principals: so that this intimation was a virtual prohibition of the duel. But it was an indirect sanction of the practice, which had been prohibited by royal edict.

His toleration was not confined to religious matters. He steadily refused to allow the prosecution of hostile speeches or writings, maintaining that the best mode of rendering them harmless was to let them alone. He was as ready to forgive as to own an error, and his clemency was overstrained; for it emboldened men like Biron to calculate on impunity. On being told that an officer of the League whom he had loaded with benefits disliked him as much as ever, he said: 'I will do him so much good as to compel him to love me in his own despite.' It was his favourite maxim that more flies might be taken with a spoonful of honey than with twenty tuns of vinegar. At the earnest and repeated solicitation of the Pope, he consented to the re-establishment of the Jesuits, who were constantly encouraging plots against his life.

When Henry had placed his finances on such a footing as to have a surplus in hand, got together a regular army, and made considerable progress in the work, afterwards completed by Richelieu, of bringing the great feudatories into strict subjection to the crown, he turned his attention to foreign policy; and his grasp of mind is remarkable in the schemes he formed for securing the tranquillity of Europe and the paramount influence of France. He was actuated by no lust of conquest or vulgar ambition. 'Never,' he wrote, for any consideration whatever, will I espouse the defence of an unjust cause.' His grand conception was to form all the European Kingdoms and States into a Confederation or Federal Republic, represented by a council, to resist the advance of the Ottoman Power and administer an equitable system of international law. He was met halfway in this design, if not anticipated, by Queen Elizabeth, who proposed (through Sully) an association for the establishment of the balance of power, which should begin by humbling the House of Austria and confining Spanish dominion within the Pyrenees. On her death, Sully was despatched with a mission to James the First to propose an alliance, defensive and offensive, against Spain, with nearly the same ulterior objects. Finding the English King timid and irresolute, Henry turned to the Protestant princes of Germany, and invited them to co-operate in emancipating the Low Countries. Whilst they were hesitating, the death of the Duke of Cleves and Juliers gave rise to a complication strongly resembling the Schleswig-Holstein imbroglio of 1863. The claims of the regular heirs, the Elector of Brandenburg and

the

the Count of Neuburg, were supported by the Protestant princes; that of the Duke of Saxony by the Emperor, who, as suzerain, arrogated the supreme decision, issued a decree of sequestration, and occupied a portion of the disputed Duchies. Both parties appealed to Henry, who expressed a strong desire to maintain the general peace and a readiness to act as umpire, announcing at the same time, that if the creatures of Austria,' under the pretext of empire, resorted to force, he should at once adopt the cause of the lawful heirs.

It was broadly stated that he had another and less justifiable motive for provoking a war. In his fifty-seventh year he had contracted a violent passion for Mademoiselle de Montmorency; and Bassompierre, who had pretensions to her hand, reports Henry as saying to him, with a deep sigh:

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Bassompierre, I will speak to thee as a friend. I am not only in love, but madly, desperately in love with Mademoiselle de Montmorency. If thou shouldst marry her, I should hate thee: should she love me, thou wouldst hate me. I am resolved to marry her

to my nephew, the Prince of Condé, and to have her in my family: she shall be the comfort and entertainment of my old age, which is coming on. I will give my nephew, who loves hunting a thousand times better than the ladies, a hundred thousand a year to amuse himself with. I shall desire no favour of her but her affection.'

He did marry her to the Prince de Condé, and was so prodigal of wedding presents to the bride and bridegroom that his object was palpable to the least discerning and most charitable of his councillors and Court. The Queen made no secret of her annoyance, and the young husband suddenly awakening to a true sense of his position, took the decided step of placing his wife beyond the reach of her royal admirer; who was at play in his closet with Bassompierre when news was brought that the Prince had crossed the frontier into Flanders with a small retinue, one of whom carried the Princess behind him on horseback. The King flew into a paroxysm of rage and grief, and vowed to get her back at any sacrifice; a vow which he repeated after ample time had been given him to cool down. When he inquired of the Papal nuncio what was thought in Italy of the meditated war, and was plainly told that the Princess was supposed to be the real object, he burst forth with an oath, stronger than his usual ventre saint gris; "Yes, most certainly I do want to have her back, and I will have her back; no one can or shall hinder it, not even God's lieutenant on earth.'

Sully treats the imputation as a calumny; and that the hope of recovering the lady was no more than an incidental incen

tive, may be conceded to him. The length of time during which the war had been in contemplation, and the scale upon which it had been planned, supply ample proof that Henry's main views and objects were worthy of his fame. Their full development and probable justification by results were suddenly arrested by fate.

The prevalent spirit of fanaticism, the constantly recurring plots against his life, and the habitual readiness with which recourse was then had to assassination, may account for many ominous sayings and rumours, but the forebodings and forewarnings, coinciding with the facts, came so thick and fast in this instance, as to afford some semblance of sanction to superstition and credulity. Thomassin, the most celebrated astrologer of the time, told Henry, in November 1609, to beware of the following May. The Queen told him in excuse for her agitation: 'I was dreaming somebody stabbed you with a knife on the staircase.' He had a secret presage which clung to him that he should not survive the coronation of the Queen. Pardieu,' he exclaimed to Sully, after a deep reverie, 'I shall die in this city they will murder me here: I see plainly they have made my death their only resource. It has been predicted to me that I should be killed at the first grand ceremony in which I took part, and that I should die in a coach. Oh, this cursed coronation! it will be my death.'

The coronation, which took place on the 13th of May, went off quietly. On the 17th, being pensive and uneasy, he was recommended to take the air in his coach: as he was getting into it, he dismissed the guards, saying he would have none about him. He was seated on the back with the Duc d'Epernon on his right and two other lords on his left. The coach was stopped by the meeting of two carts in a narrow street off the Rue St. Honoré, where Ravaillac, placing one foot on a spoke of the wheel, stabbed the King with a double-edged knife between the ribs, inflicting a slight wound. The King exclaiming I am wounded,' raised his arm, and left his side unguarded against a second stab, which went directly to the heart. He expired, according to some, without a word, breathing a deep sigh according to others, murmuring: It is nothing."

Ravaillac's account of himself, when interrogated, was that he was born at Angoulême, was between thirty-one and thirtytwo years of age, had been employed in soliciting lawsuits for fourteen years, and had been a lay brother of the Feuillants, whose habit he wore for six weeks. He avowed his chief motive to be that the King had not brought over the Huguenots to the true faith and was about to declare war against the Pope.

He

He said that he had conversed with priests and Jesuits touching the righteousness of his design, but that no one was privy to it. He repeated this assertion under torture, and accepted absolution on the scaffold conditional on its truth.

Henry was killed in the fifty-eighth year of his age, the thirtyeighth of his reign as King of Navarre, and the twenty-first of his reign as King of France. We have already drawn attention to his warlike qualities. To place his superiority as a ruler in broad relief, it is only necessary to contrast the orderly and prosperous state of France when he died, with its distracted and impoverished state when, after his conversion, he practically succeeded to the throne. The marvellous improvement effected in the intervening years was almost exclusively owing to the wise regulations which he originated or enforced. Till he and Sully organized a system of administration, there was nothing worthy of the name. All was confusion, corruption, peculation, exaction, and waste. In apportioning the merit between the Sovereign and the minister, M. Guadet remarks that, 'except in finance, Henry was the head to decide, Sully the arm to execute: that they thoroughly understood each other; Henry doing hardly anything without consulting Sully, and Sully hardly anything except under the inspiration of Henry.' Referring to the letters he received from the King during and subsequently to the expedition to Amiens in 1597, Sully says: I reckoned above three thousand, without taking in those I neglected to preserve or which have been lost through the carelessness of my secretaries.'

Dr. Johnson commends Frederic the Great for being able to tell where a particular bottle of wine was placed in the cellar. The same minute attention, combined with vastness of design, was observed in Henry. He was so extremely exact,' says Sully, 'as to make me give him an account once a week of the money received and the uses it had been put to. He does not omit to remark that, in casting some cannon, they wanted to rob him of a piece.' The only thing he neglected was his own personal comfort and equipment. Once, calling suddenly on his valet de chambre for an account of his wardrobe, he was told that he had only eight shirts, three of which were the worse for wear, and five pocket-handkerchiefs. In a letter already quoted he describes himself as frequently not knowing where to look for a dinner.

Equal justice, and strict obedience to the laws, are the indispensable conditions of national well-being and content. Henry set an excellent example in this respect. When he entered Paris as complete master in 1594, the baggage of one of his principal officers, De la Noue, was seized by the city sergeants

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for debts incurred in the royal service. On the officer complaining, he told him publicly: La Noue, debts must be paid; I make a point of paying mine.' He then drew him aside, and (having no ready money) gave him some precious stones to redeem his baggage. It was traits like this that made him the idol of his people; and the popular instinct was right for they show the soundness of his judgment as well as the goodness of his heart. When press of business interfered with his religious duties, his excuse to the bishops was: When I am working for the public, it seems to me that I leave God for the sake of God.' He said of some dissolute dignitaries of the Church: 'I should gladly do what they preach, but they little think I know all they do.'

His bons mots and repartees abound. A famous Huguenot physician having turned Catholic, he said to Sully : ‘My friend, your religion is very sick the physicians give it over.' He sharply asked a prelate who was discoursing sillily of war, to what saint the day was consecrated in his breviary.

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The spokesman of a deputation was prodigal of such phrases as 'O very benign!' O very magnificent!' O very merciful!' &c. 'Add,' interrupted Henry, and very weary.' Another began: Agesilaus, king of Lacedæmon, Sire,'-' did something extraordinary, no doubt,' continued Henry, but he had dined, and I have not.'

The municipal authorities of Paris having requested permission to levy a temporary rate on the water supply, to defray the expenses of some meditated festivities, he told them: Find some other expedient: it belongs to our Lord alone to turn water into wine.'

His ordinary manner justified the remark of the lady who, after a Court reception, remarked that she had seen the King but not Sa Majesté. But this want or neglect of dignity was far from implying want of delicacy or tact. He writes to Sully: Don't forget the two thousand crowns to M. le Grand (Bellegarde), whom I have told that it was you who reminded me of it, so that he may feel obliged to you: for I wish to make all the world love you as I do.' His passions were naturally violent, but (with one exception) he had obtained the complete mastery of them. There was an occasion when Grillon seemed bent on playing Clytus to his Alexander, and became so extravagantly insolent that it required a strong effort on the King's part to avoid a catastrophe.

Henry was essentially a man of action. The cares of state and the preoccupations of his lighter hours left no time for science or literature. But the bishop claims for him the credit

of