posed and no specific employment suggested. In fact, when vigilance appears to sleep, it should be particularly on the alert, in order to discern those tendencies and dispositions which will then most naturally unfold themselves; and because that the heart, being at those seasons less under discipline, will be more likely to betray its native character. And as the regulation of the temper is that part of education on which the whole happiness of life most materially depends, no occasion should be neglected, no indication slighted, no counteraction omitted, which may contribute to accomplish so important an end.

The peculiar defects, not merely such faults as are incident to childhood, but the predominating faults of the individual, should be carefully watched, lest they acquire strength through neglect, when they might have been diminished by a counteracting force. If the temper be restless, ardent, and impetuous, weariness and discontent will, hereafter, fill up the dreary intervals between one animating scene and another, unless the temper be subdued and tranquillised by a constant habit of quiet, though varied and interesting occupation. Few things are more fatal to the mind, than to depend for happiness on the contingent recurrence of events, businesses, and diversions, which inflame and agitate it; for as they do not often occur, the intervals which are long are also languid; the enjoyment is factitious happiness; the privation is actual misery.

Reading, therefore, has, especially to a prince,

its moral uses, independently of the nature of the study itself. It brings no small gain, if it secure him from the dominion of turbulent pursuits and agitating pleasures. If it snatch him, on the one hand, from public schemes of ambition and false glory; and if it rescue him, on the other, from the habit of forming petty projects of incessant diversion, the rudiments of a trifling and useless life.

Knowledge, therefore, is often the preservative of virtue; and, next to right habits of sentiment and conduct, the best human source of happiness. Could Louis the Fourteenth have read, probably the edict of Nantz had not been revoked. But a restless temper, and a vacant mind, unhappily lighting on absolute power, present, in this monarch, a striking instance of the fatal effects of ignorance, and the calamity of a neglected education. He had a good natural understanding, loved business, and seemed to have a mind capable of comprehending it. Many of his recorded expressions are neat and elegant. But he was uninstructed upon system; Cardinal Mazarine, with a view to secure his own dominion, having withheld from him all the necessary means of education. Thus, he had received no ideas from books; he even hated in others the learning which he did not himself possess the terms wit and scholar, were, in his mind, terms of reproach; the one as implying satire, the other pedantry. He wanted not application to public affairs; and habit had given him some experience in them. But the apathy which marked his latter years strongly illustrated the infelicity of

an unfurnished mind. This, in the tumult of his brighter days, amidst the succession of intrigues, the splendour of festivity, and the bustle of arms, was scarcely felt. But ambition and voluptuousness cannot always be gratified. Those ardent passions, which in youth were devoted to licentiousness, in the meridian of life to war, in a more advanced age to bigotry and intolerance, not only had never been directed by religion, but had never been softened by letters. After he had renounced his mistresses at home, and his unjust wars abroad, even though his mind seems to have acquired some pious tendencies, his life became a a scene of such inanity and restlessness, that he was impatient at being, for a moment, left alone. He had no intellectual resources. The agitation of great events had subsided. From never having learned either to employ himself in reading or thinking, his life became a blank, from which he could not be relieved by the sight of his palaces, his gardens, and his aqueducts, the purchase of depopulated villages and plundered cities.

Indigent amid all his possessions, he exhibited a striking confirmation of the declaration of Solomon, concerning the unsatisfying nature of all earthly pleasures; and showed, that it is in vain even for kings to hope to obtain from others those comforts, and that contentment, which man can derive only from within himself.

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CHAP. IV.

THE EDUCATION OF A SOVEREIGN A SPECIFIC .EDUCATION.

THE formation of the character is the grand object to be accomplished. This should be considered to be not so much a separate business, as a sort of centre to which all the rays of instruction should be directed. All the studies, it is presumed, of the royal pupil, should have some reference to her probable future situation. Is it not, therefore, obviously requisite that her understanding be exercised in a wider range than that of others of her sex; and that her principles be so established, on the best and surest foundation, as to fit her at once for fulfilling the peculiar demands, and for resisting the peculiar temptations of her station? Princes have been too often inclined to fancy, that they have few interests in common with the rest of mankind, feeling themselves placed by Providence on an eminence so much above them. But the great aim should be, to correct the haughtiness which may attend this superiority, without relinquishing the truth of the fact. Is it not, therefore, the business of those who have the care of a royal education, not so much to deny the reality of this distance, or to

diminish its amount, as to account for its existence, and point out the uses to which it is subservient?

A prince is an individual being, whom the hand of Providence has placed on a pedestal of peculiar elevation; but he should learn, that he is placed there as the minister of good to others; that the dignity being hereditary, he is the more manifestly raised to that elevation, not by his own merit, but by providential destination; by those laws, which he is himself bound to observe with the same religious fidelity as the meanest of his subjects. It ought early to be impressed, that those appendages of royalty, with which human weakness may too probably be fascinated, are intended not to gratify the feelings, but to distinguish the person of the monarch; that, in themselves, they are of little value; that they are beneath the attachment of a rational, and of no substantial use to a moral, being; in short, that they are not a subject. of triumph, but are to be acquiesced in for the public benefit, and from regard to that weakness of our nature, which subjects so large a portion of every community to the influence of their imagination and their senses.

While, therefore, a prince is taught the use of those exterior embellishments, which, as was before observed, designate, rather than dignify, his station; while he is led to place the just value on every appendage which may contribute to give him importance in the eyes of the multitude; who, not being just judges of what constitutes true dignity, are consequently apt to reverence the royal person