he appears to have proposed to himself to produce an epic which should combine the positive merit of being essentially national with the negative one of avoiding what he had found to condemn in his illustrious predecessors. The personage whom he chose as the central figure was the best fitted for his purpose that French history could furnish. Never had the nation a hero so enduringly popular as the skilful general and brilliant knight whose white plume is a point of light in history—the conqueror who was clement amid the merciless, generous in an age of rapacity, genial in an atmosphere of bloody fanaticism—the good king who wished to see the day when every French peasant should have his fowl in the pot. He was, indeed, an apostate, so far as apostasy may consist in exchanging one form of Christianity for another; but the change was essential to the interests of his country, for his faith formed the sole objection which his Catholic subjects could urge against a king whose rule afforded the strongest security against anarchy, and the surest pledge of national prosperity. The recording angel who took so indulgent a view of Uncle Toby's oath, would scarcely use very dark characters in inscribing on his accusing page Henry's change of religion. It is true, too, that he was noted for his weakness for the fair sex; but so far as this affects his qualification for an epic hero, it wore in him a venial, even a gay and gallant, aspect, when compared with the amours of Achilles or Æneas. While his character thus presented no fatal objections, its intrinsic virtues received uncommon prominence from contrast with such atrocious blots of history as are his royal contemporaries. The abominable beldame Catherine of Medicis—her miscreant sons, Charles IX.
