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king and people, as it would give the former a true idea of his relative situation with the latter, an idea, which few kings have enjoyed the happiness of having had properly instilled into them. If it would prove of no other service, it would, at least, tend to keep princes out of those disgraceful amusements which make them the associates and equals of blacklegs, and the 'which way did the bull run? of every Pat-hod-carrier!'-Take an example:-A letter from Paris says, "our amusement of horse-racing continues still; there were two the day before yesterday. The first between the Prince de Nassau, and the Marquis de Fenelon; who both rode their own horses. The race was for four hundred louis d'ors; but the imprudence of a spectator was the cause of the marquis losing his wager, and very near his life with it.His horse fell, and the marquis, who was under him, received a violent hurt on his head. The other race was between the Duke of Chartres, and the Duke of Lauzun. The Duke of Chartres's horse, which won

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two former races, was beat this time by that of the Duke of Lauzun; their grooms rode this race, which was for two hundred louis d'ors." So that the princes were the first spectacles of the gaping throng, and the grooms the second; which distinction does not subtract much from their equality.

The French nation, frivolous as it was, saw with indignation the behaviour of these princes of the blood, who not only rode their own horses, but entered into all the low dissipations of the turf. They exercised their whips on the spectators, as well as on their horses; and not only encouraged the officers to maltreat the crowd, but employed such grossness of speech, and horrid oaths, as shewed them not to be unskilled in the slang or vulgar tongue of the lowest blackguards in the nation. Not satisfied with exhibiting themselves as jockies, they exposed themselves to the ridicule of Paris by a foot-race. The Duke de Chartres, the Duke de Lauzun, and the Marquis of Fitzjames, betted five hundred louis which could first reach Ver.

sailles on foot. Lauzun gave in about half way; Chartres about two thirds; Fitzjames arrived in an exhausted state, and was hailed conqueror by the Count d'Artois. He, however, like a hero, nearly expiring in the arms of victory, was put to bed and bled, and gained his wager and an asthma. The late queen of France carried her refinement still farther, and instituted ass-races, bestowing on the winner three hundred livres and a golden thistle, not with a view, we suppose, to burlesque our order of that denomination, but merely allusive to the plant to which asses are partial.

How soon these princes came to the end of their race-course is too well known!--At this distance of time, we are induced, by the irresistible pleasantry with which Shakespear has given of the excesses of Prince Henry, (afterwards King Henry V.) to laugh against our sober reason; and the subject is greedily laid hold of by those ripers, (whom we have before designated as the courtierbubbles) to draw a prince into, and gloss over

those vices to which they themselves are most prone; and to debase him, until they have gained an entire ascendancy over him. "Henry," say they, "was a wild prince, but a great king." With all deference to truth, we think that he was as bad a king as he was a prince. In the first year of his reign, he was weakly led by the nose by the clergy; (who, whether Pagan, Mahometan, or Christian, have been ever lusting after power, and the greatest enemies to the national liberties of the people,) to connive at the murder of the righteous and learned Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, and hundreds of others, upon silly distinctions in points of faith, (which are now the ridicule of every body— even bigots) as they pretended, but in reality, because he had procured two bills to be brought into parliament against their continual wasting of the temporalities. Finding the king a fit tool, and a third bill to the like purpose being on foot in the parliament at Leicester, in order to distract the attention of the king and people from their own prodi

gious extortions, oppressions, and embezzlements, "they put the king in remembrance to claime his right in Fraunce, and graunted him thereunto a disme, with other great subsidy of money. Thus," saith the report of his trial, (vide State Trials,)" were Christes people betrayed, and their lives bought and sold by these most cruell thieves. For in the said parliament, the king made this most blasphemouse and cruell acte, to be as a law forever, That whatsoever they were that should rede the Scriptures in the Mother Tong, (which was then called Wickleve's learning) they shud forfet land, catel, body, lif, and godes, from they, their beyres forever, and so be condempned for heretykes to God, ennemies to the crowne, and most errant trayters to the lande."-The consequence of this weakness of the king, was not only the massacre of hundreds of his best subjects, at home, in cold blood, but his leading some thousands to France to be knocked on the head, or perish through disease, and the utter empoverishment of the nation. All

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