Nor did Henry's conduct, when he had taken Paris and conquered the throne, belie the expectations formed by this brilliant dawn of his career. He proved not merely a warrior, but the father of his people. Great projects of amelioration were set on foot--greater still were in preparation, when he perished by the hand of Ravaillac. His celebrated saying, that he "hoped to see the time when every peasant should have his fowl in his pot," reveals the paternal spirit of his government. It is vain to say these were the acts of his ministers; that Sully was the real sovereign. The answer of Queen Elizabeth, when the success of her reign was imputed to the capacity of her ministers, "Did you ever know a fool choose a wise one?" affords the decisive reply to all such depreciatory attempts. Under his beneficent rule, industry was protected, commerce revived; canals, roads, and bridges penetrated the country in every direction; and, most marvellous of all, religious schisms were healed and religious fury stilled. The abjuration by the successful monarch of the faith in which he had been bred, and the warriors of which had combated for him, was unquestionably a measure called for, in a temporal view, by the interest of his dominions at the time, not less than by his own tenure of the throne. When it is recollected that the Huguenots did not at that period exceed two millions, among twenty which France contained, it becomes at once apparent, that, in a country so recently convulsed by the passions of religious and civil dissension, conformity with the faith of the great majority was the sole condition on which tranquillity could have been restored, discord appeased, a stable government established, or the crown transmitted to the descendants of the reigning monarch. And, while his biographer must lament the necessity to which he was subjected, of bending religious conviction to political expedience, all must admire the wisdom of the Edict of Nantes, which, without shocking the prejudices of the Catholics, secured liberty of conscience and just immunities to the Protestants; and which, if adhered to by succeeding monarchs, on the equitable spirit in which it had been conceived by its author, would probably have left the direct heirs of Henry IV. still on the throne of France, and averted all the bloodshed and horrors of the Revolution.