"A sovereign's great example forms a people; The public breast is noble or is vile, As he inspires it." "The man whom Heaven appoints To govern others, should himself first learn To bend his passions to the sway of reason." Surely these two considerations--the potent effect of his example, and the almost impossibility of governing others when not able to govern himself--without referring to that paramount one which operates for all men alike, ought to have been sufficient to counteract the tendency of "the peculiar circumstances of his time," to inflame the "propensities" of the Prince; or, at least, should be enough to prevent an extenuation on that ground, of his unrestrained indulgence of them, by the historian of his life. What those circumstances were, we will let Mr. Croly relate. "The peace of 1782 threw open the continent; and it was scarcely proclaimed, when France was crowded with the English nobility. Versailles was the centre of all that was sumptuous in Europe. The graces of the young queen, then in the pride of youth and beauty; the pomp of the royal family and the noblesse; and the costliness of the fêtes and celebrations, for which France has been always famous, rendered the court the dictator of manners, morals, and politics, to all the higher ranks of the civilized world. But the Revolution was now hastening with the strides of a giant upon France: the torch was already waving over the chambers of this morbid and guilty luxury. The corrective was terrible: history has no more stinging retrospect than the contrast of that brilliant time with the days of shame and agony that followed--the untimely fate of beauty, birth, and heroism,--the more than serpent-brood that started up in the path which France once emulously covered with flowers for the step of her rulers,--the hideous suspense of the dungeon,--the heart-broken farewell to life and royalty upon the scaffold. But France was the grand corruptor; and its supremacy must in a few years have spread incurable disease through the moral frame of Europe.