, by his persuasions and temptations, the mass of moral evil, and
who calls forth by his seductions those slumbering passions which otherwise
might have allowed the human being who was the object of the Evil Spirit's
operations to pass the tenor of his life in tranquillity. For this purpose
Mephistophiles is, like Louis XI., endowed with an acute and depreciating spirit
of caustic wit, which is employed incessantly in undervaluing and vilifying all
actions, the consequences of which do not lead certainly and directly to
self-gratification.
    Even an author of works of mere amusement may be permitted to be serious for
a moment, in order to reprobate all policy, whether of a public or private
character, which rests its basis upon the principles of Machiavel, or the
practice of Louis XI.
    The cruelties, the perjuries, the suspicions of this prince, were rendered
more detestable, rather than amended, by the gross and debasing superstition
which he constantly practised. The devotion to the heavenly saints, of which he
made such a parade, was upon the miserable principle of some deputy in office,
who endeavours to hide or atone for the malversations of which he is conscious,
by liberal gifts to those whose duty it is to observe his conduct, and
endeavours to support a system of fraud, by an attempt to corrupt the
incorruptible. In no other light can we regard his creating the Virgin Mary a
countess and colonel of his guards, or the cunning that admitted to one or two
peculiar forms of oath the force of a binding obligation, which he denied to all
other, strictly preserving the secret, which mode of swearing he really
accounted obligatory, as one of the most valuable of state mysteries.
    To a total want of scruple, or, it would appear, of any sense whatever of
moral obligation, Louis XI. added great natural firmness and sagacity of
character, with a system of policy so highly refined, considering the times he
lived in, that he sometimes overreached himself by giving way to its dictates.
    Probably there is no portrait so dark as to be without its softer shades. He
understood the interests of France, and faithfully pursued them so long as he
could identify them with his own. He carried the country safe through the
dangerous crisis of the war termed »for the public good;« in thus disuniting and
dispersing this grand and dangerous alliance of the great crown vassals of
France against the Sovereign, a King of a less cautious and temporising
character, and of a more bold and less crafty disposition than Louis XI., would,
in all probability, have failed. Louis had also