In some admirable lectures on the Power of the Pen in France, Stephen gives fine portraits of Rabelais, Montaigne, Calvin and Pascal. One remark about Calvin struck us as especially felicitous. Speaking of him as writing his great work in Geneva, he says—“The beautiful lake of that city, and the mountains which encircle it, lay before his eyes as he wrote; but they are said to have suggested to his fancy no images, and to have drawn from his pen not so much as one transient allusion. With his mental vision ever directed to that melancholy view of the state and prospects of our race which he had discovered in the Book of Life, it would, indeed, have been incongruous to have turned aside to depict any of those glorious aspects of the creative benignity which were spread around him in the Book of Nature.”
The most valuable chapters in the volume are perhaps those which relate to the character and government of Louis XIV. The absolute monarchy established by him is thoroughly analyzed. Among many curious illustrations of that tyranny and perfidy which this great master of king-craft systematized into a science, Stephen translates from his “Memoires Historiques” a series of maxims, addressed to the Dauphin, for his guidance whenever he should be called upon to wear the crown of France. Louis’s celebrated aphorism, “I am the state,” is in these precious morsels of absolutism expanded into a rule of conduct. We quote a few of them, as, to republican ears, they may have the effect of witticisms:
“It is the will of Heaven, who has given kings to man, that they should be revered as his vice-regents, he having reserved to himself alone the right to scrutinize their conduct.”
“It is the will of God that every subject should yield to his sovereign on implicit obedience.”
“The worst calamity which can befall any one of our rank is to be reduced to that subjection, in which the monarch is obliged to receive the law from his people.”
“It is the essential vice of the English monarchy that the king can make no extraordinary levies of men or money without the consent of the Parliament, nor convene the Parliament without impairing his own authority.”
“All property within our realm belongs to us in virtue of the same title. The funds actually deposited in our treasury, the funds in the hands of the revenue officers, _and the funds which we allow our people to employ in their various occupations_, are all _equally_ subject to our control.”