was attached to its members. He
himself had discovered the virtues and disinterestedness of his minister
Decazes, and when his family and ministers drove away this favorite, the
king was devoted to him even in disgrace, and made him his companion.
Still later he found a substitute in Madame du Caylus,--one of those
interesting and accomplished women peculiar to France. She was not
ambitious of ruling the king, as her aunt, Madame de Maintenon, was of
governing Louis XIV., and her virtue was unimpeachable. She wrote to the
king letters twice a day, but visited him only once a week. She was the
tool of a cabal, rather than the leader of a court; but her influence
was healthy, ennobling, and religious. Louis XVIII. was not what would
be called a religious man; he performed his religious duties regularly,
but in a perfunctory manner. He was not, however, a hypocrite or a
pharisee, but was simply indifferent to religious dogmas, and secretly
averse to the society of priests. When he was dying, it was with great
difficulty that he could be made to receive extreme unction. He died
without pain, recommending to his brother, who was to succeed him, to
observe the charter of French liberties, yet fearing that his blind
bigotry would be the ruin of the family and the throne, as events
proved. The last things to which the dying king clung were pomps and
ceremonies, concealing even from courtiers his failing strength, and
going through the mockery of dress and court etiquette to almost the
very day of his death, in 1824.

The Comte d'Artois, now Charles X., ascended the throne, with the usual
promises to respect the liberties of the nation, which his brother had
conscientiously maintained. Unfortunately Charles's intellect was weak
and his conscience perverted; he was a narrow-minded, bigoted sovereign,
ruled by priests and ultra-royalists, who magnified his prerogatives,
appealed to his prejudices, and flattered his vanity. He was not cruel
and blood-thirsty,--he was even kind and amiable; but he was a fool, who
could not comprehend the conditions by which only he could reign in
safety; who could not understand the spirit of the times, or appreciate
the difficulties with which he had to contend.

What was to be expected of such a monarch but continual blunders,
encroachments, and follies verging upon crimes? The nation cared nothing
for his hunting-parties, his pleasures, and his attachment to mediaeval
ceremonies; but it did care