nage has brought forth no composer of the first order, the cause
may exist in some circumstances of national inaptitude.

"It is necessary to go back some centuries for an English king to whom
he bears the nearest likeness in _ensemble_ of character. The parallel
at first sight may be thought injurious, but the likeness will upon
consideration be found striking and complete. George IV. had in his
youth the eclat of personal endowment, education, and accomplishment,--
of success in the fashionable exercises and graces of his age,--and of
that reckless prodigality which obtains popular homage and applause in a
prince. Henry VIII. in his youth was one of the most brilliant
personages of Europe. A fine person,--the accomplishments of his time in
literature and the arts,--the display of gorgeous prodigality,--raised
him to a sort of chivalrous rivalry with Francis I. In mental culture he
excelled George IV., who owes much of his reputation for capacity and
acquirement to an imposing manner, and the eagerness to applaud a
prince: stripped of this charm, his ideas and language appeared worse
than common when he put them on paper. Both had the same dominant
ambition to be distinguished and imitated, as the arbiters of fashion in
dress for the costliness, splendour, or novelty of their toilet. Henry
VIII. and George IV. surrounded themselves with the men most
distinguished for wit and talent, with a remarkable coincidence of
motive, as ministering to their vanity or pleasures; but as soon as they
became troublesome or useless, both cast them off with the same careless
indifference. Henry VIII., it is true, sacrificed to his own caprices,
or to court intrigue, the lives of those whom he had chosen for his
social familiarity;--whilst George IV. merely turned off his so called
friends, and thought of them no more. But such is the difference between
barbarism and tyranny on the one side, and civilization and freedom on
the other: that which was death in the former, is but court disgrace in
the latter. George IV. was not cruel--he had even a certain
susceptibility; the spectacle of human suffering revolted him: but
suffering to affect him must have been present to his sense. Was Henry
VIII. gratuitously cruel? That does not appear. He took no pleasure for
itself in shedding blood, and avoided being a witness of it. Had he been
obliged to look on whilst Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More were bleeding,
he probably would have spared them.