Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/379

 Such is their contempt for human nature!—"There's a divinity doth hedge a King," that keeps their bodies and their minds sacred within the magic circle of a name; and it is their fear lest this circle should be violated or approached without sufficient awe, that makes them observe and remember the countenances and demeanour of others with such infinite circumspection and exactness.

As Kings have the sagacity of pride, courtiers have the cunning of fear. They watch their own behaviour and that of others with breathless apprehension, and move amidst the artificial forms of court-etiquette, as if the least error must be fatal to them. Their sense of personal propriety is heightened by servility: every faculty is wound up to flatter the vanity and prejudices of their superiors. When Coates painted a portrait in crayons of the Queen, on her first arrival in this country, the King, followed by a train of attendants, went to look at it. The trembling artist stood by. "Well, what do you think?" said the King to those in waiting. Not a word in reply. "Do you think it like?" Still all was hushed as death. "Why, yes, I think it is like, very like." A buzz of admiration instantly filled the room; and the old Duchess of Northumberland, going up to the artist, and tapping him familiarly on the shoulder, said, "Remember, Mr. Coates, I am to have the first copy." On another occasion, when the Queen had sat for her portrait, one of the Maids of Honour coming into the room, curtesied to the reflection in the glass, affecting to mistake it for the Queen. The picture was, you may be sure, a flattering likeness. In the "Memoirs of Count Grammont," it is related of Louis XIV. that having a dispute at chess with one of his courtiers, no one present would give an opinion. "Oh!" said he, "here comes Count Hamilton, he shall decide which of us is in the right." "Your Majesty is in the wrong," replied the Count, without looking at the board. On which, the King remonstrating with him on the impossibility of his judging till he saw the state of the game, he answered, "Does your Majesty suppose that if you were in the right, all these noblemen would stand by and say nothing?" A