His apparent virtues, instead of being the hardy productions of experience and adversity, were the premature and artificial fruits of a royal education.

The anxious tenderness of his father was continually employed to bestow on him those advantages, which he might perhaps esteem the more highly, as he himself had been deprived of them; and the most skilful masters of every science, and of every art, had labored to form the mind and body of the young prince.

[1] The knowledge which they painfully communicated was displayed with ostentation, and celebrated with lavish praise.

His soft and tractable disposition received the fair impression of their judicious precepts, and the absence of passion might easily be mistaken for the strength of reason.

His preceptors gradually rose to the rank and consequence of ministers of state: [2] and, as they wisely dissembled their secret authority, he seemed to act with firmness, with propriety, and with judgment, on the most important occasions of his life and reign.