the first mention made of a crown in the Bible
is when the Amalekites bring Saul's crown to
David. According to a rabbainicl tradition,
Nimrod—Kenaz, the hunter king—was the lirst
to imagine a crown, and the first to be crowned.
One day, as he was abroad hunting, he looked
up to the sky and saw the figure of a crown in
the heavens. He called to a craftsman and bade
him copy the pattern—the crown remaining long
enough to enable him to do so; and ever afterwards
he wore that crown in obedience to the
will of Heaven; and no one could look upon it
without blindness. Pope Gregory the Seventh
used to say, sneeringly, in allusion to this story,
that the priesthood came direct from God, but
imperial power, crowned, from Nimrod. The
"mitre" of the Church is only the old Jewish
horn-crown, in its turn copied from the
Egyptian; while the Pope's tiara is the same mitre
triply crowned, to mark him high priest, judge,
and supreme legislator of the Christian world. So
was the king of old time ever a twofold
personage—high priest and chief magistrate in
one; and it has been an endless struggle
hitherto to simplify his pretensions. This, too,
is one of the many creaking legacies left us by
the Jews.

As the king was a mixed person, in part king
and in part priest, according to the Hebrew
theocratic doctrines, so were his titles also a
medley. In Spain he was Catholic; in France,
Most Christian; Pope Julius the Second called
the English king Christianissimus, and Pope
Leo the Tenth added Defender of the Faith;
Henry the Fourth took the title of Grace;
Henry the Eighth of Majesty. Before then the
English king had been Lord, Highness, &c., and
had also, until the reign of John, been content
to be a singular pronoun, and to call himself I.
Now he is We—like an editor. "Touching"
for scrofula was also part of the divine and
priestly power of kings, and began as early as
the days of Edward the Confessor. For Edward
was saint as well as king; so, of course, could
heal all manner of evil. The first four kings of
the Norman line did not touch, nor has it been
in use since Anne's time. Dr. Johnson was
touched, and the last case on record was in the
year 1712. Once William the Third "touched"
for complaisance, saying, "God give you better
health and more sense;" for this was one
of the royal fooleries which William the Third
would not adopt. Monmouth "touched" in
his day, and his marvellous cures were
blazoned abroad as proofs of his royal blood, and
rights.

One of the clearest assertions of popular will
in the creation of kingly authority, is to be
found in Michelet's* account of how the
Dukes of Carinthia won their thrones. "The
Duke of Carinthia was not allowed to sit upon
his marble throne till he had given money.
This donation was the coemptio—the purchase
of his right. Nowhere does the sovereignty of
the people (as a sleeping abstract annunciation)
appear more haughtily declared than in this
formality. It bears the seal of a remote
antiquity, of an Homeric or biblical simplicity. The
duke walked towards the marble throne in the
dress of a peasant. But a real peasant already
occupied it, attended by the sad and severe
symbols of the labouring people—the black bull
and the lean horse. Then commenced this rude
dialogue: 'And who so proudly dares enter
here?' said the peasant; 'is he a just judge?
has he the good of the country at heart? is he
born free, and a Christian?' 'He is, and he
will,' answered the duke. 'I demand, then, by
what right,' retorted the peasant 'he will force
me to quit this place?' 'He will buy it of you,'
was the answer, 'for sixty pennies, and the
horse and the bull shall be yours,' &c. No less
ancient or deeply significant was another part of
the same ceremony. Whilst the duke brandished
his sword towards the four winds, whilst he sat
with his face to the sun and conferred fiefs,
three families had a right to mow, to pillage,
and to burn. The interregnum of the sovereign
power was thus represented as the sleep of the
law, and the people saw in this form that they
must make haste to abdicate, and to give
themselves a defender."

*Origines du Droit Français, quoted by Lieber

Many other usages in the coronations of the
various European rnonarchs show the meaning
and origin of the kingly office, and how it was in
the beginning rather conferred by the people
than assumed as of inherited right. When the
German emperor had been elected by his seven
chief princes, he showed himself to the people,
and asked if they would have him? As soon as
they had cried "Fiat! fiat! fiat!" he was crowned;
but not till then. Yet a German king forgot the
other day the lesson to be learnt in this good
old custom of his predecessors, and, taking his
crown from the altar, proclaimed himself "king
by the grace of God," consecrated by God to
his office, with all the powers and privileges ever
given to the divine right of the condition. So
here we have the "hedge" again, as thick and
bristling as ever; and the noble victory of freedom
and common sense, which other nations
have gained, remains a dead letter in Prussia,
whose king ignores the power of the people, and
holds himself no more accountable than did our
two Jameses, or the first Charles, or any other
of the kingly "gods" whom we weighed in the
balance against humanity, and found wanting.
We might have reasonably expected more
enlightenment from Prussia in this noonday of
European life; but the tenacity with which
certain minds cling to the superstitions of the past,
and refuse to see the brighter truths of the
present, is marvellous. With the history of her
ally written in golden characters before her—
golden still, if here and there blurred with tears
and stained with blood—Prussia maintains a
king who takes his own crown from the altar,
then calls himself divinely chosen, and
consecrate by God! The real king—the can-ning
man, as Carlyle calls him—is always to be
venerated; but the real king does not talk nonsense
about his divine rights, nor refuse to recognise