it was more restrained. I have seen many things that were then written, by the victims in their exile, and many of the productions of their priests. Independence, revolt, and hatred, could not have used a more violent language; nor was there one of these philippics that was not clandestinely circulated in France, not only among the protestant congregations, but among the discontented of every state and faith, whose number was very considerable. A treasury totally exhausted, the consequence of protracted wars, and fictitious expences; a debt of nearly three milliards of livres; excessive imposts, and a series of years in which the receipts were four fifths less than the expenditure; loans, by which the King received eight millions, and acknowledged a debt of thirty-two; and, finally, to make up the long catalogue of disastrous circumstances, nature added her rigours, and the scourge of famine augmented the terrors of bankruptcy, and the miseries of indigence; this concourse of calamities soon substituted impatience of oppression, for the extravagant submission of idolatrous veneration. It is a melancholy truth to record, that, in spite of the heroic manner in which Louis the Great died, his funeral rites were insulted by the testimonies of public joy.

Regency.

Louis XV. It has been said of the Regent who governed France, during the minority of Louis XV. that " he would have been the father of the state if "he had not found debts to liquidate, and "wounds to heal." It ought to be added, “and particularly if the unworthy objects of his "confidence, had not inflicted a deeper wound "in the morals of the country."

It is too true that this Prince, possessing in himself every virtuous qualification that could lay claim to the highest respect, admiration, and affection of Frenchmen, seemed destined to become the prey of corrupt minds. A wretched fatality deprived him of five governors, who, each in his turn, directed those eminent gifts which Heaven had bestowed on the nephew of Louis XIV. to the promotion of the glory and happiness of France*. Of the two tutors that

* The first of these was S. Laurent, and the first, perhaps, in capacity, although he was not so in titled dignity. The next was the Duke of Navailles, who died in 1684; after him came Marshal D'Estrades, in 1686; to him succeeded the Duke of Vieuville, in 1689; and, lastly, the Marquis D'Arcy, in 1694, who is more to be regretted than all the rest, because he possessed the confidence of his pupil, who admired his manners, respected his virtues, honoured his memory, and forgot his lessons.

remained to him, one had already given proof how worthy he was of having so excellent a disposition to cultivate; but the other † shewed himself much more capable of perverting its purity; and thus the evil principle counteracted the good. The Duke of Orleans was humane, frank, generous, heroically brave, as good a soldier as an officer, and of an extensive erudition, which a rare judgment matured and perfected; yet, he suffered all these excellent qualities to be obscured by a double depravity of morals and mind, that corrupted both the Court and the city, and could not fail, sooner or later, to degrade the supreme authority; from this depravity also was produced the first instance of public outrage of religious principle. It was the Duke of Orleans who, after having made a numerous appointment of Bishops, said aloud, "Now it is to be hoped the "Jansenits will be content: I have bestowed all "the bishoprics upon grace, and not one upon "merit." That infamous preceptor, who ought to have been punished as a criminal, for having corrupted his august and excellent pupil, was most profusely remunerated for his services; a procedure, the scandal of which rose in degree with his promotion; first, he was made one of the

Privy Council, then Ambassador to England; next, Archbishop of Cambray, for which, Du Bois, although a married man, took priest's orders immediately, commanding his wife to withdraw herself, and through the means of the Intendant of the Province, procuring the leaf, which contained his marriage, to be torn out of the parish register. Within the two following years the eyes of all Europe beheld Du Bois Archbishop and Duke of Cambray, Governor General of the Posts, Cardinal, and Prime Minister, and enjoying an income of upwards of sixty thousand pounds sterling. It was no uncommon thing to hear a man, who held the reins of government in the French empire, and a prelate invested with the Roman purple, mingling his conversation with oaths when he gave his audiences, and talking, in the palaces of Kings, to women of the greatest respectability, in the same strain as if he had been in his infamous parties, and speaking to the vile objects of his brutal gratifications. He also professed it, as his chief maxim of government, that he had no greater faith in the integrity of one sex than in the virtue of the other; and that, in his opinion, that man was the most honest who best knew how to conceal his knavery. Those noble and virtuous characters, Noailles, d'Aguesseau, and S. Simon, whom the

King had called to his councils just before he died, or the Regent had made choice of immediately after, were driven from the Cabinet, by the son of a village apothecary, to whom hist master himself gave the name of Coquin, when he took him for his minister; and to such an extravagant pitch was this degrading partiality carried, that this Coquin became a member of the Council of Conscience, and was absolutely endeavouring to get himself made Patriarch of France, when a shameful disease, the consequence of his debaucheries, put an end to his life. The man, who was at once his master in the Cabinet, and his pupil in vice, soon followed him; sincerely, but too late, repenting that he had suffered a wretch, whom he had uniformly despised, to gain such ascendancy over his mind; one too, whom he had discovered to be as monstrous in his ingratitude as he was in his other vices, having actually laid a plan to get his too blind protector discarded from the councils of the King as soon as he should be of age to sit on the throne.

Notwithstanding all this prostitution of supreme power, and all those excesses to which it gave birth, no commotions had yet proceeded to so great a length as to grow into sedition,