Attempt > Volume 1 and Select writings

THE ATTEMPT
55
loss of his children, as both the Dauphin, and his eldest son the Duke of Burgundy,
died within a year of one another. The latter was a young man of great promise, and
had already obtained much of the confidence of his grandfather. As the King of
Spain had renounced all right to the throne of France, the next heir was the Duke of
Anjou, a hoy of about four years old, and it cannot he wondered at that Louis was
much cast down at the thoughts of leaving so vast an inheritance to this child,
whose circumstances, although resembling those of his own youth, were yet more to be
lamented, as, unlike the son of Anne of Austria, he was motherless. In August 1715
the King was seized with an exremely painful and dangerous disease, which terminated
fatally on the 1st September. When he felt death approaching, he summoned the
future Louis XY. to his bedside, and taking him in his arms, calmly and solemnly
addressed to him these memorable words—“ You are about to become the King of a
great kingdom. That which I recommend to you most strenuously is, never to forget
your obligations toward God; remember you owe Him everything that you are. Strive
to preserve peace with your neighbours. I have been too fond of war. X either imitate
me in that, nor in the too great expenses which I have incurred. Seek counsel in all
things, and endeavour to find out the best always to follow it. Lighten the burdens of
your people as soon as you can, and do what I myself have had the misfortune not to
be able to do.”
Thus closed the life of Louis XIY, one of the most brilliant and popular, if not
one of the greatest sovereigns that ever ruled in France. It is, however, scarcely
possible to rise from the history of his long and prosperous reign, without feeling that,
amidst the glitter and adulation that surrounded him, and the dazzling events of which
he was the hero, we have been witnessing the performance of some splendid drama, in
whose actors we feel only the interest of the passing moment, hut who make little or
no impression on our hearts. The splendid palace of Versailles, L’Hopital des Invalides,
and many other monuments, remain of Louis the Fourteenth’s power and greatness, but
who does not feel that a life spent for the glory of God and the good of his fellow-
creatures, is the only monument that outlives a man, and that the memory of a Luther
or a Howard will endure, when Louis XIV. and all his glory will have been
forgotten 1
Z.