of the
United States; but the lives of such men as Caesar, Cromwell, and
Napoleon, furnish very great subjects for the pen of the philosophical
historian, since great controlling influences emanated from them,
rather than from the people whom they ruled.

[Sidenote: His Power and Resources.]

Louis XIV. was not a great general, like Henry IV., nor a great
statesman, like William III., nor a philosopher, like Frederic the
Great, nor a universal genius, like Napoleon; but his reign filled the
eyes of contemporaries, and circumstances combined to make him the
absolute master of a great empire. Moreover, he had sufficient talent
and ambition to make use of fortunate opportunities, and of the
resources of his kingdom, for his own aggrandizement. But France,
nevertheless, was sacrificed. The French Revolution was as much the
effect of his vanity and egotism, as his own power was the fruit of
the policy of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin. By their labors in the
cause of absolutism, he came in possession of armies and treasures.
But armies and treasures were expended in objects of vain ambition,
for the gratification of selfish pleasures, for expensive pageants,
and for gorgeous palaces. These finally embarrassed the nation, and
ground it down to the earth by the load of taxation, and maddened it
by the prospect of ruin, by the poverty and degradation of the people,
and, at the same time, by the extravagance and insolence of an
overbearing aristocracy. The aristocracy formed the glory and pride of
the throne and both nobles and the throne fell, and great was the fall
thereof.

Our notice of Louis XIV. begins, not with his birth, but at the time
when he resolved to be his own prime minister, on the death of
Cardinal Mazarin, (1661.)

Louis XIV. was then twenty-three years of age--frank, beautiful,
imperious, and ambitious. His education had been neglected, but his
pride and selfishness had been stimulated. During his minority, he had
been straitened for money by the avaricious cardinal; but avaricious
for his youthful master, since, at his death, besides his private
fortune, which amounted to two hundred millions of livres, he left
fifteen millions of livres, not specified in his will, which, of
course, the king seized, and thus became the richest monarch of
Europe. He was married, shortly before the death of Mazarin, to the
Infanta Maria Theresa, daughter of Philip IV., King of Spain. But,
long before his marriage, he had