ost attractive men in his dominions;
intelligence, goodness, courage, beamed from his eyes, and pervaded his
features. You felt the man, admired the king, appreciated the hero.
There was heart in his genius, as there is in all really great men. Well
informed, deeply read, eloquent, he applied all his endowments to the
empire; those whom he had conquered by his courage, he vanquished by his
generosity, and charmed by his language. His faults were display and
pleasure; he liked the glory of those enjoyments and amours which are
found and pardoned in heroes; his vices were those of Alexander, Caesar,
and Henri IV. The revenge of a disgraceful amour had something to do
with the conspiracy which destroyed him; to resemble these great men, he
only wanted their destiny.

When almost a child, he had rescued himself from the tutelage of the
aristocracy; in emancipating the throne, he had emancipated the people.
At the head of an army, recruited without money, and which he
disciplined by its enthusiasm, he conquered Finland, and went on from
victory to victory to St. Petersburgh. Checked in his greatness by a
revolt of his officers, surrounded in his tent by his guards, he had
escaped by flight, and had gone to the succour of another portion of his
kingdom, invaded by the Danes. Again a victor against these deadly
enemies of Sweden, the gratitude of the nation had restored to him his
repentant army; and his sole vengeance was in again leading them to
conquest.

He had subdued all without, tranquillised all within, and had only one
ambition left--disinterested from every consideration but fame--to
avenge the forsaken cause of Louis XVI., and to secure from her
persecutors a queen whom he adored at a distance. This was the vision of
a hero; it had but one mistake--his genius was vaster than his empire.
Heroism with disproportioned means makes the great man resemble an
adventurer, and transforms gigantic designs into follies. But history
does not judge like fortune, and it is the heart rather than success
that makes the hero. The romantic and adventurous character of Gustavus
is still the greatness of a restless and struggling soul in the
pettiness of its destiny. His death excited a shriek of joy amongst the
Jacobins, who deified Ankastroem; but their burst of delight on learning
the end of Gustavus, proved how insincere was their affected contempt
for this enemy of the constitution.

IX.

These two obstacles removed, nothin