deal with! For Henry of
Navarre was a resolute, active, and politic prince. He possessed,
indeed, great humanity and mildness, but an humanity and mildness that
never stood in the way of his interests. He never sought to be loved
without putting himself first in a condition to be feared. He used soft
language with determined conduct. He asserted and maintained his
authority in the gross, and distributed his acts of concession only in
the detail. Ho spent the income of his prerogative nobly, but he took
care not to break in upon the capital,--never abandoning for a moment
any of the claims which he made under the fundamental laws, nor sparing
to shed the blood of those who opposed him, often in the field,
sometimes upon the scaffold. Because he knew how to make his virtues
respected by the ungrateful, he has merited the praises of those whom,
if they had lived in his time, he would have shut up in the Bastile, and
brought to punishment along with the regicides whom he hanged after he
had famished Paris into a surrender.

If these panegyrists are in earnest in their admiration of Henry the
Fourth, they must remember that they cannot think more highly of him
than he did of the noblesse of France,--whose virtue, honor, courage,
patriotism, and loyalty were his constant theme.

But the nobility of France are degenerated since the days of Henry the
Fourth.--This is possible; but it is more than I can believe to be true
in any great degree. I do not pretend to know France as correctly as
some others; but I have endeavored through my whole life to make myself
acquainted with human nature,--otherwise I should be unfit to take even
my humble part in the service of mankind. In that study I could not pass
by a vast portion of our nature as it appeared modified in a country but
twenty-four miles from the shore of this island. On my best observation,
compared with my best inquiries, I found your nobility for the greater
part composed of men of a high spirit, and of a delicate sense of
honor, both with regard to themselves individually, and with regard to
their whole corps, over whom they kept, beyond what is common in other
countries, a censorial eye. They were tolerably well bred; very
officious, humane, and hospitable; in their conversation frank and open;
with a good military tone; and reasonably tinctured with literature,
particularly of the authors in their own language. Many had pretensions
far above this description. I speak