“ The reign of Louis XIV is the time to which ultra-royalists refer as the golden age of France. It was, in truth, one of those periods which shine with an unnatural and delusive splendor. Concerning Louis XIV himself, the world seems at last to have formed a correct judgment. He was not a great general; he was not a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the word, a great king. Never was there so consummate a master of what our James I would have called kingcraft—of all those arts which most advantageously display the merits of a prince and most completely hide his defects. ”

“ In the latter years of Queen Anne the shadow of Cromwell fell darkly across the path of Marlborough. To those who prefer the violent methods of a reforming despotism to the slow process of parliamentary amelioration, to those who despise the wisdom of following public opinion and respecting the prejudices and the associations of a nation, there can be no better lesson than is furnished by the history of Cromwell. Of his high and commanding abilities it is not here necessary to speak, nor yet of the traits of magnanimity that may, no doubt, be found in his character. ”

“ Serious as his purpose was, his manners were genial, and even courtly; he turned easily from an invective against Strafford to a chat with Lady Carlisle; and the grace and gayety of his social tone, even when the care and weight of public affairs were bringing him to the grave, gave rise to a hundred silly scandals among the prurient royalists. It was this striking combination of genial versatility with a massive force in his nature which marked him out from the first moment of power as a born ruler of men. He proved himself at once the subtlest of diplomatists and the grandest of demagogues. ”

“ But the greatness of the queen rests above all on her power over her people.
We have had grander and nobler rulers, but none so popular as Elizabeth. The passion of love, of loyalty, of admiration, which finds its most perfect expression in the “Faery Queen,” throbbed as intensely through the veins of her meanest subjects. To England, during her reign of half a century, she was a virgin and a Protestant queen; and her immorality, her absolute want of religious enthusiasm, failed utterly to blur the brightness of the national idea. Her worst acts broke fruitlessly against the general devotion. ”

“ On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age. As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe. A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood, and this was, perhaps, in the eyes of humanity, his principal virtue. “Time and myself are two,” was a frequent observation of Philip, and his favorite general considered the maxim as applicable to war as to politics. Such were his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. ”

“ For thirty years the glory and bulwark of the Greek empire, his genius for war has been rarely surpassed, and the field of his triumphs extended from Persia to Italy and Northern Africa. In spite of his priceless services to his sovereign, the envious and treacherous Justinian was careful to deprive him of power and place, when the empire could spare his genius at the head of its armies. His name has become a synonym for loyalty that no ingratitude could shake. ”

“ He cultivated the attachment of men of letters, the favor of the commons, and the sympathy of all French idolaters of the national glory.
He was a man of extensive, if not of profound, learning, a theologian of some account, and an aspirant for fame as a dramatist, a wit, a poet, and a historian. But if his claims to admiration as a writer were disputable, none contended his title to applause as a patron of literature and of art. The founder of a despotism in the world of politics, he aspired also to be the founder of a commonwealth in the world of letters. ”

“ Of the soldier’s great virtues—constancy in disaster, devotion to duty, hopefulness in defeat—no man ever possessed a larger share. He arrived, through a series of reverses, at a perfect victory. He planted a free commonwealth under the very battery of the Inquisition, in defiance of the most powerful empire existing. He was, therefore, a conqueror in the loftiest sense, for he conquered liberty and a national existence for a whole people. The contest was long, and he fell in the struggle, but the victory was to the dead hero, not to the living monarch. ”

“ A man, nevertheless, who will glare fiercely on any object, and see through it and conquer it; for he has intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles, but with an eye! Unhappily without decalogue, moral code, or theorem of any fixed sort, yet not without a strong living soul in him, and sincerity there; a reality, not an artificiality, not a sham! And so he, having struggled “forty years against despotism,” and “made away with all formulas,” shall now become the spokesman of a nation bent to do the same. ”

“ There remained of spiritual conviction only the common and human sense of justice and morality; and out of this sense some ordered system of government had to be constructed, under which quiet men could live and labor and eat the fruit of their industry. Under a rule of this material kind there can be no enthusiasm, no chivalry, no saintly aspirations, no patriotism of the heroic type. It was not to last forever. A new life was about to dawn for mankind.
Poetry and faith and devotion were to spring again out of the seeds which were sleeping in the heart of humanity. ”

“ The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestions of the understanding or the fancy would be felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labor of thought would expire in rapture and vision ”

“ It is only through the stray depositions of royal spies that we catch a glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay seething under this silence of a whole people. For the silence was a silence of terror. Before Cromwell’s rise and after his fall from power the reign of Henry VIII witnessed no more than the common tyranny and bloodshed of the time. But the years of Cromwell’s administration form the one period in our history which deserves the name which men have given to the rule of Robespierre. ”

“ His reign is marked by the rare advantage of furnishing very few materials for history; which is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
In private life he was an amiable as well as a good man. The native simplicity of his virtue was a stranger to vanity or affectation. He enjoyed with moderation the conveniences of his fortune and the innocent pleasures of society; and the benevolence of his soul displayed itself in a cheerful serenity of temper. ”

“ If any trace of her sex lingered in her actual statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity of purpose that often underlies a woman’s fluctuations of feeling.
It was this, in part, which gave her her marked superiority over the statesmen of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered round a council-board than those who gathered round the council-board of Elizabeth. But she was the instrument of none. She listened, she weighed, she used or put by the counsels of each in turn, but her policy as a whole was her own. It was a policy not of genius but of good sense. ”

“ Threatened on all sides, Queen Elizabeth bore herself with consummate skill and prudence, and even managed to make herself felt aggressively in continental affairs. The more striking events of her reign were the defeat of the great Spanish Armada, probably the most brilliant and complete sea-victory recorded in history, and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, her rival and captive. Queen Elizabeth’s reign shines as probably the most remarkable known for its intellectual flowering in every branch of human energy. ”

“ Fanaticism for the faith, protection for the oppressed, fidelity to friend or foe, knightly loyalty to a cause deemed sacred, the sacrifice of personal interests to great ideas, generosity of hand and heart—all those qualities which unite with courage and constancy to make up the ideal chevalier, Charles not only lacked but despised. He trampled on the weak antagonist, whether burgher or petty potentate. He was false as water. He inveigled his foes, who trusted to his imperial promises, by arts unworthy an emperor or a gentleman. ”

“ It was that the social affections, if concentrated within a well-defined circle, possess an intensity and endurance unrivaled by those passions of which self is the immediate object. He had the sagacity to perceive that emotions like those with which a Spartan or a Jew had yearned over the land and the institutions of their fathers—emotions stronger than appetite, vanity, ambition, avarice, or death itself—might be kindled in the members of his order; if he could detect and grasp those mainsprings of human action of which the Greek and the Hebrew legislators had obtained the mastery. ”

“ She was of use to him through her various connections at home and abroad as well as by the keen glance of her feminine sagacity and by her knowledge of men. Thus the foremost woman of her age lived in the society of the man whose superiority of mind had placed him at the head of the first city of the Hellenes, in loyal devotion to her friend and husband; and although the mocking spirits at Athens eagerly sought out every blemish which could be discovered in the life of Pericles, yet no calumny was ever able to vilify this rare union and to blacken its memory. ”

“ Skillfully seizing the opportunity of victory, he studiously avoided the chances of defeat; aware that a single disaster would at once endanger his prospects, discourage his countrymen, and strengthen his opponents, he was content to forego many opportunities of earning fame, and stifle many desires to grasp at glory; magnanimously checking the aspirations of genius, he trusted for ultimate success rather to perseverance in a wise, than audacity in a daring course. ”

“ The few broken words we have of him stir the same thrill in men of our day which they stirred in the men of his own. But passionate as was Pitt’s eloquence, it was the eloquence of a statesman, not of a rhetorician. Time has approved almost all his greater struggles, his defense of the liberty of the subject against arbitrary imprisonment under “general warrants,” of the liberty of the press against Lord Mansfield, of the rights of constituencies against the House of Commons, of the constitutional rights of America against England itself. ”

“ It is one of the great advantages of the long practice of free institutions, that it diffuses through the community a knowledge of character and a soundness of judgment which save it from the enormous mistakes that are almost always made by enslaved nations when suddenly called upon to choose their rulers. No fact shows so eminently the high intelligence of the men who managed the American Revolution as their selection of a leader whose qualities were so much more solid than brilliant, and who was so entirely free from all the characteristics of a demagogue. ”

“ His lofty stature surpassed the tallest of his army; his limbs were cast in the true proportion of strength and gracefulness, and to the decline of life he maintained the patient vigor of health and the commanding dignity of his form. His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and beard were long and of a flaxen color, his eyes sparkled with fire, and his voice, like that of Achilles, could impress obedience and terror amid the tumult of battle. In the ruder ages of chivalry such qualifications are not below the notice of the poet or historian. ”

“ If the jealous caprice of power had disappointed his expectations, if he had prudently declined the paths of greatness, the employment of the same talents in studious solitude would have placed beyond the reach of kings his present happiness and his immortal fame. When we inspect with minute, or perhaps malevolent attention the portrait of Julian, something seems wanting to the grace and perfection of the whole figure. His genius was less powerful and sublime than that of Cæsar; nor did he possess the consummate prudence of Augustus. ”

“ I can not, however, regard a politician either as a great statesman or a great party leader who left so very little of permanent value behind him, who offended so frequently and so bitterly the national feelings of his countrymen, who on two memorable occasions reduced his party to the lowest stage of depression, and who failed so signally during a long public life in winning the confidence of the nation. ”

“ Richelieu was one of the rulers of mankind in virtue of an inherent and indefeasible birthright. His title to command rested on that sublime force of will and decision of character by which, in an age of great men, he was raised above them all. It is a gift which supposes and requires in him on whom it is conferred convictions too firm to be shaken by the discovery of any unperceived or unheeded truths. ”

“ Intrusted early in life with high command, and subjected from the first to serious responsibility, he possessed that singleness of heart and integrity of purpose which, even more than talent or audacity, are the foundations of true and moral courage, and the only pure path to public greatness; a sense of duty, a feeling of honor, a generous patriotism, a forgetfulness of self, constituted the spring of all his actions. ”

“ If among the principal traits of his character there is one more prominent than the rest, it is a species of moral intemperance. A prodigy of genius and passion, flung into the chaos of a revolution, his nature unfolds and develops itself therein. He masters that wild confusion, replaces it by his own presence, and displays the energy, audacity, and fickleness of that which he replaced. Succeeding to men who stopped at nothing, either in virtue or crime, in heroism or cruelty, surrounded by men who laid no restraints on their passions, he laid none on his ”

“ A sincere and ardent piety exalted his courage. Equally free from the coarse infidelity which leaves the passions of the barbarian without control; and from the grovelling superstition of Ferdinand, who humbled himself to the dust before the Supreme Being, while he haughtily trampled on his fellow creature—in the height of his success he was ever a man and a Christian; in the height of his devotion a king and a hero. ”

“ The willfulness of Henry, the triviality of Anne Boleyn, played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, Elizabeth lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had no weight whatever with her in state affairs. The coquette of the presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest of politicians at the council-board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, she would tolerate no flattery in the closet ”