第40章 LETTER XXXIII(1)

LONDON,March 25,O.S.1748.

DEAR BOY:I am in great joy at the written and the verbal accounts which I have received lately of you.

The former,from Mr.Harte;the latter,from Mr.Trevanion,who is arrived here:they conspire to convince me that you employ your time well at Leipsig.I am glad to find you consult your own interest and your own pleasure so much;for the knowledge which you will acquire in these two years is equally necessary for both.I am likewise particularly pleased to find that you turn yourself to that sort of knowledge which is more peculiarly necessary for your destination:for Mr.Harte tells me you have read,with attention,Caillieres,Pequet,and Richelieu's "Letters."The "Memoirs"of the Cardinal de Retz will both entertain and instruct you;they relate to a very interesting period of the French history,the ministry of Cardinal Mazarin,during the minority of Lewis XIV.The characters of all the considerable people of that time are drawn,in a short,strong,and masterly manner;and the political reflections,which are most of them printed in italics,are the justest that ever I met with:they are not the labored reflections of a systematical closet politician,who,without the least experience of business,sits at home and writes maxims;but they are the reflections which a great and able man formed from long experience and practice in great business.They are true conclusions,drawn from facts,not from speculations.

As modern history is particularly your business,I will give you some rules to direct your study of it.It begins,properly with Charlemagne,in the year 800.But as,in those times of ignorance,the priests and monks were almost the only people that could or did write,we have scarcely any histories of those times but such as they have been pleased to give us,which are compounds of ignorance,superstition,and party zeal.So that a general notion of what is rather supposed,than really known to be,the history of the five or six following centuries,seems to be sufficient;and much time would be but ill employed in a minute attention to those legends.But reserve your utmost care,and most diligent inquiries,from the fifteenth century,and downward.Then learning began to revive,and credible histories to be written;Europe began to take the form,which,to some degree,it still retains:at least the foundations of the present great powers of Europe were then laid.

Lewis the Eleventh made France,in truth,a monarchy,or,as he used to say himself,'la mit hors de Page'.Before his time,there were independent provinces in France,as the Duchy of Brittany,etc.,whose princes tore it to pieces,and kept it in constant domestic confusion.

Lewis the Eleventh reduced all these petty states,by fraud,force,or marriage;for he scrupled no means to obtain his ends.

About that time,Ferdinand King of Aragon,and Isabella his wife,Queen of Castile,united the whole Spanish monarchy,and drove the Moors out of Spain,who had till then kept position of Granada.About that time,too,the house of Austria laid the great foundations of its subsequent power;first,by the marriage of Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy;and then,by the marriage of his son Philip,Archduke of Austria,with Jane,the daughter of Isabella,Queen of Spain,and heiress of that whole kingdom,and of the West Indies.By the first of these marriages,the house of Austria acquired the seventeen provinces,and by the latter,Spain and America;all which centered in the person of Charles the Fifth,son of the above-mentioned Archduke Philip,the son of Maximilian.It was upon account of these two marriages,that the following Latin distich was made:

Bella gerant alii,Tu felix Austria nube;

Nam qua,Mars aliis;dat tibi regna Venus.