_Education of Mangogul._
I will pass lightly over Mangogul's first years. The infancy of princes
is the same with that of the rest of mankind; with this difference,
however, that princes have the gift of saying a thousand pretty things,
before they can speak. Thus before Erguebzed's son was full four years
old, he furnished matter for a volume of Mangogulana. Erguebzed, who
was a man of sense, and was resolved that his son's education should
not be so much neglected as his own had been, sent betimes for all
the great men in Congo; as, painters, philosophers, poets, musicians,
architects, masters of dancing, mathematicks, history, fencing, &c.
Thanks to the happy dispositions of Mangogul, and to the constant
lessons of his masters, he was ignorant in nothing of what a young
prince is wont to learn the first fifteen years of his life; and at
the age of twenty he could eat, drink, and sleep, as completely as any
potentate of his age.
Erguebzed, whose weight of years began to make him feel the weight
of his crown, tired with holding the reins of the empire, frighted
at the disturbances which threatened it, full of confidence in the
superior qualifications of Mangogul, and urged by sentiments of
religion, sure prognostics of the approaching death or imbecility of
the great, descended from the throne, to seat his son thereon: and
this good prince thought he was under an obligation of expiating, by a
retirement, the crimes of the most just administration, of which there
is any account in the annals of Congo.
Thus it was, that in the year of the world 15,000,000,032,000,021, of
the empire of Congo 390,000,070,003, began the reign of Mangogul, the
1,234,500 of his race in a direct line. Frequent conferences with his
ministers, wars carried on, and the management of affairs, taught him
in a very short time what remained for him to know at getting out of
the hands of his pedagogues; and that was somewhat.
However, in less than ten years Mangogul acquired the reputation of
a great man. He gained battles, stormed towns, enlarged his empire,
quieted his provinces, repaired the disorder of his finances, restored
arts and sciences, raised edifices, immortalized himself by useful
establishments, strengthened and corrected the legislative power, even
founded academies; and, what his university could never comprehend, he
executed all these great things, without knowing one word of Latin.
Mangogul was not less amiable in his Seraglio than great on the throne.
He did not take it into his head to regulate his conduct by the
ridiculous customs of his country. He broke the gates of the palaces
inhabited by his women; he drove out those injurious guards of their
virtue; he prudently confided in themselves for their fidelity: the
entrance into their appartments was as free for men as into those of
the canonesses of Flanders; and doubtless their behaviour as decent.
Oh! how good a Sultan he was! There never was his equal, but in some
French romance. He was mild, affable, chearful, gallant, of a charming
figure, a lover of pleasures, cut out for them, and contained more wit
and sense in his head, than had been in those of all his predecessors
put together.
'Tis easy to judge that, with such uncommon merit, a number of the
sex aspired to make him their conquest: Some few succeeded. Those who
miss'd his heart, endeavour'd to console themselves with the grandees
of the court. Young Mirzoza was of the number of the former. I shall
not amuse myself with detailing the qualities and charms of Mirzoza:
the work would be without end, and I am resolved that this history
shall have one.