• And to speak the truth without disguise, they never enter upon any treaty but in this spirit. Whatever specious clauses. may be inserted of union and friendship, and of procuring, respectively, all sorts of advantages, the true sense which each understands perfectly, by the experience of so many ages, is, that they should abstain outwardly from all kinds of hostility, and from all public demonstrations of ill will; but, as for secret infractions, and which make no noise, the one expects them always from the other, from the natural principle which I have spoken of, and promises the contrary only in the same sense in which it is promised to him. Thus, it may be said, that in equally dispensing for themselves with the observance of treaties, in strictness they do not contravene them, because the words of treaties are not understood literally: they are forms of speech which must be used, like forms of compliment in the world, absolutely necessary for those who live in it, and which have a signification far below their sound.'. Applying this convenient doctrine to the case in point, he says, the clauses by which they bound me not to assist the crown of Portugal, the more extraordinary they were, the more reiterated and accompanied with precautions, the more they proved that it was not believed I ought to abstain from assisting it. And all the respect which I thought myself bound to pay, was not to succour it, except in case of necessity, and then, with moderation, and covertly, which could be more commodiously done through the interposition, and under the name of the King of England, if he were once brother-in-law to the King of Portugal.'

Such was the good faith of the French government!

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During the whole negociation, the Portugueze ambassador was in a state of feverish anxiety, believing that the independence of his country depended upon the issue; and when, upon a question concerning the time at which Tangiers should be delivered up, there appeared some danger that it would be broken off, he produced Sanches de Matrimonio before the privy council, to convince them that the king could not, in conscience, marry with any other person after the treaty had proceeded so far. To his infinite satis faction all points in dispute were finally adjusted; and as the definitive settlement was concluded on the 29th of April, the count, with pious disregard to the difference of styles, exulted in the thought that St. Pedro the martyr, who occupies that day in the Catholic Kalendar, had taken an active part in bringing it to this happy conclusion, in requital for the patronage afforded by the royal family of Portugal to the Holy Office,-the said St. Pedró having been an inquisitor in the first days of the Inquisition, and righteously put to death as such by the people.

Lord Clarendon relates that the Spanish ambassador took advantage of the license of the court where no rules or formalities were yet established (and to which the King himself was not enough inclined;)' presuming upon this, he came to the king at all hours, without any ceremony or desiring an audience, according to the

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old, custom, but came into the bed-chamber whilst the King was dressing himself. And from this never-heard-of license, he adds, 'introduced by the French and the Spaniards at this time without any dislike in the King, though not permitted in any other court in Christendom, many inconveniences and mischiefs broke in, which could never after be shut out.' The Conde da Ponte did not thus intrude himself; but it is surprising how little reserve Charles observed towards him, allowing him to converse upon the state of affairs in England in a manner which no other British sovereign would have endured, and even disclosing to him schemes and intentions, which certainly were not suspected by Clarendon at that time. Batteville was rash enough in his anger to say, that he had instructions to declare war, if the alliance with Portugal were concluded he little supposed that nothing could have been more conformable to the king's wishes. The Duke of York told the Portugueze minister that a war was necessary both for his brother's interests and the security of the country; and he repeated what Clarendon had said, with no intention that his words should be thus applied, that of all people in the world the Spaniards were the best to have for enemies, and the worst for friends. Encouraged by this, the ambassador endeavoured to confirm the king in this opinion, and to make him act upon it. He represented to him, accordingly, that God had given him a parliament whose good intentions even outstript his desires, and that he had obtained also the command of the militia, with the power of moving it from one part of the kingdom to another: all that was now wanting to his greatness was treasure sufficient to defend himself from his enemies, without the necessity of calling a new parliament; for a parliament it was which had always tied the hands of the kings of England, and which had been the true cause of his father's ruin; and by triumphing over the parliament Cromwell had obtained his great reputation.

After this notable preamble, he reminded the king of the great variety of sects and parties into which his subjects were divided, the number of republicans in the country, and the disbanded soldiers. What would these persons be aiming at if they were left in idleness? did not reason and policy compel him to employ them abroad that he might maintain quiet at home? And war being thus necessary, was it not advisable to determine upon one while it could be done calmly and with consideration? Spain was the natural and ancient enemy of England. Had not the king of Spain laid claim to the succession of his dominions? Philip II. wanted only the pearl of Great Britain to complete the crown of universal monarchy. The Spaniards had not forgotten the succours which England had given to the Dutch and to the Portugueze; and the loss of Dunkirk and Jamaica

Jamaica still rankled in their minds. What Batteville had threatened would have been more than a threat if the means of the Spaniards had been auswerable to their will. They had not declared war, because they were not able to maintain war, and the cause of their inability was the resistance which Portugal opposed to them. It was not their time for war; and, therefore, it was his: by war, he might purge his own territories, protect the house of Portugal, which was derived from the best blood of England, (the Plantagenets,) conquer the Indies, and give the oppressed Indians that liberty for which, during two centuries, they had been groaning. The true interest of England was to command the seas, and thereby take the lead in commerce; this required a fleet, and during peace, that fleet would be rotting in port. In peace too the greater part of her sailors would enter the Dutch service, as they were now doing, notwithstanding the prohibition which had been published. At this very time the armament which the Dutch had sent against the Portugueze in the east was manned by Englishmen. England, therefore, while she remained at peace, was sacrificing her own interests and those of her allies, and actually strengthening the enemies of both.

The Count informed his court, that Charles carried on a secret correspondence with the King of France, by means of the Duchess of Orleans; and he communicated also the intelligence that Charles was treating with the Grand Duke of Muscovy, with Denmark and with Brandenburg, in order to strengthen himself with their alliances, and weaken the Dutch, before he should break with them. The conclusion of his paper is dated August 8, 1661, when he was on his voyage back to Portugal, so that he certainly knew more of the king's views than Clarendon suspected. He had instructions to treat for another intermarriage between the courts of Lisbon and London, and to make proposals for the Princess Royal on the part of Affonso VI. whose minority was nearly at an end. Her death prevented this, and he then asked for the daughter of the Princess of Orange: this alliance would have been desirable on many accounts, but there was the obstacle of religion. The count repeated the profligate speech attributed to Henri IV. that a religion might well be changed for a crown, adding, with a sincerity belonging to himself, especially when the change was to that religion from which the Protestants confessed they had separated. When a similar proposal had been made to Charles I. for his niece on the part of the King of Poland, the British monarch replied with becoming resentment, that he looked on himself to be neither a Turk nor a Jew, but a Christian, who lived in a commendable religion, His son was not religious enough to feel any indignation at the overture; he seems to have agreed with the ambassador, and

to have regretted that his niece was strongly attached to her own faith: Clarendon, on the contrary, observed, that the point ought to be conceded on the part of Portugal; he would have had the same terms conceded there which were allowed in England; this was impossible, and the Princess thus happily escaped a marriage which must have made her miserable. Monk is scarcely mentioned in the memoir; Lauderdale, as the man to whom Portugal and the Infanta owed every thing, and whose services they ought always to acknowledge. The view which he gives of the English government at the conclusion is very remarkable. He says that the king had regulated the election for members of parliament in future, by an act of parliament, so that such persons as would be agreeable to him should always be chosen; and he was now endeavouring to bring the bishops into parliament, that the House of Lords might, in like manner, always be what he wished, for the bishops were his creatures. And though this occasioned some disgust to certain Presbyterians, the state of that house was of more importance to him than the rest of his kingdom. It is curious that a practised statesman, who understood the court so well, should have understood the government so little.

If there be an intermediate state, wherein departed souls are conscious of what passes in the world which they have left, they whose evil deeds survive them must have in that consciousness a deeper suffering than the monks have imagined in their fabled Purgatory; and few inen, in whose mixed character the good preponderates, would have so much to endure as Voltaire's hero Henri le Grand. The ill example which the Portugueze ambassador had held up vainly in one case, was proposed to Charles II. with more success in another; and thus, half a century after his death, that example proved fatal to his grandson, determining him openly to pursue a course of infamous debauchery :-at the critical moment of his life, when good and evil were before him, which to chuse. The profligate wretches by whom he was surrounded, represented to him that the great Henri never concealed his amours, nor suffered them to be matter of reproach to the women whom he liked; he brought his mistresses to court, obliged the Queen, his wife, to treat them graciously, and made all other persons pay them respect, gave them the highest titles of honour, and raised the children whom he had by them to the reputation and state of princes of the blood. And they persuaded him, that resembling his glorious grandfather as he did, in temper and constitution, he ought to imitate him in this generous part of his conduct, and make returns proportionable to the obligations he received. By such discourses, together with a little book, newly printed at Paris, according to the license of that nation, of the Amours of Henri IV. which was presented to

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him, and too concernedly,' says Lord Clarendon, read by him,' the scale was turned,-aud Charles's good angel abandoned him, for knowing that it was evil, he chose deliberately the evil part. Bad, however, as he became, he was never so bad as his infamous favourites would have made him; they endeavoured to divert and corrupt all those impressions and principles which his own conscience and reverent esteem of Providence did suggest to him.' They succeeded in weakening, but not wholly in destroying them; and his excellent good nature, which so often degenerated into weakness, proved in some cases to be his strength. When he had broken the spirit of the Queen, in the vile manner which Clarendon relates, he behaved to her ever after with respect, if not with kindness; and when Buckingham, with the cruelty of a thorough profligate, proposed to kidnap her and ship her for the plantations, he rejected the proposal with horror. To the project of divorcing her, indeed, he listened, because he was desirous of having an heir; the lawfulness of such a divorce was discussed, and the question also was started, as it had been to accommodate Henry VIIJ. whether in such a case polygamy might not be permitted. Burnet states that his opinion was asked upon both points, by Lauderdale and Sir Robert Murray, and his answer is said to have been, that though speculative people could advance a great deal for both in the way of argument, yet those things were so decried, that they were rejected by all Christian societies; so that all such propositions would throw us into great convulsions, and entail war upon us, if any issue came from a marriage so grounded.' Such an answer, indeed, he ought to have given, but a note by the editor makes it doubtful, whether he really gave it. " There is extant a brief resolution by Burnet, of two cases of conscience, viz. Is a woman's barrenness a just ground for divorce or polygamy; and is polygamy in any case lawful under the Gospel? The questions are resolved affirmatively. The original, in the author's hand writing, was copied at Ham in 1680, with Duke Lauderdale's mission, by Paterson, Archbishop of Glasgow, testified under his episcopal seal, it being then in the Duke's possession. The cases were printed in 1731.

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The king, however, had a sincere estecin for Catherine, and she loved him so tenderly, that when he conjured her, in a dangerous illness, to live for his sake, the joy which that expression of kindnéss gave her, is said to have saved her life. On his death-bed, he in-treated her forgiveness for the wrongs he had done her, but this was at the instance of that good man Bishop Ken, not from the impulse of his own heart. There is a Portugueze heroic poem, in twelve cantos, by Pedro de Azevedo Tojal, upon Charles's conversion to the Romish faith, which is there ascribed to his Queen's persuasions