was completely indifferent concerning the figure which he or they might make in the general affairs of Europe; and that his desire of power was more unmixed with love of glory than that of any other man whom history has recorded; that he was unprincipled, ungrateful, mean, and treacherous, to which may be added, vindictive and remorseless.  For Burnet, in refusing to him the praise of clemency and forgiveness, seems to be perfectly justifiable, nor is it conceivable upon what pretence his partisans have taken this ground of panegyric.  I doubt whether a single instance can be produced of his having spared the life of any one whom motives either of policy, or of revenge, prompted him to destroy.  To allege that of Monmouth as it would be an affront to human nature, so would it likewise imply the most severe of all satires against the monarch himself, and we may add, too, an undeserved one; for, in order to consider it as an act of meritorious forbearance on his part, that he did not follow the example of Constantine and Philip II., by imbruing his hands in the blood of his son, we must first suppose him to have been wholly void of every natural affection, which does not appear to have been the case.  His declaration that he would have pardoned Essex, being made when that nobleman was dead, and not followed by any act evincing its sincerity, can surely obtain no credit from men of sense.  If he had really had the intention, he ought not to have made such a declaration, unless he accompanied it with some mark of kindness to the relations, or with some act of mercy to the friends of the deceased.  Considering it as a mere piece of hypocrisy, we cannot help looking upon it as one of the most odious passages of his life.  This ill-timed boast of his intended mercy, and the brutal taunt with which he accompanied his mitigation (if so it may be called) of Russell’s sentence, show his insensibility and hardness to have been such, that in questions where right feelings were concerned, his good sense, and even the good taste for which he has been so much extolled, seemed wholly to desert him.

On the other hand, it would be want of candour to maintain that Charles was entirely destitute of good qualities; nor was the propriety of Burnet’s comparison between him and Tiberius ever felt, I imagine, by any one but its author.  He was gay and affable, and, if incapable of the sentiments belonging to pride of a laudable sort, he was at least free from haughtiness and insolence.  The praise of politeness, which the stoics are not perhaps wrong in classing among the moral virtues, provided they admit it to be one of the lowest order, has never been denied him, and he had in an eminent degree that facility of temper which, though considered by some moralists as nearly allied to vice, yet, inasmuch as it contributes greatly to the happiness of those around us, is in itself not only an engaging but an estimable quality.  His support of the queen during the heats raised by the popish plot ought to be taken rather as a proof that he was not a monster than to be ascribed to him as a merit; but his steadiness to his brother, though it may and ought, in a great measure, to be accounted for upon selfish principles, had at least a strong resemblance to virtue.