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scended to posterity, as a warning to her sex of what a woman may become when her heart is unshielded by religion, truth, and gentleness. The dreadful wars she falsely ascribed to religious motives showed that she forgot that He, for whose cause she pretended to fight, is the Prince of Peace, not of War. That policy which she might have made instrumental to a whole nation's welfare, served only to add agency to her natural abilities— abilities which, as misused talents, must be accounted for at a high and impartial tribunal.

A melancholy feeling sheds itself over the mind when retrospecting Catherine's

gency.

re

She stood a queen in power, a queen in will, in appearance, amidst her indolent sons,

a queen

and how did she govern them?

Memory! recall that terrible regency; recall it

as a lesson for posterity; and ye, who question

what a queen can really do, either on the side of virtue or vice, bring to mind the Medici.

A Queen is upon our British throne, a queen with gentle virtues and feminine attributes; she stoops to please, and exalts herself whilst stooping. And, whilst leaving to the lords of the creation the active conjugation of the word Fame, upon her reign the glory will be reflected; for the truest type of a great mind is to encourage those high qualities which our limited strength cannot positively grasp at. A queen need not be a heroine, and yet she may be glorious. That discrimination which awards recompense to the meritorious, reproof to the undeserving; that gentle patience, which rather awaits events than commands war; that religion, which casts the halo of its bounty around the nation she loves: these attributes, Queen Victoria, have made thee beloved, whilst birthright made thee the Queen.

Let, then, those who please, prate of the Salic law, it was not made for such as thou,domestic peace guards thy gentle heart, thy laws inspire thee with deeper virtue than all the intrigue of the most subtle art. And whilst thou shinest like some bright yet tranquil star, the orbs of glory move around thee, and the attractive powers of thy charms are gentleness and love.

But

It is too unfortunately true, that when we bring forward the misfortunes of Louis the Sixteenth of France, the French talk of those of Charles the First of England. England tardily, yet truly, taught the barbarity of its conduct, committed no more similar atrocity. Nor can the two examples bear so close a semblance if they be rightly considered. Charles the First, wrongly taught by his pedantic father, imbibed unconstitutional notions of monarchy; but it is very probable

that, had he had the people only to contend

with, he would have relaxed in his ideas of supremacy. It was not with the people collectively, but the people formed into a refractory body under the Protector, that Charles contended, at first to assert his own limited views of plebeian power, at last to satisfy his roused feelings of pique. And when actually engaged in civil war, the Protector was the hydra for whose life Charles felt so keen a thirst.

"Aut Cæsar, aut nullus," was the Protector's maxim; and Charles, with limited abilities, quickly fell a prey to the powerful man's superior cunning. Nevertheless, we cannot palliate that which must ever be a blot upon English history; Charles the First set law at defiance, and found military power a glorious, but an unsubstantial shadow.

Had Napoleon Bonaparte been actually

plotting during the first disturbances of the state, the case would have been the same as that of Charles and the Protector. But the unhappy Louis seemed imbibed with the Nero wish of beholding all France in the light of an enemy. There was a feeling of moderation in the earliest part of the revolution, which might have served as a lesson to restore the king to his senses; but he mistook the moderation for cowardice, and forgot, that whereas men from the earliest history of the world were endued with a spirit for fighting, policy is an acquired principle, which grows with the world's growth, and cannot be quelled by the man king.

And behold, another monarch,* untaught by example, refusing advice, battling with the very laws he had made, restricting the liberty he had sworn to protect, endeavouring to rule by absolute monarchy, and to convert that

*Charles the Tenth.

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