nversation or in reading; and he cultivated his natural
talents by study above any prince of his time. His affections, as well
as his enmities, were warm and durable; and his long experience of
the ingratitude and infidelity of men never destroyed the natural
sensibility of his temper, which disposed him to friendship and society.
His character has been transmitted to us by several writers, who were
his contemporaries; and it extremely resembles, in its most remarkable
features, that of his maternal grandfather, Henry I.; excepting only,
that ambition, which was a ruling passion in both, found not in the
first Henry such unexceptionable means of exerting itself, and pushed
that prince into measures which were both criminal in themselves, and
were the cause of further crimes, from which his grandson's conduct was
happily exempted.

This prince, like most of his predecessors of the Norman line, except
Stephen, passed more of his time on the continent than in this island:
he was surrounded with the English gentry and nobility when abroad: the
French gentry and nobility attended him when he resided in England: both
nations acted in the government as if they were the same people; and, on
many occasions, the legislatures seem not to have been distinguished.
As the king and all the English barons were of French extraction, the
manners of that people acquired the ascendant, and were regarded as the
models of imitation. All foreign improvements, therefore, such as they
were, in literature and politeness, in laws and arts, seem now to have
been, in a good measure, transplanted into England and that kingdom was
become little inferior, in all the fashionable accomplishments, to any
of its neighbors on the continent. The more homely but more sensible
manners and principles of the Saxons, were exchanged for the
affectations of chivalry, and the subtilties of school philosophy: the
feudal ideas of civil government, the Romish sentiments in religion,
had taken entire possession of the people: by the former, the sense of
submission towards princes was somewhat diminished in the barons; by
the latter, the devoted attachment to papal authority was much augmented
among the clergy. The Norman and other foreign families established in
England, had now struck deep root; and being entirely incorporated with
the people, whom at first they oppressed and despised, they no longer
thought that they needed the protection of the crown for the enjoymen