f wanted; her vivacity in
conversation enlivened his own seriousness, and her gay volubility the
defective utterance of his own; while the versatility of her manners
relieved his own formal habits. Doubtless the queen exercised the same
power over this monarch which vivacious females are privileged by nature
to possess over their husbands; she was often listened to, and her
suggestions were sometimes approved; but the fixed and systematic
principles of the character and the government of this monarch must not
be imputed to the intrigues of a mere lively and volatile woman; we must
trace them to a higher source; to his own inherited conceptions of the
regal rights, if we would seek for truth, and read the history of human
nature in the history of Charles the First.

Long after this article was published, the subject has been more
critically developed in my "Commentaries on the Life and Reign of
Charles the First."

THE MINISTER--THE CARDINAL DUKE OF RICHELIEU.

Richelieu was the greatest of statesmen, if he who maintains himself by
the greatest power is necessarily the greatest minister. He was called
"the King of the King." After having long tormented himself and France,
he left a great name and a great empire--both alike the victims of
splendid ambition! Neither this great minister nor this great nation
tasted of happiness under his mighty administration. He had, indeed, a
heartlessness in his conduct which obstructed by no relentings those
remorseless decisions which made him terrible. But, while he trode down
the princes of the blood and the nobles, and drove his patroness, the
queen-mother, into a miserable exile, and contrived that the king should
fear and hate his brother, and all the cardinal-duke chose, Richelieu
was grinding the face of the poor by exorbitant taxation, and converted
every town in France into a garrison; it was said of him, that he never
liked to be in any place where he was not the strongest. "The
commissioners of the exchequer and the commanders of the army believe
themselves called to a golden harvest; and in the interim the cardinal
is charged with the sins of all the world, and is even afraid of his
life." Thus Grotius speaks, in one of his letters, of the miserable
situation of this great minister, in his account of the court of France
in 1635, when he resided there as Swedish ambassador. Yet such is the
delusion of these great politicians, who consider what they term
_state-int