divines.  It was fortunate that revolutionary passions should have raged in the bosoms of Christians rather than of infidels,—­of men who believed in obedience to a personal God, rather than men who teach the holiness of untutored impulse, the infallibility of majorities, and the majesty of the unaided intellect of man.  And then who can estimate the value of Cromwell’s experience on the patriots of our own Revolution?  His example may even have taught the great Washington how dangerous and inconsistent it would be to accept an earthly crown, while denouncing the tyranny of kings, and how much more enduring is that fame which is cherished in a nation’s heart than that which is blared by the trumpet of idolatrous soldiers indifferent to those rights which form the basis of social civilization.

AUTHORITIES.

Bulstrode’s Memoirs; Ludlow’s Memoirs; Sir Edward Walker’s Historical Discourses; Carlyle’s Speeches and Letters of Oliver Cromwell; Macaulay’s Essays; Hallam’s Constitutional History; Froude’s History of England; Guizot’s History of Cromwell; Lamartine’s Essay on Cromwell; Forster’s Statesmen of the British Commonwealth; Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion; Hume and Lingard’s Histories of England; Life of Cromwell, by Russell; Southey’s Protectorate of Cromwell; Three English Statesmen, Goldwin Smith; Dr. Wilson’s Life of Cromwell; D’Aubigne’s Life of Oliver Cromwell; Articles in North American, North British, Westminster, and British Quarterlies on Cromwell.

LOUIS XIV.

A.D. 1638-1715.

THE FRENCH MONARCHY.

The verdict of this age in reference to Louis XIV. is very different from that which his own age pronounced.  Two hundred years ago his countrymen called him Le Grand Monarque, and his glory filled the world.  Since Charlemagne, no monarch had been the object of such unbounded panegyric as he, until Napoleon appeared.  He lived in an atmosphere of perpetual incense, and reigned in dazzling magnificence.

Although he is not now regarded in the same light as he was in the seventeenth century, and originated no great movement that civilization values,—­in fact was anything but a permanent benefactor to his country or mankind,—­yet Louis XIV. is still one of the Beacon Lights of history, for warning if not for guidance.  His reign was an epoch; it was not only one of the longest in human annals, but also one of the most brilliant, imposing, and interesting.  Whatever opinion may exist as to his inherent intellectual greatness, no candid historian denies the power of his will, the force of his character, and the immense influence he exerted.  He was illustrious, if he was not great; he was powerful, if he made fatal mistakes; he was feared and envied by all nations, even when he stood alone; and it took all Europe combined to strip him of the conquests which his generals made, and to preserve the “balance of power”