ENGLAND AND HER CRITICS. 511 



of the first Francis ; a court which, in the estimation of historians, 

 incurably infected the general morals of his country ; let him look 

 upon the throne, and shudder at the shameful cause which terminated, 

 at the age of fifty-two, the regal libertine's career. Let the Count 

 Achilles look to the amours of his successor: how many natural 

 children had the monarch then upon the throne ? had he issue by less 

 than three notorious connexions ? and what can be advanced by Count 

 Achilles in extenuation of that slavish and immoral passion, to which, 

 in the meridian of his life, he sacrificed the interests and glory of his 

 country and himself? 



Let our censorious Count Achilles look again to the throne as oc- 

 cupied by the last of the Valesian line, when corruption and depravity 

 had gained so odious an ascendant that the monarch was exclusively 

 controlled by players, minions, and Italian harlots. 



What thinks the Count Achilles of the gross impurities of Mar- 

 garet, the queen and wife of the good Henry ? And much as we ad- 

 mire that frank and gallant prince, we recommend the Count, who 

 levels his reproaches at the British throne, to read the histories of 

 Gabrielle d'Estrees, of Henriette de Balzac d'Entraques, of Jacque- 

 line de Bluil, of Charlotte des Essarts. How many children had the 

 good and gallant Henry springing from his wanton intercourse? 

 Why, eight at least. 



Let the Count relate the influence of courtezans on that nefarious 

 regency, when Orleans and Dubois dispensed the secret rigours of the 

 state, and put at the disposal of the wanton and debauched, their in- 

 struments of sensual pleasure, the very property and freedom of the 

 nation indiscriminately. Let him pass to the disgusting annals of 

 the prostitution of the court of Louis XV., the Pompadours, Du 

 Barris, .the Pare au Cerfs, when, according to the remark of an in- 

 dignant writer, " the nation was chained to the car of a prostitute, who 

 decided alike the fate of princes and of nations, of the exalted and the 

 low/' So much for the unsullied throne of France ! Now, let the 

 Count inform us, in what portion of our history he finds these usurpa- 

 tions of the strumpet on the royal power or popular endurance. The 

 depravity of Charles II., originated as it was by foreign education, 

 can hardly come within the scope of this impeachment ; though he is 

 | welcome to the censure of a libertine so thoroughly un-English, and 

 will hardly fail, while penning the reproaches of one abandoned 

 British king, to write a doubly-cutting commentary on a dozen of his 

 own. Encore, my lord, 



" Disciple d'Epicure, airaes tu les banquets 

 Ou le bon gout preside, et les jouyeux couplets, 

 Va chercher ailleurs ; fuis des tables Britannique, 

 Les mets lourds, les vins forts et les propos cyniques ; 

 Les convives epais et leurs toasts a foison, 

 Leur ivresse plus triste encor que leur raison 

 Garde toi dans le vin d'exciter leur colere ! 

 L'Anglais montre aussitot son brutal charactere, 

 II vient, fermant les poings, t'attaquer, te vexer 

 Et tu dois tout souffrir, si tu ne sais boxer." 



On the epicurean point in the above quotation, we are strongly of 



