XIV. was scarcely in any respect Christian, and that it prepared the way for that relaxation of moral and religious principles which took place in France under his feebler successors. Lewis XIV. undoubtedly well knew how to strengthen his regal prerogative, and render it more absolute, and in this work, like several of his predecessors, evinced the most systematic art, and the greatest determination of character. But all the great problems of that age--all the religious questions which then divided the world, which forming as they did the highest object of all practical reflection and conduct were then so warmly agitated, could not be brought to a permanent, adequate, and generally satisfactory solution by the capricious mandates of power, or the partial adjudications of regal authority. And if in this establishment of absolute power in the interior, no regard is paid to the lawful rights either of Foreign nations, or of the people at home, what security is there that such a system will or can endure? The splendour of the then French literature is one of the main pillars on which the glory of that reign and century depends--this literature which attained so high a degree of perfection, contains however to some extent the germs of that political scepticism, and those religious errors, which led to the disasters of subsequent times. An Æsthetic cristicism of pure art, falls not within the limits of the plan I have traced out to myself, and I can notice subjects of this nature only inasmuch as they serve to denote the character of particular ages and nations. As in no country was the spirit of the middle age--the scholastico-romantic character of the first period of European cultivation, both in the tone of feeling and the mode of expression so long preserved, nor raised to such a state of high refinement and beautiful perfection, as in Spain; so we may say that the peculiar characteristic of the French mind in the age of Lewis XIV. consisted in a studious and minute avoidance of the two principal defects in the intellectual productions of the middle age--the scholastic vagueness and obscurity in works of speculation on the one hand, and the fantastic wildness in works of imagination on the other. That choice and exquisite taste which prevails in all those models of secular and clerical, historical, poetical, and philosophic eloquence, which that age produced in such abundance, originated in this species of precision averse from all excess and obscurity. And it was by the clearness and lightness it owed to this principle that the French language became, in the eighteenth century, the universal model and most convenient medium, not only of conversation, but of epistolary communication, among the polite classes of all European nations. But in a comprehensive survey of general literature, this standard of a pleasing style must not be considered as universally applicable, or higher than any other; and without wishing to compare objects totally