alth. It is not for us
to scrutinise into "the ways" of Providence; but if Providence conducted
Charles the Second to the throne, it appears to have deserted him when
there.

Historians, for a particular purpose, have sometimes amused themselves
with a detail of an event which did not happen. A history of this kind
we find in the ninth book of Livy; and it forms a digression, where,
with his delightful copiousness, he reasons on the probable consequences
which would have ensued had Alexander the Great invaded Italy. Some
Greek writers, to raise the Parthians to an equality with the Romans,
had insinuated that the great name of this military monarch, who is said
never to have lost a battle, would have intimidated the Romans, and
would have checked their passion for universal dominion. The patriotic
Livy, disdaining that the glory of his nation, which had never ceased
from war for nearly eight hundred years, should be put in competition
with the career of a young conqueror, which had scarcely lasted ten,
enters into a parallel of "man with man, general with general, and
victory with victory." In the full charm of his imagination he brings
Alexander down into Italy, he invests him with all his virtues, and
"dusks their lustre" with all his defects. He arranges the Macedonian
army, while he exultingly shows five Roman armies at that moment
pursuing their conquests; and he cautiously counts the numerous allies
who would have combined their forces; he even descends to compare the
weapons and the modes of warfare of the Macedonians with those of the
Romans. Livy, as if he had caught a momentary panic at the first success
which had probably attended Alexander in his descent into Italy, brings
forward the great commanders he would have had to encounter; he compares
Alexander with each, and at length terminates his fears, and claims his
triumph, by discovering that the Macedonians had but one Alexander,
while the Romans had several. This beautiful digression in Livy is a
model for the narrative of an event which never happened.

The Saracens from Asia had spread into Africa, and at length possessed
themselves of Spain. Eude, a discontented Duke of Guienne in France, had
been vanquished by Charles Martel, who derived that humble but glorious
surname from the event we are now to record. Charles had left Eude the
enjoyment of his dukedom, provided that he held it as a fief from the
crown; but blind with ambition and avarice, Eude a