Volume 5 — WITS ABOUT THE THRONE OF LOUIS THE FOURTEENTH.

We copy the following paragraphs from Sir James Stephens's Lectures on the History of France. The illustrious men referred to are of course well known by educated men, but to the masses their names are familiar chiefly from their appearance in the brilliant romances of Dumas.

"The constellation of genius, wit, and learning, in the midst of which Louis shone thus pre-eminently, was too brilliant to be obscured by any clouds of royal disfavor; nor would any man have shrunken with greater abhorrence than himself, from any attempt to extinguish or to eclipse their splendor. He wisely felt, and frankly acknowledged, that, their glory was essential to his own; and he invited to a seat at his table, Moliere the roturier, to whom the lowest of his nobles would have appointed a place among his menial servants. As Francis, and Charles, and Leo, and Julius, and Lorenzo had assigned science, and poetry, and painting, and architecture, and sculpture, as their appropriate provinces, to those great master spirits of Italy, to whom they forbade the culture of political philosophy, so Louis, when he interdicted to the gigantic intellects of his times and country all intervention in the affairs of the commonwealth, summoned them to the conquest of all the other realms of thought in which they might acquire renown, either for him, for France, or themselves. The theatres, the academies, the pulpits, and the monasteries of his kingdom rivalled each other in their zealous obedience to that royal command, and obeyed it with a success from which no competent and equitable judge can withhold his highest admiration. At this day, when all the illusions of the name of Louis are exhausted, and in this country, where his Augustan age has seldom been regarded with much enthusiasm, who can seriously address himself to the perusal of his great tragedians, Corneille and Racine—or of his great comedians, Moliere and Regnard—or if his great poets, Boileau and La Fontaine—or of his great wits, La Rochfaucauld and La Bruyere—or of his great philosophers, Des Cartes and Pascal—or of his great divines, Bossuet and Arnauld—or of his great scholars, Mabillon and Montfaucon—or if his great preachers, Bourdaloue and Masillon—and not confess that no other monarch was ever surrounded by an assemblage of men of genius so admirable for the extent, the variety and the perfection of their powers.

"And yet the fact that such an assemblage were clustered into a group, of which so great a king was the centre, implies that there must have been some characteristic quality uniting them all to each other and to him, and distinguishing them all from the nobles of every other literary commonwealth which has existed among men. What, then, was that quality, and what its influence upon them?

"Louis lived with his courtiers, not as a despot among his slaves, but as the most accomplished of gentlemen among his associates. The social equality was, however, always guarded from abuse by the most punctilious observance, on their side, of the reverence due to his pre-eminent rank. In that enchanted circle men appeared at least to obey, not from a hard necessity, but from a willing heart. The bondage in which they really lived was ennobled by that conventional code of honor which dictated and enforced it. They prostrated themselves before their fellow-man with no sense of self-abasement, and the chivalrous homage with which they gratified him, was considered as imparting dignity to themselves.

"Louis acknowledged and repaid this tribute of courtesy, by a condescension still more refined, and by attentions yet more delicate than their own. The harshness of power was so ingeniously veiled, every shade of approbation was so nicely marked, and every gradation of favor so finely discriminated, that the tact of good society—that acquired sense, which reveals to us the impression we make on those with whom we associate—became the indispensable condition of existence at Versailles and Marly. The inmates of those palaces lived under a law peculiar to themselves; a law most effective for its purposes, though the recompense it awarded to those who pleased their common master was but his smile, and though the penalty it imposed on those who displeased him was but his frown."