thought of Pierre Corneille,* which had given edge to the polished
weapon of Boileau, which had lavished over the bright page of
Moliere,--Moliere, more wonderful than all--a knowledge of the humours
and the hearts of men, which no dramatist, save Shakspeare, has
surpassed. Within those walls still glowed, though now waxing faint and
dim, the fame of that monarch who had enjoyed, at least till his later
day, the fortune of Augustus unsullied by the crimes of Octavius. Nine
times, since the sun of that monarch rose, had the Papal Chair received
a new occupant! Six sovereigns had reigned over the Ottoman hordes!
The fourth emperor since the birth of the same era bore sway over
Germany! Five czars, from Michael Romanoff to the Great Peter, had
held, over their enormous territory, the precarious tenure of their iron
power! Six kings had borne the painful cincture of the English crown;**
two of those kings had been fugitives to that court; to the son of the
last it was an asylum at that moment.


* Rigidly speaking, Corneille belongs to a period later than that of
Louis XIV., though he has been included in the era formed by that
reign.--ED.


** Besides Cromwell; namely, Charles I., Charles II., James II., William
and Mary, Anne, George I.


What wonderful changes had passed over the face of Europe during that
single reign! In England only, what a vast leap in the waste of events,
from the reign of the first Charles to that of George the First! I
still lingered, I still gazed, as these thoughts, linked to one another