and dangerous neighbour; an unkind and ungenerous relation. He was equally prodigal and rapacious in the management of the treasury: and, if he possessed abilities, he lay so much under the government of impetuous passions, that he made little use of them in his administration; and he indulged intirely the domineering policy which suited his temper, and which, if supported, as it was in him, with courage and vigour, proves often more successful in disorderly times, than the deepest foresight and most refined artifice. The monuments which remain of this prince in England are, the Tower, Westminster Hall, and London Bridge, which he built.

Hume.

CHARACTER OF HENRY I.

HENRY was of a middle stature, and robust make, with dark brown hair, and blue serene eyes. He was facetious, fluent, and affable to his favourites. His capacity, naturally good, was improved and cultivated in such a manner, that he acquired the name of Beau Clerc by his learning. He was cool, cautious, politic, and penetrating; his courage was unquestioned, and his fortitude invincible. He was vindictive, cruel, and implacable, inexorable to offenders, rigid and severe in the execution of justice; and, though temperate in his diet, a voluptuary in his amours, which produced a numerous family of illegitimate issue. His Norman descent and connexions with the continent inspired him with a contempt for the English, whom he oppressed in the most tyrannical manner.

Smollett.

CHARACTER OF STEPHEN.

STEPHEN was a prince of great courage, fortitude, and activity, and might have reigned with the approbation of his people, had he not been harassed by the efforts of a powerful competitor, which obliged him to take such measures for his safety as were inconsistent with the dictates of honour, which indeed his ambition prompted him to forego in his first endeavours to ascend the throne. His necessities afterwards compelled him to infringe the charter of privileges he granted at his accession; and he was instigated by his jealousy and resentment to commit the most flagrant outrages against gratitude and sound policy. His vices, as a king, seem to have been the effect of troubles in which he was involved; for, as a man, he was brave, open and liberal; and, during the short calm that succeeded the tempest of his reign, he made a progress through his kingdom, published an edict to restrain all rapine and violence, and disbanded the foreign mercenaries who had preyed so long on his people. Smollett.

CHARACTER OF HENRY II.

THUS died, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, and thirty-fifth of his reign, the greatest prince of his time for wisdom, virtue, and ability, and the most powerful in extent of dominion, of all those that had ever filled the throne of England. His character, both in public and private life, is almost without a blemish; and he seems to have pos

sessed every accomplishment, both of body and mind, which makes a man estimable or amiable. He was of a middle stature, strong, and well-proportioned; his countenance was lively and engaging, his conversation affable and entertaining; his elocution easy, persuasive, and ever at command. He loved peace, but possessed both conduct and bravery in war; was provident without timidity; severe in the execution of justice without rigour; and temperate without austerity. He preserved health, and kept himself from corpulency, to which he was somewhat inclined, by an abstemious diet, and by frequent exercise, particularly by hunting. When he could enjoy leisure, he recreated himself in learned conversation, or in reading; and he cultivated his natural talents by study, above any prince of his time. His affections, as well as his enmities, were warm and durable; and his long experience of the ingratitude and infidelity of men never destroyed the natural sensibility of his temper, which disposed him to friendship and society. His character has been transmitted to us by many writers who were his contemporaries; and it resembles extremely, in its most remarkable strokes, that of his maternal grandfather, Henry I excepting only, that ambition, which was a ruling passion in both, found not in the first Henry such unexceptionable means of exerting itself, and pushed that prince into measures which were both criminal in themselves, and were the cause of further crimes, from which his grandson's conduct was happily exempted. Hume.

CHARACTER OF RICHARD I.

THE most shining part of this prince's character was his military talents; no man ever in that romantic age carried courage and intrepidity to a greater height; and this quality gained him the appellation of the lion-hearted, cœur de lion. He passionately loved glory; and as his conduct in the field was not inferior to his valour, he seems to have possessed every talent necessary for acquiring it: his resentments also were high, his pride unconquerable, and his subjects, as well as his neighbours, had therefore reason to apprehend, from the continuance of his reign, a perpetual scene of blood and violence. Of an impetuous and vehement spirit, he was distinguished by all the good as well as the bad qualities which are incident to that character. He was open, frank, generous, sincere, and brave; he was revengeful, domineering, ambitious, haughty, and cruel, and was thus better calculated to dazzle men by the splendour of his enterprises, than either to promote their happiness, or his own grandeur by a sound and well-regulated policy. As military talents make great impression on the people, he seems to have been much beloved by his English subjects; and he is remarked to have been the first prince of the Norman line who bore a sincere affection and regard for them. He passed, however, only four months of his reign in that kingdom: the crusade employed him near three years: he was detained about four months in captivity; the rest of his reign was spent either in war, or preparations for war against France: and he was so pleased with

the fame which he had acquired in the east, that he seemed determined, notwithstanding all his past misfortunes, to have further exhausted his kingdom, and to have exposed himself to new hazards, by conducting another expedition against the infidels. Hume.

CHARACTER OF JOHN.

THE character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices, equally mean and odious, ruinous to himself, and destructive to his people: cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty; all these qualities too evidently appear in the several incidents of his life, to give us room to suspect that the disagreeable picture has been anywise overcharged by the prejudice of the ancient historians. It is hard to say, whether his conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects, was most culpable; or whether his crimes in these respects were not even exceeded by the baseness which appeared in his transactions with the king of France, the pope, and the barons. His dominions, when they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive than have ever since his time been ruled by any English monarch. But he first lost, by his misconduct, the flourishing provinces in France; the ancient patrimony of his family. He subjected his kingdom to a shameful vassalage under the see of Rome; he saw the prerogatives of his crown diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction; and he died at last