Such considerations clouded the mind of Henry at the close of his
glorious career. What had it not cost him to reduce to order the
troubled chaos into which France had been plunged by the tumult of civil
war, fomented and supported by this very Austria! Every great mind
labours for eternity; and what security had Henry for the endurance of
that prosperity which he had gained for France, so long as Austria and
Spain formed a single power, which did indeed lie exhausted for the
present, but which required only one lucky chance to be speedily
re-united, and to spring up again as formidable as ever. If he would
bequeath to his successors a firmly established throne, and a durable
prosperity to his subjects, this dangerous power must be for ever
disarmed. This was the source of that irreconcileable enmity which
Henry had sworn to the House of Austria, a hatred unextinguishable,
ardent, and well-founded as that of Hannibal against the people of
Romulus, but ennobled by a purer origin.

The other European powers had the same inducements to action as Henry,
but all of them had not that enlightened policy, nor that disinterested
courage to act upon the impulse. All men, without distinction, are
allured by immediate advantages; great minds alone are excited by
distant good. So long as wisdom in its projects calculates upon wisdom,
or relies upon its own strength, it forms none but chimerical schemes,
and runs a risk of making itself the laughter of the world; but it is
certain of success, and may reckon upon aid and admiration when it finds
a place in its intellectual plans for barbarism, rapacity, and
superstition, and can render the selfish passions of mankind the
executors of its purposes.

In the first point of view, Henry's well-known project of expelling the