208 ONE THOUSAND FAMOUS THINGS

Erasmus Writes to Bluebeard

THE heart of a king is in the hands of God. When God means
well to any nation he gives it a king who deserves a throne.
Perhaps after so many storms He now looks on us with favourj
having inspired the present reigning monarchs with a desire for peace
and the restoration of piety.

To you is due the highest praise. No prince is better prepared
for war and none more wishes to avoid it9 knowing as you do, how
deadly a scourge is war to the mass of mankind, while you have so
well used your respite that you have cleared the roads of robbers,
so long the scourge and reproach of England ; you have suppressed
vagabonds ; you have strengthened your laws, repealed the bad ones,
and supplied defects. You have encouraged learning. You have
improved discipline among the monks and clergy. You have recog-
nised that a pure and noble race of men is a finer ornament to your
realm than warlike trophies or splendid edifices.

You make yourself the pattern of, what you prescribe for others.
The king's command goes far. But the king's example goes farther.
Who better keeps the law than you keep it ? Who less seeks un-
worthy objects ? Who is truer to his word ? Who is juster and
fairer in all that he does ? In what household, in what college or
university, will you find more wisdom and integrity than in the
Court of England ?

The poet's golden age, if such age ever was, comes back under
your Highness. What friend of England does not now congratulate
her ? What enemy does not envy her good fortune ? By their
monarch's character realms are ennobled or depraved. Future ages
will tell how England throve, how virtue flourished in the reign of
Henry the Eighth, how the nation was born again, how piety revived,
how learning grew to a height which Italy may envy," and how the
prince who reigned over it was a rule and pattern for all time to come.

Once I avoided kings and courts. Now I would gladly migrate
to England if my infirmities allowed. I am but a graft upon her,
not a native, yet when I remember the years I spent there, the
friends I found there, the fortune (small though it be) which I owe to
her, I rejoice in England's felicity as if she were my natural mother.

For yourself, the intelligence of your country will preserve the
memory of your virtues, and scholars will tell how a king once reigned
there who in his own person revived the virtues of the ancient heroes.

Letter to Henry the Eighth

It Might Have Been
OF all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these, It might have been*
Whittier