no such dignity to be supported,--where the time of the great officers of state is never occupied in wrangling about the extent of the facilities which shall be afforded the successor to the administration of affairs, of bringing disgrace upon himself, and the country,--where the people are infinitely better governed, at an infinitely less expense, both of money and honour! "Now, fully," says Mr. Croly, "began his checkered career,"--which, properly interpreted, means, that now he fully plunged into that reckless course of profligacy and folly, which terminated only with his life, and which should render his name odious to all who are friends of decency and virtue. We were afraid when we saw the announcement of the work we are reviewing, that its author would allow himself to be blinded by the regal blaze which surrounded its subject, and would endeavour to palliate those violations by a king, of the most sacred ordinances of the religion of which he is a minister, which he would have branded with indelible infamy in a private individual. Our fears, unfortunately, have not proved groundless. "There are no faults that we discover with more proverbial rapidity, than the faults of others,--and none that generate a more vindictive spirit of virtue, and are softened down by fewer attempts at palliation, than the faults of princes in the grave. Yet, without justice, history is but a more solemn libel; and no justice can be done to the memory of any public personage, without considering the peculiar circumstances of his time." Such is the sophistry with which he enters upon the task of extenuation. The first part of the first period in the above extract, is certainly undeniable--"fit nescio quomodo," says Cicero, "ut magis in aliis cernamus si quid delinquitur, quam nobismet in ipsis;" but, though the second part may also be indisputable as a general position, it is not at all applicable to this case. The historian or biographer, who is discussing the character of a monarch long since "fixed in the tomb," will doubtless find it an easy matter to make "His virtues fade, his vices bloom,"