and sagacity of character, with a system of policy so highly refined,
considering the times he lived in, that he sometimes overreached
himself by giving way to its dictates.

Probably there is no portrait so dark as to be without its softer
shades. He understood the interests of France, and faithfully
pursued them so long as he could identify them with his own. He
carried the country safe through the dangerous crisis of the war
termed "for the public good;" in thus disuniting and dispersing this
grand and dangerous alliance of the great crown vassals of France
against the Sovereign, a king of a less cautious and temporizing
character, and of a more bold and less crafty disposition than
Louis XI, would, in all probability, have failed. Louis had also
some personal accomplishments not inconsistent with his public
character. He was cheerful and witty in society; and none was better
able to sustain and extol the superiority of the coarse and selfish
reasons by which he endeavoured to supply those nobler motives for
exertion which his predecessors had derived from the high spirit
of chivalry.

In fact, that system was now becoming ancient, and had, even while
in its perfection, something so overstrained and fantastic in
its principles, as rendered it peculiarly the object of ridicule,
whenever, like other old fashions, it began to fall out of repute;
and the weapons of raillery could be employed against it, without
exciting the disgust and horror with which they would have
been rejected at an early period, as a species of blasphemy. The
principles of chivalry were cast aside, and their aid supplied by
baser stimulants. Instead of the high spirit which pressed every
man forward in the defence of his country, Louis XI substituted the