In his estimate, the absolute dominion of the French crown and the grandeur of France were convertible terms. They seemed to him but as two different aspects of the great consummation to which every hour of his political life was devoted. In approaching that ultimate goal, there were to be surmounted many obstacles which he distinctly perceived, and of which he has given a very clear summary in his “Testament Politique.” “When it pleased your majesty,” he says, “to give me not only a place in your council, but a great share in the conduct of your affairs, the Huguenots divided the state with you. The great lords were acting, not as your subjects, but as independent chieftains. The governors of your provinces were conducting themselves like so many sovereign princes. Foreign affairs and alliances were disregarded. The interest of the public was postponed to that of private men. In a word, your authority was, at that time so torn to shreds, and so unlike what it ought to be, that, in the confusion, it was impossible to recognize the genuine traces of your royal power.” Before his death, Richelieu had triumphed over all these enemies, and had elevated the house of Bourbon upon their ruins. He is, I believe, the only human being who ever conceived and executed, in the spirit of philosophy, the design of erecting a political despotism; not, indeed a despotism like that of Constantinople or Teheran, but a power which, being restrained by religion, by learning, and by public spirit, was to be exempted from all other restraints; a dynasty which, like a kind of subordinate providence, was to spread wide its arms for the guidance and shelter of the subject multitude, itself the while inhabiting a region too lofty to be ever darkened by the mists of human weakness or of human corruption. To devise schemes worthy of the academies of Laputa, and to pursue them with all the relentless perseverance of Cortés or of Clive, has been characteristic of many of the statesmen of France, both in remote and in recent times. Richelieu was but a more successful Mirabeau. He was not so much a minister as a dictator. He was rather the depositary than the agent of the royal power. A king in all things but the name, he reigned with that exemption from hereditary and domestic influences which has so often imparted to the papal monarchs a kind of preterhuman energy, and has so often taught the world to deprecate the celibacy of the throne.