_ oracles. So also their
subjects address them by the titles of "_Your Perpetuity_, _your
Eternity._" And it appears by a law of Theodoric the Great, that the
emperors at length added this to their titles. It begins, "If any
magistrate, after having concluded a public work, put his name rather
than that of _Our Perpetuity_, let him be judged guilty of
high-treason." All this reminds one of "the celestial empire" of the
Chinese.

Whenever the Great Mogul made an observation, Bernier tells us that some
of the first Omrahs lifted up their hands, crying, "Wonder! wonder!
wonder!" And a proverb current in his dominion was, "If the king saith
at noonday it is night, you are to say, Behold the moon and the stars!"
Such adulation, however, could not alter the general condition and
fortune of this unhappy being, who became a sovereign without knowing
what it is to be one. He was brought out of the seraglio to be placed on
the throne, and it was he, rather than the spectators, who might have
truly used the interjection of astonishment!

DETHRONED MONARCHS

Fortune never appears in a more extravagant humour than when she reduces
monarchs to become mendicants. Half a century ago it was not imagined
that our own times should have to record many such instances. After
having contemplated _kings_ raised into _divinities_, we see them now
depressed as _beggars_. Our own times, in two opposite senses, may
emphatically be distinguished as the _age of kings_.

In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire's.
Eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not
sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of
conversation, they are discovered to be _eight monarchs_ in Europe, who
had been deprived of their crowns!

What added to this exquisite satire was, that there were eight living
monarchs at that moment wanderers on the earth;--a circumstance which
has since occurred!

Adelaide, the widow of Lothario, king of Italy, one of the most
beautiful women in her age, was besieged in Pavia by Berenger, who
resolved to constrain her to marry his son after Pavia was taken; she
escaped from her prison with her almoner. The archbishop of Reggio had
offered her an asylum: to reach it, she and her almoner travelled on
foot through the country by night, concealing herself in the day-time
among the corn, while the almoner begged for alms and food through the
villages.

The emperor Henr