ty luminaries
which, during the life of Louis XIII., and the early part of Louis
XIV.th's reign, were lords of the ascendant when they had sunk beneath
the horizon, their constellation again blazed forth with greater force
and more disastrous splendour. Hence the Dragonnades, the destruction of
Port-Royal, the persecution of the Jansenists, the death of Racine, the
disgrace of Fenelon. Hence, in the reign of Louis XV., orgies that
Messalina would have blushed to share; while cruelties[A] of which
Suwarrow would hardly have been the instrument, were employed to lash
into a momentary paroxysm nerves withered by debauchery. Here let us
pause for a moment, to remark upon the effect which false opinions may
produce upon the happiness and well-being of distant generations. Nothing
is so common as for trivial superficial men--the class to which the
management of empires is for the most part entrusted--to ridicule
theories, and, by a mode reasoning which would place any cabin boy far
above Sir Isaac Newton, to insist upon the mechanical parts of
government, and the routine of ordinary business, as the sole objects
entitled to notice and consideration--

"O curvae in terris animae, et coelestium inanes!"

[Footnote A: This does not apply to Louis XV. personally.]

We would fain ask these practical people--for such is the eminently
inappropriate metaphor by which they rejoice to be distinguished--we would
fain ask them (if it be consistent with their profound respect for
practice to pay some attention to experience) to cast their eyes upon the
proceedings and manners of the French court (wild and chimerical as such
an appeal will no doubt appear to them) during the dominion of Catharine
of Medicis and her offspring, those execrable deceivers, corrupters, and
executioners of their people. To what are the almost incredible
abominations, familiar as household words to the French court of that day,
to be ascribed? To what are the persecutions, perjuries, the massacres
that pollute the annals of France during that period, to be attributed? To
a false theory. Catharine of Medicis brought into France the practical
atheism of Machiavelli's prince--the Bible, as she blasphemously called
it, of her class. The maxims which, when confined to the petty courts of
Italy, did not undermine the prosperity of any considerable portion of the
human race, when disseminated among a valiant, politic, and powerful
nation, brought Iliads of desolat