resolved, if he came to the throne,
to disperse that ostentatious court, which was supported at an expense
ruinous to the nation,--to preserve peace,--to correct the abuses which
were found in every part of the system of revenue,--to abolish or modify
oppressive privileges,--to reform the administration of justice,--to
revive the institution of the States-General. If he had ruled over
France during forty or fifty years, that great movement of the human
mind, which no government could have arrested, which bad government
only rendered more violent, would, we are inclined to think, have been
conducted, by peaceable means to a happy termination.

Disease and sorrow removed from the world that wisdom and virtue of
which it was not worthy. During two generations France was ruled by men
who, with all the vices of Louis the Fourteenth, had none of the art
by which that magnificent prince passed off his vices for virtues. The
people had now to see tyranny naked. That foul Duessa was stripped
of her gorgeous ornaments. She had always been hideous; but a strange
enchantment had made her seem fair and glorious in the eyes of her
willing slaves. The spell was now broken; the deformity was made
manifest; and the lovers, lately so happy and so proud, turned away
loathing and horror-struck.

First came the Regency. The strictness with which Louis had, towards the
close of his life, exacted from those around him an outward attention to
religious duties, produced an effect similar to that which the rigour
of the Puritans had produced in England. It was the boast of Madame de
Maintenon, in the time of her greatness, that devotion had become the
fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and, like a fashion, it passed away.
The austerity of the tyrant's old age had injured the morality of the
higher orders more than even the licentiousness of his youth. Not only
had he not reformed their vices, but, by forcing them to be hypocrites,
he had shaken their belief in virtue. They had found it so easy to
perform the grimace of piety, that it was natural for them to consider
all piety as grimace. The times were changed. Pensions, regiments, and
abbeys, were no longer to be obtained by regular confession and severe
penance: and the obsequious courtiers, who had kept Lent like monks
of La Trappe, and who had turned up the whites of their eyes at the
edifying parts of sermons preached before the king, aspired to the title
of roue as ardently as they had asp