with polite and engaging manners, and with some talent for lively
conversation, addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of
sauntering and of frivolous amusements, incapable of selfdenial and of
exertion, without faith in human virtue or in human attachment without
desire of renown, and without sensibility to reproach. According to him,
every person was to be bought: but some people haggled more about their
price than others; and when this haggling was very obstinate and very
skilful it was called by some fine name. The chief trick by which clever
men kept up the price of their abilities was called integrity. The chief
trick by which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty was
called modesty. The love of God, the love of country, the love of
family, the love of friends, were phrases of the same sort, delicate
and convenient synonymes for the love of self. Thinking thus of mankind,
Charles naturally cared very little what they thought of him. Honour and
shame were scarcely more to him than light and darkness to the blind.
His contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems, when
viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to deserve no
commendation. It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it.
One who trusts nobody will not trust sycophants. One who does not value
real glory will not value its counterfeit.

It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of his
species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in men but what
was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so far humane that it
was highly disagreeable to him to see their sufferings or to hear their
complaints. This, however, is a sort of humanity which, though amiable
and laudable in a private man whose power to help or hurt is bounded by
a narrow circle, has in princes often been rather a vice than a virtue.
More than one well disposed ruler has given up whole provinces to rapine
and oppression, merely from a wish to see none but happy faces round his
own board and in his own walks. No man is fit to govern great societies
who hesitates about disobliging the few who have access to him, for the
sake of the many whom he will never see. The facility of Charles was
such as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal sense. He was a
slave without being a dupe. Worthless men and women, to the very bottom
of whose hearts he saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection
for him and