power of changing the very characters and natures of men. In pursuit of them, the indolent have been excited to the most active exertions, the voluptuous have renounced their darling pleasures: and even those who have long walked in the direct road of integrity, have deviated into all the crooked paths of villany and fraud.

There are paffions, whofe indulgence is fo exceedingly flattering to the natural vanity of men, that they will gratify them, though perfuaded that the gratification will be attended by difappointment and mifery. The love of power and fovereignty is of this clafs. It has been a general belief, ever fince the kingly office was established among men, that cares and anxiety were the conftant attendants of royalty. Yet this general conviction never made a fingle perfon decline an opportunity of embarking on this fea of troubles. Every new adventurer flatters

himself,

himfelf, that he fhall be guided by fome happy ftar undifcovered by former navigators; and those who, after trial, have relinquished the voyage-Charles, Chriftina, Amadeus, and others- when they had quitted the helm, and were fafely arrived in port, are faid to have languished, all the reft of their lives, for that fituation which their own experience taught them was fraught with mifery.

Henry the Fourth of England did not arrive at the throne by the natural and direct road. Shakespeare puts the following Addrefs to Sleep, into the mouth of this monarch:

O Sleep! O gentle Sleep!

Nature's foft nurfe, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids

down,

And steep my fenfes in forgetfulness?

Why rather, Sleep, lieft thou in fmoky cribs, U on uneafy pallats ftretching thee,

And

And hufh'd with bufy night-flies to thy flumber;

Than in the perfum'd chambers of the Great,
Under the canopies of coftly fiate,

And lull'd with founds of sweetest melody?
O thou dull God! why ly'st thou with the

vile

In loathfome beds; and leav'ft the kingly couch

A watch-cafe, or a common 'larum bell?
Wilt thou, upon the high and giddy maft,

Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains

In cradle of the rude imperious furge;
And in the vifitation of the winds,-

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monftrous heads, and hanging them

With deaf'ning clamours in the flipp'ry shrouds ?

Can't thou, O partial Sleep! give thy repofe
To the wet fea-boy in an hour fo rude;
And, in the calmeft and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a King?.

However

eager and impatient this Prince

may have formerly been to obtain the

crown,

crown, you would conclude that he wasquite cloyed by poffeffion at the time he made this speech; and therefore, at firft fight, you would not expect that he fhould afterwards difplay any exceffive attachment to what gives him fo much uneafinefs. But Shakespeare, who knew the fecret wifhes, perverfe defires, and ftrange inconfift encies of the human heart, better than man: ever knew them, makes this very Henry fo tenacioufly fond of that which he himself confidered as the cause of all his inquietude, that he cannot bear to have the crown one moment out of his fight, but orders it to be placed on his pillow when he lies on his death-bed.

Of all diadems, the Tiara, in my opi nion, has the feweft charms; and nothing can afford a fironger proof of the firength and perfeverance of man's paffion for fovereign power, than our knowledge, that even this ecclefiaftical crown is fought

after

after with as much eagerness, perhaps with more, than any other crown in the world, although the candidates are generally in the decline of life, and all of a profeffion which avows the moft perfect contempt of worldly grandeur. This appears the more wonderful when we reflect, that, over and above those sources of wearinefs and vexation, which the Pope has in common with other fovereigns, he has fome which are peculiar to himself.-The tiresome religious functions which he muft perform, the ungenial folitude of his meals, the exclufion of the company and con verfation of women, restriction from the tendereft and most delightful connexions in life, from the endearments of a parent, and the open acknowledgment of his own children; his mind oppreffed with the gloomy reflection, that the man for whom he has the leaft regard, perhaps his greatest enemy, may be his immediate fucceffor; to which is added, the pain of seeing his

influence,