In the popular view, James II will always be regarded as the tyrannical despot, the subverter of the religious and political institutions of England, while his brother, Charles II, will be looked upon as a kindly and amiable gentleman, who oppressed no one and treated everyone kindly. Yet in the view of the student of history Charles becomes the tyrant and James an honest though bigoted fool. To compare the age of Cromwell with that of Charles II is to see the Dorian and Lydian spirits respectively in their most contrasted lights. The difference between Richelieu and Mazarin is the difference between the creator and the developer. The political revolution of 1688 was contemporaneous with a revolution in physics, shown by Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood; with a revolution in astronomical thought, shown by Newton's "Principia"; with a small revolution in literature, shown by the rise of English prose; with a revolution in popular feeling all over the world, as shown by the riots against excessive taxation in France and the ejection of de Witt in Holland. All the different threads of life seem to run interwoven, and one cannot be disturbed without disturbing the others. The character of Frederick the Great was stained by many infamous deeds; he was in many ways unscrupulous, yet he was never petty, and he was devoted to his country. He was the greatest genius in practical reforms and in the art of war that the eighteenth century produced. Frederick the Great has had a far stronger and better influence on history than a selfish, callous person like Louis XIV. Of all the benevolent despots there is only one, Frederick the Great, to whom can be fitly applied what Johnson said of Goldsmith: "Let not his faults be remembered: he was a very great man." Under a despotism the aristocracy loses all its powers, and, except for the bureaucracy and "King's friends," there is no privileged class unless the King is a weak man and under the thumb of his court (e.g., contrast the France of Louis XIV with that of Louis XV). Carlyle in his "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth century: compare the views of de Tocqueville. Carlyle in his grim account of the death-bed of Louis XV writes: "We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed." Paul's comment: "cf. the episode of the death of Front-de-Boeuf in 'Ivanhoe.'" Lord Chesterfield saw clearly the symptoms of the coming Revolution in France. Only two other men in Europe foresaw that immense event: Goldsmith and Arthur Young. Note Gibbon's complacent attitude _in re_ France to illustrate the general lack of vision on the subject.