C5> * n v>\ ■ ■VJp ^ N ; ,# v ^ - .^ -7 *£* ■ ^ oiV %^ KELETH. Printed by J. Darling, Leadenhall-Street, London. ~-£&cn/&irv*i/ CsCk*t/^/ Vide peu> A MlSfKLLASV FOR VA.<'A3IT MTJJVXES. Jrvas like a boy pothering flowers in iht ji, ■/ Earl of Shaftesbury, Ashley Cooper .... 75 Bernadotte ib. Bonaparte ib. Louis XVIII. 77 CONTENTS. Fage Philip the Long . . 77 Amiens * ib. Saint Peter's at Rome 83 Mosaics . . . * 104? Interesting Paintings 107 Italian Scene 1 1 1 Eloquence 116 Vicissitudes 121 Africans . 123 Popular Tumults 125 Dandies, French, in the Sixteenth Century. 129 National Tranquillity 138 Physiology, and the Art of Surgery .... 140 Sketchings in Egypt 144 The Turks 185 Pilgrimage to Jerusalem 186 Jerusalem and the Jews 188 Sketchings of Persia 194 Characteristic Sketches of All Pacha of Ja- nina, Vizier of Epirus 209 Mary Queen of Scotland 238 KELETH, ANECDOTES PERSONAL. :c THERE is perhaps no species of composition more pleasing than that which presents us with personal anecdotes of eminent men, and if its principal charm be in the gratification of our cu- riosity, it is a curiosity at least that has its ori- gin in a virtuous enthusiasm. We are anxious to know all that possibly can be learnt of those who have an honoured place in our memory. Intellectual discoveries, or heroic deeds, though they shed a broad and permanent lustre round the memory of those who have achieved them, yet occupy but a small part of the life of any in- dividual, and we are not only willing, but love to penetrate the dazzling glory, and to discover how the remaining intervals are filled up." Feeling the justness of the above observations of an intelligent writer, the editor of the present B 2 KELETII. small miscellany has arranged, under the article Anecdotes, a selection of a few, which may be deemed personal, as a specimen of a larger and more varied collection it is her intention (circum- stances favouring) to offer to the notice of those who love to trace the dispositions of eminent and remarkable characters, in their unpremedi- tated remarks and voluntary actions, in the calm of domestic intercourse, and the social hours of confidential friendship. The present small col- lection are principally derived from the French history, but in the larger proposed compilation, a wider field will of course be explored. The Edito?\ LOUIS XI. OF FRANCE. Louis the Eleventh of France, that profound and severe politician, and most accomplished dis- simulator, received from the obsequious Court of Rome the title of Most Christian King, which title has been invariably transmitted to his suc- cessors, as Defender of the Faith has been to the English monarchs since Henry the Eighth. How far the French monarch merited the title, it is not our intention to inquire ; we are told he was dreaded by his subjects, whom he continually KELETH. 3- Oppressed, and detested by his neighbours, whom he assiduously deceived; but perhaps the ho- mage which vice almost irresistibly pays to that virtue which it fails to practise, was never more strikingly exemplified than in the instruc- tions this artful monarch drew up for the use of his son, Charles the Eighth. — " The greatest care of a sovereign," he observes, " is to free his subjects from all oppressions, and to take par- ticular care of the widow and orphan. If a prince wishes to lift up his hands pure and spot- less to Heaven, he should be contented with his own domain, and with the old taxes ; he should ever be afraid to raise new imposts, unless in cases of the extremest necessity, and for the good of the state. Princes are not, in general, suffici- ently sensible of the value of friendship ; they should endeavour to have about them persons no less attached to them by personal regard, than by interest. Wjar is a scourge to a nation ; it brings with itself dangers and evils, the destruc- tion of the country, of its inhabitants, and of its wealth. Favours and emoluments were never in- tended for the idle and the indolent, for persons who are useless, and a burthen upon the state." Although the cruelty, perndiousness, and ra- pacity of Louis sufficiently proved he possessed 4 KELETH, not the internal principles of a Christian,, yet he exhibited abundant external marks of devo- tion. " His body," says a cotemporary, " was entirely covered with reliques and scapularies, to which some religious virtue was attached ; and on his hat he always wore a leaden image of the Virgin, to which he paid such singular respect and veneration, that whenever he was about to do any thing wicked, or unjust, he al- ways put it aside. Having, however, committed what acts of injustice or of cruelty he thought fit for his purpose, he assumed it again, and prayed in great confidence to her whose image it represented. Indeed, the last words he was heard to articulate as he was dying, were — ( Notre Dame d'Embrun, ma bonne maitresse, aidez moi." Where shall we find a more deplo- rable instance of the power of superstition to blind the mental view, and to convert the very source of light and wisdom into the darkness of folly and error * ? In reverence to his beloved mistress, he made her Countess of Boulogne sur Mer ; and assign- ed lands near that city for the maintenance of * A lively comment this upon that text — " If the light xvithbi you be darkness, how great is that darkness .'" KELETH. & her image in the cathedral of it, and for cele- brating masses to her honour. " Louis/' says Comines, f< was better edu- cated than the nobility of his kingdom ; for they were only educated to make fools of them- selves in dress and in language ; they possessed no kind of learning whatever. Louis, on the contrary, had a great pleasure in asking and hearing about every thing; he had words at will, and perfectly good natural sense ; of this indeed many instances are recorded/' Louis is said to have been the first King of France qui mettoit les rois hors du page, who made the monarchs of that great country inde- pendent of their nobles. To effect this, he en- couraged trade and manufactures, and those who were occupied in them, often admitting them to his table, and esteeming them much more than the indolent and useless gentlemen , A merchant, whom he had thus distinguished, applied to him for letters tif nobility; Louis immediately granted them, but never afterwards took any notice of him. — " Go your way, Mr. Gentleman," said the shrewd monarch to him ; '■* when I permitted you to sit at my table, I looked upon you as the first man in your condi- b 3 6 KELETH. tion of life ; now that you are become the last, I should act unjustly to my nobility if I conti- nued to do you the same honour." Louis was informed of a magnificent and ex- tensive hospital founded at Beaune in Burgundy, during his life, by Rolin, a financier of that duchy, who had become very rich by his exac- tions. — " It is but right," he observed, " that Rolin, who has made so many persons poor du- ring his life, should build before his death a house to keep them in." Louis was secret in, what he did, and indeed affected the reputation of being skilled in dissi- mulation. He was accustomed to say — " If my hat ' were to know my secret, I would throw it into the fire immediately." This known reserve elicited the remark of a person who, seeing the monarch on horseback, said — " There goes the strongest horse in all France, for he carries on his back the King and all his council." A favourite maxim of Louis was — " The prince who does not know how to dissemble, does not know how to reign ;" but he doubtless lost much of the advantage of the maxim by repeating it incessantly ; for it is justly observ- ed, " Dissimulation cannot be useful to those who are suspected of it f yet it may again be KELETH. 7 said, there are always fresh objects on which to exercise it, and it is generally accompanied by a persuasive insinuation of manner, that throws the persons to be acted upon entirely off their guard. In consequence of the reputation of Louis in this respect, John, King of Arragon, wrote to his son, advising him not to enter into any per- sonal conference with Louis upon some subject of dispute between them. — " I)o you not know," he observes, " that the instant you negotiate with Louis, you will be worsted? His dissi- mulation degenerates often into actual falsehood, from which it is usually separated by a very narrow limit indeed. He is continually intro- ducing into politics that artifice which but rarely supplies their defects, and always disgraces them." The only Latin which Louis would permit his son Charles to be taught, was his favourite maxim, Qui nescit dissimulare, nescit regnare — " He who knows not how to dissemble, knows not how to reign." Philip de Comines, as well as Du Clos, pre- sent us with pictures of the closing scene of this monarch's life, and of his cruelties, which are awful to contemplate, and deeply shaded with horror. 8 KELETH. We learn from them, that lie put to death more than four thousand persons, by different kinds of torture, and without any form of trial. He was frequently present at the execution of his victims, the view of which seemed to excite in him a barbarous joy and triumph. Many of the nobility were, by his command, confined in iron cages, invented by the ministers of his ty- ranny, and carried about like wild beasts ; while others were loaded with heavy and galling fet- ters, with a ring of a peculiar construction for the feet, which received the name of the King's nets. In consequence of these barbarities, when illness threatened dissolution, his conscience be- came in some degree awakened, and a dread of future punishment induced a terrible fear of death. He became suspicious of every one, not excepting his own son, his daughter, and his son-in-law, the Lord Beaujeu, subsequently Duke of Bourbon, though in the two last he reposed more confidence than in any other person. Af- ter repeatedly changing the place of his residence, on pretence that nature delights in variety, and his health required it, he took up his abode at the castle of Plessis-les-Toicrs, which he order- ed to be encompassed with large bars of iron, in the form of a grate, with four watch-towers KELETH. 9 of iron at the four corners of the building. These grates were without the wall,, on the far- ther side of the ditch, and went to the bottom ; spikes of iron, set as thick as possible, were fast- ened into the wall, and cross-bow men were placed in the ditches and in the watch-towers to shoot at any man who dared to approach the cas- tle till the opening of the gate. This was ne- ver done, nor the drawbridge let down, before eight in the morning, when the courtiers were permitted to enter. Through the day the captains were ordered to guard their several posts, with a main guard in the middle of the court, as in a town closely besieged. Nor was this all. Every secret of medicine, every allurement of sense, and every invention of superstition, were exhausted to protract the tyrant's miserable existence, and set at a distance the ills he feared. The Pope sent him the vest worn by St. Peter when he said mass — the sa- cred phial was brought from Rheims to re-an- noint him; and he invited a holy hermit from Calabria, at whose feet he kneeled, and whose intercession with Heaven he attempted to pur- chase by building him two convents* The most beau tiful country girls and youths were procured 10 KELETH. to dance before hini to the sound of music ; and he paid his physician, whom he feared, the enor- mous sum of ten thousand crowns a-month; while the blood of infants, it is even said, was shed, with a view of softening, by its adminis- tration, the acrimony of his scorbutic humours. The horrors of a guilty conscience were aw- fully and forcibly exhibited in the lingering ill- ness and death of this cruel tyrant. Dreadful is the reflection that he was unmindful, till too late, that he was an accountable, as well as an immortal being. Let those who envy the great and the powerful, recollect the temptations to which they are exposed, and be thankful that obscurity preserves them from the danger. DUC DE MONTMORENd. When the Due de Montmorenci was brought to his trial at Thoulouse, for having espoused the cause of the Due d'Orleans, brother to Louis the Thirteenth, and taking up arms against his sovereign, or rather against the faction of his minister Richelieu, he was, contrary to the cus- tom observed with state prisoners in France, placed upon a stool, on a level with the court. When the judges delivered their opinions re- specting the sentence that was to take place upon KELETH. 11 the distinguished culprit, the first to whom the president applied gave his opinion for death, the dreadful, but justly deserved punishment of him who appears in arms against his sovereign ; •the rest, one by one, rose from their seats, un- covered their heads, but said nothing, too plain- ly evincing, by their mournful silence, the cruel necessity they were under to dispense the rigid sentence of the law, however at variance with their wishes and affections. The Chancellor Segnier, Richelieu's minion, and who had been brought up by the father of the Due, presided at this tribunal (it is said) at his own particu- lar desire. On his asking the Due, in the usual form of French criminal procedure — ec What was his name ?" the Due replied — " I am sure, Sir, you ought to know it,, who have so long eaten the bread of our house." Montmorenci appear- ed much affected when it was asked if he had any children ; but in respect to every other ques- tion, his answers were as brief as possible. He exonerated several of his friends from all parti- cipation in his crime, saying, he signed with his own hand the agreement with the States of Lan- guedoc. Soon after his condemnation, the King sent for his Marshal's staff, and the collar of the order of the Holy Ghost. These distinguished 12 KELETH. marks of the sovereign's favour., and of the Due's merit, were brought to Louis while he was playing at chess. The Due de Liancourt, and all the persons of rank who were in the room with Louis, burst into tears. " Sire/' said M. de Charlus, who was sent to the Due by the King, " behold the collar of the order, and the Marshal's staff, which I present you on the part of the unfortunate Due de Montmorenci. He has given me in charge, Sir, to assure your Majesty, that he dies under the deepest impression of sorrow for hav- ing offended you; and that so far from com- plaining of the sentence which has condemned him to die, he thinks it bears no proportion to the enormity of the crime of which he has been guilty." Having said this, M. De Charlus fell at the knees of the King, and bursting into tears, said — ' e Ah, sire ! pardon M. De Montmorenci ! His ancestors have been such good servants to your predecessors ! — Pardon him, sire, pardon him !" At this instant every person in the apartment (and it happened to be extremely crowded), men and women, as if impressed with one in- stantaneous impulse, fell upon their knees, cry- ing — (c Sire, for God's sake, pardon M. De Mont- morenci !" KELETH. 13 Louis, at this dreadful and affecting scene, ap- peared totally unmoved. — " No," said he, rais- ing his voice, " M. De Montmorenci must not be pardoned. There cannot possibly be any par- don for him. You ought not to be sorry to see a person die, who has so well deserved to die as M. De Montmorenci. The only favour that I can grant him is, that the executioner shall not tie his hands, and that he shall only behead him." When this was made known to the Due, his surgeon (M. De Lucante), who came to him to cut off his hair, to prepare him for his execution, fell into a swoon by the side of his beloved master. " Ah ! poor Lucante," said the Due, Charles was educated in a very private man- ner ; none but his domestics were permitted to approach him. When he ascended the throne of France, he attempted to supply the defects of his education, applying himself particularly to the study of history, and even endeavoured to become acquainted with the Latin language, one single maxim only of which his father suffered him to be taught. Of all conquests, that of self is justly said to be the most noble. There is an anecdote re- lated of Charles, which is highly honourable to him as a sovereign and a man, distinguished for his attachment to the fair sex. Being at a vil- lage called Ast, he found, on retiring to his apartment, a young creature of great beauty, whom his obsequious courtiers had procured to administer to his pleasures. The young woman, bathed in tears, assured KELETH. 19 the monarch that extreme poverty had induced her parents to accept a sum of money from his domestics, and she conjured him, as the father of his people, to preserve her honour. " The King restored her inviolate to her friends, and gave her a portion, for an union suitable to her rank in life. It is acts like these that constitute true greatness. A singular accident terminated the life of this amiable monarch. He had retired from the fa- tigues of court to his favourite castle of Am- boise, accompanied by his Queen, Anne of Brit- tany. From a gallery he was engaged in view- ing a game of tennis, that was played in the ditch below, and desirous that the Queen might partake of the amusement, he went to her cham- ber, and conducted her to the gallery ; but in passing through a door, he struck his head vio- lently against the top, which was very low. He felt however no immediate ill consequences from the accident, and was conversing with his confessor, the Bishop of Angers, when he sud- denly fell back in an apoplectic fit. The at- tendants, alarmed at his danger, laid him on a couch, which stood in the corner of the gallery. Thrice he recovered his voice, and as quickly lost it again; his expressions were solely those of 20 KELETH. devotion; and notwithstanding every effort of medicine., he expired at eleven o'clock on the same night,, in the fifteenth year of his reign, and the twenty-eighth of his age. His funeral obsequies were performed with uncommon magnificence. Two of his domestics are stated to have died of grief for the loss of their beloved master ; and Anne, his widow, abandoned herself to all the distraction of sorrow. During two days she secluded herself in a part of her chamber, overwhelmed with despair, deaf to the friendly importunities of her attendants, and re- solutely refusing to accept the nourishment that was repeatedly proffered to her. CHARLES IX. Had not the evil genius of his ambitious mother perverted the mind and governed the actions of this prince, he possessed qualities which might have yielded the fruits of usefulnesss and happi- ness to himself, and those over whom he was called to govern. Although independent of the spirit of fanaticism, which led him to the com- mission of so many crimes, he seemed to have possessed a naturally cruel disposition. One of his most favourite amusements was to cut off f KELETH. -§1 the head of some large animal at one stroke of his sword. He was extremely fond of field exercises, and even wrote a treatise upon them, entitled, " Chasse Royale, par Charles IX." He was not fond of literature, but occasion- ally wrote very good verses himself. A copy of verses was addressed by him to Rousand the poet, in which, in a very elegant manner, the empire of the poet over the minds of men is pre- ferred to that of the monarch over their bodies. Charles was only eleven years old when he was crowned. His mother, Catherine of Me- decis, mentioning her apprehensions that the fa- tigue of the ceremony might perhaps be too much for him, he replied — (i Madam, I will very willingly undergo as much fatigue, as often as you have another crown to bestow upon me." He evidenced a spirit fit to govern, when he said one day of himself to his mother, who wish- ed to retain him in subjection to her will — " I will no longer be kept in a box, like the old jewels of the crown." This prince was generous, particularly to men of genius. He pensioned and gave bene- fices to Amiot, the celebrated translator of Plu- tarch; who had been his tutor. \ One of his max- 22* KELET1I. ims was, that a king should be continually giving, and that all the money in the kingdom came to kings as small rivers fall into the ocean ; they should again distribute it in different channels. He was a great mechanic. He had a forge built near his palace at Fontainbleau, where it is stated by his historian, Brantome — " I have seen him hammer out guns, horseshoes, and other things in iron, as well as the strongest and most expert smith." He was fond also of coining money. Having shewn one day some coin of his making to the Cardinal of Lorraine, " Sire," said the latter, " how happy it is for you, that you carry al- ways your own pardon about you !" In bad weather, Charles was accustomed to send for the poets that were about his court, and retire with them to his closet, where he would amuse himself with them. HENRY IV. Perhaps no prince ever more justly deserved the honourable appellation of the " Father of his people," than this monarch. " Henry," ob- served Voltaire, " learned to rule by being in the hard school of adversity." His situation, from early to middle life, had been a succession KELETII. 23 of ddhger, exertion, toil, and difficulty. This better fitted him for the arduous task of reign- ing, by making him acquainted with every cir- cumstance incident to humanity, giving him sympathy in the miseries of others, from having been exposed to them himself. But Henry partook largely of the frailty of man ; nor is it consistent with a regard to vir- tuous actions, to conceal that he too often devi- ated from her course, and that he suffered the wayward will, and the ill-regulated passions of the man, too often to gain an empire over the prudence and dignity of the monarch. A cloud was thus thrown over his glory, which we must expect will obscure every earthly character. Henry has incurred a general censure, for the warmth with which he pursued, and the indiscretion with which he encouraged and countenanced, the fatal rage for gaming, and its companion duelling. He once however suffered a rebuke on the former vice, which the event proved he keenly felt, although he did not re- sent it. He had lost at play a considerable sum of money, indeed so considerable, that it was said to be sufficient to have retaken Amiens from the Spaniards. M. De Sully, his uncorrupt and faithful minis- 24 KELETH. ter, suffered Henry to send three or four times for it. At last he brought it to the King, when he was at the Arsenal near Paris, and laid it all upon the table before him, in the principal apart- ment of that fortress. Henry fixed his eyes upon it for some time, then, turning to Sully, said — (C I am corrected ; I shall never lose any sum of money again as long as I live." Happy the king who finds a faithful friend, fearless in truth, in his minister ! The penetrating Catherine of Medecis early perceived the disposition of this prince. She said of him, when only seven years old —