ition of Europe,
and imminent hazard to the independence of all the adjoining states,
from the unmeasured ambition, and vast power of Louis XIV., is not taken
into consideration.

Accustomed as we are to regard the Bourbons as a fallen and unfortunate
race, the objects rather of commiseration than apprehension, and
Napoleon as the only sovereign who has really threatened our
independence, and all but effected the subjugation of the Continent, we
can scarcely conceive the terror with which a century and a half ago
they, with reason, inspired all Europe, or the narrow escape which the
continental states, at least, then made from being all reduced to the
condition of provinces of France. The forces of that monarchy, at all
times formidable to its neighbours, from the warlike spirit of its
inhabitants, and their rapacious disposition, conspicuous alike in the
earliest and the latest times;[4] its central situation, forming, as it
were, the salient angle of a bastion projecting into the centre of
Germany; and its numerous population--were then, in a peculiar manner,
to be dreaded, from their concentration in the hands of an able and
ambitious monarch, who had succeeded for the first time, for two hundred
years, in healing the divisions and stilling the feuds of its nobles,
and turned their buoyant energy into the channel of foreign conquest.
Immense was the force which, by this able policy, was found to exist in
France, and terrible the danger which it at once brought upon the
neighbouring states. It was rendered the more formidable in the time of
Louis XIV., from the extraordinary concentration of talent which his
discernment or good fortune had collected around his throne, and the
consummate talent, civil and military, with which affairs were directed.
Turenne, Boufflers, and Conde, were his generals; Vauban was his
engineer, Louvois and Torcy were his statesmen. The lustre of the
exploits of these illustrious men, in itself great, was much enhanced by
the still greater blaze of fame which encircled his throne, from the
genius of the literary men who have given such immortal celebrity to his
reign. Corneille and Racine were his tragedians; Moliere wrote his
comedies; Bossuet, Fenelon, and Bourdaloue were his theologians;
Massillon his preacher, Boileau his critic; Le Notre laid out his
gardens; Le Brun painted his halls. Greatness had come upon France, as,
in truth, it does to most other states, in all departments at the s