I The SAXON HEROINE; A retrieved Piece of ancient Hiftory. Here fend you a particle of English Hiftory, unnoticed, as I believe, by any of our writers, Speed, Milton, Rapin, &c. at least I have not feen it in any of thofe I have read. It occurs in P. Daniel's Hiftoire de France, Tom. i. p. 250 & feq. who cites the Greek author Procopius for it, and tranflated into English runs thus: Hermegifcle, King of the Varnes, a people feated near the mouth of the Raine, efpoufed, towards the clofe of the 6th century, a filter of Theode bert the first, King of Auftrafia, having by his first wife a fon, called Radiger. Some time afterwards, he entered into a treaty for the marriage of his fon with the fifter of one of the Saxon Kings in the Heptarchy, whofe dominions lay partly in Norfolk, and the alliance was concluded upon; but before the Princefs could crois the fea, Hermegifele fell fick, and died. Before his death, when he found he was not likely to recover, he aflembled his great men, and fet forth to them, in a speech, that it would be more advantageous to the ftate, for his fon to intermarry with a Francic Princefs than with a Saxon one: So, to be fhort, he recommended it to them to marry his fon to his mother-in-law; and the match actually took place after Hermegifcle's death. The Saxon Princefs was vaftly enraged at this difappointment, and vowed revenge for an affront, deemed amongst the Saxons of the higheit and most cutting nature. She ient, however, to Radiger, to know the reafons of his treating her in this unworthy manner; and when his pretences appeared to her to be weak and frivolous, the obtained of her brother, the Heptarch, both troops and veffels for the purpofe of making war upon the Varnes, and Radiger their King. She went upon the expedition herleif, and croffed the fea with another of her brothers, who was to take the command of the army. They arrived at the continent, and, as the Varnes were furprifed, ianded without oppofition. They encamped VOL. VIII. near the mouth of the Rhine; and, while the Princess remained entrenched with a part of the army, her brother marched into the country with the main body of it, joined battle with the enemy, and gained a victory, flaying a great number, and obliging the reft, with young Radiger, to fly into the woods and marshes. As the Saxons had no cavalry, they could not advance far into the country; wherefore, after pursuing the fugitives for fome time, they returned to their intrenchments, well loaded with booty. The Princess, feeing her brother return, afked him, where Radiger was, or at least his head? He answered, he had escaped. She replied, they did not come thither to plunder, but to take vengeance on a perfidious Prince; the intreated the foldiers, therefore, not to defift from profecuting their victory. They complied, and finding Radiger concealed in a wood, they brought him to her. When he was prefented to her in chains, the reproached him with his falfehood, and demanded of him again the reafons of his fhameful ufage towards her. He faid, he was compelled to do what he did by the express directions of his father, and the intreaties of the heads of the nation; that he had done it against his inclination; and that the had it in her power to punish him. "The punishment that I inflict, jays fhe, is, for you to discard my rival immediately, and to restore to me that place in your heart and throne which is fo juftly my due." The Prit ce accepted of the terms for the faving of his life, and fent back the Francic Princefs to Theodebert her brother. This ftory, which I fuppofe is true, is undoubtedly very curious. It fhews the early connections and intercourse of our Saxons, after they were once fettled here, with the neighbouring nations on the continent; and affords an inttance of spirit and magnanimity in the lady, unmixed with cruelty or vengeance, which every one must love and admire. RE REFLECTIONS, tending to prove that Chance (and not Luxury or Licentioufnefs) is the true Caufe of the Ruin of great States. L UXURY and Licentioufnefs of manners are monfters in a state, I allow. But all monsters are not deftructive; many of them are only remarkable animals. A man, who has only common fenfe will not rank among poffibilities a rich nation, which lives as if it were poor; and an enlightened and intelligent people, which has no more defires, no other pleasures, than a favage or ignorant people; becaufe he will have ftudied his own heart and mind; and thinking all other men 'formed nearly in the fame mould as himfelf, he will take it for granted that they acquire only to enjoy, and that they enjoy what they have acquired much less than what remains to be acquired. The man who confults his reafon, without enflaving it to a fyftem, will have no idea of fixing the decline of a state immediately after the inftant of its greatest profperity: Becaufe he must have found more than once, that he is well without being fo well as before, and that the moment when his health is beft, is not therefore the moment when an illness muft neceffarily follow. The pretended fage reafons differently. He has fixed a point from which he sets out, and he brings every thing to that point in fpite of every thing that oppofes his obftinacy. In vain you tell him that Lacedæmon preserved all the strength of her institution for many ages; that two hundred years after Julius Cæfar, the Roman Empire was larger than under that Dictator; that the Kings, who fucceeded Alexander, adopted the vices of the Perfians, whofe Empire they had overthrown; and that they exifted with thefe vices, these a longer, those a shorter time: In point of manners, the Greeks, in their moft brilliant time, were no better than the Perfians at the time of the fall of their - Empire; that Cæfar, to whom the Gauls fubmitted, was a hundred times more diffolute than Craffus, whofe defeat was a diversion to the Parthians; that thefe, plunged in luxury and effeminacy, made head, for many ages, against the Roman armies, while the Gauls, with their vigorous rufticity, held out only ten years against legions, commanded by men immersed in Luxury and debauchery. It is to no pur pofe to reason with those who never fee more than they chufe to fee. Recollect, my Lord, that Divine, who, confeffing the revolution of the earth, did not therefore think the power of Joshua over the fun lefs respectable and true. Let us confider Luxury and Licentioufiefs of manners as diseases in a rich and powerful ftate. But every difeafe is not mortal. Thus, as a good phyfician does not measure the danger of his patient merely by the nature of his distemper, the good politician, who apprehends the inferior conftruction and mechanifm of a state, frequently fees only fome neceffary crifes in thofe diforders where others think they fee the symptoms of an approachiug diffolution. States are compound bodies, which have all fome fmall generical resemblances, and some speci fic differences which are effential. Hence, fome epidemical diseases which are common to them all, but, by which every one of them is differently affected. A putrid fever, which foon carries to the grave the man whose habit is weak, or whofe conftitution is impaired by a bad regimen, will, with another of a strong habit, only restore his health by the melting, baking, and evacuation of the humours. It is faid, that the Luxury of the Perfians delivered them up to the Macedonians; that Carthage perifhed for having united the spirit of conquests to that of commerce. That may be true, though I do not think that it is. But what is the inference? are there not fifty foldiers who have only the fcars of wounds remaining, which have fent many others to the grave? Chance, that is to fay, a certain concurrence of circumftances, abfolutely independent on our combinations, ought to be as much confidered in the existence and manner of exifting of flates, as in the duration and prof perity The Nightingale's Speech to the Winged People. perity of human life. Lacædmon fell from her power under Agefilaus, one of her greatest kings, because that Prince had for cotemporaries Epaminondas and Pelopidas, whom he did not fufpect to be capable of the great things which they performed. The Darius's might have filled the throne of Cyrus for many more ages, if Macedonia had produced her Alexander many ages later. When our Edward III. victoriously overran the Provinces of France, and when our Henry V. repaired to Paris with the crown of France on his head, the French of thofe times were not Perfians, any more than the English were Macedonians. Let us obferve what was the ftrength of France, when the evil ftar of the firft Valois had exhaufted its malignant influence. How rapid was her recovery after the horrible convulfions into which the weak 19 nefs of the laft kings of that branch had thrown her! How did the emerge, all at once, under the adminiftration of Cardinal de Richelieu, from a faintnefs and languor of almost twenty years! Let us caft our eyes on Great Britain, and confider the English of Edward the Second, and of Henry the Fourth, thofe of Henry the Eighth, and of the Stuarts. What politican on general principles will there difcover the nation, which Edward the Third made victorious, which Henry the Seventh brought back to the love of her kings,and of repofe, to which Elizabeth gave a tafte for commerce and religious toleration, which Cromwell infected with religious and political fanaticism, and which. at length, has rifen, all at once, and by himself to the true point of Liberty, which the monarchical ftate allows? The NIGHTINGALE'S SPEECH to the Winged People. ONCE on a time, when birds could fpeak, and had their methods of government like rational creatures, an ngle iffu'd out his orders (for they had no fuch thing as the Salique law among them) for every fpecies of the feather'd race to chufe themselves new reprefentatives, (for the majority of the old ones had difobliged) and give their attendance at a convention of the ftates. Accordingly, they all met together, purfuant to his wilt and pleafure; and as it was customary with them, as it is now with us, to chufe a speaker, they immediately proceeded to an election, and with wonderful unanimity and dispatch, made choice of the Nightingale for that important 'office, after the Linnet had recommended him to the chair in a very pathetic and eloquent harangue, which fet forth his extraordinary qualifications, and his unwearied diligence in the fervice of his king and fellow-fubjects. Upon which, the Nightingale, after having excus'd himself to the throne on account of deficiencies he was never guilty of, made the follow ing oration: GENTLEMEN, TO difcharge the truft you have repofed in me, with a fidelity equal to the confidence you have of my fervices, I take the liberty to propose the two following particulars to your confideration. . The fecurity of our fovereign's honour. 2dly. The intereft and advantage of the kingdom. I prefume you'll agree with me, that the honour of our fovereign cannot be better fupported and advanced, thân by caufing a ftrict enquiry to be made, into the conduct and motives of thofe who have any ways leffened and impaired it: Nor fhould they escape unnoticed, who have daringly prefumed to dictate to the supreme authority, and elbowed themselves, unfent for, into the prefence of their king in his clofet-retirements; whereby the bats and owls, and other obfcene birds of night, have got into the chiefelt posts of honour and dignity. Another way of maintaining his honour, is making ufe of that quickness and dispatch in our deliberations, that we may enable him to bring his and our enemies to reason, and by that means have the C 2 glory |