and up to the eighteenth century, the Empire, the sole central dignity, was elective and transferable.  Spain was for a long while parcelled out into several distinct kingdoms, and since she attained territorial unity the houses of Austria and Bourbon have both occupied her throne.  The monarchy and the republic for many a year disputed and divided Italy.  Only in France was there, at any time during eight centuries, but a single king and a single line of kings.  Unity and heredity, those two essential principles of monarchy, have been the invariable characteristics of the kingship in France.

A second fact, less apparent and less remarkable, but, nevertheless, not without importance or without effect upon the history of the kingship in France, is the extreme variety of character, of faculties, of intellectual and moral bent, of policy and personal conduct amongst the French kings.  In the long roll of thirty-three kings who reigned in France from Hugh Capet to Louis xvi. there were kings wise and kings foolish, kings able and kings incapable, kings rash and kings slothful, kings earnest and kings frivolous, kings saintly and kings licentious, kings good and sympathetic towards their people, kings egotistical and concerned solely about themselves, kings lovable and beloved, kings sombre and dreaded or detested.  As we go forward and encounter them on our way, all these kingly characters will be seen appearing and acting in all their diversity and all their incoherence.  Absolute monarchical power in France was, almost in every successive reign, singularly modified, being at one time aggravated and at another alleviated according to the ideas, sentiments, morals, and spontaneous instincts of the monarchs.  Nowhere else, throughout the great European monarchies, has the difference between kingly personages exercised so much influence on government and national condition.  In that country the free action of individuals has filled a prominent place and taken a prominent part in the course of events.

It has been shown how insignificant and inert, as sovereigns, were the first three successors of Hugh Capet.  The goodness to his people displayed by King Robert was the only kingly trait which, during that period, deserved to leave a trace in history.  The kingship appeared once more with the attributes of energy and efficiency on the accession of Louis vi., son of Philip I. He was brought up in the monastery of St. Denis, which at that time had for its superior a man of judgment, the Abbot Adam; and he then gave evidence of tendencies and received his training under influences worthy of the position which awaited him.  He was handsome, tall, strong, and alert, determined and yet affable.  He had more taste for military exercises than for the amusements of childhood and the pleasures of youth.  He was at that time called Louis the Wide-awake.  He had the good fortune to find in the Monastery of St. Denis a fellow-student capable of becoming a king’s