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In Malmaison the first consul laid aside his gravity; there his gloomy brow brightened, and he became again General Bonaparte, the lover of his Josephine, the confidential companion of his friends, the harmless individual, who seemed to have nothing to require from Heaven but the happiness of the passing hour, and who could laugh at a joke with the same guilelessuess as any other child of the people who never deemed it necessary to cultivate a close intimacy with the grave and gloomy Madame Politique.
He did not hesitate to rebuke the gross profligacy of the life of Louis XIV., and although neither he nor any of the other Catholic divines of his age seriously protested against the wars of pure egotism and ostentation which made that sovereign the scourge of Europe and brought down upon his people calamities immeasurably greater than the faults of his private life although, indeed, he has spoken of those wars in language of rapturous and unqualified eulogy he had at least the grace to devote a chapter of his 'Politique tirée de l'Écriture Sainte' to the theme that 'God does not love war. But in the eyes of Bossuet the dominant fact in the life of Louis XIV. was the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the savage persecution of the Huguenots, and this was sufficient to place him among the best of sovereigns.
One of these gives a very delightful example of the English and American habit of applying a "get- civilisation-quick" system for the native inhabitants of any country into which they penetrate. Strachey's book, which was reprinted by the Hakluyt Society, was entitled "Articles, Lawes and Orders, Divine, Politique, and Martiall, for the Colony of Virginia," and was printed in 1610.
But this is no Body Politique, there being no Common Representative to oblige them to any other Law, than that which is common to all other subjects. The End of their Incorporating, is to make their gaine the greater; which is done two wayes; by sole buying, and sole selling, both at home, and abroad.
Accustomed to look out of themselves for a law of action, to consult authority upon every occasion, to defer to official sources for guidance in every detail of municipal and personal affairs, the lesson of self-dependence, the courage and the knowledge needful for efficiency are wanting. "Savez-vous," asks an epicure, "ce qui a chasse la gaite? C'est la politique."
When Humboldt relates the story, in his New Spain, he seems incredulous about this; but since the Essai Politique was written the same thing has been regularly done by the Indians, as the merest matter of business, until the crater has been fairly worked out. We took our last look at Mexico from the ridge of the crater, and, descending twenty feet at a stride, soon reached the bottom of the cone.
He himself often resembled Lady Bolingbroke's Lively description of Pope; that 'he was un politique aux choux et aux raves. He would say, 'I dine to-day in Grosvenor-square; this might be with a Duke: or, perhaps, 'I dine to-day at the other end of the town: or, 'A gentleman of great eminence called on me yesterday. He loved thus to keep things floating in conjecture: Omne ignotum pro magnifico est.
In Paris, if one of us passing, on Friday, Oct. 9, in the Rue d'Edimbourg, to an office of the Societe d'Economie Politique, situated at No. 14, had passed near to that address, he might have been murdered by a bomb thrown from one of your Taubes on the civil population of a town whose bombarding had not been notified.
Description Geographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique, et Physique de la Chiné et de Tartarie Chinoise. Par Duhalde. Le Hague, 1736, 4 vols. 4to. Of this work there is an English translation.
The juniors to-day make fun of it, it is true, and greet each other daily with the salutation, "La situation politique est tres grave," and laugh at the good words. But it is grave notwithstanding the laughter.
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