die of hunger, consigns their mothers
to the same fate, but aggravated by remorse and by the spectacle of
their perishing infants! These clamours could not penetrate to the
Louvre, but they penetrated to a higher court, and were written in books
from which there is no erasure allowed. So much for the vaunted
'generosity' of Henry IV. As to another feature of the chivalrous
character, elegance of manners, let the reader consult the report of an
English ambassador, a man of honour and a gentleman, Sir George Carew.
It was published about the middle of the last century by the
indefatigable Birch, to whom our historic literature is so much
indebted, and it proves sufficiently that this idol of Frenchmen allowed
himself in habits so coarse as to disgust the most creeping of his own
courtiers; such that even the blackguards of a manly nation would revolt
from them as foul and self-dishonouring. Deep and permanent is the
mischief wrought in a nation by false models; and corresponding is the
impression, immortal the benefit, from good ones. The English people
have been the better for their Alfred, that pathetic ideal of a good
king, through a space of now nearly a thousand years. The French are the
worse to this hour in consequence of Francis I. and Henry IV. And note
this, that even the spurious merit of the two French models can be
sustained only by disguises, by suppressions, by elaborate varnishings;
whereas the English prince is offered to our admiration with a
Scriptural simplicity and a Scriptural fidelity, not as some gay legend
of romance, some Telemachus of Fenelon, but as one who had erred,
suffered, and had been purified; as a shepherd that had gone astray, and
saw that through his transgressions the flock also had been scattered.

_XVII. ROME'S RECRUITS AND ENGLAND'S RECRUITS._

Two facts on which a sound estimate of the Roman corn-trade depends are
these: first, the very important one, that it was not Rome in the sense
of the Italian peninsula which relied upon foreign corn, but in the
narrowest sense Rome the city; as respected what we now call Lombardy,
Florence, Genoa, etc., Rome did not disturb the ancient agriculture. The
other fact offers, perhaps, a still more important consideration. Rome
was latterly a most populous city--we are disposed to agree with
Lipsius, that it was four times as populous as most moderns esteem--most
certainly it bore a higher ratio to the total Italy than any other
capita