is familiar conversation, the emperor protested the
ignorance of the intentions of Leo, which he would have disappointed by
his absence on that memorable day. But the preparations of the ceremony
must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of Charlemagne reveals
his knowledge and expectation: he had acknowledged that the Imperial
title was the object of his ambition, and a Roman synod had pronounced,
that it was the only adequate reward of his merit and services.

The appellation of _great_ has been often bestowed, and sometimes
deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favor the title
has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name, with the
addition of _saint_, is inserted in the Roman calendar; and the saint,
by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of the historians
and philosophers of an enlightened age. His _real_ merit is doubtless
enhanced by the barbarism of the nation and the times from which he
emerged: but the _apparent_ magnitude of an object is likewise enlarged
by an unequal comparison; and the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual
splendor from the nakedness of the surrounding desert. Without injustice
to his fame, I may discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness
of the restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity
is not the most conspicuous: but the public happiness could not
be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the various
indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the multitude of his
bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the long celibacy and
licentious manners of his daughters, whom the father was suspected
of loving with too fond a passion. I shall be scarcely permitted to
accuse the ambition of a conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution,
the sons of his brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain,
and the four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same
spot, would have something to allege against the justice and humanity of
Charlemagne. His treatment of the vanquished Saxons was an abuse of the
right of conquest; his laws were not less sanguinary than his arms, and
in the discussion of his motives, whatever is subtracted from bigotry
must be imputed to temper. The sedentary reader is amazed by his
incessant activity of mind and body; and his subjects and enemies were
not less astonished at his sudden presence, at the moment when they
believed him at the most distant extremity of the empir