste of milk and honey, but his ordinary food consisted of dates and water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual enjoyments which his nature required and his religion did not forbid. Their incontinence was regulated by the civil and religious laws of the Koran; their incestuous alliances were blamed, the boundless license of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives or concubines; their rights, both of bed and of dowry, were equitably determined; the freedom of divorce was discouraged, adultery was condemned as a capital offense, and fornication in either sex was punished with a hundred stripes. Such were the calm and rational precepts of the legislator; but in his private conduct Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of a prophet. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha, gave her a superior ascendant; she was beloved and trusted by the prophet, and after his death the daughter of Abubeker was long revered as the mother of the faithful. During the twenty-four years of the marriage of Mahomet with Cadijah, her youthful husband abstained from the right of polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by the society of a rival. After her death he placed her in the rank of the four perfect women—with the sister of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of his daughters. “Was she not old?” said Ayesha, with the insolence of a blooming beauty; “has not God given you a better in her place?” “No, by God,” said Mahomet, with an effusion of honest gratitude, “there never can be a better! she believed in me when men despised me; she relieved my wants when I was poor and persecuted by the world.”

The political maxims which Charlemagne acquired by tradition and inheritance had, to a certain extent, become obsolete when he himself succeeded to the power of his ancestors and to the crown of his father, Pepin. It was then no longer necessary to practice those hereditary arts with a

view to the great prize to which they had so long been subservient. But the maxims by which the Carlovingian scepter had been won were not less necessary in order to defend and to retain it. They afford the key to more than half the history of the great conqueror from whom that dynasty derives its name. The cardinal points to which throughout his long and glorious reign his mind was directed with an inflexible tenacity of purpose, were precisely those toward which his forefathers had bent their attention. They were to conciliate the attachment of his German subjects by studiously maintaining their old German institutions; to anticipate instead of awaiting the invasions of the barbarous nations by whom he was surrounded; to court the alliance and support of all other secular potentates of the East and West; and to strengthen his own power by the most intimate relations with the Church.

I have, however, already observed that Charlemagne had other rules or habits of conduct which were the indigenous growth of his own mind. It was only in a mind of surpassing depth and fertility that such maxims could have been nurtured and made to yield their appropriate fruits; for, first, he firmly believed that the power of his house could have no secure basis except in the religious, moral, intellectual, and social improvement of his subjects; and, secondly, he was no less firmly persuaded that in order to effect that improvement it was necessary to consolidate all temporal authority in Europe by the reconstruction of the Cæsarian empire—that empire beneath the shelter of which religion, law, and learning had so long and so widely flourished throughout the dominions of imperial Rome.

Gibbon has remarked, that of all the heroes to whom the title of “the Great” had been given, Charlemagne alone has retained it as a permanent addition to his name. The reason may, perhaps, be that in no other man were ever united in so large a measure, and in such perfect harmony, the qualities which, in their combination, constitute the heroic character, such as energy, or the love of action; ambition, or the love of power; curiosity, or the love of knowledge; and sensibility, or the love of pleasure—not, indeed, the love of forbidden, of unhallowed, or of enervating pleasure, but the keen relish for those blameless delights by which the burdened mind and jaded spirits recruit and renovate their powers—delights of which none are susceptible in the highest degree but those whose more serious pursuits are sustained by the highest motives and directed toward the highest ends; for the charms of social intercourse, the play of buoyant fancy, the exhilaration of honest mirth, and even the refreshment of athletic exercises, require, for their perfect enjoyment, that robust and absolute health of body and of mind, which none but the noblest natures possess and in the possession of which Charlemagne exceeded all other men.

His lofty stature, his open countenance, his large and brilliant eyes, and the dome-like structure of his head imparted, as we learn from Eginhard, to all his attitudes the dignity which becomes a king, relieved by the graceful activity of a practiced warrior. He was still a stranger to every form of bodily disease when he entered his seventieth year; and although he was thenceforward constrained to pay the usual tribute to sickness and to pain, he maintained to the last a contempt for the whole materia medica, and for the dispensers of it, which Molière himself, in his gayest mood, might have envied. In defiance of the gout, he still followed the chase, and still provoked his comrades to emulate his feats in swimming, as though the iron frame which had endured nearly threescore campaigns had been incapable of lassitude and exempt from decay.

In the monastery of St. Gall, near the Lake of Constance, there was living in the ninth century a monk who relieved the tedium of his monotonous life and got the better, as he tells us, of much constitutional laziness by collecting anecdotes of the mighty monarch, with whose departed glories the world was at that time ringing. In this amusing legend Charlemagne, the conqueror, the legislator, the patron of learning, and the restorer of the empire, makes way for Charlemagne, the joyous companion, amusing himself with the comedy or rather with the farce of life, and contributing to it not a few practical jokes, which stand in most whimsical contrast with the imperial dignity of the jester. Thus, when he commands a whole levy of his blandest courtiers, plumed and furred and silken as they stood, to follow him in the chase through sleet and tempest, mud and brambles; or constrains an unhappy chorister, who had forgotten his responses, to imitate the other members of the choir by a long series of mute grimaces; or concerts with a Jew peddler a scheme for palming off, at an enormous price, on an Episcopal virtuoso, an embalmed rat, as an animal till then unknown to any naturalist—these, and many similar facetiæ, which in any other hands might have seemed mere childish frivolities, reveal to us, in the illustrious author of them, that native alacrity of spirit and child-like glee, which neither age nor cares nor toil could subdue, and which not even the oppressive pomps of royalty were able to suffocate.

Nor was the heart which bounded thus lightly after whim or merriment less apt to yearn with tenderness over the interior circle of his home. While yet a child, he had been borne on men’s shoulders, in a buckler for his cradle, to accompany his father in his wars; and in later life, he had many a strange tale to tell of his father’s achievements. With his mother, Bertha, the long-footed, he lived in affectionate and reverend intimacy, which never knew a pause except on one occasion, which may perhaps apologize for some breach even of filial reverence, for Bertha had insisted on giving him a wife against his own consent. His own parental affections were indulged too fondly and too long, and were fatal both to the immediate objects of them and to his own tranquillity. But with Eginhard and Alcuin and the other associates of his severer labors, he maintained that grave and enduring friendship, which can be created only on the basis of the most profound esteem, and which can be developed only by that free interchange of thought and feeling which implies the temporary forgetfulness of all the conventional distinctions of rank and dignity.

It was a retributive justice which left Gibbon to deform, with such revolting obscenities, the pages in which he waged his disingenuous warfare against the one great purifying influence of human society. It may also have been retributive justice which has left the glory of Charlemagne to be overshadowed by the foul and unmerited reproach on which Gibbon dwells with such offensive levity; for the monarch was habitually regardless of that law, at once so strict and so benignant, which has rendered chastity the very bond of domestic love and happiness and peace. In bursting through the restraints of virtue, Charlemagne was probably the willing victim of a transparent sophistry. From a nature so singularly constituted as his, sweet waters or bitter might flow with equal promptitude. That peculiarity of temperament in which his virtues and his vices found their common root probably confounded the distinctions of good and evil in his self-judgments, and induced him to think lightly of the excesses of a disposition so often conducting him to the most noble and magnanimous enterprises; for such was the revelry of his animal life, so inexhaustible his nervous energies, so intense the vibrations of each successive impulse along the chords of his sensitive nature, so insatiable his thirst for activity, and so uncontrollable his impatience of repose, that, whether he was engaged in a frolic or a chase, composed verses or listened to homilies, fought or negotiated, cast down thrones or built them up, studied, conversed, or legislated, it seemed as if he, and he alone, were the one wakeful and really living agent in the midst of an inert, visionary, and somnolent generation.

The rank held by Charlemagne among great commanders was achieved far more by this strange and almost superhuman activity than by any pre-eminent proficiency in the art or science of war. He was seldom engaged in any general action, and never undertook any considerable siege, excepting that of Pavia, which, in fact, was little more than a protracted blockade; but, during forty-six years of almost unintermitted warfare, he swept over the whole surface of Europe, from the Ebro to the Oder, from Bretagne to Hungary, from Denmark to Capua, with such a velocity of movement and such a decision of purpose that no power, civilized or barbarous, ever provoked his resentment without rapidly sinking beneath his prompt and irresistible blows. And though it be true, as Gibbon has observed, that he seldom if ever encountered in the field a really formidable antagonist, it is not less true that, but for his military skill animated by his sleepless energy, the countless assailants by whom he was encompassed must rapidly have become too formidable for resistance; for to Charlemagne is due the introduction into modern warfare of the art by which a general compensates for the numerical inferiority of his own forces to those of his antagonists—the art of moving detached bodies of men along remote but converging lines with such mutual concert as to throw their united forces at the same moment on any meditated point of attack. Neither the Alpine marches of Hannibal nor those of Napoleon were combined with greater foresight or executed with greater precision than the simultaneous passages of Charlemagne and Count Bernard across the same mountain-ranges, and their ultimate union in the vicinity of their Lombard enemies.

But though many generals have eclipsed the fame of Charlemagne as a strategist, no one ever rivaled his inflexible perseverance as a conqueror. The Carlovingian crown may indeed be said to have been worn on the tenure of continual conquests. It was on that condition alone that the family of Pepin of Heristal could vindicate the deposition of the Merovings and the pre-eminence of the Austrasian people; and each member of that family, in his turn, gave an example of obedience to that law, or tradition, of their house. But by none of them was it so well observed as by Charlemagne himself. From his first expedition to his last there intervened forty-six years, no one of which he passed in perfect peace, nor without some military triumph. In six months he reduced into obedience the great province or kingdom of Aquitaine. In less than two years he drove the Lombard king into a monastic exile, placing on his own brows the iron crown, and with it the sovereignty over nearly all the Italian peninsula. During thirty-three successive summers he invaded the great Saxon confederacy, until the deluge of barbarism with which they threaten southern Europe was effectually and forever repressed.

It has been alleged, indeed, that the Saxon wars were waged in the spirit of fanaticism, and that the vicar of Christ placed the sword of Mohammed in the hands of the sovereign of the Franks. It is, I think, an unfounded charge, though sanctioned by Gibbon and by Warburton, and by names of perhaps even greater authority than theirs. That the alternative, “believe or die,” was sometimes proposed by Charlemagne to the Saxons, I shall not, indeed, dispute. But it is not less true that, before these terms were tendered to them, they had again and again rejected his less formidable proposal, “be quiet and live.” In form and in terms, indeed, their election lay between the Gospel and the sword. In substance and in reality, they had to make their choice between submission and destruction. A long and deplorable experience had already shown that the Frankish people had neither peace nor security to expect for a single year, so long as their Saxon neighbors retained their heathen rites and the ferocious barbarism inseparable from them. Fearful as may be the dilemma, “submit or perish,” it is that to which every nation, even in our own

times, endeavors to reduce a host of invading and desolating foes; nor, if we ourselves were now exposed to similar inroads, should we offer to our assailants conditions more gentle or less peremptory.

The merit of this prince both in private and public life may with advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which the annals of any age or nation can present to us. He seems, indeed, to be the model of that perfect character which, under the denomination of sage or wise man, philosophers have been fond of delineating rather as a fiction of their own imagination than in hopes of seeing it existing, so happily were all his virtues tempered together, so justly were they blended, and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper boundaries. He knew how to reconcile the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation, the most obstinate perseverance with the easiest flexibility; the most severe justice with the gentlest lenity; the greatest vigor in commanding with the most perfect affability of deportment; the highest capacity and inclination for science with the most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are almost equally the objects of our admiration, excepting only that the former being more rare among princes as well as more useful seem chiefly to challenge our applause.

Nature, also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him every bodily accomplishment—vigor of limbs, dignity of air and shape, with a pleasant, engaging, and open countenance. Fortune alone by throwing him into that barbarous age deprived him of historians worthy to transmit his fame to posterity; and we wish to see him delineated in more lively colors, and with more peculiar strokes, that we may at least perceive some of those specks and blemishes from which as a man it is impossible he could be entirely exempted.

The better to guide the magistrates in the administration of justice, Alfred framed a body of laws, which, though now lost, served long as the basis of English jurisprudence, and is generally deemed the origin of what is denominated the Common Law. The similarity of these institutions to the customs of the ancient Germans, to the practice of the other Northern conquerors, and to the Saxon laws during the heptarchy, prevents us from regarding Alfred as the sole author of this plan of government, and leads us rather to think that, like a wise man, he contented himself with reforming, extending, and executing the institutions which he found previously established.

But on the whole such success attended his legislation that everything bore suddenly a new face in England. Robberies and iniquities of all kinds were repressed by the punishment or reformation of criminals; and so exact was the general police that Alfred, it is said, hung up by way of bravado golden bracelets near the highways, and no man dared touch them. Yet, amid these rigors of justice, this great prince preserved the most sacred regard to the liberties of the people; and it is a memorable sentiment preserved in his will that it was just the English should ever remain as free as their own thoughts.

As good morals and knowledge are almost inseparable in every age, though not in every individual, the care of Alfred for the encouragement of learning among his subjects was another useful branch of his legislation, and tended to reclaim the English from their former dissolute and ferocious manners. But the king was guided in this pursuit less by political views than by his natural bent and propensity toward letters.

When he came to the throne he found the nation sunk into the grossest ignorance and barbarism, proceeding from the continued disorders in the government and from the ravages of the Danes. The monasteries were destroyed, the monks butchered or dispersed, their libraries burned, and thus the only seats of erudition in those ages were totally subverted. Alfred himself complains that on his accession he knew not one person south of the Thames who could so much as interpret the Latin service, and very few in the northern parts who had reached even that pitch of erudition. But this prince invited over the most celebrated scholars from all parts of Europe; he established schools everywhere for the instruction of his people; he founded—at least repaired—the University of Oxford, and endowed it with many privileges, revenues, and immunities. He gave preferment both in Church and state to such only as made some proficiency in knowledge.

But the most effectual expedient adopted by Alfred for the encouragement of learning was his own example, and the constant assiduity with which, notwithstanding the multiplicity and urgency of his affairs, he employed himself in the pursuit of knowledge. He usually divided his time into three equal portions—one was employed in sleep, and the refection of his body by diet and exercise; another, in the dispatch of business; a third, in study and devotion. And that he might more exactly measure the hours, he made use of burning tapers of equal length, which he fixed in lanterns—an expedient suited to that rude age, when the geometry of dialing and the mechanism of clocks and watches were entirely unknown. And by such a regular distribution of his time, though he often labored under great bodily infirmities, this martial hero who fought in person fifty-six battles by sea and land, was able, during a life of no extraordinary length, to acquire more knowledge, and even to compose more books, than most studious men, though blessed with greatest leisure and application, have in more fortunate ages made the object of their uninterrupted industry. And he deemed it no wise derogatory from his other great characters of sovereign, legislator, warrior, and politician thus to lead the way to his people in the pursuit of literature.

He invited from all quarters industrious foreigners to repeople his country, which had been desolated by the ravages of the Danes. He introduced and encouraged manufactures of all kinds, and no inventor or improver of any ingenious art did he suffer to go unrewarded. He prompted men of activity to betake themselves to navigation, to push commerce into the most remote countries, and to acquire riches by propagating industry among their fellow-citizens. He set apart a seventh portion of his own revenue for maintaining a number of workmen, whom he constantly employed in rebuilding the ruined cities, castles, palaces, and monasteries. Even the elegancies of life were brought to him from the Mediterranean and the Indies; and his subjects, by seeing those productions of the peaceful arts, were taught to respect the virtues of justice and industry, from which alone they could rise. Both living and dead Alfred was regarded by foreigners, no less than by his own subjects, as the greatest prince after Charlemagne that appeared in Europe during several ages, and as one of the wisest and best that had ever adorned the annals of any nation.

Tryggveson made a stout and, in effect, victorious and glorious struggle for himself as king. Daily and hourly vigilant to do so, often enough by soft and even merry methods—for he was a witty, jocund man, and had a fine ringing laugh in him, and clear, pregnant words ever ready—or, if soft methods would not serve, then by hard and even hardest he put down a great deal of miscellaneous anarchy in Norway, was especially busy against heathenism (devil-worship and its rites); this, indeed, may be called the focus and heart of all his royal endeavor in Norway, and of all the troubles he now had with his people there. For this was a serious, vital, all-comprehending matter; devil-worship, a thing not to be tolerated one moment longer than you could by any method help! Olaf’s success was intermittent, of varying complexion, but his effort, swift or slow, was strong and continual, and, on the whole, he did succeed. Take a sample of that wonderful conversion process:

Once, in beginning a parliamentary address, so soon as he came to touch upon Christianity the Bonders rose in murmurs, in vociferations and jingling of arms, which quite drowned the royal voice; declared they had taken arms against King Hakon the Good to compel him to desist from his Christian proposals, and they did not think King Olaf a higher man than him (Hakon the Good). The king then said, “He purposed coming to them next Yule to their great sacrificial feast to see for himself what their customs were,” which pacified the Bonders for this time. The appointed place of meeting was again a Hakon-Jarl Temple, not yet done to ruin, chief shrine in those Trondhjem parts, I believe; there should Tryggveson appear at Yule. Well, but before Yule came, Tryggveson made a great banquet in his palace at Trondhjem, and invited far and wide all manner of important persons out of the district as guests there. Banquet hardly done, Tryggveson gave some slight signal, upon which armed men strode in, seized eleven of these principal persons, and the king said: “Since he himself was to become a heathen again and do sacrifice, it was his purpose to do it in the highest form, namely, that of human sacrifice, and this time not of slaves and malefactors, but of the best men in the country!” In which stringent circumstances the eleven seized persons and company at large gave unanimous consent to baptism, straightway received the same, and abjured their idols, but were not permitted to go home till they had left, in sons, brothers, and other precious relatives, sufficient hostages in the king’s hands.

By unwearied industry of this and better kinds, Tryggveson had trampled down idolatry so far as form went—how far in substance may be greatly doubted. But it is to be remembered withal that always on the back of these compulsory adventures there followed English bishops, priests, and preachers, whereby to the open-minded conviction, to all degrees of it, was attainable, while silence and passivity became the duty or necessity of the unconvinced party. In about two years Norway was all gone over with a rough harrow of conversion. Heathenism, at least, constrained to be silent and outwardly conformable.

Olaf Tryggveson, though his kingdom was the smallest of the Norse three, had risen to a renown over all the Norse world, which neither he of Denmark nor he of Sweden could pretend to rival. A magnificent, far-shining man, more expert in all “bodily exercises,” as the Norse called them, than any man had ever been before him or after was. Could keep five daggers in the air, always catching the proper fifth by its handle, and sending it aloft again; could shoot supremely, throw a javelin with either hand; and, in fact, in battle usually threw two together. These, with swimming, climbing, leaping, were the then admirable fine arts of the North, in all which Tryggveson appears to have been the Raphael and the Michael Angelo at once. Essentially definable, too, if we look well into him, as a wild bit of real heroism in such rude guise and environment—a high, true, and great human soul. A jovial burst of laughter in him withal; a bright, airy, wise way of speech; dressed beautifully and with care; a man admired and loved exceedingly by those he liked; dreaded as death by those he did not like. “Hardly any king,” says Snorro, “was ever so well obeyed; by one class out of zeal and love, by the rest out of dread.” His glorious course, however, was not to last long.

Tryggveson had already ships and navies that were the wonder of the North. Especially in building war-ships—the Crane, the Serpent, last of all, the Long Serpent—he had, for size, for outward beauty, and inward perfection of equipment, transcended all example.

A new sea expedition undertaken by Olaf became an object of attention to all neighbors; especially Queen Sigrid the Proud and Svein Double-Beard,[20] her now king, were attentive to it.

“This insolent Tryggveson,” Queen Sigrid would often say, and had long been saying, to her Svein, “to marry thy sister without leave had or asked of thee; and now flaunting forth his war navies as if he, king only of paltry Norway, were the big hero of the North! Why do you suffer it, you kings really great?”

By such persuasions and reiterations King Svein of Denmark, King Olaf of Sweden, and Jarl Eric, now a great man there, grown rich by prosperous sea-robbery and other good management, were brought to take the matter up, and combine strenuously for destruction of King Olaf Tryggveson on this grand Wendland expedition of his.

King Olaf Tryggveson, unacquainted with all this, sailed away in summer with his splendid fleet, went through the belts with prosperous winds, under bright skies, to the admiration of both shores. Such a fleet, with its shining Serpents, long and short, and perfection of equipment and appearance, the Baltic never saw before.

Olaf’s chief captains, seeing the enemy’s fleet come out and how the matter lay, strongly advised King Olaf to elude this stroke of treachery, and with all sail hold on his course, fight being now on so unequal terms. Snorro says the king, high on the quarter-deck where he stood, replied: “Strike the sails! never shall men of mine think of flight. I never fled from battle. Let God dispose of my life; but flight I will never take!” And so the battle arrangements immediately began, and the battle with all fury went loose, and lasted hour after hour till almost sunset, if I well recollect. “Olaf stood on the Serpent’s quarter-deck,” says Snorro, “high over the others. He had a gilt shield and a helmet inlaid with gold; over his armor he had a short red coat, and was easily distinguished from other men.”

The Danish fleet, the Swedish fleet, were both of them quickly dealt with, and successively withdrew out of shotrange. And then Jarl Eric came up and fiercely grappled with the Long Serpent, or rather with her surrounding comrades, and gradually, as they were beaten empty of men, with the Long Serpent herself. The fight grew ever fiercer, more furious. Eric was supplied with new men from the Swedes and Danes; Olaf had no such resource, except from the crews of his own beaten ships; and at length this also failed him, all his ships, except the Long Serpent, being beaten and emptied. Olaf fought on unyielding. Eric twice boarded him, was twice repulsed. Olaf kept his quarter-deck, unconquerable, though left now more and more hopeless, fatally short of help. A tall young man, called Einar Tamberskelver, very celebrated and important afterward in Norway, and already the best archer known, kept busy with his bow. Twice he nearly shot Jarl Eric in his ship. “Shoot me that man!” said Jarl Eric to a bowman near him; and, just as Tamberskelver was drawing his bow the third time, an arrow hit it in the middle and broke it in two. “What is this that has broken?” asked King Olaf. “Norway from thy hand, king,” answered Tamberskelver. Tryggveson’s men, he observed with surprise, were striking violently on Eric’s, but to no purpose; nobody fell. “How is this?” asked Tryggveson. “Our swords are notched and blunted, king; they do not cut.” Olaf stepped down to his arm-chest, delivered out new swords, and it was observed, as he did it, blood ran trickling from his wrist, but none knew where the wound was. Eric boarded a third time. Olaf, left with hardly more than one man, sprang overboard (one sees that red coat of his still glancing in the evening sun), and sank in the deep waters to his long rest.

Rumor ran among his people that he still was not dead; grounding on some movement by the ships of that traitorous Sigwald, they fancied Olaf had dived beneath the keels of his enemies, and got away with Sigwald, as Sigwald himself evidently did. “Much was hoped, supposed, spoken,” says one old mourning Skald; “but the truth was, Olaf Tryggveson was never seen in Norseland more.” Strangely he remains still a shining figure to us—the wildly beautifulest man in body and in soul that one has ever heard of in the North.

The first of our foreign masters was the Dane. The countries of Scandinavia which had so long been the mere starting points of the pirate bands who had ravaged England and Ireland had now settled down into comparative order. It was the aim of Svein to unite them in a great Scandinavian Empire, of which England should be the head; and this project, interrupted for a time by his death, was resumed with yet greater vigor by his son Cnut. Fear of the Dane was still great in the land, and Cnut had no sooner appeared off the English coast than Wessex, Mercia, and Northumberland joined in owning him for their lord, and in discarding again the rule of Æthelred, who had returned on the death of Svein. When Æthelred’s death in 1016 raised his son Eadmund Ironside to the throne, the loyalty of London enabled him to struggle bravely for a few months against the Danes; but a decisive victory at Assandun and the death of his rival left Cnut master of the realm. Conqueror as he was, the Dane was no foreigner in the sense that the Norman was a foreigner after him. His language differed little from the English tongue. He brought in no new system of tenure or government. Cnut ruled, in fact, not as a foreign conqueror but as a native king. The good-will and tranquillity of England were necessary for the success of his larger schemes in the north, where the arms of his English subjects aided him in later years in uniting Denmark and Norway beneath his sway.

Dismissing, therefore, his Danish “host,” and retaining only a trained body of household troops or hus-carls to serve in sudden emergencies, Cnut boldly relied for support within his realm on the justice and good government he secured it. His aim during twenty years seems to have been to obliterate from men’s minds the foreign character of his rule, and the bloodshed in which it had begun. The change in himself was as startling as the change in his policy. When he first appears in England, it is as the mere northman, passionate, revengeful, uniting the guile of the savage with his thirst for blood. His first acts of government were a series of murders. Eadric of Mercia, whose aid had given him the crown, was felled by an axe-blow at the king’s signal; a murder removed Eadwig, the brother of Eadmund Ironside, while the children of Eadmund were hunted even into Hungary by his ruthless hate. But from a savage such as this Cnut rose suddenly into a wise and temperate king. Stranger as he was, he fell back on “Eadgar’s law,” on the old constitution of the realm, and owned no difference between conqueror and conquered, between Dane and Englishman. By the creation of four earldoms—those of Mercia, Northumberland, Wessex, and East Anglia—he recognized provincial independence, but he drew closer than of old the ties which bound the rulers of these great dependencies to the Crown. He even identified himself with the patriotism which had withstood the stranger. The Church had been the center of national resistance to the Dane, but Cnut sought above all its friendship. He paid homage to the cause for which Ælfheah had died, by his translation of the archbishop’s body to Canterbury. He atoned for his father’s ravages by costly gifts to the religious houses. He protected English pilgrims against the robber-lords of the Alps. His love for monks broke out in the song which he composed as he listened to their chant at Ely: “Merrily sang the monks in Ely when Cnut King rowed by” across the vast fen-waters that surrounded their abbey. “Row, boatmen, near the land, and hear we these monks sing.”

Cnut’s letter from Rome to his English subjects marks the grandeur of his character and the noble conception he had formed of kingship. “I have vowed to God to lead a right life in all things,” wrote the king, “to rule justly and piously my realms and subjects, and to administer just judgment to all. If heretofore I have done aught beyond what was just, through headiness or negligence of youth, I am ready with God’s help to amend it utterly.” No royal officer, either for fear of the king or for favor of any, is to consent to injustice, none is to do wrong to rich or poor “as they would value my friendship and their own well-being.” He especially denounces unfair exactions: “I have no need that money be heaped together for me by unjust demands.” “I have sent this letter before me,” Cnut ends, “that all the people of my realm may rejoice in my well-doing; for, as you yourselves know, never have I spared nor will I spare to spend myself and my toil in what is needful and good for my people.”

Cnut’s greatest gift to his people was that of peace. With him began the long internal tranquillity which was from this time to be the special note of our national history. During two hundred years, with the one terrible interval of the Norman Conquest, and the disturbance under Stephen, England alone among the kingdoms of Europe enjoyed unbroken repose. The wars of her kings lay far from her shores, in France or Normandy, or, as with Cnut, in the more distant lands of the north. The stern justice of their government secured order within. The absence of internal discontent under Cnut—perhaps, too, the exhaustion of the kingdom after the terrible Danish inroads—is proved by its quiet during his periods of absence. Everything witnesses to the growing wealth and prosperity of the country. A great part of English soil was, indeed, still utterly uncultivated.

Wide reaches of land were covered with wood, thicket and scrub, or consisted of heaths and moor. In both the east and the west there were vast tracts of marsh land; fens nearly one hundred miles long severed East Anglia from the midland counties; sites like that of Glastonbury or Athelney were almost inaccessible. The beaver still haunted marshy hollows such as those which lay about Beverley, the London craftsmen chased the wild boar and the wild ox in the woods of Hampstead, while wolves prowled round the homesteads of the north. But peace, and the industry it encouraged, were telling on this waste; stag and wolf were retreating before the face of man, the farmer’s axe was ringing in the forest, and villages were springing up in the clearings. The growth of commerce was seen in the rich trading-ports of the eastern coast. The main trade lay probably in skins and ropes and ship-masts; and, above all, in the iron and steel that the Scandinavian lands so long supplied to Britain. But Dane and Norwegian were traders over a yet wider field than the northern seas; their barks entered the Mediterranean, while the overland route through Russia brought the wares of Constantinople and the East. “What do you bring to us?” the merchant is asked in an old English dialogue. “I bring skins, silks, costly gems, and gold,” he answers, “besides various garments, pigment, wine, oil, and ivory, with brass and copper and tin, silver and gold, and such like.” Men from the Rhineland and from Normandy, too, moored their vessels along the Thames, on whose rude wharves were piled a strange medley of goods—pepper and spices from the far East, crates of gloves and gray cloths (it may be from the Lombard looms), sacks of wool, iron-work from Liége, butts of French wine and vinegar, and with them the rural products of the country itself—cheese, butter, lard, and eggs, with live swine and fowls.

Cnut’s one aim was to win the love of his people, and all tradition shows how wonderful was his success. But the greatness of his rule hung solely on the greatness of his temper, and at his death the empire he had built up at once fell to pieces.

William the Great, as men of his own day styled him, William the Conqueror, as by one event he stamped himself on our history, was now Duke of Normandy. The full grandeur of his indomitable will, his large and patient statesmanship, the loftiness of aim which lifts him out of the petty incidents of his age, were as yet only partly disclosed. But there never was a moment from his boyhood when he was not among the greatest of men. His life was one long mastering of difficulty after difficulty. The shame of his birth remained in his name of “the Bastard.” His father, Duke Robert, had seen Arlotta, the daughter of a tanner of the town, washing her linen in the little brook by

Falaise, and, loving her, had made her the mother of his boy. Robert’s departure on a pilgrimage from which he never returned left William a child-ruler among the most turbulent baronage in Christendom, and treason and anarchy surrounded him as he grew to manhood. Disorder broke at last into open revolt. Surprised in his hunting-seat at Valognes by the rising of the Bessin and Cotentin districts, in which the pirate temper and lawlessness lingered longest, William had only time to dash through the fords of Vire with the rebels on his track. A fierce combat of horse on the slopes of Val-ès-dunes, to the southeastward of Caen, left him master of the duchy, and the old Scandinavian Normandy yielded forever to the new civilization which streamed in with French alliances and the French tongue. William was himself a type of the transition. In the young duke’s character the old world mingled strangely with the new, the pirate jostled roughly with the statesman. William was the most terrible, as he was the last outcome of the northern race.

The very spirit of the “sea-wolves” who had so long “lived on the pillage of the world” seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery, the fury of his wrath, the ruthlessness of his revenge. “No knight under heaven,” his enemies confessed, “was William’s peer.” Boy as he was, horse and man went down before his lance at Val-ès-dunes. All the fierce gayety of his nature broke out in the chivalrous adventures of his youth, in his rout of fifteen Angevins with but five soldiers at his back, in his defiant ride over the ground which Geoffry Martel claimed from him—a ride with hawk on fist as though war and the chase were one. No man could bend his bow. His mace crashed its way through a ring of English warriors to the foot of the standard. He rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired. His voice rang out like a trumpet to rally his soldiers as they fled before the English charge at Senlac. In his winter march on Chester he strode afoot at the head of his fainting troops, and helped with his own hands to clear a road through the snowdrifts. With the northman’s daring broke out the northman’s pitilessness. When the townsmen of Alençon hung raw hides along their walls in scorn of the baseness of his birth, with cries of “Work for the tanner!” William tore out his prisoners’ eyes, cut off their hands and feet, and flung them into the town.

At the close of his greatest victory he refused Harold’s body a grave. Hundreds of Hampshire men were driven from their homes to make him a hunting-ground, and his harrying of Northumbria left the north of England a desolate waste. There is a grim, ruthless ring about his very jests. In his old age Philip of France mocked at the Conqueror’s unwieldy bulk and at the sickness which confined him to his bed at Rouen. “King William has as long a lying-in,” laughed his enemy, “as a woman behind her curtains!” “When I get up,” swore William, “I will go to mass in Philip’s land, and bring a rich offering for my churching. I will offer a thousand candles for my fee. Flaming brands shall they be, and steel shall glitter over the fire they make.” At harvest-tide town and hamlet flaring into ashes along the French border fulfilled the Conqueror’s vow. There is the same savage temper in the loneliness of his life. He recked little of men’s love or hate. His grim look, his pride, his silence, his wild outbursts of passion, spread terror through his court. “So stark and fierce was he,” says the English chronicler, “that none dared resist his will.” His graciousness to Anselm only brought out into stronger relief the general harshness of his tone. His very wrath was solitary. “To no man spake he, and no man dared speak to him,” when the news reached him of Harold’s accession to the throne. It was only when he passed from the palace to the loneliness of the woods that the king’s temper unbent. “He loved the wild deer as though he had been their father. Whosoever should slay hart or hind man should blind him.” Death itself took its color from the savage solitude of his life. Priests and nobles fled as the last breath left him, and the Conqueror’s body lay naked and lonely on the floor.

It is not to his victory at Senlac, but to the struggle which followed his return from Normandy, that William owes his title of the “Conqueror.” The struggle which ended in the fens of Ely had wholly changed William’s position. He no longer held the land merely as elected king; he added to his elective right the right of conquest. The system of government which he originated was, in fact, the result of the double character of his power. It represented neither the purely feudal system of the Continent nor the system of the older English royalty. More truly, perhaps, it may be said to have represented both. As the successor of Eadward, William retained the judicial and administrative organization of the older English realm. As the conqueror of England he introduced the military organization of feudalism so far as was necessary for the secure possession of his conquests. The ground was already prepared for such an organization; we have seen the beginnings of English feudalism in the warriors, the “companions,” or “thegns,” who were personally attached to the king’s war-band, and received estates from the folk-land in reward for their personal services. In later times this feudal distribution of estates had greatly increased, as the bulk of the nobles followed the king’s example and bound their tenants to themselves by a similar process of subinfeudation. On the other hand, the pure freeholders, the class which formed the basis of the original English society, had been gradually reduced in number, partly through imitation of the class above them, but still more through the incessant wars and invasions which drove them to seek protectors among the thegns at the cost of their independence. Feudalism, in fact, was superseding the older freedom in England even before the reign of William, as it had already superseded it in Germany or France. But the tendency was quickened and intensified by the Conquest; the desperate and universal resistance of his English subjects forced William to hold by the sword what the sword had won, and an army strong enough to crush at any moment a national revolt was necessary for the preservation of his throne. Such an army could only be maintained by a vast confiscation of the soil. The failure of the English risings cleared the way for its establishment; the greater part of the higher nobility fell in battle or fled into exile, while the lower thegnhood either forfeited the whole of their lands or redeemed a portion of them by the surrender of the rest.

The dependence of the Church on the royal power was strictly enforced. Homage was exacted from bishop as from baron. No royal tenant could be excommunicated without the king’s leave. No synod could legislate without his previous assent and subsequent confirmation of its decrees. No papal letters could be received within the realm save by his permission. William firmly repudiated the claims which were now beginning to be put forward by the court of Rome. When Gregory VII called on him to do fealty for his realm, the king sternly refused to admit the claim. “Fealty I have never willed to do, nor do I will to do it now. I have never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors did it to yours.”

The Conquest was hardly over when the struggle between the baronage and the crown began. The wisdom of William’s policy in the destruction of the great earldoms which had overshadowed the throne was shown in an attempt at their restoration made by Roger, the son of his minister, William Fitz-Osbern, and by the Breton Ralf de Guader, whom the king had rewarded for his services at Senlac with the earldom of Norfolk. The rising was quickly suppressed, Roger thrown into prison, and Ralf driven over sea; but the intrigues of the baronage soon found another leader in William’s half-brother, the Bishop of Bayeux. Under pretense of aspiring by arms to the papacy, Bishop Odo collected money and men; but the treasure was at once seized by the royal officers, and the bishop arrested in the midst of the court. Even at the king’s bidding no officer would venture to seize on a prelate of the Church; it was with his own hands that William was forced to effect his arrest. “I arrest not the bishop, but the Earl of Kent,” laughed the Conqueror, and Odo remained a prisoner till William’s death.

It was, in fact, this vigorous personality of William which proved the chief safeguard of his throne. “Stark he was,” says the English chronicler, “to men that withstood him. Earls that did aught against his bidding he cast into bonds; bishops he stripped of their bishoprics, abbots of their abbacies. He spared not his own brother; first he was in the land, but the king cast him into bondage. If a man would live and hold his lands, need it were that he should follow the king’s will.” But, stern as his rule was, it gave peace to the land. Even amid the sufferings which necessarily sprang from the circumstances of the Conquest itself, from the erection of castles, or the inclosure of forests, or the exactions which built up the great hoard at Winchester, Englishmen were unable to forget “the good peace he made in the land, so that a man might fare over his realm with a bosom full of gold.” Strange touches of a humanity far in advance of his age contrasted with the general temper of his government. One of the strongest traits in his character was his aversion to shed blood by process of law; he formally abolished the punishment of death, and only a single execution stains the annals of his reign. An edict yet more honorable to him put an end to the slave-trade which had till then been carried on at the port of Bristol. The pitiless warrior, the stern and awful king was a tender and faithful husband, an affectionate father. The lonely silence of his bearing broke into gracious converse with pure and sacred souls like Anselm. If William was “stark” to rebel and baron, men noted that he was “mild to those that loved God.”

The pedigree of Robert Guiscard is variously deduced from the peasants and the dukes of Normandy—from the peasants, by the pride and ignorance of a Grecian princess; from the dukes, by the ignorance and flattery of the Italian subjects. His genuine descent may be ascribed to the second or middle order of private nobility. He sprang from a race of valvassors or bannerets, of the diocese of Coutances, in the lower Normandy; the castle of Hauteville was their honorable seat, his father Tancred was conspicuous in the court and army of the duke, and his military service was furnished by ten soldiers or knights. Two marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made him the father of twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial tenderness of his second wife. But a narrow patrimony was insufficient for this numerous and daring progeny; they saw around the neighborhood the mischiefs of poverty and discord, and resolved to seek in foreign wars a more glorious inheritance. Two only remained to perpetuate the race and cherish their father’s age; their ten brothers, as they successively attained the vigor of manhood, departed from the castle, passed the Alps, and joined the Apulian camp of the Normans.

The elder were prompted by native spirit; their success encouraged their younger brethren, and the three first in seniority—William, Drogo, and Humphrey—deserved to be the chiefs of their nation and the founders of the new republic. Robert was the eldest of the seven sons of the second marriage, and even the reluctant praise of his foes has endowed him with the heroic qualities of a soldier and a statesman. His lofty stature surpassed the tallest of his army; his limbs were cast in the true proportion of strength and gracefulness, and to the decline of life he maintained the patient vigor of health and the commanding dignity of his form. His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and beard were long and of a flaxen color, his eyes sparkled with fire, and his voice, like that of Achilles, could impress obedience and terror amid the tumult of battle. In the ruder ages of chivalry such qualifications are not below the notice of the poet or historian. They may observe that Robert at once, and with equal dexterity, could wield in the right hand his sword, his lance in the left; that in the battle of Civitella he was thrice unhorsed, and that in the close of that memorable day he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of valor from the warriors of the two armies. His boundless ambition was founded on the consciousness of superior worth; in the pursuit of greatness he was never arrested by the scruples of justice, and seldom moved by the feelings of humanity. Though not insensible of fame, the choice of open or clandestine means was determined only by his present advantage. The surname of Guiscard[21] was applied to this master of political wisdom, which is too often confounded with the practice of dissimulation and deceit; and Robert is praised by the Apulian poet for excelling the cunning of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero. Yet these arts were disguised by an appearance of military frankness; in his highest fortune he was accessible and courteous to his fellow-soldiers, and, while he indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion of his country.

He grasped with a rapacious, that he might distribute with a liberal hand; his primitive indigence had taught the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not below his attention, and his prisoners were tortured with slow and unfeeling cruelty to force a discovery of their secret treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with only five followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet even this allowance appears too bountiful. The sixth son of Tancred of Hauteville passed the Alps as a pilgrim, and his first military band was levied among the adventurers of Italy. His brothers and countrymen had divided the fertile lands of Apulia, but they guarded their shares with the jealousy of avarice; the aspiring youth was driven forward to the mountains of Calabria, and in his first exploits against the Greeks and the natives it is not easy to discriminate the hero from the robber. To surprise a castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to plunder the adjacent villages for necessary food, were the obscure labors which formed and exercised the powers of his mind and body. The volunteers of Normandy adhered to his standard; and, under his command, the peasants of Calabria assumed the name and character of Normans.

As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he awakened the jealousy of his elder brother, by whom, in a transient quarrel, his life was threatened and his liberty restrained. After the death of Humphrey the tender age of his sons excluded them from the command; they were reduced to a private estate by the ambition of their guardian and uncle, and Guiscard was exalted on a buckler and saluted Count of Apulia and general of the republic. With an increase of authority and of force he resumed the conquest of Calabria, and soon aspired to a rank that should raise him forever above the heads of his equals. By some acts of rapine or sacrilege he had incurred a papal excommunication, but Nicholas II was easily persuaded that the divisions of friends could terminate only in their mutual prejudice; that the Normans were the faithful champions of the Holy See, and it was safer to trust the alliance of a prince than the caprice of an aristocracy. A synod of one hundred bishops was convened at Melphi, and the count interrupted an important enterprise to guard the person and execute the decrees of the Roman pontiff. His gratitude and policy conferred on Robert and his posterity the ducal title, with the investiture of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both in Italy and Sicily, which his sword could rescue from the schismatic Greeks and the unbelieving Saracens. This apostolic sanction might justify his arms, but the obedience of a free and victorious people could not be transferred without their consent, and Guiscard dissembled his elevation till the ensuing campaign had been illustrated by the conquest of Consenza and Reggio. In the hour of triumph he assembled his troops, and solicited the Normans to confirm by their suffrage the judgment of the vicar of Christ; the soldiers hailed with joyful acclamations their valiant duke, and the counts, his former equals, pronounced the oath of fidelity with hollow smiles and secret indignation.

After this inauguration Robert styled himself, “by the grace of God and St. Peter, Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily”; and it was the labor of twenty years to deserve and realize these lofty appellations. Such tardy progress in a narrow space may seem unworthy of the abilities of the chief and the spirit of the nation, but the Normans were few in number, their resources were scanty, their service was voluntary and precarious. The bravest designs of the duke were sometimes opposed by the free voice of his parliament of barons; the twelve counts of popular election conspired against his authority, and against their perfidious uncle the sons of Humphrey demanded justice and revenge. By his policy and vigor Guiscard discovered their plots, suppressed their rebellions, and punished the guilty with death or exile; but in these domestic feuds his years and the national strength were unprofitably consumed. After the defeat of his foreign enemies—the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens—their broken forces retreated to the strong and populous cities of the sea-coast. They excelled in the arts of fortification and defense; the Normans were accustomed to serve on horseback in the field, and their rude attempts could only succeed by the efforts of persevering courage. The resistance of Salerno was maintained above eight months; the siege or blockade of Bari lasted nearly four years. In these actions the Norman duke was the foremost in every danger; in every fatigue the last and most patient. As he pressed the citadel of Salerno a huge stone from the rampart shattered one of his military engines, and by a splinter he was wounded in the breast. Before the gates of Bari he lodged in a miserable hut or barrack, composed of dry branches, and thatched with straw—a perilous station, on all sides open to the inclemency of the winter and the spears of the enemy.

The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the present kingdom of Naples, and the countries united by his arms have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred years.

Thomas à Becket, the first man of English descent who, since the Norman conquest, had, during the course of a whole century, risen to any considerable station, was born of reputable parents in the city of London; and being endowed both with industry and capacity, he early insinuated himself into the favor of Archbishop Theobald, and obtained from that prelate some preferments and offices. By their means he was enabled to travel for improvement to Italy, where he studied the civil and canon law at Bologna; and on his return, he appeared to have made such proficiency in knowledge that he was promoted by his patron to the Archdeaconry of Canterbury, an office of considerable trust and profit. He was afterward employed with success by Theobald in transacting business at Rome; and, on Henry’s accession, he was recommended to that monarch as worthy of further preferment. Henry, who knew that Becket had been instrumental in supporting that resolution of the archbishop which had tended so much to facilitate his own advancement to the throne, was already prepossessed in his favor; and finding, on further acquaintance, that his spirit and abilities entitled him to any trust, he soon promoted him to the dignity of chancellor, one of the first civil offices in the kingdom. The chancellor, in that age, beside the custody of the great seal, had possession of all vacant prelacies and abbeys; he was the guardian of all such minors and pupils as were the king’s tenants; all baronies which escheated to the crown were under his administration; he was entitled to a place in council, even though he were not particularly summoned; and as he exercised also the office of secretary of state, and it belonged to him to countersign all commissions, writs, and letters patent, he was a kind of prime minister, and was concerned in the dispatch of every business of importance. Besides exercising this high office, Becket, by the favor of the king or archbishop, was made Provost of Beverley, Dean of Hastings, and Constable of the Tower; he was put in possession of the honors of Eye and Berkham, large baronies that had escheated to the crown; and, to complete his grandeur, he was intrusted with the education of Prince Henry, the king’s eldest son and heir of the monarchy.

The pomp of his retinue, the sumptuousness of his furniture, the luxury of his table, the munificence of his presents, corresponded to these great preferments; or rather exceeded anything that England had ever before seen in any subject. His historian and secretary, Fitz-Stephens, mentions, among other particulars, that his apartments were every day in winter covered with clean straw or hay, and in summer with green rushes or boughs, lest the gentlemen who paid court to him, and who could not, by reason of their great number, find a place at table, should soil their fine clothes by sitting on a dirty floor. A great number of knights were retained in his service; the greatest barons were proud of being received at his table; his house was a place of education for the sons of the chief nobility; and the king himself frequently vouchsafed to partake of his entertainments. As his way of life was splendid and opulent, his amusements and occupations were gay, and partook of the cavalier spirit, which, as he had only taken deacon’s orders, he did not think unbefitting his character. He employed himself at leisure hours in hunting, hawking, gaming, and horsemanship; he exposed his person in several military actions; he carried over, at his own charge, seven hundred knights to attend the king in his wars at Toulouse; in the subsequent wars on the frontiers of Normandy he maintained, during forty days, twelve hundred knights, and four thousand of their train; and in an embassy to France with which he was intrusted he astonished that court with the number and magnificence of his retinue.

Becket, who, by his complaisance and good humor, had rendered himself agreeable, and by his industry and abilities useful, to his master, appeared to him the fittest person for supplying the vacancy made by the death of Theobald. As he was well acquainted with the king’s intentions of retrenching, or rather confining within the ancient bounds, all ecclesiastical privileges, and always showed a ready disposition to comply with them, Henry, who never expected any resistance from that quarter, immediately issued orders for electing him Archbishop of Canterbury. But this resolution, which was taken contrary to the opinion of Matilda and many of the ministers, drew after it very unhappy consequences; and never prince of so great penetration appeared, in the issue, to have so little understood the genius and character of his minister.

No sooner was Becket installed in this high dignity, which rendered him for life the second person in the kingdom, with some pretentions of aspiring to be the first, than he totally altered his demeanor and conduct, and endeavored to acquire the character of sanctity, of which his former busy and ostentatious course of life might, in the eyes of the people, have naturally bereaved him. Without consulting the king, he immediately returned into his hands the commission of chancellor, pretending that he must thenceforth detach himself from secular affairs and be solely employed in the exercise of his spiritual function, but in reality, that he might break off all connections with Henry, and apprise him that Becket, as Primate of England, was now become entirely a new personage. He maintained in his retinue and attendants alone his ancient pomp and luster, which was useful to strike the vulgar; in his own person he affected the greatest austerity and most rigid mortification, which, he was sensible, would have an equal or a greater tendency to the same end. He wore sackcloth next his skin, which, by his affected care to conceal it, was necessarily the more remarked by all the world; he changed it so seldom, that it was filled with dirt and vermin; his usual diet was bread, his drink water, which he even rendered further unpalatable by the mixture of unsavory herbs; he tore his back with the frequent discipline which he inflicted on it; he daily on his knees washed, in imitation of Christ, the feet of thirteen beggars, whom he afterward dismissed with presents; he gained the affection of the monks by his frequent charities to the convents and hospitals; every one who made profession of sanctity was admitted to his conversation, and returned full of panegyrics on the humility as well as on the piety and mortification of the holy primate; he seemed to be perpetually employed in reciting prayers and pious lectures, or in perusing religious discourses; his aspect wore the appearance of seriousness and mental recollection and secret devotion; and all men of penetration plainly saw that he was meditating some great design, and that the ambition and ostentation of his character had turned itself toward a new and more dangerous object.

Four gentlemen of the king’s household, Reginald Fitz-Urse, William de Traci, Hugh de Moreville, and Richard Brito, taking certain passionate expressions to be a hint for Becket’s death, immediately communicated their thoughts to each other, and, swearing to avenge their prince’s quarrel, secretly withdrew from court. Some menacing expressions which they had dropped gave a suspicion of their design, and the king dispatched a messenger after them, charging them to attempt nothing against the person of the primate; but these orders arrived too late to prevent their fatal purpose. The four assassins, though they took different roads to England, arrived nearly about the same time at Saltwoode, near Canterbury, and being there joined by some assistants they proceeded in great haste to the archiepiscopal palace. They found the primate, who trusted entirely to the sacredness of his character, very slenderly attended; and, though they threw out many menaces and reproaches against him, he was so incapable of fear that, without using any precautions against their violence, he immediately went to St. Benedict’s Church to hear vespers. They followed him thither, attacked him before the altar, and having cloven his head with many blows retired without meeting any opposition. This was the tragical end of Thomas à Becket, a prelate of the most lofty, intrepid, and inflexible spirit, who was able to cover to the world, and probably to himself, the enterprises of pride and ambition under the disguise of sanctity and of zeal for the interests of religion: an extraordinary personage, surely, had he been allowed to remain in his first station, and had directed the vehemence of his character to the support of law and justice, instead of being engaged, by the prejudices of the times, to sacrifice all private duties and public connections to ties which he imagined or represented as superior to every civil and political consideration. But no man who enters into the genius of that age can reasonably doubt of this prelate’s sincerity.

The hilly country beyond the Tigris is occupied by the pastoral tribes of the Kurds, a people hardy, strong, savage, impatient of the yoke, addicted to rapine, and tenacious of the government of their national chiefs. The resemblance of name, situation, and manners, seems to identify them with the Carduchians of the Greeks; and they still defend against the Ottoman Porte the antique freedom which they asserted against the successors of Cyrus. Poverty and ambition prompted them to embrace the profession of mercenary soldiers; the service of his father and uncle prepared the reign of the great Saladin, and the son of Job or Ayub, a simple Kurd, magnanimously smiled at his pedigree, which flattery deduced from the Arabian caliphs. So unconscious was Noureddin of the impending ruin of his house that he constrained the reluctant youth to follow his Uncle Shiracouh into Egypt; his military character was established by the defense of Alexandria, and, if we may believe the Latins, he solicited and obtained from the Christian general the profane honors of knighthood. On the death of Shiracouh, the office of grand vizier was bestowed on Saladin, as the youngest and least powerful of the emirs; but with the advice of his father, whom he invited to Cairo, his genius obtained the ascendant over his equals, and attached the army to his person and interest. While Noureddin lived, these ambitious Kurds were the most humble of his slaves; and the indiscreet murmurs of the divan were silenced by the prudent Ayub, who loudly protested that at the command of the sultan he himself would lead his son in chains to the foot of the throne. “Such language,” he added in private, “was prudent and proper in an assembly of your rivals; but we are now above fear and obedience, and the threats of Noureddin shall not extort the tribute of a sugar-cane.” His seasonable death relieved them from the odious and doubtful conflict; his son, a minor of eleven years of age, was left for a while to the emirs of Damascus, and the new lord of Egypt was decorated by the caliph with every title that could sanctify his usurpation in the eyes of the people.

Nor was Saladin long content with the possession of Egypt; he despoiled the Christians of Jerusalem, and the Atabeks of Damascus, Aleppo, and Diarbekir; Mecca and Medina acknowledged him for their temporal protector; his brother subdued the distant regions of Yemen, or the happy Arabia; and at the hour of his death, his empire was spread from the African Tripoli to the Tigris, and from the Indian Ocean to the mountains of Armenia. In the judgment of his character, the reproaches of treason and ingratitude strike forcibly on our minds, impressed, as they are, with the principle and experience of law and loyalty. But his ambition may in some measure be excused by the revolutions of Asia, which had erased every notion of legitimate succession; by the recent example of the Atabeks themselves; by his reverence to the son of his benefactor, his humane and generous behavior to the collateral branches; by their incapacity and his merit; by the approbation of the caliph, the sole source of all legitimate power; and, above all, by the wishes and interest of the people, whose happiness is the first object of government. In his virtues, and in those of his patron, they admired the singular union of the hero and the saint; for both Noureddin and Saladin are ranked among the Mahometan saints; and the constant meditation of the holy war appears to have shed a serious and sober color over their lives and actions.

The youth of the latter was addicted to wine and women, but his aspiring spirit soon renounced the temptations of pleasure for the graver follies of fame and dominion. The garment of Saladin was of coarse woolen, water was his only drink, and while he emulated the temperance, he surpassed the chastity of his Arabian prophet. Both in faith and practice he was a rigid Mussulman; he ever deplored that the defense of religion had not allowed him to accomplish the pilgrimage of Mecca; but at the stated hours, five times each day, the sultan devoutly prayed with his brethren; the involuntary omission of fasting was scrupulously repaid, and his perusal of the Koran on horseback between the approaching armies may be quoted as a proof, however ostentatious, of piety and courage. The superstitious doctrine of the sect of Shafei was the only study that he deigned to encourage. The poets were safe in his contempt, but all profane science was the object of his aversion, and a philosopher who had vented some speculative novelties was seized and strangled by the command of the royal saint. The justice of his divan was accessible to the meanest suppliant against himself and his ministers; and it was only for a kingdom that Saladin would deviate from the rule of equity. While the descendants of Seljuk and Zenghi held his stirrup and smoothed his garments, he was affable and patient with the meanest of his servants. So boundless was his liberality that he distributed twelve thousand horses at the siege of Acre; and, at the time of his death, no more than forty-seven drachms of silver and one piece of gold coin were found in the treasury; yet in a martial reign, the tributes were diminished, and the wealthy citizens enjoyed without fear or danger the fruits of their industry. Egypt, Syria, and Arabia, were adorned by the royal foundations of hospitals, colleges, and mosques, and Cairo was fortified with a wall and citadel; but his works were consecrated to public use, nor did the sultan indulge himself in a garden or palace of private luxury. In a fanatic age, himself a fanatic, the genuine virtues of Saladin commanded the esteem of the Christians: the Emperor of Germany gloried in his friendship, the Greek emperor solicited his alliance, and the conquest of Jerusalem diffused, and perhaps magnified, his fame both in the East and West.

Thus died, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and thirty-fifth of his reign, the greatest prince of his time, for wisdom, virtue, and abilities, and the most powerful in extent of dominion of all those that had ever filled the throne of England. His character, in private as well as in public life, is almost without a blemish, and he seems to have possessed every accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes a man either estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong and well proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging; his conversation affable and entertaining; his elocution easy, persuasive, and ever at command. He loved peace, but possessed both bravery and conduct in war, was provident without timidity, severe in the execution of justice without rigor, and temperate without austerity. He preserved health, and kept himself from corpulency, to which he was somewhat inclined, by an abstemious diet and by frequent exercise, particularly hunting. When he could enjoy leisure, he recreated himself either in learned conversation or in reading, and he cultivated his natural talents by study above any prince of his time. His affections, as well as his enmities, were warm and durable, and his long experience of the ingratitude and infidelity of men never destroyed the natural sensibility of his temper, which disposed him to friendship and society. His character has been transmitted to us by several writers who were his contemporaries, and it extremely resembles, in its most remarkable features, that of his maternal grandfather, Henry I, excepting only that ambition, which was a ruling passion in both, found not in the first Henry such unexceptionable means of exerting itself, and pushed that prince into measures which were both criminal in themselves and were the cause of further crimes, from which his grandson’s conduct was happily exempted.

This prince, like most of his predecessors of the Norman line, except Stephen, passed more of his time on the Continent than in this island; he was surrounded with the English gentry and nobility when abroad; the French gentry and nobility attended him when he resided in England; both nations acted in the government as if they were the same people; and, on many occasions, the legislatures seem not to have been distinguished. As the king and all the English barons were of French extraction, the manners of that people acquired the ascendant, and were regarded as the models of imitation. All foreign improvements, therefore, such as they were, in literature and politeness, in laws and arts, seem now to have been, in a good measure, transplanted into England, and that kingdom was become little inferior, in all the fashionable accomplishments, to any of its neighbors on the Continent. The more homely but more sensible manners and principles of the Saxons were exchanged for the affectations of chivalry and the subtleties of school philosophy; the feudal ideas of civil government, the Romish sentiments in religion, had taken entire possession of the people; by the former, the sense of submission toward princes was somewhat diminished in the barons; by the latter, the devoted attachment to papal authority was much augmented among the clergy. The Norman and other foreign families established in England had now struck deep root, and being entirely incorporated with the people, whom at first they oppressed and despised, they no longer thought that they needed the protection of the crown for the enjoyment of their possessions, or considered their tenure as precarious. They aspired to the same liberty and independence which they saw enjoyed by their brethren on the Continent, and desired to restrain those exorbitant prerogatives and arbitrary practices which the necessities of war and the violence of conquest had at first obliged them to indulge in their monarch. That memory also of a more equal government under the Saxon princes, which remained with the English, diffused still further the spirit of liberty, and made the barons both desirous of more independence to themselves, and willing to indulge it to the people. And it was not long ere this secret revolution in the sentiments of men produced, first violent convulsions in the state, then an evident alteration in the maxims of government.

The history of all the preceding kings of England since the Conquest gives evident proofs of the disorders attending the feudal institutions—the licentiousness of the barons, their spirit of rebellion against the prince and laws, and of animosity against each other; the conduct of the barons in the transmarine dominions of those monarchs afforded, perhaps, still more flagrant instances of these convulsions, and the history of France during several ages consists almost entirely of narrations of this nature. The cities, during the continuance of this violent government, could neither be very numerous nor populous, and there occur instances which seem to evince that, though these are always the first seat of law and liberty, their police was in general loose and irregular, and exposed to the same disorders with those by which the country was generally infested. It was a custom in London for great numbers, to the amount of a hundred or more, the sons and relations of considerable citizens, to form themselves into a licentious confederacy, to break into rich houses and plunder them, to rob and murder the passengers, and to commit with impunity all sorts of disorder. By these crimes it had become so dangerous to walk the streets by night that the citizens durst no more venture abroad after sunset than if they had been exposed to the incursions of a public enemy. The brother of the Earl of Ferrars had been murdered by some of those nocturnal rioters, and the death of so eminent a person, which was much more regarded than that of many thousands of an inferior station, so provoked the king that he swore vengeance against the criminals, and became thenceforth more rigorous in the execution of the laws.

Henry’s care in administering justice had gained him so great a reputation that even foreign and distant princes made him arbiter, and submitted their differences to his judgment. Sanchez, King of Navarre, having some controversies with Alphonso, King of Castile, was contented, though Alphonso had married the daughter of Henry, to choose this prince for a referee; and they agreed, each of them to consign three castles into neutral hands as a pledge of their not departing from his award. Henry made the cause be examined before his great council, and gave a sentence which was submitted to by both parties. These two Spanish kings sent each a stout champion to the court of England, in order to defend his cause by arms in case the way of duel had been chosen by Henry.

From the spacious highlands between China, Siberia, and the Caspian Sea, the tide of emigration and war has repeatedly been poured. These ancient seats of the Huns and Turks were occupied in the twelfth century by many pastoral tribes, of the same descent and similar manners, which were united and (A.D. 1206-1227) led to conquest by the formidable Zingis. In his ascent to greatness, that barbarian (whose private appellation was Temugin) had trampled on the necks of his equals. His birth was noble, but it was in the pride of victory that the prince or people deduced his seventh ancestor from the immaculate conception of a virgin. His father had reigned over thirteen hordes, which composed about thirty or forty thousand families, above two thirds refused to pay tithes or obedience to his infant son, and at the age of thirteen, Temugin fought a battle against his rebellious subjects. The future conqueror of Asia was reduced to fly and to obey, but he rose superior to his fortune, and in his fortieth year he had established his fame and dominion over the circumjacent tribes. In a state of society in which policy is rude and valor is universal the ascendant of one man must be founded on his power and resolution to punish his enemies and recompense his friends. His first military league was ratified by the simple rites of sacrificing a horse and tasting of a running stream; Temugin pledged himself to divide with his followers the sweets and the bitters of life, and, when he had shared among them his horses and apparel, he was rich in their gratitude and his own hopes. After his first victory, he placed seventy caldrons on the fire, and seventy of the most guilty rebels were cast headlong into the boiling water. The sphere of his attraction was continually enlarged by the ruin of the proud and the submission of the prudent; and the boldest chieftains might tremble when they beheld, enchased in silver, the skull of the khan of the Keraites, who, under the name of Prester John, had corresponded with the Roman pontiff and the princes of Europe. The ambition of Temugin condescended to employ the arts of superstition, and it was from a naked prophet who could ascend to heaven on a white horse that he accepted the title of Zingis, the most great, and a divine right to the conquest and dominion of the earth. In a general couroultai, or diet, he was seated on a felt, which was long afterward revered as a relic, and solemnly proclaimed great khan, or emperor, of the Moguls and Tartars. Of these kindred, though rival names, the former had given birth to the imperial race, and the latter has been extended, by accident or error, over the spacious wilderness of the north.

The code of laws which Zingis dictated to his subjects was adapted to the preservation of domestic peace and the exercise of foreign hostility. The punishment of death was inflicted on the crimes of adultery, murder, perjury, and the capital thefts of a horse or an ox; and the fiercest of men were mild and just in their intercourse with each other. The future election of the great kahn was vested in the princes of his family and the heads of the tribes, and the regulations of the chase were essential to the pleasures and plenty of a Tartar camp. The victorious nation was held sacred from all servile labors, which were abandoned to slaves and strangers, and every labor was servile except the profession of arms. The service and discipline of the troops, who were armed with bows, cimeters, and iron maces, and divided by hundreds, thousands, and ten thousands, were the institutions of a veteran commander. Each officer and soldier was made responsible, under pain of death, for the safety and honor of his companions; and the spirit of conquest breathed in the law that peace should never be granted unless to a vanquished and suppliant enemy.

But it is the religion of Zingis that best deserves our wonder and applause. The Catholic inquisitors of Europe, who defended nonsense by cruelty, might have been confounded by the example of a barbarian, who anticipated the lessons of philosophy, and established by his laws a system of pure theism and perfect toleration. His first and only article of faith was the existence of one God, the author of all good, who fills by his presence the heavens and earth, which he has created by his power. The Tartars and Moguls were addicted to the idols of their peculiar tribes, and many of them had been converted by the foreign missionaries to the religions of Moses, of Mahomet, and of Christ. These various systems in freedom and concord were taught and practiced within the precincts of the same camp, and the bonze, the imaum, the rabbi, the Nestorian and the Latin priest, enjoyed the same honorable exemption from service and tribute. In the mosque of Bokhara, the insolent victor might trample the Koran under his horse’s feet, but the calm legislator respected the prophets and pontiffs of the most hostile sects. The reason of Zingis was not informed by books—the khan could neither read nor write—and, except the tribe of the Igours, the greatest part of the Moguls and Tartars were as illiterate as their sovereign. The memory of their exploits was preserved by tradition; sixty-eight years after the death of Zingis, these traditions were collected and transcribed. The brevity of their domestic annals may be supplied by the Chinese, Persians, Armenians, Syrians, Arabians, Greeks, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, and Latins; and each nation will deserve credit in the relation of their own disasters and defeats.

The arms of Zingis and his lieutenants successively reduced the hordes of the desert, who pitched their tents between the wall of China and the Volga; and the Mogul emperor became the monarch of the pastoral world, the lord of many millions of shepherds and soldiers, who felt their united strength, and were impatient to rush on the mild and wealthy climates of the south. His ancestors had been the tributaries of the Chinese emperors, and Temugin himself had been disgraced by a title of honor and servitude. The court of Pekin was astonished by an embassy from its former vassal, who, in the tone of the king of nations, exacted the tribute and obedience which he had paid, and who affected to treat the son of heaven as the most contemptible of mankind. A haughty answer disguised their secret apprehensions, and their fears were soon justified by the march of innumerable squadrons, who pierced on all sides the feeble rampart of the great wall. Ninety cities were stormed, or starved, by the Moguls; ten only escaped; and Zingis, from a knowledge of the filial piety of the Chinese, covered his vanguard with their captive parents—an unworthy, and by degrees a fruitless, abuse of the virtue of his enemies. His invasion was supported by the revolt of one hundred thousand Khitans who guarded the frontier, yet he listened to a treaty, and a princess of China, three thousand horses, five hundred youths and as many virgins, and a tribute of gold and silk were the price of his retreat. In his second expedition, he compelled the Chinese emperor to retire beyond the Yellow River to a more southern residence. The siege of Pekin was long and laborious; the inhabitants were reduced by famine to decimate and devour their fellow-citizens; when their ammunition was spent, they discharged ingots of gold and silver from their engines; but the Moguls introduced a mine to the center of the capital, and the conflagration of the palace burned above thirty days. China was desolated by Tartar war and domestic faction, and the five northern provinces were added to the empire of Zingis.

In the west he touched the dominions of Mohammed, sultan of Carizme, who reigned from the Persian Gulf to the borders of India and Turkestan; and who, in the proud imitation of Alexander the Great, forgot the servitude and ingratitude of his fathers to the house of Seljuk. It was the wish of Zingis to establish a friendly and commercial intercourse with the most powerful of the Moslem princes; nor could he be tempted by the secret solicitations of the caliph of Bagdad, who sacrificed to his personal wrongs the safety of the Church and state. A rash and inhuman deed provoked and justified the Tartar arms in the invasion of the southern Asia. A caravan of three ambassadors and one hundred and fifty merchants was arrested and murdered at Otrar, by the command of Mohammed; nor was it till after a demand and denial of justice, till he had prayed and fasted three nights on a mountain, that the Mogul emperor appealed to the judgment of God and his sword. Our European battles, says a philosophic writer, are petty skirmishes, if compared to the numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia. Seven hundred thousand Moguls and Tartars are said to have marched under the standard of Zingis and his four sons. In the vast plains that extend to the north of the Sihon or Jaxartes, they were encountered by four hundred thousand soldiers of the sultan; and in the first battle, which was suspended by the night, one hundred and sixty thousands Carizmians were slain.

The Persian historians will relate the sieges and reduction of Otrar, Cogende, Bochara, Samarcand, Carizme, Herat, Merou, Nisabour, Balch, and Candahar; and the conquest of the rich and populous countries of Transoxiana, Carizme, and Chorasan. The destructive hostilities of Attila and the Huns have long since been elucidated by the example of Zingis and the Moguls; and in this more proper place I shall be content to observe, that, from the Caspian to the Indus, they ruined a tract of many hundred miles, which was adorned with the habitations and labors of mankind, and that five centuries have not been sufficient to repair the ravages of four years. The Mogul conqueror yielded with reluctance to the murmurs of his weary and wealthy troops, who sighed for the enjoyment of their native land. Incumbered with the spoils of Asia, he slowly measured back his footsteps, betrayed some pity for the misery of the vanquished, and declared his intention of rebuilding the cities which had been swept away by the tempest of his arms. After he had repassed the Oxus and Jaxartes, he was joined by two generals, whom he had detached with thirty thousand horse to subdue the western provinces of Persia. They had trampled on the nations which opposed their passage, penetrated through the gates of Derbend, traversed the Volga and the Desert, and accomplished the circuit of the Caspian Sea, by an expedition which had never been attempted and has never been repeated. The return of Zingis was signalized by the overthrow of the rebellious or independent kingdoms of Tartary; and he died in the fulness of years and glory, with his last breath exhorting and instructing his sons to achieve the conquest of the Chinese Empire.

When a thunderstorm once forced the king, as he was rowing on the Thames, to take refuge at the palace of the Bishop of Durham, Earl Simon of Montfort, who was a guest of the prelate, met the royal barge with assurances that the storm was drifting away, and that there was nothing to fear. Henry’s petulant wit broke out in his reply: “If I fear the thunder,” said the king, “I fear you, Sir Earl, more than all the thunder in the world.”

The man whom Henry dreaded as the champion of English freedom was himself a foreigner, the son of a Simon de Montfort whose name had become memorable for his ruthless crusade against the Albigensian heretics in southern Gaul. Though fourth son of this crusader, Simon became possessor of the English earldom of Leicester, which he inherited through his mother, and a secret match with Eleanor, the king’s sister and widow of the second William Marshal, linked him to the royal house. The baronage, indignant at this sudden alliance with a stranger, rose in a revolt which failed only through the desertion of their head, Earl Richard of Cornwall; while the censures of the Church on Eleanor’s breach of a vow of chastity, which she had made at her first husband’s death, were hardly averted by a journey to Rome. Simon returned to find the changeable king quickly alienated from him and to be driven by a burst of royal passion from the realm. He was, however, soon restored to favor, and before long took his stand in the front rank of the patriot leaders. In 1248 he was appointed governor of Gascony, where the stern justice of his rule and the heavy taxation which his enforcement of order made necessary earned the hatred of the disorderly nobles. The complaints of the Gascons brought about an open breach with the king. To Earl Simon’s offer of the surrender of his post if the money he had spent in the royal service were, as Henry had promised, repaid him, the king hotly retorted that he was bound by no promise to a false traitor. Simon at once gave Henry the lie; “and but that thou bearest the name of king it had been a bad hour for thee when thou utteredst such a word!” A formal reconciliation was brought about, and the earl once more returned to Gascony, but before winter had come he was forced to withdraw to France. The greatness of his reputation was shown in an offer which its nobles made him of the regency of their realm during the absence of King Lewis on the crusade. But the offer was refused, and Henry, who had himself undertaken the pacification of Gascony, was glad before the close of 1253 to recall its old ruler to do the work he had failed to do.

Simon’s character had now thoroughly developed. He had inherited the strict and severe piety of his father; he was assiduous in his attendance on religious services, whether by night or day; he was the friend of Grosseteste and the patron of the Friars. In his correspondence with Adam Marsh we see him finding patience under his Gascon troubles in the perusal of the Book of Job. His life was pure and singularly temperate; he was noted for his scant indulgence in meat, drink, or sleep. Socially he was cheerful and pleasant in talk; but his natural temper was quick and ardent, his sense of honor keen, his speech rapid and trenchant. His impatience of contradiction, his fiery temper, were in fact the great stumbling-blocks in his after career. But the one characteristic which overmastered all was what men at that time called his “constancy,” the firm, immovable resolve which trampled even death under foot in its loyalty to the right. The motto which Edward I chose as his device, “Keep troth,” was far truer as the device of Earl Simon. We see in his correspondence with what a clear discernment of its difficulties both at home and abroad he “thought it unbecoming to decline the danger of so great an exploit” as the reduction of Gascony to peace and order; but once undertaken, he persevered in spite of the opposition he met with, the failure of all support or funds from England, and the king’s desertion of his cause, till the work was done. There is the same steadiness of will and purpose in his patriotism. The letters of Grosseteste show how early he had learned to sympathize with the bishop in his resistance to Rome, and at the crisis of the contest he offers him his own support and that of his associates. He sends to Adam Marsh a tract of Grosseteste’s on “the rule of a kingdom and of a tyranny,” sealed with his own seal. He listens patiently to the advice of his friends on the subject of his household or his temper. “Better is a patient man,” writes honest Friar Adam, “than a strong man, and he who can rule his own temper than he who storms a city.” “What use is it to provide for the peace of your fellow-citizens and not guard the peace of your own household?” It was to secure “the peace of his fellow-citizens” that the earl silently trained himself as the tide of misgovernment mounted higher and higher, and the fruit of his discipline was seen when the crisis came. While other men wavered and faltered and fell away, the enthusiastic love of the people gathered itself round the stern, grave soldier who “stood like a pillar,” unshaken by promise or threat or fear of death, by the oath he had sworn.

In England affairs were going from bad to worse. The Pope still weighed heavily on the Church. Two solemn confirmations of the charter failed to bring about any compliance with its provisions. In 1248, in 1249, and again in 1255, the great council fruitlessly renewed its demand for a regular ministry, and the growing resolve of the nobles to enforce good government was seen in their offer of a grant on condition that the chief officers of the crown were appointed by the council. Henry indignantly refused the offer, and sold his plate to the citizens of London to find payment for his household. The barons were mutinous and defiant. “I will send reapers and reap your fields for you,” Henry had threatened Earl Bigod of Norfolk when he refused him aid. “And I will send you back the heads of your reapers,” retorted the earl. Hampered by the profusion of the court and by the refusal of supplies, the crown was penniless, yet new expenses were incurred by Henry’s acceptance of a papal offer of the kingdom of Sicily in favor of his second son, Edmund. Shame had fallen on the English arms, and the king’s eldest son, Edward, had been disastrously defeated on the Marches by Llewelyn of Wales. The tide of discontent, which was heightened by a grievous famine, burst its bounds in the irritation excited by the new demands from both Henry and Rome with which the year 1258 opened, and the barons repaired in arms to a great council summoned at London. The past half-century had shown both the strength and weakness of the charter—its strength as a rallying-point for the baronage, and a definite assertion of rights which the king could be made to acknowledge; its weakness in providing no means for the enforcement of its own stipulations. Henry had sworn again and again to observe the charter, and his oath was no sooner taken than it was unscrupulously broken.

The victory of Lewes placed Earl Simon at the head of the state. “Now England breathes in the hope of liberty,” sang a poet of the time; “the English were despised like dogs, but now they have lifted up their head and their foes are vanquished.” The song announces with almost legal precision the theory of the patriots. “He who would be in truth a king, he is a ‘free king’ indeed if he rightly rule himself and his realm. All things are lawful to him for the government of his kingdom, but nothing for its destruction. It is one thing to rule according to a king’s duty, another to destroy a kingdom by resisting the law.... Let the community of the realm advise, and let it be known what the generality, to whom their own laws are best known, think on the matter. They who are ruled by the laws know those laws best; they who make daily trial of them are best acquainted with them; and since it is their own affairs which are at stake, they will take more care, and will act with an eye to their own peace.... It concerns the community to see what sort of men ought justly to be chosen for the weal of the realm.” The constitutional restrictions on the royal authority, the right of the whole nation to deliberate and decide on its own affairs, and to have a voice in the selection of the administrators of government, had never been so clearly stated before.

It was impossible to make binding terms with an imprisoned king, yet to release Henry without terms was to renew the war. A new Parliament was summoned in January, 1265, to Westminster, but the weakness of the patriotic party among the baronage was shown in the fact that only twenty-three earls and barons could be found to sit beside the hundred and twenty ecclesiastics. But it was just this sense of his weakness that drove Earl Simon to a constitutional change of mighty issue in our history. As before, he summoned two knights from every county. But he created a new force in English politics when he summoned to sit beside them two citizens from every borough. The attendance of delegates from the towns had long been usual in the county courts when any matter respecting their interests was in question; but it was the writ issued by Earl Simon that first summoned the merchant and the trader to sit beside the knight of the shire, the baron, and the bishop in the Parliament of the realm.

In his own time, and among his own subjects, Edward was the object of almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national king. At the moment when the last trace of foreign conquest passed away, when the descendants of those who won and those who lost at Senlac blended for ever into an English people, England saw in her ruler no stranger, but an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the golden hair or the English name which linked him to our earlier kings. Edward’s very temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he stands out as the typical representative of the race he ruled; like them willful and imperious, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged, stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but like them, too, just in the main, unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious. He inherited, indeed, from the Angevins their fierce and passionate wrath; his punishments, when he punished in anger, were without pity; and a priest who ventured at a moment of storm into his presence with a remonstrance dropped dead from sheer fright at his feet. But for the most part his impulses were generous, trustful, averse from cruelty, prone to forgiveness. “No man ever asked mercy of me,” he said, in his old age, “and was refused.” The rough soldierly nobleness of his nature breaks out at Falkirk, where he lay on the bare ground among his men, or in his refusal during a Welsh campaign to drink of the one cask of wine which had been saved from marauders. “It is I who have brought you into this strait,” he said to his thirsty fellow-soldiers, “and I will have no advantage of you in meat or drink.” A strange tenderness and sensitiveness to affection lay, in fact, beneath the stern imperiousness of his outer bearing. Every subject throughout his realm was drawn closer to the king who wept bitterly at the news of his father’s death, though it gave him a crown; whose fiercest burst of vengeance was called out by an insult to his mother; whose crosses rose as memorials of his love and sorrow at every spot where his wife’s bier rested. “I loved her tenderly in her lifetime,” wrote Edward to Eleanor’s friend the Abbot of Cluny; “I do not cease to love her now she is dead.” And as it was with mother and wife, so it was with his people at large. All the self-concentrated isolation of the earlier Angevins disappears in Edward. He was the first English king since the Conquest who loved his people with a personal love and craved for their love back again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws. Even in his struggles with her England understood a temper which was so perfectly her own, and the quarrels between king and people during his reign are quarrels where, doggedly as they fought, neither disputant doubted for a moment the worth or affection of the other. Few scenes in our history are more touching than that which closes the long contest over the charter, when Edward stood face to face with his people in Westminster Hall, and with a sudden burst of tears owned himself frankly in the wrong.

But it was just this sensitiveness, this openness to outer impressions and outer influences, that led to the strange contradictions which meet us in Edward’s career. Under the first king, whose temper was distinctly English, a foreign influence told most fatally on our manners, our literature, our national spirit. The rise of France into a compact and organized monarchy from the time of Philip Augustus was now making its influence dominant in Western Europe. The “chivalry” so familiar in Froissart, that picturesque mimicry of high sentiment, of heroism, love, and courtesy, before which all depth and reality of nobleness disappeared to make room for the coarsest profligacy, the narrowest caste-spirit, and a brutal indifference to human suffering, was specially of French creation. There was a nobleness in Edward’s nature from which the baser influences of this chivalry fell away. His life was pure, his piety, save when it stooped to the superstition of the time, manly and sincere, while his high sense of duty saved him from the frivolous self-indulgence of his successors. But he was far from being wholly free from the taint of his age. His passionate desire was to be a model of the fashionable chivalry of his day. He had been famous from his very youth as a consummate general; Earl Simon had admired the skill of his advance at Evesham, and in his Welsh campaign he had shown a tenacity and force of will which wrested victory out of the midst of defeat. He could head a furious charge of horse at Lewes, or organize a commissariat which enabled him to move army after army across the harried Lowlands. In his old age he was quick to discover the value of the English archery, and to employ it as a means of victory at Falkirk. But his fame as a general seemed a small thing to Edward when compared with his fame as a knight. He shared to the full his people’s love of hard fighting. His frame, indeed, was that of a born soldier—tall, deep-chested, long of limb, capable alike of endurance or action. When he encountered Adam Gurdon, a knight of gigantic size and renowned prowess, after Evesham, he forced him single-handed to beg for mercy. At the opening of his reign he saved his life by sheer fighting in a tournament at Challon. It was this love of adventure which lent itself to the frivolous unreality of the new chivalry. At his “Round Table of Kenilworth” a hundred lords and ladies, “clad all in silk,” renewed the faded glories of Arthur’s court. The false air of romance which was soon to turn the gravest political resolutions into outbursts of sentimental feeling appeared in his “Vow of the Swan,” when rising at the royal board he swore on the dish before him to avenge on Scotland the murder of Comyn. Chivalry exerted on him a yet more fatal influence in its narrowing of his sympathy to the noble class, and in its exclusion of the peasant and the craftsman from all claim to pity. “Knight without reproach” as he was, he looked calmly on at the massacre of the burghers of Berwick, and saw in William Wallace nothing but a common robber.

Hardly less powerful than the French notion of chivalry in its influence on Edward’s mind was the new French conception of kingship, feudality, and law. The rise of a lawyer class was everywhere hardening customary into written rights, allegiance into subjection, loose ties, such as commendation, into a definite vassalage. But it was specially through French influence, the influence of St. Lewis and his successors, that the imperial theories of the Roman law were brought to bear upon this natural tendency of the time. When the “sacred majesty” of the Cæsars was transferred by a legal fiction to the royal head of a feudal baronage, every constitutional relation was changed. The “defiance” by which a vassal renounced service to his lord became treason, his after-resistance “sacrilege.” That Edward could appreciate what was sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms of our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as congenial to his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He was never willfully unjust, but he was too often captious in his justice, fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law. The high conception of royalty which he had borrowed from St. Lewis united with this legal turn of mind in the worst acts of his reign. Of rights or liberties unregistered in charter or roll Edward would know nothing, while his own good sense was overpowered by the majesty of his crown. It was incredible to him that Scotland should revolt against a legal bargain which made her national independence conditional on the terms extorted from a claimant of her throne; nor could he view in any other light but as treason the resistance of his own baronage to an arbitrary taxation which their fathers had borne. It is in the very anomalies of such a character, in its strange union of justice and wrong-doing, of nobleness and meanness, that we must look for any fair explanation of much that has since been bitterly blamed in Edward’s conduct and policy.

Toward a due understanding of the extraordinary merits of Robert Bruce it is necessary to take a cursory view of the power with which he had to contend and of the resources of that kingdom, which, at that critical juncture, Providence committed to his charge. The power of England, against which it was his lot to struggle, was, perhaps, the most formidable which then existed in Europe. The native valor of her people, distinguished even under the weakest reign, was then led on and animated by a numerous and valiant feudal nobility. That bold and romantic spirit of enterprise which led the Norman arms to the throne of England and enabled Roger de Hauteville, with thirty followers, to win the crown of the Two Sicilies still animated the English nobles; and to this hereditary spirit was added the remembrance of the matchless glories which their arms had acquired in Palestine.

The barons who were then arrayed against Robert Bruce were the descendants of those iron warriors who combated for Christendom under the walls of Acre, and defeated the whole Saracen strength in the battle of Ascalon; the banners that were then unfurled for the conquest of Scotland were those which had waved victorious over the arms of Saladin; and the sovereign who led them bore the crown that had been worn by Richard in the Holy Wars, and wielded in his sword the terror of that mighty name at which even the accumulated hosts of Asia were appalled.

Nor were the resources of England less formidable for nourishing and maintaining the war. The prosperity which had grown up with the equal laws of our Saxon ancestors, and which the tyranny of the early Norman kings had never completely extinguished, had revived and spread under the wise and beneficent reigns of Henry II and Edward I. The legislative wisdom of the last monarch had given to the English law greater improvements than it had ever received in any subsequent reigns, while his heroic valor had subdued the rebellious spirit of his barons and trained their united strength to submission to the throne. The acquisition of Wales had removed the only weak point of his wide dominion and added a cruel and savage race to the already formidable mass of his armies. The navy of England already ruled the seas, and was prepared to carry ravage and desolation over the wide and defenseless Scottish coast; while a hundred thousand men armed in the magnificent array of feudal war and led on by the ambition of a feudal nobility poured into a country which seemed destined only to be their prey.

But, most of all, in the ranks of this army were found the intrepid yeomanry of England—that peculiar and valuable body of men which has in every age contributed as much to the stability of English character as the celebrity of the English arms, and which then composed those terrible archers whose prowess rendered them so formidable to all the armies of Europe. These men, whose valor was warmed by the consciousness of personal freedom and whose strength was nursed among the inclosed fields and green pastures of English liberty, conferred, till the discovery of firearms rendered personal accomplishments of no avail, a matchless advantage on the English armies. The troops of no other nation could produce a body of men in the least comparable to them, either in strength, discipline, or individual valor; and such was the dreadful efficacy with which they used their weapons that not only did they mainly contribute to the subsequent triumphs of Cressy and Azincourt, but at Poitiers and Hamildon Hill they alone gained the victory, with hardly any assistance from the feudal tenantry.

These troops were well known to the Scottish soldiers, and had established their superiority over them in many bloody battles, in which the utmost efforts of undisciplined valor had been found unavailing against their practiced discipline and superior equipment. The very names of the barons who headed them were associated with an unbroken career of conquest and renown, and can hardly be read yet without a feeling of exultation.

Against this terrible force, before which in the succeeding reign the military power of France was compelled to bow, Bruce had to array the scanty troops of a barren land and the divided force of a turbulent nobility. Scotland was in his time fallen low, indeed, from that state of peace and prosperity in which she was found at the first invasion of Edward I, and on which so much light has been thrown by the ingenious research of our own times. The disputed succession had sowed the seeds of inextinguishable jealousies among the nobles. The gold of England had corrupted many to betray their country’s cause; and the fatal ravages of English invasion had desolated the whole plains, from which resources for carrying on the war could be drawn.

All the heroic valor, the devoted patriotism, and the personal prowess of Wallace had been unable to stem the torrent of English invasion; and when he died the whole nation seemed to sink under the load against which his unexampled fortitude had long enabled it to struggle. These unhappy jealousies among the nobles, to which his downfall was owing, still continued and almost rendered hopeless any attempt to combine their forces; while the thinned population and ruined husbandry of the country seemed to prognosticate nothing but utter extirpation from a continuance of the war. Nor was the prospect less melancholy from a consideration of the combats which had taken place. The short spear and light shield of the Scotch had been found utterly unavailing against the iron panoply and powerful horses of the English barons, while the hardy and courageous mountaineers perished in vain under the dreadful tempest of the English archery.

What, then, must have been the courage of the youthful prince, who, after having been driven for shelter to an island on the north of Ireland, could venture with only forty followers to raise the standard of independence in Scotland against the accumulated force of this mighty power! What the resources of that understanding, which, though intimately acquainted from personal service with the tried superiority of the English arms, could foresee in his barren and exhausted country the means of combatting them! What the ability of that political conduct which could reunite the jarring interests and smother the deadly feuds of the Scottish nobles! And what the capacity of that noble warrior who, in the words of the contemporary historian,[22] could “unite the prowess of the first knight to the conduct of the greatest general of his age,” and was able in the space of six years to raise the Scottish arms from the lowest point of depression to such a pitch of glory that even the redoubted archers and haughty chivalry of England fled at the sight of the Scottish banner!

Nor was it only in the field that the great and patriotic conduct of Robert Bruce was displayed. In endeavor to restore the almost ruined fortunes of his country and to heal the wounds which a war of unparalleled severity had brought upon this people he exhibited the same wise and beneficent policy. Under his auspicious rule, husbandry revived, arts were encouraged, and the turbulent barons were awed into subjection. Scotland recovered during his administration in a great measure from the devastation that had preceded it; and the peasants, forgetting the stern warrior in the beneficent monarch, long remembered his sway under the name of the “good King Robert’s reign.”

But the greatness of his character appeared most of all from the events that occurred after his death. When the capacity with which he and his worthy associates Randolph and Douglas had counterbalanced the superiority of English arms was withdrawn, the fabric which they had supported fell to the ground. In the very first battle which was fought after his death at Hamildon Hill, a larger army than that which conquered at Bannockburn was overthrown by the archers of England, without a single knight couching his spear. Never at any subsequent period was Scotland able to stand the more powerful arms of the English yeomanry. Thenceforward her military history is little more than a melancholy catalogue of continued defeats, occasioned rather by treachery on the part of her nobles or incapacity in her generals than any defect of valor in her soldiers; and the independence of the monarchy was maintained rather by the terror which the name of Bruce and the remembrance of Bannockburn had inspired than by the achievements of any of the successors to his throne.

The merits of Robert Bruce as a warrior are very generally acknowledged; and the eyes of Scottish patriotism turn with the greater exultation to his triumphs from the contrast which their splendor affords to the barren annals of the subsequent reigns. But the important consequences of his victories are not sufficiently appreciated. But for his bold and unconquerable spirit, Scotland might have shared with Ireland the severity of English conquest; and instead of exulting now in the prosperity of our country, the energy of our peasantry, and the patriotic spirit of our resident landed proprietors, we might have been deploring with her an absent nobility, an oppressive tenantry, a bigoted and ruined people.

The English are apt to consider with peculiar fondness the history of Edward III, and to esteem his reign, as it was one of the longest, the most glorious, also, that occurs in the annals of their nation. The ascendant which they then began to acquire over France, their rival and supposed national enemy, makes them cast their eyes on this period with great complacency, and sanctifies every measure which Edward embraced for that end. But the domestic government of this prince is really more admirable than his foreign victories; and England enjoyed, by the prudence and vigor of his administration, a longer interval of domestic peace and tranquillity than she had been blessed with in any former period, or than she experienced for many ages after. He gained the affections of the great, yet curbed their licentiousness; he made them feel his power, without their daring, or even being inclined, to murmur at it; his affable and obliging behavior, his munificence and generosity, made them submit with pleasure to his dominion; his valor and conduct made them successful in most of their enterprises; and their unquiet spirits, directed against a public enemy, had no leisure to breed those disturbances to which they were naturally so much inclined, and which the frame of the government seemed so much to authorize.

This was the chief benefit which resulted from Edward’s victories and conquests. His foreign wars were in other respects neither founded in justice nor directed to any salutary purpose. His attempt against the King of Scotland, a minor and a brother-in-law, and the revival of his grandfather’s claim of superiority over that kingdom were both unreasonable and ungenerous; and he allowed himself to be too easily seduced, by the glaring prospect of French conquests, from the acquisition of a point which was practicable, and which, if attained, might really have been of lasting utility to his country and his successors. The success which he met with in France, though chiefly owing to his eminent talents, was unexpected; and yet from the very nature of things, not from any unforeseen accidents, was found, even during his lifetime, to have procured him no solid advantages. But the glory of a conqueror is so dazzling to the vulgar, the animosity of nations is so violent, that the fruitless desolation of so fine a part of Europe as France is totally disregarded by us, and is never considered as a blemish in the character or conduct of this prince; and, indeed, from the unfortunate state of human nature, it will commonly happen that a sovereign of genius, such as Edward, who usually finds everything easy in his domestic government, will turn himself toward military enterprises, where alone he meets with opposition, and where he has full exercise for his industry and capacity.

It is remarked by an elegant historian that conquerors, though usually the bane of human kind, proved often, in those feudal times, the most indulgent of sovereigns. They stood most in need of supplies from their people; and not being able to compel them by force to submit to the necessary impositions, they were obliged to make them some compensation by equitable laws and popular concessions. This remark is, in some measure, though imperfectly, justified by the conduct of Edward III. He took no steps of moment without consulting his Parliament and obtaining their approbation, which he afterward pleaded as a reason for their supporting his measures. The Parliament, therefore, rose into greater consideration during his reign, and acquired more regular authority than in any former time; and even the House of Commons, which during turbulent and factious periods, was naturally depressed by the greater power of the crown and barons, began to appear of some weight in the constitution. In the later years of Edward, the king’s ministers were impeached in Parliament, particularly Lord Latimer, who fell a sacrifice to the authority of the Commons; and they even obliged the king to banish his mistress by their remonstrances. Some attention was also paid to the election of their members; and lawyers, in particular, who were at that time men of character somewhat inferior, were totally excluded from the House during several Parliaments.

Edward granted about twenty parliamentary confirmations of the great charter; and these concessions are commonly appealed to as proofs of his great indulgence to the people and his tender regard for their liberties. But the contrary presumption is more natural. If the maxims of Edward’s reign had not been in general somewhat arbitrary, and if the great charter had not been frequently violated, the Parliament would never have applied for these frequent confirmations, which could add no force to a deed regularly observed, and which could serve to no other purpose than to prevent the contrary precedents from turning into a rule, and acquiring authority. It was indeed the effect of the irregular government during those ages that a statute which had been enacted some years, instead of acquiring, was imagined to lose force by time, and needed to be often renewed by recent statutes of the same sense and tenor. Hence, likewise, that general clause, so frequent in old acts of Parliament, that the statutes enacted by the king’s progenitors should be observed—a precaution which, if we do not consider the circumstances of the times, might appear absurd and ridiculous. The frequent confirmations of the privileges of the Church proceeded from the same cause.

There is not a reign among those of the ancient English monarchs which deserves more to be studied than that of Edward III, nor one where the domestic transactions will better discover the true genius of that kind of mixed government which was then established in England. The struggles with regard to the validity and authority of the great charter were now over; the king was acknowledged to lie under some limitations; Edward himself was a prince of great capacity, not governed by favorites, not led astray by any unruly passion, sensible that nothing could be more essential to his interest than to keep on good terms with his people; yet, on the whole, it appears, that the government at best was only a barbarous monarchy, not regulated by any fixed maxims nor bounded by any certain undisputed rights which in practice were regularly observed. The king conducted himself by one set of principles, the barons by another, the Commons by a third, the clergy by a fourth. All these systems of government were opposite and incompatible; each of them prevailed in its turn, as incidents were favorable to it; a great prince rendered the monarchical power predominant; the weakness of a king gave reins to the aristocracy: a superstitious age saw the clergy triumphant; the people, for whom chiefly government was instituted, and who chiefly deserve consideration, were the weakest of the whole. But the Commons, little obnoxious to any other order, though they sunk under the violence of tempests, silently reared their head in more peaceable times; and while the storm was brewing were courted on all sides, and thus received still some accession to their privileges, or at worst some confirmation of them.

In a quarter of the city which was inhabited only by mechanics and Jews, the marriage of an innkeeper and a washerwoman produced the future deliverer of Rome. From such parents Nicholas Rienzi Gabrini could inherit neither dignity nor fortune; and the gift of a liberal education, which they painfully bestowed, was the cause of his glory and untimely end. The study of history and eloquence, the writings of Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Cæsar, and Valerius Maximus elevated above his equals and contemporaries the genius of the young plebeian; he perused with indefatigable diligence the manuscripts and marbles of antiquity; loved to dispense his knowledge in familiar language; and was often provoked to exclaim: “Where are now these Romans? their virtue, their justice, their power? Why was I not born in those happy times?” When the republic addressed to the throne of Avignon an embassy of the three orders, the spirit and eloquence of Rienzi recommended him to a place among the thirteen deputies of the commons. The orator had the honor of haranguing Pope Clement VI, and the satisfaction of conversing with Petrarch, a congenial mind; but his aspiring hopes were chilled by disgrace and poverty, and the patriot was reduced to a single garment and the charity of the hospital. From this misery he was relieved by the sense of merit or smile of favor; and the employment of apostolic notary afforded him a daily stipend of five gold florins, a more honorable and extensive connection, and the right of contrasting, both in words and actions, his own integrity with the vices of the state. The eloquence of Rienzi was prompt and persuasive; the multitude is always prone to envy and censure; he was stimulated by the loss of a brother and the impunity of the assassins; nor was it possible to excuse or exaggerate the public calamities.

A prophecy, or rather a summons, affixed on the church door of St. George, was the first public evidence of his designs; a nocturnal (May 20, A.D. 1347) assembly of a hundred citizens on Mount Aventine, the first step to their execution. After an oath of secrecy and aid, he represented to the conspirators the importance and facility of their enterprise; that the nobles, without union or resources, were strong only in the fear of their imaginary strength; that all power, as well as right, was in the hands of the people; that the revenues of the apostolical chamber might relieve the public distress; and that the Pope himself would approve their victory over the common enemies of government and freedom. After securing a faithful band to protect his first declaration, he proclaimed through the city, by sound of trumpet, that on the evening of the following day all persons should assemble without arms before the church of St. Angelo to provide for the re-establishment of the good estate. The whole night was employed in the celebration of thirty masses of the Holy Ghost, and in the morning, Rienzi, bareheaded, but in complete armor, issued from the church, encompassed by the hundred conspirators.

The Pope’s vicar, the simple Bishop of Orvieto, who had been persuaded to sustain a part in this singular ceremony, marched on his right hand, and three great standards were borne aloft as the emblems of their design. In the first, the banner of liberty, Rome was seated on two lions, with a palm in one hand and a globe in the other; St. Paul, with a drawn sword, was delineated in the banner of justice; and in the third, St. Peter held the keys of concord and peace. Rienzi was encouraged by the presence and applause of an innumerable crowd, who understood little and hoped much; and the procession slowly rolled forward from the castle of St. Angelo to the Capitol. His triumph was disturbed by some secret emotions which he labored to suppress; he ascended without opposition, and with seeming confidence, the citadel of the republic, harangued the people from the balcony, and received the most flattering confirmation of his acts and laws. The nobles, as if destitute of arms and counsels, beheld in silent consternation this strange revolution; and the moment had been prudently chosen, when the most formidable, Stephen Colonna, was absent from the city. On the first rumor, he returned to his palace, affected to despise this plebeian tumult, and declared to the messenger of Rienzi that at his leisure he would cast the madman from the windows of the Capitol. The great bell instantly rang an alarm, and so rapid was the tide, so urgent was the danger, that Colonna escaped with precipitation to the suburb of St. Laurence; from thence, after a moment’s refreshment, he continued the same speedy career till he reached in safety his castle of Palestrina, lamenting his own imprudence, which had not trampled the spark of this mighty conflagration. A general and peremptory order was issued from the Capitol to all the nobles that they should peaceably retire to their estates; they obeyed, and their departure secured the tranquillity of the free and obedient citizens of Rome.

Never, perhaps, has the energy and effect of a single mind been more remarkably felt than in the sudden though transient reformation of Rome by the tribune Rienzi. A den of robbers was converted to the discipline of a camp or convent; patient to hear, swift to redress, inexorable to punish, his tribunal was always accessible to the poor and stranger; nor could birth or dignity or the immunities of the Church protect the offender or his accomplices. The privileged houses, the private sanctuaries in Rome, on which no officer of justice would presume to trespass, were abolished; and he applied the timber and iron of their barricades in the fortifications of the Capitol. The venerable father of the Colonna was exposed in his own palace to the double shame of being desirous and of being unable to protect a criminal. A mule, with a jar of oil, had been stolen near Capranica, and the lord of the Ursini family was condemned to restore the damage and to discharge a fine of four hundred florins for his negligence in guarding the highways. Nor were the persons of the barons more inviolate than their lands or houses, and, either from accident or design, the same impartial rigor was exercised against the heads of the adverse factions.

Peter Agapet Colonna, who had himself been senator of Rome, was arrested in the street for injury or debt; and justice was appeased by the tardy execution of Martin Ursini, who, among his various acts of violence and rapine, had pillaged a shipwrecked vessel at the mouth of the Tiber. His name, the purple of two cardinals, his uncles, a recent marriage, and a mortal disease were disregarded by the inflexible tribune, who had chosen his victim. The public officers dragged him from his palace and nuptial bed; his trial was short and satisfactory; the bell of the Capitol convened the people. Stripped of his mantle, on his knees, with his hands bound behind his back, he heard the sentence of death, and, after a brief confession, Ursini was led away to the gallows. After such an example, none who were conscious of guilt could hope for impunity, and the flight of the wicked, the licentious, and the idle soon purified the city and territory of Rome. In this time (says the historian) the woods began to rejoice that they were no longer infested with robbers; the oxen began to plow; the pilgrims visited the sanctuaries; the roads and inns were replenished with travelers; trade, plenty, and good faith were restored in the markets; and a purse of gold might be exposed without danger in the midst of the highway. As soon as the life and property of the subject are secure, the labors and rewards of industry spontaneously revive. Rome was still the metropolis of the Christian world, and the fame and fortunes of the tribune were diffused in every country by the strangers who had enjoyed the blessings of his government.

The deliverance of his country inspired Rienzi with a vast and perhaps visionary idea of uniting Italy in a great federative republic, of which Rome should be the ancient and lawful head, and the free cities and princes the members and associates. His pen was not less eloquent than his tongue, and his numerous epistles were delivered to swift and trusty messengers. On foot, with a white wand in their hand, they traversed the forests and mountains; enjoyed, in the most hostile states, the sacred security of ambassadors; and reported, in the style of flattery or truth, that the highways along their passage were lined with kneeling multitudes, who implored Heaven for the success of their undertaking. Beyond the Alps, more especially at Avignon, the revolution was the theme of curiosity, wonder, and applause. Petrarch had been the private friend, perhaps the secret counselor, of Rienzi; his writings breathe the most ardent spirit of patriotism and joy; and all respect for the Pope, all gratitude for the Colonna, was lost in the superior duties of a Roman citizen. The poet-laureate of the Capitol maintains the act, applauds the hero, and mingles with some apprehension and advice the most lofty hopes of the permanent and rising greatness of the republic.

While Petrarch indulged these prophetic visions the Roman hero was fast declining from the meridian of fame and power; and the people who had gazed with astonishment on the ascending meteor began to mark the irregularity of its course and the vicissitudes of light and obscurity. More eloquent than judicious, more enterprising than resolute, the faculties of Rienzi were not balanced by cool and commanding reason; he magnified in a tenfold proportion the objects of hope and fear; and prudence, which could not have erected, did not presume to fortify his throne. In the blaze of prosperity his virtues were insensibly tinctured with the adjacent vices—justice with cruelty, liberality with profusion, and the desire of fame with puerile and ostentatious vanity. He might have learned that the ancient tribunes, so strong and sacred in the public opinion, were not distinguished in style, habit, or appearance from an ordinary plebeian; and that as often as they visited the city on foot a single viator, or beadle, attended the exercise of their office. The Gracchi would have frowned or smiled could they have read the sonorous titles and epithets of their successor, “Nicholas, severe and merciful; deliverer of Rome; defender of Italy; friend of mankind, and of liberty, peace, and justice; tribune august.” His theatrical pageants had prepared the revolution; but Rienzi abused, in luxury and pride, the political maxim of speaking to the eyes as well as the understanding of the multitude. From nature he had received the gift of a handsome person till it was swelled and disfigured by intemperance; and his propensity to laughter was corrected in the magistrate by the affectation of gravity and sternness. He was clothed, at least on public occasions, in a party-colored robe of velvet or satin lined with fur and embroidered with gold. The rod of justice, which he carried in his hand, was a scepter of polished steel, crowned with a globe and cross of gold, and inclosing a small fragment of the true and holy wood. In his civil and religious processions through the city he rode on a white steed, the symbol of royalty. The great banner of the republic, a sun with a circle of stars, a dove with an olive-branch, was displayed over his head; a shower of gold and silver was scattered among the populace; fifty guards with halberds encompassed his person; a troop of horse preceded his march, and their cymbals and trumpets were of massy silver.

These extraordinary spectacles might deceive or flatter the people; and their own vanity was gratified in the vanity of their leader. But in his private life he soon deviated from the strict rule of frugality and abstinence; and the plebeians, who were awed by the splendor of the nobles, were provoked by the luxury of their equal. His wife, his son, his uncle (a barber in name and profession), exposed the contrast of vulgar manners and princely expense; and without acquiring the majesty, Rienzi degenerated into the vices of a king.

The conquest and monarchy of the world was the first object of the ambition of Timour. To live in the memory and esteem of future ages was the second wish of his magnanimous spirit. All the civil and military transactions of his reign were diligently recorded in the journals of his secretaries; the authentic narrative was revised by the persons best informed of each particular transaction, and it is believed in the empire and family of Timour that the monarch himself composed the “Commentaries” of his life and the “Institutions” of his government. But these cares were ineffectual for the preservation of his fame, and these precious memorials in the Mogul or Persian language were concealed from the world, or at least from the knowledge of Europe. The nations which he vanquished exercised a base and impotent revenge; and ignorance has long repeated the tale of calumny which had disfigured the birth and character, the person, and even the name of Tamerlane. Yet his real merit would be enhanced, rather than debased, by the elevation of a peasant to the throne of Asia; nor can his lameness be a theme of reproach, unless he had the weakness to blush at a natural, or perhaps an honorable, infirmity.

In the eyes of the Moguls, who held the indefeasible succession of the house of Zingis, he was doubtless a rebel subject; yet he sprang from the noble tribe of Berlass; his fifth ancestor, Carashar Nevian, had been the vizier of Zagatai in his new realm of Transoxiana; and in the ascent of some generations the branch of Timour is confounded, at least by the females, with the imperial stem. He was born forty miles to the south of Samarcand, in the village of Sebzar, in the fruitful territory of Cash, of which his fathers were the hereditary chiefs, as well as of a toman of ten thousand horse. His birth was cast on one of those periods of anarchy which announce the fall of the Asiatic dynasties, and opened a new field to adventurous ambition. The khans of Zagatai were extinct, the emirs aspired to independence, and their domestic feuds could only be suspended by the conquest and tyranny of the khans of Kashgar, who, with an army of Getes or Calmucks, invaded the Transoxian kingdom.

From the twelfth year of his age, Timour had entered the field of action; in the twenty-fifth he stood forth as the deliverer of his country; and the eyes and wishes of the people were turned toward a hero who suffered in their cause. The chiefs of the law and of the army had pledged their salvation to support him with their lives and fortunes; but in the hour of danger they were silent and afraid; and, after waiting seven days on the hills of Samarcand, he retreated to the desert with only sixty horsemen. The fugitives were overtaken by a thousand Getes, whom he repulsed with incredible slaughter, and his enemies were forced to exclaim, “Timour is a wonderful man; fortune and the divine favor are with him.” But in this bloody action his own followers were reduced to ten, a number which was soon diminished by the desertion of three Carizmians. He wandered in the desert with his wife, seven companions, and four horses; and sixty-two days was he plunged in a loathsome dungeon, whence he escaped by his own courage and the remorse of the oppressor. After swimming the broad and rapid stream of the Jihoon, or Oxus, he led, during some months, the life of a vagrant and outlaw, on the borders of the adjacent states. But his fame shone brighter in adversity; he learned to distinguish the friends of his person, the associates of his fortune, and to apply the various characters of men for their advantage, and above all for his own. On his return to his native country, Timour was successively joined by the parties of his confederates, who anxiously sought him in the desert; nor can I refuse to describe, in his pathetic simplicity, one of their fortunate encounters. He presented himself as a guide to three chiefs, who were at the head of seventy horse. “When their eyes fell upon me,” says Timour, “they were overwhelmed with joy; and they alighted from their horses; and they came and kneeled; and they kissed my stirrup. I also came down from my horse, and took each of them in my arms. And I put my turban on the head of the first chief; and my girdle, rich in jewels and wrought with gold, I bound on the loins of the second; and the third, I clothed in my own coat. And they wept, and I wept also; and the hour of prayer was arrived, and we prayed. And we mounted our horses, and came to my dwelling; and I collected my people, and made a feast.”

His trusty hands were soon increased by the bravest of the tribes; he led them against a superior foe, and after some vicissitudes of war, the Getes were finally driven from the kingdom of Transoxiana. He had done much for his own glory, but much remained to be done, much art to be exerted, and some blood to be spilled, before he could teach his equals to obey him as their master. The birth and power of Emir Houssein compelled him to accept a vicious and unworthy colleague, whose sister was the best beloved of his wives. Their union was short and jealous; but the policy of Timour in their frequent quarrels exposed his rival to the reproach of injustice and perfidy; and, after a small defeat, Houssein was slain by some sagacious friends, who presumed, for the last time, to disobey the commands of their lord.

At the age of thirty-four, and in a general diet or couroultai, he was invested with imperial command, but he affected to revere the house of Zingis; and while the Emir Timour reigned over Zagatai and the East, a nominal khan served as a private officer in the armies of his servant. A fertile kingdom, five hundred miles in length and in breadth, might have satisfied the ambition of a subject; but Timour aspired to the dominion of the world, and before his death the crown of Zagatai was one of the twenty-seven crowns which he had placed on his head.

The fame of Timour has pervaded the East and West; his posterity is still invested with the imperial title; and the admiration of his subjects, who revered him almost as a deity, may be justified in some degree by the praise or confession of his bitterest enemies. Although he was lame of a hand and foot, his form and stature were not unworthy of his rank; and his vigorous health, so essential to himself and to the world, was corroborated by temperance and exercise. In his familiar discourse he was grave and modest, and, if he was ignorant of the Arabic language, he spoke with fluency and elegance the Persian and Turkish idioms. It was his delight to converse with the learned on topics of history and science; and the amusement of his leisure hours was the game of chess, which he improved or corrupted with new refinements. In his religion he was a zealous though not perhaps an orthodox Mussulman; but his sound understanding may tempt us to believe, that a superstitious reverence for omens and prophecies, for saints and astrologers, was only affected as an instrument of policy.

In the government of a vast empire, he stood alone and absolute, without a rebel to oppose his power, a favorite to seduce his affections, or a minister to mislead his judgment. It was his firmest maxim that, whatever might be the consequence, the word of the prince should never be disputed or recalled; but his foes have maliciously observed that the commands of anger and destruction were more strictly executed than those of beneficence and favor. His sons and grandsons, of whom Timour left six-and-thirty at his decease, were his first and most submissive subjects; and whenever they deviated from their duty they were corrected, according to the laws of Zingis, with the bastinado, and afterward restored to honor and command. Perhaps his heart was not devoid of the social virtues; perhaps he was not incapable of loving his friends and pardoning his enemies; but the rules of morality are founded on the public interest, and it may be sufficient to applaud the wisdom of a monarch, for the liberality by which he is not impoverished, and for the justice by which he is strengthened and enriched. To maintain the harmony of authority and obedience, to chastise the proud, to protect the weak, to reward the deserving, to banish vice and idleness from his dominions, to secure the traveler and merchant, to restrain the depredations of the soldier, to cherish the labors of the husbandman, to encourage industry and learning, and, by an equal and moderate assessment, to increase the revenue, without increasing the taxes—are indeed the duties of a prince; but, in the discharge of these duties, he finds an ample and immediate recompense. Timour might boast that at his accession to the throne Asia was the prey of anarchy and rapine, while under his prosperous monarchy a child, fearless and unhurt, might carry a purse of gold from the east to the west. Such was his confidence of merit, that from this reformation he derived an excuse for his victories and a title to universal dominion.

The following observations will serve to appreciate his claim to the public gratitude; and perhaps we shall conclude that the Mogul emperor was rather the scourge than the benefactor of mankind. If some partial disorders, some local oppressions, were healed by the sword of Timour, the remedy was far more pernicious than the disease. By their rapine, cruelty, and discord, the petty tyrants of Persia might afflict their subjects; but whole nations were crushed under the footsteps of the reformer. The ground which had been occupied by flourishing cities, was often marked by his abominable trophies—by columns or pyramids of human heads. Astrakhan, Carizme, Delhi, Ispahan, Bagdad, Aleppo, Damascus, Boursa, Smyrna, and a thousand others were sacked or burned or utterly destroyed in his presence and by his troops; and perhaps his conscience would have been startled if a priest or philosopher had dared to number the millions of victims whom he had sacrificed to the establishment of peace and order. His most destructive wars were rather inroads than conquests. He invaded Turkistan, Kipzak, Russia, Hindostan, Syria, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia, without a hope or a desire of preserving those distant provinces. Thence he departed laden with spoil; but he left behind him neither troops to awe the contumacious, nor magistrates to protect the obedient natives. When he had broken the fabric of their ancient government he abandoned them to the evils which his invasion had aggravated or caused; nor were these evils compensated by any present or possible benefits.

The kingdoms of Transoxiana and Persia were the proper field which he labored to cultivate and adorn as the perpetual inheritance of his family. But his peaceful labors were often interrupted, and sometimes blasted, by the absence of the conqueror. While he triumphed on the Volga or the Ganges, his servants, and even his sons, forgot their master and their duty. The public and private injuries were poorly redressed by the tardy rigor of inquiry and punishment; and we must be content to praise the “Institutions” of Timour, as the specious idea of a perfect monarchy. Whatsoever might be the blessings of his administration, they evaporated with his life. To reign, rather than to govern, was the ambition of his children and grandchildren—the enemies of each other and of the people. A fragment of the empire was upheld with some glory by Sharokh, his youngest son; but after his decease, the scene was again involved in darkness and blood, and, before the end of a century, Transoxiana and Persia were trampled by the Uzbecks from the north, and the Turkomans of the black and white sheep. The race of Timour would have been extinct, if a hero, his descendant in the fifth degree, had not fled before the Uzbeck arms to the conquest of Hindostan. His successors (the great Moguls) extended their sway from the mountains of Cashmir to Cape Comorin, and from Candahar to the Gulf of Bengal. Since the reign of Aurungzebe, their empire has been dissolved, the treasures of Delhi have been rifled by a Persian robber, and the richest of their kingdoms is now possessed by a company of Christian merchants, of a remote island in the northern ocean.[23]

Jeanne d’Arc was the child of a laborer of Domrémy, a little village in the neighborhood of Vaucouleurs on the borders of Lorraine and Champagne. Just without the cottage where she was born began the great woods of the Vosges, where the children of Domrémy drank in poetry and legend from fairy ring and haunted well, hung their flower garlands on the sacred trees, and sang songs to the “good people,” who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but “a good girl, simple and pleasant in her ways,” spinning and sewing by her mother’s side while the other girls went to the fields, attended to the poor and sick, fond of church, and listening to the church-bell with a dreamy passion of delight which never left her. The quiet life was soon broken by the storm of war as it at last came home to Domrémy. As the outcasts and wounded passed by the young peasant-girl gave them her bed and nursed them in their sickness. Her whole nature summed itself up in one absorbing passion: she “had pity,” to use the phrase forever on her lip, “on the fair realm of France.”

As her passion grew she recalled old prophecies that a maid from the Lorraine border should save the land; she saw visions; St. Michael appeared to her in a flood of blinding light, and bade her go to the help of the king and restore to him his realm. “Messire,” answered the girl, “I am but a poor maiden; I know not how to ride to the wars, or to lead men-at-arms.” The archangel returned to give her courage, and to tell her of “the pity” that there was in heaven for the fair realm of France. The girl wept, and longed that the angels who appeared to her would carry her away, but her mission was clear. It was in vain that her father, when he heard her purpose, swore to drown her ere she should go to the field with men-at-arms. It was in vain that the priest, the wise people of the village, the captain of Vaucouleurs, doubted and refused to aid her. “I must go to the king,” persisted the peasant-girl, “even if I wear my limbs to the very knees.... I had far rather rest and spin by my mother’s side,” she pleaded, with a touching pathos, “for this is no work of my choosing, but I must go and do it, for my Lord wills it.” “And who,” they asked, “is your Lord?” “He is God.” Words such as these touched the rough captain at last; he took Jeanne by the hand and swore to lead her to the king. When she reached Chinon she found hesitation and doubt. The theologians proved from their books that they ought not to believe her. “There is more in God’s book than in yours,” Jeanne answered, simply. At last Charles received her in the midst of a throng of nobles and soldiers. “Gentle Dauphin,” said the girl, “my name is Jeanne the Maid. The heavenly King sends me to tell you that you shall be anointed and crowned in the town of Rheims, and you shall be lieutenant of the heavenly King who is the King of France.”

The girl was in her eighteenth year, tall, finely formed, with all the vigor and activity of her peasant rearing, able to stay from dawn to nightfall on horseback without meat or drink. As she mounted her charger, clad in white armor from head to foot, with the great white banner studded with fleur-de-lis waving over her head, she seemed “a thing wholly divine, whether to see or hear.” The ten thousand men-at-arms who followed her from Blois, rough plunderers whose only prayer was that of La Hire, “Sire Dieu, I pray you to do for La Hire what La Hire would do for you were you captain-at-arms and he God,” left off their oaths and foul living at her word and gathered round the altars on their march. Her shrewd peasant humor helped her to manage the wild soldiery, and her followers laughed over their camp-fires at the old warrior who had been so puzzled by her prohibition of oaths that she suffered him still to swear by his bâton. In the midst of her enthusiasm her good sense never left her. The people crowded round her as she rode along, praying her to work miracles, and bringing crosses and chaplets to be blessed by her touch. “Touch them yourself,” she said to an old Dame Margaret; “your touch will be just as good as mine.” But her faith in her mission remained as firm as ever. “The Maid prays and requires you,” she wrote to Bedford, “to work no more distraction in France, but to come in her company to rescue the Holy Sepulchre from the Turk.”—“I bring you,” she told Dunois when he sallied out of Orleans to meet her, “the best aid ever sent to any one, the aid of the King of Heaven.”

The besiegers looked on overawed as she entered Orleans, and, riding round the walls, bade the people look fearlessly on the dreaded forts which surrounded them. Her enthusiasm drove the hesitating generals to engage the handful of besiegers, and the enormous disproportion of forces at once made itself felt. Fort after fort was taken till only the strongest remained, and then the council of war resolved to adjourn the attack. “You have taken your counsel,” replied Jeanne, “and I take mine.” Placing herself at the head of the men-at-arms, she ordered the gates to be thrown open, and led them against the fort. Few as they were, the English fought desperately, and the Maid, who had fallen wounded while endeavoring to scale its walls, was borne into a vineyard, while Dunois sounded the retreat. “Wait a while!” the girl imperiously pleaded, “eat and drink! So soon as my standard touches the wall you shall enter the fort.” It touched, and the assailants burst in. On the next day the siege was abandoned, and the force which had conducted it withdrew in good order to the north.

In the midst of her triumph, Jeanne still remained the pure, tender-hearted peasant-girl of the Vosges. Her first visit as she entered Orleans was to the great church, and there, as she knelt at mass, she wept in such a passion of devotion that “all the people wept with her.” Her tears burst forth afresh at her first sight of bloodshed and of the corpses strewed over the battle-field. She grew frightened at her first wound, and only threw off the touch of womanly fear when she heard the signal for retreat.

Yet more womanly was the purity with which she passed through the brutal warriors of a mediæval camp. It was her care for her honor that had led her to clothe herself in a soldier’s dress. She wept hot tears when told of the foul taunts of the English, and called passionately on God to witness her chastity. “Yield thee, yield thee, Glasdale,” she cried to the English warrior whose insults had been foulest, as he fell wounded at her feet; “you called me harlot! I have great pity on your soul.” But all thought of herself was lost in the thought of her mission. It was in vain that the French generals strove to remain on the Loire. Jeanne was resolute to complete her task, and, while the English remained panic-stricken around Paris, the army followed her from Gien through Troyes, growing in number as it advanced, till it reached the gates of Rheims. With the coronation of Charles, the Maid felt her errand to be over. “O gentle king, the pleasure of God is done!” she cried, as she flung herself at the feet of Charles VII, and asked leave to go home. “Would it were his pleasure,” she pleaded with the archbishop, as he forced her to remain, “that I might go and keep sheep once more with my sisters and my brothers; they would be so glad to see me again!”

The policy of the French court detained her while the cities of the north of France opened their gates to the newly consecrated king. Bedford, however, who had been left without money or men, had now received re-enforcements, and Charles, after a repulse before the walls of Paris, fell back behind the Loire, while the towns on the Oise submitted again to the Duke of Burgundy. In this later struggle Jeanne fought with her usual bravery, but with the fatal consciousness that her mission was at an end, and during the defense of Compiègne she fell into the power of the Bastard of Vendôme, to be sold by her captor into the hands of the Duke of Burgundy, and by the duke into the hands of the English. To the English her triumphs were victories of sorcery, and after a year’s imprisonment she was brought to trial on a charge of heresy before an ecclesiastical court with the Bishop of Beauvais at its head. Throughout the long process which followed every art was employed to entangle her in her talk. But the simple shrewdness of the peasant-girl foiled the efforts of her judges. “Do you believe,” they asked, “that you are in a state of grace?” “If I am not,” she replied, “God will put me in it. If I am, God will keep me in it.” Her capture, they argued, showed that God had forsaken her. “Since it has pleased God that I should be taken,” she answered, meekly, “it is for the best.” “Will you submit,” they demanded, at last, “to the judgment of the Church militant?” “I have come to the King of France,” Jeanne replied, “by commission from God and from the Church triumphant above; to that Church I submit.... I had far rather die,” she ended, passionately, “than renounce what I have done by my Lord’s command.” They deprived her of mass. “Our Lord can make me hear it without your aid,” she said, weeping. “Do your voices,” asked the judges, “forbid you to submit to the Church and the Pope?” “Ah, no! Our Lord first served.”

Sick, and deprived of all religious aid, it is no wonder that, as the long trial dragged on and question followed question, Jeanne’s firmness wavered. On the charge of sorcery and diabolical possession she still appealed firmly to God. “I hold to my Judge,” she said, as her earthly judges gave sentence against her, “to the King of Heaven and Earth. God has always been my lord in all that I have done. The devil has never had power over me.” It was only with a view to be delivered from the military prison and transferred to the prisons of the Church that she consented to a formal abjuration of heresy. She feared, in fact, among the English soldiery those outrages to her honor, to guard against which she had from the first assumed the dress of a man. In the eyes of the Church her dress was a crime, and she abandoned it; but a renewed insult forced her to resume the one safeguard left her, and the return to it was treated as a relapse into heresy, which doomed her to death. A great pile was raised in the market-place of Rouen where her statue stands now. Even the brutal soldiers who snatched the hated “witch” from the hands of the clergy and hurried her to her doom were hushed as she reached the stake. One indeed passed to her a rough cross he had made from a stick he held, and she clasped it to her bosom. “O Rouen, Rouen!” she was heard to murmur, as her eyes ranged over the city from the lofty scaffold, “I have great fear lest you suffer for my death.... Yes; my voices were of God!” she suddenly cried, as the last moment came; “they have never deceived me!” Soon the flames reached her, the girl’s head sank on her breast, there was one cry of “Jesus!” “We are lost,” an English soldier muttered, as the crowd broke up; “we have burned a saint!”

The siege of Constantinople by the Turks attracts our first attention to the person and character of the great destroyer. Mahomet II was the son of the second Amurath; and though his mother had been decorated with the titles of Christian and princess, she is more probably confounded with the numerous concubines who peopled from every climate the harem of the sultan. His first education and sentiments were those of a devout Mussulman; and as often as he conversed with an infidel, he purified his hands and face by the legal rites of ablution. Age and empire appear to have relaxed this narrow bigotry; his aspiring genius disdained to acknowledge a power above his own, and in his looser hours he presumed (it is said) to brand the Prophet of Mecca as a robber and impostor. Yet the sultan persevered in a decent reverence for the doctrine and discipline of the Koran. His private indiscretion must have been sacred from the vulgar ear, and we should suspect the credulity of strangers and sectaries, so prone to believe that a mind which is hardened against truth must be armed with superior contempt for absurdity and error. Under the tuition of the most skillful masters, Mahomet advanced with an early and rapid progress in the paths of knowledge; and, besides his native tongue, it is affirmed that he spoke or understood five languages—the Arabic, the Persian, the Chaldean or Hebrew, the Latin, and the Greek. The Persian might indeed contribute to his amusement, and the Arabic to his edification; and such studies are familiar to the Oriental youth. In the intercourse of the Greeks and Turks, a conqueror might wish to converse with the people over whom he was ambitious to reign; his own praises in Latin poetry or prose might find a passage to the royal ear; but what use or merit could recommend to the statesman or the scholar the uncouth dialect of his Hebrew slaves?

The history and geography of the world were familiar to his memory; the lives of the heroes of the East, perhaps of the West, excited his emulation; his skill in astrology is excused by the folly of the times, and supposes some rudiments of mathematical science; and a profane taste for the arts is betrayed in his liberal invitation and reward of the painters of Italy. But the influence of religion and learning was employed without effect on his savage and licentious nature. I will not transcribe, nor do I firmly believe, the stories of his fourteen pages, whose bellies were ripped open in search of a stolen melon, or of the beauteous slave whose head he severed from her body, to convince the Janizaries that their master was not the votary of love. His sobriety is attested by the silence of the Turkish annals, which accuse three, and three only, of the Ottoman line of the vice of drunkenness.

But it can not be denied that his passions were at once furious and inexorable; that in the palace, as in the field, a torrent of blood was spilled on the slightest provocation; and that the noblest of the captive youth were often dishonored by his unnatural lust. In the Albanian war he studied the lessons, and soon surpassed the example, of his father; and the conquest of two empires, twelve kingdoms, and two hundred cities—a vain and flattering account—is ascribed to his invincible sword. He was doubtless a soldier, and possibly a general. Constantinople has sealed his glory; but if we compare the means, the obstacles, and the achievements, Mahomet II must blush to sustain a parallel with Alexander or Timour. Under his command, the Ottoman forces were always more numerous than their enemies; yet their progress was bounded by the Euphrates and the Adriatic, and his arms were checked by Huniades and Scanderbeg, by the Rhodian knights and by the Persian king.

In the reign of Amurath he twice (A.D. 1451, February 9—A. D. 1481, July 2) tasted of royalty, and twice descended from the throne; his tender age was incapable of opposing his father’s restoration, but never could he forgive the viziers who had recommended that salutary measure. His nuptials were celebrated with the daughter of a Turkoman emir, and after a festival of two months he departed from Adrianople with his bride to reside in the government of Magnesia. Before the end of six weeks he was recalled by a sudden message from the divan, which announced the decease of Amurath and the mutinous spirit of the Janizaries. His speed and vigor commanded their obedience; he passed the Hellespont with a chosen guard, and at a distance of a mile from Adrianople, the viziers and emirs, the imams and cadis, the soldiers and the people, fell prostrate before the new sultan. They affected to weep, they affected to rejoice. He ascended the throne at the age of twenty-one years, and removed the cause of sedition by the death, the inevitable death, of his infant brothers. The ambassadors of Europe and Asia soon appeared to congratulate his accession and solicit his friendship, and to all he spoke the language of moderation and peace. The confidence of the Greek emperor was revived by the solemn oaths and fair assurances with which he sealed the ratification of the treaty; and a rich domain on the banks of the Strymon was assigned for the annual payment of three hundred thousand aspers, the pension of an Ottoman prince, who was detained at his request in the Byzantine court. Yet the neighbors of Mahomet might tremble at the severity with which a youthful monarch reformed the pomp of his father’s household; the expenses of luxury were applied to those of ambition, and a useless train of seven thousand falconers was either dismissed from his service or enlisted in his troops. In the first summer of his reign he visited with an army the Asiatic provinces; but after humbling the pride, Mahomet accepted the submission, of the Caramanian, that he might not be diverted by the smallest obstacle from the execution of his great design.

The Mahometan, and more especially the Turkish casuists, have pronounced that no promise can bind the faithful against the interest and duty of their religion, and that the sultan may abrogate his own treaties and those of his predecessors. The justice and magnanimity of Amurath had scorned this immoral privilege; but his son, though the proudest of men, could stoop from ambition to the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit. Peace was on his lips, while war was in his heart; he incessantly sighed for the possession of Constantinople; and the Greeks, by their own indiscretion, afforded the first pretense of the fatal rupture.

From the first hour of the memorable 29th of May, when the beleaguered city was carried by storm, disorder and rapine prevailed in Constantinople till the eighth hour of the same day, when the sultan himself passed in triumph through the gate of St. Romanus. He was attended by his viziers, bashaws, and guards, each of whom (says a Byzantine historian) was robust as Hercules, dexterous as Apollo, and equal in battle to any ten of the race of ordinary mortals. The conqueror gazed with satisfaction and wonder on the strange though splendid appearance of the domes and palaces, so dissimilar from the style of Oriental architecture. In the hippodrome, or atmeidan, his eye was attracted by the twisted column of the three serpents; and as a trial of his strength he shattered with his iron mace or battle-axe the under jaw of one of these monsters, which in the eyes of the Turks were the idols or talismans of the city. At the principal door of St. Sophia he alighted from his horse and entered the dome; and such was his jealous regard for that monument of his glory, that on observing a zealous Mussulman in the act of breaking the marble pavement, he admonished him with his cimeter, that, if the spoil and captives were granted to the soldiers, the public and private buildings had been reserved for the prince. By his command the metropolis of the Eastern Church was transformed into a mosque, the rich and portable instruments of superstition had been removed; the crosses were thrown down, and the walls, which were covered with images and mosaics, were washed and purified and restored to a state of naked simplicity. On the same day, or on the ensuing Friday, the muezzin or crier ascended the most lofty turret, and proclaimed the ezan, or public invitation, in the name of God and his prophet. The imam preached, and Mahomet II performed the namaz of prayer and thanksgiving on the great altar where the Christian mysteries had so lately been celebrated before the last of the Cæsars. From St. Sophia he proceeded to the august but desolate mansion of a hundred successors of the great Constantine, but which in a few hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: “The spider hath wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.”

In one point Lorenzo was inferior to his grandfather. He had no commercial talent. After suffering the banking business of the Medici to fall into disorder, he became virtually bankrupt, while his personal expenditure kept continually increasing. In order to retrieve his fortunes it was necessary for him to gain complete disposal of the public purse. This was the real object of the constitutional revolution of 1480, whereby his privy council assumed the active functions of the state. Had Lorenzo been as great in finance as in the management of men, the way might have been smoothed for his son Piero in the disastrous year of 1494.

If Lorenzo neglected the pursuit of wealth, whereby Cosmo had raised himself from insignificance to the dictatorship of Florence, he surpassed his grandfather in the use he made of literary patronage. It is not paradoxical to affirm that in his policy we can trace the subordination of a genuine love of art and letters to statecraft. The new culture was one of the instruments that helped to build his despotism. Through his thorough and enthusiastic participation in the intellectual interests of his age, he put himself into close sympathy with the Florentines, who were glad to acknowledge for their leader by far the ablest of the men of parts in Italy.

According as we choose our point of view, we may regard him either as a tyrant, involving his country in debt and dangerous wars, corrupting the morals and enfeebling the spirit of the people, and systematically enslaving the Athens of the modern world for the sake of founding a petty principality; or else as the most liberal-minded noble of his epoch, born to play the first part in the Florentine Republic, and careful to use his wealth and influence for the advancement of his fellow-citizens in culture, learning, arts, and the amenities of life. Savonarola and the Florentine historians adopt the former of these two opinions. Sismondi, in his passion for liberty, arrays against Lorenzo the political assassinations he permitted, the enervation of Florence, the national debt incurred by the republic, and the exhausting wars with Sixtus carried on in his defense.

His panegyrists, on the contrary, love to paint him as the pacificator of Italy, the restorer of Florentine poetry, the profound critic, and the generous patron. The truth lies in the combination of these two apparently contradictory judgments. Lorenzo was the representative man of his nation at a moment when political institutions were everywhere inclining to despotism, and when the spiritual life of the Italians found its noblest expression in art and literature. The principality of Florence was thrust upon him by the policy of Cosimo, by the vote of the chief citizens, and by the example of the sister republics, all of whom, with the exception of Venice, submitted to the sway of rulers. Had he wished, he might have found it difficult to preserve the commonwealth in its integrity. Few but doctrinaires believed in a governo misto; only aristocrats desired a governo stretto; all but democrats dreaded a governo largo. And yet a new constitution must have been framed after one of these types, and the Florentines must have been educated to use it with discretion, before Lorenzo could have resigned his office of dictator with any prospect of freedom for the city in his charge. Such unselfish patriotism, in the face of such overwhelming difficulties, and in antagonism to the whole tendency of the age, was not to be expected from an oligarch of the Renaissance born in the purple, and used from infancy to intrigue.

Lorenzo was a man of marvelous variety and range of mental power. He possessed one of those rare natures fitted to comprehend all knowledge and to sympathize with the most diverse forms of life. While he never for one moment relaxed his grasp on politics, among philosophers he passed for a sage, among men of letters for an original and graceful poet, among scholars for a Grecian sensitive to every nicety of Attic idiom, among artists for an amateur gifted with refined discernment and consummate taste. Pleasure-seekers knew in him the libertine who jousted with the boldest, danced and masqueraded with the merriest, sought adventures in the streets at night, and joined the people in their May-day games and carnival festivities. The pious extolled him as an author of devotional lauds and mystery-plays, a profound theologian, a critic of sermons. He was no less famous for his jokes and repartees than for his pithy apothegms and maxims, as good a judge of cattle as of statues, as much at home in the bosom of his family as in the riot of an orgy, as ready to discourse on Plato as to plan a campaign or to plot the death of a dangerous citizen.

An apologist may always plead that Lorenzo was the epitome of his nation’s most distinguished qualities, that the versatility of the Renaissance found in him its fullest incarnation. It was the duty of Italy in the fifteenth century not to establish religious or constitutional liberty, but to resuscitate culture. Before the disastrous wars of invasion had begun, it might well have seemed even to patriots as though Florence needed a Mæcenas more than a Camillus. Therefore, the prince who in his own person combined all accomplishments, who knew by sympathy and counsel how to stimulate the genius of men superior to himself in special arts and sciences, who spent his fortune lavishly on works of public usefulness, whose palace formed the rallying-point of wit and learning, whose council-chamber was the school of statesmen, who expressed his age in every word and every act, in his vices and his virtues, his crimes and generous deeds, can not be fairly judged by an abstract standard of republican morality. It is nevertheless true that Lorenzo enfeebled and enslaved Florence. At his death he left her socially more dissolute, politically weaker, intellectually more like himself, than he found her. He had not the greatness to rise above the spirit of his century, or to make himself the Pericles instead of the Pisistratus of his republic. In other words, he was adequate, not superior to, Renaissance Italy.

This, then, was the man round whom the greatest scholars of the third period assembled, at whose table sat Angelo, Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leo Battista Alberti, Michael Angelo Buonarotti, Luigi Pulci. The mere enumeration of these names suffices to awake a crowd of memories in the mind of those to whom Italian art and poetry are dear. Lorenzo’s villas, where this brilliant circle met for grave discourse or social converse, heightening the sober pleasures of Italian country life with all that wit and learning could produce of delicate and rare, have been so often sung by poets and celebrated by historians that Careggi, Caffagiolo, and Poggio a Cajano are no less familiar to us than the studious shades of Academe. “In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence,” writes the austere Hallam, moved to more than usual eloquence in the spirit-stirring beauty of his theme, “on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompaniment.” As we climb the steep slope of Fiesole or linger beneath the rose trees that shed their petals from Careggi’s garden walls, once more in our imagination “the world’s great age begins anew”; once more the blossoms of that marvelous spring unclose. While the sun goes down beneath the mountains of Carrara, and the Apennines grow purple-golden, and Florence sleeps beside the silvery Arno, and the large Italian stars come forth above, we remember how those mighty master spirits watched the sphering of new planets in the spiritual skies. Savonarola in his cell below once more sits brooding over the servility of Florence, the corruption of a godless church. Michael Angelo, seated between Ficino and Poliziano, with the voices of the prophets vibrating in his memory, and with the music of Plato sounding in his ears, rests chin on hand and elbow upon knee, like his own Jeremiah, lost in contemplation, whereof the after-fruits shall be the Sistine Chapel and the Medicean tombs. Then, when the strain of thought, “unsphering Plato from the skies,” begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a brand-new canto of Morgante, or a singing boy is bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo’s last made ballatta.

We now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its strange feudal towers, tall pillows of brown stone, crowded together within the narrow circle of the town walls. Very beautiful is the prospect from these ramparts on a spring morning, when the song of nightingales and the scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the groves upon the slopes beneath. The gray Tuscan landscape for scores and scores of miles all round melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, flecked here and there with wandering cloud-shadows. Let those who pace the grass-grown streets of the hushed city remember that here the first flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola’s soul. Here for the first time he prophesied, “The Church will be scourged, then regenerated, and this quickly.” These are the celebrated three conclusions, the three points to which Savonarola in all his prophetic utterances adhered.

But not yet had he fully entered on his vocation. His voice was weak, his style uncertain; his soul, we may believe still wavering between strange dread and awful joy, as he beheld, through many a backward rolling mist of doubt, the mantle of the prophets descend upon him. Already he had abandoned the schoolmen for the Bible. Already he had learned by heart each voice of the Old and New Testaments. Pondering on their texts, he had discovered four separate interpretations for every suggestion of Sacred Writ. For some of the pregnant utterances of the prophets he found hundreds, pouring forth metaphor and illustration in wild and dazzling profusion of audacious, uncouth imagery. The flame which began to smolder in him at San Gemignano burst forth into a blaze at Brescia, in 1486. Savonarola was now aged thirty-four. “Midway upon the path of life,” he opened the book of Revelation; he figured to the people of Brescia the four-and-twenty elders rising to denounce the sins of Italy, and to declare the calamities that must ensue. He pictured to them their city flowing with blood. His voice, which now became the interpreter of his soul, in its resonance and earnestness and piercing shrillness, thrilled his hearers with strange terror. Already they believed his prophecy; and twenty-six years later, when the soldiers of Gascon de Foix slaughtered six thousand souls in the streets of Brescia, her citizens recalled the apocalyptic warnings of the Dominican monk.

As Savonarola is now launched upon his vocation of prophecy, this is the right moment to describe his personal appearance and his style of preaching. We have abundant material for judging what his features were, and how they flashed beneath the storm of inspiration. Fra Bartolommeo, one of his followers, painted a profile of him in the character of St. Peter Martyr. This shows all the benignity and grace of expression which his stern lineaments could assume. It is a picture of the sweet and gentle nature latent within the fiery arraigner of his nation at the bar of God. In contemporary medals the face appears hard, keen, uncompromising, beneath its heavy cowl. But the noblest portrait is an intaglio engraved by Giovanni della Corniole, now to be seen in the Uffizi at Florence. Of this work Michael Angelo, himself a disciple of Savonarola, said that art could go no further. We are therefore justified in assuming that the engraver has not only represented fully the outline of Savonarola’s face, but has also indicated his peculiar expression.

A thick hood covers the whole head and shoulders. Beneath it can be traced the curve of a long and somewhat flat skull, rounded into extraordinary fullness at the base and side. From a deeply sunken eye-socket emerges, scarcely seen, but powerfully felt, the eye that blazed with lightning. The nose is strong, prominent, and aquiline, with wide nostrils, capable of terrible dilation under the stress of vehement emotion. The mouth has full, compressed, projecting lips. It is large, as if made for a torrent of eloquence; it is supplied with massive muscles, as if to move with energy and calculated force and utterance. The jaw-bone is hard and heavy, the cheek-bone emergent; between the two the flesh is hollowed, not so much with the emaciation of monastic vigils as with the athletic exercise of wrestling in the throes of prophecy. The face, on the whole, is ugly, but not repellent; and, in spite of its great strength, it shows signs of feminine sensibility. Like the faces of Cicero and Demosthenes, it seems the fit machine for oratory. But the furnaces hidden away behind that skull, beneath that cowl, have made it haggard with a fire not to be found in the serener features of the classic orators. Savonarola was a visionary and a monk.

The discipline of the cloister left its trace upon him. The wings of dreams have winnowed and withered that cheek as they passed over it. The spirit of prayer quivers upon those eager lips. The color of Savonarola’s flesh was brown; his nerves were exquisitely sensitive yet strong; like a network of wrought steel, elastic, easily overstrained, they recovered their tone and temper less by repose than by the evolution of fresh electricity. With Savonarola fasts were succeeded by trances, and trances by tempests of vehement improvisation. From the midst of such profound debility that he could scarcely crawl up the pulpit steps, he would pass suddenly into the plenitude of power, filling the Dome of Florence with denunciations, sustaining his discourse by no mere trick of rhetoric that flows to waste upon the lips of shallow preachers, but marshaling the phalanx of embattled arguments and pointed illustrations, pouring his thought forth in columns of continuous flame, mingling figures of sublimest imagery with reasonings of severest accuracy, at one time melting his audience to tears, at another freezing them with terror, again quickening their souls with prayers and pleadings and blessings that had in them the sweetness of the very spirit of Christ.

His sermons began with scholastic exposition; as they advanced, the ecstasy of inspiration fell upon the preacher, till the sympathies of the whole people of Florence gathered round him, met and attained, as it were, to single consciousness in him. He then no longer restrained the impulse of his oratory, but became the mouth-piece of God, the interpreter to themselves of all that host. In a fiery crescendo, never flagging, never losing firmness of grasp or lucidity of vision, he ascended the altar-steps of prophecy, and, standing like Moses on the mount between the thunders of God and the tabernacles of the plain, fulminated period after period of impassioned eloquence. The walls of the church re-echoed with sobs and wailings, dominated by one ringing voice.

The scribe to whom we owe the fragments of these sermons at times breaks off with these words: “Here I was so overcome with weeping that I could not go on.” Pico della Mirandola tells us that the mere sound of Savonarola’s voice, startling the stillness of the Duomo, thronged through all its space with people, was like a clap of doom; a cold shiver ran through the marrow of his bones, the hairs of his head stood on end, as he listened. Another witness reports: “These sermons caused such terror, alarm, sobbing, and tears that every one passed through the streets without speaking, more dead than alive.”

Such was the preacher, and such was the effect of his oratory. The theme on which he loved to dwell was this: “Repent! A judgment of God is at hand. A sword is suspended over you. Italy is doomed for her iniquity—for the sins of the Church, whose adulteries have filled the world—for the sins of the tyrants who encourage crime and trample upon souls—for the sins of you people, you fathers and mothers, you young men, you maidens, you children that lisp blasphemy!” Nor did Savonarola deal in generalities. He described in plain language every vice; he laid bare every abuse; so that a mirror was held up to the souls of his hearers, in which they saw their most secret faults appallingly betrayed and ringed around with fire. He entered with particularity into the details of the coming woes. One by one he enumerated the bloodshed, the ruin of cities, the trampling down of provinces, the passage of armies, the desolating wars that were about to fall on Italy. You may read pages of his sermons which seem like vivid narratives of what afterward took place in the sack of Prato, in the storming of Brescia, in the battle of the Ronco, in the cavern-massacre of Vicenza. No wonder that he stirred his audience to their center. The hell within them was revealed. The coming down above them was made manifest. Ezekiel and Jeremiah were not more prophetic. John crying to a generation of vipers, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” was not more weighty with the mission of authentic inspiration.

“I began,” Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of sermons delivered in 1491—“I began publicly to expound the Revelation in our Church of St. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would happen shortly.” It is by right of the foresight of a new age, contained in these three famous so-called conclusions, that Savonarola deserves to be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform; it did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the discipline or to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no founder of a new order; unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he never attempted to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his successors, Caraffe the Theatine, and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no militia for the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for education. Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world, he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible studies. He caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became convinced that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new age would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very nostrils of the God of hosts.

Was Cæsar merely going straight before him, led by the insatiable ambition which lays hands upon all within its reach, or was he aiming at a distinct end, at the realization of a vast conception? Granting that he had no dreams of reconstituting the kingdom of Central Italy himself, Florence at least felt herself threatened. As long ago as his first campaign, when, after making himself master of Imola and Forli, he was still besieging Cesena preparatory to his entry into Pesaro and his progress to Rome by way of Urbino, the Florentine Republic had sent Soderini on a mission to him, to find out his intentions and his terms. The following year, with increased anxiety, as she felt herself approached more closely through the taking of Arezzo, which had fallen into the hands of Cæsar’s troops, she sent him Machiavelli, the most clear-sighted of her secretaries. The spectacle of these two champions face to face is one unique in history. From the day when he arrived in the camp, Machiavelli, who had recognized in the Duke of Valentinois a terrible adversary, felt that it was of vital interest to the state that he should not lose sight of him for a moment. As a point of fact, he never left his side up to the day when he saw him hunted down like a wild beast, vanquished by destiny, fettered beyond all power of doing harm to any one.

Of course, we may refuse to accept the verdict of the secretary of the Florentine Republic. Gregorovius, the celebrated author of the “History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages,” goes so far as to say that it is a reproach to the memory of the founder of political science that he made a blood-stained adventurer like Cæsar the “Italian Messiah”—the precursor, in a word, of Italian unity. Again, P. Villari, in his fine work “N. Machiavelli e suoi tempi,” says that the Florentine secretary, though he was an eyewitness of the actual deeds of Valentinois, made of him an imaginary personage, to whom he attributed the great ideas by which he himself was animated.

Still, we have a right to point out that in history purpose is controlled by action. A great number of the heroic deeds and of the portentous decisions which have determined the lofty destiny of empires have not been the consequence of long premeditation; they have often been the result of the passions and desires of mankind, or simply that of the need of action natural to a vigorous mind. Undoubtedly the immediate object of Alexander VI was the aggrandizement of his children, and the increase of their territory; he cared only for the power of the Church insomuch as it augmented that of his own family, but the deeds accomplished by father and son contributed none the less to reconstitute the temporal dominion of the Church—a work which, after its completion by Julius II, was destined to continue for more than three centuries, from 1510 to 1860.

The ambitious Cæsar himself was turning aside the current for his own particular advantage. When Julius II assumed the triple crown, the officers who held the fortresses of Romagna with one accord refused to give them up to the Church, considering them as the lawful conquest and personal property of their leader. Machiavelli looked only at the results; this is the justification of the opinion which he expresses concerning Valentinois in his book, “Il Principe,” in the “Legazione,” the “Descrizione dei fatti di Romagna,” and the “Decennale.” He was present when these things were done; he calculated the effect of the events he witnessed. From his observation of Cæsar at work, he noted the strength of his will and the resources of his mind, his strategic talents, and his administrative faculty; and as within certain limits the acts of Valentinois tended toward a distinct goal, an ideal not unlike that at which he himself aimed, the Florentine secretary was not the man to be squeamish about ways and means. What did it matter to him whose hand struck at the despots of the petty principalities of Italy? What cared he about the personal ambition of the man who, after overthrowing them, busied himself at once with the organization of their states, gave them laws, kept them under stern discipline, and ended by winning the affections of the people?

Once the idea of union was accepted, a prince of more blameless private life would succeed Cæsar, and there was always so much progress made toward the realization of the great conception. The Sforza had fallen; the princes of the houses of Este and Mantua were not equal to such a task; Lorenzo de’ Medici was no soldier. Impatient to reach his end, Machiavelli cast his eyes around in vain; nowhere could he find a personality capable of great undertakings. Cæsar alone, with his youth and daring, quick to seize an opportunity, free from scruples, imposing by his magnificence—Cæsar, who always went straight to the very core of a matter, a consummate soldier, full of high purposes and lofty schemes—seemed the one man capable of aiming at the goal and attaining it. From that time forward, the secretary made him the incarnation of his ideal prince, removing from his character the hideous elements which lurked beneath the fair exterior of the skillful diplomate and hardy soldier.

Of these “high purposes” of which Machiavelli speaks we have also other proofs, without speaking of the, in a manner, prophetic declaration of the young cardinal who, at twenty, fixed his eyes on the example of the Roman Cæsar, and took as his motto “CUM NUMINE CÆSARIS OMEN.” Some of the contemporaries of the Duke of Valentinois have expressed themselves in distinct terms regarding him. We have here some real revelations of his personal intentions which are free from the après coup of the judgments pronounced by later historians. Speaking of the war which the Spaniards were carrying on to prevent the Pope from extending his dominions beyond the Neapolitan frontier, Signor Villari recognizes the fact that Alexander VI had declared his intention of making Italy “all one piece.” As for Cæsar, we read in the dispatches of Collenuccio, the ambassador of Ferrara, that Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, had taken into his service a secretary who had been for some time in Cæsar’s employ, and that this person averred that he had heard the Duke of Romagna say that he had “deliberately resolved to make himself King of Italy.” Here we have it in so many words.

As regards Machiavelli, could we collect in one page all the traits of character sketched from nature, scattered here and there in his dispatches to the Florentine Signoria, we should have a literary portrait of Valentinois, signed with the name of the most sagacious observer that ever honored Italian diplomacy. Cæsar had never learned the art of war, yet it would be impossible to pass with greater facility from the Consistory to the camp than he did. He was no mere warrior. Brave and impetuous as he was, he had more serious work in hand than the exchanging of sword-thrusts. He was at once a general, a strategist, and an administrator. Hardly had he taken a town when he made laws for it, and organized its administration; the breaches in its fortifications were repaired, and its defense and retention made as safe as if the conquest were final. No sooner had Imola, Forli, and Cesena fallen into his power, than he sent for Leonardo da Vinci to provide for a sufficient supply of water, to repair the fortresses, and to erect public monuments. He founded Monts de Piété, set up courts of justice, and did the work of civilization everywhere. The cities which fell under his sway never misunderstood his efforts; they looked back on the time of his supremacy with regret.

So Machiavelli warned the Florentines not to treat Cæsar “like the other barons, but as a new power in Italy, with whom they might conclude treaties and alliances, rather than offer him an appointment as condottiere.” The purely military element, which was Machiavelli’s speciality, did not escape the attention of the secretary. Once he had found the right man, the next requisite was the proper tool to work with—that is, the army; and so, when he saw these well-disciplined battalions, and the perfect order that reigned among them, the system of supplies secured by treaties, the regular equipment, and, above all, the formidable artillery, “in which department Cæsar alone is as strong as all the sovereigns of Italy put together,” the Secretary of the Republic recognized in Cæsar a born commander, for whom he prophesied the most lofty career.

Cæsar’s life was very short, and the vicissitudes of his fortune followed each other in rapid succession. In youth he was a murderer, in youth a conqueror, and in youth he died. His period of activity as a general extended from the autumn of 1499 to April, 1503, and his actual reign as Duke of Romagna lasted only two years.

On the 26th of January, 1500, having accomplished the first half of his task, he entered Rome as a conqueror—on which occasion a representation was given of the triumph of Cæsar with the various episodes of the life of the Roman Cæsar shown in tableaux vivants, suggested by the painter Mantegna. Eleven allegorical cars started from the Piazza Navona, Borgia himself, crowned with laurel, representing in his own person the conqueror of the world. Before his departure for his second campaign, he had, as we have already seen, caused the assassination of Lucrezia’s second husband, Alfonso de Bisceglie, to prepare for the third marriage of his sister, who was this time to become Duchess of Ferrara, and thus secure him an alliance which would forward his projects as Duke of Romagna. On the 27th of September, 1500, he left Rome again to complete his work, but returned quickly to take part in the war which the King of France had carried into the Neapolitan kingdom, when he possessed himself of the city of Capua, thus acquitting his obligation toward his protector, Louis XII. On the 29th of November his father changed his title of Vicar of the Holy See to that of Duke of Romagna.

The year 1503 proved an eventful one for him. No longer contented with his duchy, he prepared to attack Bologna and to threaten Florence. The day before he set forth on this great undertaking, on the 5th of August, he assisted, together with Alexander VI, at a banquet given in the vineyard of the Cardinal of Corneto, at the gates of Rome. On their return both were taken ill so suddenly that the cardinal was suspected of having poisoned them. The old man breathed his last on the 18th of August. Cæsar, younger and more vigorous, struggled against his malady with extraordinary energy. He wrapped himself, as in a cloak, in the still quivering carcass of a newly disemboweled mule to overcome the shiverings brought on by fever, and then was thrown, still covered with blood, into a vessel of iced water, to bring about the reaction necessary to save his life. This man of iron seemed to prevail against Nature herself. He knew that, once his father dead and himself unable to move, all his enemies would rush upon him at once to crush him. It was the decisive moment of his life. He first sent his bravo, Micheletto, to seize the pontifical treasure, thus making sure of a sum of three hundred thousand ducats, the sinews of resistance. The nine thousand men-at-arms under his orders, the one disciplined force in the city, made him master of Rome; the Sacred College set all their hopes upon this dying man, for he alone possessed sufficient authority to prevent anarchy.

It is a strange spectacle—the representatives of all nations accredited to the Holy See assembling at his bedside to negotiate with him, and Cæsar, weak and helpless as he is, making himself responsible for the preservation of order, while the Sacred College formed itself into conclave to elect the new Pope. In order not to put any pressure upon the cardinals by his presence, the Duke of Valentinois retired to Nepi. He left Rome, carried on the shoulders of his guards, livid and shivering with fever. Around his litter walked the ambassadors of Spain, France, and the empire, and mingled with the troops could be seen his mother Vanozza, his brother Squillace, and his sister-in-law Sancha—all three in danger of their lives in excited Rome. One of the Borgias had been killed, and Fabio Orsini, descendant of one of the Roman barons ruined by Alexander VI, had steeped his hands in the detested blood, and sworn to visit all who bore that hated name with the same fate.

Thomas Wolsey was the son of a wealthy townsman of Ipswich, whose ability had raised him into notice at the close of the preceding reign, and who had been taken by Bishop Fox into the service of the crown. His extraordinary powers hardly, perhaps, required the songs, dances, and carouses with his indulgence in which he was taunted by his enemies, to aid him in winning the favor of the young sovereign. From the post of favorite he soon rose to that of minister. Henry’s resentment at Ferdinand’s perfidy enabled Wolsey to carry out a policy which reversed that of his predecessors. The war had freed England from the fear of French pressure. Wolsey was as resolute to free her from the dictation of Ferdinand, and saw in a French alliance the best security for English independence. In 1514 a treaty was concluded with Louis. The same friendship was continued to his successor, Francis I, whose march across the Alps for the reconquest of Lombardy was facilitated by Henry and Wolsey, in the hope that while the war lasted England would be free from all fear of attack, and that Francis himself might be brought to inevitable ruin. These hopes were defeated by his great victory at Marignano. But Francis, in the moment of triumph, saw himself confronted by a new rival. Master of Castile and Aragon, of Naples and the Netherlands, the new Spanish king, Charles V, rose into a check on the French monarchy such as the policy of Henry or Wolsey had never been able to construct before.

The alliance of England was eagerly sought by both sides, and the administration of Wolsey, amid all its ceaseless diplomacy, for seven years kept England out of war. The peace, as we have seen, restored the hopes of the New Learning; it enabled Colet to reform education, Erasmus to undertake the regeneration of the Church, More to set on foot a new science of politics. But peace, as Wolsey used it, was fatal to English freedom. In the political hints which lie scattered over the “Utopia,” More notes with bitter irony the advance of the new despotism. It was only in “Nowhere” that a sovereign was “removable on suspicion of a design to enslave his people.” In England the work of slavery was being quietly wrought, hints the great lawyer, through the law. “There will never be wanting some pretense for deciding in the king’s favor; as that equity is on his side, or the strict letter of the law, or some forced interpretation of it; or if none of these, that the royal prerogative ought, with conscientious judges, to outweigh all other considerations.”

We are startled at the precision with which More maps out the expedients by which the law courts were to lend themselves to the advance of tyranny till their crowning judgment in the case of ship-money. But behind these judicial expedients lay great principles of absolutism, which, partly from the example of foreign monarchies, partly from the sense of social and political insecurity, and yet more from the isolated position of the crown, were gradually winning their way in public opinion. “These notions,” he goes boldly on, “are fostered by the maxim that the king can do no wrong, however much he may wish to do it; that not only the property but the persons of his subjects are his own; and that a man has a right to no more than the king’s goodness thinks fit not to take from him.” In the hands of Wolsey these maxims were transformed into principles of state. The checks which had been imposed on the action of the sovereign by the presence of great prelates and nobles at his council were practically removed. All authority was concentrated in the hands of a single minister. Henry had munificently rewarded Wolsey’s services to the crown. He had been promoted to the See of Lincoln and thence to the Archbishopric of York. Henry procured his elevation to the rank of cardinal, and raised him to the post of chancellor. The revenues of two sees whose tenants were foreigners fell into his hands; he held the bishopric of Winchester and the abbacy of St. Albans; he was in receipt of pensions from France and Spain, while his official emoluments were enormous. His pomp was almost royal.

A train of prelates and nobles followed him wherever he moved; his household was composed of five hundred persons of noble birth, and its chief posts were held by knights and barons of the realm. He spent his vast wealth with princely ostentation. Two of his houses—Hampton Court and York House, the later Whitehall—were splendid enough to serve at his fall as royal palaces. His school at Ipswich was eclipsed by the glories of his foundation at Oxford, whose name of Cardinal College has been lost in its later title of Christ-church. Nor was this magnificence a mere show of power. The whole direction of home and foreign affairs rested with Wolsey alone; as chancellor he stood at the head of public justice; his elevation to the office of legate rendered him supreme in the Church. Enormous as was the mass of work which he undertook, it was thoroughly done; his administration of the royal treasury was economical; the number of his dispatches is hardly less remarkable than the care bestowed upon each; even More, an avowed enemy, confesses that as chancellor he surpassed all men’s expectations. The court of chancery, indeed, became so crowded through the character of expedition and justice which it gained under his rule that subordinate courts had to be created for its relief. It was this concentration of all secular and ecclesiastical power in a single hand which accustomed England to the personal government which began with Henry VIII; and it was, above all, Wolsey’s long tenure of the whole Papal authority within the realm, and the consequent suspension of appeals to Rome, that led men to acquiesce at a later time in Henry’s claim of religious supremacy; for, proud as was Wolsey’s bearing and high as were his natural powers, he stood before England as the mere creature of the king. Greatness, wealth, authority he held, and owned he held, simply at the royal will. In raising his low-born favorite to the head of Church and state, Henry was gathering all religious as well as all civil authority into his personal grasp. The nation which trembled before Wolsey learned to tremble before the king who could destroy Wolsey by a breath.

Pizarro was tall in stature, well-proportioned, and with a countenance not unpleasing. Bred in camps, with nothing of the polish of a court, he had a soldier-like bearing, and the air of one accustomed to command. But, though not polished, there was no embarrassment or rusticity in his address, which, where it served his purpose, could be plausible and even insinuating. The proof of it is the favorable impression made by him, on presenting himself, after his second expedition—stranger as he was to all its forms and usages—at the punctilious court of Castile.

Unlike many of his countrymen, he had no passion for ostentatious dress, which he regarded as an incumbrance. The costume which he most affected on public occasions was a black cloak, with a white hat, and shoes of the same color; the last, it is said, being in imitation of the Great Captain, whose character he had early learned to admire in Italy, but to which his own, certainly, bore very faint resemblance.

He was temperate in eating, drank sparingly, and usually rose an hour before dawn. He was punctual in attendance to business, and shrank from no toil. He had, indeed, great powers of patient endurance. Like most of his nation, he was fond of play, and cared little for the quality of those with whom he played; though, when his antagonist could not afford to lose, he would allow himself, it is said, to be the loser—a mode of conferring an obligation much commended by a Castilian writer for its delicacy.

Though avaricious, it was in order to spend, and not to hoard. His ample treasure, more ample than those, probably, that ever before fell to the lot of an adventurer, were mostly dissipated in his enterprises, his architectural works, and schemes of public improvement, which, in a country where gold and silver might be said to have lost their value from their abundance, absorbed an incredible amount of money. While he regarded the whole country, in a manner, as his own, and distributed it freely among his captains, it is certain that the princely grant of territory, with twenty thousand vassals, made to him by the Crown, was never carried into effect; nor did his heirs ever reap the benefit of it.

Though bold in action and not easily turned from his purpose, Pizarro was slow in arriving at a decision. This gave him an appearance of irresolution foreign to his character. Perhaps the consciousness of this led him to adopt the custom of saying “No,” at first, to applicants for favor; and afterward, at leisure, to revise his judgment, and grant what seemed to him expedient. He took the opposite course from his comrade Almagro, who, it was observed, generally said “Yes,” but too often failed to keep his promise. This was characteristic of the careless and easy nature of the latter, governed by impulse rather than principle.

It is hardly necessary to speak of the courage of a man pledged to such a career as that of Pizarro. Courage, indeed, was a cheap quality among the Spanish adventurers, for danger was their element. But he possessed something higher than mere animal courage, in that constancy of purpose which was rooted too deeply in his nature to be shaken by the wildest storms of fortune. It was this inflexible constancy which formed the key to his character, and constituted the secret of his success. A remarkable evidence of it was given in his first expedition, among the mangroves and dreary marshes of Choco. He saw his followers pining around him under the blighting malaria, wasting before an invisible enemy, and unable to strike a stroke in their own defense. Yet his spirit did not yield, nor did he falter in his enterprise.

There is something oppressive to the imagination in this war against nature. In the struggle of man against man, the spirits are raised by a contest conducted on equal terms; but in a war with the elements we feel that, however bravely we may contend, we can have no power to control. Nor are we cheered on by the prospect of glory in such a contest; for, in the capricious estimate of human glory, the silent endurance of privations, however painful, is little, in comparison with the ostentatious trophies of victory. The laurel of the hero—alas for humanity that it should be so!—grows best on the battle-field.

This inflexible spirit of Pizarro was shown still more strongly when, in the little island of Gallo, he drew the line on the sand which was to separate him and his handful of followers from their country and from civilized man. He trusted that his own constancy would give strength to the feeble, and rally brave hearts around him for the prosecution of his enterprise. He looked with confidence to the future, and he did not miscalculate. This was heroic, and wanted only a nobler motive for its object to constitute the true moral sublime.

Yet the same feature in his character was displayed in a manner scarcely less remarkable when, landing on the coast, and ascertaining the real strength and civilization of the Incas, he persisted in marching into the interior at the head of a force of less than two hundred men. In this he undoubtedly proposed to himself the example of Cortés, so contagious to the adventurous spirits of that day, and especially to Pizarro, engaged as he was in a similar enterprise. Yet the hazard assumed by Pizarro was far greater than that of the conqueror of Mexico, whose force was nearly three times as large, while the terrors of the Inca name—however justified by the result—were as widely spread as those of the Aztecs.

It was, doubtless, in imitation of the same captivating model that Pizarro planned the seizure of Atahualpa. But the situations of the two Spanish captains were as dissimilar as the manner in which their acts of violence were conducted. The wanton massacre of the Peruvians resembled that perpetrated by Alvarado in Mexico, and might have been attended with consequences as disastrous if the Peruvian character had been as fierce as that of the Aztecs. But the blow which roused the latter to madness broke the tamer spirits of the Peruvians. It was a bold stroke, which left so much to chance that it scarcely merited the name of policy.

When Pizarro landed in the country, he found it distracted by a contest for the crown. It would seem to have been for his interest to play off one party against the other, throwing his own weight into the scale that suited him. Instead of this, he resorted to an act of audacious violence which crushed them both at a blow. His subsequent career afforded no scope for the profound policy displayed by Cortés, when he gathered conflicting nations under his banner and directed them against a common foe. Still less did he have the opportunity of displaying the tactics and admirable strategy of his rival. Cortés conducted his military operations on the scientific principles of a great captain at the head of a powerful host. Pizarro appears only as an adventurer, a fortunate knight-errant. By one bold stroke he broke the spell which had so long held the land under the dominion of the Incas. The spell was broken, and the airy fabric of their empire, built on the superstition of ages, vanished at a touch. This was good fortune, rather than the result of policy.

But, as no picture is without its lights, we must not, in justice to Pizarro, dwell exclusively on the darker features of his portrait. There was no one of her sons to whom Spain was under larger obligations for extent of empire, for his hand won for her the richest of the Indian jewels that once sparkled in her imperial diadem. When we contemplate the perils he braved, the sufferings he patiently endured, the incredible obstacles he overcame, the magnificent results he effected with his single arm, as it were, unaided by the government—though neither a good nor a great man, in the highest sense of that term—it is impossible not to regard him as a very extraordinary one.

Cortés, at the time of the Mexican Conquest, was thirty-three or thirty-four years of age. In stature he was rather above the middle size. His countenance was pale, and his large dark eyes gave an expression of gravity to his countenance not to have been expected in one of his cheerful temperament. His figure was slender, at least till later life; but his chest was deep, his shoulders broad, his frame muscular and well proportioned. It presented the union of agility and vigor which qualified him to excel in fencing, horsemanship, and the other general exercises of chivalry. In his diet he was temperate, careless of what he ate, and drinking little; while to toil and privation he seemed perfectly indifferent. His dress—for he did not disdain the impression produced by such adventitious aids—was such as to set off his handsome figure to advantage, neither gaudy, nor striking, nor rich. He wore few ornaments, and usually the same, but those were of a great price. His manners, frank and soldier-like, concealed a most cool and calculating spirit. With his gayest humor there mingled a settled air of resolution which made those who approached him feel that they must obey; and which infused something like awe into the attachment of his most devoted followers. Such a combination, in which love was tempered by authority, was the one probably best calculated to inspire devotion in the rough and turbulent spirits among whom his lot was to be cast.

The history of the Conquest is necessarily that of Cortés, who is, if I may so say, not merely the soul but the body of the enterprise; present everywhere in person, out in the thick of the fight, or in the building of the works, with his sword or with his musket, sometimes leading his soldiers, and sometimes directing his little navy. The negotiations, intrigues, correspondence, are all conducted by him; and, like Cæsar, he wrote his own Commentaries in the heat of the stirring scenes which form the subject of them. His character is marked with the most opposite traits, embracing qualities apparently the most incompatible. He was avaricious, yet liberal; bold to desperation, yet cautious and calculating in his plans; magnanimous, yet very cunning; courteous and affable in his deportment, yet inexorably stern; lax in his notions of morality, yet (not uncommon) a sad bigot.

The great feature in his character was constancy of purpose; a constancy not to be daunted by danger, nor baffled by disappointment, nor wearied out by impediments and delays.

He was a knight-errant in the literal sense of the word. Of all the band of adventurous cavaliers whom Spain, in the sixteenth century, sent forth on the career of discovery and conquest, there was none more deeply filled with the spirit of romantic enterprise than Hernando Cortés. Dangers and difficulties, instead of deterring, seemed to have a charm in his eyes. They were necessary to rouse him to a full consciousness of his powers. He grappled with them at the outset, and, if I may so express myself, seemed to prefer to take his enterprises by the most difficult side. He conceived, at the first moment of his landing in Mexico, the design of its conquest. When he saw the strength of its civilization, he was not turned from his purpose. When he was assailed by the superior force of Narvaez, he still persisted in it; and when he was driven in ruin from the capital, he still cherished his original idea. How successfully he carried it into execution, we have seen. After the few years of repose which succeeded the Conquest, his adventurous spirit impelled him to that dreary march across the marshes of Chiapa; and, after another interval, to seek his fortunes on the stormy Californian gulf. When he found that no other continent remained for him to conquer, he made serious proposals to the emperor to equip a fleet at his own expense, with which he would sail to the Moluccas, and subdue the Spice Islands for the crown of Castile!

This spirit of knight-errantry might lead us to under-value his talents as a general, and to regard him merely in the light of a lucky adventurer. But this would be doing him injustice; for Cortés was certainly a great general, if that man be one who performs great achievements with the resources which his own genius has created. There is probably no instance in history where so vast an enterprise has been achieved by means apparently so inadequate. He may be truly said to have effected the conquest by his own resources. If he was indebted for his success to the co-operation of the Indian tribes, it was the force of his genius that obtained command of such materials. He arrested the arm that was lifted to smite him, and made it do battle in his behalf. He beat the Tlascalans, and made them his stanch allies. He beat the soldiers of Narvaez, and doubled his effective force by it. When his own men deserted him he did not desert himself. He drew them back by degrees, and compelled them to act by his will till they were all as one man. He brought together the most miscellaneous collection of mercenaries who ever fought under one standard—adventurers from Cuba and the isles, craving for gold; hidalgos, who came from the old country to win laurels; broken-down cavaliers, who hoped to mend their fortunes in the New World; vagabonds flying from justice; the grasping followers of Narvaez, and his own reckless veterans—men with hardly a common tie, and burning with the spirit of jealousy and faction; wild tribes of the natives from all parts of the country, who had been sworn enemies from their cradles, and who had met only to cut one another’s throats and to procure victims for sacrifice; men, in short, differing in race, in language, and in interests, with scarcely anything in common among them. Yet this motley congregation was assembled in one camp, compelled to bend to the will of one man, to consort together in harmony, to breathe, as it were, one spirit, and to move on a common principle of action! It is in this wonderful power over the discordant masses thus gathered under his banner that we recognize the genius of the great commander no less than in the skill of his military operations.

His power over the minds of his soldiers was a natural result of their confidence in his abilities. But it is also to be attributed to his popular manners—that happy union of authority and companionship which fitted him for the command of a band of roving adventurers. It would not have done for him to have fenced himself round with the stately reserve of a commander of regular forces. He was embarked with his men in a common adventure, and nearly on terms of equality, since he held his commission by no legal warrant. But while he indulged this freedom and familiarity with his soldiers, he never allowed it to interfere with their strict obedience, nor to impair the severity of discipline. When he had risen to higher consideration, although he affected more state, he still admitted his veterans to the same intimacy. “He preferred,” says Diaz, “to be called ‘Cortés’ by us, to being called by any title; and with good reason,” continues the enthusiastic old cavalier, “for the name of Cortés is as famous in our day as was that of Cæsar among the Romans, or of Hannibal among the Carthaginians.” He showed the same kind regard toward his ancient comrades in the very last act of his life; for he appropriated a sum by his will for the celebration of two thousand masses for the souls of those who had fought with him in the campaigns of Mexico.

His character has been unconsciously traced by the hand of a master—

Cortés, without much violence, might have sat for this portrait of Marmion.

Cortés was not a vulgar conqueror. He did not conquer from the mere ambition of conquest. If he destroyed the ancient capital of the Aztecs, it was to build up a more magnificent capital on its ruins. If he desolated the land and broke up its existing institutions, he employed the short period of his administration in digesting schemes for introducing there a more improved culture and a higher civilization. In all his expeditions he was careful to study the resources of the country, its social organization, and its physical capacities. He enjoined it on his captains to attend particularly to these objects. If he was greedy of gold, like most of the Spanish cavaliers in the New World, it was not to hoard it, nor merely to lavish it in the support of a princely establishment, but to secure funds for prosecuting his glorious discoveries. Witness his costly expeditions to the Gulf of California.

His enterprises were not undertaken solely for mercenary objects, as is shown by the various expeditions he set on foot for the discovery of a communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In his schemes of ambition he showed a respect for the interests of science, to be referred partly to the natural superiority of his mind, but partly, no doubt, to the influence of early education. It is, indeed, hardly possible that a person of his wayward and mercurial temper should have improved his advantages at the university, but he brought away from it a tincture of scholarship seldom found among the cavaliers of the period, and which had its influence in enlarging his own conceptions. His celebrated letters are written with a simple elegance that, as I have already had occasion to remark, have caused them to be compared to the military narrative of Cæsar. It will not be easy to find in the chronicles of the period a more concise yet comprehensive statement, not only of the events of his campaigns, but of the circumstances most worthy of notice in the character of the conquered countries.

Cortés was not cruel; at least, not cruel as compared with most of those who followed his iron trade. The path of the conqueror is necessarily marked with blood. He was not too scrupulous, indeed, in the execution of his plans. He swept away the obstacles which lay in his track; and his fame is darkened by the commission of more than one act which his boldest apologist will find it hard to vindicate. But he was not cruel. He allowed no outrage on his unresisting foes. This may seem small praise, but it is an exception to the usual conduct of his countrymen in their conquests, and it is something to be in advance of one’s time. He was severe, it may be added, in enforcing obedience to his orders for protecting their persons and their property. With his licentious crew, it was sometimes not without hazard that he was so. After the Conquest, he sanctioned the system of repartimientos; but so did Columbus. He endeavored to regulate it by the most humane laws, and continued to suggest many important changes for ameliorating the condition of the natives. The best commentary on his conduct, in this respect, is the deference that was shown him by the Indians, and the confidence with which they appealed to him for protection in all their subsequent distresses.

The Diet of Worms and Luther’s appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in modern European history; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilization takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations and disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles V, with all the princes of Germany, papal nuncios, dignitaries, spiritual and temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The world’s pomp and power sits there on this hand; on that, stands up for God’s truth one man, the poor miner, Hans Luther’s son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go; he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode out to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, “Were there as many devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on.” The people, on the morrow, as he went to the hall of the diet, crowded the windows and house-tops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant. “Whosoever denieth me before men!” they cried to him, as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality a petition too—the petition of the whole world lying in dark bondage of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral nightmare and triple-hatted chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not—“Free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!”

Luther did not desert us. His speech of two hours distinguished itself by its respectful, wise, and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded anger, blindness, many things, doubtless, which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and the Word of God, he could not recant it. How could he? “Confute me,” he concluded, “by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain, just arguments. I can not recant otherwise; for it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other. God assist me!” It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the modern history of men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and the vast work done in these two centuries; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present—the germ of it all lay there. Had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! The European world was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome, accursed death; or, with what paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live?

Great wars, contentions, and disunion followed out of this Reformation, which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable; but, after all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them? It seems strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules turned the purifying river into King Augeas’s stables, I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable all around, but I think it was not Hercules’s blame; it was some other’s blame! The Reformation might bring what results it liked when it came, but the Reformation simply could not help coming.

Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there. To me it is a proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom do we find a man that has stirred up some vast commotion, who does not himself perish, swept away in it! Such is the usual course of revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this greatest revolution; all Protestants, of what rank or function soever, looking much to him for guidance; and he held it peaceably, continued firm at the center of it. A man to do this must have a kingly faculty; he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong, true man, that other true men may rally round him there. He will not continue leader of men otherwise. Luther’s clear, deep force of judgment, his force of all sorts—of silence, of tolerance and moderation among others—are very notable in these circumstances.

Tolerance, I say; a very genuine kind of tolerance: he distinguishes what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a reformed preacher “will not preach without a cassock.” “Well,” answers Luther, “what harm will a cassock do the man? Let him have a cassock to preach in; let him have three cassocks, if he find benefit in them!” His conduct in the matter of Carlstadt’s wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists; of the Peasants’ war, shows a noble strength, very different from spasmodic violence. With sure, prompt insight, he discriminates what is what; a strong, just man, he speaks forth what is the wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther’s written works give similar testimony of him. The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us, but one still reads them with a singular attraction. And, indeed, the mere grammatical diction is still legible enough. Luther’s merit in literary history is of the greatest; his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these four-and-twenty quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble, faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged, sterling sense and strength. He flashes out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay, tender affection, nobleness, and depth. This man could have been a poet too! He had to work an epic poem, and not write one. I call him a great thinker; as, indeed, his greatness of heart already betokens that.

Richter says of Luther’s words, “His words are half-battles.” They may be called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and conquer—that he was a right piece of human valor. No more valiant man, no mortal heart to be called braver, that one has record of, ever lived in that Teutonic kindred whose character is valor. His defiance of the “devils” in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken. It was a faith of Luther’s that there were devils, spiritual denizens of the pit, continually besetting men. Many times in his writings this turns up, and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some.

In the room of the Wartburg, where he sat translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot on the wall, the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther was translating one of the Psalms; he was worn down with long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food; there rose before him some hideous, indefinable image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work. Luther started up with fiend-defiance, flung his inkstand at the specter, and it disappeared! The spot still remains there, a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary’s apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition in a scientific sense; but the man’s heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before exists not on this earth or under it. Fearless enough! “The devil is aware,” writes he on one occasion, “that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable devils.” Of Duke George, of Leipsic, a great enemy of his, he said, “Duke George is not equal to one devil—far short of a devil! If I had business at Leipsic, I would ride into Leipsic, though it rained Duke Georges for nine days running.” What a reservoir of dukes to ride into!

At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man’s courage was ferocity—mere coarse, disobedient obstinacy and savagery—as many do. Far from that. There may be an absence of fear, which arises from the absence of thought or affection, from the presence of hatred and stupid fury. We do not value the courage of the tiger highly. With Luther it was far otherwise; no accusation could be more unjust than this mere ferocious violence brought against him. A most gentle heart withal, full of pity and love, as, indeed, the truly valiant heart ever is. The tiger before a stronger foe flies. The tiger is not what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few things more touching than those soft breathings of affection—soft as a child’s or a mother’s—in this great, wild heart of Luther. So honest, unadulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all this downpressed mood of despair and reprobation which we saw in his youth but the outcome of pre-eminent, thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and pure? It is the curse such men as the poor poet Cowper fall into. Luther, to a slight observer, might have seemed a timid, weak man; modesty, affectionate, shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of him. It is a noble valor which is roused in a heart like this, once stirred up into defiance, all kindled into a heavenly blaze.

In Luther’s “Table-Talk,” a posthumous book of anecdotes and sayings collected by his friends—the most interesting now of all the books proceeding from him—we have many beautiful, unconscious displays of the man and what sort of nature he had. His behavior at the death-bed of his little daughter—so still, so great and loving—is among the most affecting things. He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die, yet longs inexpressibly that she might live—follows, in awe-struck thought, the flight of her little soul through those unknown realms. Awestruck—most heartfelt, we can see; and sincere—for, after all dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know or can know. His little Magdalene shall be with God, as God wills; for Luther, too, that is all.

Once he looks out from his solitary Patmos, the castle of Coburg, in the middle of the night. The great vault of immensity, long flights of clouds sailing through it—dumb, gaunt, huge—who supports all that? “None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported.” God supports it. We must know that God is great, that God is good; and trust, where we can not see. Returning home from Leipsic once, he is struck by the beauty of the harvest-fields. How it stands, that golden yellow corn, on its fair taper stem, its golden head bent, all rich and waving there; the meek earth, at God’s kind bidding, has produced it once again—the bread of man! In the garden of Wittenberg, one evening at sunset, a little bird has perched for the night. That little bird, says Luther; above it are the stars and deep heaven of worlds; yet it has folded its little wings; gone trustfully to rest there as in its home. The maker of it has given it, too, a home! Neither are mirthful turns wanting—there is a great, free, human heart in this man.

The common speech of him has a rugged nobleness; idiomatic, expressive, genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him to be a great brother man. His love of music, indeed—is not this, as it were, the summary of all these affections in him? Many a wild unutterability he spoke forth from him in the tones of his flute. The devils fled from his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the one hand, and such love of music on the other—I could call these the two opposite poles of a great soul; between these two all great things had room.

Luther’s face is to me expressive of him. In Kranach’s best portraits I find the true Luther. A rude plebeian face, with its huge, crag-like brows and bones—the emblem of rugged energy—at first, almost a repulsive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild, silent sorrow; an unnamable melancholy, the element of all gentle and fine affections; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was in this Luther, as we said; but tears also were there. Tears also were appointed him; tears and hard toil. The basis of his life was sadness, earnestness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he expresses himself heartily weary of living. He considers that God alone can and will regulate the course things are taking, and that perhaps the day of judgment is not far. As for him, he longs for one thing—that God would release him from his labor, and let him depart and be at rest. They understood little of the man who cite this in discredit of him! I will call this Luther a true great man; great in intellect, in courage, affection, and integrity; one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain; so simple, honest, spontaneous; not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great! Ah, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the heavens; yet, in the clefts of its fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flowers! A right spiritual hero and prophet; once more, a true son of nature and fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven.

Descended from an illustrious family, Ignatius had in his youth been a courtier and a cavalier, and, if not a poet, at least a cultivator of poetry. At the siege of Pampeluna his leg was broken, and, after the failure of mere vulgar leeches, was set by a touch from the hand of the prince of apostles. Yet St. Peter’s therapeutic skill was less perfect than might have been expected from so exalted a chirurgeon; for a splinter still protruded through the skin, and the limb was shrunk and shortened. To regain his fair proportions, Ignatius had himself literally stretched upon the rack; and expiated by a long confinement to his couch this singular experiment to reduce his refractory bones and sinews. Books of knighthood relieved the lassitude of sickness, and when these were exhausted, he betook himself to a series of still more marvelous romances. In the legends of the Saints the disabled soldier discovered a new field of

emulation and glory. Compared with their self-conquests and high rewards, the achievements and the renown of Roland and of Amadis waxed dim. Compared with the peerless damsel for whose smiles Palladius had fought and died, how transcendently glorious the image of female loveliness and angelic purity which had irradiated the hermit’s cell and the path of the way-worn pilgrims!

Far as the heavens are above the earth would be the plighted fealty of the knight of the Virgin Mother beyond the noblest devotion of merely human chivalry. In her service he would cast his shield over the Church which ascribed to her more than celestial dignities, and bathe in the blood of her enemies the sword once desecrated to the mean ends of worldly ambition. Nor were these vows unheeded by her to whom they were addressed. Environed in light, and clasping her infant to her bosom, she revealed herself to the adoring gaze of her champion. At that heavenly vision all fantasies of worldly and sensual delight, like exorcised demons, fled from his soul into eternal exile. He rose, suspended at her shrine his secular weapons, performed there his nocturnal devotions, and with returning day retired to consecrate his future life to the glory of the Virgo Deipara.

To these erotic dreams succeeded stern realities; convulsive agonies of prayer, wailings of remorse, and self-inflicted bodily torments. Exchanging dresses with a beggar, he lined his gabardine with prickly thorns, fasted to the verge of starvation, assumed the demeanor of an idiot, became too loathsome for human contact, and then, plunging into a gloomy cavern, surrendered himself up to such wrestlings with the evil spirit, and to such vicissitudes of rapture and despair, that in the storm of turbid passions his reason had nearly given way.

At the verge of madness, Ignatius paused. That noble intellect was not to be whelmed beneath the tempest in which so many have sunk, nor was his deliverance to be accomplished by any vulgar methods. Standing on the steps of a Dominican church, he recited the office of Our Lady, when suddenly heaven itself was laid open to the eyes of the worshiper. That ineffable mystery which the author of the Athanasian creed has labored in vain to enunciate in words, was disclosed to him as an object, not of faith, but of actual sight. To his spiritualized sense was disclosed the actual process by which the host is transubstantiated, and the other Christian verities which it is permitted to common man to receive but as exercises of their belief, became to him the objects of immediate inspection and of direct consciousness. For eight successive days his body reposed in an unbroken trance, while his spirit thus imbibed disclosures for which the tongues of men have no appropriate language.

Ignatius returned to this sublunary sphere with a mission not unmeet for an envoy from the empyrean world, of which he had thus become a temporary denizen. He returned to earth to establish a theocracy, of which he should himself be the first administrator, and to which every tribe and kindred of men should be subject. He returned no longer a sordid, half-distracted anchorite, but, strange to tell, a man distinguished not more by the gigantic magnitude of his designs than by the clear good sense, the profound sagacity, the calm perseverance, and the flexible address with which he was to pursue them. History affords no more perfect illustration how readily delirious enthusiasm and the shrewdness of the exchange may combine and harmonize in minds of the heroic order. A Swedenborg-Franklin reconciling in himself these antagonist propensities is no monster of the fancy.

Of all the occupations to which man can devote the earlier years of his life, none probably leaves on the character an impress so deep and indelible as the profession of arms. In no other calling is the whole range of our sympathetic affections, whether kindly or the reverse, called into such habitual and active exercise, nor does any other stimulate the mere intellectual powers with a force so irresistible when once they are effectually aroused from their accustomed torpor. Loyola was a soldier to the last breath he drew, a general whose authority none might question, a comrade on whose cordiality all might rely, sustaining all the dangers and hardships he exacted from his followers, and in his religious campaigns a strategist of consummate skill and most comprehensive survey. It was his maxim that war ought to be aggressive, and that even an inadequate force might be wisely weakened by detachments on a distant service, if the prospect of success was such that the vague and perhaps exaggerated rumor of it would strike terror into nearer foes and animate the hopes of irresolute allies. To conquer Lutheranism by converting to the faith of Rome the barbarous or half-civilized nations of the earth was, therefore, among the earliest of his projects.

Though not in books, yet in the far nobler school of active and especially of military life, Loyola had learned the great secret of government—at least, of his government. It was that the social affections, if concentrated within a well-defined circle, possess an intensity and endurance unrivaled by those passions of which self is the immediate object. He had the sagacity to perceive that emotions like those with which a Spartan or a Jew had yearned over the land and the institutions of their fathers—emotions stronger than appetite, vanity, ambition, avarice, or death itself—might be kindled in the members of his order; if he could detect and grasp those mainsprings of human action of which the Greek and the Hebrew legislators had obtained the mastery. Nor did he seek them in vain.

Some unconscious love of power, a mind bewildered by many gross superstitions and theoretical errors, and perhaps some tinge of insanity, may be ascribed to Ignatius Loyola; but no dispassionate reader of his writings or of his life will question his integrity, or deny to him the praise of a devotion at once sincere, habitual, and profound. It is not to the glory of the reformers to depreciate the name of their greatest antagonist, or to think meanly of him to whom more than any other man it is owing that the Reformation was stayed and the Church of Rome rescued from her impending doom.

From amid the controversies which then agitated the world had emerged two great truths, of which, after three hundred years’ debate, we are yet to find the reconcilement. It was true that the Christian commonwealth should be one consentient body, united under one supreme head, and bound together a community of law, of doctrine, and of worship. It was also true that each member of that body must for himself, on his own responsibility and at his own peril, render that worship, study that law, and seek the guidance of the Supreme Ruler. Here was a problem for the learned and wise, for schools, and presses, and pulpits. But it is not by sages nor in the spirit of philosophy that such problems receive their practical solution. Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but it is seldom the immediate agent in human affairs. It is by antagonist passions, prejudices, and follies that the equipoise of this most belligerent planet of ours is chiefly preserved, and so it was in the sixteenth century. The German pointed the way to that sacred solitude where beside the worshiper himself none may enter; the Spaniard to that innumerable company which with one accord still chant the liturgies of remotest generations. Chieftains in the most momentous warfare of which this earth had been the theatre since the subversion of paganism, each was a rival worthy of the other in capacity, courage, disinterestedness, and love of the truth, and yet how marvelous the contrast!

Unalluring and, on the whole, unlovely as it is, the image of Loyola must ever command the homage of the world. No other uninspired man, unaided by military or civil power, and making no appeal to the passions of the multitude, has had the genius to conceive, the courage to attempt, and the success to establish a polity teeming with results at once so momentous and so distinctly foreseen. Amid his ascetic follies and his half-crazy visions, and despite all the coarse daubing with which the miracle-mongers of his church have defaced it, his character is destitute neither of sublimity nor of grace. Men felt that there had appeared among them one of those monarchs who reign in right of their own native supremacy, and to whom the feebler will of others must yield either a ready or a reluctant allegiance. It was a conviction recorded by his disciples on his tomb in these memorable and significant words: “Whoever thou mayst be who hast portrayed to thine own imagination Pompey nor Cæsar or Alexander, open thine eyes to the truth, and let this marble teach thee how much greater a conqueror than they was Ignatius.”

The debate on the suppression of the monasteries was the first instance of opposition with which Cromwell had met, and for some time longer it was to remain the only one. While the great revolution which struck down the Church was in progress, England looked silently on. In all the earlier ecclesiastical changes, in the contest over the Papal jurisdiction and Papal exactions, in the reform of the Church courts, even in the curtailment of the legislative independence of the clergy, the nation as a whole had gone with the king. But from the enslavement of the clergy, from the gagging of the pulpits, from the suppression of the monasteries, the bulk of the nation stood aloof. It is only through the stray depositions of royal spies that we catch a glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay seething under this silence of a whole people. For the silence was a silence of terror. Before Cromwell’s rise and after his fall from power the reign of Henry VIII witnessed no more than the common tyranny and bloodshed of the time. But the years of Cromwell’s administration form the one period in our history which deserves the name which men have given to the rule of Robespierre. It was the English Terror. It was by terror that Cromwell mastered the king. Cranmer could plead for him at a later time with Henry as “one whose surety was only by your majesty, who loved your majesty, as I ever thought, no less than God.”

But the attitude of Cromwell toward the king was something more than that of absolute dependence and unquestioning devotion. He was “so vigilant to preserve your majesty from all treasons,” adds the primate, “that few could be so secretly conceived but he detected the same from the beginning.” Henry, like every Tudor, was fearless of open danger, but tremulously sensitive to the slightest breath of hidden disloyalty. It was on this inner dread that Cromwell based the fabric of his power. He was hardly secretary before a host of spies were scattered broadcast over the land. Secret denunciations poured into the open ear of the minister. The air was thick with tales of plots and conspiracies, and with the detection and suppression of each Cromwell tightened his hold on the king. And as it was by terror that he mastered the king, so it was by terror that he mastered the people. Men felt in England, to use the figure by which Erasmus paints the time, “as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every stone.” The confessional had no secrets for Cromwell. Men’s talk with their closest friends found its way to his ear. “Words idly spoken,” the murmurs of a petulant abbot, the ravings of a moon-struck nun, were, as the nobles cried passionately at his fall, “tortured into treason.” The only chance of safety lay in silence. “Friends who used to write and send me presents,” Erasmus tells us, “now send neither letter nor gifts, nor receive any from any one, and this through fear.”

But even the refuge of silence was closed by a law more infamous than any that has ever blotted the statute-book of England. Not only was thought made treason, but men were forced to reveal their thoughts on pain of their very silence being punished with the penalties of treason. All trust in the older bulwarks of liberty was destroyed by a policy as daring as it was unscrupulous. The noblest institutions were degraded into instruments of terror. Though Wolsey had strained the law to the utmost, he had made no open attack on the freedom of justice. If he had shrunk from assembling Parliaments, it was from his sense that they were the bulwarks of liberty. Under Cromwell the coercion of juries and the management of judges rendered the courts mere mouth-pieces of the royal will: and where even this shadow of justice proved an obstacle to bloodshed, Parliament was brought into play to pass bill after bill of attainder. “He shall be judged by the bloody laws he has himself made,” was the cry of the council at the moment of his fall, and, by a singular retribution, the crowning injustice which he sought to introduce even into the practice of attainder—the condemnation of a man without hearing his defense—was only practiced on himself.

But ruthless as was the Terror of Cromwell, it was of a nobler type than the Terror of France. He never struck uselessly or capriciously, or stooped to the meaner victims of the guillotine. His blows were effective just because he chose his victims from among the noblest and the best. If he struck at the Church, it was through the Carthusians, the holiest and the most renowned of English churchmen. If he struck at the baronage, it was through the Courtenays and the Poles, in whose veins flowed the blood of kings. If he struck at the New Learning, it was through the murder of Sir Thomas More. But no personal vindictiveness mingled with his crime. In temper, indeed, so far as we can judge from the few stories which lingered among his friends, he was a generous, kind-hearted man, with pleasant and winning manners which atoned for a certain awkwardness of person, and with a constancy of friendship which won him a host of devoted adherents. But no touch either of love or hate swayed him from his course.

The student of Macchiavelli had not studied the “Prince” in vain. He had reduced bloodshed to a system. Fragments of his papers still show us with what a business-like brevity he ticked off human lives among the casual “remembrances” of the day. “Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at Reading.” “Item, to know the king’s pleasure touching Master More.” “Item, when Master Fisher shall go to his execution, and the other.” It is indeed this utter absence of all passion, of all personal feeling, that makes the figure of Cromwell the most terrible in our history. He has an absolute faith in the end he is pursuing, and he simply hews his way to it as a woodman hews his way through the forest, axe in hand.

His single will forced on a scheme of foreign policy whose aim was to bind England to the cause of the Reformation while it bound Henry helplessly to his minister. The daring boast which his enemies laid afterward to his charge, whether uttered or not, is but the expression of his system. “In brief time he would bring things to such a pass that the king with all his power should not be able to hinder him.” His plans rested, like the plan which proved fatal to Wolsey, on a fresh marriage of his master. The short-lived royalty of Anne Boleyn had ended in charges of adultery and treason, and in her death in May, 1536. Her rival and successor in Henry’s affections, Jane Seymour, died the next year in childbirth; and Cromwell replaced her with a German consort, Anne of Cleves, a sister-in-law of the Lutheran elector of Saxony. He dared even to resist Henry’s caprice, when the king revolted on their first interview at the coarse features and unwieldy form of his new bride. For the moment Cromwell had brought matters “to such a pass” that it was impossible to recoil from the marriage.

The marriage of Anne of Cleves, however, was but the first step in a policy which, had it been carried out as he designed it, would have anticipated the triumphs of Richelieu. Charles and the house of Austria could alone bring about a Catholic reaction strong enough to arrest and roll back the Reformation; and Cromwell was no sooner united with the princes of North Germany than he sought to league them with France for the overthrow of the emperor. Had he succeeded, the whole face of Europe would have been changed, Southern Germany would have been secured for Protestantism, and the Thirty Years’ War averted. He failed as men fail who stand ahead of their age. The German princes shrank from a contest with the emperor, France from a struggle which would be fatal to Catholicism; and Henry, left alone to bear the resentment of the House of Austria, and chained to a wife he loathed, turned savagely on Cromwell. The nobles sprang on him with a fierceness that told of their long-hoarded hate. Taunts and execrations burst from the lords at the council table, as the Duke of Norfolk, who had been charged with the minister’s arrest, tore the ensign of the garter from his neck. At the charge of treason Cromwell flung his cap on the ground with a passionate cry of despair. “This, then,” he exclaimed, “is my guerdon for the services I have done! On your consciences, I ask you, am I a traitor?” Then, with a sudden sense that all was over, he bade his foes “make quick work, and not leave me to languish in prison.” Quick work was made, and a yet louder burst of popular applause than that which hailed the attainder of Cromwell hailed his execution.

The edicts and the Inquisition were the gifts of Charles to the Netherlands, in return for their wasted treasure and their constant obedience. For this his name deserves to be handed down to eternal infamy, not only throughout the Netherlands but in every land where a single heart beats for political or religious freedom. To eradicate these institutions after they had been watered and watched by the care of his successor, was the work of an eighty years’ war, in the course of which millions of lives were sacrificed. Yet

the abdicating emperor had summoned his faithful estates around him, and stood up before them in his imperial robes for the last time, to tell them of the affectionate regard which he had always borne them, and to mingle his tears with theirs.

Could a single phantom have risen from one of the many thousand graves where human beings had been thrust alive by his decree, perhaps there might have been an answer to the question propounded by the emperor amid all that piteous weeping. Perhaps it might have told the man, who asked his hearers to be forgiven if he had ever unwittingly offended them, that there was a world where it was deemed an offence to torture, strangle, burn, and drown one’s innocent fellow-creatures. The usual but trifling excuse for such enormities can not be pleaded for the emperor. Charles was no fanatic. The man whose armies sacked Rome, who laid sacrilegious hand on Christ’s vicegerent, and kept the infallible head of the Church a prisoner to serve his own political ends, was then no bigot. He believed in nothing, save that when the course of his imperial will was impeded and the interests of his imperial house in jeopardy, pontiffs were wont to succumb as well as anabaptists. It was the political heresy which lurked in the restiveness of the religious reformers under dogma, tradition, and supernatural sanction to temporal power, which he was disposed to combat to the death. He was too shrewd a politician not to recognize the connection between aspirations for religious and for political freedom. His hand was ever ready to crush both heresies in one. Had he been a true son of the Church, a faithful champion of her infallibility, he would not have submitted to the peace of Passau so long as he could bring a soldier to the field.

Yet he acquiesced in the Reformation for Germany, while the fires were burning for the reformers and were ever blazing in the Netherlands, where it was death even to allude to the existence of the peace of Passau. Nor did he acquiesce only from compulsion, for, long before his memorable defeat by Maurice, he had permitted the German troops, with whose services he could not dispense, regularly to attend Protestant worship performed by their own Protestant chaplains. Lutheran preachers marched from city to city of the Netherlands under the imperial banner, while the subjects of those patrimonial provinces were daily suffering on the scaffold for their non-conformity.

The influence of this garrison-preaching upon the progress of the Reformation in the Netherlands is well known. Charles hated Lutherans, but he required soldiers, and he thus helped by his own policy to disseminate what, had he been the fanatic which he perhaps became in retirement, he would have sacrificed his life to crush. It is quite true that the growing Calvinism of the provinces was more dangerous, both religiously and politically, than the Protestantism of the German princes, which had not yet been formally pronounced heresy; but it is thus the more evident that it was political rather than religious heterodoxy which the despot wished to suppress.

No man, however, could have been more observant of religious rites. He heard mass daily. He listened to a sermon every Sunday and holiday. He confessed and received the sacrament four times a year. He was sometimes to be seen in his tent at midnight on his knees before a crucifix, with eyes and hands uplifted. He ate no meat in Lent, and used extraordinary diligence to discover and to punish any man, whether courtier or plebeian, who failed to fast during the whole forty days. He was too good a politician not to know the value of broad phylacteries and long prayers. He was too nice an observer of human nature not to know how easily mint and cummin could still outweigh the “weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy, and faith”; as if the founder of the religion which he professed, and to maintain which he had established the inquisition and the edicts, had never cried “woe” upon the Pharisees.

Yet there is no doubt that the emperor was at times almost popular in the Netherlands, and that he was never as odious as his successor. There were some deep reasons for this, and some superficial ones; among others, a singularly fortunate manner. He spoke German, Spanish, Italian, French, and Flemish, and could assume the characteristics of each country as easily as he could use its language. He could be stately with Spaniards, familiar with Flemings, witty with Italians. He could strike down a bull in the ring like a matador at Madrid, or win the prize in the tourney like a knight of old; he could ride at the ring with the Flemish nobles, hit the popinjay with his cross-bow among Antwerp artisans, or drink beer and exchange rude jests with the boors of Brabant. For virtues such as these his grave crimes against God and man, against religion and chartered and solemnly-sworn rights, have been palliated, as if oppression became more tolerable because the oppressor was an accomplished linguist and a good marksman.

But the great reason for his popularity, no doubt, lay in his military genius. Charles was inferior to no general of his age. “When he was born into the world,” said Alva, “he was born a soldier”; and the emperor confirmed the statement and reciprocated the compliment, when he declared that “the three first captains of the age was himself first, and then the Duke of Alva and Constable Montmorency.” It is quite true that all his officers were not of the same opinion, and many were too apt to complain that his constant presence in the field did more harm than good, and “that his Majesty would do much better to stay at home.” There is, however, no doubt that he was both a good soldier and a good general. He was constitutionally fearless, and he possessed great energy and endurance. He was ever the first to arm when a battle was to be fought, and the last to take off his harness. He commanded in person and in chief, even when surrounded by veterans and crippled by the gout. He was calm in great reverses. It was said that he was never known to change color except upon two occasions—after the fatal destruction of his fleet at Algiers, and in the memorable flight from Innspruck.

He was of a phlegmatic, stoical temperament, until shattered by age and disease; a man without sentiment and without a tear. It was said by Spaniards that he was never seen to weep, even at the death of his nearest relatives and friends, except on the solitary occasion of the departure of Don Ferrante Gonzaga from court. Such a temperament was invaluable in the stormy career to which he had devoted his life. He was essentially a man of action, a military chieftain. “Pray only for my health and my life,” he was accustomed to say to the young officers who came to him from every part of his dominions to serve under his banners, “for so long as I have these I will never leave you idle—at least in France. I love peace no better than the rest of you. I was born and bred to arms, and must of necessity keep on my harness till I can bear it no longer.” The restless energy and the magnificent tranquillity of his character made him a hero among princes, an idol with his officers, a popular favorite everywhere. The promptness with which, at much personal hazard, he descended like a thunderbolt in the midst of the Ghent insurrection; the juvenile ardor with which the almost bed-ridden man arose from his sickbed to smite the Protestants at Mühlberg; the grim stoicism with which he saw sixty thousand of his own soldiers perish in the wintry siege of Metz—all insured him a large measure of that applause which ever follows military distinction, especially when the man who achieves it happens to wear a crown. He combined the personal prowess of a knight of old with the more modern accomplishments of a scientific tactician. He could charge the enemy in person like the most brilliant cavalry officer, and he thoroughly understood the arrangements of a campaign, the marshaling and victualing of troops, and the whole art of setting and maintaining an army in the field.

Yet, though brave and warlike as the most chivalrous of his ancestors—Gothic, Burgundian, or Suabian—he was entirely without chivalry. Fanaticism for the faith, protection for the oppressed, fidelity to friend or foe, knightly loyalty to a cause deemed sacred, the sacrifice of personal interests to great ideas, generosity of hand and heart—all those qualities which unite with courage and constancy to make up the ideal chevalier, Charles not only lacked but despised. He trampled on the weak antagonist, whether burgher or petty potentate. He was false as water. He inveigled his foes, who trusted to his imperial promises, by arts unworthy an emperor or a gentleman. He led about the unfortunate John Frederic, of Saxony, in his own language, “like a bear in a chain,” ready to be slipped upon Maurice should “the boy” prove ungrateful. He connived at the famous forgery of the prelate of Arras, to which the Landgrave Philip owed his long imprisonment—a villainy worse than many for which humbler rogues have suffered by thousands upon the gallows. The contemporary world knew well the history of his frauds, on scale both colossal and minute, and called him familiarly “Charles qui triche.”

The absolute master of realms on which the sun perpetually shone, he was not only greedy for additional dominion, but he was avaricious in small matters, and hated to part with a hundred dollars. To the soldier who brought him the sword and gauntlets of Francis I he gave a hundred crowns, when ten thousand would have been less than the customary present; so that the man left his presence full of desperation. The three soldiers who swam the Elbe, with their swords in their mouths, to bring him the boats with which he passed to the victory of Mühlberg, received from his imperial bounty a doublet, a pair of stockings, and four crowns apiece. His courtiers and ministers complained bitterly of his habitual niggardliness, and were fain to eke out their slender salaries by accepting bribes from every hand rich enough to bestow them. In truth, Charles was more than anything else a politician, notwithstanding his signal abilities as a soldier.

If to have founded institutions which could last be the test of statesmanship, he was even a statesman, for many of his institutions have resisted the pressure of three centuries; but those of Charlemagne fell as soon as his hand was cold, while the works of many ordinary legislators have attained to a perpetuity denied to the statutes of Solon or Lycurgus. Durability is not the test of merit in human institutions. Tried by the only touchstone applicable to governments, their capacity to insure the highest welfare of the governed, we shall not find his polity deserving of much admiration. It is not merely that he was a despot by birth and inclination, nor that he naturally substituted, as far as was practicable, the despotic for the republican element wherever his hand can be traced. There may be possible good in despotisms, as there is often much tyranny in democracy. Tried, however, according to the standard by which all governments may be measured, those laws of truth and divine justice which all Christian nations recognize, and which are perpetual, whether recognized or not, we shall find little to venerate in the life-work of the emperor. The interests of his family, the security of his dynasty—these were his end and aim. The happiness or the progress of his people never furnished even the indirect motives of his conduct, and the result was a baffled policy and a crippled and bankrupt empire at last.

He knew men—especially he knew their weaknesses, and he knew how to turn them to account. He knew how much they would bear, and that little grievances would sometimes inflame more than vast and deliberate injustice. Therefore he employed natives mainly in the subordinate offices of his various states, and he repeatedly warned his successor that the haughtiness of Spaniards and the incompatibility of their character with the Flemish would be productive of great difficulties and dangers. It was his opinion that men might be tyrannized more intelligently by their own kindred, and in this, perhaps, he was right. He was indefatigable in the discharge of business; and if it were possible that half a world could be administered as if it were the private property of an individual, the task would have been, perhaps, as well accomplished by Charles as by any man. He had not the absurdity of supposing it possible for him to attend to the details of every individual affair in every one of his realms, and he therefore intrusted the stewardship of all specialties to his various ministers and agents. It was his business to know men and to deal with affairs on a large scale, and in this he certainly was superior to his successor. His correspondence was mainly in the hands of Granvelle the elder, who analyzed letters received, and frequently wrote all but the signatures of the answers. The same minister usually possessed the imperial ear, and farmed it out for his own benefit. In all this there was, of course, room for vast deception; but the emperor was quite aware of what was going on, and took a philosophic view of the matter as an inevitable part of his system. Granvelle grew enormously rich under his eye by trading on the imperial favor and sparing his Majesty much trouble.

Charles saw it all, ridiculed his peculations, but called him his “bed of down.” His knowledge of human nature was, however, derived from a contemplation mainly of its weaknesses, and was therefore one-sided. He was often deceived and made many a fatal blunder, shrewd politician though he was. He involved himself often in enterprises which could not be honorable or profitable, and which inflicted damage on his greatest interests. He often offended men who might have been useful friends, and converted allies into enemies. “His Majesty,” said a keen observer who knew him well, “has not in his career shown the prudence which was necessary to him. He has often offended those whose love he might have conciliated, converted friends into enemies, and let those perish who were his most faithful partisans.” Thus it must be acknowledged that even his boasted knowledge of human nature and his power of dealing with men was rather superficial and empirical than the real gift of genius.

In person, Orange was above the middle height, perfectly well made and sinewy, but rather spare than stout. His eyes, hair, beard, and complexion were brown; his head was small, symmetrically shaped, combining the alertness and compactness characteristic of the soldier, with the capacious brow furrowed prematurely with the horizontal lines of

thought, denoting the statesman and the sage. His physical appearance was, therefore, in harmony with his organization, which was of antique model. Of his moral qualities, the most prominent was his piety. He was more than anything else a religious man. From his trust in God he ever derived support and consolation in the darkest hours. Implicitly relying upon Almighty wisdom and goodness, he looked danger in the face with a constant smile, and endured incessant labors and trials with a serenity which seemed more than human. While, however, his soul was full of piety, it was tolerant of error.

Sincerely and deliberately himself a convert to the Reformed Church, he was ready to extend freedom of worship to Catholics on the one hand, and to Anabaptists on the other; for no man ever felt more keenly than he, that the reformer who becomes in his turn a bigot is doubly odious.

His firmness was allied to his piety. His constancy in bearing the whole weight of as unequal a struggle as men have ever undertaken, was the theme of admiration even to his enemies. The rock in the ocean, “tranquil amid raging billows,” was the favorite emblem by which his friends expressed their sense of his firmness. From the time when, as a hostage in France, he first discovered the plan of Philip to plant the Inquisition in the Netherlands, up to the last moment of his life, he never faltered in his determination to resist that iniquitous scheme. This resistance was the labor of his life. To exclude the Inquisition, to maintain the ancient liberties of his country, was the task which he appointed to himself when a youth of three-and-twenty. Never speaking a word concerning a heavenly mission, never deluding himself or others with the usual phraseology of enthusiasts, he accomplished the task, through danger, amid toils, and with sacrifices such as few men have ever been able to make on their country’s altar; for the disinterested benevolence of the man was as prominent as his fortitude.

A prince of high rank and with royal revenues, he stripped himself of station, wealth, almost, at times, of the common necessaries of life, and became, in his country’s cause, nearly a beggar as well as an outlaw. Nor was he forced into his career by an accidental impulse from which there was no recovery. Retreat was ever open to him. Not only pardon but advancement was urged upon him again and again. Officially and privately, directly and circuitously, his confiscated estates, together with indefinite and boundless favors in addition, were offered to him on every great occasion. On the arrival of Don John at the Breda negotiations, at the Cologne conferences, we have seen how calmly these offers were waved aside, as if their rejection was so simple that it hardly required many words for its signification; yet he had mortgaged his estate so deeply that his heirs hesitated at accepting their inheritance, for fear it should involve them in debt. Ten years after his death, the account between his executors and his brother John amounted to one million four hundred thousand florins due to the Count, secured by various pledges of real and personal property, and it was finally settled upon this basis.

He was, besides, largely indebted to every one of his powerful relatives, so that the payment of the incumbrances upon his estate very nearly justified the fears of his children. While on the one hand, therefore, he poured out these enormous sums like water, and firmly refused a hearing to the tempting offers of the royal government, upon the other hand he proved the disinterested nature of his services by declining, year after year, the sovereignty over the provinces, and by only accepting in the last days of his life, when refusal had become almost impossible, the limited, constitutional supremacy over that portion of them which now makes the realm of his descendants. He lived and died, not for himself, but for his country. “God pity this poor people!” were his dying words.

His intellectual faculties were various and of the highest order. He had the exact, practical, and combining qualities which make the great commander, and his friends claimed that, in military genius, he was second to no captain in Europe. This was, no doubt, an exaggeration of partial attachment, but it is certain that the Emperor Charles had an exalted opinion of his capacity for the field. His fortification of Philippeville and Charlemont, in the face of the enemy; his passage of the Meuse in Alva’s sight; his unfortunate but well-ordered campaign against that general; his sublime plan of relief, projected and successfully directed at last from his sick bed, for the besieged city of Leyden, will always remain monuments of his practical military skill.

Of the soldier’s great virtues—constancy in disaster, devotion to duty, hopefulness in defeat—no man ever possessed a larger share. He arrived, through a series of reverses, at a perfect victory. He planted a free commonwealth under the very battery of the Inquisition, in defiance of the most powerful empire existing. He was, therefore, a conqueror in the loftiest sense, for he conquered liberty and a national existence for a whole people. The contest was long, and he fell in the struggle, but the victory was to the dead hero, not to the living monarch.

It is to be remembered, too, that he always wrought with inferior instruments. His troops were usually mercenaries, who were but too apt to mutiny upon the eve of battle, while he was opposed by the most formidable veterans of Europe, commanded successively by the first captains of the age. That, with no lieutenant of eminent valor or experience save only his brother Louis, and with none at all after that chieftain’s death, William of Orange should succeed in baffling the efforts of Alva, Requescens, Don John of Austria, and Alexander Farnese—men whose names are among the most brilliant in the military annals of the world—is in itself sufficient evidence of his warlike capacity. At the period of his death, he had reduced the number of obedient provinces to two—only Artois and Hainault acknowledging Philip—while the other fifteen were in open revolt, the greater part having solemnly forsworn their sovereign.

The supremacy of his political genius was entirely beyond question. He was the first statesman of the age. The quickness of his perception was only equaled by the caution which enabled him to mature the results of his observations. His knowledge of human nature was profound. He governed the passions and sentiments of a great nation as if they had been but the keys and chords of one vast instrument; and his hand rarely failed to evoke harmony even out of the wildest storms. The turbulent city of Ghent, which could obey no other master, which even the haughty emperor could only crush without controlling, was ever responsive to the master-hand of Orange. His presence scared away Imbize and his bat-like crew, confounded the schemes of John Casimir, frustrated the wiles of Prince Chimay, and while he lived, Ghent was what it ought always to have remained, the bulwark, as it had been the cradle, of popular liberty. After his death it became its tomb.

Ghent, saved twice by the policy, the eloquence, the self-sacrifices of Orange, fell within three months of his murder into the hands of Parma. The loss of this most important city, followed in the next year by the downfall of Antwerp, sealed the fate of the southern Netherlands. Had the prince lived, how different might have been the country’s fate! If seven provinces could dilate, in so brief a space, into the powerful commonwealth which the republic soon became, what might not have been achieved by the united seventeen—a confederacy which would have united the adamantine vigor of the Batavian and Frisian races with the subtler, more delicate, and more graceful national elements in which the genius of the Frank, the Roman, and the Romanized Celt were so intimately blended. As long as the father of the country lived, such a union was possible. His power of managing men was so unquestionable that there was always a hope, even in the darkest hour; for men felt implicit reliance as well on his intellectual resources as on his integrity.

This power of dealing with his fellow-men he manifested in the various ways in which it has been usually exhibited by statesmen. He possessed a ready eloquence—sometimes impassioned, oftener argumentative, always rational. His influence over his audience was unexampled in the annals of that country or age; yet he never condescended to flatter the people. He never followed the nation, but always led her in the path of duty and of honor, and was much more prone to rebuke the vices than to pander to the passions of his hearers. He never failed to administer ample chastisement to parsimony, to jealousy, to insubordination, to intolerance, to infidelity, wherever it was due, nor feared to confront the states or the people in their most angry hours, and to tell them the truth to their faces. This commanding position he alone could stand upon, for his countrymen knew the generosity which had sacrificed his all for them, the self-denial which had eluded rather than sought political advancement, whether from king or people, and the untiring devotion which had consecrated a whole life to toil and danger in the cause of their emancipation.

While, therefore, he was ever ready to rebuke, and always too honest to flatter, he at the same time possessed the eloquence which could convince or persuade. He knew how to reach both the mind and the heart of his hearers. His orations, whether extemporaneous or prepared; his written messages to the states-general, to the provincial authorities, to the municipal bodies; his private correspondence with men of all ranks, from emperors and kings down to secretaries, and even children, all show an easy flow of language, a fullness of thought, a power of expression rare in that age, a fund of historical allusion, a considerable power of imagination, a warmth of sentiment, a breadth of view, a directness of purpose, a range of qualities, in short, which would in themselves have stamped him as one of the master-minds of his century, had there been no other monument to his memory than the remains of his spoken or written eloquence.

The bulk of his performances in this department was prodigious. Not even Philip was more industrious in the cabinet. Not even Granvelle held a more facile pen. He wrote and spoke equally well in French, German, or Flemish; and he possessed, besides, Spanish, Italian, Latin. The weight of his correspondence alone would have almost sufficed for the common industry of a lifetime; and although many volumes of his speeches and letters have been published, there remain in the various archives of the Netherlands and Germany many documents from his hand which will probably never see the light. If the capacity for unremitted intellectual labor in an honorable cause be the measure of human greatness, few minds could be compared to the “large composition” of this man. The efforts made to destroy the Netherlands by the most laborious and painstaking of tyrants were counteracted by the industry of the most indefatigable of patriots.

He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face. Their name was the last word upon his lips, save the simple affirmative, with which the soldier who had been battling for the right all his lifetime commended his soul in dying “to his great captain, Christ.” The people were grateful and affectionate, for they trusted the character of their “Father Wiliam,” and not all the clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their darkest calamities, to look for light. As long as he lived he was the guiding star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.

Our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and a deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only can he take his stand. In the galleys of the river Loire—whither Knox and the others, after their castle of St. Andrews was taken, had been sent as galley-slaves—some officer or priest one day presented them an image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. “Mother? Mother of God?” said Knox, when the turn came to him: “This is no Mother of God; this is a pented bredd—a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshiped,” added Knox, and flung the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there; but come of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a pented bredd: worship it he would not.

He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; the cause they had was a true one, and must and would prosper; the whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God’s making; it is alone strong. How many pented bredds, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be worshiped! This Knox can not live but by fact: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man by sincerity itself becomes heroic; it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one; a narrow, inconsiderable man as compared with Luther, but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as we say, he has no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of the true prophet cast. “He lies there,” said the Earl of Morton at his grave, “who never feared the face of man.” He resembles, more than any of the moderns, an old Hebrew prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God’s truth, stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth; an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century. We are to take him for that; not require him to be other.

Knox’s conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own palace to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such cruelty, such coarseness fill us with indifference. On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knox said and what Knox meant, I must say one’s tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit. Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the queen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the nation and cause of Scotland.

A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing, ambitious Guises, and the cause of God trampled under foot of falsehoods, formulas, and the devil’s cause, had no method of making himself agreeable. “Better that women weep,” said Morton, “than that bearded men be forced to weep.” Knox was the constitutional opposition party in Scotland; the nobles of the country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it; Knox had to go, or no one. The hapless queen—but still the more hapless country, if she were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among her other qualities. “Who are you,” said she once, “that presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?” “Madam, a subject born within the same,” answered he. Reasonably answered! If the “subject” have truth to speak, it is not the “subject’s” footing that will fail him here.

We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance is to tolerate the unessential, and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate. We are here to resist, to control, and vanquish withal. We do not “tolerate” falsehoods, thieveries, iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them, Thou art false! thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish falsehoods, and to put an end to them in some wise way. I will not quarrel so much with the way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant.

A man sent to row in the French galleys, and such like, for teaching the truth in his own land, can not always be in the mildest humor. I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper, nor do I know that he had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature he decidedly had not. Kind, honest affections dwell in the much-enduring, hard-worn, ever-battling man. That he could rebuke queens, and had such weight among those proud, turbulent nobles—proud enough, whatever else they were—and could maintain to the end a kind of virtual presidency and sovereignty over that wild realm, he who was only “a subject born within the same”; this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean, acrid man, but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for pulling down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious, rioting demagogue; precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine. Knox wanted no pulling down of stone edifices; he wanted leprosy and darkness thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element. It was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Every such man is the born enemy of disorder—hates to be in it; but what then? Smooth falsehood is not order. It is the general sum-total of disorder. Order is truth—each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it. Order and falsehood can not subsist together.

Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him, which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His history, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the two prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence, march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another’s rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a great sight for him every way. Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone, though there is enough of that too; but a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say a laugh in the eyes most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man; brother to the high, brother also to the low; sincere in his sympathy with both. He had his pipe of Bordeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his—a cheery, social man, with faces that loved him. They go far wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all; he is one of the solidest of men. Practical, cautious, hopeful, patient; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present. A certain sardonic taciturnity is in him; insight enough, and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him—“They, what are they?” But the thing which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of, and in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear, all the more emphatic for his long silence.

This prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man. He had a sore fight of an existence; wrestling with popes and principalities; in defeat, contention, life-long struggle; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A sore fight; but he won it. “Have you hope?” they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, “pointed upward with his finger,” and so died. Honor to him. His works have not died. The letter of his work dies, as of all men’s, but the spirit of it never.

Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of Europe. No man studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch, he was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the age, he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Since the days of Demetrius Poliorcetes, no man had besieged so many cities. Since the days of Fabius Cunctator, no general had avoided so many battles, and no soldier, courageous as he was, ever attained to a more sublime indifference to calumny or depreciation. Having proved in his boyhood, at Fontarabia, and in his maturity, at Mühlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage, when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense. Conscious of holding his armies in his hand, by the power of an unrivalled discipline, and the magic of a name illustrated by a hundred triumphs, he could bear with patience and benevolence the murmurs of his soldiers when their battles were denied them.

He was born in 1508, of a family which boasted imperial descent. A Palæologus, brother of a Byzantine emperor, had conquered the city of Toledo, and transmitted its appellation as a family name. The father of Ferdinando, Don Garcia, had been slain on the Isle of Gerbes, in battle with the Moors, when his son was but four years of age. The child was brought up by his grandfather, Don Frederic, and trained from his tenderest infancy to arms. Hatred to the infidel, and a determination to avenge his father’s blood crying to him from a foreign grave, were the earliest of his instincts. As a youth he was distinguished for his prowess. His maiden sword was fleshed at Fontarabia, where, although but sixteen years of age, he was considered by his constancy in hardship, by his brilliant and desperate courage, and by the example of military discipline which he afforded to the troops, to have contributed in no small degree to the success of the Spanish arms.

In 1530 he accompanied the emperor in his campaign against the Turks. Charles, instinctively recognizing the merit of the youth who was destined to be the life-long companion of his toils and glories, distinguished him with his favor at the opening of his career. Young, brave, and enthusiastic, Ferdinando de Toledo at this period was as interesting a hero as ever illustrated the pages of Castilian romance. His mad ride from Hungary to Spain and back again, accomplished in seventeen days, for the sake of a brief visit to his newly-married wife, is not the least attractive episode in the history of an existence which was destined to be so dark and sanguinary. In 1535 he accompanied the emperor on his memorable expedition to Tunis. In 1546 and 1547 he was generalissimo in the war against the Smalcaldian league. His most brilliant feat of arms—perhaps the most brilliant exploit of the emperor’s reign—was the passage of the Elbe and the battle of Mühlberg, accomplished in spite of Maximilian’s bitter and violent reproaches, and the tremendous possibilities of a defeat. That battle had finished the war.

The gigantic and magnanimous John Frederic, surprised at his devotions in the church, fled in dismay, leaving his boots behind him, which for their superhuman size were ridiculously said afterward to be treasured among the trophies of the Toledo house. The rout was total. “I came, I saw, and God conquers,” said the emperor, in pious parody of his immortal predecessor’s epigram. Maximilian, with a thousand apologies for his previous insults, embraced the heroic Don Ferdinand over and over again, as, arrayed in a plain suit of blue armor, unadorned save with the streaks of his enemies’ blood, he returned from pursuit of the fugitive. So complete and so sudden was the victory, that it was found impossible to account for it save on the ground of miraculous interposition. Like Joshua in the vale of Ajalon, Don Ferdinand was supposed to have commanded the sun to stand still for a season, and to have been obeyed. Otherwise, how could the passage of the river, which was only concluded at six in the evening, and the complete overthrow of the Protestant forces, have all been accomplished within the narrow space of an April twilight?

The reply of the duke to Henry II of France, who questioned him subsequently upon the subject, is well known. “Your Majesty, I was too much occupied that evening with what was taking place on the earth beneath, to pay much heed to the evolutions of the heavenly bodies.” Spared as he had been by his good fortune from taking any part in the Algerine expedition, or in witnessing the ignominious retreat from Innspruck, he was obliged to submit to the intercalation of the disastrous siege of Metz in the long history of his successes. Doing the duty of a field-marshal and a sentinel, supporting his army by his firmness and his discipline when nothing else could have supported them, he was at last enabled, after half the hundred thousand men with whom Charles had begun the siege had been sacrificed, to induce his imperial master to raise the siege before the remaining fifty thousand had been frozen or starved to death.

The culminating career of Alva seemed to have closed in the mist which gathered around the setting star of the empire. Having accompanied Philip to England in 1554, on his matrimonial expedition, he was destined in the following year, as viceroy and generalissimo of Italy, to be placed in a series of false positions. A great captain engaged in a little war, the champion of the cross in arms against the successor of St. Peter, he had extricated himself at last with his usual adroitness, but with very little glory. To him had been allotted the mortification, to another the triumph. The luster of his own name seemed to sink in the ocean, while that of a hated rival, with new spangled ore, suddenly “flamed in the forehead of the morning sky.” While he had been paltering with a dotard, whom he was forbidden to crush, Egmont had struck down the chosen troops of France and conquered her most illustrious commanders. Here was the unpardonable crime which could only be expiated by the blood of the victor. Unfortunately for his rival, the time was now approaching when the long-deferred revenge was to be satisfied.

On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood, and this was, perhaps, in the eyes of humanity, his principal virtue. “Time and myself are two,” was a frequent observation of Philip, and his favorite general considered the maxim as applicable to war as to politics. Such were his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not combine a great variety of vices, but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed no virtues. He was neither lustful nor intemperate, but his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient vindictiveness and universal bloodthirstiness, were never found in a savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom. His history was now to show that his previous thrift of human life was not derived from any love of his kind. Personally he was stern and overbearing. As difficult of access as Philip himself, he was even more haughty to those who were admitted to his presence.

The duke’s military fame was unquestionable when he came to the provinces, and both in stricken fields and in long campaigns he showed how thoroughly it had been deserved; yet he left the Netherlands a baffled man. The prince might be many times defeated, but he was not conquered. As Alva penetrated into the heart of the ancient Batavian land, he found himself overmatched as he had never been before, even by the most potent generals of his day. More audacious, more inventive, more desperate than all the commanders of that or any other age, the spirit of national freedom now taught the oppressor that it was invincible, except by annihilation. The same lesson had been read in the same thickets by the Nervii to Julius Cæsar, by the Batavians to the legions of Vespasian; and now a loftier and a purer flame than that which inspired the national struggles against Rome glowed within the breasts of the descendants of the same people, and inspired them with the strength which comes from religious enthusiasm.

As an administrator of the civil and judicial affairs of the country, Alva at once reduced its institutions to a frightful simplicity. In the place of the ancient laws of which the Netherlander were so proud, he substituted the Blood Council. This tribunal was even more arbitrary than the Inquisition. Never was a simpler apparatus for tyranny devised than this great labor-saving machine. Never was so great a quantity of murder and robbery achieved with such dispatch and regularity. Sentences, executions, and confiscations, to an incredible extent, were turned out daily with an appalling precision. For this invention Alva is alone responsible. The tribunal and its councilors were the work and the creatures of his hand, and faithfully did they accomplish the dark purpose of their existence. Nor can it be urged, in extenuation of the governor’s crimes, that he was but the blind and fanatically loyal slave of his sovereign.

A noble nature could not have contaminated itself with such slaughter-house work, but might have sought to mitigate the royal policy without forswearing allegiance. A nature less rigid than iron would at least have manifested compunction, as it found itself converted into a fleshless instrument of massacre. More decided than his master, however, he seemed by his promptness to rebuke the dilatory genius of Philip. The king seemed, at times, to loiter over his work, teasing and tantalizing his appetite for vengeance before it should be gratified. Alva, rapid and brutal, scorned such epicureanism. He strode with gigantic steps over haughty statutes and popular constitutions; crushing alike the magnates who claimed a bench of monarchs for their jury, and the ignoble artisans who could appeal only to the laws of their land. From the pompous and theatrical scaffolds of Egmont and Horn, to the nineteen halters prepared by Master Karl to hang up the chief bakers and brewers of Brussels on their own thresholds; from the beheading of the twenty nobles on the horse-market, in the opening of the governor’s career, to the roasting alive of Uitenhoove at its close; from the block on which fell the honored head of Antony Straalen, to the obscure chair in which the ancient gentlewoman of Amsterdam suffered death for an act of vicarious mercy; from one year’s end to another’s—from the most signal to the most squalid scenes of sacrifice, the eye and hand of the great master directed without weariness the task imposed by the sovereign.

England’s one hope lay in the character of her queen. Elizabeth was now in her twenty-fifth year. Personally she had more than her mother’s beauty; her figure was commanding, her face long but queenly and intelligent, her eyes quick and fine. She had grown up amid the liberal culture of Henry’s court a bold horsewoman, a good shot, a graceful dancer, a skilled musician, and an accomplished scholar. She studied every morning the Greek Testament, and followed this by the tragedies of Sophocles or orations of Demosthenes, and could “rub up her rusty Greek” at need to bandy pedantry with a vice-chancellor. But she was far from being a mere pedant. The new literature which was springing up around her found constant welcome in her court. She spoke Italian and French as fluently as her mother-tongue. She was familiar with Ariosto and Tasso. Even amid the affectation and love of anagrams and puerilities which sullied her later years, she listened with delight to the “Faery Queen,” and found a smile for “Master Spenser” when he appeared in her presence. Her moral temper recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed blood within her veins.

She was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless courage, and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were school-boys; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear; she would break now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her ministers like a fish-wife. But strangely in contrast with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph’s dream. She loved gayety and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too gross. “To see her was heaven,” Hatton told her, “the lack of her was hell.” She would play with her rings that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that the French ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests, gave color to a thousand scandals. Her character, in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which had broken out in the romps of her girlhood and showed itself almost ostentatiously throughout her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome young squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her “sweet Robin,” Lord Leicester, in the face of the court.

It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth almost to the last to be little more than a frivolous woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered how “a wanton” could hold in check the policy of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. The willfulness of Henry, the triviality of Anne Boleyn, played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, Elizabeth lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had no weight whatever with her in state affairs. The coquette of the presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest of politicians at the council-board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, she would tolerate no flattery in the closet; she was herself plain and downright of speech with her counselors, and she looked for a corresponding plainness of speech in return. If any trace of her sex lingered in her actual statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity of purpose that often underlies a woman’s fluctuations of feeling.

It was this, in part, which gave her her marked superiority over the statesmen of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered round a council-board than those who gathered round the council-board of Elizabeth. But she was the instrument of none. She listened, she weighed, she used or put by the counsels of each in turn, but her policy as a whole was her own. It was a policy not of genius but of good sense. Her aims were simple and obvious: to preserve her throne, to keep England out of war, to restore civil and religious order. Something of womanly caution and timidity, perhaps, backed the passionless indifference with which she set aside the larger schemes of ambition which were ever opening before her eyes. She was resolute in her refusal of the Low Countries. She rejected with a laugh the offers of the Protestants to make her “head of the religion” and “mistress of the seas.” But her amazing success in the end sprang mainly from this wise limitation of her aims. She had a finer sense than any of her counselors of her real resources; she knew instinctively how far she could go and what she could do. Her cold, critical intellect was never swayed by enthusiasm or by panic either to exaggerate or to underestimate her risks or her power.

Of political wisdom, indeed, in its larger and more generous sense Elizabeth had little or none; but her political tact was unerring. She seldom saw her course at a glance, but she played with a hundred courses, fitfully and discursively, as a musician runs his fingers over the key-board, till she hit suddenly upon the right one. Her nature was essentially practical and of the present. She distrusted a plan, in fact, just in proportion to its speculative range or its outlook into the future. Her notion of statesmanship lay in watching how things turned out around her, and in seizing the moment for making the best of them. A policy of this limited, practical, tentative order was not only best suited to the England of her day, to its small resources and the transitional character of its religious and political belief, but it was one eminently suited to Elizabeth’s peculiar powers. It was a policy of detail, and in details her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found scope for their exercise. “No war, my lords,” the queen used to cry imperiously at the council-board, “No war!” but her hatred of war sprang less from her aversion to blood or to expense, real as was her aversion to both, than from the fact that peace left the field open to the diplomatic manœuvres and intrigues in which she excelled. Her delight in the consciousness of her ingenuity broke out in a thousand puckish freaks—freaks in which one can hardly see any purpose beyond the purpose of sheer mystification. She reveled in “by-ways” and “crooked ways.” She played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with much of the same feline delight in the mere embarrassment of her victims. When she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen, she turned to find fresh sport in mystifying her own ministers.

Had Elizabeth written the story of her reign, she would have prided herself not on the triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with which she had hoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in Europe during fifty years. Nor was her trickery without political value. Ignoble, inexpressibly wearisome as the queen’s diplomacy seems to us now, tracing it as we do through a thousand dispatches, it succeeded in its main end. It gained time, and every year that was gained doubled Elizabeth’s strength. Nothing is more revolting in the queen, but nothing is more characteristic than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom. A falsehood was to her simply an intellectual means of meeting a difficulty; and the ease with which she asserted or denied whatever suited her purpose, was only equaled by the cynical indifference with which she met the exposure of her lies as soon as their purpose was answered. The same purely intellectual view of things showed itself in the dexterous use she made of her very faults. Her levity carried her gayly over moments of detection and embarrassment where better women would have died of shame. She screened her tentative and hesitating statesmanship under the natural timidity and vacillation of her sex. She turned her very luxury and sports to good account. There were moments of grave danger in her reign, when the country remained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the queen give her days to hawking and hunting and her nights to dancing and plays. Her vanity and affectation, her womanly fickleness and caprice, all had their part in the diplomatic comedies she played with the successive candidates for her hand. If political necessities made her life a lonely one, she had at any rate the satisfaction of averting war and conspiracies by love-sonnets and romantic interviews, or of gaining a year of tranquillity by the dexterous spinning out of a flirtation.

As we track Elizabeth through her tortuous mazes of lying and intrigue, the sense of her greatness is almost lost in a sense of contempt. But, wrapped as they were in a cloud of mystery, the aims of her policy were throughout temperate and simple, and they were pursued with a singular tenacity. The sudden acts of energy which from time to time broke her habitual hesitation proved that it was no hesitation of weakness. Elizabeth could wait and finesse; but when the hour was come she could strike, and strike hard. Her natural temper indeed tended to a rash self-confidence rather than to self-distrust. She had, as strong natures always have, an unbounded confidence in her luck. “Her Majesty counts much on Fortune,” Walsingham wrote bitterly; “I wish she would trust more in Almighty God.” The diplomatists who censured at one moment her irresolution, her delay, her changes of front, censure at the next her “obstinacy,” her iron will, her defiance of what seemed to them inevitable ruin. “This woman,” Philip’s envoy wrote after a wasted remonstrance, “this woman is possessed by a hundred thousand devils.”

To her own subjects, indeed, who knew nothing of her manœuvres and retreats, of her “by-ways” and “crooked ways,” she seemed the embodiment of dauntless resolution. Brave as they were, the men who swept the Spanish main or glided between the icebergs of Baffin Bay never doubted that the palm of bravery lay with their queen. Her steadiness and courage in the pursuit of her aims was equaled by the wisdom with which she chose the men to accomplish them. She had a quick eye for merit of any sort, and a wonderful power of enlisting its whole energy in her service. The sagacity which chose Cecil and Walsingham was just as unerring in its choice of the meanest of her agents. Her success, indeed, in securing from the beginning of her reign to its end, with the single exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the work she set them to do, sprang in great measure from the noblest characteristic of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim her temper fell below many of the tempers of her time, in the breadth of its range, in the universality of its sympathy, it stood far above them all. Elizabeth could talk poetry with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; she could discuss euphuism with Lyly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex; she could turn from talk of the last fashions to pore with Cecil over dispatches and treasury books; she could pass from tracking traitors with Walsingham to settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to calculate with Frobisher the chances of a northwest passage to the Indies. The versatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled her to understand every phase of the intellectual movement of her day, and to fix by a sort of instinct on its higher representatives. But the greatness of the queen rests above all on her power over her people.

We have had grander and nobler rulers, but none so popular as Elizabeth. The passion of love, of loyalty, of admiration, which finds its most perfect expression in the “Faery Queen,” throbbed as intensely through the veins of her meanest subjects. To England, during her reign of half a century, she was a virgin and a Protestant queen; and her immorality, her absolute want of religious enthusiasm, failed utterly to blur the brightness of the national idea. Her worst acts broke fruitlessly against the general devotion. A Puritan, whose hand she cut off in a freak of tyrannous resentment, waved his hat with the hand that was left, and shouted, “God save Queen Elizabeth!” Of her faults, indeed, England beyond the circle of her court knew little or nothing. The shiftings of her diplomacy were never seen outside the royal closet. The nation at large could only judge her foreign policy by its main outlines, by its temperance and good sense, and above all by its success. But every Englishman was able to judge Elizabeth in her rule at home, in her love of peace, her instinct of order, the firmness and moderation of her government, the judicious spirit of conciliation and compromise among warring factions, which gave the country an unexampled tranquillity at a time when almost every other country in Europe was torn with civil war. Every sign of the growing prosperity, the sight of London as it became the mart of the world, of stately mansions as they rose on every manor, told, and justly told, in Elizabeth’s favor.

In one act of her civil administration she showed the boldness and originality of a great ruler; for the opening of her reign saw her face the social difficulty which had so long impeded English progress, by the issue of a commission of inquiry which ended in the solution of the problem by the system of poor-laws. She lent a ready patronage to the new commerce; she considered its extension and protection as a part of public policy, and her statue in the center of the London Exchange was a tribute on the part of the merchant class to the interest with which she watched and shared personally in its enterprises. Her thrift won a general gratitude. The memories of the Terror and of the martyrs threw into bright relief the aversion from bloodshed which was conspicuous in her earlier reign, and never wholly wanting through its fiercer close. Above all, there was a general confidence in her instinctive knowledge of the national temper. Her finger was always on the public pulse. She knew exactly when she could resist the feeling of her people, and when she must give way before the new sentiment of freedom which her policy unconsciously fostered. But when she retreated, her defeat had all the grace of victory; and the frankness and unreserve of her surrender won back at once the love that her resistance had lost. Her attitude at home, in fact, was that of a woman whose pride in the well-being of her subjects, and whose longing for their favor, was the one warm touch in the coldness of her natural temper. If Elizabeth could be said to love anything, she loved England. “Nothing,” she said to her first Parliament in words of unwonted fire, “nothing, no worldly thing under the sun, is so dear to me as the love and good-will of my subjects.” And the love and good-will which were so dear to her she fully won.

She clung, perhaps, to her popularity the more passionately that it hid in some measure from her the terrible loneliness of her life. She was the last of the Tudors, the last of Henry’s children; and her nearest relatives were Mary Stuart and the house of Suffolk, one the avowed, the other the secret, claimant of her throne. Among her mother’s kindred she found but a single cousin. Whatever womanly tenderness she had, wrapped itself around Leicester; but a marriage with Leicester was impossible, and every other union, could she even have bent to one, was denied to her by the political difficulties of her position. The one cry of bitterness which burst from Elizabeth revealed her terrible sense of the solitude of her life. “The Queen of Scots,” she cried at the birth of James, “has a fair son, and I am but a barren stock.” But the loneliness of her position only reflected the loneliness of her nature. She stood utterly apart from the world around her, sometimes above it, sometimes below it, but never of it. It was only on its intellectual side that Elizabeth touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects were simply dead to her.

It was a time when men were being lifted into nobleness by the new moral energy which seemed suddenly to pulse through the whole people, when honor and enthusiasm took colors of poetic beauty, and religion became a chivalry. But the finer sentiments of the men around her touched Elizabeth simply as the fair tints of a picture would have touched her. She made her market with equal indifference out of the heroism of William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest aims and lives were only counters on her board. She was the one soul in her realm whom the news of St. Bartholomew stirred to no thirst for vengeance; and while England was thrilling with its triumph over the Armada, its queen was coolly grumbling over the cost, and making her profit out of the spoiled provisions she had ordered for the fleet that saved her. To the voice of gratitude, indeed, she was for the most part deaf. She accepted services such as were never rendered to any other English sovereign without a thought of return. Walsingham spent his fortune in saving her life and throne, and she left him to die a beggar.

But, as if by a strange irony, it was to this very want of sympathy that she owed some of the grander features of her character. If she was without love, she was without hate. She cherished no petty resentments; she never stooped to envy or suspicion of the men who served her. She was indifferent to abuse. Her good-humor was never ruffled by the charges of wantonness and cruelty with which the Jesuits filled every court in Europe. She was insensible to fear. Her life became at last the mark for assassin after assassin, but the thought of peril was the one hardest to bring home to her. Even when the Catholic plots broke out in her very household, she would listen to no proposals for the removal of Catholics from her court.

Her change of abode and situation was very little agreeable to the Scottish princess. Besides her natural preposessions in favor of a country in which she had been educated from her earliest infancy, and where she had borne so high a rank, she could not forbear both regretting the society of that people, so celebrated for their humane disposition and their respectful attachment to their sovereign, and reflecting on the disparity of the scene which lay before her. It is said that, after she was embarked at Calais, she kept her eyes fixed on the coast of France, and never turned them from that beloved object till darkness fell and intercepted it from her view. She then ordered a couch to be spread for her in the open air, and charged the pilot that if in the morning the land were still in sight, he should awake her, and afford her one parting view of that country in which all her affections were centered. The weather proved calm, so that the ship made little way in the night-time, and Mary had once more an opportunity of seeing the French coast. She sat up on her couch, and, still looking toward the land, often repeated these words: “Farewell, France, farewell; I shall never see thee more.”

The first aspect, however, of things in Scotland was more favorable, if not to her pleasure and happiness, at least to her repose and security, than she had reason to apprehend. No sooner did the French galleys appear off Leith, than people of all ranks, who had long expected their arrival, flocked toward the shore with an earnest impatience to behold and receive their young sovereign. Some were led by duty, some by interest, some by curiosity; and all combined to express their attachment to her, and to insinuate themselves into her confidence on the commencement of her administration. She had now reached her nineteenth year, and the bloom of her youth and amiable beauty of her person were further recommended by the affability of her address, the politeness of her manners, and the elegance of her genius. Well accomplished in all the superficial but engaging graces of a court, she afforded, when better known, still more promising indications of her character; and men prognosticated both humanity from her soft and obliging deportment, and penetration from her taste in all the refined arts of music, eloquence, and poetry. And as the Scots had long been deprived of the presence of their sovereign, whom they once despaired ever more to behold among them, her arrival seemed to give universal satisfaction; and nothing appeared about the court but symptoms of affection, joy, and festivity.

But there was one circumstance which blasted all these promising appearances, and bereaved Mary of that general favor which her agreeable manners and judicious deportment gave her just reason to expect. She was still a papist; and though she published, soon after her arrival, a proclamation enjoining every one to submit to the established religion, the preachers and their adherents could neither be reconciled to a person polluted with so great an abomination, nor lay aside their jealousies of her future conduct. It was with great difficulty she could obtain permission for saying mass in her own chapel; and had not the people apprehended that, if she had here met with a refusal, she would instantly have returned to France, the zealots never would have granted her even that small indulgence. The cry was, “Shall we suffer that idol to be again erected within the realm?”

The whole life of Mary was, from the demeanor of these men, filled with bitterness and sorrow. The rustic apostle John Knox scruples not, in his history, to inform us that he once treated her with such severity that she lost all command of temper, and dissolved in tears before him; yet, so far from being moved with youth and beauty, and royal dignity reduced to that condition, he persevered in his insolent reproofs; and when he relates this incident, he discovers a visible pride and satisfaction in his own conduct. The pulpits had become mere scenes of railing against the vices of the court; among which were always noted, as the principal, feasting, finery, dancing, balls, and whoredom, their necessary attendant. Some ornaments which the ladies at that time wore upon their petticoats, excited mightily the indignation of the preachers; and they affirmed that such vanity would provoke God’s vengeance, not only against these foolish women but against the whole realm.

Mary, whose age, condition, and education invited her to liberty and cheerfulness, was curbed in all amusements by the absurd severity of these reformers; and she found, every moment, reason to regret her leaving that country from whose manners she had, in her early youth, received the first impressions. Her two uncles, the Duke of Aumale and the Grand Prior, with the other French nobility, soon took leave of her; the Marquis of Elbeuf remained some time longer; but after his departure she was left to the society of her own subjects—men unacquainted with the pleasures of conversation, ignorant of arts and civility, and corrupted beyond their usual rusticity by a dismal fanaticism, which rendered them incapable of all humanity or improvement. Though Mary had made no attempt to restore the ancient religion, her popery was a sufficient crime; though her behavior was hitherto irreproachable, and her manners sweet and engaging, her gayety and ease were interpreted as signs of dissolute vanity; and to the harsh and preposterous usage which this princess met with may in part be ascribed those errors of her subsequent conduct, which seemed so little of a piece with the general tenor of her character.

Mary was a woman of great accomplishments both of body and mind, natural as well as acquired, but unfortunate in her life, and during one period very unhappy in her conduct. The beauties of her person and graces of her air combined to make her the most amiable of women; and the charms of her address and conversation aided the impression which her lovely figure made on the hearts of all beholders. Ambitious and active in her temper, yet inclined to cheerfulness and society; of a lofty spirit, constant and even vehement in her purpose, yet polite, and gentle, and affable in her demeanor, she seemed to partake only so much of the male virtues as to render her estimable, without relinquishing those soft graces which compose the proper ornament of her sex.

In order to form a just idea of her character, we must set aside one part of her conduct, while she abandoned herself to the guidance of a profligate man, and must consider these faults, whether we admit them to be imprudences or crimes, as the result of an inexplicable though not uncommon inconstancy in the human mind, of the frailty of our nature, of the violence of passion, and of the influence which situations, and sometimes momentary incidents, have on persons whose principles are not thoroughly confirmed by experience and reflection. Enraged by the ungrateful conduct of her husband, seduced by the treacherous counsels of one in whom she reposed confidence, transported by the violence of her own temper, which never lay sufficiently under the guidance of discretion, she was betrayed into actions which may with some difficulty be accounted for, but which admit of no apology, nor even of alleviation. An enumeration of her qualities might carry the appearance of a panegyric; an account of her conduct must in some parts wear the aspect of severe satire and invective.

Her numerous misfortunes, the solitude of her long and tedious captivity, and the persecutions to which she had been exposed on account of her religion, had wrought her up to a degree of bigotry during her later years; and such were the prevalent spirit and principles of the age, that it is the less wonder if her zeal, her resentment, and her interest uniting, induced her to give consent to a design which conspirators, actuated only by the first of these motives, had formed against the life of Elizabeth.

If Strafford embodied the spirit of tyranny, John Pym, the leader of the Commons from the first meeting of the new houses at Westminster, stands out for all after time as the embodiment of law. A Somersetshire gentleman of good birth and competent fortune, he entered on public life in the Parliament of 1614, and was imprisoned for his patriotism at its close. He had been a leading member in that of 1620, and one of the “twelve ambassadors” for whom James ordered chairs to be set at Whitehall. Of the band of patriots with whom he had stood side by side in the constitutional struggle against the earlier despotism of Charles he was almost the sole survivor. Coke had died of old age; Cotton’s heart was broken by oppression; Eliot had perished in the tower; Wentworth had apostatized. Pym alone remained, resolute, patient as of old; and as the sense of his greatness grew silently during the eleven years of deepening misrule, the hope and faith of better things clung almost passionately to the man, who never doubted of the final triumph of freedom and the law. At their close, Clarendon tells us, in words all the more notable for their bitter tone of hate, “he was the most popular man, and the most able to do hurt, that has lived at any time.”

He had shown he knew how to wait, and when waiting was over he showed he knew how to act. On the eve of the Long Parliament he rode through England to quicken the electors to a sense of the crisis which had come at last; and on the assembling of the Commons, he took his place not merely as member for Tavistock but as their acknowledged head. Few of the country gentlemen, indeed, who formed the bulk of the members, had sat in any previous House; and of the few, none represented in so eminent a way the parliamentary tradition on which the coming struggle was to turn. Pym’s eloquence, inferior in boldness and originality to that of Eliot or Wentworth, was better suited by its massive and logical force to convince and guide a great party; and it was backed by a calmness of temper, a dexterity and order in the management of public business, and a practical power of shaping the course of debate, which gave a form and method to parliamentary proceedings such as they had never had before. Valuable, however, as these qualities were, it was a yet higher quality which raised Pym into the greatest, as he was the first, of parliamentary leaders.

Of the five hundred members who sat round him at St. Stephen’s, he was the one man who had clearly foreseen, and as clearly resolved how to meet, the difficulties which lay before them. It was certain that Parliament would be drawn into a struggle with the Crown. It was probable that in such a struggle the House of Commons would be hampered, as it had been hampered before, by the House of Lords. The legal antiquaries of the older constitutional school stood helpless before such a conflict of co-ordinate powers—a conflict for which no provision had been made by the law, and on which precedents threw only a doubtful and conflicting light. But, with a knowledge of precedent as great as their own, Pym rose high above them in his grasp of constitutional principles. He was the first English statesman who discovered, and applied to the political circumstances around him, what may be called the doctrine of constitutional proportion. He saw that, as an element of constitutional life, Parliament was of higher value than the Crown; he saw, too, that in Parliament itself the one essential part was the House of Commons. On these two facts he based his whole policy in the contest which followed.

When Charles refused to act with the Parliament, Pym treated the refusal as a temporary abdication on the part of the sovereign, which vested the executive power in the two Houses until new arrangements were made. When the Lords obstructed public business, he warned them that obstruction would only force the Commons “to save the kingdom alone.” Revolutionary as these principles seemed at the time, they have both been recognized as bases of our constitution since the days of Pym. The first principle was established by the Convention and Parliament which followed on the departure of James II; the second by the acknowledgement on all sides, since the Reform Bill of 1832, that the government of the country is really in the hands of the House of Commons, and can only be carried on by ministers who represent the majority of that House. Pym’s temper, indeed, was the very opposite of the temper of a revolutionist. Few natures have ever been wider in their range of sympathy or action.

Serious as his purpose was, his manners were genial, and even courtly; he turned easily from an invective against Strafford to a chat with Lady Carlisle; and the grace and gayety of his social tone, even when the care and weight of public affairs were bringing him to the grave, gave rise to a hundred silly scandals among the prurient royalists. It was this striking combination of genial versatility with a massive force in his nature which marked him out from the first moment of power as a born ruler of men. He proved himself at once the subtlest of diplomatists and the grandest of demagogues. He was equally at home in tracking the subtle intricacies of royalist intrigues, or in kindling popular passion with words of fire. Though past middle life when his work really began—for he was born in 1584, four years before the coming of the Armada—he displayed from the first meeting of the Long Parliament the qualities of a great administrator, an immense faculty for labor, a genius for organization, patience, tact, a power of inspiring confidence in all whom he touched, calmness and moderation under good fortune or ill, an immovable courage, an iron will. No English ruler has ever shown greater nobleness of natural temper or a wider capacity for government than the Somersetshire squire, whom his enemies, made clear-sighted by their hate, greeted truly enough as “King Pym.”

At his very name a figure seems to leap forth from the mist of three centuries, instinct with ruddy, vigorous life. Such was the intense vitality of the Bearnese prince, that even now he seems more thoroughly alive and recognizable than half the actual personages who are fretting their hour upon the stage.

We see at once a man of moderate stature, light, sinewy, and strong; a face browned with continual exposure; small, mirthful, yet commanding blue eyes, glittering from beneath an arching brow, and prominent cheek-bones; a long, hawk’s nose, almost resting upon a salient chin; a pendent mustache, and a thick, brown, curly beard, prematurely grizzled; we see the mien of frank authority and magnificent good-humor; we hear the ready sallies of the shrewd Gascon mother-wit; we feel the electricity which flashes out of him and sets all hearts around him on fire, when the trumpet sounds to battle. The headlong, desperate charge, the snow-white plume waving where the fire is hottest, the large capacity for enjoyment of the man, rioting without affectation in the certaminis gaudia, the insane gallop, after the combat, to lay its trophies at the feet of the Cynthia of the minute, and thus to forfeit its fruits—all are as familiar to us as if the seven distinct wars, the hundred pitched battles, the two hundred sieges, in which the Bearnese was personally present, had been occurrences of our own day.

He at last was both king and man, if the monarch who occupied the throne was neither. He was the man to prove, too, for the instruction of the patient letter-writer of the Escorial,[24] that the crown of France was to be won with foot in stirrup and carbine in hand, rather than to be caught by the weaving and casting of the most intricate nets of diplomatic intrigue, though thoroughly weighted with Mexican gold.

The king of Navarre was now thirty-one years old; for the three Henrys were nearly of the same age. The first indications of his existence had been recognized amid the cannon and trumpets of a camp in Picardy, and his mother had sung a gay Bearnese song as he was coming into the world at Pau. “Thus,” said his grandfather, Henry of Navarre, “thou shalt not bear to us a morose and sulky child.” The good king without a kingdom, taking the child as soon as born in the lappel of his dressing-gown, had brushed his infant lips with a clove of garlic and moistened them with a drop of generous Gascon wine. “Thus,” said the grandfather again, “shall the boy be both merry and bold.” There was something mythologically prophetic in the incidents of his birth.

The best part of Navarre had been long since appropriated by Ferdinand of Aragon. In France there reigned a young and warlike sovereign with four healthy boys. But the newborn infant had inherited the lilies of France from St. Louis, and a later ancestor had added to the escutcheon the motto “Espoir.” His grandfather believed that the boy was born to revenge upon Spain the wrongs of the house of Albret, and Henry’s nature seemed ever pervaded with Robert of Clermont’s device.

The same sensible grandfather, having different views on the subject of education from those manifested by Catharine de Medici toward her children, had the boy taught to run about bareheaded and barefooted, like a peasant, among the mountains and rocks of Béarn, till he became as rugged as a young bear and as nimble as a kid. Black bread and beef and garlic were his simple fare; and he was taught by his mother and his grandfather to hate lies and liars, and to read the Bible.

When he was fifteen, the third religious war broke out. Both his father and grandfather were dead. His mother, who had openly professed the Reformed faith since the death of her husband, who hated it, brought her boy to the camp at Rochelle, where he was received as the chief of the Huguenots. His culture was not extensive. He had learned to speak the truth, to ride, to shoot, to do with little sleep and less food. He could also construe a little Latin, and had read a few military treatises; but the mighty hours of an eventful life were now to take him by the hand and to teach him much good and much evil, as they bore him onward. He now saw military treatises expounded practically by professors like his uncle Condé, and Admiral Coligny, and Lewis Nassau in such lecture rooms as Laudun, and Jarnac, and Moncontour, and never was apter scholar.

The peace of Arnay-le-Duc succeeded, and then the fatal Bartholomew marriage with the Messalina of Valois. The faith taught in the mountains of Béarn was no buckler against the demand of “The mass, or death!” thundered at his breast by the lunatic Charles, as he pointed to thousands of massacred Huguenots. Henry yielded to such conclusive arguments, and became a Catholic. Four years of court-imprisonment succeeded, and the young king of Navarre, though proof to the artifices of his gossip Guise, was not adamant to the temptations spread for him by Catharine de Medici. In the harem entertained for him in the Louvre, many pitfalls entrapped him, and he became a stock-performer in the state comedies and tragedies of that plotting age.

A silken web of palace-politics, palace-diplomacy, palace-revolutions enveloped him. Schemes and counter-schemes, stratagems and conspiracies, assassinations and poisonings; all the state machinery which worked so exquisitely in fair ladies’ chambers, to spread havoc and desolation over a kingdom, were displayed before his eyes. Now campaigning with one royal brother against Huguenots, now fighting with another on their side, now solicited by the queen-mother to attempt the life of her son, now implored by Henry III to assassinate his brother, the Bearnese, as fresh antagonisms, affinities, combinations, were developed, detected, neutralized almost daily, became rapidly an adept in Medician state-chemistry. Charles IX in his grave, Henry III on the throne, Alençon in the Huguenot camp—Henry at last made his escape. The brief war and peace of Mercœur succeeded, and the king of Navarre formally abjured the Catholic creed. The parties were now sharply defined. Guise mounted upon the League, Henry astride upon the Reformation, were prepared to do battle to the death. The temporary “war of the amorous” was followed by the peace of Fleix.

Four years of peace again—four fat years of wantonness and riot preceding fourteen hungry, famine-stricken years of bloodiest civil war. The voluptuousness and infamy of the Louvre were almost paralleled in vice, if not in splendor, by the miniature court at Pau. Henry’s Spartan grandfather would scarcely have approved the courses of the youth whose education he had commenced on so simple a scale. For Margaret of Valois, hating her husband, and living in most undisguised and promiscuous infidelity to him, had profited by her mother’s lessons. A seraglio of maids of honor ministered to Henry’s pleasures, and were carefully instructed that the peace and war of the kingdom were playthings in their hands. While at Paris royalty was hopelessly sinking in a poisonous marsh, there was danger that even the hardy nature of the Bearnese would be mortally enervated by the atmosphere in which he lived.

The unhappy Henry III, baited by the Guises, worried by the Alençon and his mother, implored the king of Navarre to return to Paris and the Catholic faith. M. de Segur, chief of Navarre’s council, who had been won over during a visit to the capital, where he had made the discovery that “Henry III was an angel, and his ministers devils,” came back to Pau, urging his master’s acceptance of the royal invitation. Henry wavered. Bold D’Aubigné, stanchest of Huguenots and of his friends, next day privately showed Segur a palace window opening on a very steep precipice over the Bayse, and cheerfully assured him that he should be flung from it did he not instantly reverse his proceedings and give his master different advice. “If I am not able to do the deed myself,” said D’Aubigné, “here are a dozen more to help me.” The chief of the council cast a glance behind him, saw a number of grim Puritan soldiers, with their hats plucked down upon their brows, looking very serious; so made his bow, and quite changed his line of conduct.

But Henry—no longer the unsophisticated youth who had been used to run barefoot among the cliffs of Coarraze—was grown too crafty a politician to be entangled by Spanish or Medician wiles. The duke of Anjou was now dead. Of all the princes who had stood between him and the throne, there was none remaining save the helpless, childless, superannuated youth who was its present occupant. The king of Navarre was legitimate heir to the crown of France. “Espoir” was now in letters of light upon his shield, but he knew that his path to greatness led through manifold dangers, and that it was only at the head of his Huguenot chivalry that he could cut his way. He was the leader of the nobles of Gascony, and Dauphiny, and Guienne, in their mountain fastnesses; of the weavers, cutlers, and artisans in their thriving manufacturing and trading towns. It was not Spanish gold, but carbines and cutlasses, bows and bills, which could bring him to the throne of his ancestors.

And thus he stood the chieftain of that great, austere party of Huguenots, the men who went on their knees before the battle, beating their breasts with their iron gantlets, and singing in full chorus a psalm of David before smiting the Philistines hip and thigh.

Their chieftain, scarcely their representative—fit to lead his Puritans on the battle-field—was hardly a model for them elsewhere. Yet, though profligate in one respect, he was temperate in every other. In food, wine, and sleep, he was always moderate. Subtle and crafty in self-defence, he retained something of his old love of truth, of his hatred for liars. Hardly generous, perhaps, he was a friend of justice; while economy in a wandering king like himself was a necessary virtue, of which France one day was to feel the beneficent action. Reckless and headlong in appearance, he was in truth the most careful of men. On the religious question most cautious of all, he always left the door open behind him, disclaimed all bigotry of opinion, and earnestly implored the papists to seek, not his destruction, but his instruction. Yet, prudent as he was by nature in every other regard, he was all his life the slave of one woman or another; and it was by good luck rather than by sagacity that he did not repeatedly forfeit the fruits of his courage and conduct in obedience to his master-passion.

Always open to conviction on the subject of his faith, he repudiated the appellation of heretic. A creed, he said, was not to be changed like a shirt, but only on due deliberation and under special advice. In his secret heart he probably regarded the two religions as his chargers, and was ready to mount alternately the one or the other, as each seemed the more likely to bear him safely in battle. The Bearnese was no Puritan, but he was most true to himself and to his own advancement. His highest principle of action was to reach his goal, and to that principle he was ever loyal. Feeling, too, that it was for the interest of France that he should succeed, he was even inspired—compared with others on the stage—by an almost lofty patriotism.

Amiable by nature and by habit, he had preserved the most unimpaired good-humor throughout the horrible years which succeeded St. Bartholomew, during which he carried his life in his hand, and learned not to wear his heart upon his sleeve. Without gratitude, without resentment, without fear, without remorse, entirely arbitrary, yet with the capacity to use all men’s judgments; without convictions, save in regard to his dynastic interests, he possessed all the qualities necessary to success. He knew how to use his enemies. He knew how to use his friends, to abuse them, and to throw them away. He refused to assassinate Francis Alençon at the bidding of Henry III, but he attempted to procure the murder of the truest of his own friends, one of the noblest characters of the age, whose breast showed twelve scars received in his service—Agrippa D’Aubigné—because the honest soldier had refused to become his pimp, a service the king had implored upon his knees.

Beneath the mask of perpetual, careless good-humor, lurked the keenest eye, a subtle, restless, widely combining brain, and an iron will. Native sagacity had been tempered into consummate elasticity by the fiery atmosphere in which feebler natures had been dissolved. His wit was as flashing and as quickly unsheathed as his sword. Desperate, apparently reckless temerity on the battle-field was deliberately indulged in, that the world might be brought to recognize a hero and chieftain in a king. The do-nothings of the Merovingian line had been succeeded by the Pepins; to the effete Carlovingians had come a Capet; to the impotent Valois should come a worthier descendant of St. Louis. This was shrewd Gascon calculation, aided by constitutional fearlessness. When dispatch-writing, invisible Philips, star-gazing Rudolphs, and petticoated Henrys sat upon the thrones of Europe, it was wholesome to show the world that there was a king left who could move about in the bustle and business of the age, and could charge as well as most soldiers at the head of his cavalry; that there was one more sovereign fit to reign over men, besides the glorious virgin who governed England.

Thus courageous, crafty, far-seeing, consistent, untiring, imperturbable, he was born to command, and had a right to reign. He had need of the throne, and the throne had still more need of him.

Count Wallenstein, afterward Duke of Friedland, was an experienced officer, and the richest nobleman in Bohemia. From his earliest youth he had been in the service of the house of Austria, and several campaigns against the Turks, Venetians, Bohemians, Hungarians, and Transylvanians had established his reputation. He was present as colonel at the battle of Prague, and afterward, as major-general, had defeated a Hungarian force in Moravia. The emperor’s gratitude was equal to his services, and a large share of the confiscated estates of the Bohemian insurgents was their reward. Possessed of immense property, excited by ambitious views, confident of his own good fortune, and still more encouraged by the existing state of circumstances, he offered, at his own expense and that of his friends, to raise and clothe an army for the emperor, and even undertook the cost of maintaining it if he were allowed to augment it to fifty thousand men.

The project was universally ridiculed as the chimerical offering of a visionary brain; but the offer was highly valuable, if its promises should be but partly fulfilled. Certain circles in Bohemia were assigned to him as depots, with authority to appoint his own officers. In a few months he had twenty thousand men under arms, with which, quitting the Austrian territories, he soon afterward appeared on the frontiers of Lower Saxony with thirty thousand. The emperor had lent this armament nothing but his name. The reputation of the general, the prospect of rapid promotion, and the hope of plunder, attracted to his standard adventurers from all quarters of Germany, and even sovereign princes, stimulated by the desire of glory or of gain, offered to raise regiments for the service of Austria.

The secret how Wallenstein had purposed to fulfill his extravagant designs was now manifest. He had learned the lesson from Count Mansfeld,[25] but the scholar surpassed his master. On the principle that war must support war, Mansfeld and the Duke of Brunswick had subsisted their troops by contributions levied indiscriminately on friend and enemy; but this predatory life was attended with all the inconvenience and insecurity which accompany robbery. Like fugitive banditti, they were obliged to steal through exasperated and vigilant enemies; to roam from one end of Germany to another; to watch their opportunity with anxiety, and to abandon the most fertile territories whenever they were defended by a superior army. If Mansfeld and Duke Christian had done such great things in the face of these difficulties, what might not be expected if the obstacles were removed; when the army raised was numerous enough to overawe in itself the most powerful states of the empire; when the name of the emperor insured impunity to every outrage; and when, under the highest authority, and at the head of an overwhelming force, the same system of warfare was pursued which these two adventurers had hitherto adopted at their own risk, and with only an untrained multitude?

Wallenstein was at the head of an army of nearly a hundred thousand men, who adored him, when the sentence of his dismissal arrived. Most of the officers were his creatures—with the common soldiers his hint was law. His ambition was boundless, his pride indomitable, his imperious spirit could not brook an injury unavenged. One moment would now precipitate him from the height of grandeur into the obscurity of a private station. To execute such a sentence upon such a delinquent seemed to require more address than it cost to obtain it from the judge. Accordingly, two of Wallenstein’s most intimate friends were selected as heralds of these evil tidings, and instructed to soften them as much as possible by flattering assurances of the continuance of the emperor’s favor.

Wallenstein had ascertained the purport of their message before the imperial ambassadors arrived. He had time to collect himself, and his countenance exhibited an external calmness while grief and rage were storming in his bosom. He had made up his mind to obey. The emperor’s decision had taken him by surprise before circumstances were ripe or his preparations complete for the bold measures he had contemplated. His extensive estates were scattered over Bohemia and Moravia, and by their confiscation the emperor might at once destroy the sinews of his power. He looked, therefore, to the future for revenge, and in this hope he was encouraged by the predictions of an Italian astrologer, who led his imperious spirit like a child in leading-strings. Seni had read in the stars that his master’s brilliant career was not yet ended, and that bright and glorious prospects still awaited him. It was, indeed, unnecessary to consult the stars to foretell that an enemy, Gustavus Adolphus, would ere long render indispensable the services of such a general as Wallenstein.

“The Emperor is betrayed,” said Wallenstein to the messengers; “I pity but forgive him. It is plain that the grasping spirit of the Bavarian dictates to him. I grieve that, with so much weakness, he has sacrificed me; but I will obey.” He dismissed the emissaries with princely presents, and, in a humble letter, besought the continuance of the emperor’s favor and of the dignities he had bestowed upon him.

The murmurs of the army were universal on hearing of the dismissal of their general, and the greater part of his officers immediately quitted the imperial service. Many followed him to his estates in Bohemia and Moravia; others he attached to his interests by pensions, in order to command their services when the opportunity should offer.

But repose was the last thing that Wallenstein contemplated when he returned to private life. In his retreat he surrounded himself with a regal pomp which seemed to mock the sentence of degradation. Six gates led to the palace he inhabited in Prague, and a hundred houses were pulled down to make way for his courtyard. Similar palaces were built on his other numerous estates. Gentlemen of the noblest houses contended for the honor of serving him, and even imperial chamberlains resigned the golden key to the emperor to fill a similar office under Wallenstein. He maintained sixty pages, who were instructed by the ablest masters. His antechamber was protected by fifty life-guards. His table never consisted of less than one hundred covers, and his seneschal was a person of distinction. When he traveled his baggage and suite accompanied him in a hundred wagons drawn by six or four horses; his court followed in sixty carriages attended by fifty led horses. The pomp of his liveries, the splendor of his equipages, and the decorations of his apartments were in keeping with all the rest. Six barons and as many knights were in constant attendance about his person, and ready to execute his slightest order. Twelve patrols went their rounds about his palace to prevent any disturbance. His busy genius required silence. The noise of coaches was to be kept away from his residence, and the streets leading to it were frequently blocked up with chains. His own circle was as silent as the approaches to his palace. Dark, reserved, and impenetrable, he was more sparing of his words than of his gifts, while the little that he spoke was harsh and imperious. He never smiled, and the coldness of his temperament was proof against sensual seductions.

Ever occupied with grand schemes, he despised all those idle amusements in which so many waste their lives. The correspondence he kept up with the whole of Europe was chiefly managed by himself, and, that as little as possible might be trusted to the silence of others, most of the letters were written by his own hand. He was a man of large stature, thin, of a sallow complexion, with short, red hair, and small, sparkling eyes. A gloomy and forbidding seriousness sat upon his brow, and his magnificent presents alone retained the trembling crowd of his dependents.

In this stately obscurity did Wallenstein silently but not inactively await the hour of revenge. The victorious career of Gustavus Adolphus soon gave him a presentiment of its approach. Not one of his lofty schemes had been abandoned, and the emperor’s ingratitude had loosened the curb of his ambition. The dazzling splendor of his private life bespoke high soaring projects, and, lavish as a king, he seemed already to reckon among his certain possessions those which he contemplated with hope.

Wallenstein, at the age of fifty, terminated his active and extraordinary life. To ambition he owed both his greatness and his ruin. With all his failings he possessed great and admirable qualities; and, had he kept himself within due bounds, he would have lived and died without an equal. The virtues of the ruler and of the hero—prudence, justice, firmness, and courage—are strikingly prominent features in his character; but he wanted the gentler virtues of the man, which adorn the hero and make the ruler beloved. Terror was the talisman with which he worked; extreme in his punishments as in his rewards, he knew how to keep alive the zeal of his followers, while no general of ancient or modern times could boast of being obeyed with equal alacrity. Submission to his will was more prized by him than bravery; for, if the soldiers work by the latter, it is on the former that the general depends. He continually kept up the obedience of his troops by capricious orders, and profusely rewarded the readiness to obey even trifles, because he looked rather to the act itself than its object. He once issued a decree, with the penalty of death on disobedience, that none but red sashes should be worn in the army. A captain of horse no sooner heard the order, than, pulling off his gold-embroidered sash, he trampled it under foot. Wallenstein, on being informed of the circumstance, promoted him on the spot to the rank of colonel.

His comprehensive glance was always directed to the whole, and in all his apparent caprice, he steadily kept in view some general scope or bearing. The robberies committed by the soldiers in a friendly country had led to the severest orders against marauders; and all who should be caught thieving were threatened with the halter. Wallenstein himself having met a straggler in the open country upon the field, commanded him to be seized without trial, as a transgressor of the law, and, in his usual voice of thunder, exclaimed, “Hang the fellow,” against which no opposition ever availed. The soldier pleaded and proved his innocence, but the irrevocable sentence had gone forth. “Hang, then, innocent,” cried the inexorable Wallenstein, “the guilty will have then more reason to tremble.” Preparations were already making to execute the sentence, when the soldier, who gave himself up for lost, formed the desperate resolution of not dying without revenge. He fell furiously upon his judge, but was overpowered by numbers and disarmed before he could fulfil his design. “Now let him go,” said the duke, “it will excite sufficient terror.”

His munificence was supported by an immense income, which was estimated at three millions of florins yearly, without reckoning the enormous sums which he raised under the name of contributions. His liberality and clearness of understanding raised him above the religious prejudices of his age; and the Jesuits never forgave him for having seen through their system, and for regarding the pope as nothing more than a bishop of Rome.

But as no one ever yet came to a fortunate end who quarrelled with the Church, Wallenstein, also, must augment the number of its victims. Through the intrigues of monks, he lost at Ratisbon the command of the army, and at Egra his life; by the same arts, perhaps, he lost what was of more consequence, his honorable name and good repute with posterity.

For, in justice, it must be admitted that the pens which have traced the history of this extraordinary man are not untinged with partiality, and that the treachery of the duke, and his designs upon the throne of Bohemia, rest not so much upon proved facts, as upon probable conjecture. No documents have yet been brought to light which disclose with historical certainty the secret motives of his conduct; and among all his public and well-attested actions, there is, perhaps, not one which could have had an innocent end. Many of his most obnoxious measures proved nothing but the earnest wish he entertained for peace; most of the others are explained and justified by the well-founded distrust he entertained of the emperor, and the excusable wish of maintaining his own importance. It is true, that his conduct toward the Elector of Bavaria looks too like an unworthy revenge, and the dictates of an implacable spirit; but still, none of his actions perhaps warrant us in holding his treason to be proved. If necessity and despair at last forced him to deserve the sentence which had been pronounced against him while innocent, still this will not justify that sentence. Thus Wallenstein fell, not because he was a rebel, but he became a rebel because he fell. Unfortunate in life that he made a victorious party his enemy, but still more unfortunate in death, that the same party survived him and wrote his history.

Richelieu was one of the rulers of mankind in virtue of an inherent and indefeasible birthright. His title to command rested on that sublime force of will and decision of character by which, in an age of great men, he was raised above them all. It is a gift which supposes and requires in him on whom it is conferred convictions too firm to be shaken by the discovery of any unperceived or unheeded truths. It is, therefore, a gift which, when bestowed on the governors of nations, also presupposes in them the patience to investigate, the capacity to comprehend, and the genius to combine, all those views of the national interest, under the guidance of which their inflexible policy is to be conducted to its destined consummation; for the stoutest hearted men, if acting in ignorance, or under the impulse of haste or of error, must often pause, often hesitate, and not seldom recede. Richelieu was exposed to no such danger. He moved onward to his predetermined ends with that unfaltering step which attests, not merely a stern immutability of purpose, but a comprehensive survey of the path to be trodden, and a profound acquaintance with all its difficulties and all its resources. It was a path from which he could be turned aside neither by his bad nor by his good genius; neither by fear, lassitude, interest, nor pleasure; nor by justice, pity, humanity, nor conscience.

The idolatrous homage of mere mental power, without reference to the motives by which it is governed, or to the ends to which it is addressed—that blind hero-worship, which would place Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus on the same level, and extol with equal warmth the triumphs of Cromwell and of Washington, though it be a modern fashion, has certainly not the charm of novelty. On the contrary, it might, in the language of the Puritans, be described as one of the “old follies of the old Adam”; and to the influence of that folly the reputation of Richelieu is not a little indebted.

In his estimate, the absolute dominion of the French crown and the grandeur of France were convertible terms. They seemed to him but as two different aspects of the great consummation to which every hour of his political life was devoted. In approaching that ultimate goal, there were to be surmounted many obstacles which he distinctly perceived, and of which he has given a very clear summary in his “Testament Politique.” “When it pleased your majesty,” he says, “to give me not only a place in your council, but a great share in the conduct of your affairs, the Huguenots divided the state with you. The great lords were acting, not as your subjects, but as independent chieftains. The governors of your provinces were conducting themselves like so many sovereign princes. Foreign affairs and alliances were disregarded. The interest of the public was postponed to that of private men. In a word, your authority was, at that time so torn to shreds, and so unlike what it ought to be, that, in the confusion, it was impossible to recognize the genuine traces of your royal power.”

Before his death, Richelieu had triumphed over all these enemies, and had elevated the house of Bourbon upon their ruins. He is, I believe, the only human being who ever conceived and executed, in the spirit of philosophy, the design of erecting a political despotism; not, indeed a despotism like that of Constantinople or Teheran, but a power which, being restrained by religion, by learning, and by public spirit, was to be exempted from all other restraints; a dynasty which, like a kind of subordinate providence, was to spread wide its arms for the guidance and shelter of the subject multitude, itself the while inhabiting a region too lofty to be ever darkened by the mists of human weakness or of human corruption.

To devise schemes worthy of the academies of Laputa, and to pursue them with all the relentless perseverance of Cortés or of Clive, has been characteristic of many of the statesmen of France, both in remote and in recent times. Richelieu was but a more successful Mirabeau. He was not so much a minister as a dictator. He was rather the depositary than the agent of the royal power. A king in all things but the name, he reigned with that exemption from hereditary and domestic influences which has so often imparted to the papal monarchs a kind of preterhuman energy, and has so often taught the world to deprecate the celibacy of the throne.

Richelieu was the heir of the designs of Henry IV, and the ancestor of those of Louis XIV. But they courted, and were sustained by, the applause and the attachment of their subjects. He passed his life in one unintermitted struggle with each, in turn, of the powerful bodies over which he ruled. By a long series of well-directed blows, he crushed forever the political and military strength of the Huguenots. By his strong hand, the sovereign courts were confined to their judicial duties, and their claims to participate in the government of the state were scattered to the winds. Trampling under foot all rules of judicial procedure and the clearest principles of justice, he brought to the scaffold one after another of the proudest nobles of France, by sentences dictated by himself to extraordinary judges of his own selection; thus teaching the doctrine of social equality by lessons too impressive to be misinterpreted or forgotten by any later generation. Both the privileges, in exchange for which the greater fiefs had surrendered their independence, and the franchises, for the conquest of which the cities, in earlier times, had successfully contended, were alike swept away by this remorseless innovator. He exiled the mother, oppressed the wife, degraded the brother, banished the confessor, and put to death the kinsmen and favorites of the king, and compelled the king himself to be the instrument of these domestic severities. Though surrounded by enemies and by rivals, his power ended only with his life. Though beset by assassins, he died in the ordinary course of nature. Though he had waded to dominion through slaughter, cruelty, and wrong, he passed to his great account amid the applause of the people, with the benedictions of the Church; and, as far as any human being ever could perceive, in hope, in tranquility, and in peace.

What, then, is the reason why so tumultuous a career reached at length so serene a close? The reason is that, amid all his conflicts, Richelieu wisely and successfully maintained three powerful alliances. He cultivated the attachment of men of letters, the favor of the commons, and the sympathy of all French idolaters of the national glory.

He was a man of extensive, if not of profound, learning, a theologian of some account, and an aspirant for fame as a dramatist, a wit, a poet, and a historian. But if his claims to admiration as a writer were disputable, none contended his title to applause as a patron of literature and of art. The founder of a despotism in the world of politics, he aspired also to be the founder of a commonwealth in the world of letters. While crushing the national liberties, he founded the French Academy as the sacred shrine of intellectual freedom and independence. Acknowledging no equal in the state, he forbade the acknowledgment, in that literary republic, of any superiority save that of genius. While refusing to bare his head to any earthly potentate, he would permit no eminent author to stand bareheaded in his presence. By these cheap and not dishonest arts, he gained an inestimable advantage. The honors he conferred on the men of learning of his age they largely repaid, by placing under his control the main-springs of public opinion.

To conciliate the commons of France, Richelieu even ostentatiously divested himself of every prejudice hostile to his popularity. A prince of the Church of Rome, he cherished the independence of the Gallican Church and clergy. The conqueror of the Calvinists, he yet respected the rights of conscience. Of noble birth and ancestry, his demeanor was still that of a tribune of the people. But it was not by demeanor alone that he labored to win their regard. He affected the more solid praise of large and salutary reformations.

Gustavus Adolphus had not completed his seventeenth year when the Swedish throne became vacant by the death of his father; but the early maturity of his genius enabled the Estates to abridge in his favor the legal period of minority. With a glorious conquest over himself, he commenced a reign which was to have victory for its constant attendant—a career which was to begin and end in success. The young Countess of Brahe, the daughter of a subject, had gained his early affections, and he had resolved to share with her the Swedish throne; but, constrained by time and circumstances, he made his attachment yield to the higher duties of a king, and heroism again took exclusive possession of a heart which was not destined by nature to confine itself within the limits of quiet domestic happiness.

Christian IV of Denmark, who ascended the throne before the birth of Gustavus, in an inroad upon Sweden, had gained some considerable advantages over the father of that hero. Gustavus Adolphus hastened to put an end to this destructive war, and, by prudent sacrifices, obtained a peace in order to turn his arms against the czar of Muscovy. The questionable fame of a conqueror never tempted him to spend the blood of his subjects in unjust wars; but he never shrunk from a just one. His arms were successful against Russia, and Sweden was augmented by several important provinces on the east.

In the meantime, Sigismund of Poland retained against the son the same sentiments of hostility which the father had provoked, and left no artifice untried to shake the allegiance of his subjects, to cool the ardor of his friends, and to embitter his enemies. Neither the great qualities of his rival, nor the repeated proofs of devotion which Sweden gave to her loved monarch, could extinguish in this infatuated prince the foolish hope of regaining his lost throne. All Gustavus’s overtures were haughtily rejected. Unwillingly was this really peaceful king involved in a tedious war with Poland, in which the whole of Livonia and Polish Prussia were successively conquered. Though constantly victorious, Gustavus Adolphus was always the first to hold out the hand of peace.

After the unsuccessful attempt of the king of Denmark to check the emperor’s[26] progress, Gustavus Adolphus was the only prince in Europe to whom oppressed liberty could look for protection—the only one who, while he was personally qualified to conduct such an enterprise, had both political motives to recommend and wrongs to justify it. Before the commencement of the war in Lower Saxony, important political interests induced him, as well as the king of Denmark, to offer his services and his army for the defense of Germany; but the offer of the latter had, to his own misfortune, been preferred. Since that time Wallenstein and the emperor had adopted measures which must have been equally offensive to him as a man and as a king. Imperial troops had been dispatched to the aid of the Polish king, Sigismund, to defend Prussia against the Swedes. When the king complained to Wallenstein of this act of hostility, he received for answer, “The emperor has more soldiers than he wants for himself; he must help his friends.” The Swedish ambassadors had been insolently ordered by Wallenstein to withdraw from the conference at Lubeck; and when, unawed by this command, they were courageous enough to remain, contrary to the law of nations, he had threatened them with violence.

Ferdinand had also insulted the Swedish flag, and intercepted the king’s dispatches to Transylvania. He also threw every obstacle in the way of a peace between Poland and Sweden, supported the pretensions of Sigismund to the Swedish throne, and denied the right of Gustavus to the title of king. Deigning no regard to the repeated remonstrances of Gustavus, he rather aggravated the offence by new grievances than conceded the required satisfaction.

So many personal motives, supported by important considerations, both of policy and religion, and seconded by pressing invitations from Germany, had their full weight with a prince who was naturally the more jealous of his royal prerogative the more it was questioned, who was flattered by the glory he hoped to gain as Protector of the Oppressed, and passionately loved war as the element of his genius.

But the strongest pledge for the success of his undertaking Gustavus found in himself. Prudence demanded that he should embrace all the foreign assistance he could, in order to guard his enterprise from the imputation of rashness; but all his confidence and courage were entirely derived from himself. He was indisputably the greatest general of his age, and the bravest soldier in the army which he had formed. Familiar with the tactics of Greece and Rome, he had discovered a more effective system of warfare, which was adopted as a model by the most eminent commanders of subsequent times. He reduced the unwieldly squadrons of cavalry, and rendered their movements more light and rapid; and, with the same view, he widened the intervals between his battalions. Instead of the usual array in a single line, he disposed his forces in two lines, that the second might advance in the event of the first giving way.

He made up for his want of cavalry, by placing infantry among the horse; a practice which frequently decided the victory. Europe first learned from him the importance of infantry. All Germany was astonished at the strict discipline which, at the first, so creditably distinguished the Swedish army within their territories; all disorders were punished with the utmost severity—particularly impiety, theft, gambling, and duelling. The Swedish articles of war enforced frugality. In the camp, the king’s tent not excepted, neither silver nor gold was to be seen. The general’s eye looked as vigilantly to the morals as to the martial bravery of his soldiers; every regiment was ordered to form round its chaplain for morning and evening prayers. In all these points the lawgiver was also an example. A sincere and ardent piety exalted his courage. Equally free from the coarse infidelity which leaves the passions of the barbarian without control; and from the grovelling superstition of Ferdinand, who humbled himself to the dust before the Supreme Being, while he haughtily trampled on his fellow creature—in the height of his success he was ever a man and a Christian; in the height of his devotion a king and a hero.

The hardships of war he shared with the meanest soldier in his army; maintained a calm serenity amid the hottest fury of battle; his glance was omnipresent, and he intrepidly forgot the danger while he exposed himself to the greatest peril. His natural courage, indeed, too often made him forget the duty of a general; and the life of a king ended in the death of a common soldier. But such a leader was followed to victory alike by the coward and the brave, and his eagle glance marked every heroic deed which his example had inspired. The fame of their sovereign excited in the nation an enthusiastic sense of their own importance; proud of their king, the peasant in Finland and Gothland joyfully contributed his pittance; the soldier willingly shed his blood; and the lofty energy which his single mind had imparted to the nation long survived its creator.

If Gustavus Adolphus owed his successes chiefly to his own genius, at the same time, it must be owned, he was greatly favored by fortune and by circumstance. Two great advantages gave him a decided superiority over the enemy. While he removed the scene of war into the lands of the League, drew their youths as recruits, enriched himself with booty, and used the revenue of their fugitive princes as his own, he at once took from the enemy the means of effectual resistance, and maintained an expensive war with little cost to himself. And, moreover, while his opponents, the princes of the League, divided among themselves, and governed by different and conflicting interests, acted without unanimity, and therefore without energy; while the generals were deficient in authority, their troops in obedience, the operations of their scattered armies without concert; while the general was separated from the lawgiver and the statesman; these several functions were united in Gustavus Adolphus, the only source from which authority flowed, the sole object to which the eye of the warrior turned; the soul of his party, the inventor as well as the executor of his plans. In him, therefore, the Protestants had a center of unity and harmony, which was altogether wanting to their opponents. No wonder, then, if favored by such advantages, at the head of such an army, with such a genius to direct it, and guided by such political prudence, Gustavus Adolphus was irresistible.

With the sword in one hand, and mercy in the other, he traversed Germany as a conqueror, a lawgiver, and a judge, in as short a time almost as the tourist of pleasure. The keys of towers and fortresses were delivered to him, as if to a native sovereign. No fortress was inaccessible; no river checked his victorious career. He conquered by the very terror of his name.

History, too often confined to the ungrateful task of analyzing the uniform play of human passions, is occasionally rewarded by the appearance of events which strike like a hand from heaven into the nicely adjusted machinery of human plans, and carry the contemplative mind to a higher order of things. Of this kind, is the sudden retirement of Gustavus Adolphus from the scene; stopping for a time the whole movement of the political machine, and disappointing all the calculations of human prudence. Yesterday, the very soul, the great and animating principle of his own creation; to-day struck unpitiably to the ground in the very midst of his eagle flight; untimely torn from a whole world of great designs, and from the ripening harvest of his expectations, he left his bereaved party disconsolate; and the proud edifice of his past greatness sank into ruins. The Protestant party had identified its hopes with its invincible leader, and scarcely can it now separate them from him; with him, they now fear all good fortune is buried. But it was no longer the benefactor of Germany who fell at Lutzen; the beneficent part of his career, Gustavus Adolphus had already terminated; and now the greatest service which he could render to the liberties of Germany was—to die.

The ambition of the Swedish monarch aspired unquestionably to establish a power within Germany, and to attain a firm footing in the center of the empire, which was inconsistent with the liberties of the Estates. His aim was the imperial crown; and this dignity, supported by his power, and maintained by his energy and activity, would in his hands be liable to more abuse than had ever been feared from the House of Austria. Born in a foreign country, educated in the maxims of arbitrary power, and by principles and enthusiasm a determined enemy to popery, he was ill qualified to maintain inviolate the constitution of the German States, or to respect their liberties. The coercive homage which Augsburg, with many other cities, was forced to pay to the Swedish crown, bespoke the conqueror, rather than the protector of the empire; and this town, prouder of the title of a royal city than of the higher dignity of the freedom of the empire, flattered itself with the anticipation of becoming the capital of his future kingdom.

His ill-disguised attempts upon the Electorate of Mentz, which he first intended to bestow upon the Elector of Brandenburg, as the dower of his daughter Christina, and afterward destined for his chancellor and friend Oxenstiern, evinced plainly what liberties he was disposed to take with the constitution of the empire. His allies, the Protestant princes, had claims on his gratitude, which could be satisfied only at the expense of their Roman Catholic neighbors, and particularly of the immediate Ecclesiastical Chapters; and it seems probable a plan was early formed for dividing the conquered provinces (after the precedent of the barbarian hordes who overran the German empire) as a common spoil, among the German and Swedish confederates. In his treatment of the Elector Palatine, he entirely belied the magnanimity of the hero, and forgot the sacred character of a protector. The Palatinate was in his hands, and the obligations both of justice and honor demanded its full and immediate restoration to the legitimate sovereign. But, by a subtlety unworthy of a great mind, and disgraceful to the honorable title of protector of the oppressed, he eluded that obligation. He treated the Palatinate as a conquest wrested from the enemy, and thought that this circumstance gave him a right to deal with it as he pleased. He surrendered it to the Elector as a favor, not as a debt; and that, too, as a Swedish fief, fettered by conditions which diminished half its value, and degraded this unfortunate prince into a humble vassal of Sweden. One of these conditions obliged the Elector, after the conclusion of the war, to furnish, along with the other princes, his contribution toward the maintenance of the Swedish army—a condition which plainly indicates the fate which, in the event of the ultimate success of the king, awaited Germany. His sudden disappearance secured the liberties of Germany, and saved his reputation, while it probably spared him the mortification of seeing his own allies in arms against him, and all the fruits of his victories torn from him by a disadvantageous peace.

In the former situation of the English Government, when the sovereign was in a great measure independent of his subjects, the king chose his ministers either from personal favor, or from an opinion of their abilities, without any regard to their parliamentary interest or talents. It has since been the maxim of princes, wherever popular leaders encroach too much on royal authority, to confer offices on them, in expectation that they will afterward become more careful not to diminish that power which has become their own. These politics were now embraced by Charles; a sure proof that a secret revolution had happened in the constitution, and had necessitated the prince to adopt new maxims of government. But the views of the king were at this time so repugnant to those of the Puritans that the leaders whom he gained lost from that moment all interest with their party, and were even pursued as traitors with implacable hatred and resentment.

This was the case with Sir Thomas Wentworth, whom the king created first a baron, then a viscount, and afterward Earl of Strafford; made him president of the council of York, and deputy of Ireland; and regarded him as his chief minister and counsellor. By his eminent talents and abilities Strafford merited all the confidence which his master reposed in him; his character was stately and austere—more fitted to procure esteem than love; his fidelity to the king was unshaken; but as he now employed all his counsels to support the prerogative, which he had formerly bent all his endeavors to diminish, his virtue seems not to have been entirely pure, but to have been susceptible of strong impressions from private interest and ambition.

The death of Strafford was too important a stroke of party to be left unattempted by any expedient however extraordinary. Besides the great genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the popular leaders with an impeachment; and had he not himself been suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the Commons, he had, that very day, it was thought, charged Pym, Hambden, and others with treason for having invited the Scots to invade England. A bill of attainder was, therefore, brought into the Lower House immediately after finishing these pleadings; and preparatory to it a new proof of the earl’s guilt was produced, in order to remove such scruples as might be entertained with regard to a method of proceeding so unusual and irregular.

Sir Henry Vane, secretary, had taken some notes of a debate in council after the dissolution of the last Parliament; and being at a distance, he had sent the keys of his cabinet, as was pretended, to his son, Sir Henry, in order to search for some papers, which were necessary for completing a marriage settlement. Young Vane, falling upon this paper of notes, deemed the matter of the utmost importance, and immediately communicated it to Pym, who now produced the paper before the House of Commons. The question before the council was, offensive or defensive war with the Scots. The king proposes this difficulty, “But how can I undertake offensive war, if I have no more money?” The answer ascribed to Strafford was in these words: “Borrow of the city a hundred thousand pounds; go on vigorously to levy ship-money. Your majesty having tried the affections of your people, you are absolved and loose from all rules of government, and may do what power will admit. Your majesty, having tried all ways, shall be acquitted before God and man. And you have an army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to obedience; for I am confident the Scots can not hold out five months.” There followed some counsels of Laud and Cottington, equally violent, with regard to the king’s being absolved from all rules of government.

The evidence of Secretary Vane, though exposed to such insurmountable objections, was the real cause of Strafford’s unhappy fate, and made the bill of attainder pass the Commons with no greater opposition than that of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of the legislature, the king and the lords, whose assent was requisite; and these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen, would reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this difficulty, the popular leaders employed expedients, for which they were beholden partly to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of their adversaries.

Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud’s windows, with whom he had long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate dissolved in tears; and having pronounced, with a broken voice, a tender blessing on his departing friend, sank into the arms of his attendants. Strafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an elated countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what usually attended him. He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those who perish by the stroke of injustice and oppression; he was not buoyed up by glory, nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators. Yet his mind, erect and undaunted, found resources within itself, and maintained its unbroken resolution amid the terrors of death and the triumphant exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the scaffold was full of decency and courage. “He feared,” he said, “that the omen was bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it commenced with the shedding of innocent blood.”

Having bid a last adieu to his brother and friends who attending him, and having sent a blessing to his nearer relations who were absent—“And now,” said he, “I have nigh done! One stroke will make my wife a widow, my dear children fatherless, deprive my poor servants of their indulgent master, and separate me from my affectionate brother and all my friends! But let God be to you and them all in all!” Going to disrobe and prepare himself for the block, “I thank God,” said he, “that I am nowise afraid of death, nor am daunted with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time, as ever I did when going to repose!” With one blow was a period put to his life by the executioner.

Thus perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, the Earl of Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution, it may safely be affirmed that the sentence by which he fell was an enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people in their rage had totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the necessities, or more properly speaking, the difficulties, by which the king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply were the result of measures previous to Strafford’s favor; and if they arose from ill conduct, he, at least, was entirely innocent.

Even those violent expedients themselves, which occasioned the complaint that the constitution was subverted, had been all of them conducted, so far as appeared, without his counsel or assistance. And whatever his private advice might be, this salutary maxim he failed not, often and publicly, to inculcate in the king’s presence, that if any

inevitable necessity ever obliged the sovereign to violate the laws, this license ought to be practiced with extreme reserve, and as soon as possible a just atonement be made to the constitution for any injury which it might sustain from such dangerous precedents. The first Parliament after the restoration reversed the bill of attainder; and even a few weeks after Strafford’s execution this very Parliament remitted to his children the more severe consequences of his sentence, as if conscious of the violence with which the prosecution had been conducted.

The soul of his party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty years of age, accepted a commission in the parliamentary army. He saw precisely where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He saw also that there were abundant and excellent materials for the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than those of which the gallant squadrons of the king were composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected them to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been known in England, he administered to their intellectual and moral nature stimulants of fearful potency. Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the same principles on which he had organized his own regiment. As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war was decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter between the Royalists and the remodeled army of the Houses. The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive. It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In a few months the authority of the Parliament was fully established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the Scots, and was by them, in a manner which did not much exalt their national character, delivered up to his English subjects.

In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn courage characteristic of the English people was, by the system of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders have maintained orders as strict. Other leaders have inspired their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of crusaders. From the time when the army was remodeled to the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the British islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces whatever force was opposed to them. They at length came to regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe with disdainful confidence. Turenne was startled by the shout of stern exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and expressed the delight of a true soldier, when he learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell’s pikemen to rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy; and the banished Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the finest infantry of Spain. The military saints resolved that, in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universal sentiment of the realm, the king should expiate his crimes with blood. In order to accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that they should first break in pieces every part of the machinery of government. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy; and his head was severed from his shoulders before thousands of spectators in front of the banqueting hall of his own palace.

King, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been vanquished and destroyed; and Cromwell seemed to be left the sole heir of the powers of all three. Yet were certain limitations still imposed on him by the very army to which he owed his immense authority. That singular body of men was, for the most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of enslaving their country, they had deceived themselves into the belief that they were emancipating her. The book which they most venerated furnished them with a precedent, which was frequently in their mouths. It was true that the ignorant and ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers. Even so had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who brought it, by painful and dreary paths, from the house of bondage to the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had that leader rescued his brethren in spite of themselves; nor had he shrunk from making terrible examples of those who contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots, the taskmasters and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of the warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement of a free and pious commonwealth. For that end they were ready to employ, without scruple, any means, however violent and lawless. It was not impossible, therefore, to establish by their aid a dictatorship such as no king had even exercised: but it was probable that their aid would be at once withdrawn from a ruler who, even under strict constitutional restraints, should venture to assume the kingly name and dignity.

The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was not what he had been; nor would it be just to consider the change which his views had undergone as the effect merely of selfish ambition. He had, when he came up to the Long Parliament, brought with him from his rural retreat little knowledge of books, no experience of great affairs, and a temper galled by the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy. He had, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a political education of no common kind. He had been a chief actor in a succession of revolutions. He had been long the soul, and at last the head, of a party. He had commanded armies, won battles, negotiated treaties, subdued, pacified, and regulated kingdoms. It would have been strange indeed if his notions had been still the same as in the days when his mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion, and when the greatest events which diversified the course of his life were a cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon. He saw that some schemes of innovation for which he had once been zealous, whether good or bad in themselves, were opposed to the general feeling of the country, and that, if he persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but constant troubles, which must be suppressed by the constant use of the sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essentials, that ancient constitution which the majority of the people had always loved, and for which they now pined.

The course afterward taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The memory of one terrible day separated the great regicide for ever from the house of Stuart. What remained was that he should mount the ancient English throne, and reign according to the ancient English polity. If he could effect this, he might hope that the wounds of the lacerated state would heal fast. Great numbers of honest and quiet men would speedily rally round him. Those Royalists whose attachment was rather to institutions than to persons, to the kingly office than to King Charles I or King Charles II, would soon kiss the hand of King Oliver. The peers, who now remained sullenly at their country houses, and refused to take any part in public affairs, would, when summoned to their House by the writ of a king in possession, gladly resume their ancient functions. Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester and Pembroke, would be proud to bear the crown and the spurs, the scepter and the globe, before the restorer of aristocracy. A sentiment of loyalty would gradually bind the people to the new dynasty; and, on the decease of the founder of that dynasty, the royal dignity might descend with general acquiescence to his posterity.

The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were correct, and that, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow his own judgment, the exiled line would never have been restored. But his plan was directly opposed to the feelings of the only class which he dared not offend. The name of king was hateful to the soldiers. Some of them were indeed unwilling to see the administration in the hands of any single person. The great majority, however, were disposed to support their general, as elective first magistrate of a commonwealth, against all factions which might resist his authority: but they would not consent that he should assume the regal title, or that the dignity, which was the just reward of his personal merit, should be declared hereditary in his family. All that was left to him was to give to the new republic a constitution as like the constitution of the old monarchy as the army would bear.

Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the nation might have found courage in despair, and might have made a convulsive effort to free itself from military domination. But the grievances which the country suffered, though such as excited serious discontent, were by no means such as impel great masses of men to stake their lives, their fortunes, and the welfare of their families against fearful odds. The taxation, though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not heavy when compared with that of the neighboring states and with the resources of England. Property was secure. Even the Cavalier, who refrained from giving disturbance to the new settlement, enjoyed in peace whatever the civil troubles had left him. The laws were violated only in cases where the safety of the Protector’s person and government was concerned. Justice was administered between man and man with an exactness and purity not before known. Under no English government, since the Reformation, had there been so little religious persecution. The unfortunate Roman Catholics, indeed, were held to be scarcely within the pale of Christian charity. But the clergy of the fallen Anglican Church were suffered to celebrate their worship on condition that they would abstain from preaching about politics. Even the Jews, whose public worship had, ever since the thirteenth century, been interdicted, were, in spite of the strong opposition of jealous traders and fanatical theologians, permitted to build a synagogue in London.

The Protector’s foreign policy at the same time extorted the ungracious approbation of those who most detested him. The Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one who had done so much to raise the fame of the nation had been a legitimate king; and the Republicans were forced to own that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country, and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given her glory in exchange. After half a century during which England had been of scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christendom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by land and sea, seized one of the finest West Indian islands, and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest. All the reformed churches scattered over Roman Catholic kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The Huguenots of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets of the Alps, professed a Protestantism older than that of Augsburg, were secured from oppression by the mere terror of his great name. The Pope himself was forced to preach humanity and moderation to popish princes. For a voice which seldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless favor were shown to the people of God, the English guns should be heard in the castle of Saint Angelo. In truth, there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake and that of his family, so much reason to desire as a general religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been the captain of the Protestant armies. The heart of England would have been with him. His victories would have been hailed with a unanimous enthusiasm unknown in the country since the rout of the Armada, and would have effaced the stain which one act, condemned by the general voice of the nation, has left on his splendid fame. Unhappily for him he had no opportunity of displaying his admirable military talents, except against the inhabitants of the British isles.

While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed loved his government; but those who hated it most hated it less than they feared it. Had it been a worse government, it might perhaps have been overthrown in spite of all its strength. Had it been a weaker government, it would certainly have been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But it had moderation enough to abstain from those oppressions which drive men mad; and it had a force and energy which none but men driven mad by oppression would venture to encounter.

It has often been affirmed, but with little reason, that Oliver died at a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if his life had been prolonged, it would probably have closed amid disgraces and disasters. It is certain that he was, to the last, honored by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of the British islands, and dreaded by all foreign powers; that he was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral pomp such as London had never before seen, and that he was succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any king had ever been succeeded by any Prince of Wales.

Among the statesmen of those times Halifax was, in genius, the first. His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. His polished, luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by the silver tones of his voice, was the delight of the House of Lords. His conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics. To the weight derived from talents so great and various he united all the influence which belongs to rank and ample possessions. Yet he was less successful in politics than many who enjoy smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual peculiarities which make his writings valuable frequently impeded him in the contests of active life. For he always saw passing events, not in the point of view in which they commonly appear to one who bears a part in them, but in the point of view in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear to the philosophic historian. With such a turn of mind, he could not long continue to act cordially with any body of men. All the prejudices, all the exaggerations, of both the great parties in the state moved his scorn. He despised the mean arts and unreasonable clamors of demagogues. He despised still more the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience. He sneered impartially at the bigotry of the Churchman and at the bigotry of the Puritan.

He was equally unable to comprehend how any man should object to saints’ days and surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man for objecting to them. In temper he was what, in our time, is called a Conservative, in theory he was a Republican. Even when his dread of anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions led him to side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary power, his intellect was always with Locke and Milton. Indeed, his jests upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes such as would have better become a member of the Calf’s Head Club than a privy councilor of the Stuarts. In religion he was so far from being a zealot that he was called by the uncharitable an atheist; but this imputation he vehemently repelled; and in truth, though he sometimes gave scandal by the way in which he exerted his rare powers both of reasoning and of ridicule on serious subjects, he seems to have been by no means unsusceptible of religious impressions.

He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great parties contemptuously called trimmers. Instead of quarreling with this nickname, he assumed it as a title of honor, and vindicated, with great vivacity, the dignity of the appellation. Everything good, he said, trims between extremes. The temperate zone trims between the climate in which men are roasted and the climate in which they are frozen. The English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and the Papist lethargy. The English constitution trims between Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but a just temper between propensities any one of which, if indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the perfection of the Supreme Being himself consists in the exact equilibrium of attributes, none of which could preponderate without disturbing the whole moral and physical order of the world.

Thus Halifax was a trimmer on principle. He was also a trimmer by the constitution both of his head and of his heart. His understanding was keen, skeptical, inexhaustibly fertile in distinctions and objections; his taste refined; his sense of the ludicrous exquisite; his temper placid and forgiving, but fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be constant to any band of political allies. He must not, however, be confounded with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For though, like them, he passed from side to side, his transition was always in the direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing in common with those who fly from extreme to extreme, and who regard the party which they have deserted with an animosity far exceeding that of consistent enemies. His place was on the debatable ground between the hostile divisions of the community, and he never wandered far beyond the frontier of either. The party to which he at any moment belonged was the party which, at that moment, he liked least, because it was the party of which at that moment he had the nearest view. He was, therefore, always severe upon his violent associates, and was always in friendly relations with his moderate opponents. Every faction in the day of its insolent and vindictive triumph incurred his censure; and every faction, when vanquished and persecuted, found in him a protector. To his lasting honor it must be mentioned that he attempted to save those victims whose fate has left the deepest stain both on the Whig and on the Tory name.

He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had thus drawn on himself the royal displeasure, which was, indeed, so strong that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty without much difficulty and long altercation. As soon, however, as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his manner and of his conversation made him a favorite. He was seriously alarmed by the violence of the public discontent. He thought that liberty was for the present safe, and that order and legitimate authority were in danger. He therefore, as was his fashion, joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps his conversion was not wholly disinterested. For study and reflection, though they had emancipated him from many vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave to vulgar desires. Money he did not want; and there is no evidence that he ever obtained it by any means which, in that age, even severe censors considered as dishonorable; but rank and power had strong attractions for him. He pretended, indeed, that he considered titles and great offices as baits which could allure none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and pageantry, and that his dearest wish was to escape from the bustle and glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which surrounded his ancient mansion in Nottinghamshire; but his conduct was not a little at variance with his professions. In truth he wished to command the respect at once of courtiers and of philosophers, to be admired for attaining high dignities, and to be at the same time admired for despising them.

More than one historian has been charged with partiality to Halifax. The truth is that the memory of Halifax is entitled in an especial manner to the protection of history. For what distinguishes him from all other English statesmen is this, that through a long public life, and through frequent and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably took that view of the great questions of his time which history has finally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually varying. As well might the pole star be called inconstant because it is sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west of the pointers. To have defended the ancient and legal constitution of the realm against a seditious populace at one conjuncture, and against a tyrannical government at another; to have been the foremost champion of order in the turbulent Parliament of 1680, and the foremost champion of liberty in the servile Parliament of 1685; to have been just and merciful to Roman Catholics in the days of the Popish Plot, and to Exclusionists in the days of the Rye House Plot; to have done all in his power to save both the head of Strafford and the head of Russell; this was a course which contemporaries, heated by passion, and deluded by names and badges, might not unnaturally call fickle, but which deserves a very different name from the late justice of posterity.

The reign of Louis XIV is the time to which ultra-royalists refer as the golden age of France. It was, in truth, one of those periods which shine with an unnatural and delusive splendor. Concerning Louis XIV 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 word, a great king. Never was there so consummate a master of what our James I 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 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 mass-book, 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 XIV as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see him shave and put on his breeches in the morning. He then knelt down by the side of his bed and said his prayer, the ecclesiastics on their knees and the laymen with their hats before their faces. He walked about his garden 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 entrées. 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 deepest awe and reverence. The illusion which he produced on his worshipers 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 extolled was, in truth, a little man. 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 shoe-tie. His public character has been scrutinized by men free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Molière. 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.

He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a beaten and humbled army, provinces turned into deserts by misgovernment and persecution, factions dividing the court, a schism raging in the Church, an immense debt, an empty treasury, immeasurable palaces, an innumerable household, inestimable palaces and furniture. All the sap and nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloated and unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was morbidly flourishing. Yet it does not appear that the associations which attached the people to the monarchy had lost strength during his reign. He had neglected or sacrificed their dearest interests, but he had struck their imaginations.

The place which William Henry, Prince of Orange-Nassau, occupies in the history of England and of mankind is so great that it may be desirable to portray with some minuteness the strong lineaments of his character.[27]

He was now in his thirty-seventh year. But both in body and in mind he was older than other men of the same age. Indeed, it might be said that he had never been young. His external appearance is almost as well known to us as to his own captains and counselors. Sculptors, painters, and medallists exerted their utmost skill in the work of transmitting his features to posterity; and his features were such that no artist could fail to seize, and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivaling that of an eagle in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a good-humored man. But it indicates in a manner not to be mistaken capacity equal to the most arduous enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or dangers.

Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler, and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. With strong natural sense, and rare force of will, he found himself, when first his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of the oligarchy then supreme in the United Provinces. The common people, fondly attached during three generations to his house, indicated, whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken, that they regarded him as their rightful head. The able and experienced ministers of the republic, mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay their feigned civilities to him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The first movements of his ambition were carefully watched; every unguarded word uttered by him was noted down; nor had he near him any adviser on whose judgment reliance could be placed.

He was scarcely fifteen years old when all the domestics who were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his confidence, were removed from under his roof by the jealous government. He remonstrated with energy beyond his years, but in vain. Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of the young state prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, sank for a time under the emotions which his desolate situation had produced. Such situations bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, how to baffle curiosity by dry and guarded answers; how to conceal all passions under the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an inferior degree, embellished the court of England; and his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value of a favor and take away the sting of a refusal. He was little interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and Liebnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic performances tired him, and he was glad to turn away from the stage and to talk about public affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while Tartuffe was pressing Elmira’s hand.

He had, indeed, some talent for sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural rhetoric, quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not, however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His attention had been confined to those studies which form strenuous and sagacious men of business. From a child he listened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or a horn-work. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to comprehend and answer without assistance everything that was said to him and every letter which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. With the French he was not less familiar. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and wrote English and German, inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and intelligibly. No qualification could be more important to a man whose life was to be passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding armies assembled from different countries.

The faculties which are necessary for the conduct of important business ripened in him at a time of life when they have scarcely begun to blossom in ordinary men. Since Octavius the world had seen no such instance of precocious statesmanship. Skillful diplomatists were surprised to hear the weighty observations which at seventeen the prince made on public affairs, and still more surprised to see a lad, in situations in which he might have been expected to betray strong passion, preserve a composure as imperturbable as their own. At eighteen he sat among the fathers of the commonwealth—grave, discreet, and judicious as the oldest among them. At twenty-one, in a day of gloom and terror, he was placed at the head of the administration. At twenty-three he was renowned throughout Europe as a soldier and a politician. He had put domestic factions under his feet; he was the soul of a mighty coalition; and he had contended with honor in the field against some of the greatest generals of the age.

His personal tastes were those rather of a warrior than of a statesman, but he, like his great-grandfather, the silent prince who founded the Batavian commonwealth, occupies a far higher place among statesmen than among warriors. The event of battles, indeed, is not an unfailing test of the abilities of a commander; and it would be peculiarly unjust to apply this test to William, for it was his fortune to be almost always opposed to captains who were consummate masters of their art, and to troops far superior in discipline to his own. Yet there is reason to believe that he was by no means equal, as a general in the field, to some who ranked far below him in intellectual powers. To those whom he trusted he spoke on this subject with the magnanimous frankness of a man who had done great things, and could well afford to acknowledge some deficiencies. He had never, he said, served an apprenticeship to the military profession. He had been placed, while still a boy, at the head of an army. Among his officers there had been none competent to instruct him. His own blunders and their consequences had been his only lessons. “I would give,” he once exclaimed, “a good part of my estates to have served a few campaigns under the Prince of Condé before I had to command against him.”

It is not improbable that the circumstance which prevented William from attaining any eminent dexterity in strategy may have been favorable to the general vigor of his intellect. If his battles were not those of a great tactician, they entitled him to be called a great man. No disaster could for one moment deprive him of his firmness or of the entire possession of all his faculties. His defeats were repaired with such marvelous celerity that, before his enemies had sung the Te Deum, he was again ready for the conflict; nor did his adverse fortune ever deprive him of the respect and confidence of his soldiers. That respect and confidence he owed in no small measure to his personal courage. Courage, in the degree which is necessary to carry a soldier without disgrace through a campaign, is possessed, or might, under proper training, be acquired by the great majority of men. But courage like that of William is rare indeed. He was proved by every test; by war, by wounds, by painful and depressing maladies, by raging seas, by the imminent and constant risk of assassination—a risk which has shaken very strong nerves, a risk which severely tried even the adamantine fortitude of Cromwell. Yet none could ever discover what that thing was which the Prince of Orange feared. His advisers could with difficulty induce him to take any precaution against the pistols and daggers of conspirators. Old sailors were amazed at the composure which he preserved amid roaring breakers on a perilous coast. In battle his bravery made him conspicuous even among tens of thousands of brave warriors, drew forth the generous applause of hostile armies, and was scarcely ever questioned even by the injustice of hostile factions.

During his first campaigns he exposed himself like a man who sought for death, was always foremost in the charge and last in the retreat, fought sword in hand, in the thickest press, and with a musket ball in his arm and the blood streaming over his cuirass, still stood his ground and waved his hat under the hottest fire. His friends adjured him to take more care of a life invaluable to his country; and his most illustrious antagonist, the great Condé, remarked, after the bloody day of Seneff, that the Prince of Orange had in all things borne himself like an old general, except in exposing himself like a young soldier. William denied that he was guilty of temerity. It was, he said, from a sense of duty and on a cool calculation of what the public interest required, that he was always at the post of danger. The troops which he commanded had been little used to war, and shrank from a close encounter with the veteran soldiery of France. It was necessary that their leader should show them how battles were to be won. And in truth more than one day which had seemed hopelessly lost was retrieved by the hardihood with which he rallied his broken battalions and cut down the cowards who set the example of flight. Sometimes, however, it seemed that he had a strange pleasure in venturing his person. It was remarked that his spirits were never so high and his manners never so gracious and easy as amid the tumult and carnage of a battle. Even in his pastimes he liked the excitement of danger. Cards, chess, and billiards gave him no pleasure. The chase was his favorite recreation, and he loved it most when it was most hazardous. His leaps were sometimes such that his boldest companions did not like to follow him. He seemed to have thought the most hardy field sports of England effeminate, and to have pined in the great park of Windsor for the game which he had been used to drive to bay in the forests of Guelders—wolves and wild boars, and huge stags with sixteen antlers.

The audacity of his spirit was the more remarkable because his physical organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of small-pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some date beyond which, if there were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which was one long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and languid body.

He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities; but the strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the multitude his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment, were hidden by a phlegmatic serenity which made him pass for the most coldblooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after a defeat looked in vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mohawk chief; but those who knew him well and saw him near were aware that under all this ice a fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived him of power over himself; but when he was really enraged the first outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was, indeed, scarcely safe to approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained his self-command he made such ample reparation to those whom he had wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and his life. To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity and secrecy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share in festive conversation.

To him England was always a land of exile, visited with reluctance, and quitted with delight. Even when he rendered to her those services of which to this day we feel the happy effects, her welfare was not his chief object. Whatever patriotic feeling he had was for Holland. There was the stately tomb where slept the great politician whose blood, whose name, whose temperament, and whose genius he had inherited. There the very sound of his title was a spell which had, through three generations, called forth the affectionate enthusiasm of boors and artisans. The Dutch language was the language of his nursery. Among the Dutch gentry he had chosen his early friends. The amusements, the architecture, the landscape of his native country had taken hold on his heart. To her he turned with constant fondness from a prouder and fairer rival. In the gallery of Whitehall he pined for the familiar House in the Wood at the Hague, and never was so happy as when he could quit the magnificence of Windsor for his far humbler seat at Loo.

During his splendid banishment it was his consolation to create around him, by building, planting, and digging, a scene which might remind him of the formal piles of red brick, of the long canals, and of the symmetrical flower-beds among which his early life had been passed. Yet even his affection for the land of his birth was subordinate to another feeling which early became supreme in his soul, which mixed itself with all his passions, which impelled him to marvelous enterprises, which supported him when sinking under mortification, pain, sickness, and sorrow, which, toward the close of his career, seemed during a short time to languish, but which soon broke forth again fiercer than ever, and continued to animate him even while the prayer for the departing was read at his bedside. That feeling was enmity to France, and to the magnificent king who, in more than one sense, represented France, and who to virtues and accomplishments eminently French joined in large measure that unquiet, unscrupulous, and vainglorious ambition which has repeatedly drawn on France the resentment of Europe.

It is not difficult to trace the progress of the sentiment which gradually possessed itself of William’s whole soul. When he was little more than a boy his country had been attacked by Lewis in ostentatious defiance of justice and public law, had been overrun, had been desolated, had been given up to every excess of rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty. The Dutch had in dismay humbled themselves before the conqueror, and had implored mercy. They had been told in reply that, if they desired peace, they must resign their independence, and do annual homage to the House of Bourbon. The injured nation, driven to despair, had opened its dykes, and had called in the sea as an ally against the French tyranny. It was in the agony of that conflict, when peasants were flying in terror before the invaders, when hundreds of fair gardens and pleasure-houses were buried beneath the waves, when the deliberations of the States were interrupted by the fainting and the loud weeping of ancient senators who could not bear the thought of surviving the freedom and glory of their native land, that William had been called to the head of affairs.

The French monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal, what the Ottoman power was to Scanderbeg, what the Southron domination was to Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and unquenchable animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed that the same power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the scourge of the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the threshing-floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which the heroic fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a great work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins conspired in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted himself on a starless night, amid raging waves, and near a treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardor and perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have scarcely any parallel in history.

Our ancestors were not a little surprised to learn that a young barbarian, who had, at seventeen years of age, become the autocrat of the immense region stretching from the confines of Sweden to those of China, and whose education had been inferior to that of an English farmer or shopman, had planned gigantic improvements, had learned enough of some languages of Western Europe to enable him to communicate with civilized men, had begun to surround himself with able adventurers from various parts of the world, had sent many of his young subjects to study languages, arts, and sciences in foreign cities, and finally had determined to travel as a private man, and to discover, by personal observation, the secret of the immense prosperity and power enjoyed by some communities whose whole territory was far less than the hundredth part of his dominions.

It might have been expected that France would have been the first object of his curiosity. For the grace and dignity of the French Court, the splendor of the French Court, the discipline of the French armies, and the genius and learning of the French writers, were then renowned all over the world. But the Czar’s mind had early taken a strange ply which it retained to the last. His empire was of all empires the least capable of being made a great naval power. The Swedish provinces lay between his states and the Baltic. The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles lay between his states and the Mediterranean. He had access to the ocean only in a latitude in which navigation is, during a great part of every year, perilous and difficult. On the ocean he had only a single port, Archangel; and the whole shipping of Archangel was foreign. There did not exist a Russian vessel larger than a fishing boat. Yet, from some cause which can not now be traced, he had a taste for maritime pursuits which amounted to a passion, indeed almost to a monomania. His imagination was full of sails, yardarms, and rudders. That large mind, equal to the highest duties of the general and the statesman, contracted itself to the most minute details of naval architecture and naval discipline.

The chief ambition of the great conqueror and legislator was to be a good boatswain and a good ship’s carpenter. Holland and England therefore had for him an attraction which was wanting to the galleries and terraces of Versailles. He repaired to Amsterdam, took a lodging in the dockyard, assumed the garb of a pilot, put down his name on the list of workmen, wielded with his own hand the caulking iron and the mallet, fixed the pumps, and twisted the ropes. Ambassadors who came to pay their respects to him were forced, much against their will, to clamber up the rigging of a man-of-war, and found him enthroned on the cross-trees.

Such was the prince whom the populace of London now crowded to behold. His stately form, his intellectual forehead, his piercing black eye, his Tartar nose and mouth, his gracious smile, his frown black with all the stormy rage and hate of a barbarian tyrant, and above all a strange nervous convulsion which sometimes transformed his countenance, during a few moments, into an object on which it was impossible to look without terror, the immense quantities of meat which he devoured, the pints of brandy which he swallowed, and which, it was said, he had carefully distilled with his own hands, the fool who jabbered at his feet, the monkey which grinned at the back of his chair, were, during some weeks, popular topics of conversation. He meanwhile shunned the public gaze with a haughty shyness which inflamed curiosity. He went to a play; but as soon as he perceived that pit, boxes, and gallery were staring, not at the stage, but at him, he retired to a back bench where he was screened from observation by his attendants. He was desirous to see a sitting of the House of Lords; but, as he was determined not to be seen, he was forced to climb up to the leads, and to peep through a small window. He heard with great interest the royal assent given to a bill for raising fifteen hundred thousand pounds by land-tax, and learned with amazement that this sum, though larger by one half than the whole revenue which he could wring from the population of the immense empire of which he was absolute master, was but a small part of what the Commons of England voluntarily granted every year to their constitutional king.

William judiciously humored the whims of his illustrious guest, and stole to Norfolk Street so quietly that nobody in the neighborhood recognized his Majesty in the thin gentleman who got out of the modest-looking coach at the czar’s lodgings. The czar returned the visit with the same precautions, and was admitted into Kensington House by a back door. It was afterward known that he took no notice of the fine pictures with which the palace was adorned. But over the chimney of the royal sitting-room was a plate which, by an ingenious machinery, indicated the direction of the wind, and with this plate he was in raptures.

He soon became weary of his residence. He found that he was too far from the objects of his curiosity, and too near to the crowds to which he was himself an object of curiosity. He accordingly removed to Deptford, and was there lodged in the house of John Evelyn, a house which had long been a favorite resort of men of letters, men of taste, and men of science. Here Peter gave himself up to his favorite pursuits. He navigated a yacht every day up and down the river. His apartment was crowded with models of three-deckers and two-deckers, frigates, sloops, and fire-ships. The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to take much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern. Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favorite that he prevailed on the czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of tobacco into Russia. There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy would cry out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that text which declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter in at the mouth, but by those things which proceed out of it. This apprehension was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an audience of the czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.

He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped at different times to make him a proselyte. Burnet, commissioned by his brethren, and impelled, no doubt, by his own restless curiosity and love of meddling, repaired to Deptford and was honored with several audiences. The czar could not be persuaded to exhibit himself at St. Paul’s, but he was induced to visit Lambeth Palace. There he saw the ceremony of ordination performed, and expressed warm approbation of the Anglican ritual. Nothing in England astonished him so much as the archiepiscopal library. It was the first good collection of books that he had seen; and he declared that he had never imagined that there were so many printed volumes in the world.

The impression which he made on Burnet was not favorable. The good bishop could not understand that a mind which seemed to be chiefly occupied with questions about the best place for a capstan and the best way of rigging a jury-mast might be capable, not merely of ruling an empire, but of creating a nation. He claimed that he had gone to see a great prince, and had found only an industrious shipwright. Nor does Evelyn seem to have formed a much more favorable opinion of his august tenant. It was, indeed, not in the character of tenant that the czar was likely to gain the good word of civilized men. With all the high qualities which were peculiar to himself, he had all the filthy habits which were then common among his countrymen. To the end of his life, while disciplining armies, founding schools, framing codes, organizing tribunals, building cities in deserts, joining distant seas by artificial rivers, he lived in his palace like a hog in a sty; and, when he was entertained by other sovereigns, never failed to leave on their tapestried walls and velvet state beds unequivocal proof that a savage had been there. Evelyn’s house was left in such a state that the Treasury quieted his complaints with a considerable sum of money.

Toward the close of March the czar visited Portsmouth, saw a sham sea-fight at Spithead, watched every movement of the contending fleets with intense interest, and expressed in warm terms his gratitude to the hospitable government which had provided so delightful a spectacle for his amusement and instruction. After passing more than three months in England, he departed in high good-humor.

Beyond comparison the greatest of English generals, Marlborough raised his country to a height of military glory such as it had never attained since the days of Poitiers and of Agincourt, and his victories appeared all the more dazzling after the ignominious reigns of the last two Stuarts, and after the many failures that checkered the enterprises of William. His military genius, though once bitterly decried by party malignity, will now be universally acknowledged, and it was sufficient to place him among the greatest captains who have ever lived. Hardly any other modern general combined to an equal degree the three great attributes of daring, caution, and sagacity, or conducted military enterprises of equal magnitude and duration without losing a single battle or failing in a single siege. He was one of the very few commanders who appear to have shown equal skill in directing a campaign, in winning a battle, and in improving a victory. It can not, indeed, be said of him, as it may be said of Frederick the Great, that he was at the head of a small power, with almost all Europe in arms against it, and that nearly every victory he won was snatched from an army enormously outnumbering his own. At Blenheim and Oudenarde the French exceeded by a few thousands the armies of the allies. At Ramillies the army of Marlborough was slightly superior. At Malplaquet the opposing forces were almost equal. Nor did the circumstances of Marlborough admit of a military career of the same brilliancy, variety, and magnitude of enterprise as that of Napoleon.

But both Frederick and Napoleon experienced crushing disasters, and both of them had some advantages which Marlborough did not possess. Frederick was the absolute ruler of a state which had for many years been governed exclusively on the military principle, in which the first and almost the sole object of the government had been to train and discipline the largest and most perfect army the nation could support. Napoleon was the absolute ruler of the foremost military power on the Continent at a time when the enthusiasm of a great revolution had given it an unparalleled energy, when the destruction of the whole hierarchy of rank and the opening of all posts to talent had brought an extraordinary amount of ability to the forefront, and when the military administrations of surrounding nations were singularly decrepit and corrupt. Marlborough, on the other hand, commanded armies consisting in a great degree of confederates and mercenaries of many different nationalities, and under many different rulers. He was thwarted at every step by political obstacles, and by the much graver obstacles arising from divided command and personal or national jealousies; he contended against the first military nation of the Continent, at a time when its military organization had attained the highest perfection, and when a long succession of brilliant wars had given it a school of officers of consummate skill.

But great as were his military gifts, they would have been insufficient had they not been allied with other qualities well fitted to win the admiration of men. Adam Smith has said, with scarcely an exaggeration, that “it is a characteristic almost peculiar to the great Duke of Marlborough, that ten years of such uninterrupted and such splendid successes as scarce any other general could boast of, never betrayed him into a single rash action, scarcely into a single rash word or expression.” Nothing in his career is more admirable than the unwearied patience, the inimitable skill, the courtesy, the tact, the self-command with which he employed himself during many years in reconciling the incessant differences, overcoming the incessant opposition, and soothing the incessant jealousies of those with whom he was compelled to co-operate. His private correspondence abundantly shows how gross was the provocation he endured, how keenly he felt it, how nobly he bore it.

As a negotiator he ranks with the most skillful diplomatists of his age, and it was no doubt his great tact in managing men that induced his old rival Bolingbroke, in one of his latest writings, to describe him as not only the greatest general, but also “the greatest minister our country or any other has produced.” Chesterfield, while absurdly depreciating his intellect, admitted that “his manner was irresistible,” and he added that, of all men he had ever known, Marlborough “possessed the graces in the highest degree.” Nor was his character without its softer side. Though he can not, I think, be acquitted of a desire to prolong war in the interests of his personal or political ambition, it is at least true that no general ever studied more, by admirable discipline and by uniform humanity, to mitigate its horrors. Very few friendships among great political or military leaders have been as constant or as unclouded by any shade of jealousy as the friendship between Marlborough and Godolphin, and between Marlborough and Eugene.

His conjugal fidelity, in a time of great laxity and under temptations and provocations of no common order, was beyond reproach. His attachment to the Church of England was at one time the great obstacle to his advancement. It appears never to have wavered through all the vicissitudes of his life; and no one who reads his most private letters with candor can fail to perceive that a certain vein of genuine piety ran through his nature, however inconsistent it may appear with some portions of his career.

Yet it may be questioned whether, even in the zenith of his fame, he was really popular. He had grave vices, and they were precisely of that kind which is most fatal to public men. His extreme rapacity in acquiring and his extreme avarice in hoarding money contrasted forcibly with the lavish generosity of Ormond, and alone gave weight to the charges of peculation that were brought against him. It is true that this, like all his passions, was under control. Torcy soon found that it was useless to attempt to bribe him, and he declined, as we have seen, with little hesitation, the enormously lucrative post of governor of the Austrian Netherlands when he found that the appointment aroused the strong and dangerous hostility of the Dutch. In these cases his keen and far-seeing judgment perceived clearly his true interest, and he had sufficient resolution to follow it. Yet still, like many men who have risen from great poverty to great wealth, avarice was the passion of his life, and the rapacity both of himself and of his wife was insatiable. Besides immense grants from Blenheim and marriage portions given by the queen to their daughters, they at one time received between them an annual income of public money of more than sixty-four thousand pounds.

Nor can he be acquitted of very gross and aggravated treachery to those he served. It is, indeed, not easy to form a fair estimate in this respect of the conduct of public men at the period of the revolution. Historians rarely make sufficient allowance for the degree in which the judgments and dispositions even of the best men are colored by the moral tone of the age, society, or profession in which they live, or for the temptations of men of great genius and of natural ambition in times when no highly scrupulous man could possibly succeed in public life. Marlborough struggled into greatness from a very humble position, in one of the most profligate periods of English politics, and he lived through a long period when the ultimate succession of the crown was very doubtful. A very large proportion of the leading statesmen during this long season of suspense made such overtures to the deposed dynasty as would at least secure them from absolute ruin in the event of a change, and their conduct is surely susceptible of much palliation.

The apparent interests and the apparent wishes of the nation hung so evenly and oscillated so frequently that strong convictions were rare, and even good men might often be in doubt. But the obligations of Churchill to James were of no common order, and his treachery was of no common dye. He had been raised by the special favor of his sovereign from the position of a page to the peerage, to great wealth, to high command in the army. He had been trusted by him with the most absolute trust. He not only abandoned him in the crisis of his fate, with circumstances of the most deliberate and aggravated treachery, but also employed his influence over the daughter of his benefactor to induce her to fly from her father and to array herself with his enemies. Such conduct, if it had indeed been dictated, as he alleged, solely by a regard for the interests of Protestantism, would have been certainly, in the words of Hume, “a signal sacrifice to public virtue of every duty in private life”; and it “required ever after the most upright, disinterested, and public-spirited behavior, to render it justifiable.” How little the later career of Marlborough fulfilled this condition is well known.

When we find that, having been loaded under the new Government with titles, honors, and wealth, having been placed in the inner council and intrusted with the most important state secrets, he was one of the first Englishmen to enter into negotiations with St. Germain’s; that he purchased his pardon from James by betraying important military secrets to the enemies of his country, and that, during a great part of his subsequent career, while holding office under the Government, he was secretly negotiating with the Pretender, it is difficult not to place the worst construction upon his public life. It is probable, indeed, that his negotiations with the Jacobites were never sincere, that he had no real desire for a restoration, and that his guiding motive was much less ambition than a desire to secure what he possessed; but these considerations only slightly palliate his conduct. At the period of his downfall his later acts of treason were for the most part unknown, but his conduct toward James weighed heavily upon his reputation, and his intercourse with the Pretender, though not proved, was at least suspected by many. Neither Hanoverians nor Jacobites trusted him, neither Whigs nor Tories could regard him without reserve as their own.

And with this feeling of distrust there was mingled a strong element of fear. In the latter years of Queen Anne the shadow of Cromwell fell darkly across the path of Marlborough. To those who prefer the violent methods of a reforming despotism to the slow process of parliamentary amelioration, to those who despise the wisdom of following public opinion and respecting the prejudices and the associations of a nation, there can be no better lesson than is furnished by the history of Cromwell. Of his high and commanding abilities it is not here necessary to speak, nor yet of the traits of magnanimity that may, no doubt, be found in his character. Everything that great genius and the most passionate sympathy could do to magnify these has in this century been done, and a long period of unqualified depreciation has been followed by a reaction of extravagant eulogy.

But the more the qualities of the man are exalted the more significant are the lessons of his life. Despising the national sentiment of loyalty, he and his party dethroned and beheaded the king. Despising the ecclesiastical sentiment, they destroyed the Church. Despising the deep reverence for the constitution, they subverted the Parliament. Despising the oldest and most cherished customs of the people, they sought to mold the whole social life of England in the die of an austere Puritanism. They seemed for a time to have succeeded, but the result soon appeared. Republican equality was followed by the period of most obsequious, servile loyalty England has ever known. The age when every amusement was denounced as a crime was followed by the age when all virtue was treated as hypocrisy, and when the sense of shame seemed to have almost vanished from the land. The prostration of the Church was followed, with the full approbation of the bulk of the nation, by the bitter, prolonged persecution of Dissenters. The hated memory of the Commonwealth was for more than a century appealed to by every statesman who desired to prevent reform or discredit liberty, and the name of Cromwell gathered around it an intensity of hatred approached by no other in the history of England. This was the single sentiment common in all its vehemence to the Episcopalians of England, the Presbyterians of Scotland, and the Catholics of Ireland, and it had more than once considerable political effects. The profound horror of military despotism, which is one of the strongest and most salutary of English sentiments, has been, perhaps, the most valuable legacy of the Commonwealth. In Marlborough, for the first time since the restoration, men saw a possible Cromwell, and they looked forward with alarm to the death of the queen as a period peculiarly propitious to military usurpation. Bolingbroke never represented more happily the feelings of the people than in the well-known scene at the first representation of the “Cato” of Addison. Written by a great Whig writer, the play was intended to advocate Whig sentiments; but when the Whig audience had made the theatre ring with applause at every speech on the evil of despotism and arbitrary principles, the Tory leader availed himself of the pause between the acts to summon the chief actor, to present him with a purse of money, and to thank him publicly for having defended the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual military dictator.

It is worthy of notice that the long ascendency of Walpole was in no degree owing to any extraordinary brilliancy of eloquency. He was a clear and forcible reasoner, ready in reply, and peculiarly successful in financial exposition, but he had little or nothing of the temperament or the talent of an orator. It is the custom of some writers to decry parliamentary institutions as being simply government by talking, and to assert that when they exist mere rhetorical skill will always be more valued than judgment, knowledge, or character. The enormous exaggeration of such charges may be easily established. It is, no doubt, inevitable that where business is transacted chiefly by debate, the talent of a debater should be highly prized; but it is perfectly untrue that British legislatures have shown less skill than ordinary sovereigns in distinguishing solid talent from mere showy accomplishments, or that parliamentary weight has in England been usually proportioned to oratorical power.

St. John was a far greater orator than Harley; Pulteney was probably a greater orator than Walpole; Stanley in mere rhetorical skill was undoubtedly the superior of Peel. Godolphin, Pelham, Castlereagh, Liverpool, Melbourne, Althorpe, Wellington, Lord J. Russell, and Lord Palmerston are all examples of men who, either as statesmen or as successful leaders of the House of Commons, have taken a foremost place in English politics without any oratorical brilliancy. Sheridan, Plunket, and Brougham, though orators of almost the highest class, left no deep impression on English public life; the ascendancy of Grey and Canning was very transient, and no Opposition since the early Hanoverian period sank so low as that which was guided by Fox. The two Pitts and Mr. Gladstone are the three examples of speakers of transcendent power exercising for a considerable time a commanding influence over English politics. The younger Pitt is, I believe, a real instance of a man whose solid ability bore no kind of proportion to his oratorical skill, and who, by an almost preternatural dexterity in debate, accompanied by great decision of character, and assisted by the favor of the king, by the magic of an illustrious name, and by a great national panic, maintained an authority immensely greater than his deserts. But in this respect he stands alone. The pinnacle of glory to which the elder Pitt raised his country is a sufficient proof of the almost unequaled administrative genius which he displayed in the conduct of a war; and in the sphere of domestic policy it may be questioned whether any other English minister since the accession of the house of Brunswick has carried so many measures of magnitude and difficulty or exhibited so perfect a mastery over the financial system of the country as the great living statesman.

The qualities of Walpole were very different, but it is impossible, I think, to consider his career with adequate attention without recognizing in him a great minister, although the merits of his administration were often rather negative than positive, and although it exhibits few of those dramatic incidents, and is but little susceptible of that rhetorical coloring on which the reputation of statesmen largely depends.

Without any remarkable originality of thought or creative genius, he possessed in a high degree one quality of a great statesman—the power of judging new and startling events in the moments of excitement or of panic as they would be judged by ordinary men when the excitement, the novelty, and the panic had passed. He was eminently true to the character of his countrymen. He discerned with a rare sagacity the lines of policy most suited to their genius and to their needs, and he had a sufficient ascendency in English politics to form its traditions, to give a character and a bias to its institutions. The Whig party, under his guidance, retained, though with diminished energy, its old love of civil and of religious liberty, but it lost its foreign sympathies, its tendency to extravagance, its military restlessness. The landed gentry, and in a great degree the Church, were reconciled to the new dynasty. The dangerous fissures which divided the English nation were filled up. Parliamentary government lost its old violence, it entered into a period of normal and pacific action, and the habits of compromise, of moderation, and of practical good sense, which are most essential to its success, were greatly strengthened.

These were the great merits of Walpole. His faults were very manifest, and are to be attributed in part to his own character, but in a great degree to the moral atmosphere of his time. He was an honest man in the sense of desiring sincerely the welfare of his country and serving his sovereign with fidelity; but he was intensely wedded to power, exceedingly unscrupulous about the means of grasping or retaining it, and entirely destitute of that delicacy of honor which marks a high-minded man. In the opinion of most of his contemporaries, Townshend and Walpole had good reason to complain of the intrigues by which Sunderland and Stanhope obtained the supreme power in 1717; but this does not justify the factious manner in which Walpole opposed every measure the new ministry brought forward—even the Mutiny Act, which was plainly necessary to keep the army in discipline; even the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, though he had himself denounced those acts as more like laws of Julian the Apostate than of a Christian legislature.

He was sincerely tolerant in his disposition, and probably did as much for the benefit of the Dissenters as could have been done without producing a violent and dangerous reaction of opinion; but he took no measure to lighten the burden of the Irish penal code, and he had no scruple in availing himself of the strong feeling against the English Catholics and non-jurors to raise one hundred thousand pounds, by a special tax upon their estates, or in promising the Dissenters that he would obtain the repeal of the Test Act, when he had no serious intention of doing so. He warned the country faithfully against the South Sea scheme, but when his warning was disregarded he proceeded to speculate skillfully and successfully in it himself. He labored long and earnestly to prevent the Spanish war, which he knew to be eminently impolitic; but when the clamors of his opponents had made it inevitable he determined that he would still remain at the helm, and he accordingly declared it himself. He governed the country mildly and wisely, but he was resolved at all hazards to secure for himself a complete monopoly of power; he steadily opposed the reconciliation of the Tories with the Hanoverian dynasty, lest it should impair his ascendancy, surrounded himself with colleagues whose faculties rarely rose above the tamest mediocrity, drove from power every man of real talent who might possibly become his rival, and especially repelled young men of promise, character, and ambition, whom a provident statesman, desirous of perpetuating his policy beyond his lifetime, would especially seek to attract.

The scandal and also the evil effects of his political vices were greatly increased by that total want of decorum which Burke has justly noted as the weakest point of his character. In this respect his public and private life resembled one another. That he lived for many years in open adultery and indulged to excess in the pleasures of the table were facts which in the early part of the eighteenth century were in themselves not likely to excite much attention; but his boisterous revelries at Houghton exceeded even the ordinary license of the country squires of his time, and the gross sensuality of his conversation was conspicuous in one of the coarsest periods of English history. When he did not talk of business, it was said, he talked of women; politics and obscenity were his tastes. There seldom was a court less addicted to prudery than that of George II, but even its tolerance was somewhat strained by a minister who jested with the queen upon the infidelity of her husband; who advised her on one occasion to bring to court a beautiful but silly woman as a “safe fool” for the king to fall in love with; who, on the death of the queen, urged her daughters to summon without delay the two mistresses of the king in order to distract the mind of their father; who at the same time avowed, with a brutal frankness, as the scheme of his future policy, that though he had been for the wife against the mistress, he would be henceforth for the mistress against the daughters.

In society he had the weakness of wishing to be thought a man of gallantry and fashion, and his awkward addresses, rendered the more ludicrous by a singularly corpulent and ungraceful person, as well as the extreme coarseness into which he usually glided when speaking to and of women, drew down upon him much ridicule and some contempt. His estimate of political integrity was very similar to his estimate of female virtue. He governed by means of an assembly which was saturated with corruption, and he fully acquiesced in its conditions and resisted every attempt to improve it. He appears to have cordially accepted the maxim that government must be carried on by corruption or by force, and he deliberately made the former the basis of his rule. He bribed George II by obtaining for him a civil list exceeding by more than one hundred thousand pounds a year that of his father. He bribed the queen by securing for her a jointure of one hundred thousand pounds a year, when his rival, Sir Spencer Compton, could only venture to promise sixty thousand pounds. He bribed the dissenting ministers to silence by the Regium Donum for the benefit of their widows. He employed the vast patronage of the crown uniformly and steadily with the single view of sustaining his political position, and there can be no doubt that a large proportion of the immense expenditure of secret-service money during his administration was devoted to the direct purchase of members of Parliament.

His influence upon young men appears to have been peculiarly pernicious. If we may believe Chesterfield, he was accustomed to ask them in a tone of irony upon their entrance into Parliament whether they too were going to be saints or Romans, and he employed all the weight of his position to make them regard purity and patriotism as ridiculous or unmanly. Of the next generation of statesmen, Fox, the first Lord Holland,[28] was the only man of remarkable ability who can be said to have been his disciple, and he was, perhaps, the most corrupt and unscrupulous of the statesmen of his age.

About fourscore years ago there used to be seen sauntering on the terraces of Sans Souci, for a short time in the afternoon, or you might have met him elsewhere at an earlier hour, riding or driving in a rapid business manner on the open roads or through the scraggy woods and avenues of that intricate amphibious Potsdam region, a highly interesting lean little old man, of alert though slightly stooping figure, whose name among strangers was King Friedrich the Second, or Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the common people, who much loved and esteemed him, was Vater Fritz—Father Fred—a name of familiarity which had not bred contempt in that instance. He is a king, every inch of him, though without the trappings of a king. Presents himself in a Spartan simplicity of vesture; no crown but an old military cocked hat—generally old, or trampled and kneaded into absolute softness if new—no scepter but one like Agamemnon’s, a walking-stick cut from the woods, which serves also as a riding-stick (with which he hits the horse “between the ears,” say authors)—and for royal robes, a mere soldier’s blue coat with red facings, coat likely to be old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on the breast of it; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive in color or cut, ending in high overknee military boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permitted to be blackened or varnished; Day and Martin with their soot-pots forbidden to approach.

The man is not of godlike physiognomy, any more than of imposing stature or costume; close-shut mouth with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, by no means of Olympian height; head, however, is of long form, and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not what is called a beautiful man; nor yet, by all appearance, what is called a happy. On the contrary, the face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are termed, of much hard labor done in this world, and seems to anticipate nothing but more still coming. Quiet stoicism, capable enough of what joys there were, but not expecting any worth mention; great unconscious and some conscious pride, well tempered with a cheery mockery of humor—are written on that old face, which carries its chin well forward, in spite of the slight stoop about the neck; snuffy nose, rather flung into the air, under its old cocked hat—like an old snuffy lion on the watch; and such a pair of eyes as no man or lion or lynx of that century bore elsewhere, according to all the testimony we have.

“Those eyes,” says Mirabeau, “which, at the bidding of his great soul, fascinated you with seduction or with terror (portaient, au gré de son âme héroïque, la séduction ou la terreur).” Most excellent potent brilliant eyes, swift-darting as the stars, steadfast as the sun; gray, we said, of the azure-gray color; large enough, not of glaring size; the habitual expression of them vigilance and penetrating sense, rapidity resting on depth, which is an excellent combination, and gives us the notion of a lambent outer radiance springing from some great inner sea of light and fire in the man.

The voice, if he speak to you, is of similar physiognomy—clear, melodious, and sonorous; all tones are in it, from that of ingenuous inquiry, graceful sociality, light-flowing banter (rather prickly for most part), up to definite word of command, up to desolating word of rebuke and reprobation; a voice “the clearest and most agreeable in conversation I ever heard,” says witty Dr. Moore. “He speaks a great deal,” continues the doctor, “yet those who hear him regret that he does not speak a good deal more. His observations are always lively, very often just, and few men possess the talent of repartee in greater perfection.”

This was a man of infinite mark to his contemporaries, who had witnessed surprising feats from him in the world; very questionable notions and ways, which he had contrived to maintain against the world and its criticisms, as an original man has always to do, much more an original ruler of men. The world, in fact, had tried hard to put him down, as it does, unconsciously or consciously, with all such, and after the most conscious exertions, and at one time a dead-lift spasm of all its energies for seven years, had not been able. Principalities and powers, imperial, royal, czarish, papal, enemies innumerable as the sea-sand, had risen against him, only one helper left among the world’s potentates (and that one only while there should be help rendered in return), and he led them all such a dance as had astonished mankind and them.

No wonder they thought him worthy of notice! Every original man of any magnitude is—nay, in the long run, who or what else is? But how much more if your original man was a king over men; whose movements were polar, and carried from day to day those of the world along with them. The Samson Agonistes—were his life passed like that of Samuel Johnson in dirty garrets, and the produce of it only some bits of written paper—the Agonistes, and how he will comport himself in the Philistine mill; this is always a spectacle of truly epic and tragic nature, the rather if your Samson, royal or other, is not yet blinded or subdued to the wheel, much more if he vanquish his enemies, not by suicidal methods, but march out at last flourishing his miraculous fighting implement, and leaving their mill and them in quite ruinous circumstances, as this King Friedrich fairly managed to do.

For he left the world all bankrupt, we may say; fallen into bottomless abysses of destruction; he still in a paying condition, and with footing capable to carry his affairs and him. When he died, in 1786, the enormous phenomenon since called French Revolution was already growling audibly in the depths of the world, meteoric-electric coruscations heralding it all round the horizon. Strange enough to note, one of Friedrich’s last visitors was Gabriel Honoré Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau. These two saw one another; twice, for half an hour each time. The last of the old gods and the first of the modern Titans—before Pelion leaped on Ossa, and the foul earth taking fire at last, its vile mephitic elements went up in volcanic thunder. This also is one of the peculiarities of Friedrich, that he is hitherto the last of the kings; that he ushers in the French Revolution, and closes an epoch of world-history. Finishing off forever the trade of king, think many, who have grown profoundly dark as to kingship and him.

The French Revolution may be said to have, for about half a century, quite submerged Friedrich, abolished him from the memories of men; and now, on coming to light again, he is found defaced under strange mud incrustations, and the eyes of mankind look at him from a singularly changed, what we must call oblique and perverse point of vision. This is one of the difficulties in dealing with his history—especially if you happen to believe both in the French Revolution and in him—that is to say, both that real kingship is eternally indispensable, and also that the destruction of sham kingship (a frightful process) is occasionally so.

On the breaking out of the formidable explosion and suicide of his century, Friedrich sank into comparative obscurity, eclipsed amid the ruins of that universal earthquake, the very dust of which darkened all the air, and made of day a disastrous midnight—black midnight, broken only by the blaze of conflagrations—wherein, to our terrified imaginations, were seen, not men, French and other, but ghastly portents, stalking wrathful, and shapes of avenging gods.

It must be owned the figure of Napoleon was titanic; especially to the generation that looked on him, and that waited shuddering to be devoured by him. In general, in that French Revolution, all was on a huge scale; if not greater than anything in human experience, at least more grandiose. All was recorded in bulletins, too, addressed to the shilling gallery; and there were fellows on the stage with such a breadth of saber, extent of whiskerage, strength of windpipe, and command of men and gunpowder as had never been seen before. How they bellowed, stalked, and flourished about, counterfeiting Jove’s thunder to an amazing degree! Terrific Drawcansir figures of enormous whiskerage, unlimited command of gunpowder; not without sufficient ferocity, and even a certain heroism, stage heroism, in them; compared with whom, to the shilling gallery, and frightened, excited theatre at large, it seemed as if there had been no generals or sovereigns before; as if Friedrich, Gustavus, Cromwell, William Conqueror, and Alexander the Great were not worth speaking of henceforth.

All this, however, in half a century is considerably altered. The Drawcansir equipments getting gradually torn off, the natural size is seen better; translated from the bulletin style into that of fact and history, miracles, even to the shilling gallery, are not so miraculous. It begins to be apparent that there lived great men before the era of bulletins and Agamemnon. Austerlitz and Wagram shot away more gunpowder—gunpowder, probably, in the proportion of ten to one, or a hundred to one; but neither of them was tenth part such a beating to your enemy as that of Rossbach, brought about by strategic art, human ingenuity and intrepidity, and the loss of one hundred and sixty-five men. Leuthen, too, the battle of Leuthen (though so few English readers ever heard of it) may very well hold up its head beside any victory gained by Napoleon or another. For the odds were not far from three to one; the soldiers were of not far from equal quality; and only the general was consummately superior, and the defeat a destruction.

Napoleon did, indeed, by immense expenditure of men and gunpowder, overrun Europe for a time; but Napoleon never, by husbanding and wisely expending his men and gunpowder, defended a little Prussia against all Europe, year after year for seven years long, till Europe had enough, and gave up the enterprise as one it could not manage. So soon as the Drawcansir equipments are well torn off and the shilling gallery got to silence, it will be found that there were great kings before Napoleon, and likewise an art of war, grounded on veracity and human courage and insight, not upon Drawcansir rodomontade, grandiose Dick-Turpinism, revolutionary madness, and unlimited expenditure of men and gunpowder. “You may paint with a very big brush, and yet not be a great painter,” says a satirical friend of mine. This is becoming more and more apparent, as the dust-whirlwind and huge uproar of the last generation gradually dies away again.

Friedrich is by no means one of the perfect demigods; and there are various things to be said against him with good ground. To the last, a questionable hero; with much in him which one could have wished not there, and much wanting which one could have wished. But there is one feature which strikes you at an early period of the inquiry. That in his way he is a reality; that he always means what he speaks; grounds his actions, too, on what he recognizes for the truth; and, in short, has nothing whatever of the hypocrite or phantasm. Which some readers will admit to be an extremely rare phenomenon.

We perceive that this man was far indeed from trying to deal swindler-like with the facts around him; that he honestly recognized said facts wherever they disclosed themselves, and was very anxious also to ascertain their existence where still hidden or dubious. For he knew well, to a quite uncommon degree, and with a merit all the higher as it was an unconscious one, how entirely inexorable is the nature of facts, whether recognized or not, ascertained or not; how vain all cunning of diplomacy, management and sophistry, to save any mortal who does not stand on the truth of things, from sinking in the long run. Sinking to the very mudgods, with all his diplomacies, possessions, achievements; and becoming an unnamable object, hidden deep in the cesspools of the universe. This I hope to make manifest; this which I long ago discerned for myself, with pleasure, in the physiognomy of Friedrich and his life. Which, indeed, was the first real sanction, and has all along been my inducement and encouragement, to study his life and him. How this man, officially a king withal, comported himself in the eighteenth century, and managed not to be a liar and charlatan as his century was, deserves to be seen a little by men and kings, and may silently have didactic meanings in it.

He that was honest with his existence has always meaning for us, be he king or peasant. He that merely shammed and grimaced with it however much, and with whatever noise and trumpet-blowing, he may have cooked and eaten in this world, can not long have any. Some men do cook enormously (let us call it cooking, what a man does in obedience to his hunger merely, to his desires and passions merely)—roasting whole continents and populations, in the flames of war or other discord; witness the Napoleon above spoken of. For the appetite of man in that respect is unlimited; in truth, infinite; and the smallest of us could eat the entire solar system, had we the chance given, and then cry, like Alexander of Macedon, because we had no more solar systems to cook and eat. It is not the extent of the man’s cookery that can much attach me to him; but only the man himself, and what of strength he had to wrestle with the mud-elements, and what of victory he got for his own benefit and mine.

It is this personal and solitary grandeur which strikes us most as we look back to William Pitt. The tone of his speech and action stands out in utter contrast with the tone of his time. In the midst of a society critical, polite, indifferent, simple even to the affectation of simplicity, witty and amusing but absolutely prosaic, cool of heart and of head, skeptical of virtue and enthusiasm, skeptical above all of itself, Pitt stood absolutely alone. The depth of his conviction, his passionate love for all that he deemed lofty and true, his fiery energy, his poetic imaginativeness, his theatrical airs and rhetoric, his haughty self-assumption, his pompousness and extravagance, were not more puzzling to his contemporaries than the confidence with which he appealed to the higher sentiments of mankind, the scorn with which he turned from a corruption which had till then been the great engine of politics, the undoubting faith which he felt in himself, in the grandeur of his aims, and in his power to carry them out. “I know that I can save the country,” he said to the Duke of Devonshire on his entry into the ministry, “and I know no other man can.” The groundwork of Pitt’s character was an intense and passionate pride; but it was a pride which kept him from stooping to the level of the men who had so long held England in their hands. He was the first statesman since the restoration who set the example of a purely public spirit.

Keen as was his love of power, no man ever refused office so often or accepted it with so strict a regard to the principles he professed. “I will not go to court,” he replied to an offer which was made him, “if I may not bring the constitution with me.” For the corruption about him he had nothing but disdain. He left to Newcastle the buying of seats and the purchase of members. At the outset of his career Pelham appointed him to the most lucrative office in his administration, that of paymaster of the forces; but its profits were of an illicit kind, and poor as he was, Pitt refused to accept one farthing beyond his salary. His pride never appeared in loftier and nobler form than in his attitude toward the people at large. No leader had ever a wider popularity than “the great commoner,” as Pitt was styled, but his air was always that of a man who commands popularity, not that of one who seeks it. He never bent to flatter popular prejudice. When mobs were roaring themselves hoarse for “Wilkes and liberty,” he denounced Wilkes as a worthless profligate; and when all England went mad in its hatred of the Scots, Pitt haughtily declared his esteem for a people whose courage he had been the first to enlist on the side of loyalty.

His noble figure, the hawk-like eye which flashed from the small, thin face, his majestic voice, the fire and grandeur of his eloquence, gave him a sway over the House of Commons far greater than any other minister has possessed. He could silence an opponent with a look of scorn, or hush the whole House with a single word. But he never stooped to the arts by which men form a political party, and at the height of his power his personal following hardly numbered half a dozen members.

His real strength, indeed, lay not in Parliament, but in the people at large. His significant title of “the great commoner” marks a political revolution. “It is the people who have sent me here,” Pitt boasted with a haughty pride when the nobles of the cabinet opposed his will. He was the first to see that the long political inactivity of the public mind had ceased, and that the progress of commerce and industry had produced a great middle class which no longer found its representatives in the legislature. “You have taught me,” said George II, when Pitt sought to save Byng by appealing to the sentiment of Parliament, “to look for the voice of my people in other places than within the House of Commons.”

It was this unrepresented class which had forced him into power. During his struggle with Newcastle the greater towns backed him with the gift of their freedom and addresses of confidence. “For weeks,” laughs Horace Walpole, “it rained gold boxes.” London stood by him through good report and evil report, and the wealthiest of English merchants, Alderman Beckford, was proud to figure as his political lieutenant. The temper of Pitt indeed harmonized admirably with the temper of the commercial England which rallied round him, with its energy, its self-confidence, its pride, its patriotism, its honesty, its moral earnestness. The merchant and the trader were drawn by a natural attraction to the one statesman of their time whose aims were unselfish, whose hands were clean, whose life was pure and full of tender affection for wife and child. But there was a far deeper ground for their enthusiastic reverence and for the reverence which his country has borne Pitt ever since.

He loved England with an intense and personal love. He believed in her power, her glory, her public virtue, till England learned to believe in herself. Her triumphs were his triumphs, her defeats his defeats. Her dangers lifted him high above all thought of self or party spirit. “Be one people,” he cried to the factions who rose to bring about his fall; “forget everything but the public! I set you the example!” His glowing patriotism was the real spell by which he held England. But even the faults which checkered his character told for him with the middle classes. The Whig statesmen who preceded him had been men whose pride expressed itself in a marked simplicity and absence of pretense. Pitt was essentially an actor, dramatic in the cabinet, in the House, in his very office. He transacted business with his clerks in full dress. His letters to his family, genuine as his love for them was, are stilted and unnatural in tone. It was easy for the wits of his day to jest at his affectation, his pompous gait, the dramatic appearance which he made on great debates with his limbs swathed in flannel and his crutch by his side. Early in life Walpole sneered at him for bringing into the House of Commons “the gestures and emotions of the stage.” But the classes to whom Pitt appealed were classes not easily offended by faults of taste, and saw nothing to laugh at in the statesman who was borne into the lobby amid the tortures of the gout, or carried into the House of Lords to breathe his last in a protest against national dishonor.

Above all Pitt wielded the strength of a resistless eloquence. The power of political speech had been revealed in the stormy debates of the long Parliament, but it was cramped in its utterance by the legal and theological pedantry of the time. Pedantry was flung off by the age of the revolution, but in the eloquence of Somers and his rivals we see ability rather than genius, knowledge, clearness of expression, precision of thought, the lucidity of the pleader or the man of business, rather than the passion of the orator. Of this clearness of statement Pitt had little or none. He was no ready debater like Walpole, no speaker of set speeches like Chesterfield. His set speeches were always his worst, for in these his want of taste, his love of effect, his trite quotations and extravagant metaphors came at once to the front. That with defects like these he stood far above every orator of his time was due above all to his profound conviction, to the earnestness and sincerity with which he spoke. “I must sit still,” he whispered once to a friend, “for when once I am up everything that is in my mind comes out.” But the reality of his eloquence was transfigured by a large and poetic imagination, and by a glow of passion which not only raised him high above the men of his own day, but set him in the front rank among the orators of the world. The cool reasoning, the wit, the common sense of his age made way for a splendid audacity, a sympathy with popular emotion, a sustained grandeur, a lofty vehemence, a command over the whole range of human feeling. He passed without an effort from the most solemn appeal to the gayest raillery, from the keenest sarcasm to the tenderest pathos. Every word was driven home by the grand self-consciousness of the speaker. He spoke always as one having authority. He was in fact the first English orator whose words were a power, a power not over Parliament only, but over the nation at large. Parliamentary reporting was as yet unknown, and it was only in detached phrases and half-remembered outbursts that the voice of Pitt reached beyond the walls of St. Stephen’s. But it was especially in these sudden outbursts of inspiration, in these brief passionate appeals, that the power of his eloquence lay. The few broken words we have of him stir the same thrill in men of our day which they stirred in the men of his own. But passionate as was Pitt’s eloquence, it was the eloquence of a statesman, not of a rhetorician. Time has approved almost all his greater struggles, his defense of the liberty of the subject against arbitrary imprisonment under “general warrants,” of the liberty of the press against Lord Mansfield, of the rights of constituencies against the House of Commons, of the constitutional rights of America against England itself. His foreign policy was directed to the preservation of Prussia, and Prussia has vindicated his foresight by the creation of Germany. We have adopted his plans for the direct government of India by the crown, which when he proposed them were regarded as insane. Pitt was the first to recognize the liberal character of the Church of England. He was the first to sound the note of parliamentary reform. One of his earliest measures shows the generosity and originality of his mind. He quieted Scotland by employing its Jacobites in the service of their country, and by raising the Highland regiments among its clans. The selection of Wolfe and Amherst as generals showed his contempt for precedent and his inborn knowledge of men.

There are few men whose depth and versatility have been both so fully recognized by their contemporaries and whose pre-eminence in many widely different spheres is so amply attested. Adam Smith declared that he had found no other man who, without communication, had thought out the same conclusions on political economy as himself. Winstanley, the Camden Professor of Ancient History, bore witness to his great knowledge of the “philosophy, history, and filiation of languages, and of the principles of etymological deduction.” Arthur Young, the first living authority on agriculture, acknowledged his obligations to him for much information about his special pursuits, and it was in a great degree his passion for agriculture which induced Burke, when the death of his elder brother had improved his circumstances, to incumber himself with a heavy debt by purchasing that Beaconsfield estate where some of his happiest days were spent. His conversational powers were only equaled, and probably not surpassed, by those of Johnson. Goldsmith described him as “winding into his subject, like a serpent.” “Like the fabled object of the fairy’s favors,” said Wilberforce, “whenever he opened his mouth pearls and diamonds dropped from him.” Grattan pronounced him the best talker he had ever known. Johnson, in spite of their violent political differences, always spoke of him with generous admiration. “Burke is an extraordinary man. His stream of mind is perpetual.... His talk is the ebullition of his mind. He does not talk for a desire of distinction, but because his mind is full.... He is the only man whose common conversation corresponds with the general fame which he has in the world. Take up what topic you please, he is ready to meet you.... No man of sense could meet Mr. Burke by accident under a gateway to avoid a shower without being convinced that he was the first man in England.” It is not surprising that “he is the first man in the House of Commons, for he is the first man everywhere.” He once declared that “he knew but two men who had risen considerably above the common standard—Lord Chatham and Edmund Burke.”

The admirable proportion which subsisted between his different powers, both moral and intellectual, is especially remarkable. Genius is often, like the pearl, the offspring or the accompaniment of disease, and an extraordinary development of one class of faculties is too frequently balanced by an extraordinary deficiency of others. But nothing of this kind can be found in Burke.

His intellectual energy was fully commensurate with his knowledge, and he had rare powers of bringing illustrations and methods of reasoning derived from many spheres to bear on any subject he touched, and of combining an extraordinary natural facility with the most untiring and fastidious labor. In debate images, illustrations, and arguments rose to his lips with a spontaneous redundance that astonished his hearers; but no writer elaborated his compositions more carefully, and his printers were often aghast at the multitude of his corrections and alterations. Nor did his intellectual powers in any degree dry up or dwarf his moral nature. There is no public man whose character is more clearly reflected in his life and in his intimate correspondence; and it may be confidently said that there is no other public man whose character was in all essential respects more transparently pure. Weak health, deep and fervent religious principles, and studious habits, saved him from the temptations of youth; and amid all the vicissitudes and corruption of politics his heart never lost its warmth, or his conscience its sensitiveness.

There were faults, indeed, which were only too apparent in his character as in his intellect—an excessive violence and irritability of temper; personal antipathies, which were sometimes carried beyond all the bounds of reason; party spirit, which was too often suffered to obscure his judgment and to hurry him into great intemperance and exaggeration of language. But he was emphatically a good man; and in the higher moral qualities of public as of private life he has not often been surpassed. That loyal affection with which he clung through his whole life to the friends of his early youth; that genuine kindness which made him, when still a poor man, the munificent patron of Barry and Crabbe, and which showed itself in innumerable acts of unobtrusive benevolence; that stainless purity and retiring modesty of nature which made his domestic life so different from that of some of the greatest of his contemporaries; that depth of feeling which made the loss of his only son the death-knell of the whole happiness of his life, may be traced in every stage of his public career. “I know the map of England,” he once said, “as well as the noble lord, or as any other person, and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment.” Fidelity to his engagements, a disinterested pursuit of what he believed to be right, in spite of all the allurements of interest and of popularity; a deep and ardent hatred of oppression and cruelty in every form; a readiness at all times to sacrifice personal pretensions to party interests; a capacity of devoting long years of thankless labor to the service of those whom he had never seen, and who could never reward him, were the great characteristics of his life, and they may well make us pardon many faults of temper, judgment, and taste.

In Parliament he had great obstacles to contend with. An Irishman unconnected with any of the great governing families, and without any of the influence derived from property and rank, he entered Parliament late in life and with habits fully formed, and during the greater part of his career he spoke as a member of a small minority in opposition to the strong feeling of the House. He was too old and too rigid to catch its tone, and he never acquired that subtle instinct or tact which enables some speakers to follow its fleeting moods and to strike with unfailing accuracy the precise key which is most in harmony with its prevailing temper. “Of all politicians of talent I ever knew,” wrote Horace Walpole, “Burke has least political art,” and his defects so increased with age that the time came when he was often listened to with undisguised impatience. He spoke too often, too vehemently, and much too long; and his eloquence, though in the highest degree intellectual, powerful, various, and original, was not well adapted to a popular audience.

He had little or nothing of that fire and majesty of declamation with which Chatham thrilled his hearers, and often almost overawed opposition, and as a parliamentary debater he was far inferior to Charles Fox. That great master of persuasive reasoning never failed to make every sentence tell upon his hearers, to employ precisely and invariably the kind of arguments that were most level with their understandings, to subordinate every other consideration to the single end of convincing and impressing those who were before him. Burke was not inferior to Fox in readiness and in the power of clear and cogent reasoning. His wit, though not of the highest order, was only equaled by that of Townshend, Sheridan, and perhaps North, and it rarely failed in its effect upon the House. He far surpassed every other speaker in the copiousness and correctness of his diction, in the range of knowledge he brought to bear on every subject of debate, in the richness and variety of his imagination, in the gorgeous beauty of his descriptive passages, in the depth of the philosophical reflections and the felicity of the personal sketches which he delighted in scattering over his speeches. But these gifts were frequently marred by a strange want of judgment, measure, and self-control.

His speeches were full of episodes and digressions, of excessive ornamentation and illustration, of dissertations on general principles of politics, which were invaluable in themselves, but very unpalatable to a tired or excited house waiting eagerly for a division. As Grattan once said, “they were far better suited to a patient reader than an impatient hearer.” Passionately in earnest in the midst of a careless or half-hearted assembly, seeking in all measures their essential and permanent tendencies, while his hearers thought chiefly of their transient and personal aspects, discussing first principles and remote consequences, among men whose minds were concentrated on the struggle of the hour, constantly led away by the endless stream of ideas and images which were forever surging from his brain, he was often interrupted by his impatient hearers. There is scarcely a perceptible difference between the style of his essays and the style of his published speeches; and if the reader selects from his works the few passages which possess to an eminent degree the flash and movement of spoken rhetoric, he will be quite as likely to find them in the former as in the latter.

Like most men of great imaginative power, he possessed a highly strung and oversensitive nervous organization, and the incessant conflicts of parliamentary life brought it at last into a condition of irritability that was wholly morbid and abnormal. Though eminently courteous and amenable to reason in private life, in public he was often petulant, intractable, and ungovernably violent. His friends sometimes held him down by the skirts of his coat to restrain the outbursts of his anger. He spoke with a burning brain and with quivering nerves. The rapid, vehement, impetuous torrent of his eloquence, kindling as it flowed and the nervous motions of his countenance reflected the ungovernable excitement under which he labored; and while Fox could cast off without an effort the cares of public life and pass at once from Parliament to a night of dissipation at Brooks’s, Burke returned from debate jaded, irritated, and soured.

With an intellect capable of the very highest efforts of judicial wisdom he combined the passions of the most violent partisan, and in the excitement of debate these too often obtained the ascendency. Few things are more curious than the contrast between the feverish and passionate excitement with which he threw himself into party debates and the admirably calm, exhaustive, and impartial summaries of the rival arguments which he afterward drew up for the “Annual Register.” Though a most skillful and penetrating critic, and though his English style is one of the very finest in the language, his taste was not pure. Even his best writings are sometimes disfigured by strangely coarse and repulsive images, and gross violations of taste appear to have been frequent in his speeches. It is probable that in his case the hasty reports in the “Parliamentary History” and in the “Cavendish Debates” are more than commonly defective, for Burke was a very rapid speaker, and his language had the strongly marked individuality which reporters rarely succeed in conveying; but no one who judged by these reports would place his speeches in the first rank, and some of them are wild and tawdry almost to insanity.

Nor does he appear to have possessed any histrionic power. His voice had little charm. He had a strong Irish accent, and Erskine described his delivery as “execrable,” and declared that in some of his finest speeches he emptied the house.

Gerard Hamilton once said that while everywhere else Burke seemed the first man, in the House of Commons he appeared only the second. At the same time there is ample evidence that with all his defects he was from the first a great power in the House, and that in the early part of his career, and almost always on occasions of great importance, his eloquence had a wonderful power upon his hearers. Pitt passed into the House of Lords almost immediately after Burke had entered the Commons. Fox was then a boy; Sheridan had not yet become a member; and his fellow-countryman, Barré, though a rhetorician of great if somewhat coarse power, was completely eclipsed by the splendor and the variety of the talents of Burke. Charles Townshend alone, who shone for a few years with a meteoric brilliancy in English politics, was regarded as his worthy rival. Johnson wrote to Langton with great delight that Burke by his first speeches in the House had “gained more reputation than perhaps any man at his first appearance ever gained before.”

“An Irishman, Mr. Burke, is sprung up,” wrote the American General Lee, who was then watching London politics with great care, “who has astonished everybody with the power of his eloquence and his comprehensive knowledge in all our exterior and internal politics and commercial interests. He wants nothing but that sort of dignity annexed to rank and property in England to make him the most considerable man in the Lower House.” Grattan, who on a question of oratory was one of the most competent of judges, wrote in 1769, “Burke is unquestionably the first orator among the Commons of England, boundless in knowledge, instantaneous in his apprehensions, and abundant in his language. He speaks with profound attention and acknowledged superiority, notwithstanding the want of energy, the want of grace, and the want of elegance in his manner.” Horace Walpole, who hated Burke, acknowledged that he was “versed in every branch of eloquence,” that he possessed “the quickest conception, amazing facility of elocution, great strength of argumentation, all the power of imagination, and memory,” that even his unpremeditated speeches displayed “a choice and variety of language, a profusion of metaphors, and a correctness of diction that was surprising,” and that in public, though not in private life his wit was of the highest order, “luminous, striking, and abundant.” He complained, however, with good reason that he “often lost himself in a torrent of images and copiousness,” that “he dealt abundantly too much in establishing general positions,” that he had “no address or insinuation”; that his speeches often showed a great want of sobriety and judgment, and “the still greater want of art to touch the passions.”

But though their length, their excursiveness, and their didactic character did undoubtedly on many occasions weary and even empty the House, there were others in which Burke showed a power both of fascinating and of moving, such as very few speakers have attained. Gibbon, whose sinecure place was swept away by the Economical Reform Bill of 1782, bears testimony to the “delight with which that diffusive and ingenious orator, Mr. Burke, was heard by all sides of the House, and even by those whose existence he proscribed.” Walpole has himself repeatedly noticed the effect which the speeches of Burke produced upon the hearers. Describing one of those against the American war, he says that the wit of one part “excited the warmest and most continued bursts of laughter even from Lord North, Rigby, and the ministers themselves,” while the pathos of another part “drew iron tears down Barré’s cheek,” and Governor Johnston exclaimed that “he was now glad that strangers were excluded, as if they had been admitted Burke’s speech would have excited them to tear ministers to pieces as they went out of the House.” Sir Gilbert Elliot, describing one of Burke’s speeches on the Warren Hastings impeachment, says: “He did not, I believe, leave a dry eye in the whole assembly.” Making every allowance for the enthusiasm of a French Royalist for the author of the “Reflections on the French Revolution,” the graphic description by the Duke de Levis of one of Burke’s latest speeches on that subject is sufficient to show the magnetism of his eloquence even at the end of his career. “He made the whole House pass in an instant from the tenderest emotions of feeling to bursts of laughter; never was the electric power of eloquence more imperiously felt. This extraordinary man seemed to raise and quell the passions of his auditors with as much ease and as rapidly as a skillful musician passes into the various modulations of his harpsichord. I have witnessed many, too many political assemblages and striking scenes where eloquence performed a noble part, but the whole of them appear insipid when compared with this amazing effort.”

Perhaps the most difficult question, however, was the appointment of a commander-in-chief; and on no other subject did the Congress exhibit more conspicuous wisdom. When only twenty-three, Washington had been appointed commander of the Virginian forces against the French; and in the late war, though he had met with one serious disaster, and had no opportunity of obtaining any very brilliant military reputation, he had always shown himself an eminently brave and skillful soldier. His great modesty and taciturnity kept him in the background, both in the provincial legislature and in the Continental Congress; but though his voice was scarcely ever heard in debate, his superiority was soon felt in the practical work of the committees. “If you speak of solid information or sound judgment,” said Patrick Henry about this time, “Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man in the Congress.” He appeared in the assembly in uniform, and in military matters his voice had an almost decisive weight. Several circumstances distinguished him from other officers, who in military service might have been his rivals.

He was of an old American family. He was a planter of wealth and social position, and being a Virginian, his appointment was a great step toward enlisting that important colony cordially in the cause. The capital question now pending in America was, how far the other colonies would support New England in the struggle. In the preceding March, Patrick Henry had carried a resolution for embodying and reorganizing the Virginia militia, and had openly proclaimed that an appeal to arms was inevitable; but as yet New England had borne almost the whole burden.

The army at Cambridge was a New England army, and General Ward, who commanded it, had been appointed by Massachusetts. Even if Ward were superseded, there were many New England competitors for the post of commander; the army naturally desired a chief of their own province, and there were divisions and hostilities among the New England deputies. The great personal merit of Washington and the great political importance of securing Virginia, determined the issue; and the New England deputies ultimately took a leading part in the appointment. The second place was given to General Ward, and the third to Charles Lee, an English soldier of fortune who had lately purchased land in Virginia and embraced the American cause with great passion. Lee had probably a wider military experience than any other officer in America, but he was a man of no settled principles, and his great talents were marred by a very irritable and capricious temper.

To the appointment of Washington, far more than to any other single circumstance, is due the ultimate success of the American Revolution, though in purely intellectual powers Washington was certainly inferior to Franklin, and perhaps to two or three others of his colleagues. There is a theory which once received the countenance of some considerable physiologists, though it is now, I believe, completely discarded, that one of the great lines of division among men may be traced to the comparative development of the cerebrum and the cerebellum. To the first organ it was supposed belong those special gifts or powers which make men poets, orators, thinkers, artists, conquerors, or wits. To the second belong the superintending, restraining, discerning, and directing faculties which enable men to employ their several talents with sanity and wisdom, which maintain the balance and the proportion of intellect and character, and make sound judgments and well-regulated lives. The theory, however untrue in its physiological aspect, corresponds to a real distinction in human minds and characters, and it was especially in the second order of faculties that Washington excelled. His mind was not quick or remarkably original. His conversation had no brilliancy or wit. He was entirely without the gift of eloquence, and he had very few accomplishments. He knew no language but his own, and except for a rather strong turn for mathematics, he had no taste which can be called purely intellectual. There was nothing in him of the meteor or the cataract, nothing that either dazzled or overpowered. A courteous and hospitable country gentleman, a skillful farmer, a very keen sportsman, he probably differed little in tastes and habits from the better members of the class to which he belonged; and it was in a great degree in the administration of a large estate and in assiduous attention to county and provincial business that he acquired his rare skill in reading and managing men.

As a soldier the circumstances of his career brought him into the blaze not only of domestic, but of foreign criticism, and it was only very gradually that his superiority was fully recognized. Lee, who of all American soldiers had seen most service in the English army, and Conway, who had risen to great repute in the French army, were both accustomed to speak of his military talents with extreme disparagement; but personal jealousy and animosity undoubtedly colored their judgments. Kalb, who had been trained in the best military schools of the Continent, at first pronounced him to be very deficient in the strength, decision, and promptitude of a general; and, although he soon learned to form the highest estimate of his military capacity, he continued to lament that an excessive modesty led him too frequently to act upon the opinion of inferior men, rather than upon his own most excellent judgment. In the army and the Congress more than one rival was opposed to him. He had his full share of disaster; the operations which he conducted, if compared with great European wars, were on a very small scale; and he had the immense advantage of encountering in most cases generals of singular incapacity.

It may, however, be truly said of him that his military reputation steadily rose through many successive campaigns, and before the end of the struggle he had outlived all rivalry, and almost all envy. He had a thorough knowledge of the technical part of his profession, a good eye for military combinations, and an extraordinary gift of military administration. Punctual, methodical, and exact in the highest degree, he excelled in managing those minute details which are so essential to the efficiency of an army, and he possessed to an eminent degree not only the common courage of a soldier, but also that much rarer form of courage which can endure long-continued suspense, bear the weight of great responsibility, and encounter the risks of misrepresentation and unpopularity. For several years, and usually in the neighborhood of superior forces, he commanded a perpetually fluctuating army, almost wholly destitute of discipline and respect for authority, torn by the most violent personal and provincial jealousies, wretchedly armed, wretchedly clothed, and sometimes in imminent danger of starvation. Unsupported for the most part by the population among whom he was quartered, and incessantly thwarted by the jealousy of Congress, he kept his army together by a combination of skill, firmness, patience, and judgment which has rarely been surpassed, and he led it at last to a signal triumph.

In civil as in military life, he was pre-eminent among his contemporaries for the clearness and soundness of his judgment, for his perfect moderation and self-control, for the quiet dignity and the indomitable firmness with which he pursued every path which he had deliberately chosen. Of all the great men in history he was the most invariably judicious, and there is scarcely a rash word or action or judgment recorded of him. Those who knew him well, noticed that he had keen sensibilities and strong passions; but his power of self-command never failed him, and no act of his public life can be traced to personal caprice, ambition, or resentment. In the despondency of long-continued failure, in the elation of sudden success, at times when his soldiers were deserting by hundreds and when malignant plots were formed against his reputation, amid the constant quarrels, rivalries, and jealousies of his subordinates, in the dark hour of national ingratitude, and in the midst of the most universal and intoxicating flattery, he was always the same calm, wise, just, and single-minded man, pursuing the course which he believed to be right, without fear or favor or fanaticism; equally free from the passions that spring from interest and from the passions that spring from imagination. He never acted on the impulse of an absorbing or uncalculating enthusiasm, and he valued very highly fortune, position, and reputation; but at the command of duty he was ready to risk and sacrifice them all.

He was in the highest sense of the words a gentleman and a man of honor, and he carried into public life the severest standard of private morals. It was at first the constant dread of large sections of the American people that if the old government were overthrown, they would fall into the hands of military adventurers, and undergo the yoke of military despotism. It was mainly the transparent integrity of the character of Washington that dispelled the fear. It was always known by his friends, and it was soon acknowledged by the whole nation and by the English themselves, that in Washington America had found a leader who could be induced by no earthly motive to tell a falsehood, or to break an engagement, or to commit any dishonorable act. Men of this moral type are happily not rare, and we have all met them in our experience; but there is scarcely another instance in history of such a man having reached and maintained the highest position in the convulsions of civil war and of a great popular agitation.

It is one of the great advantages of the long practice of free institutions, that it diffuses through the community a knowledge of character and a soundness of judgment which save it from the enormous mistakes that are almost always made by enslaved nations when suddenly called upon to choose their rulers. No fact shows so eminently the high intelligence of the men who managed the American Revolution as their selection of a leader whose qualities were so much more solid than brilliant, and who was so entirely free from all the characteristics of a demagogue. It was only slowly and very deliberately that Washington identified himself with the revolutionary cause.

No man had a deeper admiration for the British constitution, or a more sincere wish to preserve the connection and to put an end to the disputes between the two countries. In Virginia the revolutionary movement was preceded and prepared by a democratic movement of the yeomanry of the province, led by Patrick Henry, against the planter aristocracy, and Washington was a conspicuous member of the latter. In tastes, manners, instincts, and sympathies he might have been taken as an admirable specimen of the better type of English country gentleman, and he had a great deal of the strong conservative feeling which is natural to the class. From the first promulgation of the Stamp Act, however, he adopted a conviction that a recognition of the sole right of the colonies to tax themselves was essential to their freedom, and as soon as it became evident that Parliament was resolved at all hazards to assert and exercise its authority of taxing America, he no longer hesitated. An interesting letter to his wife, however, shows clearly that he accepted the proffered command of the American forces with extreme diffidence and reluctance, and solely because he believed that it was impossible for him honorably to refuse it. He declined to accept from Congress any emoluments for his service beyond the simple payment of his expenses, of which he was accustomed to draw up most exact and methodical accounts.

Which of these six hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their king? For a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have; be their work what it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it; that man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be? With the hure, as himself calls it, or black boar’s-head, fit to be “shaken” as a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewed, seamed, carbuncled face, there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy—and burning fire of genius; like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honoré Riquetti Mirabeau, the world-compeller; man-ruling deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de Staël, he steps proudly along, though looked at askance here; and shakes his black chevelure, or lion’s-mane, as if prophetic of great deeds.

Yes, reader, that is the type-Frenchman of this epoch; as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man—and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National Assembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say with the old despot: “The National Assembly? I am that.”

Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood; for the Riquettis, or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long centuries ago, and settled in Provence, where from generation to generation they have ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred; irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes verged toward madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfillment of a mad vow, chains two mountains together; and the chain, with its “iron star of five rays,” is still to be seen. May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and set it drifting—which also shall be seen?

Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his grandfather, stout Col-d’Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell day, lie sunk together on the bridge at Casano; while Prince Eugene’s cavalry galloped and regalloped over him—only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head; and Vendôme, dropping his spy-glass, moaned out, “Mirabeau is dead, then!” Nevertheless he was not dead: he awoke to breath, and miraculous surgery—for Gabriel was yet to be. With his silver-stock he kept his scarred head erect, through long years; and wedded; and produced tough Marquis Victor, the Friend of Men. Whereby at last in the appointed year, 1749, this long-expected rough-hewed Gabriel Honoré did likewise see the light; roughest lion’s whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old lion (for our old marquis too was lion-like, most unconquerable, kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on his offspring; and determined to train him as no lion had yet been! It is in vain, oh Marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw in dogcart of political economy, and be a Friend of Men; he will not be thou, but must and will be himself, another than thou. Divorce lawsuits, “whole family save one in prison, and three-score Lettres-de-Cachet” for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world.

Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of Rhé and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the castle of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the fortress of Joux, and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the dungeon of Vincennes—all by Lettre-de-Cachet from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded before Aix parliaments (to get back his wife); the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could not hear; “the clatter-teeth (claque-dents)!” snarls singular old Mirabeau, discerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, of the drum species.

But as for Gabriel Honoré, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants to prime-ministers, to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of men he has gained; for, at bottom, it is a social, loving heart, that wild, unconquerable one—more especially all manner of women. From the archer’s daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier, whom he could not but “steal,” and be beheaded for—in effigy! For, indeed, hardly since the Arabian prophet lay dead to Ali’s admiration was there seen such a love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. In war, again, he has helped to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons. In literature, he has written on “Despotism,” on “Lettres-de-Cachet”; Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities; books on the “Prussian Monarchy,” on “Cagliostro,” on “Calonne,” on “The Water-Companies of Paris”—each book comparable, we will say, to a bituminous alarm-fire; huge, smoky, sudden! The fire-pan, the kindling, the bitumen were his own; but the lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him), was gathered from hucksters and ass-panniers of every description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is mine!

Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man himself he can make his. “All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de réverbère)!” snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of qualities for him. In that forty years’ “struggle against despotism” he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union; this man can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in the life of other men; can make men love him, work with him; a born king of men!

But consider further how, as the old marquis still snarls, he has “made away with (humé, swallowed, snuffed-up) all formulas”—a fact, which, if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A man, nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object, and see through it and conquer it; for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles, but with an eye! Unhappily without decalogue, moral code, or theorem of any fixed sort, yet not without a strong living soul in him, and sincerity there; a reality, not an artificiality, not a sham! And so he, having struggled “forty years against despotism,” and “made away with all formulas,” shall now become the spokesman of a nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism; to make away with her old formulas—having found them naught, worn out, far from the reality? She will make away with such formulas—and even go bare, if need be, till she have found new ones.

Toward such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke. And now it has got air; it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere, too, and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that smoldering, with foul fire-damp and vapor enough; then victory over that—and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and for twenty-three resplendent months pours out in flame and molten fire-torrents all that is in him, the Pharos and wonder-sign of an amazed Europe—and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honoré, the greatest of them all; in the whole national deputies, in the whole nation, there is none like and none second to thee.

Charles James Fox was the third son of the first Lord Holland, the old rival of Pitt. He had entered Parliament irregularly and illegally in November, 1768, when he had not yet completed his twentieth year, and in February, 1770, he had been made a lord of the admiralty in the Government of Lord North. The last political connection of Lord Holland had been with Bute, and his son appears to have accepted the heritage of his Tory principles without inquiry or reluctance. His early life was in the highest degree discreditable, and gave very little promise of greatness. His vehement and passionate temperament threw him speedily into the wildest dissipation, and the almost insane indulgence of his father gratified his every whim. When he was only fourteen Lord Holland had brought him to the gambling-table at Spa, and, at a time when he had hardly reached manhood, he was one of the most desperate gamblers of his day. Lord Holland died in 1774, but before his death he is said to have paid no less than one hundred and forty thousand pounds in extricating his son from gambling debts. The death of his mother and the death of his elder brother in the same year brought him a considerable fortune, including an estate in the Isle of Thanet and the sinecure office of clerk of the pells in Ireland, which was worth two thousand three hundred pounds a year; but in a short time he was obliged to sell or mortgage everything he possessed. He himself nicknamed his antechamber the Jerusalem Chamber from the multitude of Jews who haunted it. Lord Carlisle was at one time security for him to the extent of fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds. During one of the most critical debates in 1781 his house was in the occupation of the sheriffs. He was even debtor for small sums to chairmen and to waiters at Brooks’s; and although in the latter part of his life he was partly relieved by a large subscription raised by his friends, he never appears to have wholly emerged from the money difficulties in which his gambling tastes had involved him. Nor was this his only vice.

With some men the passion for gambling is an irresistible moral monomania, the single morbid taint in a nature otherwise faultless and pure. With Fox it was but one of many forms of an insatiable appetite for vicious excitement, which continued with little abatement during many years of his public career. In 1777, during a long visit to Paris, he lived much in the society of Madame du Deffand, and that very acute judge of character formed an opinion of him which was, on the whole, very unfavorable. He has much talent, she said, much goodness of heart and natural truthfulness, but he is absolutely without principle, he has a contempt for every one who has principle, he lives in a perpetual intoxication of excitement, he never gives a thought to the morrow, he is a man eminently fitted to corrupt youth. In 1779, when he was already one of the foremost politicians in England, he was one night drinking at Almack’s with Lord Derby, Major Stanley, and a few other young men of rank, when they determined at three in the morning to make a tour through the streets, and amused themselves by instigating a mob to break the windows of the chief members of the Government.

His profligacy with women during a great part of his life was notorious, though he appears at last to have confined himself to his connection with Mrs. Armistead, whom he secretly married in September, 1795. He was the soul of a group of brilliant and profligate spendthrifts, who did much to dazzle and corrupt the fashionable youth of the time; and in judging the intense animosity with which George III always regarded him, it must not be forgotten that his example and his friendship had probably a considerable influence in encouraging the Prince of Wales in those vicious habits and in that undutiful course of conduct which produced so much misery in the palace and so much evil in the nation. One of the friends of Charles Fox summed up his whole career in a few significant sentences. “He had three passions—women, play, and politics. Yet he never formed a creditable connection with a woman. He squandered all his means at the gaming-table, and, except for eleven months, he was invariably in opposition.”

That a man of whom all this can be truly said should have taken a high and honorable place in English history, and should have won for himself the perennial love and loyalty of some of the best Englishmen of his time, is not a little surprising, for a life such as I have described would with most men have destroyed every fiber of intellectual energy and of moral worth. But in truth there are some characters which nature has so happily compounded that even vice is unable wholly to degrade them, and there is a charm of manner and of temper which sometimes accompanies the excesses of a strong animal nature that wins more popularity in the world than the purest and the most self-denying virtue. Of this truth Fox was an eminent example. With a herculean frame, with iron nerves, with that happy vividness and buoyancy of temperament that can ever throw itself passionately into the pursuits and the impressions of the hour, and can then cast them aside without an effort, he combined one of the sweetest of human tempers, one of the warmest of human hearts.

Nothing in his career is more remarkable than the spell which he cast over men who in character and principles were as unlike as possible to himself. “He is a man,” said Burke, “made to be loved, of the most artless, candid, open, and benevolent disposition; disinterested in the extreme, of a temper mild and placable to a fault, without one drop of gall in his whole constitution.” “The power of a superior man,” said Gibbon, “was blended in his attractive character with the softness and simplicity of a child. Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood.” “He possessed,” said Erskine, “above all men I ever knew, the most gentle, and yet the most ardent spirit.” He retained amid all his vices a capacity for warm and steady friendship, a capacity for struggling passionately and persistently in opposition, for an unpopular cause; a purity of taste and a love of literature which made him, with the exception of Burke, the foremost scholar among the leading members of the House of Commons; an earnestness, disinterestedness, and simplicity of character which was admitted and admired even by his political opponents.

He resembled Bolingbroke in his power of passing at once from scenes of dissipation into the House of Commons, and in retaining in public affairs during the most disorderly periods of his private life all his soundness of judgment and all his force of eloquence and of decision. Gibbon described how he “prepared himself” for one important debate by spending twenty-two previous hours at the hazard table and losing eleven thousand pounds. Walpole extols the extraordinary brilliancy of the speech which he made on another occasion, when he had but just arrived from Newmarket and had been sitting up drinking the whole of the preceding night, and he states that in the early period of his brilliant opposition to the American policy of North he was rarely in bed before five in the morning, or out of it before two in the afternoon. Yet, like Bolingbroke, he never lost the taste and passion for study even at the time when he was most immersed in a life of pleasure.

At Eton and Oxford he had been a very earnest student, and few of his contemporaries can have had a wider knowledge of the imaginative literatures of Greece, Italy, or France. He was passionately fond of poetry, and a singularly delicate and discriminating critic; but he always looked upon literature chiefly from its ornamental and imaginative side. Incomparably the most important book relating to the art of government which appeared during his lifetime was the “Wealth of Nations,” but Fox once owned that he had never read it; and the history which was his one serious composition added nothing to his reputation. In books, however, he found an unfailing solace in trouble and disappointment. One morning, when one of his friends having heard that Fox on the previous night had been completely ruined at the gaming-table, went to visit and console him, he found him tranquilly reading Herodotus in the original. “What,” he said, “would you have a man do who has lost his last shilling?”

His merits as a politician can only he allowed with great deductions and qualifications. But little stress should indeed be laid on the sudden and violent change in his political principles, which was faintly foreshadowed in 1772 and fully accomplished in 1774, though that change did undoubtedly synchronize with his personal quarrel with Lord North. Changes of principle and policy, which at forty or fifty would indicate great instability of character, are very venial at twenty-four or twenty-five, and from the time when Fox joined the Whig party his career through long years of adversity and of trial was singularly consistent. I can not, however, regard a politician either as a great statesman or a great party leader who left so very little of permanent value behind him, who offended so frequently and so bitterly the national feelings of his countrymen, who on two memorable occasions reduced his party to the lowest stage of depression, and who failed so signally during a long public life in winning the confidence of the nation.

His failure is the more remarkable as one of the features most conspicuous both in his speeches and his letters is the general soundness of his judgment, and his opinions during the greater part of his life were singularly free from every kind of violence, exaggeration, and eccentricity. Much of it was due to his private life, much to his divergence from popular opinion on the American question and on the question of the French Revolution, and much also to an extraordinary deficiency in the art of party management, and to the frequent employment of language which, though eminently adapted to the immediate purposes of debate, was certain from its injudicious energy to be afterward quoted against him. Like more than one great master of words, he was trammeled and injured at every stage of his career by his own speeches. The extreme shock which the disastrous coalition of 1784 gave to the public opinion of England was largely, if not mainly, due to the outrageous violence of the language with which Fox had in the preceding years denounced Lord North, and a similar violence made his breach with the court irrevocable, and greatly aggravated his difference with the nation on the question of the French Revolution.

But if his rank as a statesman and as a party leader is by no means of the highest order, he stood, by the concurrent testimony of all his contemporaries, in the very first line, if not in the very first place, among English parliamentary debaters. He threw the whole energy of his character into his career, and he practiced it continually till he attained a dexterity in debate which to his contemporaries appeared little less than miraculous. “During five whole sessions,” he once said, “I spoke every night but one, and I regret only that I did not speak on that night.” With a delivery that in the beginning of his speeches was somewhat slow and hesitating, with little method, with great repetition, with no grace of gesture, with an utter indifference to the mere oratory of display, thinking of nothing but how to convince and persuade the audience who were immediately before him, never for a moment forgetting the vital issue, never employing an argument which was not completely level with the apprehensions of his audience, he possessed to the very highest degree the debating qualities which an educated political assembly of Englishmen most highly value.

The masculine vigor and strong common sense of his arguments, his unfailing lucidity, his power of grasping in a moment the essential issue of a debate, his skill in hitting blots and throwing the arguments on his own side into the most vivid and various lights, his marvelous memory in catching up the scattered threads of a debate, the rare combination in his speeches of the most glowing vehemence of style with the closest and most transparent reasoning, and the air of intense conviction which he threw into every discussion, had never been surpassed. He was one of the fairest of debaters, and it was said that the arguments of his opponents were very rarely stated with such masterly power as by Fox himself before he proceeded to grapple with, and to overthrow them.

He possessed to the highest degree what Walpole called the power of “declaiming argument,” and that combination of rapidity and soundness of judgment which is the first quality of a debater. “Others,” said Sir George Savile, “may have had more stock, but Fox had more ready money about him than any of his party.” “I believe,” said Lord Carlisle, “there never was a person yet created who had the faculty of reasoning like him.” “Nature,” said Horace Walpole, “had made him the most wonderful reasoner of the age.” “He possessed beyond all moderns,” wrote Mackintosh, “that union of reason, simplicity, and vehemence which formed the prince of orators.” “Had he been bred to the bar,” wrote Philip Francis, “he would in my judgment have made himself in a shorter time, and with much less application than any other man, the most powerful litigant that ever appeared there.” “He rose by slow degrees,” said Burke, “to be the most brilliant and accomplished debater the world ever saw.” His finest speeches were wholly unpremeditated, and the complete subordination in them of all rhetorical and philosophical ambition to the immediate purpose of the debate has greatly impaired their permanent value; but, even in the imperfect fragments that remain, the essential qualities of his eloquence may be plainly seen.

Three men among the Jacobins—Marat, Danton, and Robespierre—merited distinction and possessed authority. Owing to a malformation, or distortion, of head and heart, they fulfilled the requisite conditions. Of the three, Marat is the most monstrous; he borders on the lunatic, of which he displays the chief characteristics—furious exaltation, constant overexcitement, feverish restlessness, an inexhaustible propensity for scribbling, that mental automatism and tetanus of the will under the constraint and rule of a fixed idea, and, in addition to this, the usual physical symptoms, such as sleeplessness, a livid tint, bad blood, foulness of dress and person, with, during the last five months of his life, irritations and eruptions over his whole body. Issuing from incongruous races, born of a mixed blood, and tainted with serious moral commotions, he harbors within him a singular germ; physically he is an abortion, morally a pretender, and one who covets all places of distinction.

His father, who was a physician, intended from his early childhood that he should be a savant; his mother, an idealist, meant that he should be a philanthropist, while he himself always steered his course toward both summits. “At five years of age,” he says, “it would have pleased me to be a schoolmaster, at fifteen a professor, at eighteen an author, and a creative genius at twenty,” and afterward, up to the last, an apostle and martyr to humanity. “From my earliest infancy I had an intense love of fame, which changed its object at various stages of my life, but which never left me for a moment.” He rambled over Europe or vegetated in Paris for thirty years, living a nomadic life in subordinate positions; hissed as an author, distrusted as a man of science, and ignored as a philosopher; a third rate political writer, aspiring to every sort of celebrity and to every honor, constantly presenting himself as a candidate and as constantly rejected—too great a disproportion between his faculties and ambition.

Talentless, possessing no critical acumen, and of mediocre intelligence, he was fitted only to teach some branch of the sciences, or to practice some one of the arts, either as professor or doctor, more or less bold and lucky, or to follow, with occasional slips on one side or the other, some path clearly marked out for him. Never did man with such diversified culture possess such an incurably perverted intellect. Never did man, after so many abortive speculations and such repeated malpractices, conceive and maintain so high an opinion of himself. Each of these two sources in him augments the other; through his faculty of not seeing things as they are, he attributes to himself virtue and genius; satisfied that he possesses genius and virtue, he regards his misdeeds as merits and his crotchets as truths.

Thenceforth, and spontaneously, his malady runs its own course and becomes complex; next to the ambitious delirium comes the mania for persecution. In effect, the evident or demonstrated truths which he supplies should strike the public at once; if they burn slowly or miss fire, it is owing to their being stamped out by enemies or the envious; manifestly, they have conspired against him, and against him plots have never ceased. First came the philosophers’ plot; when his treatise on “Man” reached Paris from Amsterdam, “they felt the blow I struck at their principles and had the book stopped at the custom-house.” Next came the plot of the doctors, who “ruefully estimated my enormous gains. Were it necessary, I could prove that they often met together to consider the best way to destroy my reputation.” Finally, came the plot of the academicians; “the disgraceful persecution I had to undergo from the Academy of Sciences for two years, after being satisfied that my discoveries on light upset all that it had done for a century, and that I was quite indifferent about becoming a member of its body.... Would it be believed that these scientific charlatans succeeded in underrating my discoveries throughout Europe, in exciting every society of savants against me, and in closing against me all the newspapers!” Naturally, the would-be-persecuted man defends himself—that is to say, he attacks. Naturally, as he is the aggressor, he is repulsed and put down, and, after creating imaginary enemies, he creates real ones, especially in politics, where, on principle, he daily preaches insurrection and murder.

Naturally, in fine, he is prosecuted, convicted at the Chatelet Court, tracked by the police, obliged to fly and wander from one hiding-place to another; to live like a bat “in a cellar, underground, in a dark dungeon”; once, says his friend Panis, he passed “six weeks on one of his buttocks,” like a madman in his cell, face to face with his reveries. It is not surprising that, with such a system, the reverie should become more intense, more and more gloomy, and at last settle down into a confirmed nightmare; that, in his distorted brain, objects should appear distorted; that, even in full daylight, men and things should seem awry, as in a magnifying, dislocating mirror; that frequently, on the numbers (of his journal) appearing too blood-thirsty, and his chronic disease too acute, his physician should bleed him to arrest these attacks and prevent their return. When a madman sees everywhere around him—on the floors, on the walls, on the ceiling—toads, scorpions, spiders, swarms of crawling, loathsome vermin, he thinks only of crushing them, and the disease enters on its last stage; after the ambitious delirium, the mania for persecution, and the settled nightmare, comes the homicidal mania. At the outset a few lives would have sufficed: “Five hundred heads ought to have fallen when the Bastile was taken, and all would then have gone on well.” But, through lack of foresight and timidity, the evil was allowed to spread, and the more it spread the larger the amputation should have been. With the sure, keen eye of the surgeon, Marat gives its dimensions; he has made his calculation beforehand. In September, 1792, in the Council at the Commune, he estimates approximatively forty thousand as the number of heads that should be laid low. Six weeks later, the social abscess having enormously increased, the figures swell in proportion; he now demands two hundred and seventy thousand heads, always on the score of humanity, “to insure public tranquillity,” on condition that the operation be intrusted to him, as the summary, temporary justiciary. Save this last point the rest is granted to him; it is unfortunate that he could not see with his own eyes the complete fulfillment of his programme, the batches condemned by the revolutionary tribunal, the massacres of Lyons and Toulon, the drownings of Nantes. From first to last he was in the right line of the revolution; lucid on account of his blindness, thanks to his crazy logic, thanks to the concordance of his personal malady with the public malady, to the precocity of his complete madness alongside of the incomplete or tardy madness of the rest, he alone steadfast, remorseless, triumphant, perched aloft, at the first bound, on the sharp pinnacle, which his rivals dared not climb, or only stumbled up.

Never was character more opposite to that of the Russian autocrat than that of his great coadjutor in the pacification and settlement of Europe, Prince Talleyrand. This most remarkable man was born at Paris in 1754, so that in 1814 he was already sixty years of age. He was descended of an old family, and had for his maternal aunt the celebrated Princess of Ursius, who played so important a part in the war of the succession at the court of Philippe V.[29] Being destined for the Church, he early entered the seminary of St. Sulpice, and even there was remarkable for the delicate vein of sarcasm, nice discrimination, and keen penetration, for which he afterward became so distinguished in life. At the age of twenty-six he was appointed agent-general for the clergy, and in that capacity his administrative talents were so remarkable that they procured for him the situation of Bishop of Autun, which he held in 1789, when the revolution broke out. So remarkable had his talents become at this period that Mirabeau, in his secret correspondence with Berlin, pointed him out as one of the most eminent men of the age.

He was elected representative of the clergy of his diocese for the Constitute Assembly, and was one of the first of that rank in the Church who voted on the 29th of May for the junction of the ecclesiastical body with the Tiers État. He also took the lead in all the measures, then so popular, which had for their object to spoliate the Church, and apply its possessions to the service of the state; accordingly, he himself proposed the suppression of tithes and the application of the property of the Church to the public treasury. In all these measures he was deaf to the remonstrances of the clergy whom he represented, and already he had severed all the cords which bound him to the Church.

His ruling principle was not any peculiar enmity to religion, but a fixed determination to adhere to the dominant party, whatever it was, whether in Church or state; to watch closely the signs of the times, and throw in his lot with that section of the community which appeared likely to gain the superiority. In February, 1790, he was appointed President of the Assembly, and from that time forward, down to its dissolution, he took a leading part in all its measures. He was not, however, an orator; knowledge of men and prophetic sagacity were his great qualifications. Generally silent in the hall of debate, he soon gained the lead in the council of deliberation or committee of management. He officiated as constitutional bishop to the great scandal of the more orthodox clergy in the great fête on the 14th of July, 1790, in the Champ de Mars; but he had already become fearful of the excesses of the popular party, and was, perhaps, the only person to whom Mirabeau on his deathbed communicated his secret views and designs for the restoration of the French monarchy.

Early in 1792 he set out on a secret mission to London, where he remained till the breaking out of the war in February, 1793, and enjoyed much of the confidence of Mr. Pitt. He naturally enough became an object of jealousy to both parties, being denounced by the Jacobins as an emissary of the court, and by the Royalists as an agent of the Jacobins; and, in consequence, he was accused and condemned in his absence, and only escaped by withdrawing to America, where he remained till 1795 engaged in commercial pursuits. It was not the least proof of his address and sagacity that he thus avoided equally the crimes and the dangers of the Reign of Terror, and returned to Paris at the close of that year with his head on his shoulders, and without deadly hostility to any party in his heart.

His influence and abilities soon caused themselves to be felt; the sentence of death, which had been recorded against him in his absence, was soon recalled; he became a leading member of the Club of Salm, which in 1797 was established to counterbalance the efforts of the Royalists in the Club of Clichy; and on the triumph of the revolutionists by the violence of Augereau in July, 1797, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. Nevertheless, aware of the imbecility of the directorial government, he entered warmly into the views of Napoleon, upon his return from Egypt, for its overthrow. He was again made Minister of Foreign Affairs by that youthful conqueror after the 18th Brumaire, and continued, with some few interruptions, to be the soul of all foreign negotiations and the chief director of foreign policy, down to the measures directed against Spain in 1807. On that occasion, however, his wonted sagacity did not desert him; he openly disapproved of the attack on the peninsula, and was, in consequence, dismissed from office, which he did not again hold till he was appointed chief of the provisional government on the 1st of April, 1814. He had thus the singular address, though a leading character under both régimes, to extricate himself both from the crimes of the revolution and the misfortunes of the Empire.

He was no ordinary man who could accomplish so great a prodigy and yet retain such influence as to step, as it were, by common consent into the principal direction of affairs on the overthrow of Napoleon. His power of doing so depended not merely on his great talents; they alone, if unaccompanied by other qualifications, would inevitably have brought him to the guillotine under the first government or the prisons of state under the last. It was his extraordinary versatility and flexibility of disposition, and the readiness with which he accommodated himself to every change of government and dynasty which he thought likely to be permanent, that mainly contributed to this extraordinary result. Such was his address that, though the most changeable character in the whole revolution, he contrived never to lose either influence or reputation by all his tergiversations; but, on the contrary, went on constantly rising to the close of his career, when above eighty years of age, in weight, fortune, and consideration.

The very fact of his having survived, both in person and influence, so many changes of government, which had proved fatal to almost all his contemporaries, of itself constituted a colossal reputation; and when he said, with a sarcastic smile, on taking the oath of fidelity to Louis Philippe in 1830, “C’est le treisiéme,” the expression, repeated from one end of Europe to the other, produced a greater admiration for his address than indignation at his perfidy.

He has been well described as the person in existence who had the least hand in producing, and the greatest power of profiting, by revolutions. He was not destitute of original thought, but wholly without the generous feeling, the self-forgetfulness, which prompt the great in character as well as talent to bring forth their conceptions in word or action, at whatever hazard to themselves or their fortunes. His object always was not to direct, but to observe and guide the current; he never opposed it when he saw it was irresistible, nor braved its dangers where it threatened to be perilous, but quietly withdrew until an opportunity occurred, by the destruction alike of its supporters and its opponents, to obtain its direction. In this respect his talents very closely resembled those of Metternich, of whom a character has already been drawn; but he was less consistent than the wary Austrian diplomatist, and, though equaled by him in dissimulation, he was far his superior in perfidy.

It cost him nothing to contradict and violate his oaths whenever it suited his interest to do so, and the extraordinary and almost unbroken success of his career affords, as well as that of Napoleon, the most striking confirmation of the profound saying of Johnson—that no man ever raised himself from private life to the supreme direction of affairs, in whom great abilities were not combined with certain meannesses, which would have proved altogether fatal to him in ordinary life.

Yet was he without any of the great vices of the revolution; his selfishness was constant, his cupidity unbounded, his hands often sullied by gold, but he was not cruel or unforgiving in his disposition, and few, if any, deeds of blood stain his memory. His witticisms and bon mots were admirable, and repeated from one end of Europe to the other; yet was his reputation in this respect, perhaps, greater than the reality, for, by common consent, every good saying at Paris during his life-time was ascribed to the ex-Bishop of Autun. But none perhaps more clearly reveals his character and explains his success in life than the celebrated one, “That the principal object of language is to conceal the thought.”

Between the demagogue and the highwayman the resemblance is close; both are leaders of bands, and each requires an opportunity to organize his band. Danton, to organize his band, required the revolution. “Of low birth, without a patron,” penniless, every office being filled, and “the Paris bar unattainable,” admitted a lawyer after “a struggle,” he for a long time strolled about the streets without a brief, or frequented the coffee-houses, the same as similar men nowadays frequent the beer-shops. At the Café de l’École, the proprietor, a good-natured old fellow “in a small round perruque, gray coat, and a napkin on his arm,” circulated among his tables smiling blandly, while his daughter sat in the rear as cashier. Danton chatted with her, and demanded her hand in marriage. To obtain her he had to mend his ways, purchase an attorneyship in the Court of the Royal Council, and find bondsmen and indorsers in his small native town.

Wedded and lodged in the gloomy Passage du Commerce, “more burdened with debts than with causes,” tied down to a sedentary profession which demands vigorous application, accuracy, a moderate tone, a respectable style, and blameless deportment; obliged to keep house on so small a scale that, without the help of a louis regularly advanced to him each week by his coffee-house father-in-law, he could not make both ends meet; his free-and-easy tastes, his alternately impetuous and indolent disposition, his love of enjoyment and of having his own way, his rude, violent instincts, his expansiveness, creativeness, and activity, all rebel; he is ill-calculated for the quiet routine of our civil careers; it is not the steady discipline of an old society that suits him, but the tumultuous brutality of a society going to pieces, or one in a state of formation. In temperament and character he is a barbarian, and a barbarian born to command his fellow-creatures, like this or that vassal of the sixth century or baron of the tenth century.

A colossus with the head of a “Tartar,” pitted with the small-pox, tragically and terribly ugly, with a mask convulsed like that of a growling “bull-dog,” with small, cavernous, restless eyes buried under the huge wrinkles of a threatening brow, with a thundering voice, and moving and acting like a combatant, full-blooded, boiling over with passion and energy, his strength in its outbursts seeming illimitable, like the forces of Nature, roaring like a bull when speaking, and heard through closed windows fifty yards off in the street, employing immoderate imagery, intensely in earnest, trembling with indignation, revenge, and patriotic sentiments, able to arouse savage instincts in the most tranquil breast and generous instincts in the most brutal, profane, using emphatic terms, cynical, not monotonously so, and affectedly like Hébert, but spontaneously and to the point, full of crude jests worthy of Rabelais, possessing a stock of jovial sensuality and good-humor, cordial and familiar in his ways, frank, friendly in tone; in short, outwardly and inwardly the best-fitted for winning the confidence and sympathy of a Gallic-Parisian populace, and all contributing to the formation of “his inborn, practical popularity,” and to make of him “a grand seignior of sans-culotterie.”

Thus endowed for playing a part, there is a strong temptation to act it the moment the theatre is ready, whether this be a mean one, got up for the occasion, and the actors rogues, scamps, and prostitutes, or the part an ignoble one, murderous, and finally fatal to him who undertakes it. He comprehended from the first the ultimate object and definite result of the revolution, that is to say, the dictatorship of the violent minority. Immediately after the “14th of July,” 1789, he organized in his quarter of the city a small independent republic, aggressive and predominant, the center of the faction, a refuge for the riff-raff and a rendezvous for fanatics, a pandemonium composed of every available madcap, every rogue, visionary, shoulder-hitter, newspaper scribbler, and stump-speaker, either a secret or avowed plotter of murder, Camille Desmoulins, Fréron, Hébert, Chaumette, Clootz, Théroigne, Marat—while, in this more than Jacobin state, the model in anticipation of that he is to establish later, he reigns, as he will afterward reign, the permanent president of the district, commander of the battalion, orator of the club, and the concocter of bold undertakings. In order to set the machine up, he cleared the ground, fused the metal, hammered out the principal pieces, filed off the blisterings, designed the action, adjusted the minor wheels, set it a-going and indicated what it had to do, and, at the same time, he forged the plating which guarded it from the foreigner and against all outward violence. The machine being his, why, after constructing it, did he not serve as its engineer?

Because, if competent to construct it, he was not qualified to manage it. In a crisis he may take hold of the wheel himself, excite an assembly or a mob in his favor, carry things with a high hand, and direct an executive committee for a few weeks. But he dislikes regular, persistent labor; he is not made for studying documents, for poring over papers, and confining himself to administrative routine. Never, like Robespierre and Billaud, can he attend to both official and police duties at the same time, carefully reading minute daily reports, annotating mortuary lists, extemporizing ornate abstractions, coolly enunciating falsehoods, and acting out the patient, satisfied inquisitor; and, especially, he can never become the systematic executioner.

On the one hand, his eyes are not obscured by the gray veil of theory; he does not regard men through the “Contrat-Social” as a sum of arithmetical units, but as they really are, living, suffering, shedding their blood, especially those he knows, each with his peculiar physiognomy and demeanor. Compassion is excited by all this when one has any feeling, and he had. Danton had a heart; he had the quick sensibilities of a man of flesh and blood stirred by the primitive instincts, the good ones along with the bad ones, instincts which culture had neither impaired nor deadened, which allowed him to plan and permit the September massacre, but which did not allow him to practice, daily and blindly, systematic and wholesale murder. Already in September, “cloaking his pity under his bellowing,” he had shielded or saved many eminent men from the butchers. When the ax is about to fall on the Girondists, he is “ill with grief” and despair. “I am unable to save them,” he exclaimed, “and big tears streamed down his cheeks.”

On the other hand, his eyes are not covered by the bandage of incapacity or lack of forethought. He detected the innate vice of the system, the inevitable and approaching suicide of the revolution. “The Girondists forced us to throw ourselves upon the sans-culotterie which has devoured them, which will devour us, and which will eat itself up.” “Let Robespierre and Saint-Just alone, and there will soon be nothing left in France but a Thebaid of political Trappists.” At the end he sees more clearly still. “On a day like this I organized the revolutionary tribunal.... I ask pardon for it of God and man.... In revolutions, authority remains with the greatest scoundrels.... It is better to be a poor fisherman than govern men.”

Nevertheless, he professed to govern them; he constructed a new machine for the purpose, and, deaf to its creaking, it worked in conformity with its structure and the impulse he gave to it. It towers before him, this sinister machine, with its vast wheel and iron cogs grinding all France, their multiplied teeth pressing out each individual life, its steel blade constantly rising and falling, and, as it plays faster and faster, daily exacting a larger and larger supply of human material, while those who furnish this supply are held to be as insensible and as senseless as itself. Danton can not, or will not, be so. He gets out of the way, diverts himself, gambles, forgets; he supposes that the titular decapitators will probably consent to take no notice of him; in any case, they do not pursue him; “they would not dare do it.... No one must lay hands on me; I am the ark.” At the worst he prefers “to be guillotined rather than guillotine.” Having said or thought this, he is ripe for the scaffold.

Marat and Danton finally become effaced, or efface themselves, and the stage is left to Robespierre who absorbs attention. If we would comprehend him we must look at him as he stands in the midst of his surroundings. At the last stage of an intellectual vegetation passing away, he remains on the last branch of the eighteenth century, the most abortive and driest offshoot of the classical spirit. He has retained nothing of a worn-out system of philosophy but its lifeless dregs and well-conned formulæ, the formulæ of Rousseau, Mably, and Raynal, concerning “the people, nature, reason, liberty, tyrants, factions, virtue, morality,” a ready-made vocabulary, expressions too ample, the meaning of which, ill-defined by the masters, evaporates in the hands of the disciple. He never tries to get at this; his writings and speeches are merely long strings of vague abstract periods; there is no telling fact in them, no distinct, characteristic detail, no appeal to the eye evoking a living image, no personal, special observation, no clear, frank, original impression.

It might be said of him that he never saw anything with his own eyes, that he neither could nor would see, that false conceptions have intervened and fixed themselves between him and the object; he combines these in logical sequence, and simulates the absent thought by an affected jargon, and this is all. The other Jacobins alongside of him likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them expatiate on it so lengthily. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless tirades, and we grasp nothing. We then, astonished, ask what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said nothing and that he talks only for the sake of talking, the same as a sectary preaching to his congregation, neither the preacher nor his audience ever wearying, the one of turning the dogmatic crank, and the other of listening. So much the better if the hopper is empty; the emptier it is the easier and faster the crank turns. And better still, if the empty term he selects is used in a contrary sense; the sonorous words justice, humanity, mean to him piles of human heads, the same as a text from the gospels means to a grand inquisitor the burning of heretics.

Now, his first passion, his principal passion, is literary vanity. Never was the chief of a party, sect, or government, even at critical moments, such an incurable, insignificant rhetorician, so formal, so pompous, and so vapid. On the eve of the 9th of Thermidor, when it was necessary to conquer or die, he enters the tribune with a set speech, written and rewritten, polished and repolished, overloaded with studied ornaments and bits for effect, coated by dint of time and labor, with the academic varnish, the glitter of symmetrical antitheses, rounded periods, exclamations, preteritions, apostrophes, and other tricks of the pen. There is no sign of true inspiration in his elaborate eloquence, nothing but recipes, and those of a worn-out art—Greek and Roman commonplaces, Socrates and the hemlock, Brutus and his dagger, classic metaphors like “the flambeaux of discord,” and “the vessel of state,” words coupled together and beauties of style which a pupil in rhetoric aims at on the college bench; sometimes a grand bravura air, so essential for parade in public; oftentimes a delicate strain of the flute, for, in those days, one must have a tender heart; in short, Marmontel’s method in “Belisarius,” or that of Thomas in his “Eloges,” all borrowed from Rousseau, but of inferior quality, like a sharp, thin voice strained to imitate a rich, powerful voice; a sort of involuntary parody, and the more repulsive because a word ends in a blow, because a sentimental, declamatory Trissotin poses as statesman, because the studied elegances of the closet become pistol shots aimed at living breasts, because an epithet skillfully directed sends a man to the guillotine.

Robespierre, unlike Danton, has no cravings. He is sober; he is not tormented by his senses; if he gives way to them, it is only no further than he can help, and with a bad grace; in the Rue Saintonge in Paris, “for seven months,” says his secretary, “I knew of but one woman that he kept company with, and he did not treat her very well.... Very often he would not let her enter his room”; when busy, he must not be disturbed; he is naturally steady, hard-working, studious and fond of seclusion, at college a model pupil, at home in his province an attentive advocate, a punctual deputy in the Assembly, everywhere free of temptation and incapable of going astray. “Irreproachable” is the word which, from early youth, an inward voice constantly repeats to him in low tones to console him for obscurity and patience. Thus has he ever been, is now, and ever will be; he says this to himself, tells others so, and on this foundation, all of a piece, he builds up his character. He is not, like Desmoulins, to be seduced by dinners; like Barnave, by flattery; like Mirabeau and Danton, by money; like the Girondists, by the insinuating charm of ancient politeness and select society; like the Dantonists, by the bait of joviality and unbounded license—he is the incorruptible.

“Alone, or nearly alone, I do not allow myself to be corrupted; alone, or nearly alone, I do not compromise the right; which two merits I possess in the highest degree. A few others may live correctly, but they oppose or betray principles; a few others profess to have principles, but they do not live correctly. No one else leads so pure a life or is so loyal to principles; no one else joins to so fervent a worship of truth so strict a practice of virtue; I am the unique.” What can be more agreeable than this mute soliloquy? It is gently heard the first day in Robespierre’s address to the Third Estate of Arras; it is uttered aloud the last day in his great speech in the convention; during the interval, it crops out and shines through all his compositions, harangues, or reports, in exordiums, parentheses, and perorations, permeating every sentence like the drone of a bagpipe. In three years a chorus of a thousand voices, which he formed and led indefatigably, rehearses to him in unison his own litany, his most sacred creed, the hymn of three stanzas composed by him in his own honor, and which he daily recites to himself in a low tone of voice, and often in a loud one: “Robespierre alone has discovered the ideal citizen! Robespierre alone attains to it without exaggeration or shortcomings! Robespierre alone is worthy of and able to lead the revolution!” Cool infatuation carried thus far is equivalent to a raging fever, and Robespierre almost attains to the ideas and the ravings of Marat.

First, in his own eyes, he, like Marat, is a persecuted man, and, like Marat, he poses himself as a “martyr,” but more skillfully and keeping within bounds, affecting the resigned and tender air of an innocent victim, who, offering himself as a sacrifice, ascends to heaven, bequeathing to mankind the imperishable souvenir of his virtues. “I excite against me the self-love of everybody; I sharpen against me a thousand daggers. I am a sacrifice to every species of hatred.... To the enemies of my country, to whom my existence seems an obstacle to their heinous plots, I am ready to sacrifice it, if their odious empire is to endure; ... let their road to the scaffold be the pathway of crime, ours shall be that of virtue; ... let the hemlock be got ready for me, I await it on this hallowed spot. I shall at least bequeath to my country an example of constant affection for it, and to the enemies of humanity the disgrace of my death.”

Naturally, as always with Marat, he sees around him only “evil-doers,” “intriguers,” and “traitors.” Naturally, as with Marat, common sense with him is perverted, and, like Marat again, he thinks at random. “I am not obliged to reflect,” said he to Garat, “I always rely on first impressions.” “For him,” says the same authority, “the best reasons are suspicions,” and nought makes headway against suspicions, not even the most positive evidence.

Such assurance, equal to that of Marat, is terrible and worse in its effect, for Robespierre’s list of conspirators is longer than that of Marat. Political and social, in Marat’s mind, the list comprehends only aristocrats and the rich; theological and moral in Robespierre’s mind, it comprehends all atheists and dishonest persons—that is to say, nearly the whole of his party. In this narrow mind, given up to abstractions and habitually classifying men under two opposite headings, whoever is not with him on the good side is against him on the bad side, and, on the bad side, the common understanding between the factious of every flag and the rogues of every degree is natural. Add all this vermin to that which Marat seeks to crush out; it is no longer by hundreds of thousands, but by millions, exclaim Baudot, Jean Bon St. André, and Guffroy, that the guilty must be counted and heads laid low! And all these heads, Robespierre, according to his maxims, must strike off. He is well aware of this; hostile as his intellect may be to precise ideas, he, when alone in his closet, face to face with himself, sees clearly, as clearly as Marat. Marat’s chimera, on first spreading out its wings, bore its frenzied rider swiftly onward to the charnel house; that of Robespierre, fluttering and hobbling along, reaches the goal in its turn; in its turn, it demands something to feed on, and the rhetorician, the professor of principles, begins to calculate the voracity of the monstrous brute on which he is mounted. Slower than the other, this one is still more ravenous, for, with similar claws and teeth, it has a vaster appetite. At the end of three years Robespierre has overtaken Marat, at the extreme point reached by Marat at the outset, and the theorist adopts the policy, the aim, the means, the work, and almost the vocabulary of the maniac; armed dictatorship of the urban mob, systematic maddening of the subsidized populace, war against the bourgeoisie, extermination of the rich, proscription of opposition writers, administrators, and deputies.

Both monsters demand the same food; only, Robespierre adds “vicious men” to the ration of his monster, by way of extra and preferable game. Henceforth, he may in vain abstain from action, take refuge in his rhetoric, stop his chaste ears, and raise his hypocritical eyes to heaven, he can not avoid seeing or hearing under his immaculate feet the streaming gore, and the bones crashing in the open jaws of the insatiable monster which he has fashioned and on which he prances. Destructive instincts, long repressed by civilization, thus devoted to butchery, become aroused. His feline physiognomy, at first “that of a domestic cat, restless but mild, changes into the savage mien of the wild-cat, and next to the ferocious mien of the tiger. In the Constituent Assembly he speaks with a whine, in the convention he froths at the mouth.” The monotonous drone of a stiff sub-professor changes into the personal accent of furious passion; he hisses and grinds his teeth; sometimes, on a change of scene, he affects to shed tears. But his wildest outbursts are less alarming than his affected sensibility. The festering grudges, corrosive envies, and bitter schemings which have accumulated in his breast are astonishing. The gall vessels are full, and the extravasated gall overflows on the dead. He never tires of re-executing his guillotined adversaries, the Girondists, Chaumette, Hébert, and especially Danton, probably because Danton was the active agent in the revolution of which he was simply the incapable pedagogue; he vents his posthumous hatred on this still warm corpse in artful insinuations and obvious misrepresentations. Thus, inwardly corroded by the venom it distills, his physical machine gets out of order, like that of Marat, but with other symptoms. When speaking in the tribune “his hands crisp with a sort of nervous contraction”; sudden tremors agitate “his shoulders and neck, shaking him convulsively to and fro.” “His bilious complexion becomes livid,” his eyelids quiver under his spectacles, and how he looks! “Ah,” said a Montagnard, “you would have voted as we did on the 9th of Thermidor, had you seen his green eyeballs!” “Physically as well as morally,” he becomes a second Marat, suffering all the more because his delirium is not steady, and because his policy, being a moral one, forces him to exterminate on a grander scale.

But he is a discreet Marat, of a timid temperament, anxious, keeping his thoughts to himself, made for a schoolmaster or a pleader, but not for taking the lead or for governing, always acting hesitatingly, and ambitious to be rather the Pope, than the dictator of the revolution. He would prefer to remain a political Grandison; he keeps the mask on to the very last, not only to the public and to others, but to himself and in his inmost conscience. The mask, indeed, has adhered to his skin; he can no longer distinguish one from the other; never did impostor more carefully conceal intentions and acts under sophisms, and persuade himself that the mask was his face, and that in telling a lie, he told the truth.

When nature and history combine to produce a character they succeed better than even man’s imagination. Neither Moliere in his “Tartuffe,” nor Shakespeare in his “Richard III,” dared bring on the stage a hypocrite believing himself sincere, and a Cain that regarded himself as an Abel.

When Parliament came together after the overthrow of the Coalition, the minister of twenty-five was master of England as no minister had been before. Even the king yielded to his sway, partly through gratitude for the triumph he had won for him over the Whigs, partly from a sense of the madness which was soon to strike him down, but still more from a gradual discovery that the triumph which he had won over his political rivals had been won, not to the profit of the crown, but of the nation at large. The Whigs, it was true, were broken, unpopular, and without a policy, while the Tories clung to the minister who had “saved the king.” But it was the support of a new political power that really gave his strength to the young minister. The sudden rise of English industry was pushing the manufacturer to the front; and all that the trading classes loved in Chatham, his nobleness of temper, his consciousness of power, his patriotism, his sympathy with a wider world than the world within the Parliament house, they saw in his son. He had little indeed of the poetic and imaginative side of Chatham’s genius, of his quick perception of what was just and what was possible, his far-reaching conceptions of national policy, his outlook into the future of the world.

Pitt’s flowing and sonorous commonplaces rang hollow beside the broken phrases which still make his father’s eloquence a living thing to Englishmen. On the other hand, he possessed some qualities in which Chatham was utterly wanting. His temper, though naturally ardent and sensitive, had been schooled in a proud self-command. His simplicity and good taste freed him from his father’s ostentation and extravagance. Diffuse and commonplace as his speeches seem, they were adapted as much by their very qualities of diffuseness and commonplace as by their lucidity and good sense to the intelligence of the middle classes whom Pitt felt to be his real audience. In his love of peace, his immense industry, his dispatch of business, his skill in debate, his knowledge of finance, he recalled Sir Robert Walpole; but he had virtues which Walpole never possessed, and he was free from Walpole’s worst defects. He was careless of personal gain. He was too proud to rule by corruption. His lofty self-esteem left no room for any jealousy of subordinates. He was generous in his appreciation of youthful merits; and the “boys” he gathered round him, such as Canning and Lord Wellesley, rewarded his generosity by a devotion which death left untouched. With Walpole’s cynical inaction Pitt had no sympathy whatever. His policy from the first was one of active reform, and he faced every one of the problems, financial, constitutional, religious, from which Walpole had shrunk. Above all, he had none of Walpole’s scorn of his fellow-men. The noblest feature in his mind was its wide humanity.

His love for England was as deep and personal as his father’s love, but of the sympathy with English passion and English prejudice which had been at once his father’s weakness and strength he had not a trace. When Fox taunted him with forgetting Chatham’s jealousy of France and his faith that she was the natural foe of England, Pitt answered nobly that “to suppose any nation can be unalterably the enemy of another is weak and childish.” The temper of the time and the larger sympathy of man with man, which especially marks the eighteenth century as a turning-point in the history of the human race, was everywhere bringing to the front a new order of statesmen, such as Turgot and Joseph II, whose characteristics were a love of mankind and a belief that as the happiness of the individual can only be secured by the general happiness of the community to which he belongs, so the welfare of individual nations can only be secured by the general welfare of the world. Of these Pitt was one. But he rose high above the rest in the consummate knowledge, and the practical force which he brought to the realization of his aims.

Pitt’s strength lay in finance; and he came forward at a time when the growth of English wealth made a knowledge of finance essential to a great minister. The progress of the nation was wonderful. Population more than doubled during the eighteenth century, and the advance of wealth was even greater than that of population. The war had added a hundred millions to the national debt, but the burden was hardly felt. The loss of America only increased the commerce with that country; and industry had begun that great career which was to make Britain the workshop of the world. Though England already stood in the first rank of commercial states at the accession of George III, her industrial life at home was mainly agricultural. The wool-trade had gradually established itself in Norfolk, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and the counties of the southwest; while the manufacture of cotton was still almost limited to Manchester and Bolton, and remained so unimportant that in the middle of the eighteenth century the export of cotton goods hardly reached the value of fifty thousand a year. There was the same slow and steady progress in the linen trade of Belfast and Dundee and the silks of Spitalfields. The processes of manufacture were too rude to allow any large increase of production. It was only where a stream gave force to turn a mill-wheel that the wool-worker could establish his factory; and cotton was as yet spun by hand in the cottages, the “spinsters” of the family sitting with their distaffs round the weaver’s handloom. But had the processes of manufacture been more efficient, they would have been rendered useless by the want of a cheap and easy means of transport. The older main roads, which had lasted fairly through the middle ages, had broken down in later times before the growth of traffic and the increase of wagons and carriages.

The new lines of trade lay often along mere country lanes which had never been more than horse-tracks. Much of the woolen trade, therefore, had to be carried on by means of long trains of pack-horses; and in the case of yet heavier goods, such as coal, distribution was almost impracticable, save along the greater rivers or in districts accessible from the sea. A new era began when the engineering genius of Brindley joined Manchester with its port of Liverpool in 1767, by a canal which crossed the Irwell on a lofty aqueduct; the success of the experiment soon led to the universal introduction of water-carriage, and Great Britain was traversed in every direction by three thousand miles of navigable canals. At the same time a new importance was given to the coal which lay beneath the soil of England. The stores of iron which had lain side by side with it in the northern counties had lain there unworked through the scarcity of wood, which was looked upon as the only fuel by which it could be smelted.

In the middle of the eighteenth century a process for smelting iron with coal turned out to be effective; and the whole aspect of the iron trade was at once revolutionized. Iron was to become the working material of the modern world; and it is its production of iron which more than all else has placed England at the head of industrial Europe. The value of coal as a means of producing mechanical force was revealed in the discovery by which Watt in 1765 transformed the steam-engine from a mere toy into the most wonderful instrument which human industry has ever had at its command. The invention came at a moment when the existing supply of manual labor could no longer cope with the demands of the manufacturers. Three successive inventions in twelve years, that of the spinning-jenny in 1764 by the weaver Hargreaves, of the spinning-machine in 1768 by the barber Arkwright, of the “mule” by the weaver Crompton in 1776, were followed by the discovery of the power-loom. But these would have been comparatively useless had it not been for the revelation of a new and inexhaustible labor-force in the steam-engine. It was the combination of such a force with such means of applying it that enabled Britain during the terrible years of her struggle with France and Napoleon to all but monopolize the woolen and cotton trades, and raised her into the greatest manufacturing country that the world had seen.

To deal wisely with such a growth required a knowledge of the laws of wealth which would have been impossible at an earlier time. But it had become possible in the days of Pitt. If books are to be measured by the effect which they have produced on the fortunes of mankind the “Wealth of Nations” must rank among the greatest of books. Its author was Adam Smith, an Oxford scholar and a professor at Glasgow. Labor, he contended, was the one source of wealth, and it was by freedom of labor, by suffering the worker to pursue his own interest in his own way, that the public wealth would best be promoted. Any attempt to force labor into artificial channels, to shape by laws the course of commerce, to promote special branches of industry in particular countries, or to fix the character of the intercourse between one country and another, is not only a wrong to the worker or the merchant, but actually hurtful to the wealth of a state. The book was published in 1776, at the opening of the American war, and studied by Pitt during his career as an undergraduate at Cambridge. From that time he owned Adam Smith for his master. He had hardly become minister before he took the principles of the “Wealth of Nations” as the groundwork of his policy. The ten earlier years of his rule marked a new point of departure in English statesmanship. Pitt was the first English minister who really grasped the part which industry was to play in promoting the welfare of the world. He was not only a peace minister and a financier, as Walpole had been, but a statesman who saw that the best security for peace lay in the freedom and widening of commercial intercourse between nations; that public economy not only lessened the general burdens but left additional capital in the hands of industry; and that finance might be turned from a mere means of raising revenue into a powerful engine of political and social improvement.

Napoleon was endowed by nature with a clear, penetrating, vast, comprehensive, and peculiarly active mind, nor had he less decision of character than clearness of intellect. He always seized at once the decisive argument, in battle the most effective movement. To conceive, resolve, and perform were with him but one indivisible act, so wonderful was his rapidity, that not a moment was spent in reflection between perception and action. Any obstacle presented to such a mind by a trifling objection, by indolence, weakness, or disaffection, served but to cause his anger to spring forth and cover you with its foam. Had he chosen some civil profession where success can only be attained by persuading men and winning them over, he might have endeavored to subdue or moderate his fiery temperament, but flung into the career of arms, and endowed with the sovereign faculty of seeing the surest means of conquest at a glance, he became at one bound the ruler of Italy, at a second the master of the French Republic, at a third the sovereign of Europe.

What wonder that a nature formed so impetuous by God should become more so from success; what wonder if he were abrupt, violent, domineering, and unbending in his resolutions! If apart from the battle-field he exercised that tact so necessary in civil business, it was in the council of state, though even there he decided questions with a sagacity and clearness of judgment that astonished and subdued his hearers, except on some few occasions when he was misled for a moment by passion or want of sufficient knowledge of the subject under discussion. Both nature and circumstances combined to make him the most despotic and impetuous of men.

In contemplating his career, it does not appear that this fiery, despotic nature revealed itself at once or altogether. In his youth he was lean, taciturn, and even sad—sad from concentrated ambition that feeds upon itself until it finds an outlet and attains the object of its desires. As a young man he was sometimes rude, morose, until becoming the object of universal admiration he became more open, calm, and communicative—lost the meagerness that made his countenance so expressive, and, as one may say, unfolded himself. Consul for life, emperor, conqueror at Marengo and Austerlitz, still exercising some little restraint on himself, he seemed to have reached the apogee of his moral existence; and his figure, then moderately stout, was radiant with regular and manly beauty. But soon, when nations submitted and sovereigns bowed before him, he was no longer restrained by respect for man or even for nature. He dared, attempted all things; spoke without restraint; was gay, familiar, and often intemperate in language. His moral and physical nature became more developed, nor did his extreme stoutness diminish his Olympian beauty; his fuller countenance still preserved the eagle glance; and when descending from his accustomed height from which he excited admiration, fear, and hatred, he became merry, familiar, and almost vulgar, he could resume his dignity in a moment, for he was able to descend without demeaning himself. And when at length, in advancing life, he is supposed to be less active or less daring, because of his increasing embonpoint, or because Fortune had ceased to smile on him, he bounds more impetuously than ever on his charger, and shows that for his ardent mind matter is no burden, misfortune no restraint.

Such were the successive developments of this extraordinary nature. It is not easy to estimate Napoleon’s moral qualities, for it is rather difficult to discover goodness in a soldier who was continually strewing the earth with dead, or friendship in a man who never knew an equal, or probity in a potentate in whose power were the riches of the universe. Still, though an exception to all ordinary rules, we may occasionally catch some traits of the moral physiognomy of this extraordinary man.

In all things promptness was his distinctive characteristic. He would become angry, but would recover his calmness with wonderful facility, almost ashamed of his excitement, laughing at it if he could do so without compromising his dignity, and would again address with affectionate words or gestures the officer he had overpowered by his burst of passion. His anger was sometimes affected for the purpose of intimidating subalterns who neglected their duty. When real, his displeasure passed like a flash of lightning; when affected, it lasted as long as it was needed. When he was no longer obliged to command, restrain, or impel men, he became gentle, simple, and just, just as every man of great mind is who understands human nature, and appreciates and pardons its weaknesses because he knows that they are inevitable. At St. Helena, deprived of all external prestige, his power departed, without any other ascendant over his companions than that derived from his intellect and disposition, Napoleon ruled them with absolute sway, won them by unchanging amiability; and that to such a degree that having feared him for the greater part of their lives, they ended by loving him for the remainder. On the battle-field he had acquired an insensibility that was almost fearful; he could behold unmoved the ground covered with a hundred thousand lifeless bodies, for none had ever caused so much human blood to flow as he.

This insensibility was, so to speak, a consequence of his profession. Often in the evening he would ride over the battle-field, which in the morning he had strewed with all the horrors of war, to see that the wounded were removed, a proceeding that might be the result of policy, but was not; and he frequently sprang from his horse to assure himself whether in an apparently lifeless body the vital spark did not still linger. At Wagram he saw a fine young man, in the uniform of the cuirassiers, lying on the ground with his face covered with clotted blood; he sprang at once from his horse, supported the head of the wounded youth on his knee, restored him by the aid of some spirituous remedy, and said, smiling: “He will recover, it is one more saved!” These are no proofs of want of feeling.

In everything connected with finance he was almost avaricious, disputing even about a centime, while he would give millions to his friends, servants, or the poor. Having discovered that a distinguished savant who had accompanied him to Egypt was in embarrassed circumstances, he sent him a large sum, blaming him at the same time for not having told him of his position. In 1813, having expended all his ready money, and learning that a lady of high birth, who had once been very rich, was in want of the necessaries of life, he immediately appointed her a pension of twenty-four thousand francs, as much as fifty thousand at the present time, and being told that she was eighty-four years of age, “Poor woman,” he said, “let her be paid four years in advance.” These, we must repeat, are no indications of want of kindness of disposition.

Having but little time to devote to private friendships, removed from them by his superiority to other men, but still, under the influence of time and habit, he did become attached to some, so strongly attached as to be indulgent even to weakness to those he loved. This was the case with regard to his relatives, whose pretensions often provoked his anger; yet, seeing them annoyed, he relented, and to gratify them, often did what he knew to be unwise. Although the admiration he had felt for the Empress Josephine passed away with time, and though she had, by many thoughtless acts, lowered herself in the esteem he always entertained for her, he had for her, even after his divorce, the most profound affection. He wept for Duroc, but in secret, as though it were a weakness.

As to his probity, we know not by what standard to estimate such a quality in a man who from the very commencement of his public career had immense riches at his command. When he became commander-in-chief of the army in Italy and was master of all the wealth of the country, he first supplied his army abundantly, and then sent assistance to the army on the Rhine, reserving nothing for himself, or at most only a sum sufficient to purchase a small house, Rue de la Victoire, a purchase for which one year’s pay would have sufficed; and had he died in Egypt, his widow would have been left destitute. Was this the result of pride, disdain of vulgar enjoyments, or honesty? Perhaps there was a little of all in this forbearance, which was not unexampled among our generals, though certainly as rare then as it has ever been. He punished dishonesty with extreme severity, which might be attributed to his love of order; but, what was still better, and seemed to indicate that he possessed the quality of honesty himself, was the positive affection he showed for honest people, carried so far as to take keen pleasure in their society.

Still this man, whom God had made so great and so good, was not a virtuous man, for virtue consists in a fixed idea of duty, to which all our inclinations, all our desires, moral and physical, must be subjected, and which could not be the case with one who, of all that ever lived, put least restraint upon his passions. But if wholly deficient in what is abstractly understood as virtue, he possessed certain special virtues, particularly those of a warrior and statesman. He was temperate, not prone to sensual gratifications, and, it not exactly chaste he was not a libertine, never, except on occasions of ceremony, remained more than a few minutes at table; he slept on a hard bed though his constitution was rather weak than strong, bore, without even perceiving it, an amount of fatigue that would have exhausted the most vigorous soldiers; and was capable of prodigious exertion when mentally occupied with some great undertaking.

He did more than brave danger, he seemed unconscious of its existence, and was ever to be found wherever he was needed to see, direct, or command. Such was his character as a soldier; as a general he was not inferior.

Never had the cares of a vast military command been borne with more coolness, vigor, or presence of mind. If he were occasionally excited or angry, the officers who knew him best said that all was going on well. When the danger became serious, he was calm, mild, encouraging, not wishing to add the excitement attendant on his displeasure to that which naturally arose from the circumstances; he remained perfectly calm, a power acquired by the habit of restraining his emotions in great emergencies, and, calculating the extent of the danger, turning it aside, and thus triumphing over fortune. Formed for great emergencies and familiarized by habit to every species of peril, he stood by, in 1814, a calm spectator of the suicidal destruction of his own power, a destruction achieved by his ambition; and still he hoped when all around despaired, because he perceived resources undivined by anybody else, and under all vicissitudes, soaring on the wings of genius above the shock of circumstances, and with the resignation of a self-judged mind he accepted the deserved punishment of his faults.

Such, in our opinion, was this man, so strange, so self-contradicting, so many-sided. If among the principal traits of his character there is one more prominent than the rest, it is a species of moral intemperance. A prodigy of genius and passion, flung into the chaos of a revolution, his nature unfolds and develops itself therein. He masters that wild confusion, replaces it by his own presence, and displays the energy, audacity, and fickleness of that which he replaced. Succeeding to men who stopped at nothing, either in virtue or crime, in heroism or cruelty, surrounded by men who laid no restraints on their passions, he laid none on his; they wished to convert the world into a universal republic, he would have it an equally boundless monarchy; they turned everything into chaos, he formed an almost tyrannical unity; they disorganized everything, he re-established order; they defied sovereigns, he dethroned them; they slaughtered men on the scaffold, he on the battle-field, where blood was shrouded in glory. He immolated more human beings than did any Asiatic conqueror, and within the narrow precincts of Europe, peopled with opposing nations, he conquered a greater space of territory than Tamerlane or Genghis Khan amid the deserts of Asia.

It was reserved for the French revolution, destined to change the aspect of European society, to produce a man who would fix the attention of the world as powerfully as Charlemagne, Cæsar, Hannibal, and Alexander. He possessed every qualification that could strike, attract, and fix the attention of mankind, whether we consider the greatness of the part he was destined to perform, the vastness of the political convulsions he caused, the splendor, extent, and profundity of his genius, or his majestic gravity of thought. This son of a Corsican gentleman, who received the gratuitous military education that ancient royalty bestowed on the sons of the poor nobility, had scarcely left school when in a sanguinary tumult he obtained the rank of commander-in-chief, then left the Parisian army for that of Italy, conquered that country in a month, successively destroyed all the forces of the European coalition, wrested from them the peace of Campo-Formio, and then becoming too formidable to stand beside the government of the republic, he went to seek a new destiny in the East, passed through the English fleet with five hundred ships, conquered Egypt at a stride, then thought of following Alexander’s footsteps in the conquest of India. But suddenly recalled to the West by the renewal of the European war, after having attempted to imitate Alexander, he imitated and equaled Hannibal in crossing the Alps, again overpowered the coalition, and compelled it to accept the peace of Luneville, and at thirty years of age this son of a poor Corsican nobleman had already run through a most extraordinary career.

Become pacific for a while, he by his laws laid the basis of modern society; but again yielding to the impulses of his restless genius, he once more attacked Europe, vanquished her in three battles—Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland—set up and threw down kingdoms, placed the crown of Charlemagne on his head; and when kings came to offer him their daughters, chose the descendant of the Cæsars, who presented him with a son that seemed destined to wear the most brilliant crown in the universe. He advanced from Cadiz to Moscow, where he was subjected to the greatest catastrophe on record, rose again, but was again defeated, and confined in a small island, from which he emerged with a few hundred faithful soldiers, recovered the crown of France in twenty days, struggled again against exasperated Europe, sank for the last time at Waterloo, and having sustained greater wars than those of the Roman Empire, went—he, the child of a Mediterranean isle—to die on an island in the ocean, bound like Prometheus by the fear and hatred of kings to a rock.

This son of a poor Corsican nobleman has indeed played in the world the parts of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, and Charlemagne! He possessed as much genius as the greatest among them; acquired as much fame as the most celebrated, and unfortunately shed more blood than any of them. In a moral point of view, he is inferior to the best of these great men but superior to the worst. His ambition was not as futile as that of Alexander, nor as depraved as that of Cæsar, but it was not as respectable as Hannibal’s, who sacrificed himself to save his country the misfortune of being conquered. His ambition was that usual with conquerors who seek to rule after having aggrandized their native land. Still he loved France and cherished her glory as dearly as his own.

As a ruler he sought what was right, but sought it as a despot, nor did he pursue it with the consistency or religious perseverance of Charlemagne. In variety of talents he was inferior to Cæsar, who, being compelled to win over his fellow-citizens before ruling them, had to learn how to persuade as well as how to fight, and could speak, write, and act with a certain simple majesty. Napoleon, on the other hand, having acquired power by warfare, had no need of oratory, nor possibly, though endowed with natural eloquence, could he ever have acquired it, since he never would have taken the trouble of patiently analyzing his thought in presence of a deliberative assembly. He could write as he thought, with force and dignity, but he was sometimes a little declamatory like his mother, the French revolution; he argued with more force than Cæsar, but could not narrate with his extreme simplicity or exquisite taste. He was inferior to the Roman dictator in the variety of his talents, but superior as a general, both by his peculiar military genius and by the daring profundity and inexhaustible fertility of his plans, in which he had but one equal or superior (which we can not decide)—Hannibal; for he was as daring, as prudent, as subtle, as inventive, as terrible, and as obstinate as the Carthaginian general, with one advantage of living at a later period. Succeeding to Hannibal, Cæsar, the Nassaus, Gustavus Adolphus, Condé, Turenne, and Frederick, he brought military art to its ultimate perfection. God alone can estimate the respective merits of such men; all we can do is to sketch some prominent traits of their wonderful characters.

The name of no commander in the long array of British greatness will occupy so large a space in the annals of the world as that of Wellington; and yet there are few whose public characters possess, with so many excellences, so simple and unblemished a complexion. It is to the purity and elevation of his principles in every public situation that this enviable distinction is to be ascribed. Intrusted early in life with high command, and subjected from the first to serious responsibility, he possessed that singleness of heart and integrity of purpose which, even more than talent or audacity, are the foundations of true and moral courage, and the only pure path to public greatness; a sense of duty, a feeling of honor, a generous patriotism, a forgetfulness of self, constituted the spring of all his actions.

He was ambitious, but it was to serve his king and country only; fearless, because his whole heart was wound up in these noble objects; disinterested, because the enriching of himself or his family never for a moment crossed his mind; insensible to private fame when it interfered with public duty, indifferent to popular obloquy when it arose from rectitude of conduct. Like the Roman patriot, he wished rather to be than appear deserving. “Esse quam bonus malebat, ita quo minus gloriam petebat eo magis adsequebatur.” Greatness was forced upon him, both in military and political life, rather because he was felt to be worthiest, than because he desired to be the first; he was the architect of his own fortune, but he became so almost unconsciously, while solely engrossed in constructing that of his country. He has left undone many things, as a soldier, which might have added to his fame, and done many things, as a statesman, which were fatal to his power; but he omitted the first because they would have endangered his country, and committed the second because he felt them to be essential to its salvation.

It is the honor of England, and of human nature, that such a man should have risen at such a time to the rule of her armies and her councils; but he experienced with Themistocles and Scipio Africanus the mutable tenure of popular applause and the base ingratitude of those whom he had saved. Having triumphed over the arms of the threatened tyrant, he was equally immovable in the presence of the insane citizens; and it is hard to say whether his greatness appeared most when he struck down the conqueror of Europe on the field of Waterloo, or was himself with difficulty rescued from death on its anniversary, eighteen years afterward, in the streets of London.

A constant recollection of these circumstances, and of the peculiar and very difficult task which was committed to his charge, is necessary in forming a correct estimate of the Duke of Wellington’s military achievements. The brilliancy of his course is well known; an unbroken series of triumphs from Vimiero to Toulouse; the entire expulsion of the French from the Peninsula; the planting of the British standard in the heart of France; the successive defeat of those veteran marshals who had so long conquered in every country of Europe; the overthrow of Waterloo; the hurling of Napoleon from his throne; and the termination, in one day, of the military empire founded on twenty years of conquest. But these results, great and imperishable as they are, convey no adequate idea, either of the difficulties with which Wellington had to contend, or of the merit due to his transcendent exertions. With an army seldom superior in number to a single corps of the French marshals; with troops dispirited by recent disasters, and wholly unaided by practical experience; without any compulsory law to recruit his ranks, or any strong national passion for war to supply its wants, he was called on to combat successively vast armies, composed, in great part, of veteran soldiers, perpetually filled by the terrible powers of the conscription, headed by the chiefs who, risen from the ranks, and practically acquainted with the duties of war in all its grades, had fought their way from the grenadier’s musket to the marshal’s baton, and were followed by men who, trained in the same school, were animated by the same ambition.

Still more, he was the general of a nation in which the chivalrous and mercantile qualities are strongly blended together; which, justly proud of its historic glory, is unreasonably jealous of its military expenditure; which, covetous beyond measure of warlike renown, is ruinously impatient of pacific preparation; which starves its establishment when danger is over, and yet frets at defeat when its terrors are present; which dreams, in war, of Cressy and Agincourt, and ruminates, in peace, on economic reduction.

He combated at the head of an alliance formed of heterogeneous states, composed of discordant materials, in which ancient animosities and religious divisions were imperfectly suppressed by recent fervor or present danger; in which corruption often paralyzed the arm of patriotism, and jealousy withheld the resources of power. He acted under the direction of a ministry which, albeit zealous and active, was alike inexperienced in hostility and unskilled in combinations; in presence of an opposition which, powerful in eloquence, supported by faction, was prejudiced against the war, and indefatigable to arrest it; for the interests of a people, who, although ardent in the cause and enthusiastic in its support, were impatient of disaster and prone to depression, and whose military resources, how great soever, were dissipated in the protection of a colonial empire which encircled the earth.

Nothing but the most consummate prudence, as well as ability in conduct, could with such means have achieved victory over such an enemy, and the character of Wellington was singularly fitted for the task. Capable, when the occasion required or opportunity was afforded, of the most daring enterprises, he was yet cautious and wary in his general conduct; prodigal of his own labor, regardless of his own person, he was avaricious only of the blood of his soldiers. Endowed by Nature with an indomitable soul, a constitution of iron, he possessed that tenacity of purpose and indefatigable activity which is ever necessary to great achievements; prudent in council, sagacious in design, he was yet prompt and decided in action. No general ever revolved the probable dangers of an enterprise more anxiously before undertaking it, none possessed in a higher degree the eagle eye, the arm of steel, necessary to carry it into execution.

By the steady application of these rare qualities he was enabled to raise the British military force from an unworthy state of depression to an unparalleled pitch of glory; to educate, in presence of the enemy, not only his soldiers in the field, but his rulers in the cabinet; to silence, by avoiding disaster, the clamor of his enemies; to strengthen, by progressive success, the ascendency of his friends; to augment, by the exhibition of its results, the energy of the government; to rouse, by deeds of glory, the enthusiasm of the people.

Skillfully seizing the opportunity of victory, he studiously avoided the chances of defeat; aware that a single disaster would at once endanger his prospects, discourage his countrymen, and strengthen his opponents, he was content to forego many opportunities of earning fame, and stifle many desires to grasp at glory; magnanimously checking the aspirations of genius, he trusted for ultimate success rather to perseverance in a wise, than audacity in a daring course. He thus succeeded during six successive campaigns, with a comparatively inconsiderable army, in maintaining his ground against the vast and veteran forces of Napoleon, in defeating successively all his marshals, baffling successively all his enterprises, and finally rousing such an enthusiastic spirit in the British Empire as enabled its Government to put forth its immense resources on a scale worthy of its present greatness and ancient renown, and terminate a contest of twenty years by planting the English standard on the walls of Paris.

THE END.

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