service here by
reputation. The report goes as far as the shot. We could not derive
from the justice of your cause arguments so powerful in sustaining or
reducing your subjects as we do from the news of the prosperity of your
enterprises."

Abroad the policy of Henry IV. was as judicious and far sighted as it was
just and sympathetic at home. There has been much writing and
dissertation about what has been called his grand design. This name has
been given to a plan for the religious and political organization of
Christendom, consisting in the division of Europe amongst three
religions, the Catholic, the Calvinistic, and the Lutheran, and into
fifteen states, great and small, monarchical or republican, with equal
rights, alone recognized as members of the Christian confederation,
regulating in concert their common affairs, and pacifically making up
their differences, whilst all the while preserving their national
existence. This plan is lengthily and approvingly set forth, several
times over, in the _OEconomies royales,_ which Sully's secretaries wrote
at his suggestion, and probably sometimes at his dictation. Henry IV.
was a prince as expansive in ideas as he was inventive, who was a master
of the art of pleasing, and himself took great pleasure in the freedom
and unconstraint of conversation. No doubt the notions of the grand
design often came into his head, and he often talked about them to Sully,
his confidant in what he thought as well as in what he did. Sully, for
his part was a methodical spirit, a regular downright putter in practice,
evidently struck and charmed by the richness and grandeur of the
prospects placed before his eyes by his king, and feeling pleasure in
shedding light upon them whilst giving them a more positive and more
complete shape than belonged to their first and original appearance.
And thus came down to us the grand design, which, so far as Henry IV. was
concerned, was never a definite project. His true external policy was
much more real and practical. He had seen and experienced the evils of
religious hatred and persecution. He had been a great sufferer from the
supremacy of the house of Austria in Europe, and he had for a long while
opposed it. When he became the most puissant and most regarded of
European kings, he set his heart very strongly on two things--toleration
for the three religions which had succeeded in establishing themselves in
Europe and showing themselves capabl