by a great variety of fortunes in different parts of the world, and crowned with great military glory, but without any accession of power to himself, or prosperity to his people, whom he entirely neglected, and reduced, by his imprudence and misfortunes, to no small indigence and distress. In many respects, a striking parallel presents itself between this ancient King of England and Charles the Twelfth, of Sweden. They were both inordinately desirous of war, and rather generals than kings. Both were rather fond of glory than ambitious of empire. Both of them made and deposed sovereigns. They both carried on their wars at a distance from home. They were both made prisoners by a friend and ally. They were both reduced by an adversary inferior in war, but above them in the arts of rule. After spending their lives in remote adventures, each perished at last near home in enterprises not suited to the splendor of their former exploits. Both died childless. And both, by the neglect of their affairs and the severity of their government, gave their subjects provocation and encouragement to revive their freedom. In all these respects the two characters were alike; but Richard fell as much short of the Swedish hero in temperance, chastity, and equality of mind as he exceeded him in wit and eloquence. Some of his sayings are the most spirited that we find in that time; and some of his verses remain, which is a barbarous age might have passed for poetry. CHAPTER VIII. REIGN OF JOHN. [Sidenote: A.D. 1199] We are now arrived at one of the most memorable periods in the English story, whether we consider the astonishing revolutions which were then wrought, the calamities in which both the prince and people were involved, or the happy consequences which, arising from the midst of those calamities, have constituted the glory and prosperity of England for so many years. We shall see a throne founded in arms, and augmented by the successive policy of five able princes, at once shaken to its foundations: first made tributary by the arts of a foreign power; then limited, and almost overturned, by the violence of its subjects. We shall see a king, to reduce his people to obedience, draw into his territories a tumultuary foreign army, and destroy his country instead of establishing his government. We shall behold the people, grown desperate, call in another foreign army, with a foreign prince at its head, and throw away that liberty which they had sacrificed everything to preserve. We shall see the arms of this prince successful against an established king in the vigor of his years, ebbing in the full tide of their prosperity, and yielding to an infant: after this, peace and order and liberty restored, the foreign force and foreign title purged off, and all things settled as happily as beyond all hope.