wear it every day; but he that thinks it too light knows not of what metal it is made,

A king must make religion the rule of government, and not the balance of state; for the monarch that shall cast religion into the scale to make it even, shall himself be judged and weighed in these characters, Tekel Peres; he is found too light, his kingdom shall be divided and given to another: and that king who holds not religion the best reason of state, is void of piety and justice, the only sure supporters of a crown.-A king, in matters of consequence, should be able to give his advice, but not to rely intirely thereupon; for though happy events always justify their counsellors, yet it is much better that the ill success of good advice be imputed to a subject than a sovereign. A king is the chief fountain of honour, which should not run to waste by too large a pipe, lest courtiers sell the water, and then, as the Popish priests say of their holy fluid, it loses the virtue.

A king is also the life of the law, not only as he is Lex Loquens himself, but because he animates that dead L-making it active towards all his subjects; and as a wise king must do less in altering the laws, for new governments are dangerous, it being in the body politic as in the natural, that omnis subita mutatis est periculosa, and though it be for the better, yet it is not without fearful apprehensions; for the king that changeth the fundamental laws of his kingdom, openly declares, that there is no good title to a crown but by conquest.

A king that sets to sale seats of judicature oppresseth the people, for he teaches the judges to sell justice.-Bounty and magnificence are great virtues, but a prodigal king is nearer to a tyrant than a parsimonious one; for plenty at home draws his contemplations abroad, and want supplies itself of what is next; and herein a good king ought to be wise and prudent, that he do not exceed what he has a right to do. A king that is not feared consequently is not loved, his study, therefore, ought to be, how to be feared as well as loved; not loved from fear, but feared from love; therefore, as he must always endeavour to resemble him whose great name he bears, and that in manifesting the sweet influence of his mercy over the severe strokes of his justice, but not to suffer a man of death to live; for, besides that the land will mourn the restraint of justice, some doth more retard the affection of love, than the extent of mercy to others doth inflame it; and surely where love is so lessened, their fears are quite lost. A king's greatest enemies are his flatterers, who, though they always speak on his side, yet their words make against him. The love that a king owes to the public should not be confined to any particular, yet, that his more special favour reflect upon some worthy one is certainly necessary, because he knows but few deserving that character; but also he must know, that by concealing that man's faults (for where is the person free from faults) he injureth the commonwealth more than he could in paying his debts at the expence of the public. A good king ought to love his queen above all women, and to keep her from jealousy he must persuade her to love his mistress the commonwealth, which the more they both do, the better

they will love one another.-Their faults are of greater latitude than other men's, and their falls more irrecoverable; for which reason there is no medium to be found betwixt Nebuchadnezzar as a king, and afterwards as a beast.-To conclude, as a king is a person of the greatest power, he is likewise subject to the greatest cares; the man therefore that honours him not is next thing to an atheist, wanting the fear of God in his heart.

THE IRON MASK.

SIR,

A

TO THE

EDITOR OF THE FREEMASONS' MAGAZINE.

FTER all the conjectures that have been promulgated respecting the Man in the Iron Mask, I think the account inserted in your last Number bears the strongest marks of veracity. That the prisoner was of the blood-royal of France (as there asserted) seems confirmed by a learned and eloquent advocate of the last Parliament of Paris. It is but justice to say, that what follows is taken from the European Magazine, Vol. XXI. p. 424.

"In the MS. Memoirs of M. De La Reinterie, at present in the possession of the Marquis of Mesmon Romance at Paris, the Marquis says, That when he commanded in the fortress of Pignerol, a prisoner who was confined in the citadel of that place one day shut the door of his room with great violence upon the officer who waited upon him, and ran immediately down stairs, in order to escape from his confinement; he was, however, stopped by the centinel at the bottom of the stairs. The officer in the mean time cried out from the window, that the prisoner was making his escape, and requested the assistance of the garrison. The officer upon guard immediately came up and laid hold of the prisoner, who was scuffling with the centinel. The officer drew his sword, and the prisoner cried out, in a very commanding tone of voice, Songez à ce que vous faites Monsieur: Respectez le sang de vos Souverains" Take care what you do, sir: respect the blood of your sovereigns."-In the mean time the officer who had been locked in came down stairs, and, on hearing what the prisoner had said, put his hand upon his mouth, and desired all the persons present never to mention what they had heard the prisoner say; who was immediately reconducted to his old apartment, and guarded with more care than before,

"M. De La Reinterie says, that he told the story to a few confidential persons about the court of Versailles, whose names he mentions in his Memoirs, and that, except to them, he always preserved the most perfect secresy of this very extraordinary circumstance."

It may not be displeasing, however, to some of your readers to have laid before them the various opinions that have been entertained by different authors on this obscure subject.

The author of Memoires Secrets pour servir à l'Histoire de Perse asserts, that the Count de Vermandois, a natural son of Lewis XIV. and Mademoiselle de la Valliere, and highly beloved by them, who was nearly of the same age with the Dauphin, but of a character diametrically opposite to his, one day so far forgot himself as to hit him a box on the ear; that this action having got wind, Lewis, to send him out of the way, ordered him into the army, and gave instructions to a confidential agent to spread a report, soon after his arrival among his corps, that he was infected with the plague; which having had the natural effect of making him shunned by every body, he might with probability give out that he had died of the disease; and while he deceived the army with the preparations for his obsequies, he was to conduct him secretly to the citadel of l'Isle de Sainte Marguerite. These instructions were punctually obeyed. The next order was, that he should remain in that citadel till he could be conveniently removed to the Bastille, which was done in 1700, when Lewis gave the government of the Bastille to the commandant of that isle, as a reward for his fidelity. The same author adds, that the Comte de Vermandois one day conceived the idea of graving his name with the point of a knife at the bottom of his plate; that a servant having discovered this, thought the opportunity favourable for making his court, by carrying the plate to the commandant, and hoped to meet with an ample recompence; but the poor wretch was egregiously deceived, for he was put to death on the spot to prevent the possibility of the secret being divulged. Though these Secret Memoirs were published nine years previous to the earliest edition of l'Histoire du Siecle de Lewis XIV. as M. Clement observes in Les cinq Année Literaires (Lettre xcix. du 1 Mai, 1752, Tom. 2.) Voltaire boldly asserts, that all the historians who had written before him were ignorant of this extraordinary fact. He relates the story with but little variation, except that he omits the name of the Count de Vermandois. He adds, that the Marquis de Louvois, when he went to visit this unknown prisoner in the Isle Sainte Marguerite, always conversed with him in a standing posture, and with the most profound respect; that the prisoner died in the Bastille in 1704, and was interred by night in the parish of St. Paul.

e

The author of the Philippics (M. de la Grange-Chancel), in his, letter to M. Frezon, pretends that this prisoner was the Duc de Beaufort, who was reported to have fallen in the siege of Candy, and whose body was never to be found by the most diligent search. He gives, as a reason for the confinement of the duke, his turbulent spirit, the part he took in the disturbances of Paris in the time of La Fronde, and his opposition (in character of admiral) to the designs of Colbert, minister in the marine department.

M. Poullain de Saintfoy combats all these opinions concerning the Man in the Iron Mask; he likewise contradicts the date of this pri

soner's confinement in the Isle St. Marguerite, fixed by M. de Voltaire in 1661, by M. de la Grange-Chancel in 1669, and by the author of Memoires Secrets towards the end of 1683. M. de Saintfoy asserts, that this unknown personage was no other than the Duke of Monmouth, son of King Charles II. by Lucy Walters; that he had headed a party in the county of Dorset, where he was proclaimed king; and that having encountered the royal army, he was defeated, taken prisoner, and conducted to London, where he was shut up in the Tower, and condemned to lose his head on the 15th July 1685. M. de Saintfoy adds, that a report was spread about this time, that there was an officer in the army of the Duke of Monmouth, whose features and person bore a singular resemblance to the Duke's; that this man had been made prisoner at the same time with his royal commander, and had the heroism to suffer death in his stead. He quotes Mr. Hume, and a book entitled "Amours de Charles II. and James II. Kings of England;" and observes, to confirm his opinion, that James II. apprehensive that some unforeseen revolution might set Monmouth`at liberty, thought proper, for the peace of his own mind, to grant him his life on condition of his immediately passing over to France.

The jesuit Henry Griffet, who had long been confessor to the prisoners in the Bastille, having gained access to the secret papers and archives of the castle, and without doubt seen the register of deaths which was placed in the Depot, composed a very masterly dissertation on this historical problem. The jesuit does not positively assert, that the Man in the Iron Mask was the Duke de Vermandois, but he adduces many probable reasons to favour that opinion.

ONE

VICES AND VIRTUES.

FROM THE FRENCH.

TATLERS.

NE day Apelles said to Megabyses, a Persian lord, who had made him a visit in his work-room, and pretended to be a connoisseur in painting," While you were silent you appeared a person of consequence, on account of your order, your chains of gold, and your "purple robe; but since you have opened your mouth you become "the ridicule of all who hear you, even to the very boys who grind "my colours; pretending to know what you do not understand." PLUTARCH, in bis Treatise of the Flatterer and bis Friend. Leosthenes endeavouring by a pompous and audacious harangue to persuade the Athenians to war, was answered by Phocion in this manner: Thy words, young man, resemble the cypress-tree; they are mighty, and carry their heads high, but bear no fruit." PLUTARCH in bis Life.

66

SIR,

A

CANT PHRASES

IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

EXPLAINED.

TO THE

EDITOR OF THE FREEMASONS' MAGAZINE.

MONG other valuable communications inserted in your last Nume · ber, I was agreeably surprised to find one relative to the academical archæology of Granta. Being inyself a member of that university, my curiosity was excited by the superscription, " To the learned, the Graduates and Undergraduates of the University of Cambridge:" and I was highly gratified by the perusal of the letter subjoined. Although a vein of good-natured jocularity evidently pervades the whole composition, yet the academical honours, and the colloquial phrases, therein alluded to, do all certainly exist; and are all, as certainly, very unintelligible, both to the students and fellows of the several colleges individually, and also to the public at large. But popery and monkish impositions being now, it is to be hoped, entirely abolished in England, the correlative mummery should no longer remain; the age of superstition and of Abracadabra is past! With a firm persuasion of this truth, I shall venture to offer some slight conjectures upon the intricate subject; well aware, however, that to the indefatigable industry, to the scrupulous accuracy, and to the immense reading, of a Wall of Christ's, a Tyrwhitt of Jesus, or a Whiter of Clare, we must alone eventually look for full and satisfactory information. Mine will be but an inferior ministerial office in the temple of literature; I shall bind the ambiguous victims, and drag them to the altar. Let these high-priests come forward, and strike the blow. Before I proceed to notice the queries of your ingenious correspondent, it may not perhaps be improper to mention one very remarkable personage, whic, either through inadvertency or design, he has passed over in total silence. I mean "The Wooden Spoon. This luckless wight (for what cause I know not) is annually the universal butt and laughing-stock of the whole senate-house. He is the last of those young men who take honours, in his year, and is called a junior optimé; yet, notwithstanding his being in fact superior to them all, the very lowest of the woo, or gregarious undistinguished batchelors, think themselves entitled to shoot the pointless arrows of their clumsy wit against the wooden spoon; and to reiterate the stale and perennial remark, that " wranglers are born with gold spoons in their mouths: senior optimes with silver; junior optimés with wooden; and the of woo with leaden ones."

Besides this mirth-devoted character, and in a degree still lower than the of woλos, are always " a few, a chosen few, a band of brothers," VOL. IV.

Bb