for serious reflection before he closed his life, dethroned CHAP. and exiled, in a foreign land.

III.

3.

position of

Louis XVI.

During his youth, the character of Louis XVI. still more clearly developed itself. He was a good scholar, Early disread Latin and English with facility, was an excellent geographer, and evinced an accurate and tenacious memory, for which he continued remarkable through life. But his recollection was of facts or persons, and dates, rather than principles; and he early showed a tendency to rely on the judgment of others, in matters of opinion, in preference to his own-a disposition in which he was unhappily encouraged by his earliest minister Maurepas, and which proved the principal cause of the calamities in which he was afterwards involved. He was so early impressed with a horror at the dissolute pleasures of his grandfather, and the insatiable avidity of his courtiers, that when told he was called by the people Louis "Le Désiré," he said he would rather be called "Louis Le Sévère." He had no disposition to gallantry, and kept at a distance from all the seducing beauties of the court-a peculiarity which rendered him an object of undisguised aversion to Madame du Barri, and was the cause of no small surprise to the ladies of the capital.* The Parisians, however, consoled themselves by the recollection that Louis XV. in early youth had been the same; and said, "For all that, he is a Bourbon, and he will show it at the age of forty, like the others, when he is tired of the Dauphiness." He was strong, however, in body, abundantly endowed with physical courage, and 1 Bertrand passionately fond of the chase, which amusement he con- de Molletinued regularly till his imprisonment during the Revo- ville, i. 24, lution.1 He had an extraordinary fondness for athletic i. 39, 47. occupations and mechanical labour, insomuch that he 116, 119. Campan, i. frequently worked several hours a-day with a blacksmith 123. of the name of Gamin, who taught him the art of wielding

* Madame du Barri used to call him "le gros enfant mal élevé.”—Droz, i, 117, note.

25. Soul.

Droz, i.

III.

CHAP. the hammer, and managing the forge. He took the greatest interest in this occupation, and loaded his preceptor in the art with kindness, who returned it by betraying to the Convention a secret iron recess, which they had together worked out in the walls of his cabinet in the Tuileries, wherein to deposit his secret papers during the storms of the Revolution.*

His character.

Of all the monarchs who ever sat upon the French throne, Louis XVI. was the one least calculated to provoke, and worst fitted to subdue, a social convulsion. Firm in principle, pure in morals, humane in feeling, beneficent in intention, he possessed all the dispositions calculated to adorn a pacific throne, or which are amiable and estimable in private life; but he had neither the genius to prevent, nor the firmness to resist, a revolution. Many of his qualities were calculated to have allayed the public discontents, none to have stifled them. The people were tired of the arbitrary powers of their monarch, and he was disposed to abandon them; they were provoked at the costly corruptions of the court, and he was both innocent in his manners and unexpensive in his habits; they demanded reformation in the administration of affairs, and he placed his chief glory in anticipating their desires. Such was his anxiety to outstrip the general passion for reform, that he caused a box to be placed at the gate of his palace, to receive suggestions from all persons who might concur in the same views. But, in accomplishing great changes in society, it is not only necessary to concede to one party, but to restrain their violence and control another; and the difficult task awaited the French monarch, of either compelling the nation to submit to abuses, or the aristocracy to agree to innovation. To accomplish either of these objects required

*""Le Roi,' disait Gamin, 'était bon, tolérant, timide, curieux, ami du sommeil. Il aimait avec passion la serrurerie, et se cachait de la reine et de la cour pour limer et forger avec moi. Pour porter son enclume et le mien, à l'insu de tout le monde, il nous fallait user de mille stratagèmes dont l'histoire ne finirait pas.'"-SOULAVIE, Règne de Louis XVI., ii. 47.