orest vistas, misery
is lying outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly
following precarious husbandry; ploughing stony fields with starved
cattle; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly
on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his mistress
Aurora von Koenigsmarck is the loveliest, the wittiest creature; his
diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts
as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more
than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and mark him eyeing Madame
de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he
passes through the great gallery where Villars and Vendome, and Berwick,
and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. Can Court be more splendid; nobles
and knights more gallant and superb; ladies more lovely? A grander
monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject,
you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we wish to
estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry?
Yes! Remember the grace and beauty, the splendour and lofty politeness;
the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy, where the French line bids the gentlemen
of the English guard to fire first; the noble constancy of the old king
and Villars his general, who fits out the last army with the last
crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or
conquer for France at Denain. But round all that royal splendour lies a
nation enslaved and ruined: there are people robbed of their
rights--communities laid waste--faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and
wellnigh destroyed--nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what
horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot
that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the
world, are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the
king ties in diamonds round his mistress's white neck. In the first half
of the last century, I say, this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a
waste as well as Picardy or Artois; and Versailles is only larger and not
worse than Herrenhausen.

[Illustration]

Two Portraits

It was the first Elector of Hanover who made the fortunate match which
bestowed the race of Hanoverian Sovereigns upon us Britons. Nine years
after Charles Stuart l