be interested in seeing, in the leaf of his psalter which I have laid on the table, the death of that brother set down in golden letters, between the common letters of ultramarine, on the eighth of February.
94. Providence, defied by Frederick, and trusted in by St. Louis, made such arrangements for them both; Providence not in anywise regarding the opinions of either king, but very much regarding the facts, that the one had no business in Egypt, nor the other in Apulia.
No two kings, in the history of the world, could have been happier, or more useful, than these two might have been, if they only had had the sense to stay in their own capitals, and attend to their own affairs. But they seem only to have been born to show what grievous results, under the power of discontented imagination, a Christian could achieve by faith, and a philosopher by reason.[1]
- ↑ It must not be thought that this is said in disregard of the nobleness of either of these two glorious Kings. Among the many designs of past years, one of my favourites was to write a life of Frederick II. But I hope that both his, and that of Henry II. of England, will soon be written now, by a man who loves them as well as I do, and knows them far better.
