GREAT AUTHORS OP ALL AGES. GKEAT AUTHOES OP ALL AGES. BEING SELECTIONS FKOM THE PEOSE WOEKS OF EMINENT WEITEES FEOM THE TIME OF PEEICLES TO THE PEESENT DAY. WITH INDEXES. BY S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE. AUTHOR OF " A CRITICAL DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND BRITISH AND AMERICAN AUTHORS," "POETICAL QUOTATIONS FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON," "PROSE QUOTATIONS FROM SOCRATES TO MACAULAY," ETC. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND. 1882. Copyright, 1879, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT A Co. TO ROBERT LENOX KENNEDY, OP NEW YORK, AS A TOKEN OF PROFOUND EESPECT FOR HIS CHAKACTER AS A CHRISTIAN, A PHILANTHROPIST, AND A SCHOLAK, I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME. S. AUSTIN ALLIBOKE. NEW YORK. October 11, 1879. 250290G PREFACE. THIS volume is the fourth of my works constituting a Course of English Literature, viz. : I. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, Living and Deceased, from the Earliest Accounts to the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century, containing over Forty-six Thousand [46,499] Articles (Authors) ; with Forty Indexes of Subjects. Royal 8vo, 3 vols., pp. 3139. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1858-70-71. II. Poetical Quotations from Chaucer to Tennyson, with Copious Indexes. Authors, 550; Subjects, 435; Quotations, 13,600. 8vo, pp. xiv. 788. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1873. III. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay, with Indexes. Authors, 544; Subjects, 571 ; Quotations, 8810. 8vo. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1876. IV. Great Authors of all Ages : Being Selections from the Prose Works of Eminent Writers from the Time of Pericles to the Present Day. With Indexes. 8vo. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1880. It is difficult for an author to say anything of his works which does not savour of ostentation, or, at least, of egotism ; and therefore I prefer to say nothing. S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE. YORK, October 23, 1879. INDEX OF AUTHORS. Adams, John Quincy 289 Addison, Joseph - 133 Arbuthnot, John, M.D 140 Arnold, Thomas, D.D...'. 419 Ascham, Roger 28 Bacon, Francis 39 Bancroft, George, LL.D 437 Barclay, Robert 121 Barrow, Isaac, D.D 93 Baxter, Richard 74 Boattie, James, LL.D 252 Beckford, William 278 Beecher, Henry Ward, D.D 502 Bentham, Jeremy 270 Berkeley, George, D.D 150 Beveridge, William, D.D 112 Binney, Horace, LL.D 357 Blackstone, Sir William 220 Blackwall, Anthony 137 Blair, Hugh, D.D 202 Bolingbroke, Lord 145 Boyle, Hon. Robert 88 Brougham, Henry, Lord Brougham 338 Brown, Thomas, "M.D 343 Browne, Sir Thomas, M.D 58 Budgell, Eustace 153 Bunyan, John 90 Buonaparte, Napoleon 290 Burke, Edmund 233 Burritt, Elihu 486 Burton, Robert 44 Bury, Richard do 17 Butler, Joseph, D.D 163 Butler, Samuel 69 Byron, George Gordon Noel, Lord 395 Carey, Henry Charles, LL.D 407 Carleton, William.... 434 Carlyle, Thomas 414 Carter, Elizabeth 199 Cavendish, George 25 Caxton, William 20 Cervantes 32 Chalmers, Thomas, D.D., LL.D 354 Channing, William Ellery, D.D 352 Chapone, Esther .' 220 Charleton, Walter, M.D 80 Charnock, Stephen 86 Chatham, Earl of 176 Chenevix, Richard 361 Chesterfield, Earl of 166 Cicero 12 Clarendon, Earl of. 65 Clarke, Samuel, D.D 142 Combe, Andrew, M.D 430 Combe, George 392 Cooper, Anthony Ashley 131 Cowley, Abraham, M.D 78 Cowper, William 242 Cudworth, Ralph 77 Cumberland, Richard '.. 246 Dalrymple, David, Lord Hailes 224 Davy, Sir Humphry 342 De Foe, Daniel 124 De Quincey, Thomas 380 Decker, Thomas 113 Dick, Thomas, LL.D 302 Dickens, Charles 492 Disraeli, Isaac 287 Doddridge, Philip, D.D 170 Dodsley, Robert 171 Dryden, John..., 97 Eliot, George 530 Ellwood, Thomas 114 Elyot, Sir Thomas 51 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 457 Erskine, Ralph ; 155 Evelyn, John 81 Everett, Edward, D.C.L 409 Felltham, Owen 60 Felton, Henry, D.D 149 Fielding, Henry 174 Fisher,\John 20 Foster, John 295 Fox, Charles James 272 Franklin, Benjamin 172 Froude, James Anthony 513 Fuller, Thomas ." 61 Gibbon, Edward 256 Gilpin, William 223 Godwin, William 277 Goldsmith, Oliver 227 Green, Rev. John Richard 527 Guizot, Fran9ois Pierre Guillaume.. ..... 389 Hailes, Lord 224 Hale, Sir Matthew 67 Hales, John 48 Hall, Captain Basil 399 Hall, Joseph, D.D 42 Hall, Robert 280 INDEX OF AUTHORS. Hallam, Henry, LL.D Hare, Julius Charles Harris, James, M.P Harrison, William Hawkesworth, John, LL.D Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hazlitt, William Heber, Reginald, D.D Helps, Sir Arthur Herbert, Lord Edward Hersehel, John Frederick William, D.C.L Heylin, Peter, D.D Hillard, George Stillman Hondly, Benjamin, D.D Hobbes, Thomas Hooker, Richard Hopkins, Ezekiel Home, George, D.D Horsley, Samuel, LL.D Howell, James Hughes, John Hume, David Hunt, James Henry Leigh Kurd, Richard, D.D Hyde, Henry Irving, Washington, LL.D. PAOE 335 428 179 52 195 462 345 364 510 46 400 56 475 143 50 36 105 241 248 55 144 189 372 204 65 366 James VI. and 1 41 Jefferson, Thomas 259 Jeffrey, Francis 313 Jenyns, Soame 171 Jerrold, Douglas 456 Johnson, Samuel, LL.D 181 Jones, Sir William 263 Junius 293 Kane, Elisha Kent, M.D 521 Kingslev, Rev. Charles 517 Knox, Vicesimus, D.D 273 Lamb, Charles 324 Landor, Walter Savage 330 Latimer, Hugh 22 Layard, Austen Henry, D.C.L., M.P.... 512 Lecky, William Edward Hartpole 529 Leighton, Robert, D.D 68 Locke, John 102 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 470 Lyell, Sir Charles, D.C.L 433 Lyttelton, Lord George 178 Lytton, Edward George Earle Bulwer Lytton, Lord 465 Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, M.P./Lord , 440 Macchiavelli 21 Mackenzie, Sir George 109 Mackenzie, Henry 262 Mackintosh, Sir' James, M.D., M.P., LL.D 285 Mant, Richard, D.D 333 Martineau, Harriet 454 Melmoth, William ... 187 Miller, Hugh 452 Milman, Henry Hart, D.D 403 Milton, John 62 Montagu, Elizabeth 203 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley 161 Montaigne, Michel de 30 More, Henry, D.D 73 More, Sir Thomas 23 Motley, John Lothrop, LL.D., D.C.L... 504 Newton, Sir Isaac 117 North, Christopher 375 Overbury, Sir Thomas 47 Owen, John, D.D 70 Pnley, William, D.D 260 Pascal, Blaise 84 Paulding, James Kirke :!">(> Pearson, John, D.D 70 Penn, William 119 Pepys, Samuel 101 Pericles 9 Petrarch, Francesco 18 Phillips, Charles 387 Pitt, Right Hon. William, Earl of Chat- ham 176 Pliny the Younger 15 Pope, Alexander 156 Potter, Alonzo, D.D 450 Prescott, William Hickling, LL.D 422 Priestley, Joseph, LL.D 250 Purchas, Samuel 46 Quincy, Josiah, LL.D 311 Radcliffe, Anne 283 Raleigh, Sir Walter 34 Rapin de Thoyras 122 Reid, Thomas, D.D 186 Richardson, Samuel 158 Ridley, Nicholas 26 Robertson, William, D.D 209 Rollin, Charles 123 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 192 Ruskin, John 51!) Russell, Lady Rachel 109 Saint John, Henry 145 Sallust 14 Sandys, George 45 Scott, Sir Walter , 307 Selden, John 49 Seward, Anna 269 Shaftesbury, Earl of 131 Sharswood, George, LL.D 483 Sherlock, Thomas, D.D 148 Sherlock, William, D.D 115 Sidney, Algernon 83 Sidney, Sir Philip 37 Smiles, Samuel, M.D 507 Smith, Adam, LL.D 219 Smith, Goldwin, LL.D 525 Smith, Sydney 299 Smollett, Tobias George, M.D 213 South, Robert, D.D 106 Southey, Robert, LL.D 318 INDEX OF AUTHORS. XI Spence, Joseph 108 Spencer, Herbert 522 Sprat, Thomas 110 Stanhope, Philip Dormer 166 Stecle, Sir Richard 129 Sterne, Laurence 194 Stewart, Dugald 275 Stillingfleet, Edward, D.D 107 Simmer, John Bird, D.D 359 Swift, Jonathan, D.D 125 Talbot, Catherine 206 Taylor, Jeremy, D.D 71 Temple, Sir William 91 Thackeray, William Makepeace 488 Tickell, Thomas 155 Ticknor, George, LL.D 405 Tillotson, John, D.D 95 Trench, Richard Chcnevix, D.D 473 Tuckerman, Henry Theodore 498 Tytler, Alexander Fraser 266 Usher, James 207 Vaughan, Charles John, D.D 509 Yon Schlegel, Frederick Wilhelm 305 Walpole, Horace 200 Walton, Izaak 54 Warhurton, William, D.D 107 Warton, Joseph, D.D 210 Warton, Thomas 237 ' Washington, George 244 ' Watson, Richard, D.D 255 Watts, Isaac, D.D 130 Webster, Daniel, LL.D 362 West, Gilbert, LL.D 169 Whately, Richard, D.D 385 Whiston, William 128 White, Henry Kirke 379 White, Joseph, D.D 265 Wilson, John ("Christopher North")... 375 Winslow, Forbes, M.D., D.C.L 481 Winthrop, Robert Charles, LL.D 479 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Abbotsford, Irving at 369 yEneid and Virgil's Genius 168 Albania, Ityron at 395 Alfred, Hume on 190 America, Burke on 234 American Literature 410 Ancestry, Pride of. 302 Animals, Cruelty to 350 Anjou and Elizabeth 37 Arts, Herscbel on tbe 402 Ascham, Koger, and Lady Jane Grey... 332 Astronomy, Uses of -. 411 Augustan Age in England 230 Authorship, Prescott on 427 Bacon, Yon Schlegel on 306 Bastille, Attack upon the 418 Battle of the Nile 319 Battle of Princeton 245 Buttle of Trafalgar 322 Battle of Trenton 244 Beards, Budgell on 154 Beattie on his "Minstrel" 252 Beauty, Bacon on 39 Beauty, Emerson on 458 Beauty, Personal 208 Beauty and Love, Scale of 132 Bible as a Study .451 Bois-Guilbert and Rebecca 309 Books, Choice of 419 Books, De Bur}' on 17 Books, Hillard on 478 Books, Meditation among the 224 Books and Book-Buyers, Ruskin on 521 Books, Buying, Beecher on 503 Books and Reading, Lamb on 327 Books and Reading, Watts on 140 Britain, Languages of 52 British Nation, Industry of the 301 Buonaparte, Phillips on 387 Burning of Vanities 533 Busy-Body, Hall on the 43 Cains Marius to the Romans 14 Calamity, Compensation of 400 Caliph Vathek and his Palaces 278 Candid Man 400 Castle-Building, Steele on 130 Castle of Udolpho 283 Cato, Smith on 525 Charles I., Clarendon on GO Charles II., Death of 444 Charles V., Robertson on 211 Childe Harold, Byron on 397 Children, Hale's Letter to his 67 Children of Light 428 Chinese, Condition of the 840 Christ, Ascension of 70 Christ, Character and Influence of 529 Christ, Divinity of 290 Christ, Miracles of 247 Christ and Socrates 265 Christian's Dependence upon his Re- deemer 359 Christianity, Proposed Abolition of 120 Christianity the Great Remedy 479 Christianity and Natural Religion 255 Church of England 27 Civilization, Guizot on 389 Clovernook and its Inn 456 Columbus, First Voyage of. 368 Confessions of a Drunkard 329 Conscience, Butler on 164 Contentment, Walton on 54 Controversy, Baxter on 74 Controversy, Hall on 282 Conversation, Fuller on 61 Conversation, Usher on 209 Copyright, Macaulay on 441 Countries, Ancient 45 Cowper on his Poems, 243 Cromwell, Clarendon on 65 Cromwell, Guizot on 392 Daughter, Death of a 91 Day of Judgment 226 Death, Ignorance of the Time of 116 Decision of Character 297 Detraction, Felltham on 60 Devils in the Head 50 Devotional Feelings 170 Divine Benevolence 261 Divinity, Law, and Physic 133 Don Quixote, Cervantes on 32 Don Quixote, Hallam on 336 Earth, Insignificance of the 355 Earthquakes, London 201 Education, Classical 421 Education, Female, Lady Montagu on.. 162 Education, Female, Sydney Smith on... 300 Education of the Middle Classes 420 Education, Spencer on 523 Education, True and False 63 Elegance, Thoughts on 207 Elizabeth, Amy Robsart, and Leicester. 310 XIV INDEX OF SUBJECTS. Elizabeth, Hume on 191 Elizabeth, Prescott on 423 Elizabeth, Rapin on 122 Elizabeth, Scott on 310 Elizabeth, Literature of the Age of. 345 Eloquence, "Webster on 364 English Literature, Progress of 313 English People, Best 488 Enthusiasm, Defence of 499 Everett, Hillard on 476 Evil Speaking, Selden on 50 Excellency of the Christian Religion 93 Exercise, Combe on 430 Exercise, Elyot on 52 Existence of God 73 Faith in Providence 454 Fame, Love of 188 Faults, Beecher on 504 Feast in the Manner of the Ancients.... 213 Fire in London, 1666 81 Fortune, Petrarch on 18 Fossils of the Old Red Sandstone 453 France, Critics and Moralists of 216 Francis of Assisi 20 Franklin, Overbury on a 48 Franklin, Jefferson on 260 Franklin and the American Revolution 250 French, Character of the 57 French Revolution 285 Friendship in Heaven 386 Friendship and Benevolence 153 Future State, Berkeley on 151 Genius, Emerson on 460 Golden City, Approach to the 90 Good Breeding, Chesterfield on 166 Good Breeding, Warton on 218 Good "Works, Franklin on 173 Government, Burke on 235 Grant, Sir William 338 Great Seal, More's Resignation of the... 46 Greatness, Inconvenience of 30 Greek and Roman Authors 137 Hamlet, Hazlitt on 348 Happiness, Butler on 69 Happiness of Others 343 Happiness and Misery 197 Harley, Death of 262 Hastings, Impeachment of 236 Hastings, Trial of 442 Heathen, Future State of the 242 Henry VIII., Fronde on 514 Henry VIII., Hume on 190 History, Credit clue to 75 Homer, Blackwall on 137 Homer, Fox on 272 Homer and Virgil, Pope on 157 Honour to God 95 Horace, Spence on 109 Human Life, Shortness of. 146 Humility, Selden on 50 Hypocrite, Hall on the 43 Image-Breakers of the Netherlands 505 Immortality, Consciousness of. 342 Immortality, Universal Belief in 803 Incarnation, Mystery of the 70 Incomprehensibility of God 77 Indians, Employment of 177 Inferior Animals, Cruelty to 172 Ingratitude an Incurable Vice 106 Inquiry and Private Judgment in Re- ligion 48 Insanity, Symptoms of 481 Inventions, Revival of 507 Irish Village and School-House 435 Irving and Scott's last Interview 371 Isabella of Spain and Elizabeth of Eng- land 423 Johnson, Macaulay on 447 Judgments of God 58 Junius to the King 293 Knowledge, God's.... Knowledge, Love of. 86 51 Labour, Division of 220 Ladies, Unmarried...; 158 Language, Changes in 433 Languages, Harrison 180 Languages, Spencer on 524 Last Judgment 105 Latin and Greek 299 Laughter, Hobbes on : 51 Law Studies, Sharswood on 483 Law, Study of the, Blackstone on 221 Laws in General, Blackstone on 222 Laws, Sleeping, Bentham on 271 Learning, Useless 145 Lexicography, Johnson on 182 Liberty and Government 83 Libraries, Roman 247 Life, Conduct of. 59 Life Not too Short 115 Literary Aspirations 62 Literature, National 353 Loneliness, Vaughan on 509 Lord's Supper 334 Love, Bacon on 39 Love, Power of 458 Luther, Robertson on 211 Mahomet, Gibbon on 257 Mambrino's Helmet 33 Man's Writing a Memoir of Himself..... 295 Marriage, Prospect of. 162 Marriages, Early 173 Mary, Queen of Scots, Execution of. 515 Mary, Queen of Scots, Robertson on 210 Mathematical Learning 141 Matrimonial Happiness 162 Matrimony, Dickens on 497 Melancholy and Contemplation 44 Memory, Fuller on 61 Memory, Stewart on 276 Memory, Watts on 139 Memory, "Winslow on 482 Men and Women 160 Mercy, God's 155 INDEX OF SUBJECTS. xv Mexico, Prescott on 426 Milton, Country Ketreat of. 203 3Iilton, Ellwood on 114 Mind, Knowledge of the 186 More, Sir Thomas, Mackintosh on 286 Names, Sterne on 105 Narrative, Hawkesworth on 195 Natural Philosophy and Religion 88 Nature, Love of 253 Neapolitan Church 284 Neglect, Felltham on 60 New Commandment 249 New England, Quincy on 312 Nile, Battle of the 319 Nimroud, Excavations at 512 Noble Birth, Pride of. 119 Noodle's Oration 301 Oblivion, Browne on 59 Obscurity, Cowley on 78 One Niche the Highest 486 Opium, Effects of. 381 Pacific Ocean, Discovery of the 511 Partridge at the Playhouse 175 Paul at^Athens 404 Paul's Walk 113 Pecksniff. , 493 Peloponnesian War 9 Pcnn's Advice to his Children 120 Plague in London in 1665, De Foe on... 125 Plague in London in 1665, Pepys on 101 Pleasure, Utopian 24 Pleasures, Natural and Fantastical 152 Poet, a Small 69 Poetry, Modern, Defects in 518 Poetry of the Age of Elizabeth 237 Poetry, Steele on 130 Poetry, What is ? 337 Politeness, True and False 205 Poor Relations 326 Pope, Milton, Thomson 269 Pope to Atterbury 158 Pope's Translation of Homer 185 Power and Activity 393 Power, God's ". 87 Poyser, Mrs., and the Squire 530 Practice and Habit 103 Prayer, Bacon's 40 Preaching, .Moral 354 Prescott, 'Death of 406 Press, Censorship of the 64 Princeton, Battle of 245 Private Judgment in Religion 92 Procrastination 79 Prophetic Language 118 Protestant Infallibility 143 Proverbs, Philosophy 'of 288 Prudence, Dodsley on 171 Psalms, Beauties of the 241 Purity and Propriety 203 Rainy Sunday in an Inn 367 Raleigh, Three Rules of 35 Raleigh to Prince Henry 35 Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton 308 Reading, Gibbon on 258 Religion and Moral Conduct IDS Religion not Hostile to Pleasure 106 Religion, Sherlock on 148 Remorse, Godwin on 277 Repentance, Death-Bed 72 Revelation, Evidences of 128 Revolution, Riccabocca on 4'',;) Rewards and Punishments 164 Richard the Third and Macbeth 849 Richmond, Countess of. '-'<> Right and Wrong 142 Rill from the Town Pump 462 Roast Pig, Lamb on 324 Rome in 1621 56 Rural Life in Sweden 471 Russell, Lady R., to Doctor Fitzwilliam 109 Sacred Writers, Simplicity of the 169 Sallust and Cicero 2'it Schoolmaster of Ascham 28 Science and its Methods 408 Science, Influence of 401 Scott, Sir Walter, Hall on 399 Scottish Rebellion 200 Scripture and the Law of Nature 36 Scriptures, Confirmation of the 513 Scriptures, Style of the 89 Scrooge's Christmas 495 Sea, Purchas on the 4(5 Self-Culture 352 Self-Deceit 165 Self-Denial 112 Self-Love, Immoderate 10S Shakespeare, Johnson on 183 Shakspeare, Jeffrey on 317 Shakspeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Ben Jonson 98 Shakspere's Later Years 527 Shepherds of Bethlehem 23 Sidney, Sir Philip, and Lord Brooke 331 Snow-Storm 376 Solitude, Happiness of. 1!' ; ! Sorcery and Witchcraft 41 Soul, immortality of the, Gibbon on the 257 Soul, Immortality of the, Hughes on the 144 Spenser and Milton 99 Spring, Pleasures of the 156 Squire Bull and his Son 350 Statcliness and Courtesy 459 Stoicism and Christianity 199 Studies, Bacon on 40 Study, Course of 16 Study, Haste in 104 Style, Blair on 202 Style, Melmoth on 187 Sublime, Felton on the 149 Success, Macchiavelli on 21 Suicide, Lecky on 52'l Sunday Amusements 273 Sunday, Autobiography of 2(>6 Sunrise in the W'oods 224 Taste, Cultivation of. 202 Taste, Formation of the Right 419 XVI INDEX OF SUBJECTS. PAGE Taste, Reflections on 123 Tears, Steele on 129 Temple, Knights of the 491 Teufelsdrockh's View of the City 417 Tezcuco, King of. 424 The Seal! The Seal ! 522 Themistocles, Aristides, and Composition 379 Thoughts and Aphorisms 127 Thurlow, Josephus, and Tacitus 243 Time and Eternity, Hall on 281 Time and Eternity, Heber on 365 Time, Employing our 72 Tinker, Overbury's 47 Titles of Honour 121 Trafalgar, Battle of. 322 Translation, Dryden on 100 Travelling, Emerson on 461 Trenton, Battle of. 244 Truth and Sincerity 95 Unbelievers, Expostulation with 84 Understanding, Weakness of. 102 Union, Preservation of the 363 Vanities, Burning of. 533 Vanity, Mrs. Montagu on 204 Venice, Ruskin on 520 Ventriloquism, Dick on 304 Verres, Cicero against 12 View of the Divine Government 110 Virtue and Vice 9fi Virtue More Pleasant than Vice 110 Wakefield, Family of. 227 Wakefield Family in Affliction 228 "Wakefield Family in Prosperity 229 War, Horrors of 280 Warburton to Hurd 167 Washington Abroad and at Home 412 Washington Appointed Commander-in- Chief. 437 Washington, Fame of. 174 Washington, Farewell Address of 358 Westminster Abbey 134 Wife, Economical 2<>6 William the Conqueror 178 Wisdom, God's 87 Wisdom, True 107 Wit, Barrow on 94 Wit, Ready and Nimble 80 Wit, Slow but Sure 80 Witches, Travel of. 42 Wolsey and Henry VIII 26 Women in Politics 289 Women, Learning of. 160 Words, Morality in 474 Words, Study of 474 Work, Carlyle on 415 GEEAT AUTHOES OP ALL AGES. PERICLES, an illustrious Athenian statesman and orator, died B.C. 429. " The history of eloquence at Athens is remark- able. From a very early period great speakers had flourished there. Pisistratus and Themistoclcs are said to have owed much of their influence to their talents for debate. We learn, with more certainty, that Pericles was distinguished by ex- traordinary oratorical powers. The substance of some of his speeches is transmitted to us by Thu- cydides, and that excellent writer has doubtless faithfully reported the general line of his argu- ments." LOUD MACAULAY : OH the Athenian Orn- tors : Kui(jJtt's Quarterly Mnr/nzine, August, 1824, and in his works, complete, 1866, 8 vols., Svo, vii. 668. " His oration upon those who fell in the first campaign of the Peloponnesism war has been pronounced the most remarkable of all the com- positions of antiquity.'' RKV. JAMES TAYLOK, D.D. : Imperial Diet, of Univ. Diog., iii. 644. THE ORATION wnicn WAS SPOKEN BY PERI- CLES AT THE PUBLIC FUNERAL OF THOSE ATHENIANS WHO HAD BEEN FIRST KILLED iv THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. (From TIIUCYUIDES.) Many of those who have spoken before me on occasions of this kind have com- mended the author of that law which we are now obeying, for having instituted an oration to the honour of those who sacrifice their lives in fighting for their country. For my part, I think it sufficient for men who have approved their virtue in action, by ac- tion to be honoured for it by such as you see the public gratitude now performing about this funeral ; and that the virtues of many ought not to be endangered by the manage- ment of any one person, when their credit must precariously depend on his oration, which may be good, and may be bad. Diffi- cult indeed it is, judiciously to handle a subject where even probable truth will hardly gain assent. The hearer, enlight- ened by a long acquaintance, and warm in his affections, may quickly pronounce every- thing unfavourably expressed, in respect to what lie wishes and what he knows; whilst the stranger pronounceth all exaggerated, through envy of those deeds which he is conscious are above his own achievement. For the praises bestowed on others are then only to be endured when men imagine they can do those feats they hear to have been done , they envy what they cannot equal, and immediately pronounce it false. Yet, as this solemnity has received its sanction from the authority of our ancestors, it is my duty to obey the law, and to endeavour to procure, so far as I am able, the good will and approbation of all my audience. I shall therefore begin first with our fore- fathers, since both justice and decency re- quire that we should, on this occasion, bestow on them an honourable remem- brance. In this our country they kept themselves always firmly settled; and, through their valour, handed it down free to every since succeeding generation. Worthy, indeed, of praise are they, and yet more worthy are our immediate fathers ; since, enlarging their own inheritance into the extensive empire which we now possess, they bequeathed that, their work of toil, to us their sons. Yet even these successes, we ourselves, here present, who are yet in the strength and vigour of our days, have nobly improved, and have made such pro- visions for this our Athens, that now it is all-sufficient in itself to answer every exi- gence of war and of peace. I mean not here to recite those martial exploits by which these ends were accomplished, or the resolute defences we ourselves and our fore- fathers have made against the formidable invasions of Barbarian! and Greeks. Your own knowledge of these will excuse the long detail. But by what methods we have rose to this height of glory and power ; by what 9 10 PERICLES. polity, and by what conduct, we arc thus aggrandized, I shall first endeavour to show, and then proceed to the praise of the de- ceased. These, in my opinion, can be no impertinent topics on this occasion ; the dis- cussion of them must be beneficial to this numerous company of Athenians and of strangers. We are happy in a form of government which cannot envy the laws of our neigh- bours ; for it has served as a model to others, but is originally at Athens. And this our form, as committed not to the few, but to the whole body of the people, is called a democracy. How different soever in a private capacity, we all enjoy the same general equality our laws are fitted to pre- serve; and superior honours, just as we excel. The public administration is not confined to a particular family, but is at- tainable only by merit. Poverty is not a hindrance, since whoever is able to serve his country meets with no obstacle to pre- ferment from his first obscurity. The offices of the state we go through without obstruc- tions from one another, and live together in the mutual endearments of private life with- out suspicions ; not angry with a neighbour for following the bent of his own humour, nor putting on that countenance of discon- tent which pains, though it cannot punish ; so that in private life we converse together without diffidence or damage, whilst we dare not, on any account, offend against the pub- lic, through the reverence we bear to the magistrates and the laws, chiefly to those enacted for redress of the injured, and to those unwritten, a breach of which is al- lowed disgrace. Our laws have further provided for the mind most frequent inter- missions of care, by the appointment of pub- lic recreations and sacrifices throughout the year, elegantly performed with a peculiar pomp, the daily delight of which is a charm that puts melancholy to flight. The grand- eur of this our Athens causes the produce of the whole earth to be imported here, by which we reap a familiar enjoyment, not more of the delicacies of our own growth than those of other nations. In the affairs of war we excel those of our enemies who adhere to methods opposite to our own ; for we lay open Athens to general resort, nor ever drive any stranger from us, whom either improvement or curiosity hath brought amongst us, lest any enemy should hurt us by seeing what is never concealed: we place not so great a confidence in the preparatives and artifices of war as in the native warmth of our souls, impelling us to action. In point of education, the youth of some people are inured, by a course of la- borious exercise, to support toil and hard- ship like men 5 but we, notwithstanding our easy and elegant way of life, face all the dangers of war as intrepidly as they. This may be proved by facts, since the Lacede- monians never invade our territories barely with their own, but with the united strength of all their confederates. But when we in- vade the dominions of our neighbours, for the most part we conquer without difficulty, in an enemy's country, those who fight in defence of their own habitations. The strength of our whole force no enemy hath ever yet experienced, because it is divided by our naval expeditions, or engaged in the different quarters of our service by land. But if anywhere they engage and defeat a small party of our forces, they boastingly give it out a total defeat; and if they are beat, they were certainly overpowered by our united strength. What though from a state of inactivity, rather than laborious exercise, or with a natural, rather than an acquired, valour, we learn to encounter dan- ger : this good at least we receive from it, that we never droop under the apprehension of possible misfortunes, and when we h;\zard the danger, are found no less courageous than those who are continually inured to it. In these respects our whole community de- serves justly to be admired, and in many we have yet to mention. In our manner of living we show an elegance tempered with frugality, and we cultivate philosophy, without enervating the mind. We display our wealth in the season of beneficence, and not in the vanity of discourse. A confes- sion of poverty is disgrace to no man ; no effort to avoid it is disgrace indeed. There is visibly, in the same persons, an attention to their own private concerns and those of the public ; and in others engaged in the labours of life there is a competent skill in the affairs of government. For we are the only people who think him that does not meddle in State affairs not indolent, but good-for-nothing. And yet we pass the soundest judgment, and are quick at catch- ing the right apprehensions of things ; not thinking that words are prejudicial to actions, but rather the not being duly pre- pared by previous debate before we are obliged to proceed to execution. Herein consists our distinguishing excellence, that in the hour of action we show the greatest courage, and yet debate beforehand the ex- pediency of our measures. The courage of others is the result of ignorance; delibera- tion makes them cowards. And those un- doubtedly must be owned to have the greatest souls who, most acutely sensible of the miseries of war and the sweets of peace, are not hence in the least deterred from facing danger. PERICLES. 11 In acts of beneficence, further, we dif- fer from the many. We preserve friends, not by receiving but by conferring obliga- tions. For he who does a kindness hath the advantage over him who, by the law of gratitude, becomes a debtor to his benefactor. The person obliged is compelled to act the more insipid part, conscious that a return of kindness is merely a payment, and not an obligation. And we alone are splendidly beneficent to others, not so much from in- terested motive as for the credit of pure liberality. I shall sum up what yet remains, by only adding, that our Athens, in general, is the school of Greece : and that every single Athenian among us is excellently formed, by his personal qualifications, for all the various scenes of active life, acting with a most graceful demeanour, and a most reaily habit of dispatch. That I have not, on this occasion, made use of a pomp of words, but the truth of facts, that height to which, by such a con- duct, this state hath rose, is an undeniable proof. For we are now the only people of the world who are found by experience to be greater than in report: the only people who, repelling the attacks of an invading enemy, exempts their defeat from the blush of in- dignation, and to their tributaries no discon- tent, as if subject to men unworthy to com- mand. That we deserve our power, we need no evidence to manifest: we have great and signal proofs of this, which entitle us to the admiration of the present and of future ages. We want no Homer to be the herald of our praise ; no poet to deck off a history with the charms of verse, where the opinion of ex- ploits must suffer by a strict relation. Every sea hath been opened by our fleets, and every land been penetrated by our armies, which have everywhere left behind them eternal monuments of our enmity and our friend- ship. In the just defence of such a state, these victims of their own valour, scorning the ruin threatened to it, have valiantly fought and bravely died. And every one of those who survive is ready, I am persuaded, to sacrifice life in such a cause. And for this reason have I enlarged so much on national points, to give the clearest proof that in the present war we have more at stake than men whose public advantages are not so valuable; and to illustrate by actual evi- dence how great a commendation is due to them who are now my subjects, and the greatest part of which they have already received. For the encomiums with which I have celebrated the state have been earned for it by the bravery of these, and of men like these. And such compliments might be thought too high and exaggerated if passed on any Grecians but them alone. The fatal period to which these gallant souls are now reduced is the surest evidence of their merit, an evidence begun in their lives and com- pleted by their deaths: for it is a debt of justice to pay superior honours to men who have devoted their lives in fighting for their country, though inferior to others in every virtue but that of valour. Their last service effaceth all former demerits, it extends to the public ; their private demeanors reached only to a few. Yet not one of these was at all induced to shrink from danger, through fondness of those delights which the peace- ful, affluent life bestows; not one was the less lavish of his life through that flattering hope attendant upon want, that poverty at length might be exchanged for affluence. One passion there was in their minds much stronger than these, the desire of vengeance on their enemies. Regarding this as the most honourable prize of dangers, they boldly rushed towards the mark, to seek revenge, and then to satisfy those secondary passions. The uncertain event they had already se- cured in hope ; what their eyes showed plainly must be done, they trusted their own valour to accomplish, thinking it more glorious to defend themselves and die in the attempt, than to yield and live. From the reproach of cowardice, indeed, they fled, but presented their bodies to the shock of battle ; when, inssnsiltle of fear, but triumphing in hope, in the doubtful charge they instantly drop; and thus discharged the duty which brave men owe to their country. As for you who now survive them, it is your business to pray for a better fate, but to think it your duty also to preserve the same spirit and warmth of courage against your enemies ; not judging the expediency of this from a mere harangue where any man, indulging a flow of words, may tell you, what you yourselves know as well as he, how many advantages there are in fighting valiantly against your enemies but rather making the daily increasing grandeur of this community the object of your thoughts, and growing quite enamoured of it. And when it really appears great to your appre- hensions, think again, that this grandeur was acquired by brave and valiant men ; by men who knew their duty, and in the moments of action were sensible of shame ; who, whenever their attempts were unsuccess- ful, thought it dishonourable their country should stand in need of anything their valour could do for it, and so made it the most glori- ous present. Bestowing thus their lives on the public, they have every one received a praise that will never decay, a sepulchre that will be most illustrious. Not that in which their bones are mouldering, but that 12 CICERO. in which their fame is preserved, to be on every occasion, when honour is the employ of either word or act, eternally remembered. This whole earth is a sepulchre of illustrious men ; nor is it the inscription on the col- umns in their native soil that alone shows their merit, but the memorial of them, better than all inscriptions, in every foreign nation, reposited more durably in universal remem- brance than on their own tomb. From this very moment, emulating these noble patterns, placing your happiness in liberty, and liberty in valour, be prepared to encounter all the dangers of war. For, to be lavish of life is not so noble in those whom misfortunes have reduced to misery and despair, as in men who hazard the loss of a comfortable subsist- ence, and the enjoyment of all the blessings this world affords, by an unsuccessful enter- prise. Adversity after a series of ease and affluence sinks deeper into the heart of a man of spirit than the stroke of death insen- sibly received in the vigour of life and public hope. For this reason, the parents of those who are now gone, whoever of them may be at- tending here, I do not bewail, I shall rather comfort. It is well known to what unhappy accidents they were liable from the moment of their birth, and that happiness belongs to men who have reached the most glorious period of life, as these now have who are to you the source of sorrow ; those whose life bath received its ample measure, happy in its continuance, and equally happy in its conclusion. I know it in truth a difficult truth to fix comfort in those breasts which will have frequent remembrances in seeing the happiness of others of what they once themselves enjoyed. And sorrow flows not from the absence of those good things we have never yet experienced, but from the loss of those to which we have been accustomed. They who are not yet by age exempted from issue, should be comforted in the hope of having more. The children yet to be born will be a private benefit to some, in causing them to forget such as no longer are, and will be a double benefit to their country, in preventing its desolation, and providing for its security. For those persons cannot in common justice be regarded as members of equal value to the public, who have no chil- dren to expose to danger for its safety. But you whose age is already far advanced, com- pute the greater share of happiness your longer time hath afforded for so much gain ; persuaded in yourselves the remainder will be but short, and enlighten that space by the glory gained by these. It is greatness of soul alone that never grows old; nor is it wealth that delights in the latter stage of life, as some give out, so much as honour. To you, the sons and brothers of the de- ceased, whatever number of you are here, a field of hardy contention is opened. For him who no longer is, every one is ready to commend ; so that to whatever height you push your deserts, you will scarce ever be thought to equal, but to be somewhat in- ferior, to these. Envy will exert itself against a competitor whilst life remains ; but when death stops the competition, affec- tion will applaud without restraint. If, after this, it be expected from me to say any thing to you who are now reduced to a state of widowhood, about female virtue, I shall ex- press it all in one short admonition: It is your greatest glory not to be deficient in the virtue peculiar to your sex, and to give the men as little handle as possible to talk of your behaviour, whether well or ill. I have now discharged the province al- lotted me by the laws, and said what I thought most pertinent to this .assembly. Our departed friends have by facts been already honoured. Their children, from this day till they arrive at manhood, shall be educated at the public expense of the state, which hath appointed so beneficial a meed for these and all future relics of the public contests. For wherever the greatest rewards are pro- posed for virtue, there the best of patriots are ever to be found. Now let every one respectively indulge the decent grief for his departed friends, and then retire. CICERO, a famous statesman and orator, was born at Arpinum, about seventy miles east-southeast of Rome, B.C. 106, and was murdered by the soldiers of Antony near his Formian villa, B.C. 43. " We have all, in our early education, read the Verrine Orations 1 . We read them not merely to instruct us, as they will do, in the principles of eloquence, nnd to acquaint us with the manners, customs, and laws of the ancient Romans, of which they are an abundant repository, but we may read them from a much higher motive. " We may read them from a motive which the great author had doubtless in his view, when by publishing them he left to the world and to the latest posterity a monument by which it may be seen what course a great public accuser in a great public cause ought to pursue; and, as connected with it, what course judges ought to pursue in deciding upon such a cause." EDMUND BURKE: Impeachment of Warren Ha*ting, Speech in Gen- eral Reply, Ninth Day, June 16, 1794. PART OF CICERO'S ORATION AGAINST VERRES. The time is come, Fathers, when that which has long been wished for, towards allaying the envy your order has been sul>- ject to, and removing the imputations CICERO. 13 against trials, is (not by human contrivance but superior direction) effectually put in our power. An opinion has long prevailed, not only here at home, but likewise in foreign countries, both dangerous to you and per- nicious to the state, viz., that in prosecutions men of wealth are always safe, however clearly convicted. There is now to be brought upon his trial before you, to the confusion, I hope, of the propagators of this slanderous imputation, one whose life and actions condemn him in the opinion of all impartial persons, but who, according to his own reckoning, and declared dependence upon his riches, is already acquitted: I mean Caius Verres. If that sentence is passed upon him which his crimes deserve, your authority, Fathers, will be venerable and sacred in the eyes of the public: but if his great riches should bias you in his favour, I shall still gain one point, viz., to make it apparent to all the world that what was wanting in this case was not a criminal nor a prosecutor, but justice and adequate punishment. To pass over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does his quaestorship, the first public employment he held, what does it exhibit but one continued scene of vil- lanies ? Cneius Carbo plundered of the pub- lic money by his own treasurer, a consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious right of a people violated. The employment he held in Asia Minor and Pamphilia, what did it produce but the ruin of tliose countries? in which houses, cities, and temples were robbed by him. What was his conduct in his praetorship here at home ? Let the plundered temples, and public works neglected that he might embezzle the money intended for carrying them on, bear witness. But his praetorship in Sicily crowns all his works of wickedness, and finishes a lasting monument to his infamy. The mis- chiefs done by him in that country during the three years of his iniquitous administra- tion are such that many years under the wisest and best of praetors will not be suffi- cient to restore things to the condition in which he found them. For it is notorious that during the time of his tyranny the Sicilians neither enjoyed the protection of their own original laws, of the regulations made for their benefit by the Roman Senate upon their coming under the protection of the commonwealth, nor of the natural and unalienable rights of men. His nod has decided all causes in Sicily for these three years ; and his decisions have broke all law, all precedent, all right. The sums he has, by arbitrary taxes and unheard of imposi- tions, extorted from the industrious poor, are not to be computed. The most faithful allies of the commonwealth have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. The most atrocious criminals, for money, have been exempted from the deserved pun- ishments ; and men of the most unexception- able characters condemned and banished, unheard. The harbours, though sufficiently fortified, and the gates of strong towns, opened to pirates and ravagers ; the soldiery and sailors belonging to a province under the protection of the commonwealth starved to death ; whole fleets, to the great detri- ment of the province, suffered to perish; the ancient monuments of either Sicilian or Roman greatness, the statues of heroes and princes, carried off; and the temples stripped of the images. The infamy of his lewdness has been such as decency forbids to describe ; nor will I, by mentioning particulars, put those unfortu- nate persons to fresh pain who have not been able to save their wives and daughters from his impurity. And these his atrocious crimes have been committed in so public a manner that there is no one who has heard of his name but could reckon up his actions. Having, by his iniquitous sentences, filled the prisons with the most industrious and deserving of the people, he then proceeded to order numbers of Roman citizens to be strangled in his gaols ; so that the exclama- tion, ''I am a citizen of Rome !" which has often, in the most distant regions, and among the most barbarous people, been a protection, was of no service to them, but, on the con- trary, brought a speedier and more severe punishment upon them. I ask now, Verres. what you have to ad- vance against this charge ? Will you pre- tend to deny it? Will you pretend that any thing false, that even any thing aggravated, is alleged against you? Had .any prince, or any state, committed the same outrage against the privilege of Roman citizens, should we not think we had sufficient ground for declaring immediate war against them ? What punishment ought then to be inflicted upon a tyrannical and wicked praetor who dared, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, to put to the infamous death of crucifixion that un- fortunate and innocent citizen, Publius Ga- vius Cosanus, only for his having asserted his privilege of citizenship, and declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against a cruel oppressor, who had unjustly confined him in a prison at Syra- cuse, from whence he had just made his escape? The unhappy man, arrested as he was going to embark for his native country, 14 SAL LUST. is brought before the wicked praetor. With eyes darting fury, and a countenance dis- torted with cruelty, he orders the helpless victim of his rage to be stripped and rods to be brought, accusing him, but without the least shadow of evidence, or even of suspi- cion, of having come to Sicily as a spy. It was in vain that the unhappy man cried out, ' I am a Roman citizen ! I have served under Lucius Pretius. who is now at Panormus, and will attest my innocence!" The blood- thirsty praetor, deaf to all he could urge in his own defence, ordered the infamous pun- ishment to be inflicted. Thus, Fathers, was an innocent Roman citizen publicly mangled with scourging ; whilst the only words he uttered amidst his cruel sufferings were, "I am a Roman citi- zen !" With these he hoped to defend him- self from violence and infamy ; but of so little service was this privilege to him that while he was thus asserting his citizenship the order was given for his execution, for his execution upon the cross! liberty ! sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred privilege of Roman citizen- ship! once sacred, now trampled upon! But what then? is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture with fire and red-hot plates of iron, and at the last put to the infamous death of the cross, a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, nor the tears of pitying spectators, nor the majesty of the Roman common- weal tli, nor the fear of the justice of the country, restrain the licentious and wanton cruelty of a monster, who, in confidence of his riches, strikes at the root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance? I conclude with expressing my hopes that your wisdom and justice, Fathers, will not, by suffering the atrocious and unexampled insolence of Caius Verres to escape the due punishment, leave room to apprehend the danger of a total subversion of authority, and introduction of general anarchy and confusion. SALLUST, a Roman historian, was born at Amiternum, B.C. 86, and died B.C. 34. "It would seem that Sallust took Thncydides for his model, but his writings will bear no comparison as to philosophic depth and insight with the immortal work of the Greek historian. Yet his observations, if seldom profound, are always sensible, and show great shrewdness and sagacity. But it is in the delineation of character that he more especially excels. His portrait of Catiline, brief as it is, entitles us to place him on a par in this respect with Tacitus and Clarendon. He has often been accused of partiality, but so far as our limited knowledge enables us to judge, the charge is unfounded. Like all ancient historians, with the exception of Polybius, he introduced fictitious speeches into his histories. Thus we find him assigning orations of his own composing to Onto and Caesar, although the speeches really delivered by them were extant when he wrote." U., i Imperial Diet, of Uitio. Biography, v. 889. CAIUS MARIUS TO THE ROMANS, SHOWING THE ABSURDITY OF THEIR HESITATING TO CON- FER ON HIM THE RANK OF GENERAL, MERELY ON ACCOUNT OF HIS EXTRACTION. It is but too common, my countrymen, to observe a material difference between the behaviour of those who stand candidates for places of power and trust, before and after their obtaining them. They solicit them in one manner, and execute them in another. They set out with a great appearance of activity, humility, and moderation ; and they quickly fall into sloth, pride, and avarice. It is, undoubtedly, no easy matter to dis- charge, to the general satisfaction, the duty of a supreme commander in troublesome times. I am, I hope, duly sensible of the im- portance of the office I propose to take upon, me for the service of my country. To carry on, with effect, an expensive war, and yet be frugal of the public money ; to oblige those to serve, whom it may be delicate to offend ; to conduct, at the same time, a complicated variety of operations; to concert measures at home, answerable to the state of things abroad ; and to gain every valuable end, in spite of opposition from the envious, the factious, and the disaffected, to do all this, my countrymen, is more difficult than is generally thought. But besides the disadvantages which are common to me with all others in eminent stations, my case is, in this respect, pecu- liarly hard, that whereas a commander of Patrician rank, if he is guilty of a neglect or breach of duty, has his great connections, the antiquity of his family, the important services of his ancestors, and the multitudes he has by power engaged in his interest, to screen him from condign punishment, my whole safety depends upon myself; which renders it the more indispensably necessary for me to take care that my conduct be clear and unexceptionable. Besides, I am well aware, my countrymen, that the eye of the public is upon me ; and that, though the im- partial, who prefer the real advantage of the commonwealth to all other considerations, favour my pretensions, the Patricians want nothing PO much as an occasion against me. It is, therefore, my fixed resolution to use my best endeavours that you be not disap- PLINY THE YOUNGER. 15 pointed in me, and that their indirect designs against me may be defeated. I have, from my youth, been familiar with toils and with dangers. I was faithful to your interest, my countrymen, when I served you for no reward but that of honour. It is not my design to betray you now that you have conferred upon me a place of profit. You have committed to my conduct the war airaiust Jugurtha. The Patricians are of- fended at this. But where would be the wisdom of giving such a command to one of their honourable body? a person of illus- trious birth, of ancient family, of innumer- able statues, but of no experience ! What service would his long line of dead ancestors, or his multitude of motionless statues, do his country in the day of battle? What could such a general do, but in his trepida- tion and inexperience have recourse to some inferior commander for direction in difficul- ties to which he was not himself equal? Thus your Patrician general would, in fact, have a general over him ; so that the acting commander would still be a Plebeian. So true is this, my countrymen, that I have myself known those who have been chosen consuls begin then to read the history of their own country, of which till that time they were totally ignorant ; that is, they first obtained the employment, and then be- thought themselves of the qualifications necessary for the proper discharge of it. I submit to your judgment, Romans, on which side the advantage lies, when a com- parison is made between Patrician haughti- ness and Plebeian experience. The very actions which they have only read, I have partly seen, and partly myself achieved. What they know by reading, .1 know by action. They are pleased to slight my mean birth ; I despise their mean characters. Want of birth and fortune is the objection against me ; want of personal worth against them. But are not all men of the same species? What can makeadifference between one man and another, but the endowments of the mind? For my part, I shall always look upon the bravest man as the noblest man. Suppose it were enquired of the fathers of such Patricians as Albinus and Bcstia. whether, if they had their choice, they would desire sons of their character, or of mine ; what would they answer but that they should wish the worthiest to be their sons? If the Patricians have reason to despise me, let them likewise despise their ancestors, whose nobility was the fruit of their virtue. Do they envy the honours bestowed upon me? let them envy likewise my labours, my abstinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them. But those worthless men lead such a life of inactivity as if they despised any honours they can bestow, while they aspire to honours as if they had deserved them by the most industrious virtue. They lay claim to the rewards of activity for their having enjoyed the pleas- ures of luxury : yet none can be more lavish than they are in praise of their ancestors : and they imagine they honour themselves by celebrating their forefathers; whereas they do the very contrary : for, as much as their ancestors were distinguished for their virtues, so much are they disgraced by their vices. The glory of ancestors casts a light, indeed, upon their posterity ; but only serves to show what the descendants are. It alike exhibits to public view their degeneracy and their worth. I own I cannot boast of the deeds of my forefathers ; but I hope I may answer the cavils of the Patricians by stand- ing up in defence of what I have myself done. Observe now, my countrymen, the in- justice of the Patricians. They arrogate to themselves honours on account of the ex- ploits done by their forefathers ; whilst they will not allow me the due praise for per- forming the very same sort of actions in my own person. He has no statues, they cry, of his family. lie can trace no vener- able line of ancestors. What then ? Is it matter of more praise to disgrace one's illus- trious ancestors than to become illustrious by one's own behaviour? What if I can show no statues of my family? I can show the standards, the armour, and the trap- pings which I have myself taken from the vanquished ; I can show the scars of those wounds which I have received by facing the enemies of my country. These are my statues. These are the honours I boast of. Not left me by inheritance, as theirs : bub earned by toil, by abstinence, by valour ; amidst clouds of dust and seas of blood : scenes of action, where these effeminate Patricians, who endeavour by indirect means to depreciate me in your esteem, have never dared to show their faces. PLINY THE YOUNGER (Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus), born at Comum, A.D. 61 or 62, died about A.D. 116. " Pliny wrote and published a great number of books: but nothing has escaped the wreck of time, except the books of Epistles, and the ' Panegyric upon Trnjan,' which has ever been considered as a masterpiece. His letters seem to have been in- tended for the public ; and in them he may be con- sidered as writing his own memoirs. Every epistle is a kind of historical sketch, in which we have a view of him in some striking attitude, either of 16 PLINY THE YOUNGER. active or contemplative life." CJialmeria Diet., 64. See the Letters of Pliny the Younger, trans, by J. D. Lewis, Caiiib. and Lond., 1879, p. 8vo. To Tuscus: ON A COURSE OF STUDY. You dSsire my sentiments concerning the method of study you should pursue in that retirement to which you have long since withdrawn. In the first place, then, I look upon it as a very advantageous practice (and it is what many recommend) to translate either from Greek into Latin, or from Latin into Greek. By this means you will furnish yourself with noble and proper expressions, with variety of beautiful figures, and an ease and strength of style. Besides, by imitating the most approved authors, you will find your imagination heated, and fall insensibly into a similar turn of thought ; at the same time that those things which you may possibly have overlooked in a common way of read- ing, cannot escape you in translating: and this method will open your understanding and improve your judgment. It may not be amiss after you have read an author, in order to make yourself master of his subject and argument, from his reader to turn, as it were, his rival, and attempt something of your own in the same way ; and then make an impar- tial comparison between your performance and his, in order to see in what point either you or he most happily succeeded. It will be a matter of very pleasing congratulation to yourself, if you shall find in some things that you have the advantage of him, as it will be a great mortification if he should rise above you in all. You may sometimes venture in these little essays to try your strength upon the most shining passages of a distinguished author. The attempt, in- deed, will be something bold ; but as it is a contention which passes in secret, it cannot be taxed with presumption. Not but that we have seen instances of persons who have publicly entered this sort of lists with great success, and while they did not despair of overtaking, have gloriously advanced before, those whom they thought it sufficient honour to follow. After you have thus finished a composition, you must lay it aside till it is no longer fresh in your memory, and then take it up in order to revise and correct it. You will find several things to retain, but still more to reject; you will add a new thought here, and alter another there. It is a labori- ous and tedious task, I own, thus to re-in- flame the mind after the first heat is over, to recover an impulse when its force has been checked and spent ; in a word, to interweave new parts into the texture of a composition without disturbing or confounding the ori- ginal plan ; but the advantage attending this method will overbalance the difficulty. I know the bent of your present attention is directed towards the eloquence of the bar ; but 1 would not for that reason advise you never to quit the style of dispute and conten- tion. As land is improved by sowing with various seeds, so is the mind by exercising it with different studies. I would recom- mend it to you, therefore, sometimes to single out a fine passage of history ; sometimes to exercise yourself in the epistolary style, and sometimes the poetical. For it fre- quently happens that the pleading one has occasion to make use not only of historical, but even poetical descriptions ; as by the epistolary mariner of writing you will ac- quire a close and easy expression. It will be extremely proper also to unbend your mind with poetry : when I say so, I do not mean that species of it which turns upon subjects of great length (for that is fit only for persons of much leisure), but those little pieces of the epigrammatic kind, which serve as proper reliefs to, and are consistent with, employments of every sort. They com- monly go under the title of Poetical Amuse- ments ; buttheseainusementshavesometimes gained as much reputation to their authors us works of a more serious nature. In this manner the greatest men, as well as the great- est orators, used either to exercise or amuse themselves, or rather, indeed, did both. It is surprising how much the mind is enter- tained and enlivened by these little pocticcil compositions, as they turn upon subjects of gallantry, satire, tenderness, politeness, and every thing, in short, that concerns life and the affairs of the world. Besides, the same advantage attends these as every other sort of poems, that we turn from them to prose with so much the more pleasure after having experienced the difficulty of being con- strained and fettered by numbers. And now, perhaps, I have troubled you upon this subject longer than you desired ; however, there is one thing which I have omitted : I have not told you what kind of authors you should read; though indeed that was suf- ficiently implied when I mentioned what subjects I would recommend for your com- positions. You will remember, that the most approved writers of each sort are to be care- fully chosen; for, as it lias been well ob- served, "Though we should read much, we should not read many books." Who these authors are is so clearly settled, and so gen- erally known, that I need not point them out to you : besides, I have already extended this letter to such an immoderate length, that I have interrupted, I fear, too long those studies I have been recommending. I will here resign you, therefore, to your papers, which you will now resume; and either pursue the studies you were before engaged RICHARD DE BURY. 17 in, or enter upon some of those which I have advised. Farewell. RICHARD DE BURY, born at Bury St. Edmunds, 1287, became Bishop of Durham 1333, and died 1345. " Richard de Bury, otherwise called Richard Aungervylle, is said to have alone possessed more books than all the bishops of England together. Lei-ides the fixed libraries which he had formed in his several palaces, the floor of his common apart- ment was so covered with books that those who entered could not with due reverence approach his presence. . . . Petrarch says that he had once a conversation with Aungervylle concerning the Island Thulc, whom he calls Virum ardentis in- genii. Petrarch, Epist., i. 3." Warton'ii Hint, of EIKJ. Poet., ed. 1840, i. cxv., cxvi. Ox BOOKS. The desirable treasure of wisdom and knowledge, which all men covet from the impulse of nature, infinitely surpasses all the riches of the world ; in comparison with which precious stones are vile, silver is clay, and purified gold grains of sand ; in the splendour of which the sun and moon grow dim to the sight ; in the admirable sweetness of which, honey and manna are bitter to the taste. The value of wisdom decreaseth not with time ; it hath an ever flourishing virtue that cleanseth its possession from every venom. celestial gift of Divine liberality, descend- ing from the Father of Light to raise up the rational soul even to heaven ! Thou art the celestial alimony of intellect, of which who- soever eateth shall yet hunger, and whoso drinketh shall yet thirst ; a harmony re- joicing the soul of the sorrowful, and never in any way discomposing the hearer. Thou art the moderator and the rule of morals, operating according to which none err. By thee kings reign and law-givers decree justly. Through thee, rusticity of nature being cast off, wits and tongues being pol- ished, and the thorns of vice utterly eradi- cated, the summit of honour is reached, and they become fathers of their country and companions of princes, who, Avithout thee, might have forged their lances into spades and ploughshares, or perhaps have fed swine with the prodigal son. Where, then, most potent, most longed-for treasure, art thou concealed ? and where shall the thirsty soul find thee? Undoubtedly, indeed, thou hast placed thy desirable tabernacle in books, where the Most High, the Light of light, the Book of life, hath established thee. There then all who ask receive, all who seek find thee, to those who knock thou openest quickly. In books Cherubim expand their wings, that the soul of the student may ascend and look around from pole to pole, from the rising to the setting sun, from the north and from the south. In them the Most High incomprehensible God himself is contained and worshipped. In them the nature of celestial, terrestrial, and infernal beings is laid open. In them the laws by which every polity is governed are decreed, the officers of the celestial hierarchy are distinguished, and tyrannies of such demons are described as the. ideas of Plato never surpassed, and the chair of Crato never sustained. In books we find the dead as it were liv- ing ; in books we foresee things to come : in books warlike affairs are methodized ; the rights of peace proceed from books. All things are corrupted and decay with time. Satan never ceases to devour those whom he generates, insomuch that the glory of the world would be lost in oblivion if God had not provided mortals with a remedy in books. Alexander the ruler of the world, Julius the invader of the world and of the city, the first who in unity of person as- sumed the empire, arms, and arts, the faith- ful Fabricius, the rigid Cato, would at this day have been without a memorial if the aid of books had failed them. Towers are razed to the earth, cities overthrown, trium- phal arches mouldered to dust; nor can the king or pope be founded upon whom the privilege of a lasting name can be conferred more easily than by books. A book made renders succession to the author ; for as long as the book exists, the author remaining udvva Tof, immortal, cannot perish. As Ptolemy witnesseth in the prologue of Almazett, he (he says) is not dead who gave life to science. What learned scribe, therefore, who draws out things new and old from an infinite treasury of books, will limit their price by any other thing whatsoever of another kind ? Truth, overcoming all things, which ranks above kings, wine, and women, to honour which above friends obtains the benefit of sanctity, which is the way that deviates not, and the life without end, to which the holy Boetius attributes a threefold existence, in the mind, in the voice, and in writing, ap- pears to abide most usefully and fructify most productively of advantage in books. For the truth of the voice perishes with the sound; truth latent in the mind is hidden wisdom and invisible treasure ; but the truth which illuminates books, desires to manifest itself to every disciplinable sense, to the sight when read, to the hearing when heard : it, moreover, in a manner com- mends itself to the touch, when submitting to be transcribed, collated, corrected, and 18 FRANCESCO PETRARCH. preserved. Truth confined to the mind, though it may be the possession of a noble soul, while it wants a companion and is not judged of, either by the sight or the hearing, appears to be inconsistent with pleasure. But the truth of the voice is open to the hearing only, and latent to the sight (whicli shows as many differences of things fixed upon by a most subtle motion, beginning and ending as it were simultaneously). But the truth written in a book, being not fluc- tuating, but permanent, shows itself openly to the sight passing through the spiritual ways of the eyes, as the porches and halls of common sense and imagination ; it enters the chamber of intellect, reposes itself upon the couch of memory, and there congenev- ates the eternal truth of the mind. Lastly, let us consider how great a com- modity of doctrine exists in books ; how easily, how secretly, how safely, they expose the nakedness of human ignorance without putting it to shame. These are the masters that instruct us without rods and ferules, without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you. Translated by J. B. Jnglis, Lond., 1832, 8vo. FRANCESCO PETRARCH, born at Arezzo, Tuscany, 1304, died at Ar- qua, 1374. " I cannot conclude these remarks without making a few observations on the Latib writings of Petrarch. It appears that, both by himself and by his contemporaries, these were far more highly vulued than his compositions in the ver- nacular language. Posterity, the supreme court of literary appeal, has not only reversed the judg- ment, but, according to its general practice, re- versed it with costs, and condemned the unfortu- nate works to pay, not only for their own inferi- ority, but also for the injustice of those who have given them an unmerited preference. . . . He has aspired to emulate the philosophical eloquence of Cicero, as well as the poetical majesty of Virgil. His essay on the Remedies of Good and Evil For- tune is a singular work in a colloquial form, and a most scholastic style. It seems to be framed upon the model of the Tusculan Questions, with what success those who have read it may easily determine. It consists of a series of dialogues : in each of these a person is introduced who has experienced some happy or some adverse event : he gravely states his case; and a reasoner, or rather Reason personified, confutes him: a task not very difficult, sine* the disciple defends his position only by pertinaciously repeating it, in almos* the same words, at the end of every argu- ment of his antagonist." LORD MACAULAY: Cn'ti- citms on the Principal Italian Writer*, No. II., Petrarch, in Knight's Quarterly Mag., April, 1824, and his works, complete, 1866, vii. 629. PETRARCH'S DEDICATION TO Azzo DA COR- REGGIO OF HIS TREATISE OX TI1E REMEDIES OF GOOD AND BAD FORTUNE. When I consider the instability of human affairs, and the variations of fortune. I find nothing more uncertain or restless than the life of man. Nature has given to animals an excellent remedy under disasters, which is the ignorance of them. We seem better treated in intelligence, foresight, and mem- ory. No doubt these are admirable presents ; but they often annoy more than they assist us. A prey to unuseful or distressing cares, we are tormented by the present, the past, and the future ; and, as if we feared we should not be miserable enough, we join to the evil we suffer the remembrance of a former distress, and the apprehension of some future calamity. This is the Cerberus with three heads we combat without ceasing. Our life might be gay and happy if we would ; but we eagerly seek subjects of affliction to render it irksome and melan- choly. We pass the first years of this life in the shades of ignorance, the succeeding ones in pain and labour, the latter part in grief and remorse, and the whole in error : nor do we suffer ourselves to possess one bright day without a cloud. Let us examine this matter with sincerity, and we shall agree that our distresses chiefly arise from ourselves. It is virtue alone which can render us superior to Fortune ; we quit her standard, and the combat is no longer equ.il. Fortune mocks us ; she turns us on her wheel : she raises and abases us at her pleasure, but her power is founded on our weakness. This is an old-rooted evil, but it is not incurable : there is nothing a firm and elevated mind cannot accomplish. The discourse of the wise and the study of good books are the best remedies I know of; but to these we must join the consent of the soul, without which the best advice will be useless. What gratitude do we not owe to those great men who, though dead many ages before us, live with us by their works, discourse with us, are our masters and guides, and serve us as pilots in the naviga- tion of life, where our vessel is agitated without ceasing by the storms of our pas- sions ! It is here that true philosophy brings us to a safe port, by a sure and easy pas- sage: not like that of the schools, which, raising us on its airy and deceitful wings, and causing us to hover on the clouds of frivolous dispute, lets us fall without any light or instruction in the same place where she took us up. Dear friend, I do not at- tempt to exhort you to the study I deem so FRANCESCO PETRARCH. 19 important. Nature lias given you a taste for all knowledge, but Fortune has denied you the leisure to acquire it: yet, whenever you could steal a moment from public affairs, you sought the conversation of wise men ; and I have remarked that your memory often served you instead of books. It is, therefore, unnecessary to invite you to do what you have always done ; but, as we cannot retain all we hear or read, it may be useful to furnish your mind with some maxims that may best serve to arm you against the assaults of misfortune. The vulgar, and even philosophers, have decided that adverse fortune was most difficult to sustain. For my own part I am of a differ- ent opinion, and believe it more easy to support adversity than prosperity ; and that fortune is more treacherous and dangerous when she caresses than when she dismays. Experience has taught me this, not books or arguments. I have seen many persons sus- tain great losses, poverty, exile, tortures, death, and even disorders that were worse than death, with courage ; but I have seen none whose heads have not been turned by power, riches, and honours. How often have we beheld those overthrown by good fortune who could never be shaken by bad ! This made me wish to learn how to support a great fortune. You know the short time this work has taken. I have been less .at- tentive to what might shine than to what might be useful on this subject. Truth and virtue are the wealth of all men ; and shall I not discourse on these with my dear Azon ? I would prepare for you, as in a little port- able box, a friendly antidote against the poison of good and bad fortune. The one requires a rein to repress the sallies of a transported soul, the other a consolation to fortify the overwhelmed and afflicted spirit. Nature gave you, my friend, the heart of a king, but she gave you not a kingdom, of which therefore fortune could not deprive you. But I doubt whether our age can fur- nish an example of worse or better treatment from her than yourself. In the first part of your life you were blest with an admirable constitution and astonishing health and vigour; some yearsafter we beheld you thrice abandoned by the phvsicians, who despaired of your life. The heavenly Physician, who was your sole resource, restored your health, but not your former strength. You were then called iron-footed, for your singular force and agility; you are now bent, and lean upon the shoulders of those whom you formerly supported. Your country beheld you one day its governor, the next an exile. Princes disputed for your friendship, and afterwards conspired your ruin. You lost by death the greatest part of your friends ; the rest, according to custom, deserted you in calamity. To these misfortunes was added a violent disease which attacked you when destitute of all succours, at a distance from your country and family, in a strange land invested by the troops of your enemies ; so that those two or three friends whom fortune had left you could not come near to relievo you. In a word, you have experienced every hardship but imprisonment and death. But what do I say ? You have felt all the horrors of the former, when your faithful wife and children were shut up by your enemies ; and even death followed you. and took one of those children, for whose loss you would willingly have sacrificed your own. In you have been united the fortunes of Pompey and Marius; but you were neither arrogant in prosperity as the one, nor dis- couraged in adversity as the other. You have supported both in a manner that has made you loved by your friends and admired by your enemies. There is a peculiar charm in the serene and tranquil air of virtue which enlightens all around it, in the midst of the darkest scenes and the greatest calamities. My ancient friendship for you has caused me to quit everything for you to perform a work in which, as in a glass, you may adjust and prepare your soul for all events; and be able to say, as JEneas did to the Sibyl, " Nothing of this is new to me ; I have fore- seen and am prepared for it all." I am sen- sible that in the disorders of the mind, as well as those of the body, discourses are not thought the most efficacious remedies ; but I am persuaded also that the malady of the soul ought to be cured by spiritual applica- tions. If we see a friend in distress and give him all the consolation we are able, we perform the duties of friendship, which pays more attention to the disposition of the heart than the value of the gift. A small present may be the testimony of a great love. There is no good I do not wish you, and this is all I can offer toward it. I wish this little treatise may be of use to you. If it should not answer my hopes, I shall, however, be secure of pardon from your friendship. It presents you with the four great passions : Hope and Joy, the daughters of Prosperity ; Fear and Grief, the daughters of Adversity, who attack the soul and launch at it all their arrows. Rea- son commands in the citadel to repulse them : your penetration will easily perceive which side will obtain the victory. From the translation in Mrs. Dobson's Life of Petrarch, from the French of the Abb& de Sade, 20 WILLIAM CAXTON.JOHN FISHER. WILLIAM CAXTON, celebrated as the first who introduced print- ing into England, was born in Kent about 1412, and died in 1492. " Exclusively of the labours attached to the working of his press as a new art, our typographer contrived, though well stricken in years, to trans- late not fewer than five thousand closely-printed folio pages. As a translator, therefore, he ranks among the most laborious, ami, I would hope, not the least successful, of his tribe. " The foregoing conclusion is the result of a careful enumeration of all the books translated as well as printed by him; which [the translated books], if published in the modern fashion, would extend to nearly twenty-five octavo volumes." L)IBDI\ : Typographical Antiquities. " Caxton, Mr. Warton [History of English Poetry] observes, by translating, or procuring to be translated, a great number of books from the French, greatly contributed to promote the state of literature in England. It was only in this way that he could introduce his countrymen to the knowledge of many valuable publications at a time when an acquaintance with the learned languages was confined to a few ecclesiastics. Ancient learn- ing had as yet made too little progress among us to encourage him to publish the Roman authors in their original tongue. Indeed, had not the French furnished Caxton with materials, it is not probable that Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and many other good writers, would, by the means of his press, have been circulated in the English language as early as the close of the fifteenth cefttury." CHALMERS: Jiioij. Diet., viii. 512. See, also, The Life and Typography of William Caxton, England's ''First Printer," etc., by William Blades, Lond., 1861-63, 2 vols. 4to ; and How to Tell a Caxton, by W. Blades, 1870, fp. 8vo. FROM CAXTON'S TRANSLATION OF THE GOLDEN LEGEND, 1483, FOL. Francis, servant and friend of Almighty God. was born in the city of Assyse, and was made a merchant until the 25th year of his age, and wasted his time by living vainly, whom our Lord corrected by the scourge of sickness, and suddenly changed him into another man ; so that he began to shine by the spirit of prophecy. For on a time he, with other men of Peruse, was taken pris- oner, and were put in a cruel prison, where all the other wailed and sorrowed, and he only was glad and enjoyed. And when they had reproved him thereof, he answered, " Know ye," said he, " that I am joyful, for I shall be worshipped as a saint throughout all the world." . . , On a time, as this holy man was in prayer, the devil called him thrice by his own name. And when the holy man had answered him, he said none in this world is so great a sinner, but if he convert him, our Lord would pardon him; but who that sleeth himself with hard pen- ance, shall never find mercy. And anon this holy man knew by revelation the fal- lacy and deceit of the fiend, how he would have withdraw him fro to do well. . . . He was ennobled in his life by many miracles. . . . And the very death, which is to all men horrible and hateful, he admonished them to praise it. And, also, he warned and admonished death to come to him, and said, " Death, my sister, welcome be to you." And when he came at the last hour, he slept in our Lord, of whom the friar saw the soul, in manner of a star, like to the moon in quantity, and the sun in clearness. JOHN FISHER, born 1459, Margaret Professor of Divinity 1502, Bishop of Rochester 1504. was inhu- manly executed by order of the tyrant Henry VIII. in 1535. " The fame of his learning and virtues reaching the ears of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., she chose him her chap- lain and confessor; in which high station he be- haved himself with so much wisdom and goodness that she committed herself entirely to his govern- ment and direction. It was by his counsel that she undertook those magnificent foundations of St. John's and Christ's Colleges at Cambridge; established the divinity professorships in both universities ; and did many other acts of gener- osity for the propagation of learning and piety. . . . The issue was a declaration from Fisher thiit he would 'swear to the succession [of Elizabeth] ; never dispute more about the marriage [to Anne Boleyn] ; and promise allegiance to the king ; but his conscience could not be convinced that the marriage was not against the law of God.' These concessions did not satisfy the king; who was re- solved to let all his subjects see that there was no mercy to be expected by any one who opposed his will. . . . He was beheaded about ten o'clock, aged almost 77 : and his head was fixed over Lon- don bridge the next day. "Such was the tragical end of Fisher, 'which left one of the greates-t blots upon this kingdom's proceedings.' as Burnet says in his 'History of the Reformation.' . . . Erasmus represents him as a man of integrity, deep learning, sweetness of tem- per, and greatness of soul." Chalmers'* King. Diet., xiv. 323, 326, 328. FROM BISHOP FISHER'S ACCOUNT or THE CHARACTER OF MARGARET, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND, IN HIS SERMON ENTITLED A MORNYNGE REMEMBRAUNCE HAD AT THE MONETH MYNDE OF MARGARETE, COUNT- ESSE OF RYCHEMONDE AND DARBYE, Lond., by W. DE WORDE, 4to, sine anno (1509). Albeit she of her lineage were right noble, yet nevertheless by marriage adjoin- ing of other blood, it took some increase- ment. For in her tender age, she being endued with so great towardness of nature and likelihood of inheritance, many sued to have had her to marriage. The Duke of Suffolk, which was then a man of great ex- perience, most diligently procured to have MACCHIAVELLL 21 had her for his son and heir. Of the con- trary part, King Henry VI. did make means for Edmund his brother, then the Earl of Richmond. She, which as then was not fully nine years old, doubtful in her mind what she were best to do, asked counsel of an old gentlewoman, whom she much loved and trusted, which did advise her to com- mend herself to St. Nicholas, the patron and helper of all true maidens, and to beseech him to put in her mind what she were best to do ! This counsel she followed, and made her prayer so full often, but specially that night, when she should the morrow after make answer of her mind determinately. A marvellous thing! the same night, as I have heard her tell many a time, as she lay in prayer, calling upon St. Nicholas, whether sleeping or waking she could not assure, but about four of the clock in the morning, one appeared unto her, arrayed like a bishop, and naming unto her Edmund, bade take him unto her husband. And so by this means she did incline her mind unto Ed- mund the king's brother, and Earl of Rich- mond, by whom she was made mother of the king that dead is (whose soul God pardon), and grand-dame to our sovereign lord King Henry VIII., which now, by the grace of God, governeth the realm. So what by lineage, what by affinity, she had thirty kings and queens within the four degree of marriage unto her, besides earls, marquisses, dukes, and princes. And thus much we have spoken of her nobleness. ... In prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not long after five of the clock, she began certain devotions ; and so after them, with one of her gentlewomen, the matins of our lady, which kept her to then she came into her closet, where then with her chaplain, she said also matins of the day ; and .after that daily heard four or five masses upon her knees; so continuing in her prayers and devotions unto the hour of dinner, which of the eating day was ten of the clock, and upon the fasting day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go to her stations to three altars daily ; daily her dirges and commendations she would say. and her even songs before supper, both of the day and of our lady, beside many other prayers and psalters of David throughout the year; and at night before she went to bed, she failed not to resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all this long time her kneeling was to her painful, and so painful that many times it caused in her back pain and disease. And yet neverthe- less, daily when she was in health she failed not to say the crown of our lady, which after the manner of Home containeth sixty and three aves, and at every ave to make a kneeling. As for meditation, she had divers books in French, wherewith she would oc- cupy herself when she was weary of prayer. Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French into English. Her marvellous weep- ing they can bear witness of which here- before have heard her confession, which be divers and many, and at many seasons in the year, lightly every third day. Can also record the same that were present at any time she was houshilde [received the com- munion], which was full nigh a dozen tiine.s every year, what floods of tears there issued forth of her eyes 1 NICCOLO DI BERNARDO MACCHIAVELLI, a famous Italian, diplomatist, statesman, and author, was born at Florence, 1409, and died there, 1527. " We doubt whether any name in literary his- tory be so generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose t> consider. The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of ambition and revenge, the original inventor of perjury, and that before the publication of his fatal Prince, there had never been a hypocrite, % tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a con- venient crime. . . . The Church of Rome has pro- nounced his works accursed things. Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonyme for the Devil. . . . To a modern statesman the form of the Dis- courses may appear to be puerile. In truth Livy is not an historian on whom implicit reliance can be placed, even in cases where he must have pos- sessed considerable means of information. And the first decade, to which Macchiavelli has con- fined himself, is scarcely entitled to more credit than our Chronicle of British Kings who reigned before the Roman invasion. But the commenta- tor is indebted to Livy for little more than a few texts which he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or the Decameron. The whole train of thought is original." LORD MACAULAY : Edinburgh Ilerieie, March, 1827, and in his works, complete, 1866, 8 vols. 8vo, v. 46, 75. MACCITIAVELU'S DISCOURSE, " How HE THAT WOULD SUCCEED MUST ACCOMMODATE TO TIIE TIMES." I have many times considered with my- self that the occasion of every man's good or bad fortune consists in his correspond- ence and accommodation with the times. We see some people acting furiously, and with an impetus : others with more slowness and caution ; and because both in the one and the other they are immoderate, and do not observe their just terms, therefore both 22 HUGH LATIMER. of them do err ; but his error and misfortune is least, whose customs suit and correspond with the times; and who comports himself in his designs according to the impulse of his own nature. Every one can tell how Fabius Maximus conducted his army, and with what carefulness and caution he pro- ceeded, contrary to the ancient heat and boldness of the Romans, and it happened that grave way was more conformable to those times ; for Hannibal, coming young and brisk into Italy, and being elated with his good fortune, as having twice defeated the armies of the Romans, that common- wealth having lost most of her best soldiers, and remaining in great fear and confusion, nothing could have happened more season- ably to them than to have such a general who, by his caution and cunctation, could keep the enemy at bay. Nor could any times have been more fortunate to his way of proceeding ; for that that slow and delib- erate way was natural in Fabius, and not affected, appeared afterwards, when Scipio, being desirous to pass his army into Africa to give the finishing blow to the war, Fabius opposed it most earnestly, as one who could not force or dissemble his nature, which was rather to support wisely against the difficulties that were upon him, than to search out for new. So that had Fabius directed, Hannibal had continued in Italy, and the reason was because he did not con- sider the times were altered, and the method of the war was to be changed with them. And if Fabius at that time had been king of Rome, he might well have been worsted in the war, as not knowing how to frame his counsels according to the variation of the times. But there being in that com- monwealth so many brave mm, and excel- lent commanders, of all sorts of tempers and humours, fortune would have it, that, as Fabius was ready, in hard and difficult times, to sustain the enemy, and continue the war, so, afterwards, when affairs were in a better posture, Scipio was presented to finish and conclude it. And hence it is that an aristocracy or free state is longer lived, and generally more fortunate than a princi- pality, because in the first they are more flexible, and can frame themselves better to the diversity of the times : for a prince, being accustomed to one way, is hardly to be got out of it, though perhaps the varia- tion of the times requires it very much. Piero Soderino (whom I have mentioned before) proceeded with great gentleness and humanity in all his actions ; and he and his country prospered whilst the times were according; but when the times changed, and there was a necessity of laying aside that meekness and humility, Piero was at a loss, and he and his country were both ruined. Pope Julius XI., during the whole time of his papacy, carried himself with great vigour and vehemence ; and because the times were agreeable, he prospered in every- thing ; but had the times altered, and re- quired other counsels, he had certainly been ruined, because he could never have com- plied. And the reason why we cannot change so easily with the times, is twofold : first, because we cannot readily oppose our- selves against what we naturally desire ; and next, because when we have often tried one way, and have always been prosperous, we can never persuade ourselves we could do so well any other ; and this is the true cause why a prince's fortune varies so strangely, because he varies the times, but he does not alter the way of his administra- tion. And it is the same in a common- wealth : if the variation of the times be not observed, and their laws and customs altered accordingly, many mischiefs must follow, and the government be ruined, as we have largely demonstrated before ; but those alterations of their laws are more slow in a commonwealth, because they are not so easily changed, and there is a necessity of such times as may shake the whole state, to which one man will not be sufficient, let him change his proceedings, and take new measures, as he will. From Knight's Half-Hours with the Best Authors. New edit., ii. 274. HUGH LATIMER, born in Leicestershire, about 1472, became Bishop of Worcester in 1535, and was burnt at the stake, in Oxford, with Bishop Ridley, Oct. 16, 1555. " On the lamented death of Edward he was im- prisoned, first in the Tower, and then at Oxford, along with Cranmer and Ridley. After various delays he was tried and condemned to the stake. Fox gives a pitiful and touching account of his appearance before his persecutors, wearing ' an old threadbare Bristol frieze gown girded to his body with a penny leather girdle, his Testament sus- pended from bis girdle by a leathern sling, and his spectacles without a case hung from his neck upon his brenst.' He suffered along with Ridley, 16th of October, 1555, ' without Boeardo gate,' on a spot opposite Balliol College, now marked by a splendid martyr's monument. Latimer's charac- ter excites our admiration by its mixture of sim- plicity and heroism. He is simple as a child, and yet daring for the truth, without shrinking or ostentation. He is more consistent than Cranmer, more tolerant than Ridley, if less learned and polished than either. His sermons are rare speci- mens of vigorous eloquence, which read fresh and vivid and powerful now, after three centuries. SIR THOMAS MORE. 23 The humorous Saxon scorn ani invective with which he lashes the vices of the times are, perhaps, their most noted characteristics ; but they are also remarkable for their clear and homely statements of Christian doctrine, and the faithfulness with which they exhibit the simple ideal of the Chris- tian life, in contrast to all hypocrisies and preten- sions of religion. In all things, in his sermons, in his reforms, in his character, Latimer was eminently practical." REV. JOHX TULLOCH, D.D., Principal of St. Mary's College, St. Andrews. Imperial Diet, of Univ. Biog., v. 115. THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM. I pray you to whom was the nativity of Christ first opened ? To the bishops or great lords which were at that time at Bethlehem ? Or to those jolly damsels with their far- dingales, with their round-abouts, or with their bracelets? No, no: they had too many lets to trim and dress themselves, so that they could have no time to hear of the na- tivity of Christ ; their minds were so occu- pied otherwise that they were not allowed to hear of him. But his nativity was re- vealed first to the shepherds, and it was re- vealed unto them in the night-time, when every body was at rest ; then they heard this joyful tidings of the Saviour of the world : for these shepherds were keeping their sheep in the night season from the wolf and other beasts, and from the fox ; for the sheep in that country do lamb two times in the year, arid therefore it was needful for the sheep to have a shepherd to keep them. And here note the diligence of these shepherds; for whether their sheep were their own, or whether they were servants, I cannot tell, for it is not expressed in the book; but it is most like they were servants, .and their mas- ters had put them in trust to keep their sheep. Now, if these shepherds had been deceit- ful fellows, that when their masters had put them in trust to keep their sheep they had been drinking in the alehouse all night, as some of our servants do nowadays, surely the angel had not appeared unto them to have told them this great joy and good tid- ings. And here all servants may learn by these shepherds to serve truly and diligently unto their masters ; in what business soever they are set to do, let them be painful and diligent, like as Jacob was unto his master Laban. Oh what a painful, faithful, and trusty man was he! He was day and night at his work, keeping his sheep truly, as he was put in trust to do ; and when any chance happened that any thing was lost he made it good and restored it again of his own. So likewise was Eleazarus a painful man, a faithful and trusty servant. Such a servant was Joseph, in Egypt, to his master Potiphar. So likewise was Daniel unto his master the king. But I pray you where are those servants nowadays ? Indeed I fear me there be but very few of such faithful serv- ants. Now these shepherds, I say, they watch the whole night, they attend upon their vocation, they do according to their calling, they keep their sheep, they run not hither and thither, spending the time in vain, and neglecting their office and calling. No, they did not so. Here, by these shep- herds, men may learn to attend upon their offices and callings. I would wish that cler- gymen, the curates, parsons, and vicars, the bishops, and all other spiritual persons, would learn this lesson by these poor shep- herds, which is this, to abide by their flocks and by their sheep, to tarry amongst them, to be careful over them ; not to run hither and thither after their own pleasure, but to tarry by their benefices and feed their sheep with the food of God's word, and to keep hospitality, and so to feed them, both soul and body. For I tell you, these poor, unlearned shepherds shall condemn many a stout and great-learned clerk : for these shep- herds had but the care and charge over brute beasts, and yet were diligent to keep them, and to feed them, and the other have the care over God's lambs, which he bought with the death of his son ; and yet they are so careless, so negligent, so slothful over them ; yea, and the most part intendeth not to feed the sheep, but they long to be fed of the sheep ; they seek only their own pas- times, they care for no more. But what said Christ to Peter ? What said he ? Petre, amas me? (Peter, lovest thou me?) Peter made answer, Yes. Then feed my sheep. And so the third time he commanded Peter to feed his sheep. But our clergymen do declare plainly that they love not Christ, be- cause they feed not his flock. If they had earnest love to Christ, no doubt they would show their love, they would feed his sheep. Latimer 's Sermons. SIR THOMAS MORE, born 1480, executed under Henry VIII., 1535. His works were published in Latin, Lovanii, 1565 et 1566, fol. ; in English, Lond., 1557, fol.; best Latin edit., Francf., 1689, fol. " The indictment was then read by the attorney- general. It set forth that Sir Thomas More, trai- torously imagining and attempting to deprive the king of his title as Supreme Head of the Church," etc. " The usual punishment for treason was com- muted, as it had been with Fisher, to death upon the scaffold; and this last favour was communi- cated as a special instance of the royal clemency. More's wit was always ready. ' God forbid,' he answered, 'that the king should show any more 24 SIR THOMAS MO UK puch mercy unto any of my friends; and God bless all my posterity from such pardons.' . . . The scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook as he placed his foot upon the ladder. 'See uie safe up,' he said to Kingston; 'for my coining down I can shift for myself.' He began to speak to the people, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed, and he contented himself with ask- ing for their prayers, and desiring them to bear witness for him that he died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church, and a faithful servant of God and the king. He then repeated the Miserere psalm on his knees; and when he had ended, and iiad risen, the executioner, with an emotion which promised ill for the manner in which his part in the matter would be accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed him. 'Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive,' he said. ' Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. Take heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty.' The executioner offered to tie his eye?. 'I will cover them myself,' he said; and binding them in a cloth, which he had brought with him, he knelt and laid his head upon the block. The fatal stroke was about to fall, when he signed for a moment's delay, while he moved nside his beard. ' Pity that should be cut,' he murmured, ' that has not committed treason.' AV'ith which strange words, the strangest perhaps ever uttered at such a time, the lips most famous through Europe for eloquence and wisdom closed forever." FROUDE : Hiatory of Europe, ii., chap, is. THE UTOPIAX IDEA OF PLEASURE ; FR.OM BISHOP BURNET'S TRANSLATION OF MORE'S UTOPIA, Lond., 1684, 8vo. They think it is an evidence of true wis- dom for a man to pursue his own advantages as far as the laws allow it. They account it piety to prefer the public good to one's private concerns. But they think it unjust for a man to seek for his own pleasure by snatching another man's pleasures from him. And, on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to dis- pense with his own advantage for the good of others ; and that by so doing a good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another: for, as he may expect the like from others when he may come to need it, so, if that should fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the reflections that one makes on the love and gratitude of those whom he has obliged, gives the mind more pleasure than the body could have found in that from which it had restrained itself. They are also persuaded that God will make up the loss of those small pleasures with a vast and endless joy, of which religion does easily convince a good soul. Thus, upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as in our chief end and greatest happiness ; and they call every motion or state, either of body or mind, in which nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure. And thus they cautiously limit pleasure only to those appetites to which nature leads us ; for they reckon that nature leads us only to those delights to which reason as well as sense carries us. and by which we neither injure any other person nor let go greater pleasures for it, and which do not draw troubles on us after them : but they look upon those delights which men, by a foolish though common mistake, call pleasure, as if they could change the nature of things, as well as the use of words, as things that not only do not advance our hap- piness, but do rather obstruct it very much, because they do so entirely possess the minds of those that once go into them with a false notion of pleasure, that there is no room left for truer and purer pleasures. There are many things that in themselves have nothing that is truly delighting : on the contrary, they have a good deal of bitterness in them ; and yet by our perverse appetites after forbidden objects, are not only ranked among the pleasures, but are made even the greatest designs of life. Among those who pursue these sophisticated pleasures they reckon those whom I mentioned before, who think themselves really the better for having fine clothes, in which they think they are doubly mistaken, both in the opinion that they have of their clothes, and in the opin- ion that they have of themselves; for if you consider the use of clothes, why should a tine thread be thought better than a coarse one? And yet that sort of men, as if they had some real advantages beyond others, and did not owe it wholly to their mistakes, look big, and seem to fancy themselves to be the more valuable on that account, and imagine that a respect is due to them for the sake of a rich garment, to which they would not have pretended if they had been more meanly clothed ; and they resent it ns nn affront if that respect is not paid them. . . . Another sort of bodily pleasure is that which consists in a quiet and good constitution of body, by which there is an entire healthi- ness spread over all the parts of the body not allayed with any disease. This, when it is free from all mixture of pain, gives an inward pleasure of itself, even though it should not be excited by any external and delighting object; and although this pleasure does not so vigorously affect the sense, nor act so strongly upon it, yet as it is the greatest of all pleasures, so almost all the Utopians reckon it the foundation and bas.is of all the other joys of life ; since this alone makes one's state of life to be easy and de- sirable; and when this is wanting, a man is really capable of no other pleasure. Thoy look upon indolence and freedom from pain, GEORGE CAVENDISH. 25 if it does not rise from a perfect health, to be a state of stupidity rather than of pleas- ure. There has been a controversy in this matter very narrowly canvassed among them : Whether a firm and entire health could be called a pleasure or not? Some have thought that there was no pleasure but that which was excited by some sensible motion in the body. But this opinion has been long run down among them, so that now they do almost all agree in this, that health is the greatest of all bodily pleasures; and that, as there is a pain in sickness, which is as opposite in its nature to pleasure as sickness itself is to health, so they hold that health carries a pleasure along with it. And if any should say that sickness is not really a pain, but that it only carries a pain along with it, they look upon that as a fetch of subtility that does not much alter the matter. So they think it is all one whether it be said that health is in itself a plesvsure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire gives heat, so it be granted that all those whose health is entire have a true pleasure in it; and they reason thus: What is the pleasure of eating, but that a man's health which had been weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger, and so recruit- ing itself, recovers its former vigour? And being thus refreshed, it finds a pleasure in that conflict. And if the conflict is pleasure, the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we will fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that which it pur- sued, and so does neither know nor rejoice in its own welfare. If it is said that health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny that : for what man is in health that does not perceive it when he is awake ? Is there any man that is so dull and stupid as not to acknowledge that he feels a delight in health ? And what is delight but another name for pleasure ? But of all pleasures, they esteem those to be the most valuable that lie in the mind ; and the chief of these are those that arise out of true virtue, and the witness of a good conscience. They account health the chief pleasure that belongs to the body ; for they think that the pleasure of eating and drink- ing, and all the other delights of the body, are only so far desirable as they give or maintain health. But they are not pleasant in themselves, otherwise than as they resist those impressions that our natural infirmity is still making upon us ; and as a, wise man desires rather to avoid diseases than take physic, and to be freed from pain rather than to find ease by remedies, so it were a more desirable state not to need this sort of pleas- ure than to be obliged to indulge it. And if any man imagines that there is a real hap- piness in this pleasure, he must then confess that he would be the happiest of all men if he were to lead his life in a perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching, and by consequence in perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching himself; which any one may easily see would be not only a base, but a miserable state of life. These are, indeed, the lowest of pleas- ures, and the least pure ; for we can never relish them but where they are mixed with the contrary pains. The pain of hunger must give us the pleasure of eating ; and here the pain outbalances the pleasure : and as the pain is more vehement, so it lasts much longer : for, as it is upon us before the pleasure comes, so it does not cease but with the pleasure that extinguishes it, and that goes off with it: so that they think none of those pleasures are to be valued but as they are necessary. Yet they rejoice in them, and with due gratitude acknowledge the ten- derness of the great author of nature, who has planted in us appetites, by which these things that are necessary for our preserva- tion are likewise made pleasant to us. For how miserable a thing would life be, if these daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return sel- dorner upon us 1 GEORGE CAVENDISH, gentleman-usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and subsequently to Henry VIII., died 1557, left in MS. a life of his first-named master, en- titled, " The Negotiations of Woolsey, the Great Cardinal of England," Lond., 1641, 4to. " There is a sincere and impartial adherence to truth, a reality, in Cavendish's narrative, which bespeaks the confidence of his reader, and very much increases his pleasure. It is a work without pretension, but full of natural eloquence, devoid of the formality of a set rhetorical composition, un- spoiled by the affectation of that cbtsxical manner in which nil biography and history of old time was prescribed to be written, and which often divests such records of the attraction to be found in the conversational style of Cavendish. . . . Our great poet has literally followed him in several passnges of his King Henry VIII., merely putting his language into verse. Add to this the historical importance of the work, as the only sure and au- thentic source of information upon many of the most interesting events of that reign ; and from which all historians have largely drawn (through the secondary medium of Holinshed and Stowo, who adopted Cavendish's narrative), and its in- trinsic value need not be more fully expressed." S. W. SINGER: The Life of Cardinal Wohey, and Metrical Versions from the Original Aiitoyrnph Manuscript, with Notes and other Illustrations. Chiswick, 1825, 2 vols. 8vo, 1. p. 50 copies. 26 NICHOLAS RIDLEY. CAVENDISH'S ACCOUNT OP KINO HENRY'S VISITS TO WOLSEY'S HOUSE. And when it pleased the king's majesty, for his recreation, to repair unto the cardi- nal's house, as he did divers times in the year, at which time there wanted no prepa- rations or goodly furniture, with viands of the finest sort that might be provided for money or friendship ; such pleasures were then devised for the king's comfort and con- solation as might be invented, or by man's wit imagined. The banquets were set forth with masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous a sort and costly manner, that it was a heaven to behold. There wanted no dames or damsels, meet or apt to dance with the maskers, or to garnish the place for the time with other goodly disports. Then was there all kind of music and harmony set forth, with excellent voices both of men and chil- dren. I have seen the king suddenly come in thither in a mask, with a dozen of other maskers, all in garments like shepherds, made of fine cloth of gold, and fine crimson satin paned, and caps of the same, with visors of good proportion of visnomy ; their hairs and beards either of fine gold wire, or else of silver, and some being of black silk ; having sixteen torch-bearers ; besides their drums, and other persons attending upon them with visors, and clothed all in satin, of the same colours. And at his coming, and before he came into the hall, ye shall understand that he came by water to the water-gate, without any noise, where, against his coming, were laid charged many cham- bers [short guns], and at his landing they were all shot off, which made such a rumble in the air that it was like thunder. It made all the noblemen, ladies, and gentlewomen to muse what it should mean coming so sud- denly, they sitting quietly at a solemn ban- quet. . . . Then, immediately after this great shot of guns, the cardinal desired the lord chamberlain and comptroller to look what this sudden shot should ine.an, as though he knew nothing of the matter. They there- upon looking out of the window into Thames, returned again, and showed him that it seemed to them there should be some noble- men and strangers arrived at his bridge, as ambassadors from some foreign prince. . . . Then quoth the cardinal to my lord chamber- lain, "I pray you," quoth he, "show them that it seemeth me that there should be among them some nobleman whom I suppose to be much more worthy of honour to sit and oc- cupy this room and place than I ; to whom I would most gladly, if I knew him, surrender my place according to my duty." Then spake my lord chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my lord cardinal's mind 5 and they rounding [whispering] them again in the ear, my lord chamberlain said to my lord cardinal, " Sir, they confess," quoth he, " that among them there is such a noble personage, whom, if your grace can appoint him from the other, he is contented to dis- close himself, and to accept your place most worthily." With that, the cardinal, taking a good advisement among them, at the last, quoth he, " Me seemeth the gentleman with the black beard should be even he." And with that he arose out of his chair, and of- fered the same to the gentleman in the black beard, with his cap in his hand. The person to whom he offered then his chair was Sir Edward Neville, a comely knight, of a goodly personage, that much more resembled the king's person in that mask than any other. The king, hearing and perceiving the car- dinal so deceived in his estimation and choice, could not -forbear laughing; but plucked down his visor, and Master Neville's also, and dashed out with such a pleasant countenance and cheer, that all noble estates there assembled, seeing the king in there amongst them, rejoiced very much. The cardinal eftsoons desired his highness to take the place of estate, to whom the king an- swered that he would go first and shift his apparel ; and so departed, and went straight into my lord's bedchamber, where was a great fire made and prepared for him, and there new-apparelled him with rich and princely garments. And in the time of the king's absence the dishes of the banquet were clean taken up, and the table spread .again with new and sweet-perfumed cloths ; every man sitting still until the king and his maskers came in among them again, every man being newly apparelled. Then the king took his seat under the cloth of estate, commanding no man to remove, but sit still, as they did before. Then in came a new banquet before the king's majesty, and to all the rest through the tables, wherein, I sup- pose, were served two hundred dishes, or above, of wondrous costly meats and devices, subtilly devised. Thus passed they forth the whole night with banquetting, dancing, and other tri- umphant devices, to the great comfort of the king, and pleasant regard of the nobility there assembled. The Negotiations of Woolsey. NICHOLAS RIDLEY, born about 1505, became Bishop of Roches- ter 1547, Bishop of London 1550, and was burnt at the stake, with Bishop Latimer, at Oxford, Oct. 16, 1555. NICHOLAS RIDLEY. FROM RIDLEY'S PITEOUS LAMENTATION OF THE MISERABLE ESTATE OF THE CHURCH IN ENGLAND, IN THE TIME OF THE LATE REVOLT FROM THE GOSPEL, 1566. Of God's gracious aid in extreme perils toward them that put their trust in him, all Scripture is full both old and new. What dangers were the patriarchs often brought into, as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but of all other Joseph ; and how mercifully were they delivered again ! In what perils was Moses when he was fain to fly for the safe- guard of his life! And when was he sent .again to deliver the Israelites from the ser- vile bondage ? Not before they were brought into extreme misery. And when did the Lord mightily deliver his people from Pha- raoh's sword ? Not before they were brought into such straits that they were so compassed on every side (the main sea on the one side, and the main host on the other), that they could look for none other, (yea, what did they else look for then ?) but either to have been drowned in the sea, or else to have fallen on the edge of Pharaoh his sword. Those judges which wrought most wonder- ful things in the delivery of the people were ever given when the people were brought to most misery before, as Othoniel, Aioth [Ehud], Sangar, Gedeon, Jepthah, Samson. And so was Saul endued with strength and boldness from above, against the Ammon- ites, Philistines, and Amalechites, for the defence of the people of God. David like- wise felt God's help, most sensibly ever in his extreme persecutions. What shall I speak of the Prophets of God, whom God suffered so oft to be brought into extreme perils, and so mightily delivered them again ; as Ilelias, Ileremy, Daniel, Micheas, and Jonas, and many others, whom it were but too long to rehearse and set out at large? And did the Lord use his servants otherwise in the new law after Christ's incarnation? Read the Acts of the Apostles and you shall see, no. Were not the Apostles cast into prison, and brought out by the mighty hand of God? Did not the angel deliver Peter out of the strong prison, and bring him out by the iron gates of the city, and set him free? And when, I pray you? Even the same night before Herod appointed to have brought him in judgment for to have slain him, as he had a little before killed James, the brother of John. Paul and Silas, when after they had been sore scourged, and were put into the inner prison, and there were held fast in the stocks ; I pray you what appearance was there that the magistrates should be glad to come the next day them- selves to them, to desire them to be content, and to depart in peace ? Who provided for Paul that he should be safely conducted out of .all danger, and brought to Felix, the Emperor's deputy, whenas both the high priests, the pharisees, and rulers of the Jews had conspired to require judgment of death against him, he being fast in prison, and also more than forty men had sworn each one to other that they would never eat nor drink until they had slain Paul ! A thing wonderful, that no reason could have in- vented, or man could have looked for: God provided Paul his own sister's son, a young man, that disappointed that conspiracy and all their former conjuration. The manner how the thing came to pass, thou mayest read in the twenty-third of the Acts : I will not be tedious unto thee here with the re- hearsal thereof. Now, to descend from the Apostles to the martyrs that followed next in Christ's church, and in them likewise to declare how gracious our good God ever hath been to work wonderfully with them which in his cause have been in extreme perils, it were a matter enough to write a long book. I will here name but one man and one woman, that is, Athanasias, the great clerk and godly man, stoutly standing in Christ's cause against the Arians ; and that holy woman, Blandina, so constantly in all ex- treme pains, in the simple confession of Christ. If thou wilt have examples of more, look and thou shalt have both these and a hundred more in Ecclesiastica Ilistoria of Eusebius, and in Tripartita Historia. But for all these examples, both of holy Scrip- ture and of other histories, I fear me the weak man of God, encumbered with the frailty and infirmity of the flesh, will have now and then such thoughts and qualms (as they call them) to i - un over his heart, and to think thus: All these things which are re- hearsed out of the Scripture, I believe to be true, and of the rest truly I do think well, and can believe them also to be true ; but all these we must needs grant were special miracles of God, which now in our hands are ceased, we see, and to require them of God's hands, were it not to tempt God? Well-beloved brother. I grant such were great wonderful works of God, and we have not seen many such miracles in our time, either for that our sight is not clear (for truly God worketh with us his part in all times) or else because we have not the like faith of them for whose cause God wrought such things, or because after that he had set forth the truth of his doctrine by such mira- cles then sufficiently, the time of so many miracles to be done was expired withal. Which of these is the most special cause of all other, or whether there be any other, God knoweth : I leave that to God. But 28 ROGER AS CHAM. know thou this, my well-beloved in God, that God's hand is as strong as ever it was ; he may do what his gracious pleasure is, and he is as good and gracious as ever he was. Man changeth as the garment doth ; but God, our heavenly Father, is even the same now that he was, and shall be for evermore. The world without doubt (this I do be- lieve, and therefore I say) draweth towards an end, and in all ages God hath hud his own manner, after his secret and unsearch- able wisdom, to use his elect: sometimes to deliver them, and to keep them safe ; and sometimes to suffer them to drink of Christ's cup. that is, to feel the smart, and to feel of the whip. And though the flesh smarteth at the one, and feeleth ease in the other, is glad of the one, and sore vexed in the other; yet the Lord is all one towards them in both, and loveth them no less when he suf- fereth them to be beaten, yea, and to be put to bodily death, than when he worketh won- ders for their marvellous delivery. Nay, rather he doth more for them, when in an- guish of the torments he standeth by them, and strengtheneth them in their faith, to suffer in the confession of the truth and his faith the bitter pains of death, than when he openeth the prison doors and letteth them go loose: for here he doth but respite them to another time, and leavoth them in danger to fall in like peril again ; and there he maketh them perfect, to be without danger, pain, or peril, after that for evermore: but this his love towards them, howsoever the world doth judge of it, it is all one, both when he delivereth and when he suffereth them to be put to death. He loved as well Peter and Paul, when (after they had, according to his blessed will, pleasure, and providence, fin- ished their courses, and done their services appointed them by him here in preaching of his Gospel,) the one was beheaded, and the other was hanged or crucified of the cruel tyrant Nero (as the ecclesiastical history saith), as when he sent the angel to bring Peter out of prison, and for Paul's delivery he made all the doors of the prison to fly Avide open, and the foundation of the same like an earthquake to tremble and shake. Thinkest thou, man of God, that Christ our Saviour had less affection to the first martyr, Stephen, because he suffered his enemies, even at the first conflict, to stone him to death? No, surely: nor James, John's brother, which was one of the three that Paul calleth primates or principals amongst the Apostles of Christ. He loved him never a whit the worse than he did the other, although he suffered Herod the ty- rant's sword to cut off his head. Nay. doth not Daniel say, speaking of the cruelty of Antichrist his time: ''And the learned [he meaneth truly learned in God's law] shall teach many, and shall fall upon the sword, and in the flame [that is, shall be burnt in the flaming tire], and in captivity [that is, shall be in prison], and be spoiled and robbed of their goods for a long season." And after a little, in the same place of Dan- iel, it followeth : "And of the learned there be which shall fall or be overthrown, that they may be known, tried, chosen, and lie made white" he meaneth be burnished and scoured anew, picked and chosen, and made fresh and lusty. If that, then, was foreseen for to be done to the godly learned, and for so gracious causes, let every one to whom any such thing by the will of God doth chance, be merry in God and rejoice, for it is to God's glory and to his own everlasting wealth. Wherefore well is he that ever he was born, for whom thus graciously God hath provided, having grace of God, and strength of the Holy Ghost, to stand stead- fastly in the height of the storm. Happy is he that ever he was born whom God, his heavenly Father, hath vouchsafed to appoint to glorify him, and to edify his church by the effusion of his blood. To die in Christ's cause is an high honour, to the which no man certainly shall or can aspire but to whom God vouchsafed! that dignity ; for no man is allowed to presume for to take unto himself any office of honour but he which is thereunto called of God. Therefore John saith well, speaking of them which have obtained the victory by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of his testi- mony, that they loved not their lives even unto death. ROGER ASCHAM, tutor to the Princess Elizabeth, and Latin secretary to Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, was born in or about 1515, and died 1568. " He had a facile and fluent Latin style (not like those who, counting obscurity to be elegancy, weed out all the hard words they meet in authors) : wit- ness his ' Epistles,' which some say are the only Latin ones extant of any Englishman, and if so, the more the pity. What loads have we of letters from foreign pens, as if no author were complete without those necessary appurtenances \ \Vliilst surely our Englishmen write (though not so many) as good as any other nation. In a word, his ' Tox- ophilus' is accounted a good book for youiiff men, his ' Schoolmaster' for old men, his ' Epistles' for all men." FULLER : Worthies of England. EXTRACTS FROM ASCITAM'S SCHOOLMASTER, Lond., 1570, 4to. It is a pity that coinmonly more care is had, and that among very wise men, to find ROGER AS CHAM. out rather a cunning man for their horse, than a cunning man for their children. To the one they will gladly give a stipend of 200 crowns hy the year, and loth to offer the other 200 shillings. God, that sitteth in heaven, laugheth their choice to scorn, and rewardeth their liberality as it should; for he suffereth them to have tame and well- ordered horse, but wild and unfortunate children. One example, whether love or fear doth work more in a child for virtue arid learning, I will gladly report; which may be heard with some pleasure and followed with more profit. Before I went into Germany, 1 came to Broadgate, in Leicestershire, to take my leave of that noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I was exceedingly much beholden. Her parents, the duke and the duchess, with all the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber, reading Phaedon Platonis in Greek, and that Avith as much delight as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Bocace. After salutation and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her why she would lose such pastime in the park? Smil- ing, she answered me, "I wiss, all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas ! good folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant.'' '' And how came you, madam." quoth I, " to this deep knowledge of pleas- ure? And what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many w r omen, but very few men, have attained thereunto?" [Lady Jane was then in her 14th year.] ''I will tell you," quoth she, " and tell you a truth which, perchance, ye will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp and severe pa- rents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any- thing else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so per- fectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea. presently, sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways, which I will not name for the honour I bear them, so with- out measure misordered, that I think my- self in hell till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer; who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing whiles I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because whatever I do else but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear, and whole misliking unto me. And thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that, in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deed be but trifles and troubles unto me." Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty ; and learning teacheth safely when experience maketh more miser- able than wise. He hazardeth sore that waxeth wise by experience. An unhappy master he is that is made cunning by many shipwrecks; a miserable merchant that is neither rich nor wise but after some bank- routs. It is costly wisdom that is bought by experience. We know by experience itself that it is ( a marvellous pain to find out but a short way by long wandering. And surely, he that would prove wise by ex- perience, he may be witty indeed, but even like a swift runner, that runneth fast out of his way, and upon the night, lie knoweth not whither. And verily they be fewest in number that be happy or wise by unlearned experience. And look well upon the former life of those few, whether your example be old or young, who without learning have gathered by long experience a little wisdom and some happiness ; and when you do con- sider what mischief they have committed, what dangers they have escaped (and yet twenty to one do perish in the adventure), then think well with yourself whether ye would that your own son should come to wisdom and happiness by the way of such experience or no. It is a notable tale that old Sir Roger Chamloe, sometime chief justice, would tell of himself. When he was Ancient in inn of court certain young gentlemen were brought before him to be corrected for cer- tain misordcrs ; and one of the lustiest said, li Sir, we be young gentlemen; and wise men before us have proved all fashions, and } r e(i those have done full well." This they said because it was Avell known Sir Roger had been a good fellow in his youth. But he answered them very wisely. "Indeed," saith he, "in my youth I Avas as you are now: and I had tweh'e fellows like unto myself, but not one of them came to a good end. And therefore, follow not my exam- ple in youth, but follow my counsel in age, if ever ye think to come to this place, or to these years that I am come unto ; less ye meet either with poverty or Tyburn in the way." Thus, experience of all fashions in youth being in proof always dangerous, in issue seldom lucky, is a Avay indeed to overmuch knowledge ; yet used commonly of such men which be either carried by some curious affection of mind, or driven by some hard necessity of life, to hazard the trial of over- many perilous adventures. 30 MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE. MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, born in Perigord, France, 1533, died 1592. " Montaigne's 'Essays' are among the most re- markable of literary productions. Absolutely without order, method, or indeed anything like intelligible purpose, they have yet exercised an influence, particularly on French and English literature, greater perhaps thnn that of any other single book we could name. Several of his critics have suffered their indignation against 'the con- fusion of the whole book' to carry them a great way further than was necessary; for, indeed, it is partly this want of formal arrangement that gives to the ' Essays' their peculiar excellence. ... It is quite impossible to convey an adequate notion of their unrestrained vivacity, energy, and fancy, of their boldness and attractive simplicity. They range over every subject connected with human life and manners; abound in observations often most felicitously expressed of great depth and acuteness, and never fail to entertain with their constant eagerness and gaiety. It is not too much to say that they supply the mind with tit once the best stimulus and recreation which the world of books contains." REV. ROBERT MARTIN: Imperial Diet, of Univ. Bioy., v., I860, 434. OP THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS. Since we cannot attain unto it, let us re- venge ourselves by railing at it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything to proclaim its defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how much to be coveted soever. It has in gen- eral this manifest advantage, that it can grow less when it pleases, and has very near the absolute choice of both the one and the other condition. For a man does not fall from all heights; there are several from which one may descend without falling down. It does indeed appear to me that we value it at too high a rate, and also over- value the resolution of those whom we have either seen or heard have contemned it^or displaced themselves of their own accord. Its essence is not evidently so commodious that a man may not without a miracle re- fuse it : I find it a very hard thing to under- go misfortunes; but to be content with a competent measure of fortune, .and to avoid greatness, I think a very easy matter. 'Tis, methinks, a virtue to which 1, who am none of the wisest, could, without any great en- deavour, arrive. What, then, is to be expected from them that would yet put into considera- tion the glory attending this refusal, wherein there may lurk worse ambition than even in the desire itself and fruition of greatness ? Forasmuch as ambition never comports itself better according to itself than when it pro- ceeds by obscure and unfrequented ways, I incite my courage to patience, but 1 rein it as much as I can towards desire. I have as much to wish for as another, and allow my wishes as much liberty and indis- cretion ; but yet it never befell me to wish for either empire or royalty, for the eminency of those high and commanding fortunes. I do not aim that way ; I love myself too well. AVhen I think to grow greater, 'tis but very moderately, and by a compelled and timorous advancement, such as is proper for me, in resolution, in prudence, in health, in beauty, and even in riches too. But this supreme reputation, and this mighty authority, oppress my imagination ; and, quite contrary to some others, 1 should, peradventure, rather choose to be the second or third in Perigourd than the first in Paris. I would neither dispute a miserable un- known with a nobleman's porter, nor make crowds open in adoration as I pass. I am trained up to a moderate condition, as well as by my choice as fortune ; and have made it appear in the whole conduct of my life and enterprises that I have rather- avoided than otherwise the climbing above the degree of fortune wherein God has placed me by my birth : all natural constitution is equally just and easy. My soul is so sneaking and mean that I measure not good fortune by the height, but by the facility. But if my heart be not great enough, 'tis open enough to make amends at any one's request freely to lay open its weakness. Should any one put me upon comparing the life of L. Thorius Balbus, a brave man, handsome, learned, healthful, understanding, and abounding in all sorts of conveniencies and pleasures, leading a quiet life, and all his own ; his mind well prepared against death, supersti- tion, pains, and other incumbrances of hu- man necessity ; dying at last in battle with his sword in his hand, for the defence of his country, on the one part; and on the other part, the life of M. Regulus, so great and as high as is known to every one, and his end admirable ; the one without name and with- out dignity, the other exemplary and glori- ous to a wonder: I should doubtless say, as Cicero did, could I speak as well as he. But if I was to touch it in my own phrase, I should then also say, that the first is as much according to my capacity and desire, which I conform to my capacity, as the second is far beyond it ; that I could not approach the last but with my veneration, the other I would willingly attain by custom. But let us return to our temporal greatness, from which we have digressed. I disrelish all dominion, whether active or passive. Otanes, one of the seven who had a right to pretend to the kingdom of Persia, did as I should willingly have done; which was, that he gave up to his concurrents his right of being promoted to it, either by election or by lot, provided that he and his might live in the MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE. 31 empire out of all authority and subjection, those of the ancient laws excepted, and might enjoy all liberty that was not prejudicial to them, as impatient of commandingas of being commanded. The most painful and difficult employment in the world, in my opinion, is worthily to discharge the office of a king. I excuse more of their mistakes than men com- monly do, in consideration of the intolerable weight of their function, which does astonish me. 'Tis hard to keep measure in so im- measurable a power. Yet so it is, that it is, to those who are not the best-natured men, a singular incitement to virtue to be seated in a place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put upon record ; and where the least benefit redounds to so many men ; and where your talent of administra- tion, like that of preachers, does principally address itself to the people, no very exact judge, easy to deceive, and easily content. There are few things wherein we can give a sincere judgment, by reason that there are few wherein we have not in some sort a par- ticular interest. Superiority and inferiority, dominion and subjection, are bound to a natural envy and contest, and must necessarily perpetually intrench upon one another. I neither be- lieve the one nor the other touching the rights of the adverse party: let reason, therefore, which is inflexible and without passion, determine. 'Tis not a month ago that I read over two Scotch authors con- tending upon this subject; of which he who stands for the people makes kings to be in a worse condition than a carter; and he who writes for monarchy places him some degrees above God Almighty in power and sover- eignty. Now the inconveniency of greatness, that I have made choice of to consider in this place, upon some occasions that has lately put it into my head, is this: there is not peradventure anything more pleasant in the commerce of men than the trials that we make against one another, out of emulation of honour and valour, whether in the exer- cises of the body or in those of the mind ; wherein the sovereign greatness can have no true part. And in earnest I have often thought, that out of force of respect men have used princes disdainfully and injuri- ously in that particular. For the thing I was infinitely offended at in my childhood, that they who exercised with me forbore to do their best because they found me un- worthy of their utmost endeavour, is what we see happen to them every day, every one finding himself unworthy to contend with them. If we discover that they have the least passion to have the better, there is no one who will not make it his business to give it them, and who will not rather betray his own glory than offend theirs; and will therein employ so much force only as is necessary to advance their honour. What share have they, then, in the engagement wherein every one is on their side? Me- thinks I see those paladins of ancient times presenting themselves to jousts, with en- chanted arms and bodies. Crisson, running against Alexander, purposely missed his blow, and made a fault in his career; Alex- ander chid him for it, but he ought to have had him whipped. Upon this consideration, Carneades said that the sons of princes learned nothing right but to ride the great horse; by reason that in all their exercises every one bends and yields to them ; but a horse that is neither a flatterer nor a court- ier, throws the son of a king with no more remorse than he would do that of a porter. Homer was compelled to consent that Venus, so sweet and delicate as she was, should be wounded at the battle of Troy, thereby to ascribe courage and boldness to her ; quali- ties that cannot possibly be in those who are exempt from danger. The gods are made to be angry, to fear, to run away, to be jealous, to grieve, and to be transported Avith pas- sions, to honour them with the virtues that amongst us are built upon these imperfec- tions. Who does not participate in the hazard and difficulty can pretend no inter- est in the honour and pleasure that are the consequents of hazardous actions. 'Tis a pity a man should be so potent that all things must give way to him. Fortune therein sets you too remote from society, and places you in too great a solitude. The easiness and mean facility of making all things bow under you is an enemy to all sorts of pleasure. This is to slide, not to go: this is to sleep, and not to live. Con- ceive man accompanied with omnipotency, you throw him into an abyss: he must beg disturbance and opposition as an alms. His being and his good is indigence. Their good qualities are dead and lost ; for they are not to be perceived but by comparison, and we put them out of it; they have little knowl- edge of the true praise, having their ears deafed with so continued and uniform an approbation. Have they to do with the meanest of all their subjects? They have no means to take any advantage of him, if he say, 'Tis because he is my king, he thinks he has said enough to express that he there- fore suffered himself to he overcome. This quality stifles and consumes the other true and essential qualities. They are involved in the royalty, and leave them nothing to recommend themselves withal, but actions that directly concern themselves, and that merely respect the function of their place. 32 MIGUEL DE CERVANTES. 'Tis so much to he a king, that he only is so by being so ; the strange lustre that en- virons him conceals him and shrouds him from us; our sight is there repelled and dis- sipated, bejng stopped and filled by this pre- vailing light. The senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tiberius : he refused it, sup- posing that, though it had been just, he could derive no advantage from a judgment so par- tial, and that was so little free to judge. As we give them all advantages of honour, so do we soothe and authorize all their vices and defects, not only by approbation, but by imi- tation also. Every one of Alexander's fol- lowers carried their heads on one side, as he did ; and the flatterers of Dionysius ran against one another in his presence, stum- bled at and overturned whatever was under- foot, to show that they were as purblind as he. Natural imperfections have sometimes also served to recommend a man to favour. I have seen deafness affected ; and because the master hated his wife, Plutarch has seen his courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved ; and which is yet more, uncleanness and all manner of dissoluteness has been in fashion ; as also disloyalty, blasphemies, cruelty, heresy, superstition, irreligion, effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be. And by an example yet more dangerous than that of Mithridates' flatterers, who, by how much their master pretended to the honour of a good physician, came to him to have incision and cauteries made in their limbs ; for these others suffered the soul, a more delicate and noble thing, to be cauterized. But to end where I begun: the Emperor Adrian dis- puting with the philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus soon yielded him the victory, for which his friends rebuking him, "You talk simply," said he ; il would you not have him wiser than I, who commands thirty legions?" Augustus wrote verses against Asinius Pol- lio, and I, said Pollio, say nothing, for it is not prudence to write in contest with him who has power to proscribe ; ami he had reason : for Dionysius because he could not equal Philoxenus in poesy, and Plato in dis- course, condemned one to the quarries, and sent the other to be sold for a slave into the island of ^Egina. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA, author of Don Quixote, was born at Alcata de Ilenares, 1547, entered the order of Fran- ciscan friars April 2, 1616, and died April 2-5 of the same year. His Don Quixote was first published at Madrid, Part I. 1605, small 4to ; Part II. 1615, small 4to. " Both Don Quixote and Sancho are thus brought before us like such living realities that, at this mo- ment, the figures of the crazed, gaunt, dignified knight and of his round, selfish, and most amusing esquire dwell bodied forth in the imaginations of more, among all conditions of men throughout Christendom, than any other of the creations of human talent. The greatest of the great poets Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton have no doubt risen to loftier heights, aud placed them- selves in more imposing relations with the noblest attributes of our nature; but Cervantes always writing under the unchecked impulse of his own genius, and instinctively concentrating in his fic- tion whatever was peculiar to the character of his nation has shown himself of kindred to all times and all lands; to the humblest degrees of cultiva- tion as well as to the highest ; and has thus, beyond all other writers, received in return a tribute of sympathy and admiration from the universal spirit of humanity." TICKNOR : Hint, of Spanish Lit., 3d Amer. edit., Boston, 1863, ii. 146 : Second Part of The Don Quixote. DESCRIPTION OP DON QUIXOTE. Down in a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to recollect, there lived, not long ago, one of those gen- tlemen who usually keep a lance upon a rack, an old buckler, a lean horse, and a coursing greyhound. Soup, composed of somewhat more mutton than beef, the frag- ments served up cold on most nights, lentils on Fridays, pains and breakings on Satur- days, and a pigeon, by way of addition, on Sundays, consumed three-fourths of his in- come ; the remainder of it supplied him with a cloak of fine cloth, velvet breeches, with slippers of the same for holidays, and a suit of the best homespun, in which he adorned himself on week-days. His family consisted of a housekeeper above forty, a niece not quite twenty, and a lad who served him both in the field and at home, who could saddle the horse or handle the pruning-hook. The age of our gentleman bordered upon fifty years ; he was of a strong constitution, spare-bodied, of a meagre visage, a very early riser, and a lover of the chase. Some pretend to say that his surname was Quixada, or Quesada, for on this point his historians differ; though, from very probable conjec- tures, we may conclude that his name w;is Quixana. This is, however, of little im- portance to our history : let it suffice that, m relating it, we do not swerve a jot from the truth. Be it known , then, that the afore-mentioned gentleman, in his leisure moments, which composed the greater part of the year, gave himself up with so much ardor to the perusal of books of chivalry, that he almost wholly neglected the exercise of the chase, and even the regulation of his domestic affairs; in- deed, so extravagant was his zeal in this pursuit, that he sold many acres of arable MIGUEL DE CERVANTES. 33 land to purchase books of knight-errantry ; collecting as many as he could possibly ob- tain. Among them all none pleased him so much as those written by the famous Felici- ano de Silva, whose brilliant prose and in- tricate style were, in his opinion, infinitely precious ; especially thase amorous speeches and challenges in which they so much abound, such as : " The reason of the un- reasonable treatment of my reason so en- feebles my reason, that with reason I com- plain of your beauty." And again: ''The high heavens that, with your divinity, di- vinely fortify you with the stars, rendering you meritorious of the merit merited by your greatness." These and similar rhap- sodies distracted the poor gentleman, for he laboured to comprehend and unravel their meaning, which was more than Aristotle himself could do, were he to rise from the dead expressly for that purpose. lie was not quite satisfied as to the wounds which Don Belianis gave and received ; for he could not help thinking that, however skilful the surgeons were who healed them, his face and whole body must have been covered with seams and scars. Nevertheless, he commended his author for concluding his book with the promise of that interminable adventure ; and he often felt an inclination to seize the pen himself and conclude it, lit- erally as it is there promised: this he would doubtless have done, and with success, had he not been diverted from it by meditations of greater moment, on which his mind was incessantly employed. He often debated with the curate of the village, a man of learning, and a graduate of Siguenza, which of the two was the best knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis de Gaul; but Master Nicholas, barber of the same place, declared that none ever came up to the knight of the sun ; if, indeed, any one could be compared to him, it was Don Galaor, brother of Amadis de Gaul, for he had a genius suited to everything : he was no effeminate knight, no whimperer, like his brother; and in point of courage he was by no means his inferior. In short, he became so infatuated with this kind of study that he passed whole days and nights over these books; and thus, with little sleeping, and much reading, his brains were dried up and his intellects deranged. His imagination was full of all that he had read : of en- chantments, contests, battles, challenges, wounds, courtships, amours, tortures, and impossible absurdities; and so firmly was he persuaded of the truth of the whole tis- sue of visionary fiction, that, in his mind, no history in the world was more authentic. The Cid Ruy Diaz, he asserted, was a very good knight, but not to be compared with the knight of the flaming sword, who, with a single back-stroke, cleft asunder two fierce and monstrous giants. lie was better pleased with Bernardo del Carpio, because, at Koncesvalles, he slew Roland the en- chanted, by availing himself of the strata- gem employed by Hercules upon Anteus, whom he squeezed to death within his arms. He spoke very favourably of the giant Mor- ganti, for although of that monstrous breed who are always proud and insolent, he alone was courteous and well bred. Above all he admired Rinaldo de Montalvan, particularly when he saw him sallying forth from his castle to plunder all he encountered ; and when, moreover, he seized upon that image of Mohamet which, according to history, was of massive gold. But he would have given his housekeeper, and even his niece into the bargain, for a fair opportunity of kicking the traitor Galalon. Adventures of Don Quixote, Jarvis's Trans- lation, Loud., 1742, 2 vols. 4to. Book I. Chapter I. CAPTURE OF MAMBRINO'S HELMET. About this time it begun to rain a little, and Sancho proposed entering the fulling- mill ; but Don Quixote had conceived such an abhorrence of them for the late jest, that he would by no means go in : turning, there- fore, to the right hand they struck into another road, like that they had travelled through the day before. Soon after, Don Quixote discovered a man on horseback, who had on his head something which glit- tered as if it had been of gold; and scarcely had he seen it when, turning to Sancho, he said, " I am of opinion there is no proverb but Avhat is true, because they are all sen- tences drawing from experience itself, the- mother of all the sciences; especially that which says, ' Where one door is shut .another is opened.' I say this because, if fortune last night shut the door against what we sought, deceiving us with the fulling-mills, it now opens wide another, for a better and more certain adventure ; in which, if I am deceived, the fault will be mine, without imputing it to my ignorance of fulling-mill* or to the darkness of night. This I say be- cause, if I mistake not, there comes one to- wards us who carries on his head Mambrino's helmet, concerning which thou mayest re- member I swore the oath." " Take care, sir, what you say, and more what you do," said Sancho ; " for I would not wish for other fulling-mills, to finish the milling and mash- ing our senses." " The devil take thee !" re- plied Don Quixote: "what has a helmet to do with fulling-mills?" " I know not," an- swered Sancho, ''but in faith, if I might 34 SIR WALTER RALEIGH. talk as much as I used to do, perhaps I could give such reasons that your worship would see you are mistaken in what you Bay." " How can I be mistaken in what I say, scrupulous traitor?" said Don Quixote. " Tell me, seest thou not yon knight coming towards us on a dapple-gray steed, with a helmet of gold on his head?" " What I see and perceive," answered Sancho, "is only a man on a gray ass like mine, with something on his head that glitters." " Why, that is Mambrino's helmet," said Don Quixote ; " re- tire, and leave me alone to deal with him, and thou shalt see how, in order to save time, I shall conclude this adventure with- out speaking a word, and the helmet I have so much desired remain my own." " I shall take care to get out of the way," replied Sancho ; " but Heaven grant, I say again, it may not prove another fulling-mill adven- ture." "I have already told thee, Sancho, not to mention those fulling-mills, nor even think of them," said Don Quixote: "if thou dost, I say no more, but I vow to mill thy soul for thee !" Sancho held his peace, fear- ing lest his master should perform his vow, which had struck him all of a heap. Now the truth of the matter concerning the helmet, the steed, and the knight which Don Quixote saw, was this. There were two villages in that neighbourhood, one of them so small that it had neither shop nor barber, but the other adjoining to it had both ; therefore the barber of the larger served also the less, wherein one customer now wanted to be let blood, and another to be shaved ; to perform which the barber was now on his way, carrying with him his brass basin ; and it so happened that while upon the road it began to rain, and to save his hat, which was a new one, he clapped the basin on his head, which being lately scoured was eeen glittering at the distance of half a league ; and he rode on a gray ass, as San- eho had affirmed. Thus Don Quixote took the barber for a knight, his ass for a dapple- gray steed, and his basin for a golden helmet ; for whatever he saw was quickly adapted to his knightly extravagances ; and when the poor knight drew near, without staying to reason the case with him, he advanced at Ilozinante's best speed, and couched his lance, intending to run him through and through : but, when close upon him, with- out checking the fury of his career, he cried out, " Defend thyself, caitiff! or instantly surrender what is justly my due." The barber, so unexpectedly seeing this phan- tom advancing upon him, had no other way to avoid the thrust of the lance than to slip down from the ass ; and no sooner had he touched the ground than, leaping up nimbler than a roebuck, he scampered over the plain with such speed that the wind could not overtake him. The basin he left on the ground : with which Don Quixote was satisfied, observing that the pagan had acted discreetly, and in imitation of the beaver, which, when closely pursued by the hunters, tears off with his teeth that which it knows by instinct to be the object of pursuit. He ordered Sancho to take up the helmet ; who, holding it in his hand, said, " Before Heaven, the basin is a special one, and is well worth a piece of eight, if it is worth a farthing." lie then gave it to his master, who immediately placed it upon his head, turning it round in search of the vizor; but not finding it, he said, " Doubtless the pagan for whom this famous helmet was originally forged must have had a prodigious head, the worst of it is that one half is wanting." When San- cho heard the basin called a helmet, he could not forbear laughing; which, however, he instantly checked on recollecting his mas- ter's late choler. " What dost thou laugh at, Sancho?" said Don Quixote. "I am laugh- ing," answered he, " to think what a huge head the pagan had who owned that helmet, which is for all the world just like a bar- ber's basin." " Knowest thou, Sancho, what I conceive to be the case? This famous piece, this enchanted helmet, by some strange acci- dent must have fallen into the possession of one who, ignorant of its true value as a hel- met, and seeing it to be of the purest gold, hath inconsiderately melted down the one half for lucre's sake, and of the other made this, which, as thou sayest, doth indeed look like a barber's basin ; but to me, who know what it really is, its transformation is of no importance, for I will have it so repaired in the first town where there is a smith, that it shall not be surpassed nor even equalled by that which the god of smiths himself made and forged for the god of battles. In the mean time, I will wear it as I best can, for something is better than nothing; and it will be sufficient to defend me from stones." u It will so," said Sancho, "if they do not throw them with slings, as they did in the battle of the two armies." Adventures of Don Quixote, Jarvis''s Trans- lation, Book III. Chapter XXI. SIR WALTER RALEIGH, a distinguished navigator and author, was born at Hayes, Devonshire, 1552, and was executed for alleged treason in 1618. "There is no object in human pursuits which the genius of Raleigh did not embrace. What science was that unwearying mind not buried in ? What arts of hoar antiquity did he not love to SIR WALTER RALEIGIL 35 peek ? What sense of the beautiful ever passed transient^ 7 over his spirit? His books and his pictures ever accompanied him in his voyages. Even in the short hour before his last morning is he not still before us, while his midnight pen traces his mortuary verse, perpetuating the emo- tions of the sage, and of the hero who could not fear death ?" DISRAKU : Amenities of Lit. : Psy- cliolof/ical Hist, of Rnwleiyh. " Raleigh, the soldier, the sailor, the scholar, the courtier, the orator, the poet, the historian, the philosopher; whom we picture to ourselves sometimes reviewing the Queen's guards, some- times giving chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love-songs too near the ears of her Highness's maids of honour, and soon after por- ing over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with Livy." LORD MACAULAY: Sm-leii/h and His Ti'me/i, Edin. Rev., Apr!!, 1832, and in his works, complete, 1866, 8 vols. Svo, v. 611. SIR WALTER RALEIGH TO PRINCE HENRY, Sox OF JAMES I. May it please your highness, The following lines are addressed' to your highness from a man who values his liberty, and a very small fortune in a remote part of this island, under the present constitu- tion, above all the riches and honours that he could anywhere enjoy under any other establishment. You see, sir, the doctrines that are lately come into the world, and how far the phrase has obtained of calling your royal father God's vicegerent ; which ill men have turned both to the dishonour of God and the im- peachment of his majesty's goodness. They adjoin vicegerency to the idea of being all- fowerful, and not to that of being all-good. [is majesty's wisdom, it is to be hoped, will save him from the snare that may lie under gross adulations: but your youth, and the thirst of praise which I have observed in you, may possibly mislead you to hearken to these charmers, who would conduct your noble nature into tyranny. Be careful, my prince! Hear them not; fly from their deceit : you are in the succession to a throne, from whence no evil can be imputed to you, but all good must be conveyed from you. Your father is called the vicegerent of Heaven : while he is good, he is the viceger- ent of Heaven. Shall man have authority from the fountain of good to do evil? No, my prince; let mean and degenerate spirits, which want benevolence, suppose your power impaired by a disability of doing injuries. If want of power to do ill be an incapacity in a prince, with reverence be it spoken, it is an incapacity he has in common with the Deity. Let me not doubt but all pleas which do not carry in them the mutual hap- piness of prince and people will appear as absurd to your great understanding as dis- agreeable to your noble nature. Exert yourself, generous prince, against such sycophants, in the glorious cause of liberty ; and assume such an ambition worthy of you, to secure your fellow-creatures from slavery ; from a condition as much below that of brutes as to act without reason is less miserable than to act against it. Pre- serve to your future subjects the divine right of free agents; and to your own royal house the divine right of being their bene- factors. Believe me. my prince, there is no other right can flow from God. While your highness is forming yourself for a throne, consider the laws as so many common-places in your study of the science of government ; when you mean nothing but justice they are an ease and help to you. This way of thinking is what gave men the glorious appellation of deliverers and fathers of their country; this made the sight of them rouse their beholders into acclamations, and man- kind incapable of bearing their very appear- ance without applauding it as a benefit. Consider the inexpressible advantages which will ever attend your highness while you make the power of rendering men happy the measure of your actions ! While this is your impulse, how easily will that power be extended ! The glance of your eye will give gladness, and your very sentence have a fo/ce of beauty. Whatever some men would insinuate, you have lost your subjects when you have lost their inclinations. You are to preside over the minds not the bodies of men ; the soul is the essence of the man, and you ca,nnot have the true man against his inclinations. Choose therefore to be the king or the conqueror of your people: it may be submission, but it cannot be obedi- ence, that is passive. London, Aug. 12, 1611. RALEIGH'S THREE RULES TO BE OBSERVED FOR THE PRESERVATION OF A MAN'S ESTATE. Amongst all other things of the world take care of thy estate, which thou shalt ever preserve if thou observe three things : first, that thou know what thou hast, what every thing is worth that thou hast, and to see that thou art not wasted by thy servants and officers. The second is, that thou never spend anything before thou have it ; for bor- rowing is the canker and death of every man's estate. The third is, that thou suffer not thyself to be wounded for other men's faults, and scourged for other men's offences ; which is the surety for another, for thereby millions of men have been beggared and destroyed, paying the reckoning of other men's riot and the charge of other men's folly and prodigality ; if thou smart, smart for thine own sins; and, above all things, be 36 RICHARD HOOKER. not made an ass to carry the burdens of other men : if any friend desire thee to be his surety, give him a part of what thou hast to spare ; if he press thee farther, he is not thy friend at all, for friendship rather chooseth harm to itself than offereth it. If thou be bound for a stranger, thou art a fool ; if for a merchant, thou puttest thy estate to learn to swim ; if for a churchman, he hath no inheritance ; if for a lawyer, he will find an invasion by a syllable or a word to abuse thee; if for a poor man, thou must pay it thyself; if for a rich man, he needs not; therefore from suretyship, as from a man slayer or enchanter, bless thyself; for the best profit and return will be this, that if thou force him for whom thou art bound to pay it himself, he will become thy enemy ; if thou use to pay it thyself, thou wilt be a beggar ; and believe thy father in this, and print it in thy thought, that what virtue so- ever thou hast, be it never so manifold, if thou be poor withal, thou and thy qualities shall be despised. Besides, poverty is oft- times sent as a curse of God ; it is a shame amongst men, an imprisonment of the mind, a vexation of every worthy spirit ; thou shalt neither help thyself nor others ; thou shalt drown thee in all thy virtues, having no means to show them ; thou shalt be a burden and an eyesore to thy friends, every man will fear thy company ; thou shalt be driven basely to beg and depend on others, to flat- ter unworthy men, to make dishonest shifts ; and, to conclude, poverty provokes a man to do infamous and detested deeds ; let no van- ity, therefore, or persuasion, draw thee to that worst of worldly miseries. If thou be rich, it will give thee plesvuire in health, comfort in sickness, keep thy mind and body free, save thee from many perils, relieve thee in thy elder years, relieve the poor and thy honest friends, and give means to thy posterity to live and defend themselves and thine own fame. Where it is said in the Proverbs, " That he shall be sore vexed that is surety for a stranger, and he that hateth suretyship is sure ;" it is further said, " The poor is hated even of his own neighbour, but the rich have many friends." Lend not to him that is mightier than thyself, for if thou lendest him. count it but lost; be not surety above thy power, for if thou be surety, think to pay it. RICHARD HOOKER, born in or about 1553, died 1600. Works, arranged by the Rev. John Keble, Lond., 1830. 4 vols. 8vo; airain, 1841, 3 vols. 8vo ; 3d edit., Oxf., 1845/3 vols. 8vo. "The finest as well as the most philosophical writer of the Elizabeth period is llooker. The first book of the Ecclesiastical Polity is at this day one of the master-pieces of English eloquence. His periods, indeed, are generally much too long and too intricate, but portions of them are often beautifully rhythmical; his language is rich in English idiom without vulgarity, and in words of a Latin source without pedantry ; he is more uni- formly solemn than the usage of later times per- mits, or even than writers of that time, such as Bacon, conversant with mankind as well as books, would have reckoned necessary : but the example of ancient orators and philosophers, upon themes so grave as those which he discusses, may justify the serious dignity from which he does not depart. Hooker is perhaps the first of such in England who adorned his prose with the images of poetry; but this he has done more judiciously and with more moderation than others of great name; and we must be bigot in Attic severity before we can object to some of his grand figures of speech. We may praise him also for avoiding the super- fluous luxury of quotations; a rock on which the writers of the succeeding age were so frequently wrecked." HALLAM: Jutiuduction to Lit. of Europe, ed. 1854, ii. 198. SCRIPTURE AND THE LAW OF NATURE. What the Scripture purposeth, the same in all points it doth perform. Ilowbeit. that here we swerve not in judgment, one thing especially we must observe : namely, that the absolute perfection of Scripture is seen by relation unto that end whereto it temleth. And even hereby it coineth to pass that, first, such as imagine the general and main drift of the main body of sacred Scripture not to be so large as it is, nor that God did thereby intend to deliver, as in truth he doth, a full instruction in all things unto salvation necessary, the knowledge whereof man by nature could not otherwise in this life attain unto ; they are by this very menn induced, either still to look for new revela- tions from heaven, or else dangerously to add to the word of God uncertain tradition, that so the doctrine of man : s salvation may be complete; which doctrine we constantly hold in all respects, without any such things added, to be so complete, that we utterly re- fuse as much as once to acquaint ourselves with anything further. Whatsoever, to make up the doctrine of man's salvation, is added as in supply of the Scripture's in- sufficiency, we reject it ; Scripture purposing this, hath perfectly and fully done it. Again, the scope and purpose of God in delivering the holy Scripture, such as do take more largely than behoveth, they, on the contrary, side-racking and stretching it further than by him was meant, are drawn into sundry as great inconveniences. They pretending the Scripture's perfection, infer thereupon, that in Scripture all things lawful to be done must needs be contained. We count those things perfect which want nothing requisite for the end whereto they were in- PHILIP SIDNEY. 37 stituted. As, therefore, G,><1 created every part and particle of man exactly perfect that is to say. in all points sufficient unto that use for which he appointed it so the Scripture, yea, every sentence thereof, is perfect, and \vanteth nothing requisite unto that purpose for which God delivered the same. So that if hereupon we conclude, that hecause the Scripture is perfect, there- fore all things lawful t;> be done are com- prehended in the Scripture: we may even as well conclude s'> of every sentence, as of the whole sum arid body thereof, unless we first of all prove that it was the drift, scope, ami purpose of Almighty God in holy Scrip- ture to comprise all things which man may practise. But admit this, and mark, I be- seech you, what would follow. God, in delivering Scripture to his church, should clean have abrogated among them the Law of Nature, which is an infallible knowledge imprinted in the minds of all the children of men, whereby both general principles for directing of human actions are compre- hended, and conclusions derived from them ; upon which conclusions groweth in particu- larity the choice of good and evil in the daily affairs of this life. Admit this, and what shall the Scripture be but a snare and a torment to weak consciences, filling them with infinite perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, .and extreme despairs? Not that the Scripture itself doth cause any such thing (for it tendeth to the clean con- trary, and the fruit thereof is resolute as- surance and certainty in that it teacheth) ; but the necessities of this life urging men to do that which the light of nature, com- mon discretion, and judgment of itself di- recteth them unto ; on the other side this doctrine teaching them that so to do were to sin against their own souls, and that they put forth their hands to iniquity, whatsoever they go about, and have not first the sacred Scripture of God for direction ; how can it choose but bring the simple a thousand times to their wit's end; how can it choose but vex and amaze them? Nor in every action of common life, to find out some sen- tence clearly and infallibly setting before our eyes what we ought to do (seem we in Scripture never so expert), would trouble us more than we are aware. In weak and tender minds, we little know what misery this strict opinion would breed, besides the stops it would make in the whole course of all men's lives and actions. Make all things sin which we do by direction of nature's light, and by the rule of common discretion, without thinking at all upon Scripture; ad- mit this position, and parents shall cause their children to sin, as oft as they cause them to do anything before they come to years of capacity, and be ripe for knowledge in the Scripture. Admit this, and it shall not be with masters as it was witli him in the gospel ; but servants being commanded to go, shall stand still till they have their errand warranted unto them by Scripture, which, as it standeth with Christian duty in some cases, so in common affairs to require it were most unfit. The Laics of Ecclesiastical Polity, Lond., Bookes I'.-IV. (1594), fol. ; Book V.i 1597, fol. ; Book VI.. 1618 ; Bookes VII., VIII., 1618, 4to ; again, Bookes I.-VIII. (termed The Works), Lond., 1622, fol. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, born 1554, was fatally wounded at the battle of Zutphen, September 22, 1586, and died at Arnheim on the 17th of October ensuing. As a writer Sidney is best known by the Countesse of Pembroke's Arcadia, Lond., 1590, 4to, a romance, and An Apologie for Poetrie, Lond., 1595, 4to, afterwards en- titled The Defence of Poetry, and The De- fense of Poesy. " Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I can- not acquire a taste. As Mr. Burke said he ' could not love the French Republic,' so I may truly say that I cannot love ' The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia,' with all my good will to it. ... It is to me one of the great-st monuments of the abuse of intellectual power on record. It puts one in mind of the court dresses and preposterous fashions of the time, which are grown obsolete and disgusting. It is not romantic, but scholastic ; not poetry, but casuistry; not nature, but art, ami the worst sort of art, which thinks it can do better than nature. Of the number of fine things that are constantly passing through the author's mind, there is hardly one th:it he has not contrived to spoil, and to spoil purposely and maliciously, in order to ag- grandize our idea of himself. Out of five hundred folio pages, there are hardly. I conceive, half a dozen sentences expressed simply and directly, with the sincere desire to convey the image im- plied, and without a systematic interpolation of the wit, learning, ingenuity, wisdom, and everlasting impertinence of the writer, so as to disguise the objeat, instead of displaying it in its true colours and real proportions." HAXLITT: Lectn. on the Dramat. Art of the Aye of Elizabeth, Lect. V. Horace AValpole also thought Sidney vastly overrated ; but Dr. Zouch, Peter Ileylin, Isaac Disraeli, Ilallam, Dr. Drake, and others, have much to say in his favour. As a speci- men of Sidney's style, we shall present an extract from a very long letter, which does great credit to his good judgment, honesty, and courage. SlR PHILIP SlDNET TO QuEEN ELIZABETH, ANNO 15SD, PERSUADING HER NOT TO MARRY WITH THE DUKE OF ANJOU. Most feared and beloved, most sweet and gracious sovereign : To seek out excuses of 38 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. this my boldness, and to arm the acknowl- edging of a fault with reasons for it, might better show I knew I did amiss, than any way diminish the attempt, especially in your judgment ; who being able to discern lively into the nature of the thing done, it were folly to hope, by laying on better colours, to make it more acceptable. Therefore carrying no other olive branch of intercession than the laying myself at your feet, nor no other insinuation, either for attention or pardon, but the true vowed sacrifice of unfeigned love, I will in simple and direct terms (as hoping they shall only come to your merciful eyes) set down the overflowing of my mind in this most impor- tant matter, importing, as I think, the con- tinuance of your safety : and, as I know, the joys of my life. And because my words (I confess shallow, but coining from the deep well-spring of most loyal affection) have de- livered to your most gracious ear what is the general sum of my travailing thoughts therein ; I will now but only declare what be the reasons that make me think that the marriage with Monsieur will be unprofitable unto you ; then will I answer the objection of those fears which might procure so violent a refuge. The good or evil that will come by it must be considered either according to your estate or person. To your estate what can be added to the being an absolute born and accord- ingly respected princess? But, as they say the Irishmen are wont to call over them that die, they are rich, they are fair, what needed they to die so cruelly ? not unfitly of you, en- dowed with felicity above all others, a man might well ask, What makes you in such a calm to change course ; to so healthful a body to apply so unsavoury a medicine ? What can recompense so hazardous an adventure? In- deed, were it but the altering of a well- maintained and well-approved trade; for, as in bodies natural every sudden change is full of peril, so in this body politic, whereof you are the only head, it is so much the more dangerous, as there are more humours to re- ceive a hurtful impression. But hazards are then most to be regarded when the nature of the patient is fitly composed to occasion them. The patient I account your realm ; the agent Monsieur and his design ; for neither outward accidents do much prevail against a true inward strength ; nor doth inward weakness lightly subvert itself, without being thrust at by some outward force. Your inward force (for as for your treas- ures indeed, the sinews of your crovrn. your majesty doth best and only know) consisteth in your subjects, generally unexpert in war- like defence ; and as they are divided now into mighty factions (and factions bound in the never-dying knot of religion). The one of them, to whom your l.appy government hath granted the free exercise of the ex- ternal truth ; with this, by the continuance of time, by the multitude of them ; by the principal offices and strength they hold ; and lastly, by your dealings both at home and abroad against the adverse party ; your state is so entrapped, as it were impossible for you, without excessive trouble, to pull your- self out of the party so long maintained. For such a course once taken in hand, is not much unlike a ship in a tempest, which how dangerously soever it may be beaten with waves, yet is there no safety or succour with- out it ; these, therefore, .as their souls live by your happy government, so are they your chief if not your sole strength; these, how- soever the necessity of human life makes them lack, yet can they not look for better conditions than presently they enjoy ; these, how their hearts will be galled, if not aliened, when they shall see you take a hus- band, a Frenchman and a Papist, in whom (howsoever fine wits may find further deal- ings or painted excuses) the very common people well know this, that he is the son of a Jezebel of our age; that his brother made oblation of his own sister's marriage, the easier to make massacres of our brethren in belief; that he himself, contrary to his prom- ise, and all gratefulness, having his liberty and principal estate by the Huguenots' means, did sack Zacharists, and utterly spoil them with fire and sword. This 1 say, even at first sight, gives occasion to all, truly re- ligious, to abhor such u master, and con- sequently to diminish much of the hopeful love they have long held to you. The other faction, most rightly indeed to be called. a faction, is the Papists; men whose spirits are full of anguish, some being infested by others, whom they ac- counted damnable; some having their am- bition stopped, because they are not in the way of advancement : some in prison and disgrace ; some whose best friends are ban- ished practisers; many thinking you an usurper; many thinking also you had dis- annulled your right, because of the Pope's excommunication; all burthened with the weight of their conscience ; men of great numbers, of great riches (because the afliiirs of state have not lain on them), of united minds (as all men that deem themselves op- pressed naturally are); with these I would willingly join all discontented persons, such as want and disgrace keep lower than they have set their hearts ; such as have resolved what to look for at your hands ; such aa Caesar said, Quibns opus est bello civili, and are of his mind, malo in acie, quam in fore cadere. FRANCIS BACON. 39 FRANCIS BACON, born in London, 1561, was created Lord High Chancellor of England and Baron Verulam, 1619; Viscount of St. Alban's, 1620, and died in 1626. The work by which Bacon is best known to the general reader is entitled Essayes : lleligious Meditations : Places of Perswasion and Disswasion, Lond., 1597, 16mo ; frequently reprinted, with addi- tions. " The first in time, and, we may justly say, the first in excellence, of English writers on moral prudence, are the Essays of Bacon. . . . The tran- scendent strength of Bacon's mind is visible in the whole tenor of these Essays, unequal as they must be from the very nature of such compositions. They are deeper and more discriminating than any earlier, or almost any later work in the Eng- lish language : full of recondite observations, long matured, and carefully sifted. . . . Few books are more quoted, and, what is not always the case with such books, we may add, that few are more generally read. In this respect they lead the van of our prose literature ; for no gentleman is ashamed of owning that he has not read the Elizabethan writers ; but it would be somewhat derogatory to a man of the slightest claim to polite letters were he unacquainted with the Es- says of Bacon." HALLAM: Introdao. to Lit. of Europe. ESSAY X. OF LOVE. The stage is more beholding to love than the life of men; for as to the stage, love is even matter of comedies, and now and then of tragedies; but in life it doth much mis- chief; sometimes like a siren, sometimes like a fury. You may observe that amongst all the great and worthy persons (whereof the memory remaineth, either ancient or re- cent) there is not one that hath been trans- ported to the mad degree of love, which shows that great spirits and great business do keep out this weak passion. You must except, nevertheless, Marcus Antonius, the half partner of the empire of Home, and Appius Claudius, the decemvir and law- giver; whereof the former was indeed a vo- luptuous man, and inordinate ; but the latter was an austere and wise mar| ; and therefore it seems (though rarely) that love can find entrance, not only into an open heart, but also into a heart well fortified, if watch be not well kept. It is a poor saying of Epi- curus, " Satis magnum alter alter! theatrum sumus ;" as if man, made for the contempla- tion of heaven, and all noble objects, should do nothing but kneel before a little idol, and make himself a subject, though not of the mouth (as beasts are), yet of the eye, which was given him for higher purposes. It is a strange thing to note the excess of this pas- sion, and how it braves the nature and value of things by this, that the speaking in a perpetual hyperbole is comely in nothing but love ; neither is it merely in the phrase ; for whereas it hath been well said, " That the arch flatterer, with whom all the pretty flatterers have intelligence, is a man's self ; ;) certainly the lover is more ; for there was never a proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved ; and therefore it was well said, *' That it is impossible to love and to be wise." Neither doth this weakness appear to others only, and not to the party loved, but to the loved most of all, except the love be recip- rocal ; for it is a true rule, that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciprocal, or with an inward or secret contempt ; by how much more the men ought to beware of this pas- sion, which loseth not only other things, but itself. As for the other losses, the poet's re- lation doth well figure them : " That he that preferred Helena quitted the gifts of Juno and Pallas :" for whosoever esteemeth too much of amorous affection quitteth both riches and wisdom. This passion hath its floods in the very times of weakness, which are great prosperity and great adversity, though this latter hath been less observed; both which times kindle love, and make it more fervent, and therefore show it to be the child of folly. They do best who, if they cannot but admit love, yet make it keep- quarter, and sever it wholly from their seri- ous affairs and actions of life ; for if it check once with business, it troubleth men's for- tunes, and maketh men that they can nc ways be true to their own ends. I knovi not how, but martial men are given to love: I think it is but as they are given to wine ; for perils commonly ask to be paid in pleas- ures. There is in man's nature a secret inclina- tion and motion towards love of others, which, if it be not spent upon some one or a few, doth naturally spread itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars. Nuptial love maketh mankind ; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth and embasseth it. ESSAY XLIV. OF BEAUTY. Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set; and surely virtue is best in a body that is comely, though not of delicate features ; and that hath rather dignity of presence than beauty of aspect: neither is it at most seen that very beautiful persons are otherwise of great virtue ; as if nature were rather busy not to err, than in labour to produce excel- lency ; and therefore they prove accom- plished, but not of great spirit: and study rather behaviour than virtue. But this 40 FRANCIS BACON. holds not always: for Augustus Caesar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Belle of France, Edward the Fourth of England, Aloibiades of Athens, Ismael the sophy of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of their times. In beauty, that of favour is more than that of colour; and that of decent and gracious motion more than that of favour. That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot ex- press ; no, nor the first sight of life. There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man can- not tell whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler ; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions : the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one ex- cellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made them : not but I think a painter may make a better face than ever was; but he must do it by a kind of felicity (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music), and not by rule. A man shall see faces that, if you examine them part by part, you shall find never a good ; and yet altogether do well. If it be true that the principal part of beauty is in decent motion, certainly it is no marvel, though persons in years seem many times more amiable : " pulchrorum au- tummis pulcher;" for no youth can be comely but by pardon, and considering the youth as to make up the comeliness. Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to cor- rupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance ; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtues shine and vices blush. ESSAY LI. OF STUDIES. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring: for ornament is in discourse; and for ability is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth ; to use them too much for ornament is .affecta- tion ; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar: they per- fect nature, and are perfected by experience : for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study ; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by ex- perience. Crafty men contemn studies, sim- ple men admire them, and wise men use them ; for they teach not their own use ; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them won by observation. Read not to con- tradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others ; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books ; else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; con- ference a ready man ; and writing an exact man : and therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory ; if he con- fer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise ; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtile ; natural philosophy, deep ; moral, grave ; logic and rhetoric, able to contend: "Abeunt studiain mores;" nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropri- ate exercises : boAvling is good for the stone and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, gentle walking for the stomach, riding for the head, and the like : so, if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics ; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away, never so little, he must begin again ; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are " Cymini Sectores;" if he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call upon one tiling to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyer's cases : so every de- fect of the mind may have a special receipt. In The Tatler, No. 267, December 23, 1710, Addison remarks : "I was infinitely pleased to find among the works of this extraordinary man a prayer of his own composing, which for the elevation of thought, and greatness of expression, seem rather the de- votion of an angel than of a man. His principal fault, seems to have been the excess of that virtue which covers a multitude of faults. This betrayed him to so great an indulgence towards his ser- vants, who made a corrupt use of it, that it stripped him of all those riches and honours which a long series of merits had heaped upon him. But in this prayer, at the same time that we find him prostrating himself before the great mercy-seat, and humbled under afflictions which at that time lay heavy upon him, we see him supported by the sense of his integrity, his zeal, his devotion, and his love to mankind ; which give him a much higher figure in the minds of thinking men than JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND AND I. OF ENGLAND. 41 that greatness had done from which he was fallen. I shall beg leave to write down the prayer itself, with the title to it, as it was found amongst his lordship's papers, written in his own hand; not being able to furnish my readers with an enter- tainment more suitable to this solemn time." A PRAYER, OR PSALM, MADE BY MY LORD BACO\, CHANCELLOR OF ENGLAND. Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father; from my youth up my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter ! Thou, Lord, soundest and scarchest the depths and secrets of all hearts; thou acknowledges! the up- right of heart; thou judgest the hypocrite; thou ponderest men's thoughts and doings as in a balance ; thou measurest their inten- tions as with a line ; vanity and crooked ways cannot be hid from thee. Remember, Lord ! how thy servant hath walked before thee ; remember what I have first sought, and what hath been principal in my intentions. I have loved thy assem- blies, I have mourned for the divisions of thy church, I have delighted in the bright- ness of thy sanctuary. This vine which thy right hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto thee that it might have the first and the latter rain, and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods. The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes; I liavo hated all cruelty and hardness of heart; I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men. If any have been my enemies, I thought not of them, neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure ; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. My creatures have been my books, but thy Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gar- dens ; but I have found thee in thy temples. Thousands have been my sins and ten thousands my transgressions, but thy sanc- tifications have remained with me, and my heart, through thy grace, hath been an un- quenched coal up'm thine altar. Lord, my strength ! I have since my youth met with thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable chastisements, and by thy most visible prov- idence. As thy favours have increased upon me, so have thy corrections : so as thou hast been always near me, Lord ! and ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me; and when I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before thee. And now, when I thought most of peace and honour, thy hand is heavy upon me. and hath humbled me according to thy former loving kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as a child. Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to thy mercies ; for what are the sands of the seas? Earth, heaven, and all these are nothing to thy mercies. Besides my innu- merable sins, I confess before thee that I am debtor to thee for the gracious talent of thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put in a napkin, nor put it, as I ought, to ex- changers, where it might have made best profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit: so I may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage. Be merciful unto me, Lord, for my Saviour's sake, and receive me unto thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways. JAMES VI. OF SCOTLAND AND I. OF" ENGLAND, born 1566, died 1625. His best known pub- lication is Dgeiuonologie, in Forme of a Dia- logue divided into three Bookes, Edin., 1597, 4to. "One remark I cannot avoid making: the king's speech is always supposed by Parliament to be the speech of the minister: how cruel would it have been on King James's ministers if that interpretation had prevailed in his reign ! . . . Bishop Montague translated all his majesty's works into Latin ; a man of so much patiense was well worthy of favour." HORACE WALPOI.F, : li'n/al and Noble Authors, Park's ed., i. 115-116, 120. ON SORCERY AND WITCHCRAFT. The fearful abounding at this time in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise, (as I protest) to serve for a show of my learning and ingine, but only, moved of conscience, to press thereby, so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of many ; both that such assaults of Sathan are most cer- tainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merits most severely to be punished : against the damnable opinions of two princi- pally in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed ir public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft; and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits. The other called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby, procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrays himself to have been one of that profession. And to make this treatise the more pleasant and facile, I have put it in form of a dialogue, 42 JOSEPH HALL. which I have divided into three books : the first speaking of magic in general, and nec- romancy in special ; the second, of sorcery and witchcraft ; and the third contains a discourse of all these kinds of spirits and spectres that appears and troubles persons : together with a conclusion of the whole work. My intention in this labour is only to prove two things, as I have already said : the one, that such devilish arts have been and are ; the other, what exact trial and severe punishment they merit : and therefore reason I, what kind of things are possible to be performed in these arts, and by what natural causes they may be. Not that I touch every particular thing of the devil's power, for that were infinite : but only to speak scholasticly (since this cannot be spoken in our language), I reason upon genus, leaving species and differentia to be comprehended therein. As, for example, speaking of the power of magicians in the first book and sixth chapter, I say that they can suddenly cause be brought unto them all kinds of dainty dishes by their familiar spirit; since as a thief he delights to steal, and as a spirit he can eubtilly and suddenly enough transport the same. Now under this genus may be comprehended all particu- lars depending thereupon ; such as the bringing wine out of a wall (as we have heard oft to have been practised) and such others; which particulars are sufficiently proved by the reasons of the general. Dcemonologie. How WITCIIES TRAVEL. Philomathes. But by what way say they, or think ye it possi ble, they can come to these unlawful conventions? Epistemon. There is the thing which I esteem their senses to be deluded in, and, though they lie not in confessing of it, be- cause they think it to be true, yet not to be so in substance or effect, for they say. that by divers means they may convene either to the adoring of their master or to the putting in practice any service of his committed unto their charge: one way is natural, which is natural riding, going, or sailing, at what hour their master comes and advertises them. And this way may be easily believed. An- other way is somewhat more strange, and yet it is possible to be true: which is by being carried by the force of the spirit which is their conductor, either above the earth or above the sea, swiftly, to the place where they are to meet ; which I am persuaded to be likewise possible, in respect that as Ha- bakkuk was carried by the angel in that form to the den where Daniel lay, so think I the devil will be ready to imitate God, as well in that as in other things ; which is much more possible to him to do, being a spirit, than to a mighty wind, being but a natural meteor, to transport from one place to an- other a solid body, as is commonly and daily seen in practice. But in this violent form they cannot be carried but a short bounds, agreeing with the space that they may re- tain their breath ; for if it were longer, their breath could not remain unextinguished, their body being carried in such a violent and forcible manner, as, by example, if one fall off a small height, his life is but in peril according to the hard or soft lighting ; but if one fall from a high and stay [steep] rock, his breath will be forcibly banished from the body before he can win [get] to the earth, as is oft seen by experience. And in this transporting they say themselves that they are invisible to any other, except amongst themselves. For if the devil may form what kind of impressions he pleases in the air. as I have said before, speaking of magic, why may he not far easier thicken and obscure so the air that is next about them, by con- tracting it strait together, that the beams of any other man's eyes cannot pierce through the same to see them ? But the third way of their coining to their conventions is that wherein I think them deluded ; for some of them saith that, being transformed in the likeness of a little beast or fowl, they will come and pierce through whatsoever house or church, though all ordinary passages be closed, by whatsoever open the air may enter in at. And some saith that their bodies lying still, as in an ecstacy, their spirits will be ravished out of their bodies and carried to such places ; and for verifying thereof will give evident tokens, as well by witnesses that have seility were such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good na- ture, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded that breed- ing." EAUL OF CLARENDON (his intimate friend for many years) : Life. When Selden was dying, he said to Arch- bishop Usher : " I have surveyed most of the learning that is among the sons of men, and my study is filled with books and manuscripts [he had 8000 volumes in his library] on various sub- jects; but at present I cannot recollect any passage out of all my books and papers whereon I can rest my soul, save this from the sacred Scriptures : ' The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to nil men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world ; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zeal- ous of good works.' (Tit. ii. 14.)" Dr. Johnson and Ilallam considered Sel- den's Table-Talk to be far superior to the Ana of the Continent; and another eminent authority thus speaks of Selden's volume: 50 THOMAS HOBBES. " There is more weighty bullion sense in this book than I ever found in the same number of pages of any uninspired writer. ... to have been with Selden over his glass of wine, making every accident an outlet and a vehicle of wisdom." COLERIDGE: Lit. Remains, ii. 361, 362. EVIL SPEAKING. 1. lie that speaks ill of another, com- monly, before he is aware, makes himself such a one as he speaks against ; for if he had civility or breeding, he would forbear such kind of language. 2. A gallant man is above ill words. An example we have in the old Lord of Salis- bury, who was a great wise man. Stone had called some lord about court fool ; the lord complains, and has Stone whipped ; Stone cries, " I might have called iny Lord of Salis- bury fool often enough before he would have had me whipped.'' 3. Speak not ill of a great enemy, but rather give him good words, that he may use you the better, if you chance to fall into his hands. The Spaniard did this when he was dying; his confessor told him, to work him to repentance, how the devil tormented the wicked that went to hell ; the Spaniard replying, called the devil my lord: "I hope any lord the devil is not so cruel." His con- fessor reproved him. "Excuse me," said the don, " for calling him so ; I know not into what hands I may fall ; and if I happen into his, I hope he will use me the better for giving him good words." Table- Talk. HUMILITY. 1. Humility is a virtue all preach, none practice, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity. 2. There is humilitas quccdam in vitio. If a man does not take notice of that excel- lency and perfection that is in himself, how can he be thankful to God, who is the author of all excellency and perfection? Nay, if a man hath too mean an opinion of himself, it will render him unserviceable both to God and man. 3. Pride may be allowed to this or that de- gree, else a man cannot keep up his dignity. In gluttons there must be eating, in drunken- ness there must be drinking : it is not the eating, nor it is riot the drinking, that is to be blamed, but the excess. So in pride. Table- Talk. DEVILS IN THE HEAD. A person of quality came to my chamber in the Temple, and told me he had two devils in his head (I wondered what he meant), and just at that time one of them bid him kill me. With that I began to be afraid, and thought he was mad. He said he knew I could cure him, and therefore en- treated me to give him something, for he was resolved he would go to nobody else. I per- ceiving what an opinion he had of me, and that it was only melancholy that troubled him, took him in hand, warranted him, if he would follow my directions, to cure him in a short time. I desired him to let me be alone about an hour, and then to come again ; which he was very willing to. In the mean time I got a card, and wrapped it up handsome in a piece of taffeta, and put strings to the taffeta; and when he came, gave it to him to hang about his neck ; withal charged him, that he should not dis- order himself, neither with eating nor drink- ing, but eat very little of supper, and say his prayers duly when he went to bed ; and I made no question but he would be well in three or four days. Within that time I went to dinner to his house, and asked him how he did. He said he was much better, but not perfectly well ; for, in truth, he had not dealt clearly with me ; he had four devils in his head, and he perceived two of them were gone, with that which I had given him, but the other two troubled him still. " Well," said I, " I am glad two of them are gone : I make no doubt to get away the other two likewise." So I gave him another thing to hang about his neck. Three days after, he came to me in my chamber, and professed he was now as well as ever he was in his life, and did extremely thank me for the great care I had taken of him. I, fearing lest he might relapse into the like distemper, told him that there was none but myself and one physician more in the whole town that could cure the devils in the head, and that was Dr. Harvey (whom I had prepared), and wished him, if ever he found himself ill in my absence, to go to him, for he could cure his disease as well as myself. The gentleman lived many years, and was never troubled after. Table- Talk. THOMAS HOBBES, born 1588, and died 1679, was the author of Human Nature; or, the Fundamental Prin- ciples of Policy concerning the Faculties and Passions of the Human Soul, Lond., 1650, 12mo, Leviathan; or, the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, ecclesiasti- call and civill, 1651, fol., and other works. " A permanent foundation of his fame remains in his admirable style, which seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, pre- cise, pithy, his language never has more than one SIR THOMAS ELYOT. 51 meaning, which it never requires a second thought to tnke. By the help of his exact method it takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will not allow attention to slacken." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH: Second Prelim. JJiauert. to Encyc, Brit. LAUGHTER. There is a passion that hath no name ; but the sign of it is that distortion of the coun- tenance which we call laughter, which is always joy ; but what joy, what we think, and wherein we triumph when we laugh, is not declared by any. That it consisteth in wit, or, as they call it, in the jest, experi- ence confuteth ; for men laugh at mischances and indecencies, wherein there lieth no wit nor jest at all. And forasmuch as the same thing is no more ridiculous when it groweth stale or usual, Avhatsoever it be that moveth laughter, it must be new and unexpected. Men laugh often (especially such as are greedy of applause from everything they do well) at their own actions performed never so little beyond their own expectations; as also at their own jests: and in this case it is manifest that the passion of laughter pro- ceedeth from a sudden conception of some ability in himself that laugheth. Also, men laugh at the infirmities of others, by com- parison wherewith their own abilities are set off and illustrated. Also, men laugh at jests, the wit whereof always consisteth in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds some absurdity of another; and in this case also the passion of laughter pro- ceeded from the sudden imagination of our own odds and eminency; for what is else the recommending of ourselves to our own good opinion, by comparison with another man's infirmity or absurdity? For when a jest is broken upon ourselves, or friends, of whose dishonour we participate, we never laugh thereat. I may therefore conclude that the passion of laughter is nothing else but sud- den glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by compari- son with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly; for men laugh at the follies of themselves past, when they come sud- denly to remembrance, except they bring with them any present dishonour. It is no wonder, therefore, that man take heinously to be laughed at or derided ; that is, tri- umphed over. Laughing without offence, must be at absurdities and infirmities ab- stracted from persons, and when all the com- pany may laugh together : for laughing to one's self putteth all the rest into jealousy, and examination of themselves. Besides, it is vain glory, and an argument of little worth, to think the infirmity of another sufficient matter for his triumph. Human Nature. LOVE OF KNOWLEDGE. Forasmuch as all knowledge beginneth from experience, therefore also new experi- ence is the beginning of new knowledge, and the increase of experience the beginning of the increase of knowledge. Whatsoever, therefore, happeneth new to a man, giveth him matter of hope of knowing somewhat that he knew not before. And this hope and expectation of future knowledge from anything that happeneth new and strange, is tlrat passion which we commonly call ail- miration ; and the same considered as appe- tite, is called curiosity, which is appetite of knowledge. As in the discerning of facul- ties, man leaveth all community with beasts at the faculty of imposing names, so also doth he surmount their nature at this pas- sion of curiosity. For when a beast seeth anything new and strange to him, he con- sidereth it so far only as to discern whether it be likely to serve his turn or hurt him, and accordingly approacheth nearer to it, or fleeth from it : whereas man, who in most events remembereth in what manner they were caused and begun, looketh for the cause and beginning of everything that ariseth new unto him. And from this pas- sion of admiration and curiosity have arisen not only the invention of names, but also supposition of such causes of all things as they thought might produce them. And from this beginning is derived all philoso- phy : as astronomy from the admiration of the course of heaven ; natural philosophy from the strange effects of the elements and other bodies. And from the degrees of curiosity proceed also the degrees of knowledge amongst men ; for, to a man in the chase of riches or author- ity (which in respect of knowledge are but sensuality) it is a diversity of little pleasure whether it be the motion of the sun or the earth that maketh the day ; or to enter into other contemplations of any strange acci- dent, otherwise than whether it conduce or not to the end he pursueth. Because curi- osity is delight, therefore also novelty is so; but especially that novelty from which a man conceiveth an opinion, true or false, of bettering his own estate; for in such case they stand affected with the hope that all gamesters have while the cards are shuffling. Human Nature. SIR THOMAS ELYOT, a learned physician, employed by Henry VIII. on several embassies, published, among other works, The Castle of Helthe, Lond., 1533, IGmo. 52 WILLIAM HARRISON. DIFFERENT KINDS OF EXERCISE. The qualify of exercise is the diversity thereof, for as much as therein be many differences in moving, and also some exer- cise inoveth more one part of the body, some another. In difference of moving, some is slow or soft, some is swift or fast, some is strong or violent, some be mixed with strength and swiftness. Strong or violent exercises be these : delving (specially in tough clay and heavy), bearing or sustain- ing of heavy burdens, climbing or walking against a steep, upright hill, holding a rope and climbing up thereby, hanging by the hands on anything above a man's reach, that his feet touch not the ground, standing and holding up or spreading the arms, with the hands fast closed and abiding so a long time. Also, to hold the {inns steadfast, causing another man to essay to pull them out, and notwithstanding he keepeth his arm steadfast, enforcing thereunto the sinews and muscles. Wrestling also, with the arms and legs, if the persons be equal in strength, it doth ex- ercise the one and the other; if the one be stronger, then is [it] to the weaker a more violent exercise. All these kinds of exer- cise and other like them do augment strength, and therefore they serve only for young men which be inclined or be apt to the wars. Swift exercise without violence is running, playing with weapons, tennis, or throwing of the ball, trotting a space of ground forward and backward, going on the toes and holding up the hands; also, stirring up and down his arms without plummets. Vehement exercise is compound of violent exercise and swift, when they are joined together at one time, as dancing or galiards, throwing of the ball and running after it ; foot-ball play may be in the num- ber thereof, throwing of the long dart and continuing it many times, running in har- ness, and other like. The moderate exer- cise is long walking or going a journey. The parts of the body have sundry exercises appropried unto them : as running and go- ing is more proper for the legs ; moving of the arms up and down, or stretching them out and playing with weapons serveth most for the arms and shoulders; stooping and rising oftentimes, or lifting great weights, taking up plummets or other like poises on the ends of staves, and in likewise lifting up in every hand a spear or morrispike by the ends, specially crossing the hands, and to lay them down ngain in their places ; these do exercise the back and loins. Of the bulk [chest] and lungs the proper exercise is . moving of the breath in singing or crying. The entrails, which be underneath the mid- rift', be exercised by blowing either by con- straint or playing on shalms or sackbuts, or other like instruments, which do require much wind. The muscles are best exercised with holding of the breath in a long time, so that he which doth exercise hath well di- gested his meat, and is not troubled with much wind in his body. Finally, loud read- ing, counterfeit battle, tennis or throwing the ball, running, walking, adde[d] to shoot- ing, which, in mine opinion, exceeds all the other, do exercise the body commodiously. Always remember that the end of violent exercise is difficulty in fetching of .the breath ; of moderate exercise alteration of breath only, or the beginning of sweat. Moreover, in winter, running and wrestling is convenient ; in summer, wrestling a little, but not running ; in very cold weather, much walking: in hot weather rest is more expe- dient. They which seern to have moist bodies, and live in idleness, they have need of violent exercise. They which are lean and choleric must walk softly, and exercise themselves very temperately. The plum- mets, called of Galen alteres, which are now much used with great men, being of equal weight and according to the strength of him. that exerciseth. are very good to be used. The Castle of Helthe. WILLIAM HARRISON, rector of Radwinter, died 1592(7), wrote a Historical Description of the Island of Brit- ain, prefixed to The Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande, and Irelande, by Raphael! IIol- inshed, Lond., 1577, "1 vols. fol. (" Shak- speare edition.") TOE LANGUAGES OF BRITAIN. The British tongue called Cymric doth yet remain in that part of the island which is now called Wales, whither the Britons were driven after the Saxons had made a full conquest of the other, which we now call England, although the pristine integrity thereof be not a little diminished by mixture of the Latin and Saxon speeches withal. Ilowbeit, many poesies and writings (in making whereof that nation hath evermore delighted) are yet extant in my time, where- by some difference between the ancient and present language may easily be discerned, notwithstanding that among all these there is nothing to be found which can set down any sound and full testimony of their own original, in remembrance whereof their bards and cunning men have been most slack and negligent. . . . Next unto the British speech, the Latin tongue was brought in by the Ro- WILLIAM HARRISON. 53 mans, and in manner generally planted through the whole region, as the French was after by the Normans. Of this tongue I will not say much, because there are few which be not skilful in the same. Ilowbeit, as the speech itself -is easy and delectable, so hath it perverted the names of the ancient rivers, regions, and cities of Britain, in such wise, that in these our days their old British denominations are quite grown out of mem- ory, and yet those of the new Latin left at most uncertain. This remaineth, also, unto my time, borrowed from the Romans, that all our deeds, evidences, charters, and writ- ings of record are set down in the Latin tongue, though now very barbarous, and thereunto the copies anil court-rolls, and processes of courts and leets registered in the same. The third language apparently known is the Scythian, or High Dutch, induced at the first by the Saxons (which the Britons call Saysonace, as they do the speakers Sayson), a hard and rough kind of speech, God wot, when our nation was brought first into acquaintance withal, but now changed with us into a far more fine and easy kind of utter- ance, and so polished and helped with new and milder words, that it is to be avouched how there is no one speech under the sun spoken in our time that hath or can have more variety of words, copiousness of phrases, or figures and flowers of eloquence, than hath our English tongue, although some have affirmed us rather to bark as dogs than talk like men, because the most of our words (as they do indeed) incline unto one syllable. This, also, is to be noted as a tes- timony remaining still of our language, de- rived from the Saxons, that the general name, for the most part, of every skilful artificer in his trade endeth in here with us, albeit the h be left out and er only inserted, as scrivenhere, writehere, shiphere, &c., for scrivener, writer, and shipper, &c. ; besides many other relics of that speech, never to be abolished. After the Saxon tongue came the Norman or French language over into our country, and therein were our laws written for a long time. Our children, also, were, by an espe- cial decree, taught first to speak the same, and thereunto enforced to learn their con- structions in the French, whensoever they were set to the grammar-school. In like sort, few bishops, abbots, or other clergy- men were admitted unto any ecclesiastical function here among us, but such as came out of religious houses from beyond the seas, to the end they should not use the English tongue in their sermons to the people. In the court, also, it grew into such contempt, that most men thought it no small dishonour to speak any English there ; which bravery took his hold at the last likewise in the country with every ploughman that even the very carters began to wax weary of their mother-tongue, and laboured to speak French, which as then was counted no small token of gentility. And no marvel; for every French rascal, when he came once hither, was taken for a gentleman, only because he was proud, and could use his own language. And all this (I say) to exile the English and British speeches quite out of the country. But in vain : for in the time of King Edward I., to wit, toward the latter end of his reign, the French itself ceased to be spoken generally, but most of all and by law in the midst of Edward III., and then began the English to recover and grow in more estimation than before ; notwithstanding that, among our artificers, the most part of their implements, tools, and words of art retain still their French denominations even to these our days, as the language itself is used likewise in sundry courts, books of record, and mat- ters of law; whereof here is no place to make any particular rehearsal. Afterward, also, by diligent travail of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower, in the time of Richard II., and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate, monk of Bury, our said tongue was brought to an excellent pass, notwithstand- ing that it never came unto the type of per- fection until the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewel, bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundry learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished the ornature of the same, to their great praise and im- mortal commendation ; although not a few other do greatly seek to stain the same by fond affectation of foreign and strange words, presuming that to be the best English which is most corrupted with external terms of eloquence and sound of many syllables. But as this excellency of the English tongue is found in one, and the south part of this island, so in Wales the greatest number (as I said) retain still their own ancient lan- guage, that of the north part of the said country being less corrupted than the other, and therefore reputed for the better in their own estimation and judgment. This, also, is proper to us Englishmen, that since ours is a middle or intermediate language, and neither too rough nor too smooth in utter- ance, we may with much facility learn any other language, beside Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and speak it naturally, as if we were home-born in those countries; and yet on the other side it falleth out, I wot not by what other means, that few foreign nations can rightly pronounce ours, without some and that great note of imperfection, espe- cially the Frenchmen, who also seldom 54 IZAAK WALTON. write anything that savoureth of English truly. But this of all the rest doth breed most admiration with me, that if any stran- ger do hit upon some likely pronunciation of our tongue, yet in age he swerveth so much from the same, that he is worse therein than ever he was, and thereto, peradventure, halteth not a little also in his own, as I have seen by experience in Reginald Wolfe, and others, whereof I have justly marvelled. The Cornish and Devonshire men, whose country the Britons call Cerniw, have a speech in like sort of their own, and such as hath indeed more affinity with the Amori- can tongue than I can well discuss of. Yet in mine opinion they are both but a cor- rupted kind of British, albeit so far degen- erating in these days from the old, that if either of them do meet with a Welshman, they are not able at the first to understand one another, except here and there in some odd words, without the help of interpreters. And no marvel, in mine opinion, that the British of Cornwall is thus corrupted, since the Welsh tongue that is spoken in the north and south part of Wales doth differ so much in itself as the English used in Scot- land doth from that which is spoken among us here in this side of the island, as I have said already. The Scottish-English hath been much broader and less pleasant in utterance than ours, because that nation hath not, till of late, endeavoured to bring the same to any perfect order, and yet it was such in manner as Englishmen themselves did speak for the most part beyond the Trent, whither any great amendment of our language had not, as then, extended itself. Ilowbeit. in our time the Scottish language endeavoureth to come near, if not altogether to match, our tongue in fineness of phrase and copiousness of words, and this may in part appear by a history of the Apocrypha translated into Scottish verse by Hudson, dedicated to the king of that country, and containing six books, except my memory do fail me. Historical Description of the Island of ttritain. IZAAK WALTON, "The Father of Angling," born at Stafford, 1593, died at Winchester, 1683. His Complete Angler ; or, The Contem- plative Man's Recreation, Lond., 1653, 16ino, is an English classic. "Whether we consider the elegant simplicity of the style, the ease and unaffected humour of the dialogue, the lovely scenes which it delineates, the enchanting pastoral poetry which it contains, or the fine morality it so sweetly inculcates, it has hardly its fellow among any of the modern lan- guages." SIR JOHN HAWKINS. "Among all your quaint-readings did you ever light upon ' Walton's Complete Angler'? I asked you the question once before ; it breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of heart : there are many choice old verses interspersed in, it: it would Christianize every discordant angry passion. Pray make yourself acquainted with it." CHARLES LAMB TO COLERIDGE, Oct. 28, 1796. CONTENTMENT. Well, scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High Cross, I will as we walk towards it in the cool shade of this sweet honeysuckle hedge, mention to you some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we met together. And these thoughts shall be told you, that you -also may join with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift for our happiness. And that our present happiness may appear to be the greater, and we the more thankful for it, I will beg you to con- sider with me how many do, even at this very time, lie under the torment of the stone, the gout, and toothache; and this we are free from. And every misery that I miss is a new mercy ; and therefore let us be thankful. There have been, since we met, others that have met disasters of broken limbs ; some have been blasted, others thun- der-strucken ; and we have been freed from these and all those many other miseries that threaten human nature: let us therefore rejoice and be thankful. Nay, which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the in- supportable burthen of an accusing torment- ing conscience a misery that none can hear; and therefore let us praise Him for his preventing grace, and say, Every misery that I miss is a new mercy. Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty times our estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be healthful and cheerful like us, who, with the expense of a little money, have eat, and drank, and laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely ; and rose next day, and cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled again, which are blessings rich men cannot purchase with all their money. Let me tell you, scholar, I have a rich neighbour that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh ; the whole business of his life is to get money, and more money, that he may still get more and more money: he is still drudging on, and says that Solomon says, " The hand of the diligent maketh rich;" and it is true indeed : but he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy ; for it was wisely said by a man of great observation, " That there be as many mis- JAMES HO WELL. 55 cries beyond riches as on this side them." And yet God deliver us from pinching pov- erty, and grant that, having a competency, we may be content and thankful ! Let us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riuhes, when, as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they clog him with weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep quietly. We see but the outside of the rich man's happiness , few consider him to be like the silkworm, that, \vhen she seems to play, is at the very same time spinning her own bowels, and consuming herself: and this many rich men do, loading themselves with corroding cares to keep what they have, probably, unconscionably got. Let us, therefore, be thankful for health and competence, and, above all, for a quiet conscience. Let me tell you, scholar, that Diogenes Avalked on a day, with his friend, to see a country fair, where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks ; and having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a complete country fair, he said to his friend, " Lord, how many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need !" And truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex and toil themselves to get what they have no need of. Can any man charge God that he hath not given him enough to make his life happy? No, doubtless ; for nature is content with a little. And yet you shall hardly meet with a man that complains not of some want, though he indeed wants nothing but his will ; it may be, nothing but his will of his poor neighbour, for not worshipping or not flattering him: and thus, when we might be happy and quiet, we create trouble to ourselves. I have heard of a man that was anirry with him- self because he was no taller ; and of a woman that broke her looking-glass because it did not show her face to be as young and handsome as her next neighbour's was. And I knew another to whom God had given health and plenty, but a wife that nature had made peevish, and her husband's riches had made purse-proud ; and must, because she was rich, and for no other vir- tue, sit in the highest pew in the church ; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention for it, and at last into a lawsuit with a dogged neighbour, who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other ; and this lawsuit begot higher oppositions and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits ; for you must remember that both were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well, this wilful, purse-proud law- suit lasted during the life of the first hus- band, after which his wife vexed and chid, and chid and vexed, till she also chid and vexed herself into her grave ; and so the wealth of these poor rich people was cursed into a punishment, because they wanted meek and thankful hearts, for those only can make us happy. I knew a man that had health and riches, and several houses, all beautiful and ready-furnished, and would often trouble himself and family to be re- moving from one house to another ; and being .asked by a friend why he removed so often from one house to another, replied, " It was to find content in some one of them." But his friend, knowing his temper, told him, "If he would find content in any of his houses, he must leave himself behind him ; for content will never dwell but in a meek and quiet spirit." And this may ap- pear, if we read and consider what our Saviour says in St. Matthew's gospel, for he there says, " Blessed be the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed be the meek, for they shall possess the earth." Not that the meek shall not also obtain mercy, and see God. and be comforted, and at last come to the kingdom of heaven ; but, in the mean time, he, and he only, possesses the earth, as he goes toward that kingdom of heaven, by being humble and cheerful, and content with what his good God has allotted him. lie has no turbulent, repin- ing, vexatious thoughts that he deserves better ; nor is vexed when he sees others possessed of more honour or more riches than his wise God has allotted for his share ; but he possesses what he has with a meek and contented quietness; such a quietness as makes his very dreams pleasing, both to God and himself. The Complete Angler. JAMES HOWELL, born 1594, from 1619 travelled in Holland, Flanders, Spain, France, and Italy, as stew- ard to a glassware manufactory, and from the Restoration until his death, in 1660, was Historiographer-Royal of England. Of his nearly fifty works and translations, the best known is his Epistolae IIo-Elianae ; or, Fa- miliar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, Lond., 1645, 4to. "I believe the second published correspondence of this kind, and, in our own language at least, of any importance after [Joseph] Hall, will be found 5G PETER IIEYLIN. to be Epistolae IIo-EIiante, or the letters of James JIowcll, a great traveller, an intimate friend of Johnson, and the first who bore the office of the royal-historiographer, which discover a variety of literature, and abound with much entertaining and useful information." WAKTO.N: Uit. of Eng. Poet., ed. 1840, iii. 440, 441. ROME ix 1621. The following is an extract from a letter written by Howell to Sir William St. John, Knight, dated Rome, September 13, 1621 : SIR, Having seen Antenor's tomb in Padua, and the amphitheatre of Flaminius in A r erona. with other brave towns in Lom- bardy, I am now come to Rome, and Rome, they say, is every man's country : she is called Communis Patris, for every one that is within the compass of the Latin church finds himself here, as it were, at home and in his mother's house, in regard of interest in religion, which is the cause that for one native there be five strangers that sojourn in this city ; and without any distinction or mark of strangeness, they come to prefer- ments and offices, both in church and state, according to merit, which is more valued and Bought after here than anywhere. But whereas I expected to have found Rome elevated upon seven hills. I met her rather spreading upon a flat, having hum- bled herself since she was made a Christian, smd descended from those hills to Campus Martins : with Trasieren, and the suburbs of Saint Peter, she hath yet in compass about fourteen miles, which is far short of that vast circuit she had in Claudius his time: for Vopiscus writes she was then of fifty miles in circumference, and she had five hundred thousand free citizens in a famous cense that was made, which, allowing but six to every family, in women, children, and servants, came to three millions of souls; but she is now a wilderness in comparison of that number. The pope is grown to be a great temporal prince of late years, for the state of the church extends above three hundred miles in length and two hundred miles in breadth ; it contains Ferrara, Bo- logna, Romagnia, the Marquisate of Ancona, Umbria, Sabina, Perugia, with a part of Tuscany, the patrimony, Rome herself, and Latium. In these there are above fifty bishopricks ; the pope hath also the duchy of Spoleto, and the exarchate of Ravenna ; he hath the town of Benevento in the king- dom of Naples, and the country of Venissa, called Avignon, in France. He hath title also good enough to Naples itself; but rather than offend his champion, the king of Spain, he is contented with a white mule, and purse of pistoles about the neck, which he receives every year for a heriot, or homage, or what you will call it ; he pretends also to be lord paramount of Sicily, Urbin, Parma, and Masseran ; of Norway. Ireland, and England, since King John did prostrate our crown at Pandelfo his legate's feet. . . . The air of Rome is not so wholesome as of old ; and amongst other reasons, one is be- cause of the burning of stubble to fatten their fields. For her antiquities, it would take up a whole volume to write them ; those which I hold the chiefest are Ves- pasian's amphitheatre, where fourscore thou- sand people might sit; the stoves of An- thony ; divers rare statues at Belvidere and St. Peter's, specially that of Laocoon ; the obelisk ; for the genius of the Roman hath always been much taken with imagery, limning, and sculptures, insomuch that, as in former times, so now I believe, the statues and pictures in Rome exceed the number of living people. . . . Since the dismembering of the empire, Rome hath run through many vicissitudes and turns of fortune ; and had it not been for the residence of the pope, I believe she had become a heap of stones, a mount of rubbish, by this time: and how- ever that she bears up indifferent well, yet one may say, Qui miseranda videt veteris vestigia RomsB, Ille potest merito dicere, Roma fuit. "They who the ruins of first Rome behold, May say, Rome is not now, but was of old." Present Rome may be said to be but a monument of Rome past, when she was in that flourish that St. Austin desired to see her in. She who tamed the world tamed herself at last, and falling under her own weight, fell to be a prey to time ; yet there is a providence seems to have a care of her still ; for though her air be not so good, nor her circumjacent soil so kindly as it was, yet she hath wherewith to keep life and soul together still, by her ecclesiastical courts, which is the sole cause of her peopling now ; so that it may be said, when the pope came to be her head, she was reduced to her first principles ; for as a shepherd was founder, so a shepherd is still governor and pre- server. Epistolce Ho-Eliance. PETER HEYLIN, D.D., born 1600, died 1662, was the author of at least thirty-seven works, theological, polit- ical, educational, historical, &c. From the Voyage of France : or, a compleat Journey through France (in 1625), Lond., 1673, 8vo, also 1679, we give some quotations. "This volume, however, we assure our readers, in of a most amusing description, and indicative PETER HEYLIN. 57 of great reading anJ acquirements for the age nt which it was written. It is full of the efferves- cence of young life and animal spirits. The air of Krance seems to have actually converted the author into a Frenchman, whose vivacity, point, and badinage he seems to have imbibed. The very moment he touched the Gallic soil he cast away his canonicals, and became the most fa- cetious and joyous of good fellows, the most lively of tourists." (London) lietrospec. lieo., iii. 22-31, 1821. CHARACTER OP THE FRENCH. The present French is nothing but an old Gaul moulded into a new name; as rash he is, as headstrong, and as hair-brained. A nation whom you shall win with a feather, and lose with a straw; upon the first sight of him you shall have him as familiar as your sleep, or the necessity of breathing. In one hour's conference you may endear him to you, in the second unbutton him, the third pumps him dry of all his secrets, and lie gives them you as faithfully as if you were his ghostly father, and bound to conceal them 'sub sigillo confessiones' ; when you have learned this you may lie him aside, for he is no longer serviceable. If you have any hu- mour in holding him in a further acquaint- ance (a favour which he confesseth, and I be- lieve him, he is unworthy of), himself will make the first separation : he hath said over his lesson now unto you, and now must find out somebody else to whom to repeat. Fare him well : he is a garment whom I would be loath to wear above two days together, for in that time he will be threadbare. " Familiare est hominis omnia sibi remit- tere," saith Velleius of all : it holdeth most properly in this people. He is very kind- hearted to himself, and thinketh himself as free from wants as he is full ; so much he hath in him the nature of a Chinese, that he thinketh all men blind but himself. In this private self-conceitedness he hateth the Spaniard, loveth not the English, and con- temneth the German ; himself is the only courtier and complete gentleman, but it is his own glass which he seeth in. But of this conceit of his own excellency and partly out of a shallowness of brain, he is very liable to exceptions ; the least distaste that can be draweth his sword, and a minute's pause sheatheth it to your hand ; afterwards, if you boat him into better manners, he shall take it kindly, and cry serviteur. In this one thing they are wonderfully like the devil : meekness or submission makes them insolent, a little resistance putteth them to their heels, or makes them your spaniels. In a word (for I have held him too long), he is a walk- ing vanity in a new fashion. I will give you now a taste of his table, which you shall find in a measure furnished (I speak not of the present), but not with so full a manner as with us. Their beef they cut out into such chops that that which goeth there for a laudable dish, would be thought here a university commons, new served from the hatch. A loin of mutton serves amongst them for three roastings, besides the hazard of making pottage with the rump. Fowl, also, they have in good plenty, especially such as the king found in Scotland; to say truth, that which they have is sufficient for nature and a friend, were it not for the mistress or the kitchen witch. I have heard much fame of the French cooks, but their skill lieth not in the neat handling of beef and mutton. They have (as generally have all this nation) good fancies, and are speci.il fellows for the mak- ing of puff-pastes, and the ordering of ban- quets. Their trade is not to feed the belly, but the palate. It is now time you were set down, where the first thing you must do is to say your grace ; private graces are as ordinary there as private masses, and from thence I think they learned them. That done, fall to where you like best; they ob- serve no method in their eating, and if you look for a carver, you may rise fasting. When you are risen, if you can digest the sluttishness of the cookery (which is most abominable at first sight), I dare trust you in a garrison. Follow him to church, and there he will show himself most irreligious and irreverent. I speak not of all, but the general. At a mass, in Cordeliers' church, in Paris, I saw two French papists, even when the most sacred mystery of their faith was celebrating, break out into such a blas- phemous and atheistical laughter that even an Ethnic would have hated it; it was well they were Catholics, otherwise some French hothead or other would have sent them laughing to Pluto. The French language is, indeed, very sweet and delectable ; it is cleared of all harshness by the cutting and leaving out the conso- nants, which inaketh it fall off the tongue very volubly ; yet, in my opinion, it is rather elegant than copious ; and, therefore, is much troubled for want of words to find out para- phrases. It expresseth very much of itself in the action ; the head, body, and shoulders concur all in the pronouncing of it; and he that hopeth to speak it with a good grace must have something in him of the mimic. It is enriched with a full number of signifi- cant proverbs, which is a great help to the French humour in scoffing; and very full of courtship, which inaketh all the people com- plimental. The poorest cobbler in the village hath his court cringes, and his eau benite de cour; his court holy-water as perfectly as the prince of Conde. ... At my being there, the sport was dancing, an exercise much 58 SIR THOMAS BROWNE. used by the French, who do naturally affect it. And it seems this natural inclination is so strong and deep-rooted, that neither age nor the absence of a smiling fortune can prevail against it. For on this dancing green there assembleth not only youth and gentry, but also age and beggary ; old wives which could not set foot to ground without a crutch in the streets had here taught their feet to amble ; you would have thought by the cleanly conveyance and carriage of their bodies that they had been troubled with the sciatica, and yet so eager in the sport as if their dancing days should never be done. Some there was so ragged that a swift gal- liard would almost have shaken them into nakedness, and they, also, most violent to have their carcasses directed in a measure. To have attempted the staying of them at home, or the persuading of them to work when they heard the fiddle, had been a task too unwieldy for Hercules. In this mixture of age and condition did we observe them at their pastimes ; the rags being so interwoven witlr the silks, and wrinkled brows being so interchangeably mingled with fresh beauties, that you would have thought it to have been a mummery of fortunes ; as for those of both sexes which were altogether past action, they had caused themselves to be carried thither in their chairs, and trod the meas- ures with their eyes. The Voyage of France. SIR THOMAS BROWNE, M.D., born 1605, died 1682, was the author of four works of great merit : Keligio Medici, Lond., 1642, 12mo; Pseudodoxia Epidemica: En- quiries into very many received Tenets, and commonly presumed Truths, or Enquiries into vulgar and common Errors, Lond., 1646, sm. fol. ; Hydriotaphia: Urn Buriall, etc., Lond., 1658, 8vo ; and Christian Morals, Camb., 1716, 8vo. " It is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity; of which he will not easily be deprived while learning shall have any reverence among men; for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill ; and scarce any kind of knowl- edge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with suc- cess." DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Sir T. Browne. THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD. And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can per- ceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mer- cies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself: and whether out of the prejudice of my affection, or an invert- ing and partial conceit of his mercies. I know not ; but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me who inquire farther into them than their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favours of his affection. It is a singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion, the works of God, and so well to distinguish his justice from his mercy as not to miscall those noble attri- butes : yet it is likewise an honest piece of logic, so to dispute and argue the proceed- ings of God, as to distinguish even his judg- ments into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because bet- ter to the worst than the best deserve ; and to say he punisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the judge : thus our offences being mortal, and deserving not only death, but damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what phrenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments, rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies ! There- fore to adore, honour, and admire him is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation of our nature, states, and conditions ; and with these thoughts, he that knows them best will not deny that I adore him. That I obtain heaven, and the bliss thereof, is ac- cidental, and not the intended work of my devotion; it being a felicity I can neither think to deserve, nor scarce in modesty to expect. For these two ends of us all, either as rewards or punishments, are mercifully ordained and disproportionably disposed unto our actions ; the one being so far be- yond our deserts, the other so infinitely be- low our demerits. There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, that is, say some, since his nativity, and, as divinity affirmeth, before also; which makes me much apprehend the end of those honest worthies and philoso- phers which died before his incarnation. It is hard to place those souls in hell whoso worthy lives do teach us virtue on earth ; methinks amongst those many subdivisions of hell there might have been one limbo left for these. What a strange vision will it be to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real devils ! How strange to them will SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 59 sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of! when they that derive their genealogy from the god's, shall know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man ! Keligio Medici. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast which tells thee thou hast a living spirit in tliee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in over-quietness, and no laboriousness in la- bour; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brasilia, were a most tiring penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imi table by our thoughts than our corporeal motions: yet the solemn motions of our lives amount unto a greater measure than is commonly appre- hended. Some few men have surrounded the globe of the earth ; yet many in the set locomotions and movements of their days have measured the circuit of it, and twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly, not meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of goodness ; but in all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy meas- ures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a fur- long in a breath : festination may prove pre- cipitation : deliberating delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no sloth fulness. Since virtuous actions have their own trumpets, and, without any noise from thy- self, will have their resound abroad, busy not thy best member in the encomium of thy self. Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtues of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb. Fall not, however, into the common prevaricating way of self- commendation and boasting, by denoting the imperfections of others. He who dis- commendeth others obliquely commendeth himself. He who whispers their infirmities proclaims his own exemption from them ; and consequently says, I am not as this publican, or hie niger, whom I talk of. Open ostentation and loud vainglory is more tolerable than this obliquity, as but contain- ing some froth, no ink ; as but consisting of a personal piece of folly, nor complicated with uncharitableness. Superfluously we seek a precarious applause abroad ; every good man hath his plaudite within himself; and though his tongue be silent, is not with- out loud cymbals in his breast. Conscience will become his panegyrist, and never for- get to crown and extol him unto himself. Bless not thyself only that thou wert born in Athens, but, among thy multiplied ac- knowledgments, lift up one hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest par- ents ; that modesty, humility, patience, and veracity lay in the same egg, and came into the world with thee. From such foun- dations thou mayst be happy in a virtuous precocity, and make an early and long walk in goodness ; so mayst thou more naturally feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and resist some by the antidote of thy temper. Christian Morals. OBLIVION. Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings. We slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extrem- ities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which, notwithstand- ing, is no unhappy stupidity. To be igno- rant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture ofour few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity con- tented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumula- tion of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncom- fortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyp- tian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriv- ing their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for bal- sams. In vain do individuals hope for immor- tality, or any patent from oblivion, in pres- ervations below the moon. Men have been deceived even in their flatteries above the GO OWEN FELL TEAM. sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their name in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations. Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth, durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts ; whereof, beside comets and new stars, per- spectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Pharethon's favour, would make clear conviction. Urn Burial. OWEN FELL/THAM, OR FEL- THAM, born about 1608, died about 1678, lived for some years in the family of the Earl of Tho- mond, was the author of Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political, Lond., without date, 12mo ; 2d edit., Lond., 1628, 4to ; 3d, the first complete edit., Lond., 1628, 4to ; 12th edit.. 1709, 13th edit., 1806, &c., 14th edit., 1820, &c. Both of the last two editions were edited, with an Account of the Author, by J. Gumming. New edit., Lond., Pickering, 1839, 12mo; Century I., 1840, cr. 4to ; The Beauties of Owen Feltliam, Selected from his Resolves, by J. A., Lond., 1818, 12mo. " We lay aside the Revolves as we part from our dearest friends, in the hope of frequently return- ing to them. We recommend the whole of them to our readers' perusal. They will find therein more solid maxims, as much piety, and far better writing, than in most of the pulpit lectures now current among us." (London) Retrospective Re- view, x. 365. " For myself, I can only say that Feltham ap- pears not only a laboured and artificial, but a shallow writer. Among his many faults, none strike me more than a want of depth, which his pointed and sententious manner renders more ridiculous. . . . He is one of our worst writers in point of style; with little vigour, he has less ele- gance." HALLAM : Lit. Hint, of Europe, Introduc, AGAINST DETRACTIONS In some dispositions there is such an envi- ous kind of pride, that they cannot endure that any but themselves shoujd be set forth as excellent ; so that, when they hear one justly praised, they will either openly de- tract from his virtues, or, if those virtues be like a clear and shining light, eminent and distinguished, so that he cannot be safely traduced by the tongue, they will then raise a suspicion against him by a mysterious silence, as if there were something remain- ing to be told, which over-clouded even his brightest glory. Surely, if we considered detraction to proceed, as it does, from envy, and to belong only to deficient minds, we should find that to applaud virtue would procure us far more honour than under- imndedly seeking to disparage her. The former would show that we loved what we commended, while the latter tells the world we grudge that in others which we want in ourselves. It is one of the basest offices of man to make his tongue the lash of the worthy. Even if we do know of faults in others, I think we can scarcely show our- selves more nobly virtuous than in having the charity to conceal them ; so that we do not flutter or encourage them in their fail- ings. But to relate anything we may know iigainst our neighbour, in his absence, is most unbeseeming conduct. And who will not condemn him as a traitor to reputation and society who tells the private fault of his friend to the public and ill-natured world ? When two friends part they should lock up one another's secrets, and exchange their keys. The honest man will rather be a grave to his neighbours errors than in any way expose them. OF NEGLECT. There is the same difference between dili- gence and neglect that there is between a garden properly cultivated and the slug- gard's field which fell under Solomon's view, when overgrown with nettles and thorns. The one is clothed with beauty, the other is unpleasant and disgusting to the sight. Negligence is the rust of the soul, that cor- rodes through all her best resolutions. What nature made for use, for strength, for or- nament, neglect alone converts to trouble, weakness, and deformity. We need only sit still, and diseases will arise from the mere want of exercise. How fair soever the soul may be, yet while connected with our fleshy nature it requires continual care and vigilance to pre- vent its being soiled and discoloured. Take the weeders from the Floralinm and a very little time will change it to a wilderness, and turn that which was before a recreation for men into a habitation for vermin. Our life is a warfare ; and we ought not, while passing through it, to sleep without a sen- tinel, or march without a scout. He who neglects either of these precautions exposes himself to surprise, and to becoming a prey to the diligence and perseverance of his ad- versary. The mounds of life and virtue, as well as those of pastures, will decay ; and if we do not repair them, all the beasts of the field will enter, and tear up everything good which grows within them. With the re- ligious and well-disposed a slight deviation from wisdom's laws will disturb the mind's fair peace. Macarius did penance for only killing a gnat in anger. Like the Jewish THOMAS FULLER. 61 touch of things unclean, the least miscar- riage requires purification. Man is like a watch : if evening and morning he be not wound up with prayer and circumspection he is unprofitable and false, or serves to mis- lead. If the instrument be not truly set it will be harsh and out of tune: the diapason dies wlien every string does not perform his part. Surely without a union to God we cannot be secure or well. Can he be happy who from happiness is divided? To be united to God we must be influenced by his goodness and strive to imitate his perfec- tions. Diligence alone is a good patrimony; but neglect will waste the fairest fortune. One preserves and gathers ; the other, like death, is the dissolution of all. The indus- trious bee, by her sedulity in summer, lives on honey all the winter. But the drone is not only cast out from the hive, but beaten and punished. Resolves. THOMAS FULLER, born 1608, died 1661, was the author of The Historic of the Holy Warre, Camb., 1639, fol., The Holy and Profane State, Camb., 1642, fol., The Church History of Britain, from the Birth of Jesus Christ untill the Year MDCXLVIII., Lond., 1655, fol., The History of the Worthies of England, Lond., 1662, fol., and other works. " Next to Shakspeare, I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller beyond all other writers does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvel- lous; the degree in which any given faculty, or combination of faculties, is possessed and mani- fested, so far surpassing what we would have thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the flavour and qualify of wonder. Fuller \yas incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced, great man of an age that boasted of a galaxy of great men. In all his numerous volumes, on so many different subjects, it is scarcely too much to say, that you will hardly find a page in which some one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for itself as a inotto or as a maxim." S. T. COLERIDGE. 'The historical works of Fuller are simply a caricature of the species of composition to which they professedly belong; a systematic violation of all its proprieties. The gravity and dignity of the historic muse are continually violated by him. But not only is he continually cracking his jokes and perpetrating his puns ; his matter is as full of treason against the laws of history as his manner." HENRY ROGERS: Edin. llev., Ixxiv. 352-353, and in his Essays. RULES FOR IMPROVING THE MEMORY. First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What wonder is it if agitation of business jog that out of thy head which was there rather tacked than fastened? Whereas those notions which get in by " violenta possessio'' will abide there till " ejcctio firma," sickness, or extreme age dispossess them. It is best knocking in the nail overnight, and clinching it the next morning. Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant a slave ! Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a purse, if it be overfull that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it: take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the .appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof. Beza's case was peculiar and memo- rable ; being above fourscore years of age, he perfectly could say by heart any Greek chapter in St. Paul's epistles, or anything else which he had learnt long before, but forgot whatsoever was newly told him ; his memory, like an inn, retaining old guests, but having no room to entertain new. Spoil not thy memory by thine own jeal- ousy, nor make it bad by suspecting it. How canst thou find that true which thou wilt not trust? St. Augustine tells of his friend Simplicius, who, being asked, could tell all Virgil's verses backward and for- ward, and yet the same party avowed to God that he knew not that he could do it till they did try him. Sure there is concealed strength in men's memories, which they take no notice of. Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles, than when it lies untoward flapping and hanging about his shoulders. Things orderly far- died up under heads are most portable. Adventure not all thy learning in one bottom, but divide it betwixt thy memory and thy note-books. He that with Bias carries all his learning about him in his head, will utterly be beggared and bankrupt if a violent disease, a merciless thief, should rob and strip him. I know some have a commonplace against commonplace books, and yet, perchance, will privately make use of what they publicly declaim against. A commonplace book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field on competent Avaru- ing. CONVERSATION. The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion that heats not ; whereas con- ference teaches and exercises at once. If I confer with an understanding man and a rude jester, he presses hard upon me on both sides; his imaginations raise up mine in more than ordinary pitch. Jealousy, glory, and contention stimulate and raise 62 JOHN MILTON. me up to something above myself; and a consent of judgment is a quality totally offensive in conference. But, as our minds fortify themselves by the communication of vigorous and able understandings, 'tis not to be expressed how much they lose and degenerate by the continual commerce and frequentation we have with those that are mean and low. There is no contagion that spreads like that. I know sufficiently, by experience, what 'tis worth a yard. I love to discourse and dispute, but it is with few men, and for myself: for to do it as a spec- tacle and entertainment to great persons, and to vaunt of a man's wit and eloquence, is in my opinion very unbecoming a man of honour. Impertinency is a scurvy quality ; but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex at it, as I do, is another sort of disease, little inferior to impertinence itself, and is the thing that I will now accuse in myself. I enter into conference and dispute with great liberty and facility, forasmuch as opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and wherein to take any deep root: no propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, though never so contrary to my own. There is no frivolous and ex- travagant fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the product of human wit. . . . The contradictions of judgments, then, do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present our- selves to it, especially when it appears in the form of conference, and not of authority. At every opposition, we do not consider whether or no it be just, but right or wrong how to disengage ourselves ; instead of ex- tending the arms, we thrust out our claws. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friend, so much as to tell me that I am a fool, and talk I know not of what. I love stout expressions amongst brave men, and to have them speak as they think. We must fortify and harden our hearing against this tenderness of the ceremonious sound of words. I love a strong and manly famili- arity in conversation ; a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigour of communication, like love in biting and scratching. It is not vigorous and gener- ous enough if it be not quarrelsome ; if civilized and artificial, if it treads nicely, and fears the shock. When any one con- tradicts rne, he raises my attention, not my anger ; I advance towards him that contro- verts, that instructs me. The cause of truth ought to be the common cause both of one and the other. ... I embrace and caress truth in what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself and my conquered arms, as far off as I can discover it; and. provided it be not too imperiously, take a pleasure in being reproved ; and ac- commodate myself to my accusers, very often more by way of civility than amendment, loving to gratify and nourish the liberty of admonition by my facility of submitting to it. ... In earnest, I rather choose the fre- quentation of those that ruffle me than those that fear me. 'Tis a dull and hurtful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us and approve of all we say. JOHN MILTON, born 1608, died 1674, is but little known to general readers as a prose writer, great as he was in this species of composition. We give some specimens, taken from the Reason of Church Government urged against Prela- tory, in two Books, Lond., 1641, 4to, Letter to Master Hartlib on Education, Lond.. lf>44, 4to, and Areopagitica ; a Speech to the Par- liament of England for the liberty of unli- censed Printing, Lond., 1644, 4to. " It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should, in our time, be so. little rend. As compositions, they deserve the attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the full power of the English language. They abound with passages compared with which the finest dec- lamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier books of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen -higher than in those parts of hia controversial works in which his feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of devotional and lyric rapture. It is. to borrow hia own majestic language, 'a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies.'" LOUD MACAULAY : Edin. lte<\, xliii. 345, and in his Essays. "His prose writings are disagreeable, though, not altogether deficient in genius." HUME : Hint, of Etirj. " Milton's prose works are exceedingly stiff and pedantic." DR. RICHARD FARMER: Goodtnujh'a E. G. Lib. Man., 43i. LITERARY ASPIRATIONS. After I had, from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, whom God recompense, been exercised to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and at the schools, it was found that whether aught was imposed me by them that hjid the overlooking, or be taken to of my own choice in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly the latter, the style, by certain vital signs it had, was likely to live. But much latelier, in the private academies of Italy, whither I was favoured to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed at under twenty JOHN MILTON. 63 or thereabout (for the manner is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading there), met with acceptance above what was looked for ; and other things which I had shifted, in scarcity of books and conveniences, to patch up among them, were received with written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps, I began thus far to assent both to them and divers of my friends here at home ; and not less to an inward prompting, which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intent study (which I take to be my portion in this life), joined to the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written, to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die. These thoughts at once possessed me, and these other, that if I were certain to write as men buy leases, for three lives and downward, there ought no regard be sooner had than to God's glory, by the honour and instruction of my country. For which cause, and not only for that I knew it would be hard to arrive at the second rank among the Latins, I applied myself to that resolution which Ariosto fol- lowed against the persuasions of Bembo, to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my native tongue ; not to make verbal curiosities the end, that were a toilsome vanity; but to be an interpreter, and relater of the best and safest things among my own citizens throughout this island, in the mother dialect. That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome, or modern Italy, and those Hebrews of old did for their country, I in my propor- tion, with this over and above, of being a Christian, might do for mine; not caring to be once named abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that, but content with these British islands as my world, whose fortune hath hitherto been, that if the Athenians, as some say, made their small deeds great and renowned by their eloquent writers, England hath had her noble achievements made small by the unskilful handling of monks and mechanics. . . . Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any know- ing reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the pay- ment of what I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine; like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; not to be obtained by the invocation of dame memory and her syren daughters ; but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom ho pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly arts and aflairs ; till which in some measure be compassed, at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not loath to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them. The Reason of Church Government. TRUE AND FALSE EDUCATION. And seeing every nation affords not ex- perience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom ; so that language is but the instrument con- veying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence appear the many mis- takes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful : first we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much Latin and Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. . . . And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of the universi- ties, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense), they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics, so that they having but newly left those gym- nastic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled with their unbal- lasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge ; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either to an ambitions and mer- cenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity ; some allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promis- 64 JOHN MILTON. ing and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others be- take them to state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding, that flattery and courtshifts, and tyrannous aphorisms, appear to them the highest points of wisdom ; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery ; if, as I rather think, it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit retire themselves (knowing no better) to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity ; which, indeed, is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of misspend- ing our prime youth at schools and universi- ties as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better un- learned. I shall detain you now no longer in the de- monstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct you to a hill-side, where I \\ill point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education ; laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Or- pheus was not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of such a happy nature, than we have now to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sowthistles and brambles which is commonly set before them, as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docile age. I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war. Letter to Master Hartlib on Education. THE CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS. I deny not but that it is of the greatest con- cernment in the church and commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men ; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors ; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them, to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are ; nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth ; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book : who kills a man kills a reason- able creature, God's imajie ; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth ; but a good book is the precious life- blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss ; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus com- mitted, sometimes a kind of martyrdom ; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and soft essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immor- tality rather than a life. . . . When a man writes to the world, he summons up all hia reason and deliberation to assist him ; he searches, meditates, is industrious, and likely consults and confers with his judicious friends : after all which is done, he takes himself to be informed in what he writes, as well as any that writ before him ; if in this the most consummate act of his fidelity and ripeness, no years, no industry, no former proof of his abilities, can bring him to that state of maturity, as not to be still mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry all his considerate diligence, all his mid- night watchings, and expense of Palladian oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licenser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who never knew the labour of book-writing ; and if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must appear in print like a puny with his guar- dian, and his censor's hand on the back of his title, to be his bail and surety that he is no idiot or seducer; it cannot be but a dis- honour and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learn- ing. . . . And how can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching; how- can he be a doctor in his book, as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whereas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction, of his pa- triarchal licenser, to blot or alter what pre- cisely accords not with the hide-bound humour which he calls his judgment? Areopagitica. EDWARD HYDE. 65 EDWARD HYDE, EARL OF CLARENDON, born 1608, died 1673, will always be dis- tinguished as the author of The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, to which is added, an historical View of the Affairs of Ireland, Oxf., 1702-3-4, 3 vols. fol. " Clarendon will always be esteemed an enter- taining writer, even independent of our curiosity to know the facts which he relates. His style is prolix and redundant, and suffocates us by the length of its periods ; but it discovers imagination and sentiment, and pleases us at the same time that we disapprove of it. ... An air of probity and goodness runs through the whole work, as these qualities did in reality embellish the whole life of the author. . . . Clarendon was always a friend to the liberty and constitution of his country." HUME: Hint, nf Entj. " For an Englishman there is no single historical work with which it can be so necessary for him to be well and thoroughly acquainted as with Claren- don. I feel at this time perfectly assured, that if that book had been put into my hands in youth, it would have preserved me from all the political errors which I have outgrown." SOUTHEV : Life and Gorresp. But the Hon. Agar Ellis (Character of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, Lond., 1827, Svo) stamps Clarendon as an unprin cipled man of talent, and Brodie (Hist, of the British Empire, Lond., 1822, 4 vols. Svo) considers him ' a miserable sycophant and canting hypocrite." CHARACTER OF OLIVER CROMWELL. He was one of those men, quos vituperare ne inimici quidem possunt, nisi ut simil lau- dent ; whom his very enemies could not condemn without commending him at the same time; for he could never have done half that mischief without great parts of courage, industry, and judgment, lie must have had a wonderful understanding in the natures and humours of men, and as great a dexterity in applying them ; who, from a private and obscure birth (though of a good family), without interest or estate, alliance or friendship, could raise himself to such a height, and compound and knead such oppo- site and contradictory tempers, humours, and interests into a consistence that contributed to his designs, and to their own destruction ; whilst himself grew insensibly powerful enough to cut off those by whom he had climbed, in the instant that they projected to demolish their own building. What was said of Cinna may very justly be said of him, ausum eum, qu.ce nemo auderet bonus; perfecisse quce a nullo nisi fortissimo, perfici possent. Without doubt, no man with more wickedness ever attempted anything, or brought to pass what he desired more wick- 5 edly. more in the face and contempt of re- ligion and moral honesty. Yet wickedness as great as his could never have accomplished those designs without the assistance of a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity, and a most magnanimous resolution. When he appeared first in the parliament he seemed to have a person in no degree gracious, no ornament of discourse, none of those talents which use to conciliate the affections of the stander-by. Yet as he grew into place and authority his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had concealed faculties till he had occasion to use them ; and when he was to act the part of a great man he did it without any indecency, not- withstanding the want of custom. After he was confirmed and invested Pro- tector by the humble petition and advice, he consulted with very few upon any action of importance, nor communicated any enter- prise he resolved upon with more than those who were to have principal parts in the exe- cution of it; nor with them sooner than was absolutely necessary. What he once resolved, in which he was not rash, he would not be dissuaded from, nor endure any contradic- tion of his power and authority, but extorted obedience from them who were not willing to yield it. Thus he subdued a spirit that had been often troublesome to the most sovereign power, and made Westminster Hall as obe- dient and subservient to his commands as any of the rest of his quarters. In all other matters, which did not concern the life of his jurisdiction, he seemed to have great reverence for the law, rarely interposing between party and party. As he proceeded with this kind of indignation and haughti- ness with those who were refractory, and durst contend with his greatness, so towards all who complied with his good pleasure, and courted his protection, he used great civility, generosity, and bounty. To reduce three nations, which perfectly hated him, to an entire obedience to all his dictates; to awe and govern those nations by an army that was indevoted to him, and wished his ruin, was an instance of a very prodigious address. But his greatness at home was but a shadow of the glory he had abroad. It was hard to discover which feared him most, France, Spain, or the Low Countries, where his friendship was current at the value he put upon it. As they did all sacrifice their honour and their interest to his pleasure, so there is nothing he could have demanded that either of them would have denied him. . . . To conclude his character: Cromwell was not so far a man of blood as to follow Machi- 66 EDWARD HYDE. nvel's method ; which prescribes, upon a total alteration of government, as a tiling abso- lutely necessary, to cut off all the heads of those, and extirpate their families, who are friends to the old one. It was confidently reported that in the council of officers it was more than once proposed "that there might be a general massacre of all the royal party, as the only expedient to secure the govern- ment," but that Cromwell would never con- Bent to it; it may be, out of too great a contempt of his enemies. In a word, as he was guilty of many crimes against which damnation is denounced, and for which hell- fire is prepared, so he had some good quali- ties which have caused the memory of some men in all ages to be celebrated ; and he will be looked upon by posterity us a brave wicked man. History of the Rebellion. CHARACTER OF CHARLES I. But it will not be unnecessary to add a short character of his person, that posterity may know the inestimable loss which the nation then underwent in being deprived of a prince whose example would have had a greater influence upon the manners and piety of the nation than the most strict laws can have. To speak first of his private qualifications as a man, before the mention of his princely and royal virtues: he was, if ever any, the most worthy of the title of an honest man ; so great a lover of justice, that no temptation could dispose him to a wrongful action, except it was so disguised to him that he believed it to be just. He had a tenderness and compassion of nature which restrained him from ever doing a hard-hearted tiling ; and, therefore, he was so apt to grant pardon to malefactors that the judges of the land represented to him thedam- age and insecurity to the public that flowed from such his indulgence. And then he re- frained himself from pardoning either mur- ders or highway robberies, and quickly dis- cerned the fruits of his severity by a wonder- ful reformation of those enormities. He was very punctual and regular in his devotions : he was never known to enter upon his re- creations or sports, though never so early in the morning, before he had been at public prayers; so that on hunting days his chap- lains were bound to a very early attendance. He was likewise very strict in observing the hours of his private cabinet devotions, and was so severe an exacter of gravity and reverence in all mention of religion, that he could never endure any light or profane word, with what sharpness of wit soever it was covered ; and though he was well pleased and delighted with reading verses made upon any occasion, no man durst bring before him anything that was profane or unclean. That kind of wit had never any countenance then. He was so great an example of con- jugal affection, that they who did not imi- tate him in that particular durst not brag of their liberty; and he did not only permit, but direct, his bishops to prosecute those scandalous vices, in the ecclesiastical courts, against persons of eminence and near rela- tion to his service. Ilis kingly virtues had some mixture and alloy that hindered them from shining in full lustre, and from producing those fruits they should have been attended with, lie was not in his nature very bountiful, though he gave very much. This appeared more after the Duke of Buckingham's death, after which those showers fell very rarely ; and he paused too long in giving, Avhich made those to whom he gave less sensible of the benefit. He kept state to the full, which made his court very orderly, no man pre- suming to be seen in a place where he had no pretence to be. He saw and observed men long before he received them about his person ; and did not love strangers, nor very confident men. He was a patient hearer of causes, which he frequently accustomed him- self to at the council board, and judged very well, and was dexterous in the mediating part ; so that he often put an end to causes by persuasion, which the stubbornness of men's humours made dilatory in courts of justice. He was very fearless in his person : but, in his riper years, not very enterprising. He had an excellent understanding, but was not confident enough of it; which made him oftentimes change his own opinion for a worse, and follow the advice of men that did not judge as well as himself. This made him more irresolute than the conjuncture of his affairs would admit; if he had been of a rougher and more imperious nature he would have found more respect and duty. And his not applying some severe cures to approaching evils proceeded from the lenity of his nature, and the tenderness of his con- science, which, in all cases of blood, made him choose the softer way, and not hearken to severe counsels, how reasonably soever urged. . . . As he excelled in all other vir- tues, so in temperance he was so strict that he abhorred all debauchery to that degree that, at a great festival solemnity, where he once was, where very many of the nobility of the English and Scots were entertained, being told by one who withdrew from thence, what vast draughts of wine they drank, and " that there was one earl who had drank most of the rest down, and was not himself moved or altered," the king said, " that he deserved to be hanged ;" and that earl com- SIR MATTHEW HALE. 67 ing shortly after into the room where his majesty was, in some gaiety, to show how unhurt he was from that battle, the king sent one to bid him withdraw from his ma- jesty's presence; nor did he in some days after appear before him. History of the Rebellion. SIR MATTHEW HALE, born 1609, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, 1660, Lord Chief Justice of England, 1671, died 1676, was alike distinguished for legal learning and private virtues. "He was most precisely just; insomuch that I believe he would have lost all he had in the world rather than do an unjust act: patient in hearing the most tedious speech which any man had to make for himself; the pillar of justice, the refuge of the subject who frarei oppression, and one of the greate.-t honours of his majesty's government; for, with some other upright judges, he upheld the honour of the English nation, that it fell not into the reproach of arbitrariness, cruelty, and utter confusion. Every man that had a just cause was almost past fear if he could bring it to the court or assize where he was judge ; for the other judges geldom contradicted him. ... I, who heard and re;id his serious expressions of the concernments of eternity, and saw his love to all good men, and the blamelessness of his life, thought better of his piety than my own.'' RICHARD BAXTER. LETTER TO HIS CHILDREN'. DEAR CHILDREN', I thank God I came well to Farrington this day, about five o'clock. And as I have some leisure time at my inn, I cannot spend it more to my own satisfaction, and your benefit, than, by a letter, to give you some good counsel. The subject shall be concerning your speech ; because much of the good or evil that be- falls persons arises from the well or ill managing of their conversation. When I have leisure and opportunity, I shall give you my directions on other subjects. Never speak anything for a truth which you know or believe to be false. Lying is a great sin against God, who gave us a tongue to speak the truth, and not false- hood. It is a great offence against human- ity itself; for, where there is no regard to truth, there can be no safe society between man and man. And it is an injury to the speaker ; for, besides the disgrace which it brings upon him, it occasions so much base- ness of mind that he can scarcely tell truth, or avoid lying, even when he has no colour of necessity for it; and, in time, he comes to such a pass that as other people cannot believe he speaks truth, so he himself scarcely knows when he tells a falsehood. As you must be careful not to lie, so you must avoid coming near it. You must not equivocate, nor speak anything positively for which you have no authority but report, or conjecture, or opinion. Let your words be few, especially when your superiors, or strangers, are present, lest you betray your own weakness, and rob your- selves of the opportunity, which you might have otherwise have had, to gain knowl- edge, wisdom, and experience, by hearing those whom you silence by your impertinent talking. Be not too earnest, loud, or violent in your conversation. Silence your opponent with reason, not with noise. Be careful not to interrupt another wher. he is speaking ; hear him out, and you will understand him the better, and be able to give him the better answer. Consider before you speak, especially when the business is of moment; weigh the sensa of what you mean to utter, and the expres- sions you intend to use, that they may be significant, pertinent, and inoffensive. In- considerate people do not think till they speak; or they speak, and then think. Some men excel in husbandry, some in gardening, some in mathematics. In con- versation, learn, as near as you can, where the skill or excellence of any person lies; put him upon talking on that subject, ob- serve what he says, keep it in your memory, or commit it to writing. By this means you will glean the worth and knowledge of every- body you converse with, and, at an easy rate, acquire what may be of use to you on many occasions. When you are in company with light, vain, impertinent persons, let the observing of their failings make you the more cautious both in your conversation with them and in your general behaviour, that you may avoid their errors. If any one, whom you do not know to be a person of truth, sobriety, and weight, re- lates strange stories, be not too ready to be- lieve or report thorn ; and yet (unless he is one of your familiar acquaintance) be not too forward to contradict him. If the oc- casion requires you to declare an opinion, do it modestly and gently, not bluntly nor coarsely ; by this means you will avoid giv- ing offence, or being abused for too much credulity. If a man whose integrity you do not very well know, makes you great and extraordi- nary professions, do not give much credit to him. Probably you will find that he aims at something besides kindness to you, and that when he has served his turn, or been disappointed, his regard for you will grow cool. B,eware also of him who flatters you, and GS ROBERT LEIGH TON. commends you to your face, or to one who lie thinks will tell you of it; most probably he has either deceived or abused you, or means to do so. Remember the fable of the fox commending the singing of the crow, who had something in her mouth which the fox wanted. Be careful that you do not commend your- selves. It is a sign that your reputation is small and sinking, if your own tongue must praise you ; and it is fulsome and unpleasing to others to hear such commendations. Speak well of the absent whenever you have a suitable opportunity. Never speak ill of them, or of anybody, unless you are sure they deserve it, and unless it is neees- sary for their amendment, or for the safety and benefit of others. Avoid, in your ordinary communications, not only oaths, but all imprecations and earnest protestations. Forbear scoffing or jesting at the condi- tion or natural defects of any person. Such offences leave a deep impression and they often cost a man dear. Be very careful that you give no reproach- ful, menacing, or spiteful words to any per- son. Good words make friends : bad words make enemies. It is great prudence to gain as many friends as we honestly can. especi- ally when it may be done at so easy a rate as a good word ; and it is great folly to make an enemy by ill words, which are of no ad- vantage to the party who uses them. When faults are committed, they may, and by a superior they must, be reproved: but let it be done without reproach or bitterness ; otherwise it will lose its due end and use, and. instead of reforming the offence, it will exasperate the offender, and lay the reprover justly open to reproof. If a person be pas- sionate, and give you ill language, rather pity him than be moved to anger. You will find that silence, or very gentle words, are the most exquisite revenge for reproaches : they will either cure the distemper in the angry man. and make him sorry for his pas- sion, or they will be a severe reproof and punishment to him. But, at any rate, they will preserve your innocence, give you the deserved reputation of wisdom arid modera- tion, and keep up the serenity and compo- sure of your mind. Passion and anger make a man unfit for everything that be- comes him as a man or as a Christian. Never utter any profane speeches, nor make a jest of any Scripture expressions. When you pronounce the name of God or of Christ, or repeat any words of Holy Scripture, do it with reverence and serious- ness, and not lightly, for that is " taking the name of God in vain." If you hear of any unseemly expressions used in religions exercises, do not publish them; endeavour to forget them ; or, if you mention them at all, let it be with pity and sorrow, not with derision or reproach. Read these directions often ; think of them seriously ; and practice them diligently. You will find them useful in your conversa- tion ; which will be every day the more evident to you, as your judgment, under- standing, and experience increase. I have little further to add at this time, but my wish and command that you will remember the former counsels that I have frequently given you. Begin and end the day with private prayer ; read the Scriptures often and seriously ; be attentive to the public worship of God. Keep yourselves in some useful employment; for idleness is the nursery of vain and sinful thoughts, which corrupt the mind and disorder the life. Be kind and loving to one another. Honour your minister. Be not bitter nor harsh to my servants. Be respectful to all. Bear my absence patiently and cheerfully. Be- have as if I were present among you and saw you. Remember, yon have a greater Father than I am, who always, and in all places, beholds you, and knows your hearts and thoughts. Study to requite my love and care for you with dutifulness, observ- ance, and obedience ; and account it an honour that you have an opportunity, by your attention, faithfulness, and industry, to pay some part of that debt which, by the laws of nature and of gratitude, you owe to me. Be frugal in my family, but let there be no want; and provide conveniently for the poor. I pray God to fill your hearts with his grace, fear, and love, and to let you see the comfort and advantage of serving him ; and that his blessing, and presence, and direc- tion, may be with you, and over you all. I am your ever loving father. ROBERT LEIGHTON, D.D., born 1611, Archbishop of Glasgow, 1670, died 1684, was the author of a number of religious works which are still held in high estimation for their spirituality. " Perhaps there is no expository work in the English language equal altogether to the exposi- tion of Prter. It is rich in evangelical sentiment and exalted devotion. The meaning is seldom missed, and otten admirably illustrated. There is learning without its parado. theology divested of systematic stiffness, and eloquence in a beauti- ful flow of unaffected language and appropriate imagery. To say more would be unbecoming, and le.s could not be said with justice." ORIIE : Bib- liolheca Biblica. SAMUEL BUTLER. 69 OF HAPPINESS. The Greek epigram ascribed by some to Prosidipus, by others to Crates the Cynic philosopher, begins thus, ' What state of life oughtone to choose?'' and having enumerated them all, concludes in this manner : " There are, then, only two things eligible, either never to have been born, or to die as soon as one makes his appearance in the world/' But now, leaving the various periods ;md conditions of life, let us, with great brevity, run over those things which are looked upon to be the greatest blessings in it, and see whether any of them can make it completely happy. Can this be expected from a beauti- ful outside? No: this has rendered many miserable, but never made one happy. For suppose it to be sometimes attended with innocence, it is surely of a fading and perish- ing nature, '' the sport of time or disease." Can it be expected from riches? Surely no: for how little of them does the owner possess, even supposing his wealth to be ever so great ! what a small part of them does he use or enjoy himself! And what has he of the rest but the pleasure of seeing them with his eyes ? Let his table be loaded with the greatest variety of delicious dishes, he fills his belly out of one; and if he has a hundred beds, he lies but in one of them. Can the kingdoms, thrones, and sceptres of this world confer happiness? No: we learn from the histories of all ages, that not a few have been tumbled down from these by sudden and unexpected revolutions, and these not such as were void of conduct or courage, but men of great and extraordinary abilities. And that those who met with no such misfortunes were still far enough from happiness is very plain from the situation of their affairs, and, in many cases, from their own confession. The saying of Au- gustus is well known : '' I wish I had never been married, and had died childless." And the expression of Severus at his death, " I became all things, and yet it does not profit me." But the most noted saying of all, and that which best deserves to be known, is that of the wisest and most flourishing king, as well as the greatest preacher, who, having exactly computed all the advantages of his exalted dignity and royal opulence, found this to be the sum total of all, and left it on record for the inspection of posterity and future ages, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. All this may possibly be true with regard to the external advantages of men, but may not happiness be found in the internal goods of the mind, such as wisdom and virtue? Suppose this granted; still that they may confer perfect felicity they must, of necessity. be perfect themselves. Now, shew me the man who, even in his own judgment, has attained to perfection in wisdom and virtue: even those who were accounted the wisest, and actually were so, acknowledged they knew nothing ; nor was there one among the most approved philosophers whose vir- tues were not allayed with many blemishes. The same must be said of piety and true religion, which, though it is the beginning of felicity, and tends directly to perfection, yet, as in this earth it is not full and com- plete itself, it cannot make its possessors perfectly happy. The knowledge of the most exalted minds is very obscure, and almost quite dark, and their practice of virtue lame and imperfect. And indeed, who can have the boldness to boast of per- fection in this respect when he hears the great Apostle complaining of the Law of the flesh, and pathetically exclaiming, Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Rom. vii. 24. Besides, though wisdom, and virtue, or piety, were perfect, so long as we have bodies, we must at the same time have all bodily advantages, in order to perfect felicity. Therefore the satirist smartly ridicules the wise man of the Stoics. '' He is," says he, " free, honoured, beautiful, a king of kings, and particularly happy, except when he is troubled with phlegm." Since these things are so, we must raise our minds higher, and not live with our heads bowed down like the common sort of mankind ; who, as St. Au- gustine expresses it, "look for a happy life in the region of death." To set our hearts upon the perishing goods of this wretched life and its muddy pleasures, is not the hap- piness of men, but of hogs. And if pleasure is dirt, other things are but smoke. Were this the only good proposed to the desires and hopes of men, it would not have been so great a privilege to be born. Theological Lectures. SAMUEL BUTLER, born 1612, died 1680, acquired great repu- tation by his poem of Iludibras, and was also the author of some prose Characters (in the style of Earle, Hall, and Overbury). which appeared in his Remains in Verse and Prose, published from the original MSS., with Notes by Robert Thver, Lond., 1759, 2 vols. 8vo; later edition from the original MSS., Lond., 1827, 8vo, and royal 8vo: vol. i. only published. A SMALL POET is one that would fain make himself that which nature never meant him ; like a fa- natic that inspires himself with his own 70 JOHN PEARSON. whimsies. He sets up haberdasher of small poetry, with a very small stock, and no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find out other men's wit ; and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or company, he makes bold with us his own. This he puts together so untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit has the rickets by the swelling disproportion of the joints. You may know his wit not to be natural, 'tis so unquiet and troublesome in him : for as those that have money but seldom are al- ways shaking their pockets when they have it, so does he when he thinks he has got something that will make him appear. He is a perpetual talker ; and you may know l>y the freedom of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely what they get. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent dis- covery ; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty lar- ceny of wit may pass unsuspected. He ap- pears so over-concerned in all men's wits, as if they were but disparagements of his own ; and cries down all they do, as if they were encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as jus- tices do false weights and pots that want measure. When he meets with anything that is very good, he changes it into small money, like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. lie disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true, by his often missing of his mark. As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such matches are unlawful, and nut fit to be made by a Chris- tian poet; and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two, and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best : for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did ; for contraries are best set off with contraries. He has found out a new sec of poetical Georgics a trick of sowing wit like clover grass on barren subjects, which would yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some men say, there is no room left for new in- vention. He will take three grains of wit, like the elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age, turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has presently van- ished, the whole world has kept holiday ; there has been no men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses ; trees have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge. When he writes, he com- monly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in the world so rich in terms as poetry ; a whole dictionary is scarce able to contain them ; for there is hardly a pond, a sheep- walk, or a gravel-pit in all Greece but the ancient name of it is become a term of art in poetry. By this means small poets have such a stock of able hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadrvades, ab'nidos, fauni, nymphae, sylvani, &c., that signify- nothing at all ; and such a world of pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new inventions and " thorough reformations" that can happen between this and Plato's great year. Characters. JOHN PEARSON, D.D., born at Snoring, Norfolk, 1612, became Bishop of Chester, Feb. 9, 1672-73, and died in 1686. His best-known work is An Exposition of the Creed, Lond., 1659, 4to. "A standard book in English divinity. It ex- pands beyond the literal purport of the Creed itself to most articles of orthodox belief, and is a valuable summary of arguments and authorities on that sMe. The closeness of Pearson, and his judicious selection of proofs, distinguish him from many, especially the earlier, theologians. Some might surmise that his undeviating adherence to what he calls The Church is hardly consistent with independence of thinking; but, considered as an advocate, he is one of much judgment and skill." H.U.I.AM: Lit. Hint, of Europe, 4th ed., 1854, iii. 298. THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST. The ascent of Christ into heaven was not metaphorical or figurative, as if there were no more to be understood by it, but only that he attained a more heavenly and glori- ous state or condition after his resurrection. For whatsoever alteration was made in the body of Christ when he rose, whatsoever glorious qualities it was invested with there- by, that was not his ascension, as appeareth by those words which he spake to Mary, Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father. Although he had said before to Nicodemus, No man [hath] ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven t JEREMY TAYLOR. even the Son of man which is in heaven; which words imply that he had then as- cended ; yet even those concern not this ascension. For that was therefore only true, because the Son of Man, not yet con- ceived in the Virgin's womb, was not in heaven, and after his conception by virtue of the hypostatical union was in heaven : from whence, speaking after the manner of men. he might well say, that he had as- cended into heaven; because whatsoever was first on earth and then in heaven, we say ascended into heaven. Wherefore, beside that grounded upon the hypostatical union, beside that glorious condition upon his resur- rection, there was yet another and that more proper ascension : for after he had both those ways ascended, it was still true that he had not yet ascended to his Father. Now this kind of ascension, by which Christ had not yet ascended when he spake to Mary after his resurrection, was not long after to be performed ; for at the same time he said unto Mary, Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father. And when this ascension was performed, it appeared manifestly to be a true local translation of the Son of Man, as man, from these parts of the world below into the heaven above; by which that body which was before locally present here on earth, and was not so then present in heaven, became substantially present in heaven, and no longer locally present on earth. For when he had spoken unto the disciples, and blessed them, laying his hands upon them, and so was corporally present with them, even while he blessed them, he parted from them, and while the;/ beheld, he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight ; and so he was carried up into heaven, while they looked steadfastly towards heaven as he went up. This was a visible departure, as it is described ; a real removing of that body of Christ, which was before present with the apostles ; and that body living after the resurrection, by virtue of that soul which was united to it, and therefore the Son of Gud according to his humanity, was really and truly translated from these parts below unto the heavens above, which is a proper local ascension. Thus was Christ's ascension visibly per- formed in the presence and sight of the apostles, for the confirmation of the reality and the certainty thereof. They did not see him when he rose, but they saw him when he ascended ; because an eye-witness was not necessary unto the act of his resur- rection, but it was necessary unto the act of his ascension, it was sufficient that Christ shewed himself to the apostles alive after his passion ; for being they knew him before to be dead, and now saw him alive, they were thereby assured that he rose again: for whatsoever was a proof of his life after death was a demonstration of his resurrec- tion. But being the apostles were not to see our Saviour in heaven ; being the ses- sion was not to be visible to them on earth ; therefore it was necessary they should be eye-witnesses of the act, who were not with the same eyes to behold the effect. Beside the eye-witness of the apostles, there was added the testimony of the angels ; those blessed spirits which ministered before, and saw the face of, God in heaven, and carne down from thence, did know that Christ ascended up from hence unto that place from whence they came; and because the eyes of the apostles could not follow him so far, the inhabitants of that place did come to testify of his reception; for behold two men stood by them in white apparel, which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. We must there- fore acknowledge and confess against all the wild heresies of old, that the eternal Son of God, who died and rose again, did, with the same body and soul with which he died and rose, ascend up to heaven ; which was the second particular consider- able in this Article. An Exposition of the Creed, Article VI. JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D., born 1613, at Cambridge, Bishop of Down and Connor, 1661, died 1667, was the author of many theological works, distinguished for their learning, piety, and fervid imagi- nation. " He was none of God's ordinary works, but his Endowments were so many and so great, as really made him a Miracle. . . . He was a rare Human- ist, and hugely versed in all the polite parts of Learning, and thoroughly concocted all the an- cient Moralists, Greek and Roman Poets and Ora- tors, and was not unacquainted with the refined wits of the later ages, whether French or Italian. . . . This great Prelate had the good humour of a Gentleman, the eloquence of an Orator, the fancy of a Poet, the acute-ness of a Schoolman, the pro- foundness of a Philosopher, the wisdom of a Chan- cellor, the sagacity of a Prophet, the reason of an Angel, and the piety of a Saint. He had devotion enough for a Cloister, learning enough for an Uni- versity, and wit enough for a College of Virtuosi. And had his parts and endowments been parcelled out among his poor Clergy that he left behind him, it would perhaps have made one of the best dioceses in the world." DOCTOR GEORGE RUST, his chaplain, and subsequently his episcopal suc- cessor in the see of Dromore. JEREMY TAYLOR. "The greatest ornament of the English pulpit up to the middle of the seventeenth century; and we have no reason to believe, or ralher much rea- son to disbelieve, that he had any competitor in other languages." UALLAM: Lit. JJiat. of Europe, i. 359-60. The best edition of his Works is that pub- lished under the supervision of the Rev. C. P. Eden [and Rev. Alexander Taylor], Lond., 1847-51 (again 1854, 1856, 1861), 10 vols. 8vo. RULES FOR EMPLOYING OUR TIME. 1. In the morning, when you awake, ac- custom yourself to think first upon God, or something in order to his service ; and at night, also, let him close thine eyes: and let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expensive of time, beyond the needs and conveniences of nature ; and sometimes be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coining forth from his chambers of the east. 2. Let every man that hath a calling be diligent in pursuance of its employment, so as not lightly or without reasonable occa- sion to neglect it in any of those times which are usually, and by the custom of prudent persons and good husbands, employed in it. 3. Let all the intervals or void spaces of time be employed in prayers, reading, medi- tating works of nature, recreations, charity, friendliness, and neighbourhood, and means of spiritual and corporal health : ever re- membering so to work in our calling as not to neglect the work of our high calling; but to begin and end the day with God, with such forms of devotion as shall be proper to our necessities. 4. The resting days of Christians, and fes- tivals of the church, must, in no sense, be days of idleness ; for it is better to plough upon holy days than to do nothing, or to do viciously : but let them be spent in the works of the day, that is, of religion and charity, according to the rule appointed. 5. Avoid the company of drunkards and busy bodies, and all such as are apt to talk much to little purpose ; for no man can be provident of his time that is not prudent in the choice of his company; and if one of the speakers be vain, tedious, and trifling, he that hears, and he that answers, in the discourse, are equal losers of their time. 6. Never walk with any man, or under- take any trifling emplo3'inent, merely to pass the time aWay ; for every day well spent may become a "day of salvation," and time rightly employed is an " acceptable time." And remember, that the time thou triflestaway was given thee to repent in, to pray for pardon of sins, to work out thy sal- vation, to do the work of grace, to lay up against the day of judgment a treasure of good works, that thy time may be crowned with eternity. 7. In the midst of the works of thy calling, often retire to God in short prayers and ejac- ulations; and those may make up the want of those larger portions of time, which, it may be, thou desirest for devotion, and in which thou thinkest other persons have ad- vantage of thee ; for so thou reconcilest the outward work and thy inward calling, the church and the commonwealth, the employ- ment of the body and the interest of thy soul : for be sure, that God is present at thy breathings and hearty sighings of prayer, as soon as at the longer offices of less busied persons ; and thy time is as truly sanctified by a trade, and devout though shorter pray- ers, as Ly the longer offices of those whose time is not filled up with labour and useful business. 8. Let your employment be such as may become a reasonable person ; and not be a business fit for children or distracted people, but fit for your age and understanding. For a man may be very idly busy, and take great pains to so little purpose, that in his labours and expense of time he shall serve no end but of folly and vanity. There are some trades that wholly serve the ends of idle persons and fools, and such as are fit to be seized upon by the severity of laws and banished from under the sun : and there are some people who are busy ; but it is as Do- mitian was, in catching flies. Rules and Exercises of Holy Living. TIIE INVALIDITY OF A LATE OR DEATH-BED REPENTANCE. But will not trusting in the merits of Jesus Christ save such a man ? For that, we must be tried by the word of God, in which there is no contract at all made with a dying per- son that lived in name a Christian, in prac- tice a heathen : and we shall dishonour the sufferings and redemption of our blessed Saviour, if we think them to bo an um- brella to shelter our impious and ungodly living. But that no such person may, after a wicked life, repose himself on his death- bed upon Christ's merits, observe but these two places of Scripture : " Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us' 1 what to do? that we might live as we list, and hope to be saved by his merits? no: but " that he might redeem us from all in- iquity, and purify to himself a peculiar peo- ple, zealous of good works." These things "speak and exhort," saith St. Paul. But more plainly yet in St. Peter : " Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree" to what end? " That we, being dead unto sin, should live unto righteousness." Since, HENRY MORE. T3 therefore, our living a holy life is the end of Christ's dying that sad and holy death for us, he that trusts on it to evil purposes, and to excuse his vicious life, does as much as in him lies, make void the very purpose and design of Christ's passion, and dishon- ours the blood of the everlasting covenant; which covenant was confirmed by the blood of Christ ; but as it brought peace from God, so it requires a holy life from us. But why may not we be saved, as well as the thief on the cross? even because our case is nothing alike. When Christ dies once more for us, we may look for such another instance ; not till then. But this thief did but then come to Christ, he knew him not before ; and his case was, as if a Turk, or heathen, should be converted to Christianity, and be bap- tized, and enter newly into the covenant upon his death-bed: then God pardons all his sins. And so God does to Christians when they are baptized, or first give up their names to Christ by a voluntary confirmation of their baptismal vow : but when they have once entered into the covenant they must perform what they promise, and do what they are obliged. The thief had made no contract with God in Jesus Christ, and there- fore failed of none ; only the defailances of the state of ignorance Christ paid for at the thief's admission: but we, that have made a covenant with God in baptism, and failed of it all our days, and then return at "night, when we cannot work," have noth- ing to plead for ourselves ; because we have made all that to be useless to us, which God, with so much mercy and miraculous wisdom, gave us to secure our interest and hopes of heaven. And therefore, let no Christian man who hath covenanted with God to give him the service of his life, think that God will be answered with the sighs and prayers of a dying man : for all that great obligation which lies upon us cannot be transacted in an instant, when we have loaded our souls with sin, and made them empty of virtue ; we cannot so soon grow up to "a perfect man in Christ Jesus." . . . Suffer not there- fore yourselves to be deceived by false prin- ciples and vain confidences: for no man can in a moment root out the long-contracted habits of vice, nor upon his death-bed make use of all that variety of preventing, accompanying, and persevering grace which God gave to man in mercy, because man would need it all, because without it he could not be saved ; nor upon his death-bed can he exercise the duty of mortification, nor cure his drunken- ness then, nor his lust, by any act of Chris- tian discipline, nor "run with patience," nor " resist unto blood," nor " endure with long-sufferance;" but he can pray, and groan, and call to God, and resolve to live well when he is dying. Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying. HENRY MORE, D.D., born 1614. died 16cS7, famous for his learn- ing and piety, was the author of philosophi- cal poems and treatises, theological disser- tations, and Aphorisms. " No one defended the Platonic doctrine, com- bined with the Pythagorean and Cabalistic, with greater learning and subtlety than Cudworth's friend ami colleague, Henry More. . . . He died leaving behind him a name highly celebrated among theologians and philosophers." ENFIELD: Hist. <,f Plnlus., 1840, 546. " More was an open-hearted and sincere Chris- tian philosopher, who studied to establish men in the great principles of religion against atheism." BISHOP BURXKT: Hist, of My Oton Times. We give an extract from An Antidote against Atheism, which was included in his Philosophical Works, Lond., 1662, fol., 4th edit., corrected and much enlarged, Lond., 1712, fol. NATURE OF THE EVIDENCE OF THE EXIST- ENCE OF GOD. When I say that I will demonstrate that there is a God, I do not promise that I will always produce such arguments that the reader shall acknowledge so strong, as he shall be forced to confess that it is utterly impossible that it should be otherwise; but they shall be snch as shall deserve full as- sent, and win full assent from any unpreju- diced mind. For I conceive that we may give full as- sent to that which, notwithstanding, may possibly be otherwise; which I shall illus- trate by several examples : suppose two men got to the top of Mount Athos, and there viewing a stone in the form of an altar with ashes on it, and the footsteps of men on those ashes, or some words, if you will, as Optimo Maximo, or To agnosto Theo, or the like, written or scrawled out upon the ashes ; and one of them should cry out, As- suredly here have been some men that have done this. But the other, more nice than wise, should reply, Nay, it may possibly be otherwise ; for this stone may have natu- rally grown into this very shape, and the seeming ashes may be no ashes, that is, no remainders of any fuel burnt there ; but some unexplicable and imperceptible mo- tions of the air, or other particles of this fluid matter that is active everywhere, have wrought some parts of the matter into the form and nature of ashes, and have fridged RICHARD BAXTER. nnd played about so, that they have also figured those intelligible characters in the same. But would not anybody deem it a piece of weakness, no less than dotage, for the other man one whit to recede from his former apprehension, but as fully as ever to agree with what he pronounced first, not- withstanding this bare possibility of being otherwise ? So of anchors that have been digged up, either in plain fields or mountainous places, as also the Roman urns with ashes and in- scriptions, as Severianus FuL Linus, and the like, or Roman coins with the effigies and names of the Caesars on them, or that which is more ordinary, the skulls of men in every churchyard, with the right figure, and all those necessary perforations for the passing of the vessels, besides those conspicuous hollows for the eyes and rows of teeth, the os stylocides, ethocides, and what not. If a man will say of them that the motions of the particles of the matter, or some hidden spermatic power, has gendered these, both anchors, urns, coins, and skulls, in the ground, he doth but pronounce that which human reason must admit is possible. Nor can any man ever so demonstrate that those coins, anchors, and urns were once the arti- fice of men, or that this or that skull was once a part of a living man, that he shall force an acknowledgment that it is impossi- ble that it should be otherwise. But yet I do not think that any man, without doing manifest violence to his faculties, can at all suspend his assent, but freely and fully agree that this or that skull was once a part of a living man, and that these anchors, urns, and coins were certainly once made by human artifice, notwithstanding the possi- bility of being otherwise. And what I have said of assent is also true in dissent ; for the mind of man, not crazed nor prejudiced, will fully and irreconcilably disagree, by its own natural sagacity, where, notwithstanding, the thing that it doth thus resolvedly and undoubtedly reject, no wit of man can prove impossible to be true. As if we should make such a fiction as this, that Archi- medes, with the same individual body that he had when the soldiers slew him, is now safely intent upon his geometrical figures under ground, at the centre of the earth, far from the noise and din of this world that might disturb his meditations, or distract him in his curious delineations he makes with his rod upon the dust ; which no man living can prove impossible. Yet if any man does not as irreconcilably dissent from such a fable as this, as from any falsehood imaginable, assuredly that man is next door to madness or dotage, or does enormous vio- lence to the free use of his faculties. RICHARD BAXTER, born 1615. died 1691, a divine first of the Church of England, and subsequently a nonconformist, was the author of one hun- dred and sixty-eight works, of which The Saint's Everlasting Rest and the Call to the Unconverted are still in high estimation. A collection of his Practical Works was pub- lished, London, 1707, 4 vols. fol., and other editions appeared, 1838, 4 vols. imp. 8vo, and 1847, 4 vols. imp. 8vo, Works, with a Life of the Author by Rev. W. Orme, 1830, 23 vols. 8vo. After his death was published Reliquiae Baxteriange: A Narrative of his Life and Times, published by Matthew Sylvester, 1696, fol. Boswell tells: "I asked [Dr. Johnson] what works of Richard Baxter's I should read. He said, 'Read any of them: they are all good.'" Another of Johnson's friends tells us that the doc- tor " thought Baxter's Reasons of the Christian Religion contained the best collection of the evi- dences of the divinity of tho Christian system." " Baxter wrote as in the view of eternity ; but generally judicious, nervous, spiritual, and evan- gelical, though often charged with the contrary. He discovers a manly eloquence and the most evi- dent proofs of an amazing genius, with respect to which he may not improperly be called the EngKk Demosthenes.'' DODDRIDGE : Lects. on Preach imj. " Pray read with great attention Baxter's life of himself; it is an inestimable work. There is HO substitute for it in a course of study for a cler- gyman or public mnn : I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity as Baxter's veracity." COLERIDGE. Of Baxter's Life, thus praised, we give two specimens. CONTROVERSY. And this token of my weakness so accom- panied those my younger studies that I was very apt to start up controversies in the way of my practical writings, and also more de- sirous to acquaint the world with all that I took to be the truth, and to assault those books by name which I thought did tend to deceive them, and did contain unsound and dangerous doctrine ; and the reason of all this was, that I was then in the vigour of my youthful apprehensions, and the new appearance of any sacred truth, it was more apt to affect me, and be more highly valued, than afterwards, when commonness had dulled my delight ; and I did not sufficiently discern then how much in most of our con- troversies is verbal, and upon mutual mis- takes. And withal, I knew not how im- patient divines were of being contradicted, nor how it would stir up all their powers to defend what they have once said, and to rise up against the truth which is thus thrust upon them, as the mortal enemy of their honour ; and I knew not how hardly men's minds are changed from their former appre- RICHARD BAXTER. hensions, be the evidence never so plain. And I have perceived that nothing so much hinders the reception of the truth as urging it on men with too harsh importunity, and falling too heavily on their errors; for here- by you engage their honour in the business, and they defend their errors as themselves, and stir up all their wit and ability to oppose you. In controversies, it is fierce opposition which is the bellows to kindle a resisting zeal ; when, if they be neglected, and their opinions lie awhile despised, they usually cool, and come again to themselves. Men are so loath to be drenched with the truth, that I am no more for going that way to work ; and, to confess the truth, I am lately much prone to the contrary extreme, to be too indifferent what men hold, and to keep my judgment to myself, and never to men- tion anything wherein I differ from another on anything which I think I know more than he ; or, at least, if he receive it not presently, to silence it, and leave him to his own opinion ; and I find this effect is mixed according to its causes, which are some good and some bad. The bad causes are, 1. An impatience of men's weakness, and mistak- ing forwardness, and self-conceitedness. 2. An abatement of my sensible esteem of truths, through the long abode of them on my mind. Though my judgment value them, yet it is hard to be equally affected with old and common things as with new and rare ones. The better causes are, 1. That I am much more sensible than ever of the neces- sity of living upon the principles of religion which we are all agreed in, and uniting in these; and how much mischief men that overvalue their own opinions have done by their controversies in the church ; how some have destroyed charity, and some caused schisms by them, and most have hindered godliness in themselves and others, and used them to divert men from the serious prose- cuting of a holy life ; and, as Sir Francis Bacon saith in his Essay of Peace, u that it is one great benefit of church peace and con- cord, that writing controversies is turned into books of practical devotion for increase of piety and virtue." 2. And I find that it is much more for most men's good and edifi- cation to converse with them only in that way of godliness which all are agreed in, and not by touching upon differences to stir up their corruptions, and to tell them of little more of your knowledge than what you find them willing to receive from you as mere learners; and therefore to stay till they crave information of you. We mistake men's diseases when we think there needeth nothing to cure their errors, but only to bring them the evidence of truth. Alas i there are many distempers of mind to be re- moved before men are apt to receive that evidence. And, therefore, that church is happy where order is kept up, and the abili- ties of the ministers command a reverend submission from the hearers, and where all are in Christ's school, in the distinct ranks of teachers and learners ; for in a learning way men are ready to receive the truth, but in a disputing way, they come armed against it with prejudice and animosity. Reliquiae Baxteriance. THE CREDIT DUE TO HISTORT. I am much more cautelous in my belief of history than heretofore ; not that I run into their extreme that will believe nothing because they cannot believe all things. But I am abundantly satisfied by the experience of this age that there is no believing two sorts of men, ungodly men and partial men; though an honest heathen, of no reli- gion, may be believed, where enmity against religion biasseth him not ; yet a debauched Christian, besides his enmity to the power and practice of his own religion, is seldom without some further bias of interest or fac- tion : especially when these concur, and a man is both ungodly and ambitious, espous- ing an interest contrary to a holy, heavenly life, and also factious, embodying himself with a sect or party suited to his spirit and designs, there is no believing his word or oath. If you read any man partially bitter against others, as differing from him in opin- ion, or as cross to his greatness, interest, or designs, take heed how you believe any more than the historical evidence, distinct from his word, compelleth you to believe. The prodigious lies which have been pub- lished in this age in matters of fact, with unblushing confidence, even where thou- sands or multitudes of eye and ear witnesses knew all to be false, doth call men to take heed what history they believe, especially where power and violence affordeth that privilege to the reporter that no man dare answer him, or detect his fraud ; or if they do, their writings are all supprest. As long as men have liberty to examine and contra- dict one another one may partly conjec- ture, by comparing their words, on which side the truth is like to lie. But when great men write history, or flatterers by their appointment, which no man dare con- tradict, believe it but as you are constrained. Yet, in these cases I can freely believe his- tory : 1. If the person show that he is ac- quainted with what he saith. 2. And if he show the evidences of honesty and con- science, and the fear of God (which may be much perceived in the spirit of a writing). 3. If he appear to be impartial and chari- 76 JOHN OWEN. table, and a lover of goodness and of man- kind, and not possessed of malignity, or per- sonal ill-will and malice, nor carried away by faction or personal interest. Conscionable men dare not lie: but faction and interest abate men's tenderness of conscience. And a charitable, impartial heathen may speak truth in a love to truth, and hatred of a lie ; but ambitious malice and false religion will not stick to serve themselves on anything. . . . Sure I am, that as the lies of the Pa- pists, of Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, and Beza, are visibly malicious and impudent, by the common plenary contradicting evi- dence, and yet the multitude of their se- duced ones believe them all, in despite of truth and charity ; so in this age there have been such things written against parties and persons, whom the writers design to make odious, so notoriously false, as you would think that the sense of their honour, at least, should have made it impossible for such men to write. My own eyes have read such words and actions asserted with most vehe- ment, iterated, unblushing confidence ; which abundance of ear-witnesses, even of their own parties, must needs know to have been altogether false: and therefore having myself now written this history of myself, notwithstanding my protestations that I have not in anything wilfully gone against the truth, I expect no more credit from the reader than the self-evidencing light of the matter, with concurrent rational advantages from persons, and things, and other wit- nesses, shall constrain him to, if he be a person that is unacquainted with the author himself, and the other evidences of his ve- racity and credibility. Reliquiae Baxteriance. JOHN OWEN, D.D., a famous Puritan divine, born 1616, died 1683, was the author of many learned theo- logical works, of which the Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, with Preliminary Exercitations, Lond., 1668-84, 4 vols. fol., is perhaps the best known. " Let me again recommend your studious and sustained attention," remarks Dr. Chalmers to his students, " to the Epistle to the Hebrews. ... I promise you a hundred-fold more advnntage from the perusal of this greatest work of John Owen than from the perusal of all that has been written on the subject of the heathen sacrifices. It is a work of gigantic strength as well as gigantic size; and he who hath mastered it is very little short, both in respect to the doctrinal and practical of Christianity, of being an erudite and accomplished theologian." Prelections on Hill's Lects. : Chal- wers't Poith. Works, ix. 282. THE MrsTERr OF THE INCARNATION. Let all vain imaginations cease: there is nothing left unto the sons of men but either to reject the divine person of Christ as many do unto their own destruction or humbly to adore the mystery of infinite wisdom and grace therein. And it will re- quire a condescending charity to judge that those do really believe the incarnation of the Son of God who live not in the admira- tion of it, as the most adorable effect of di- vine wisdom. The glory of the same mystery is else- where testified unto, Ileb. i. 13: "God hath spoken unto us by his Son, by whom also he made the worlds; who, being the bright- ness of his glory, and the express image of his person, upholding all things by the word of his power, by himself purged our sins." That he purged our sins by his death, and the oblation of himself therein unto God, is acknowledged. That this should be done by him by whom the worlds were made, who is the essential brightness of the divine glory, and the express image of the person of the Father therein, who upholds, rules, sustains all things by the word of his power, whereby God purchased his church with his own blood (Acts xx. 28), is that wherein he will be admired unto eternity. See Phil, ii. 6-9. In Isaiah (chap, vi.) there is a represen- tation made of him as on a throne, filling the temple with the train of his glory. The Son of God it was who was so represented, and that as he was to fill the temple of his human nature with divine glory, when the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him bodily. And herein the seraphim, which adminis- tered unto him, had six wings, with two whereof they covered their faces, as not being able to behold or look into the glo- rious mystery of his incarnation : verse 2, 3: John xii. 39-41, ii. 19; Col. ii. 9.' But when the same ministering spirits, under the name of cherubim, attended the throne of God, in the administration of his provi- dence as unto the disposal and government of the world, they had four wings only, and covered not their faces, but steadily beheld the glory of it : Ezek. i. 6. x. 2, 3. This is the glory of the Christian religion, the basis and foundation that bears the whole superstructure, the root whereon it grows. This is its life and soul, that wherein it differs from, and inconceivably excels, whatever was in true religion before, or whatever any false religion pretended unto. Religion, in its first constitution, in the state of pure, uncorrupted nature, was or- derly, beautiful, and glorious. Man being made in the image of God, was fit and able RALPH CUD WORTH. 77 to glorify him as God. But whereas, what- ever perfection God had communicated unto our nature, he had not united it unto him- self in a personal union, the fabric of it quickly fell unto the ground. Want of this foundation made it obnoxious unto ruin. God manifested herein, that no gracious relation between him and our nature could be stable and permanent, unless our nature was assumed into personal union and sub- sistence with himself. This is the only rock and assured foundation of the relation of the church unto God, which now can never utterly fail. Our nature is eternally secured in that union, and we ourselves (as we shall see) thereby. " In him all tilings consist" (Col. i. 17, 18); wherefore, what- ever beauty and glory there was in the re- lation that was between God and man, and the relation of all things unto God by man, in the preservation whereof natural religion did consist, it had no beauty nor glory in comparison of this which doth excel, or the manifestation of God iti the flesh, the ap- pearance and subsistence of the divine and human natures in the same single individual person. The Person and Glory of Christ. RALPH CUDWORTH, born 1617, died 1688, published in 1678, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, fol. ; new editions, Lond., 1743, 2 vols. 4to, 1820, 4 vols. 8vo. " It contains the greatest mass of learning and argument that ever was brought to hear on athe- ism. A thousand folio pages, full of learned quo- tations, and references to all heathen and sacred antiquity, demonstrate the fertility and laborious diligence of the author. And whoever wishes to know all that can be said respecting liberty and necessity, fate and free-will, eternal reason and justice, and arbitrary omnipotence, has only to digest the Intellectual System." ORME: Biblio- theca Hiblica. GOD, THOUGH INCOMPREHENSIBLE NOT IN- CONCEIVABLE. It doth not at all follow because God is incomprehensible to our finite and narrow understandings, that he is utterly inconceiv- able by them, so that they cannot frame any idea of him at all, and he may therefore be concluded to be a non-entity. For it is certain that we cannot comprehend ourselves, and that we have not such an adequate and com- prehensive knowledge of the essence of any substantial thing as that we can perfectly master and conquer it. It was a truth, though abused by the sceptics, akatalepton ti, something incomprehensible in the essence of the lowest substances. For even body itself, which the atheists think themselves so well acquainted with, because they can feel it with their fingers, and which is the only substance that they acknowledge either in themselves or in the universe, hath such puzzling difficulties and entanglements in the speculation of it, that they can never be able to extricate themselves from. \Ye might instance, also, in some accidental things, as time and motion. Truth is bigger than our minds, and we are not the same with it, but have a lower participation only of the intellectual nature, and are rather apprehenders than comprehenders thereof. This is indeed one badge of our creaturely state, that we have not a perfectly compre- hensible knowledge, or such as is adequate and commensurate to the essences of things ; from whence we ought to be led to this acknowledgment, that there is another Per- fect Mind or Understanding Being above us in the universe, from which our imperfect minds were derived, and upon which they do depend. Wherefore, if we can have no idea or conception of anything whereof we have not a full and perfect comprehension, then can we not have an idea or conception of the nature of any substance. But though we do not comprehend all truth, as if one mind were above it, or master of it, and cannot penetrate into, and look quite through the nature of everything, yet may rational souls frame certain ideas and conceptions of whatsoever is in the orb of being proportion- ate to their own nature, and sufficient for their purpose. And though we cannot fully comprehend the Deity, nor exhaust the in- h'niteness of its perfection, yet may we have an idea of a Being absolutely perfect; such a one as is nostro modulo conformis, agree- able and proportionate to our measure and scantling; as we may approach near to a mountain, and touch it with our hands, though we cannot encompass it all round, and enclasp it within our arms. Whatso- ever is in its own nature absolutely uncon- ceivable, is nothing; but not whatsoever is not fully comprehensible by our imperfect understandings. It is true, indeed, that the Deity is more incomprehensible to us than anything else whatsoever, which proceeds from the fulness of its being and perfection, and from the transcendency of its brightness ; but for the very same reason may it be said also in some sense, that it is more knowable and conceiv- able than anything. As the sun, though by reason of its excessive splendour it dazzle our weak sight, yet is it, notwithstanding, far more visible also than any of the nebur loses stella, the small misty stars. Where there is more of light there is more visibility so, where there is more of entity, reality, and perfection, there is more of conccpti- ABRAHAM COWLEY. bility and cognoscibility ; such a thing fill- ing up the mind more, and acting more strongly upon it. Nevertheless, because our weak and imperfect minds are lost in the vust immensity and redundancy of the Deity, and overcome with its transcendent light and dazzling brightness, therefore hath it to us an appearance of darkness and incompre- hensibility : as the unbounded expansion of light, in the clear transparent ether, hath to us the apparition of an azure obscurity ; which yet is not an absolute thing in itself, 1m t only relative to our sense, and a mere fancy in us. The incomprehensibility of the Deity is so far from being an argument against the reality of its existence, as that it is most certain, on the contrary, that were there nothing incom- prehensible to us. who are but contemptible pieces, and small atoms of the universe; were there no other being in the world but what our finite understandings could span or fathom, and encompass round about, look through and through, have a commanding view of, and perfectly conquer and subdue under them, then could there be nothing absolutely and infinitely perfect, that is, no God. . . . And nature itself plainly intimates to us that there is some such absolutely perfect Being, which, though not inconceivable, yet is incomprehensible to our finite understand- ings, by certain passions, which it hath im- planted in us, that otherwise would want an object to display themselves upon ; namely, those of devout veneration, adoration, and admiration, together with a kind of ecstasy and pleasing horror; which, in the silent language of nature, seem to speak thus much to us, that there is some object in the world so much bigger and vaster than our mind and thoughts, that it is the very same to them that the ocean is to narrow vessels ; so that, when they have taken into them- selves as much as they can thereof by con- templation, and filled up all their capacity, there is still an immensity of it left without, which cannot enter in for want of room to receive it, and therefore must be apprehended after some other strange and more mysteri- ous manner, namely, by their being plunged into it, and swallowed up or lost in it. To conclude, the Deity is indeed incomprehen- sible to our finite and imperfect understand- ings, but not inconceivable ; and therefore there is no ground at all for this atheistic pretence to make it a non-entity. True Intellectual System of the Universe. ABRAHAM COWLEY, M.D., born 1618, died 1667, once famous as a poet, was esteemed one of the best prose writers of his time. His essays are dissertations on Liberty. Solitude, Obscurity, Agriculture, The Garden, Greatness, Avarice, The Dan- gers of an Honest Man in Much Company, The Shortness of Life and Uncertainty of Riches, The Danger of Procrastination, Of Myself. First edition of his Works, Lond., 1656, fol. Prose Works, including his Es- says in Prose and Verse, Lond., 1826, cr. Svo, large paper 8vo. "The Essays must not be forgotten. What is said by Sprat of his conversation, that no man could draw from it any suspicion of his excellence in poetry, may be applied to these compositions. No author ever kept his verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equability, which has never yet obtained its due commendation. Nothing is far-sought, or hard- laboured ; but all is easy without feebleness, and familiar without grossness." DR. JOHNSON : Lives of the Eny/igh Poets. OF OBSCURITY. What a brave privilege it is to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving and from pay- ing all kinds of ceremonies ! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime for two good and agreeable friends to travel up and down together, in places where they are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It was the case of ^Eneasand his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Car- thage. Venus herself A veil of thickened air around them cast, That none might know, or see them, as they pass'd. The common story of Demosthenes' con- fession, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tanker-woman say, as he passed, " This is that Demosthenes," is wonderfully ridiculous from so solid an orator. I my- self have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any) ; but am so far from finding it any pleasure that it only makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Deniocritus relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the good fortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him ; and Epi- curus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend, Metrodorus ; after whose death, making, in one of his letters, a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at lost, that he thought it no dispar- agement to those great felicities of their life, that in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but al- ABRAHAM COWLEY. most without being heard of; and yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quo- tidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that ; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord- chief-justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be anyways extraordinary. It was as often said, " This is that Bucephalus," or " This is that Inci- tatus," when they were led prancing through the streets, as " This is that Alexander,'' or '* This is that Domitian ;" and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire. I love and commend a true good fame, be- cause it is the shadow of virtue: not that it doth any good to the body which it accom- panies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and like that of St. Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Avistides; but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives; what it is after his death I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three .agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is es- teemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody ; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit) : this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him, this mitta persona, I take him to have been more happy in his part than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise ; nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had not played his part very well. Essays. OF PROCRASTINATION. I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world, and con- secrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly in- clined me, and from which fortune, like a stepmother, has so long detained me. But nevertheless (you say, which is but cerngo mera, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. But you say) you would ad- vise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me (according to the saying of that person whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another man) cum dignitate otium. This were excel- lent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there is no fooling with life when it is once turned beyond forty: the seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate after-game ; it is a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes, and recover all ; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine. There is some help for all the defects of fortune ; for if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epicurus writes a letter to Idomeneus (who was then a very powerful, wealthy, and, it seems, bountiful person), to recommend to him, who had made so many men rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, whom he desired might be made a rich man too : " but I intreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have done to many less deserving per- sons ; but in the most gentlemanly manner of obliging him, which is, not to add any- thing to his estate, but to take something from his desires." The sum of this is, that for the uncertain hopes of some conveniences, we ought not to defer the execution of a work that is necessary ; especially when the use of those things which we would stay for may other- wise be supplied, but the loss of time never recovered ; nay, farther yet, though we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, though we were sure of getting never BO much by continuing the game, yet, when the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so precious, " le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle ;" after having been long tossed in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us to our port, it is no matter for the want of steamers and top-gallants : " utere veils, Totos pande sinus." A gentleman, in our late civil wars, when his quarters were beaten up by the enemy, was taken prisoner, and lost his life after- wards only by staying to put on a band and adjust his periwig: he would escape like a 80 WALTER CHARLETON. person of quality, or not at all, and died the noble martyr of ceremony and gentility. Essays. WALTER CHARLETON, M.D., born 1619, and died 1707, was the author of Chorea Gigantum : or, the most famous antiquity of Great Britain, vulgarly called Stone lleng, standing on Salisbury Plain, restored to the Danes, Lond., 1633, 4to ; Two Philosophical Discourses : the first concerning the Different Wits of Men, the second concerning the Mysteries of Vint- ners, 1608, 8vo (again 1675, 1692), and other works. THE READY AND NIMBLE WIT. Such as are endowed therewith have a certain extemporary acuteness of conceit, accompanied with a quick delivery of their thoughts, so as they can at pleasure enter- tain their auditors with facetious passages and fluent discourses even upon slight occa- sions ; but being generally impatient of sec- ond thoughts and deliberations, they seem fitter for pleasant colloquies and drollery than for counsel and design ; like fly-boats, good only in fair weather and shallow waters, and then, too, more I'or pleasure than traf- fic. If they be, as for the most part they are, narrow in the hold and destitute of bal- last sufficient to counterpoise their large sails, they reel with every blast of argument, and are often driven upon the sands of ci "non- plus;" hut where favoured with the breath of common applause, they sail smoothly and proudly, and, like the city pageants, dis- charge whole volleys of squibs and crackers, and skirmish most furiously. But take them from their familiar and private conversation into grave and severe assemblies, whence all extemporary flashes of wit, all fantastic allusions, all personal reflections, are ex- cluded, and there engage them in an en- counter with solid wisdom, not in light skirmishes, but a pitched field of long and serious debate concerning any important question, and then you shall soon discover their weakness, and contemn that barrenness of understanding which is incapable of struggling with the difficulties of apodictical knowledge, and the deduction of truth from a long series of reasons. Again, if those very concise sayings and lucky repartees, wherein they are so happy, and which at first hearing were entertained with so much of pleasure and admiration, be written down, and brought to a strict examination of their pertinency, coherence, and verity, how shal- low, how frothy, how forced will they be found ! how much will they lose of that ap- plause which their tickling of the ear and present flight through the imagination had gained ! In the greatest part, therefore, of such men, you ought to expect no deep or continued river of wit, but only a few flashes, and those, too, not altogether free from mud and putrefaction. THE SLOW BUT SURE WIT. Some heads there are of a certain close and reserved constitution, which makes them at first sight to promise as little of the vir- tue wherewith they are endowed, as the for- mer appear to be above the imperfections to which they are subject. Somewhat slow they are, indeed, of both conception and ex- pression ; yet no whit the less provided with solid prudence. When they are en- gaged to speak their tongue doth not readily interpret the dictates of their mind, so that their language comes, as it were, dropping from their lips, even where they are encour- aged by familiar entreaties, or provoked by the smartness of jests, which sudden and nimble wits have newly darted at them. Costive they are also in invention ; so that when they would deliver somewhat solid and remarkable, they are long in seeking what is fit, and as long in determining in what manner and words to utter it. But after a little consideration, they penetrate deeply into the substance of things and marrow of business, and conceive proper and emphatic words, by which to express their sentiments. Barren they are not. but a little heavy and retentive. Their gifts lie deep and concealed ; but being furnished with notions, not airy and umbratil ones, borrowed from the pedantism of the schools, but true and useful, and if they have been manured with good learning, and the habit of exercising their pen, oftentimes they pro- duce many excellent conceptions, worthy to be transmitted to posterity. Having, how- ever, an aspect very like to narrow and dull capacities, at first sight most men take them to be really such, and strangers look upon them with the eyes of neglect and contempt. Hence it comes, that excellent parts remain- ing unknown, often want the favour and patronage of great persons, whereby they might be redeemed from obscurity, and raised to employments answerable to their faculties, and crowned with honours pro- portionate to their merits. The best course, therefore, for these to overcome that eclipse which prejudice usually brings upon them, is to contend against their own modesty, and either by frequent converse with noble and discerning spirits to enlarge the win- dows of their minds, and dispel those clouds of reservedness that darken the lustre of JOHN EVELYN. 81 their faculties ; or, by writing on some new and useful subject, to lay open their talent, so that the world may be convinced of their intrinsic; value. Two Philosophical Discourses. JOHN EVELYN, born 1620, died 1706, one of the best and most accomplished men in the vicious court of Charles II., kept a chronicle of public events occurring around him, which will be found in Memoirs illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn. Esq., comprising his Diary from 1041 to 1705-6, and a selec- tion of his familiar Letters, Lond., 1818, 2 vols. 4to, and later editions. By Evelyn's direction the following in- scription was placed upon his tombstone: ''That living in an age of extraordinary events and revolutions, he had learned from thence this truth, which he desired might be thus communicated to posterity: That all is vanity which is not honest, and that there is no solid wisdom but real piety." "His life," remarks Horace Walpole, "which was extended to eighty-six years, was a course of enquiry, study, curiosity, instruction, and benevo- lence. The works of the Creator, and the mimic labours of the creature, were all objects of his pur- suit. He unfolded the perfection of the one, and assisted the imperfection of the other. He adored from examination ; was a courtier that flattered only by informing his prince, and by pointing out what was worthy for him to countenance; and was really the neighbour of the gospel, for there was no man that might not have been the better for him." Cataloyue of Engravers. THE GREAT FIRE IN LOXDOV. 1666. 2d Sept. This fatal night about ten began that deplorable fire near Fish Streete in London. 3d. The fire continuing, after dinner I took coach with my wife and sonn and went to the Bank side in Southwark, where we beheld that dismal spectacle, the whole citty in dreadful flames near y e water side; all the houses from the Bridge, all Thames, and upwards towards Cheapeside, downe to the Three Cranes, were now consum'd. The fire having continued all this night (if I may call that night which was light as day for 10 miles round about, after a dread- ful manner), when conspiring with a fierce eastern wind in a very drie season, I went on foote to the same place, and saw the whole south part of y e burning from Cheapside to y e Thames, and all along Cornehill (for it kindl'd back against y e wind as well as for- ward), Tower Streete, Fenchurch Streete, Gracious Streete, and so along to Bainard's. Castle, and was now taking hold of St. G Panic's church, to which the scaffolds con- tributed exceedingly. The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonish'd, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirr'd to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or scene but crying out and lamentation, run- ning about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting to save even their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them, so as it burned both in breadth and length, the churches, publiq halls, exchange, hospitals, monuments, and ornaments, leap- ing after a prodigious manner from house to house and streete to streete, at greate dis- tances one from y other ; for y e heate with a long set of faire and warme weather had even ignited the air, and prepar'd the mate- rials to conceive the fire, which devour'd, after an incredible manner, houses, furni- ture, and everything. Here we saw the Thames cover'd with goods floating, all the barges and boates laden with what some had time and courage to save, as, on y e other, y e carts, &c., carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strew'd with moveable of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter both people and what goods they could get away. Oh the miserable and ca- lamitous spectacle ! such as haply the world had not scene the like since the foundation of it, nor be outdone till the universal con- flagnition. All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, the light scene above 40 miles round about for many nights. God grant my eyes may never behold the like, now seeing above 10,000 houses all in one flame: the noise, and cracking, and thunder of the impetuous flames, y e shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflam'd, that at last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forc'd to stand still and let y e flames burn on, w ch they did for neere two miles in length and one in bredth. The clouds of smoke were dismall, and reach'd upon computation neer 50 miles in length. Thus I left it this afternoone burning, a resemblance of Sodom or the last day. London was, but is no more! 4th. The burning still rages, and it was now gotten as far as the Inner Temple, all Fleete Streete, the Old Bailey, Ludgate Hill, Warwick Lane, Newgate, Paul's Chain, Watling Streete, now flaming, and most of it reduc'd to ashes ; the stones of Paules flew like granados, y e mealting lead running downe the streetes in a streame, and the very pavements glowing with fiery rednesse, so as no horse nor man was able to tread on them, and the demolition had stopp'd all the pas- 82 JOHN EVELYN. sages, so that no help could be applied. The eastern wind still more impetuously drove the flames forward. Nothing but y e Al- mighty power of God was able to stop them, for vame was y e help of man. Sept. 5th. It crossed towards Whitehall : Oh the confusion there was then at that court ! It pleased his Ma 1 * to command me among y e rest to looke after the quenching of Fetter Lane end, to preserve if possible, that part of Holborn, whilst the rest of y e gentlemen tooke their several posts (for now they began to bestir themselves, and not till now, who hitherto had stood as men intoxi- cated, with their hands acrosse), and began to consider that nothing was likely to put a stop but the blowing up of so many houses as might make a wider gap than any had yet ben made by the ordinary method of pulling them down with engines; this some stout seamen proposed early enough to have sav'd near y e whole citty, but this some tena- cious and avaritious men. aldermen, &o., would not permit, because their houses must have ben of the first. It was therefore now commanded to be practised, and my concern being particularly for the hospital of St. Bartholomew, neere Smithfield, where I had many wounded and sick men, made me the more diligent to promote it, nor was my care for the Savoy lesse. It now pleas'd God, by abating the wind, and by the Indus- trie of y e people, infusing a new spirit into tliem, that the fury of it began sensibly to abate about noone, so as it came no farther than y e Temple westward, nor than y e en- trance of Smithfield north. But continu'd all this day and night so impetuous towards Cripplegate and the Tower as made us all clespaire; it also broke out againe in the Temple, but the courage of the multitude persisting, and many houses being blown up, such gaps and desolations were soone made, as with the former three days' consump- tion, the back fire did not so vehemently urge upon the rest as formerly. There was yet no standing neere the burning and glow- ing ruines by neere a furlong's space. The coale and wood wharfes and maga- zines of oyle, rosin, &c., did infinite mis- cheife, so as the invective which a little before I had dedicated to his Ma'?, and ptiblish'd, giving warning what might probably be the issue of suffering those shops to be in the citty, was look'd on as a prophecy. The poore inhabitants were dispers'd about St. George's Fields, and Moorefields, as far as Ilighgate, and severall miles in circle, some under tents, some under miser- able hutts and hovells, many without a rag or any necessary utensills, bed or board, who, from delicatenesse, riches, and easy ac- commodations in stately and well furnish'd houses, were now reduc'd to extreamest misery and poverty. In this calamitous condition I return'd with a sad heart to my house, blessing and adoring the mercy of God to me and mine, who in the midst of all this ruine was like Lot, in my little Zoar, safe and sound. 7th. I went this morning on foote f m Whitehall as far as London Bridge, thro' the late Fleete Street, Ludgate Hill, by St. Paules, Cheapeside, Exchange, Bishopgate, Aldersgate. and out to Moorefields, thence thro' Cornehill, &c., with extraordinary diffi- culty, clambering over heaps of yet smoking rubbish, and frequently mistaking where I was. The ground under my feete was so hot that it even burnt the soles of my shoes. In the meantime his Ma'r got to the Tower by water, to demolish y e houses about the graff, which being built intirely about it, had they taken fire and attack'd the White Tower where the magazine of powder lay, would undoubtedly not only have beaten downe and destroy'd all y e bridge, but sunke and torne the vessells in y" river, and render'd y e demolition beyond all expres sion for several miles about the countrey. At my return I was infinitely concern'd to find that goodly church St. Paules now a sad ruine, and that beautiful portico (for structure comparable to any in Europe, as not long before repair'd by the king) now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split asunder, and nothing remaining intire but the inscription in the architrave, showing by whom it was built, which had not one letter of it defac'd. It was astonishing to see what immense stones the heat had in a manner calcin'd, so that all y ornaments, columns, freezes, and projectures of massic Portland stone flew off, even to y" very roofe, where a sheet of lead covering a great space was totally mealted ; the ruines of the vaulted roofe falling broke into St. Faith's, which being fillel with the maga- zines of bookes belonging to y e stationers, and carried thither for safety, they were all consum'd, burning for a week following. It is also observable, that the lead over y e altar at y e east end was untouch'd, and among the divers monuments, the body of one bishop remain'd intire. Thus lay in ashes that most venerable church, one of the most antient pieces of early piety in y e Christian world, besides neere 100 more. The lead, yron worke, bells, plate, &c., mealted ; the exquisitely wrought Mercers Chapell, the sumptuous Exchange, y e august fabnq of Christ Church, all y e rest of the Companies Halls, sumptuous buildings, arches, all in dust ; the fountaines dried up and ruin'd, whilst the very waters re- main'd boiling; the vorago's of subterranean ALGERNON SIDNEY. 83 collars, wells, and dungeons, formerly ware- houses, still burning in stench and dark clouds of smoke, so that in 5 or 6 miles, in traversing about, I did not see one load of timber unconsum'd, nor many stones but what were calcin'd white as snow. The people who now walk'd about y e mines ap- pear'd like men in a dismal desarfc, or rather in some greate citty laid waste by a cruel enemy. Evelyn's Diary. ALGERNON SIDNEY, son of Robert, Earl of Leicester, born about 1621, illegally convicted and executed for alleged complicity in the Rye House Plot, 1683, was the author of Discourses concern- ing Government: Published from the au- thor's original MS., Lond., 1698, fol. "Sidney's Discourses on Government, not pub- lished till 1R98, are a diffuse reply to Filnier. They contain indeed many chapters full of his- torical learning and judicious reflection ; yet the constant anxiety to refute that which needs no refutation renders them a little tedious. Sidney does not condemn a limited monarchy like the English, but his partiality is for a form of republic which would be deemed too aristocratical for our popular theories." HALLAJI : Lit. Hint, of Europe, 4th ed., 1854, iii. 440. " Not a syllable can we find that shows the illus- trious author to have regarded the manner in which the people were represented as of any importance." LORD BROUGHAM: Polit. P/iilos., Part 3, 2d ed., 1849, 88. LIBERTY AND GOVERNMENT. Such as enter into society must, in some degree, diminish their liberty. Reason leads them to this. No one man or family is able to provide that which is requisite for their convenience or security, whilst every one has an equal right to everything, and none acknowledges a superior to determine the controversies that upon such occasions must continually arise, and will probably be so many and so great, that mankind cannot bear them. Therefore, though I do not believe that ISellarmine said a common- wealth could not exercise its power; for he could not be ignorant that Rome and Athens did exercise theirs, and that all the regular kingdoms of the world are commonwealths ; yet there is nothing of absurdity in saying, that man cannot continue in the perpetual and entire fruition of the liberty that God hath given him. The liberty of one is thwarted by that of another; and whilst they are all equal, none will yield to any, otherwise than by a general consent. This is the ground of all just governments; for violence or fraud can create no right ; and the same consent gives the form to them all, how much soever they differ from each other. Some small numbers of men, living within the precincts of one city, have, as it were, cast into a common stock the right which they had of governing themselves and chil- dren, and, by common consent joining in one body, exercised such power over every single person as seemed beneficial to the whole; and this men call perfect democracy. Others choose rather to be governed by a. select number of such as most excelled in wisdom and virtue; and this, according to the signification of the word, was called aristocracy ; or when one man excelled all others, the government was put into hia hands, under the name of monarchy. But the wisest, best, and far the greatest part of mankind, rejecting these simple species, did form governments mixed or composed of the three, as shall be proved hereafter, which commonly received their respective denomi- nation from the part that prevailed, and did deserve praise or blame as they were well or ill proportioned. It were a folly hereupon to say, that the liberty for which we contend is of no use to us, since we cannot endure the solitude, bar- barity, weakness, want, misery, and dangers that accompany it whilst we live alone, nor can enter into a society without resigning it; for the choice of that society, and the liberty of framing it according to our own wills, for our own good, is all we seek. This remains to us whilst we form governments that we ourselves are judges how far it is good for us to recede from our natural liberty ; which is of so great importance, that from thence only we can know whether we are freemen or slaves; and the difference be- tween the best government and the worst doth wholly depend on a right or wrong ex- ercise of that power. If men are naturally free, such as have wisdom and understand- ing will always frame good governments : but if they are born under the necessity of a perpetual slavery, no wisdom can be of use to them ; but all must forever depend upon the will of their lords, how cruel, mad, proud, or wicked soever they be. . . . The Grecians, amongst others who fol- lowed the light of reason, knew no other original title to the government of a nation than that wisdom, valour, and justice which was beneficial to the people. These qualities gave beginning to those governments which we call Heroum Regna ; and the veneration paid to such as enjoyed them proceeded from a grateful source of the good received from them: they were thought to be descended from the gods, who in fortune and benefi- cence surpassed other men : the same at- tended their descendants, till they came to 84 BLAISE PASCAL. abuse their power, and by their vices showed themselves like to, or worse than others, who could best perform their duty. Upon the same grounds we may conclude that no privilege is peculiarly annexed to any form of government ; but that all magis- trates are equally the ministers of God, who perform the work for which they are insti- tuted ; and that the people which institutes them may proportion, regulate, and termi- nate their power as to time, measure, and number of persons, as seems most conveni- ent to themselves, which can be no other than their own good. For it cannot be imagined that a multitude of people should send for Nnnm, or any other person to whom they owed nothing, to reign over them, that he might live in glory and pleasure; or for any other reason than that it might be good for them and their posterity. This shows the work of all magistrates to be always and everywhere the same, even the doing of justice, and procuring the welfare of those that create them. This we learn from com- mon sense: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the best human authors, lay it as an immovable foundation, upon which they build their arguments relating to matters of that nature. Discourses on Government. BLAISE PASCAL, famous as a mathematician and natural philosopher, and also eminent for his piety, was born at Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France, 1623, and died 1662. He is best known by his Provincial Letters, and his Thoughts upon Religion, and upon some other subjects. " His powers of mind were such as have rarely been bestowed on any of the children of men ; and the vehemence of the zeal which animated him was but too well proved by the cruel penance* and vigils under which his macerated frame sunk into an early grave. His spirit was the spirit of Saint Bernard: but the delicacy of his wit, the purity, the energy, the simplicity of his rhetoric [in the Provincial Letters], had never been equalled, ex- cept by the grent masters of Attic eloquence. All Europe read and admired, laughed and wept. The Jesuits attempted to reply, but their fetb!e answers were received by the public with shouts of mockery." Lono MACAULAY: Hint, of Eny., i., ch. vi. ' The Thoughts of Pnscal nre to be ranked, ns a monument of his genius, above the ' Provincial Letters,' though some have averted the contrary. They burn with an intense light ; condensed in expression, sublime, energetic, rapid, they hurry away the reader, till he is scarcely nhle or willing to distinguish the sophisms from the truth they contain.' HALLAM: Litrod. to Lit. of Europe. The following thoughts are very impres- sive : A SERIOUS EXPOSTULATION WITH UNBE LIEVERS. The immortality of the soul is a thing which so deeply concerns, so infinitely im- ports us, that we must have utterly lost our feeling to be altogether cold and remiss in our inquiries about it. And all our actions or designs ought to bend so very different a way, according as we are encouraged or forbidden to embrace the hope of eternal rewards, that it is impossible for us to pro- ceed with judgment and discretion, other- wise than as we keep this point always in view, which ought to be our ruling object arid final aim. Thus it is our highest interest, no less than our principal duty, to get light into a subject on which our whole conductdepends. And therefore, in the number of wavering and unsatisfied men, I make the greatest difference imaginable between those who labour with all their force to obtain instruc- tion, and those who live without giving themselves any trouble, or as much as any thought in this affair. I cannot but be touched with a hearty compassion for those who sincerely groan under this dissatisfaction ; who look upon it as the greatest of misfortunes, and who spare no pains to deliver themselves from it, by making these researches their chief employment and most serious study. But as for those who pass their life without re- flecting on its issue, and who, for this reason alone, because they find not in themselves a convincing testimony, refuse to seek it elsewhere, and to examine to the bottom, whether the opinion proposed be such as we are wont to entertain by popular simplicity and credulity, or as such, though obscure in itself, yet is built on solid and immovable foundations, I consider them after quite an- other manner. The carelessness which they betray in an affair where their person, their interest, their whole eternity is embarked, rather provokes my resentment than engages my pity. Nay, it strikes me with amaze- ment and astonishment: it is a monster to my apprehension. I speak not this as trans- ported with the pious zeal of a spiritual and rapturous devotion : on the contrary, I affirm that the love of ourselves, the interest of mankind, and the most simple and art- less reason, do naturally inspire us with these sentiments; and that to see thus far is not to exceed the sphere of unrefined, un- educated men. It requires no great elevation of soul to observe that nothing in this world is pro- ductive of true contentment ; that our pleas- ures are vain and fugitive, our troubles innumerable and perpetual : and that, after all. death, which threatens us every moment, BLAISE PASCAL. 85 must, in the compass of a few years (per- haps of a few days), put us into the eternal condition of happiness, or misery, or nothing. Between us and these three great periods, or states, no barrier is interposed but life, the most brittle thing in all nature ; and the happiness of heaven being certainly not de- signed for those who doubt whether they have an immortal part to enjoy it, such per- sons have nothing left but the miserable chance of annihilation, or of hell. There is not any reflection which can have more reality than this, as there is none which has greater terror. Let us set the bravest face on our condition, and play the heroes as artfully as we can ; yet see here the issue which attends the goodliest life upon earth. It is in vain for men to turn aside their thoughts from this eternity which awaits them, as if they were able to destroy it by denying it a place in their imagination : it subsists in spite of them ; it advanceth un- observed ; and death, which is to draw the curtain from it, will in a short time infalli- bly reduce them to the dreadful necessity of being forever nothing, or forever miser- able. We have here a doubt of the most affright- ing consequence, and which, therefore, to entertain, may be well esteemed the most grievous of misfortunes: but, at the same time, it is our indispensable duty not to lie under it without struggling for deliverance. He then who doubts, and yet seeks not to be resolved, is equally unhappy and unjust: but if withal he appears easy and composed, if he freely declares his indifference, nay, if he takes a vanity of professing it, and seems to make this most deplorable condi- tion the subject of his pleasure and joy, I have not words to fix a name on so extrava- gant a creature. Where is the very possi- bility of entering into these thoughts and resolutions? What delight is there in ex- pecting misery without end? What vanity in finding one's self encompassed with im- penetrable darkness ? Or what consolation in despairing forever of a comforter? To sit down with some sort of acquies- cence under so fatal an ignorance is a thing unaccountable beyond all expression ; and they who live with such a disposition ought to be made sensible of its absurdity and stupidity, by having their inward reflections laid open to them, that they may grow wise by the prospect of their own folly. For behold how men are wont to reason while they obstinately remain thus ignorant of what they are, and refuse all methods of in- struction and illumination : " Who has sent me into the world I know not ; what the world is I know not, nor what I am myself. I am under an astonishing and terrifying ignorance of all things. I know not what my body is, what my senses, or my soul : this very part of me which thinks what I speak, which reflects upon everything else, and even upon itself, yet is as mere a stranger to its own nature as the dullest thing I carry about me. I behold these frightful spaces of the universe with which I am encompassed, and I find myself chained to one little corner of the vast extent, without understanding why I am placed in this seat rather than in any other; or why this moment of time given me to live was assigned rather at such a point than at any other of the whole eter- nity which was before me, or of all that which is to come after me. I see nothing but infinities on all sides, which devour and swallow me up like an atom, or like a shadow, which endures but a single instant, and is never to return. The sum of my knowledge is that I must shortly die ; but that which I am most ignorant of is this very death, which I feel unable to decline. "As I know not whence I came, so J know not whither I go ; only this I know, that at my departure out of the world I must either fall forever into nothing, or into the hands of an incensed God, without being capable of deciding which of these two conditions shall eternally be my portion. Such is my state, full of weakness, obscurity, and wretch- edness. And from all this I conclude that I ought, therefore, to pass all the days of my life without considering what is here- after to befall me ; and that I have nothing to do but to follow my inclinations without reflection or disquiet, in doing all that which, if what men say of a miserable eter- nity prove true, will infallibly plunge me into it. It is possible I might find some light to clear up my doubts ; but I shall not take a minute's pains, nor stir one foot in the search of it. On the contrary, I am re- solved to treat those with scorn and derision who Labour in this inquiry and care and so to run without fear or foresight upon the trial of the grand event ; permitting myself to be led softly on to death, utterly uncer- tain as to the eternal issue of my future condition." In earnest, it is a glory to religion to have so unreasonable men for its professed enemies ; and their opposition is of so little danger, that it serves to illustrate the prin- cipal truths which our religion teaches. For the main scope of Christian faith is to estab- lish those two principles, the corruption of nature and the redemption by Jesus Christ. And these opposers, if they are of no use towards demonstrating the truth of the re- demption by the sanctity of their lives, yet 86 STEPHEN CHARNOCK. are at least admirably useful in shewing the corruption of nature, by so unnatural sen- timents and suggestions. STEPHEN CHARNOCK, a Nonconformist divine, born 1628, died ] 680. was the author of some of the greatest of uninspired productions, Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God, Lond., 1684, fol., and later editions. " Perspicuity and depth ; metaphysical sublimity and evangelical simplicity; immense learning, but irrefragable reasoning, conspire to render this per- formance one of the most inestimable productions that ever did honour to the sanctified judgment and genius of a human being." TOPLADY. " Mr. Charnock with his masculine style and inexhaustible vein of thought." HEHVEY. OF GOD'S KNOWLEDGE. God hath an infinite knowledge and un- derstanding. All knowledge. Omnipres- ence, which before we spake of, respects his essence; omniscience respects his under- standing, according to our manner of con- ception. This is clear in Scripture ; hence God is called a God of knowledge (1 Sam. ii. 3), "the Lord is a God of knowledge," Heb. knowledges, in the plural number, of all kind of knowledge; it is spoken there to quell man's pride in his own reason and parts ; what is the knowledge of man but a spark to the whole element of fire, a grain of dust, and worse than nothing, in compari- son of the knowledge of God, as his essence is in comparison of the essence of God? All kind of knowledge. He knows what angels know, what man knows, and infinitely more; he knows him- self, his own operations, all his creatures, the notions and thoughts of them ; he is understanding above understanding, mind above mind, the mind of minds, the light of lights ; this the Greek word, Qsbf, signifies in the etymology of it, of Qeiadai, to see, to contemplate ; and faiftuv of fctu, scio. The names of God signify a nature, viewing and piercing all things; and the attribution of our senses to God in Scripture, as hearing and seeing, which are the senses whereby knowledge enters into us, signifies God's knowledge. 1. The notion of God's knowledge of all things lies above the ruins of nature ; it was not obliterated by the fall of man. It was necessary offending man was to know that he had a Creator whom he had injured, that he had a Judge to try and punish him ; since God thought fit to keep up the world, it had been kept up to no purpose had not this notion been continued alive in the minds of men ; there would not have been any prac- tice of his laws, no bar to the worst of crimes. If men had thought they had to deal with an ignorant Deity, there could be no practice of religion. Who would lift up his eyes, or spread his hands towards heaven, if he im- agined his devotion were directed to a God as blind as the heathens imagined fortune ? To what boot would it be for them to make heaven and earth resound with their cries, if they had not thought God had an eye to see them, and an ear to hear them? And indeed the very notion of a God at the first blush, speaks him a Being endued with un- derstanding ; no man can imagine a Creator void of one of the noblest perfections belong- ing to those creatures that are the flower and cream of his works. 2. Therefore all nations acknowledge this, as well as the existence and being of God. No nation but had their temples, particular ceremonies of worship, and presented their sacrifices, which they could not have been so vain as to do without an acknowledgment of this attribute. This notion of God's knowledge owed not its rise to tradition, but to natural implantation ; it was born and grew up with every rational creature. Though the several nations and men of the world agreed not in one kind of deity, or in their sentiments of his nature or other per- fections, some judging him clothed with a fine and pure body, others judging him an uncompounded spirit, some fixing him to a seat in the heavens, others owning his uni- versal presence in all parts of the world; yet they all agreed in the universality of his knowledge, and their own consciences re- flecting their crimes, unknown to any but themselves, would keep this notion in some vigour, whether they would or no. Now this being implanted in the minds of all men by nature, cannot be false, for nature imprints not in the minds of all men an assent to a falsity. Nature would not per- vert the reason and minds of men. Uni- versal notions of God are from original not lapsed nature, and preserved in mankind in order to a restoration from a lapsed state. The heathens did acknowledge this : in all the solemn covenants, solemnized with oatha and the invocation of the name of God, thia attribute was supposed. They confessed knowledge to be peculiar to the Deity ; scientia deorum vita, saith Cicero. Some called Nofcf, mens, mind, pure understanding, without any note E7r67m?f, the inspector of all. As they called him life, because he was the author of life, so they called him intel- lectus, because he was the author of all knowledge and understanding in his crea- tures; and one being asked, whether any man could be hid from God? No, saith he, STEPHEN CHARNOCK. 87 not so much as thinking. Some call him the eye of the world ; and the Egyptians represented God by an eye on the top of a sceptre, because God is all eye, and can be ignorant of nothing. And the same nation made eyes and ears of the most excellent metals, consecrating them to God, and hanging them up in the midst of their temples, in signification of God's seeing and hearing all things; hence they called God Light, as well as the Scrip- ture, because all things are visible to him. Discourse upon the Existence and Attri- butes of God. ON THE WISDOM OF GOD. The wisdom of God is seen in this way of redemption, in vindicating the honour and righteousness of the law, both in precept and penalty. The first and irreversible de- sign of the law was obedience. The penalty of the law had only entrance upon trans- gression. Obedience Avas the design, and the penalty was added to enforce the observ- ance of the precept (Gen. ii. 17): "Thou shalt not eat;" there is the precept: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die ;" there is the penalty. Obedience was our debt to the law, as creatures; punishment was due from the law to us, as sinners : we were bound to endure the penalty for our first transgression, but the penalty did not cancel the bond of future obedience: the penalty had not been incurred without trans- gressing the precept; yet the precept AVUS not abrogated by enduring the penalty. Since man so sorm revolted, and by his re- volt fell under the threatening, the justice of the law had been honoured by man's suf- ferings, but the holiness and equity of the law hud been honoured by man's obedience. The wisdom of God finds out a medium to satisfy both: the justice of the law is pre- served in the execution of the penalty; and the holiness of the law is honoured in the observance of the precept. The life of our Saviour is a conformity to the precept, and his death is a conformity to the penalty; the precepts are exactly performed, and the curse punctually executed, by a voluntary observing the one, and a voluntary under- going the other. It is obeyed as if it had not been transgressed, and executed as if it had not been obeyed. It became the wis- dom, justice, and holiness of God, as the Rector of the world, to exact it (Ileb. ii. 10). and it became the holiness of the Me- diator to " fulfil all the righteousness of the law'' (Rom. viii. 3 ; Matt. iii. 15). And thus the honour of the law was vindicated in all the parts of it. The transgression of the law was condemned in the flesh of the Re- deemer, and the righteousness of the law was fulfilled in his person: and both these acta of obedience, being counted as one right- eousness, and imputed to the believing sin- ner, render him a subject to the law, both in its preceptive and minatory part. By Adam's sinful acting we were made sinners, and by Christ's righteous acting we are made righteous (Rom. v. 19) : "As by one man's disobedience many were made sin- ners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." The law was obeyed by him that the righteousness of it might be fulfilled in us (Rom. viii. 4). It is not fulfilled in us, or in our actions, by inher- ency, but fulfilled in us by imputation of that righteousness which was exactly fulfilled bj another. As he died for us, and rose again for us, so he lived for us. The commands of the law were as well observed for ua as the threateningsof the law were endured for us. This justification of a sinner, with the preservation of the holiness of the law in truth, in the inward parts, in sincerity of intention, as well as conformity in action, is the wisdom of God, the gospel wisdom which David desires to know (Ps. Ii. G) : " Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom ;" or, as some render it, " the hidden things of wisdom." Not an inherent wisdom in the acknowledgments of his sin, which he had confessed before, but the wis- dom of God in providing a medicine, so aa to keep up the holiness of the law in the observance of it in truth, and the averting the judgment due to the sinner. In and by this way methodized by the wisdom of God, all doubts and troubles are discharged. Naturally, if we take a view of the law to behold its holiness and justice, and then of our hearts, to see the contrariety in them to the command, and the pollution repugnant to its holiness ; and after this, cast our eyes upward, and behold a flaming sword, edged with curses and wrath ; is there any matter but that of terror afforded by any of these? But when we behold in the life of Christ a sustaining the minatory part of the law, this wisdom of God gives a well-grounded and rational dismiss to all the horrors that can seize upon us. Ibid. Ox THE POWER OP GOD. Though God hath a power to furnish every creature with greater and nobler perfections than he hath bestowed upon it, yet he hath framed all things in the perfectest manner, and most convenient to that end for which he intended them. Every thing is endowed 88 ROBERT BOYLE. with the best nature and quality suitable to God's end in creation, though not in the best manner for itself. In regard of the universal end, there cannot be a better ; for God himself is the end of all things, who is the Supreme Goodness. Nothing can be better than God, who could not be God if he were not superlatively beet, or optimus ; and he hath ordered all things for the decla- ration of his goodness or justice, according to the behaviour of his creatures. Man doth not consider what strength or power he can put forth in the means he useth to attain such an end, but the suitableness of them to his main design, and so tits and marshals them to his grand purpose. Had God only created things that are most excellent, cre- ated only angels and men ; how, then, would his wisdom have been conspicuous in other works in the subordination and subserviency of them to one another? God therefore de- termined his power by his wisdom : and though his absolute power could have made every creature better, yet his ordinate power, which in every step was regulated by his wisdom, made every thing best for his de- signed intention. A musician hath a power to wind up a string on a lute to a higher and more perfect note in itself, but in wis- dom he will not do it, because the intended melody would be disturbed thereby if it were not suited to the other strings on the instrument; a discord would mar and taint the harmony which the lutinist designed. God, in creation, observed the proportions of nature: he can make a spider as strong as a lion ; but according to the order of nature which he hath settled, it is not con- venient that a creature of so small a com- pass should be as strong as one of a greater bulk. The absolute power of God could have prepared a body for Christ as glorious as that he had after his resurrection ; but that had not been agreeable to the end de- signed in his humiliation : and therefore God acted most perfectly by his ordinate power, in giving him a body that wore the livery of our infirmities. God's power is always regulated b}' his wisdom and will ; and though it produceth not what is most perfect in itself, yet what is most perfect and decent in relation to the end he fixed. And so in his providence, though he could rack the whole frame of nature to bring about his end in a more miraculous way and astonishment to mortals, yet his power is usually and ordinarily confined by his will to act in concurrence with the nature of the creatures, and direct them according to the laws of their being, to such ends which he aims at in their conduct, without violencing their nature. Ibid. HON. ROBERT BOYLE, seventh son of the "Great Earl of Cork," was born in Munster, Ireland, 1627, and died in London, 1691. He was the author of many treatises narrating the results of his investigations and experiments in pneu- matics, chemistry, medicine, and kindred subjects; published some theological works, and founded the Boyle Lecture, "designed to prove the truth of the Christian Religion among Infidels." " To Boyle the world is indebted, besides some very acute remarks and many fine illustrations of his own upon metaphysical questions of the highest moment, for the philosophical arguments in defence of religion, which hiive added so much lustre to the names of Derham and Bentley ; and, far above both, to that of Clarke. ... I do not recollect to have seen it anywhere noticed, that some of the most striking and beautiful instances of design in the order of the material world, which occur in the sermons preached at Boyle's Lecture, are borrowed from the works of the founder." DUGALD STEWART: Uiasert., Firtt Eneyc. Brit. THE STUDY OP NATURAL PHILOSOPHY FA- VOURABLE TO RELIGION. The first advantage that our experimental philosopher, as such, hath towards being a Christian, is, that his course of studies con- duceth much to settle in his mind a firm belief of the existence, and divers of the chief attributes of God ; which belief is, in the order of things, the first principle of that natural religion which itself is pre- required to revealed religion in general, and consequently to that in particular which is embraced by Christians. That the consideration of the vastness, beauty, and regular motions of the heavenly bodies, the excellent structure of animals and plants, besides a multitude of other phenomena of nature, and the subserviency of most of these to man, may justly induce him, as a rational creature, to conclude that this vast, beautiful, orderly, and (in a word) many waj 7 s admirable system of things, that we call the world, was framed by an author supremely powerful, wise, and good, can scarce be denied by an intelligent and unprejudiced considerer. And this is strongly confirmed by experience, which witnesseth that in almost all ages and countries the generality of philosophers and contemplative men were persunded of the existence of a Deity by the consideration of the phenomena of the universe, whose fabric and conduct, they rationally concluded, could not be deservedly ascribed either to blind chance, or to any other cause than a divine Being. But though it be true that God hath not ROBERT BOYLE. 89 left himself without witness, even to per- functory considerers, by stamping upon divers of the more obvious parts of his workmanship such conspicuous impressions of his attributes, that a moderate degree of understanding and attention may suffice to make men acknowledge his being, yet I scruple not to think that assent very much inferior to the belief that the same objects are fitted to produce in a heedful and intel- ligent contemplator of them. For the works of God are so worthy of their author, that besides the impresses of his wisdom and goodness that were left, as it were, upon their surfaces, there are a great many more curious and excellent tokens and effects of divine artifice in the hidden and innermost recesses of them ; and these are not to be discovered by the perfunctory looks of osci- tant and unskilful beholders ; but require, as well as deserve, the most attentive and prying inspection of inquisitive and well- instructed considerers. And sometimes in one creature there may be I know not how many admirable things that escape a vulgar eye, and yet may be clearly discerned by that of a true naturalist, who brings with him, besides a more than common curiosity and attention, a competent knowledge of anatuny, optics, cosmography, mechanics, and chemistry. But treating elsewhere pur- posely of this subject, it may here suffice to say, that God has couched so many things in his visible works, that the clearer light a man has the more he may discover of their unobvious exquisiteness, and the more clearly and distinctly he may discern those qualities that lie more obvious. And the more wonderful things he discovers in the works of nature, the more auxiliary proofs he meets with to establish and enforce the argument, drawn from the universe and its parts, to evince that there is a God ; which is a, proposition of that vast weight and im- portance, that it ought to endear everything to us that is able to confirm it, and afford us new motives to acknowledge and adore the divine Author of things. SOME CONSIDERATIONS TOUCHING THE STYLE OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. These things, dear Theophilus, being thus despatched, 1 suppose we may now season- ably proceed to consider the style of the Scripture ; a subject that will as well re- quire as deserve some time and much atten- tion, in regard that divers witty men. who freely acknowledge the authority of the Scripture, take exceptions at its style, and by those, and their own reputation divert many from studying, or so much as perus- ing, those sacred writings, thereby at once giving men injurious and irreverent thoughts of it, and diverting them from allowing the Scripture the best way of justifying itself, and disabusing them. Than which scarce anything can be more prejudicial to a book that needs but to be sufficiently understood to be highly venerated ; the writings these men criminate, and would keep others from reading, being like that honey which Saul's rash adjuration withheld the Israelites from eating, which, being tasted, not only grati- fied the taste, but enlightened the eyes. . . . Of the considerations, then, that I am to lay before you, there are three or four which are of a more general nature ; and therefore being such as may each of them be perti- nently employed against several of the ex- ceptions taken at the Scripture's style, it will not be inconvenient to mention them before the rest. And, in the first place, it should be con- sidered that those cavillers at the style of the Scripture, that you and I have hitherto met with, do (for want of skill in the original, espe- cially in the Hebrew) judge of it by the trans- lations, wherein alone they read it. Now, scarce any but a linguist will imagine how much a book may lose of its elegancy by being read in another tongue than that it was written in, especially if the languages from which and into which the version is made be so very differing as are those of the eastern and these western parts of the world. But of this I foresee an occasion of saying something hereafter ; yet at present I must observe to you that the style of the Scripture is much more disadvantaged than that of other books, by being judged of by translations; for the religious and just veneration that the interpreters of the Bible have had for that sacred book has iiicide them, in most places, render the Hebrew and Greek passages so scrupulously word for word, that, for fear of not keeping close enough to the sense, they usually care not how much they lose of the eloquence of the passages they translate. So that, whereas in those versions of other books that are made by good linguists the interpreters are wont to take the liberty to recede from the author's words, and also substitute other phrases instead of his that they may express his meaning without injuring his reputation, in translating the Old Testament interpre- ters have not put Hebrew phrases into Latin or English phrases, but only into Latin or English words, and have too often, besides, by not sufficiently understanding, or at least considering, the various significations of words, particles, and senses in the holy tongue, made many things appear less co- herent, or less rational, or less considerable, which, by a more free and skilful rendering 90 JOHN BUNYAN. of the original, would not be blemished by any appearance of such imperfection. And though this fault of interpreters be pardon- able enough in them, as carrying much of its excuse in its cause, yet it cannot but much derogate from the Scripture to appear with peculiar disadvantages, besides those many that are common to almost all books, by being translated. JOHN BUNYAN, born 1628, died 1688, will always be remem- bered as the author of The Pilgrim's Prog- ress (first edition, First Part, Lond., 1678, fp. 8vo), of which Lord Macaulay remarks : " There is no book in our literature on which we could so readily stake the fame of the old, un- polluted English language; no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed. . . . We are not afraid to say that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter part of the seventeenth century, there were only two great creative minds. One of those minds produced the Paradise Lost, the other, The Pilgrim's Progress." LOUD MA- CAULAY : Review of Sottthey's Edition of the Pil- grim's Pror/res* ; Edin. Kev., Dec. 1830, and in Macaulay'e Essays. THE APPROACH TO THE GOLDEN CITY. Now I saw in my dream that by this time the Pilgrims were got over the Enchanted ground ; and entering into the country of Beulah, whose air was very sweet and pleas- ant, the way lying directly through it, they solaced themselves there for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the tur- tle in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day : wherefore this was beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and also out of the reach of Giant Despair ; neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle. Here they were within sight of the City they were going to: also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof; for in this land the shining ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of heaven. In this land also the contract between the Bride and the Bride- groom was renewed : yea, here, " as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so doth their God rejoice over them." Here they had no want of corn and wine ; for in this place they met with abundance of what they had sought for in all their pilgrimage. Here they heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, " Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh I Be- hold, his reward is with him!" Here all the inhabitants of the country called them " the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out," &c. Now. as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in parts more re- mote from the kingdom to which they were bound ; and, drawing near to the City, they had yet a more perfect view thereof. It was builded of pearls and precious stones ; also the streets thereof were paved with gold ; so that, by reason of the natural glory of the City, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick. Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease. Wherefore here they lay by it for a while, crying out because of their pangs, " If you see my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love." But being a little strengthened, and better able to bear their sickness, they walked on their way, and came yet nearer and nearer, where were orchards, vineyards, and gardens, and their gates opened into the highway. Now, as they came up to these places, be- hold the gardener stood in the way ; to whom the pilgrims said, ''Whose goodly vineyards and gardens are these?" lie an- swered, " They are the King's, and are planted here for his own delight, and also for the solace of pilgrims." So the gar- dener had them into the vineyards, and bid them refresh themselves with the dainties; he also showed them there the King's walks and arbours, where he delighted to be : and here they tarried and slept. Now I beheld in my dream, that they talked more in their sleep at this time than ever they did in all their journey: and beinjf in a muse thereabout, the gardener said even to me, Wherefore musest thou at the matter? it is the nature of the fruit of the grapes of these vineyards, " to go down so sweetly as to cause the lips of them that are asleep to speak." So I saw that when they awoke, they ad- dressed themselves to go up to the City. But, as I said, the reflection of the sun upon the City (for the City was pure gold) was so extremely glorious, that they could not as yet with open face behold it, but through an instrument made for that purpose. So I saw that, as they went on, there met them two men in raiment that shone like gold, also their faces shone as the light. Now, you must note, that the City stood upon a mighty hill: but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease, because they had these two men to lead them up by the arms: they had likewise left their mortal garments behind them in the river; for though they went in with them, they came out without them. They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, though the foundation upon which SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 91 the City was framed was higher than the clouds: they therefore went up through the region of the air, sweetly talking as they went, being comforted, because they safely got over the river, and had such glorious companions to attend them. The talk that they had with the shining ones was about the glory of the place : who told them that the beauty and glory of it was inexpressible. There, said they, is ''Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect." You are going now, said they, to the paradise of God, wherein you shall see the tree of life, and eat of the never-fading fruits thereof: and when you come there, you shall have white robes given you, and your walk and talk shall be every day with the King, even all the days of eternity. There you shall not see again such things as you saw when you were in the lower region upon the earth ; to wit, sorrow, sickness, affliction, and death ; " for the former things are passed away." t You are going now to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob, and to the prophets, men that God hath taken away from the evil to come, and that are now " resting upon their beds, eacli one walking in his righteousness." The men then asked, What must we do in the holy place ? To whom it was answered, You must there receive the comfort of all your toil, and have joy for all your sorrow ; you must reap what you have sown, even the fruit of all your prayers and tears, and sufferings for the King by the way. In that place you must wear crowns of gold, and enjoy the perpetual sight and vision of the Holy One; for "there you shall see him as he is." There also you shall serve him continually with praise, with shouting, and thanksgiving, whom you desired to serve in the world, though with much difficulty, because of the infirmity of your flesh. There your eyes shall be de- lighted with seeing, and your ears with hear- ing the pleasant voice of the Mighty One. Pilgrim's Progress. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, an eminent English statesman and diplomat- ist, born 1628, died 1(399, was the author of a number of political, historical, biographi- cal, poetical, and other works, of which a collective edition was published, Lond., 1720, 2 vols. fol. ; last edition, 1814, 4 vols. 8vo. " Of all the considerable writers of this age, Sir William Temple is almost the only one that kept himself altogether unpolluted by that inundation of vice and licentiousness which overwhelmed the nation. The style of this author, although ex- tremely negligent, and even infected with foreign idioms, is agreeable and interesting. That mix- ture of vanity which appears in his works if rather a recommendation to them. By means of it we enter into acquaintance with the character of the author, full of honour and humanity, and fancy that we are engaged, not in the perusal of a book, but in conversation with a companion." HUME: Hist, af En;/., ch. Ixxi. "Sir William Temple was the first writer who gave cadence to English prose. Before his time they were careless of arrangement, and did not mind whether a sentence ended with an important word or an insignificant word, or with what part of speech it was concluded." Dn. JOHNSON, t'n Bos- well, ch. Ixiii. Dr. Johnson should have said "one of the first." EXTRACT OP A LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE COUNTESS OF ESSEX, IN 1674, AFTER THE DEATH OF HER ONLY DAUGHTER. I know no duty in religion more generally agreed on, nor more justly required by God Almighty, than a perfect submission to his will in all things ; ijor do I think any dis- position of mind can either please him more, or becomes us better, than that of being satisfied with all he gives, and contented with all he takes away. None, I am sure, can be of more honour to God, nor of more ease to ourselves. For if we consider him as our Maker, we cannot con- tend with him ;' if as our Father, we ought not to distrust him ; so that we may be con- fident whatever he does is intended for good ; and whatever happens that we interpret otherwise, yet we can get nothing by repin- ing, noi* save anything by resisting. But if it were fit for us to reason with God Almighty, and your ladyship's loss were acknowledged as great as it could have been to any one, yet, I doubt, you would have but ill grace to complain at the rate you have done, or rather as you do ; for the first emotions or passions may be pardoned ; it is only the continuance of them which makes them inexcusable. In this world, madam, there is nothing perfectly good ; and whatever is called so, is but either comparatively with other things of its kind, or else with the evil that is mingled in its composition ; so he is a good man who is better than men commonly are, or in whom the good qualities are more than the bad ; so, in the course of life, his con- dition is esteemed good, which is better than that of most other men, or in which the good circumstances are more than the evil. By this measure, I doubt, madam, your com- plaints ought to be turned into acknowl- edgments, and your friends would have cause to rejoice rather than to condole with you. When your ladyship has fairly con- sidered how God Almighty has dealt with 92 SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. you in what he has given, you may be left to judge yourself how you have dealt with him in your complaints for what he has taken away. If you look about you, and consider other lives as well as your own, and what your lot is, in comparison with those that have been drawn in the circle, of your knowledge, if you think how few are born with honour, hiw many die without name or children, how little beauty we see, how few friends we hear of, how much poverty, and how many diseases there are in the world, you will fall down upon your knees, and in- stead of repining at one affliction, will ad- mire so many blessings as you have received at the hands of God. . . . But, madam, though religion were no party in your case, and for so violent and injurious a grief you had nothing to answer to God, but only to the world and yourself, yet I very much doubt how you would be acquitted. We bring into the world with us a poor, needy, uncertain life; short at the longest, and un- quiet at the best. All the imaginations of the witty and the wise have been perpetually busied to find out the ways to revive it with pleasures, or to relieve it with diversions ; to compose it with ease, and settle it with safety. To these ends have been employed the institutions of lawyers, the reasonings of philosophers, the inventions of poets, the pains of labouring, and the extravagances of voluptuous men. All the world is per- petually at work that our poor mortal lives may pass the easier and happier for that little time we possess them, or else end the better when we lose them. On this account riches and honour are coveted, friendship and love pursued, and the virtues themselves admired in the world. Now, madam, is it not to bid defiance to all mankind, to con- demn their universal opinions and designs, if, instead of passing your life as well and easily, you resolve to pass it as ill and as miserably as you can? You grow insensible to the conveniences of riches, the delights of honour and praise, the charms of kindness or friendship ; nay, to the observance or applause of virtues themselves ; for who can you expect, in these excesses of passions, will allow that you show either temperance or fortitude, either prudence or justice? And as for your friends, I suppose you reckon upon losing their kindness, when you have sufficiently convinced them they can never hope for any of yours, sinoe you have left none for yourself, or anything else. Ox THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT IN RELIGION. Whosoever designs the change of religion in a country or government, by any other means than that of a general conversion of the people, or the greatest part of them, designs all the mischiefs to a nation that use to usher in, or attend the two greatest distempers of a state, civil war or tyranny ; which are violence, oppression, cruelty, ra- pine, intemperance, injustice; and, in short, the miserable effusion of human blood, and the confusion of all laws, orders, and virtues among men. Such consequences as these, I doubt, are something more than the disputed opinions of any man, or any particular assembly of men, can be worth ; since the great and general end of all religion, next to men's happiness hereafter, is their happiness here ; as appears by the commandments of God being the best and greatest moral and civil, as well as divine precepts, that have been given to a nation ; and by the rewards pro- posed to the piety of the Jews, throughout the Old Testament, which were the blessings of this life, as health, length of age, number of children, plenty, peace, or victory. Now, the way to our future happiness has been perpetually disputed throughout the world, and must be left at last to the impres- sions made upon every man's belief and con- science, either by natural or supernatural arguments and means ; which impressions men may disguise or dissemble, but no man can resist. For belief is no more in a man's power than his stature or his feature ; and he that tells me I must change my opinion for his, because 'tis the truer and the bet- ter, without other arguments that have to me the force of conviction, may as well tell me I must change my gray eyes for others like his that are black, because these are lovelier or more in esteem. He that tells me I must inform myself, has reason if I do it not; but if I endeavour it all that I can, and perhaps more than ever he did, and yet still differ from him ; and he that, it may be, is idle, will have me study on, and in- form myself better, and so to the end of my life, then I easily understand what he means by informing, which is, in short, that I must do it till I come to be of his opinion. If he that, perhaps, pursues his pleasures or interests as much or more than I do, and allows me to have as good sense as he has in all other matters, tells me I should be of his opinion but that passion or interest blinds me; unless he can convince me how or where this lies, he is but where he was ; only pretends to know me better than I do myself, who cannot imagine why I should not have as much care of my soul as he has of his. A man that tells me my opinions are ab- surd or ridiculous, impertinent or unreason- able, because they differ from his, seems to ISAAC BARROW. 93 intend a quarrel instead of a dispute, and calls me fool or madman, with a little more circumstance ; though, perhaps, I pass for one as well in my senses as he, as pertinent in talk, and as prudent in life : yet these are the common civilities in religious argu- ment, of sufficient and conceited men, who talk much of right reason, and mean always their own, and make their private imagina- tion the measure of general truth. But such language determines all between us, and the dispute comes to end in three words at last, which it might have as well have ended in at first, that he is in the right, and I am in the wrong. The other great end of religion, which is our happiness here, .has been generally agreed on by all mankind, as appears in the records of all their laws, as well as their religions, which come to be established by the concurrence of men's customs and opin- ions ; though in the latter that concurrence may have been produced by divine im- pressions or inspirations. For all agree in teaching and commanding, in planting and improving, not only those moral virtues which conduce to the felicity and tranquil- lity of every private man's life, but also those manners and dispositions that tend to the peace, order, and safety of all civil societies and governments among men. Nor could 1 ever understand how those who call themselves, and the world usually calls, religious men, come to put so great weight upon those points of belief which men never have agreed in, and so little upon those of virtue and morality, in which they have hardly ever disagreed. Nor why a state should venture the subversion of their peace, and their order, which are certain goods, and so universally esteemed, for the prop- agation of uncertain or contested opinions. ISAAC BARROW, D.D., nn eminent mathematician and divine, the tutor of Sir Isaac Newton, born in London 1630, died 1677, was the author of some of the best sermons in the English language. The great Earl of Chatham read Barrow's sermons till he could recite many of them memoriter ; and he recommended his son, William Pitt, to study them deeply. Daniel Webster, also, strove to profit by their perusal. New editions of his Theological Works were published, Oxford, 1818, 6 vols. 8vo, also 1830, 8 vols. 8vo; edited by Rev. T. S. Hughes, 7 vols. 8vo, and by Rev. James Hamilton, Edin., 1842, 3 vols'. 8vo ; New York, 1845, 3 vols. 8vo. " The sermons of Barrow display a strength of mind, a comprehensiveness and fertility, which have rarely been equalled. No better proof can be given than his eight sermons on the govern- ment of the tongue; copious and exhaustive, without tautology or superfluous declamation, they are in moral preaching what the best parts of Aristotle are in ethical philosophy, with more of development and more extensive observation. . . . His quotations from ancient philosophers, though not so numerous as in Taylor, are equally uncon- genial to our ears. In his style, notwithstanding its richness and occasional vivacity, we may cen- sure a redundancy and excess of apposition : his language is more formal and antiquated than of his age; and he abounds too much in uncommon words of Latin derivation, frequently such as ap- pear to have no authority but his own." HAL- LAM : Lit. Hint, of Europe, THE EXCELLENCY OP THE CHRISTIAN RE- LIGION. Another peculiar excellency of our re- ligion is,. that it prescribes an accurate rule of life, most agreeable to reason and to our nature, most conducive to our welfare and content, tending to procure each man's pri- vate good, and to promote the public benefit of all, by the strict observance whereof we bring our human nature to a resemblance of the divine ; and we shall also thereby obtain God's favour, oblige and benefit men, and procure to ourselves the conveniences of a sober life, and the pleasure of a good conscience. For if we examine the pre- cepts which respect our duty to God, what can be more just, pleasant, or beneficial to us than are those duties of piety which our religion enjoins? What is more fit and reasonable than that we should most highly esteem and honour him who is most excel- lent? that we should bear the sincerest affection for him who is perfect goodness himself, and most beneficial to us? that we should have the most awful dread of him that is infinitely powerful, holy, and just? that we should be very grateful to him from whom we received our being, with all the comforts and conveniences of it? that we should entirely trust and hope in him who can and will do whatever we may in reason expect from his goodness, nor can he ever fail to perform his promises? that we should render all uue obedience to him whose children, servants, and subjects we are? Can there be a higher privilege than to have liberty of access to him who will favourably hear, and is fully able to supply our wants? Can we desire to receive bene- fits on easier terms than the asking for them ? Can a more gentle satisfaction for our offences be required than confessing of them, repentance, and strong resolutions to amend them ? The practice of such a piety, of a service so reasonable, cannot but be of vast advantage to us, as it procures peace of conscience, a comfortable hope, a freedom 94 ISAAC BARROW. from all terrors and scruples of mind, from all tormenting cares and anxieties. And if we consider the precepts by which our religion regulates our carriage and beha- viour towards our neighbours and brethren, what can be imagined so good and useful as those which the gospel affords ? It en- joins us sincerely and tenderly to love one another; earnestly to desire and delight in each other's good ; heartily to sympathize with all the evils and sorrows of our breth- ren, readily affording them all the help and comfort we are able; willingly to part with our substance, ease, and pleasure for their benefit and relief; not confining this our charity to particular friends and relations, but, in conformity to the boundless good- ness of Almighty God, extending it to all. It requires us mutually to bear with one another's infirmities, mildly to resent and freely remit all injuries ; retaining no grudge, nor executing no revenge, but re- quiting our enemies with good wishes and good deeds. It commands us to be quiet in our stations, diligent in our callings, true in our words, upright in our dealings, ob- servant of our relations, obedient and re- spectful to our superiors, meek and gentle to our inferiors, modest and lowly, ingenu- ous and condescending in our conversation, candid in our censures, and innocent, inof- fensive, and obliging in our behaviour to- wards all persons. It enjoins us to root out of our hearts all envy and malice, all pride and haughtiness ; to restrain our tongues from all slander, detraction, reviling, bitter and harsh language; not to injure, hurt, or needlessly trouble our neighbour. It en- gages us to prefer the public good before our own opinion, humour, advantage, or convenience. And would men observe and practise what this excellent doctrine teaches, how sociable, secure, and pleasant a life we might lead ! what a paradise would this world then become, in comparison to what it now is I DEFINITION OF WIT. First it may be demanded what the thing is we speak of, or what this facetiousness doth import? To which question I might reply as Democritus did to him that asked him the definition of a man: " 'Tis that which we all see and know." Any one better apprehends what it is by acquaint- ance than I can inform him by description. It is indeed a thing so versatile and multi- form, appearing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many garbs, so variously appre- hended by several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to make a por- trait of Proteus, or to define the figure of the fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale: sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound. Sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of humorous expression : sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude: some- times it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly retorting an objection : some- times it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyper- bole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense: sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a presumptuous bluntness, giveth it being: sometimes it riseth only from a lucky hitting upon what is strange: some- times from a crafty wresting obvious matter to the purpose : often it consists in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the num- berless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and proveth things by), which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding some delight thereto. It raiseth admiration, as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of inven- tion, a vivacity of spirit and reach of wit more than vulgar. It seemeth to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in remote conceits applicable ; a notable skill, that he can dexterously accommodate them to the purpose before him ; together with a lively briskness of humour, not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagina- tion. Whence in Aristotle such persons are termed epidexioi, dexterous men : and eutro- poi, men of facile or versatile manners, who can easily turn themselves to all things, or turn all things to themselves. It also pro- cureth delight by gratifying curiosity with its rareness or semblance of difficulty; as monsters, not for their beauty, but their rarity ; as juggling tricks, not for their use, but their abstruseness, are beheld with pleas- ure, by diverting the mind from its road of serious thoughts; by instilling gaiety and airiness of spirit ; by provoking to such dis- positions of spirit in way of emulation or complaisance ; and by seasoning matters, otherwise distasteful or insipid, with an unusual and thence grateful tang. JOHN TILLOTSON. 95 ON HONOUR TO GOD. God is honoured by a willing and careful practice of all piety and virtue for con- science' sake, or an avowed obedience to his holy will. This is the most natural expres- sion of our reverence towards him, and the most effectual way of promoting the same in others. A subject cannot better demon- strate the reverence he bears towards his prince than by (with a cheerful diligence) observing his laws ; for by so doing he de- clares that he acknowledged the authority and revereth the majesty which enacted them ; that he approves the wisdom which devised them, and the goodness which de- signed them for public benefit ; that he dreads his prince's power, which can main- tain them, and his justice, which will vindi- cate them ; that he relies upon his fidelity in making good what of protection or of recompense he propounds to the observers of them. No less pregnant a signification of our reverence towards God do we yield in our gladly and strictly obeying his laws, thereby evidencing our submission to God's sovereign authority, our esteem of his wis- dom and goodness, our awful regard to his power and justice, our confidence in him, and dependence upon his word. The goodline.ss to the sight, the pleasantness to the taste, which is ever perceptible in those fruits which genuine piety beareth, the beauty men see in a calm mind and a sober conversation, the sweetness they taste from works of justice and charity, will certainly produce veneration to the doctrine that teacheth such things, and to the authority which enjoins them. We shall especially honour God by discharg- ing faithfully those offices which God hath entrusted us with ; by improving diligently those talents which God hath committed to us; by using carefully those means and op- portunities which God hath vouchsafed us of doing him service and promoting his glory. Thus, he to whom God hath given wealth. if he expend it, not to the nourishment of pride and luxury, not only to the gratifying his own pleasure or humour, but to the furtherance of God's honour, or to the suc- cour of his indigent neighbour, in any pious or charitable way, he doth thereby in a special manner honour God. He also on whom God hath bestowed wit and parts, if he employ them not so much in contriving to advance his own petty interests, or in procuring vain applause to himself, as in advantageously setting forth God's praise, handsomely recommending goodness, dex- terously engaging men in ways of virtue, he doth thereby remarkably honour God. He likewise that hath honour conferred upon him if he subordinate it to God's honour, if he use his own credit as an in- strument of bringing credit to goodness, thereby adorning and illustrating piety, he by so doing doth eminently practise this duty. JOHN TILLOTSON, D.D., born 1630, Archbishop of Canterbury 1691, died 1694, was very famous as a preacher, and his sermons retained their popularity long after his death. " He was not only the best preacher of the age, but seemed to have brought preaching to perfec- tion : his sermons were so well heard nnd liked, and so much read, that all the nation proposed him as a pattern, and studied to copy after him." BISHOP BUK.VET : Hint, of Own Times, ed. 1833, 242. " The sermons of Tillotson were for half a cen- tury more read than any in our language. They are now bought almost as waste paper, and hardly read at all. Such is the fickleness of religious taste, as abundantly numerous instances would prove. Tillotson is reckoned verbose and languid. He has not the former defect in nearly so great a degree as some of his eminent predecessors; but there is certainly little vigour or vivacity in his style. . . . Tillotson is always of a tolerant and catholic spirit, enforcing right actions rather than orthodox opinions, and obnoxious, for that and other reasons, to all the bigots of his own a<*e.'' HALLAM : Lit. Hist, of Europe, 4th ed., 1854, iii. 297. ADVANTAGES OF TRUTH AND SINCERITY. Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance and many more. If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better : for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? for to counterfeit and dissemble is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now, the best way in the world for a man to seem to be anything, is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides that, it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discov- ered to want, and then all his pains and la- bour to seem to have it are lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a skilful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion. It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will Jilways be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other. Therefore, if any man think it con- venient to seem good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to every- body's satisfaction: so that, upon all accounts, 96 JOHN TIL LOTS ON. sincerity is true wisdom. Particularly ns to the affairs of this world, integrity hath many advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing in the world ; it has less of trouble and difficulty, of entan- glement and perplexity, of danger and haz- ard in it ; it is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line, and will hold out and last longest. The arts of deceit and cunning do contin- ually grow weaker, and less effectual and serviceable to them that use them ; whereas integrity gains strength by use; and the more and longer any man practiseth it the greater service it does him, by confirming his reputation, and encouraging those with whom he hath to do to repose the greatest trust and confidence in him, which is an un- speakable advantage in the business and affairs of life. Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out; it is al- ways near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware ; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a great many more to make it good. It is like building upon a false foundation, which continually stands in need of props to shore it up, and proves at last move chargeable than to have raised a sub- stantial building at first upon a true and solid foundation : for sincerity is firm and substantial, and there is nothing hollow or unsound in it, and because it is plain and open, fears no discovery ; of which the crafty man is always in danger; and when he thinks he walks in the dark, all his pre- tences are so transparent that he that runs may read them. lie is the last man that finds himself to be found out; and whilst he takes it for granted that he makes fools of others, he renders himself ridiculous. Add to all this, that sincerity is the most compendious wisdom, and an excellent in- strument for the speedy despatch of busi- ness: it creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labour of many in- quiries, and brings this to an issue in few words ; it is like travelling in a plain beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves. In a word, whatever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimulation, it is soon over, but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it brings a man under an everlasting jealousy and suspicion, so that he is not be- lieved when he speaks truth, nor trusted perhaps when he means honestly. When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor false- hood. Sermons. VIRTUE AND VICE DECLARED BY THE GENE- RAL VOTE OP MANKIND. God hath shown us what is good by the general vote and consent of mankind. Not that all mankind do agree concerning virtue and vice ; but that as to the greater duties of piety, justice, mercy, and the like, the exceptions are but few in comparison, and not enough to infringe a general consent. And of this I shall offer to you this three- fold evidence : 1. That these virtues are generally praised and held in esteem by mankind, and the contrary vices generally reproved and evil spoken of. Now, to praise anything, is to give testimony to the goodness of it; and to censure anything, is to declare that we be- lieve it to be evil. And if we consult the history of all ages, we shall find that the things which are generally praised in the lives of men, and recommended to the imi- tation of posterity, are piety and devotion, gratitude and justice, humanity and charity ; and that the contrary to these are marked with ignominy and reproach : the former are commended even in enemies, and the latter are branded even by those who had a kind- ness for the persons that were guilty of them : so constant hath mankind always been in the commendation of virtue and the censure of vice. Nay, we find not only those who are virtuous themselves giving their testimony and applause to virtue, but even those who are vicious ; not out of love to goodness, but from the conviction of their own minds, and from a secret reverence they bear to the common consent and opin- ion of mankind. And this is a great testi- mony, because it is the testimony of an enemy, extorted by the mere light and force of truth. And, on the contrary, nothing is more ordinary than for vice to reprove sin, and to hear men condemn the like or the same things in others which they allow in themselves. And this is a clear evidence that vice is generally condemned by mankind ; that many men condemn it in themselves ; and those who are so kind as to spare themselves are very quick-sighted to spy a fault in any- body else, and will censure a bad action done by another with as much freedom and impartiality as the most virtuous man in the world. And to this consent of mankind about virtue and vice the Scripture frequently ap- peals. As when it commands us to provide JOHN DRYDEN. 97 things honest in the sight of all men ; and by well-doing to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men ; intimating that there are some things so confessedly good, and owned to be such by so general a vote of mankind, that the worst of men have not the face to open their mouths against them. And it is made the character of a virtuous action if it be lovely and commendable, and of good report: Philip, iv. 8, "Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, make account of these things;' 1 intimating to us that mankind do generally concur in the praise and commendation of what is virtuous. 2. Men do generally glory and stand upon their innocency when they do virtuously, but are ashamed and out of countenance when they do the contrary. Now, glory and shame are nothing else but an appeal to the judgment of others concerning the good or evil of our actions. There are, indeed, some such monsters as are impudent in their impieties, but these are but few in compari- son. Generally, mankind is modest: the greatest part of those who do evil are apt to blush at their own faults, and to confess them in their countenance, which is an ac- knowledgment that they are not only guilty to themselves that they have done amiss, but that they are apprehensive that others think so ; for guilt is a passion respecting ourselves, but shame regards others. Now, it is a sign of shame that men love to con- ceal their faults from others, and commit them secretly in the dark and without wit- nesses, and are afraid even of a child or a fool ; or if they be discovered in them, they are solicitous to excuse and extenuate them, and ready to lay the fault upon anybody else, or to transfer their guilt, or as much of it as they can, upon others. All which are certain tokens that men are not only natu- rally guilty to themselves when they commit a fault, but that they are sensible also what opinions others have of these things. And, on the contrary, men are apt to stand upon their justification, and to glory when they have done well. The conscience of a man's own virtue and integrity lifts up his head, and gives him confidence before others, because he is satisfied they have a good opinion of his actions. What a good face does a man naturally set upon a good deed ! And how does he sneak when he hath d:>ne wickedly, being sensible that he is con- demned by others, as well as by himself! No man is afraid of being upbraided for having dealt honestly or kindly with others, nor does he account it any calumny or reproach to have it reported of him that he is a sober and chaste man. No man blusheth when he meets a man with whom he hath kept his word and discharged his trust; but every man is apt to do so when he meets one with whom he has dealt dishonestly, or who knows some notorious crime by him. 3. Vice is generally forbidden and pun- ished by human laws; but against the contrary virtues there never was any law. Some vices are so manifestly evil in them- selves, or so mischievous to human society, that the laws of most nations have taken care to discountenance them by severe pen- alties. Scarce any nation was ever so bar- barous as not to maintain and vindicate the honour of their gods and religion by public laws. Murder and adultery, rebellion and sedition, perjury and breach of trust, fraud and oppression, are vices severely prohibited by the laws of most nations, a clear indica- tion what opinion the generality of mankind and the wisdom of nations have always had of these things. But now, against the contrary virtues there never was any law. No man was ever impeached for living soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, a plain acknowledgment that mankind always thought them good, and never were sensible of the inconvenience of them : for had they boen so, they would have provided against them by laws. This St. Paul takes notice of as a great commendation of the Christian virtues, ''The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness. kindness, fidelity, meekness, temperance : against such there is no law." As if he had said, Turn, over the law of Moses, search those of Athens and Sparta, and the twelve tables of the Romans, and those innumerable laws- that have been added since, and you shall not in any of them find any of those virtue* that I have mentioned condemned and for- bidden, a clear evidence that mankind never took any exception against them, but are generally agreed about the goodness of them. Sermons. JOHN DRYDEN, one of the most eminent of English poets and prose writers, was born 1631, and died 1700. His principal prose compositions are his Essay on Dramatick Poesy, and his ex- cellent Prefaces and Dedications, and criti- cisms connected with them. " Dryden may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conluetel through life and nature by a genius that rarely niis!e 1, anj 98 JOHN DRYDEN. rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them." DR. JOHNSON : Life of Dryden. " As to his writings, I may venture to say in general terms, that no man hath written in our language so much, and so various matter, and in so various manners, so well. . . . His prose had all the clearness imaginable, together with all the nobleness of expression, all the graces and orna- ments proper and peculiar to it, without deviating into the language or diction of poetry. I have heard him frequently own with pleasure that if he had any talent of English prose, it was owing to his having often read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson. His versification and his numbers he could learn of nobody : for he first possessed those talents in perfection in our tongue: and they who have succeeded in them since his time have been indebted to his example; and the more they have been able to imitate him, the better they have succeeded." CONGUEVE : Dedication of Drydeii't Dramatic Works to the Duke of New- castle. O.v SHAKSPEARE, BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER, AND BEN JONSON. To begin, then, with Shakspeare. lie was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient, poets had the largest and most com- prehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he de- scribes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater com- mendation. He was naturally learned ; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature ; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is everywhere alike : were he so, I should do him injury to com- pare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swell- ing into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him : no man can ever say lie had a fit sub- ject for his wit, and did not then raise him- self as high above the rest of poets, Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi. The consideration of this made Mr. Hales, of Eton, say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ but he would pro- duce it much better done in Shakspeare: and however others are now generally pre- ferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem. And in the lasi king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him. Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I nm next to speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, rreat natural gifts, improved by study ; Beau- nont, especially, being so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure and, tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, f not contriving, all his plots. What value be had for him appears by the verses he writ to him, and therefore I need speak no farther of it. The first play that brought Fletcher and him in esteem was their " Philaster ;" for before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully : as the like is reported of Ben Jonson before he writ " Every man in his Humour." Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's, especially those which were made before Beaumont's death ; and they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better; whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson derived from particular per- sons, they made it not their business to de- scribe : they represented all the passions very lively, but above all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to its highest perfection : what words have since been taken in are rather super- fluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent enter- tainments of the stage ; two of theirs being acted through the year for one of Shak- speare's or Jonson's: the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with all men's hu- mours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs. As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages) I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. lie was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him ; but something of art was wanting to the drama till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions ; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height. Humour was his proper sphere ; and in that he de- lighted most to represent mechanic people, lie was deeply conversant in the ancients, JOHN DRYDEN. 99 both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them : there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he lias not translated in " Sejanus'' and " Catiline." But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch ; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him. With the spoils of these write -s he so represented Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of th nr poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his lan- guage; it was that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially : perhaps, too, he did a little too much Roman- ise our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them ; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If 1 would compare him with Shakspeare I must ac- knowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father, of our dramatic poets ; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing: I admire him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him : as he has given us the most correct plays, so in the precepts which he has laid down in his " Discoveries," we have as many and profitable rules for perfecting the stage as any wherewith the French can furnish us. Essay on Dramatic Poesy. Ov SPENSER AXD MILTOX. [In epic poetry] the English have only to boast of Spenser and Milton, who neither of them wanted either genius or learning to have been perfect poets, and yet both of them are liable to many censures. For there is no uniformity in the design of Spenser : he aims at the accomplishment of no one action, he raises up a hero for every one of his adventures, and endows each of them with some particular moral virtue, which renders them all equal without subordination or preference. Every one is most valiant in his own legend ; only, we must do him that justice to observe, that magnanimity, which is the character of Prince Arthur, shines throughout the whole poem, and succours the rest when they are in distress. The original of every knight was then living in the court of Queen Elizabeth ; and he attrib- uted to each of them that virtue which he thought was more conspicuous in them, an ingenious piece of flattery, though it turned not much to his account. Had he lived to finish his poem, in the six remaining legends, it had certainly been more of a piece, but could not have been perfect, be- cause the model was not true. IJut Prince Arthur, or his chief patron, Sir Philip Sidney, whom he intended to make happy by the marriage of his Gloriana, dying be- fore him, deprived the poet both of means and spirit to .accomplish his design. For the rest, his obsolete language, and the ill choice of his stanza, are faults but of the second magnitude; for, notwithstanding the first, he is still intelligible, at least after a little practice ; and for the last, he is more to be admired that, labouring under such a difficulty, his verses are so numerous, so various, and so harmonious, that only Virgil, whom he professedly imitated, has surpassed him among the Romans, and only Mr. Waller among the English. As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much justice, his .subject is not that of a heroic poem, properly so called. His design is the losing of our happiness; his event is not prosperous, like that of all other epic works ; his heavenly machines are many, and his human persons are but two. But I will not take Mr. Rymer's work out of his hands: he has promised the world a critique on that author, wherein, though he would not allow his poem for heroic, I hope he will grant us that his thoughts are ele- vated, his words sounding, and that no man has so happily copied the manner of Ilorner, or so copiously translated his Grecisms, and the Latin elegancies of Virgil. It is true, he runs into a flat of thought sometimes for a hundred lines together, but it is when he has got into a track of Scripture. His antiquated words were his choice, not his necessity ; for therein he imitated Spenser, as Spenser did Chaucer. And though, per- haps, the love of their masters may have transported both too far, in the frequent use of them, yet, in my opinion, obsolete words may then be laudably revived when either they are more sounding or more significant than those in practice ; and when their ob- scurity is taken away by joining other words to them which clear the sense, according to the rule of Horace for the admission of new words. But in both cases a moderation is to be observed in the use of them ; for un- necessary coinage, as well as unnecessary revival, runs into affectation, a fault to be avoided on either hand. Neither will I jus- tify Milton for his blank verse, though I may excuse him by the example of Hannibal Caro and other Italians who have used it : for whatever causes he alleges for the abolishing of rhyme (which I have not now the leisure to examine), his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent : he had neither the ease of doing 100 JOHN DRYDEN. it, nor the graces of it; which is manifest in his "Juvenilia," or verses written in liis youth, where his rhyme is always con- strained and forced, and comes hardly from bim, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer though not a poet. Essay on Dramatic 1'oestj. ON TRANSLATION. Thus it appears necessary that a man should be a nice critic in his mother-tongue before he attempts to translate in a foreign language. Neither is it sufficient that he be able to judge of words and style, but he must be a master of them too : he must per- fectly understand his author's tongue,, and absolutely command his own: so that to be a thorough translator he must be a thor- ough poet. Neither is it enough to give his author's sense, in good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical numbers : for, though all these are exceeding difficult to perform, yet there remains a harder task ; and it is a secret of which few translators have sufficiently thought. I have already hinted a word or two concerning it ; that is, the maintaining the character of an au- thor, which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appear that indi- vidual poet whom you would interpret. For example, not only the thoughts but the style and versification of Virgil and Ovid are very different; yet I see, even in our best poets, who have translated some parts of them, that they have confounded their several talents; and by endeavouring only at the sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them both so much alike, that if I did not know the originals, I should never l>e able to judge by the copies which was Virgil and which was Ovid. It was objected agiiinst a late noble painter, that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of them were like. And this happened to him be- cause he always studied himself more than those who sat to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish the hand which per- formed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet from another. Suppose two au- thors are equally sweet ; yet there is as great distinction to be made in sweetness, as in that of sugar and that of honey. I can make the difference more plain by giv- ing you (if it l>e worth knowing) my own method of proceeding in my translations out of four several poets in this volume, Vir- gil. Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace. In each of these, before I undertook them, I considered the genius and distinguishing character of my author. I looked on Virgil as a succinct and grave majestic writer ; one who weighed not only every thought, but every word and syllable ; who was still aim- ing to crowd his sense into as narrow a compass as possibly he could: for which reason he is so very figurative that he re- quires (I may almost say) a grammar apart to construe him. His verse is everywhere sounding the very thing in your ears whose sense it bears; yet the numbers are per- petually varied, to increase the delight of the reader, so that the same sounds are never repeated twice together. On the con- trary, Ovid and Claudian, though they write in styles differing from each other, yet have each of them but one sort of muisic in their verses. All the versification and little variety of Claudian is included within the compass of four or five lines, and then he begins again in the same tenor, perpetually closing his sense at the end of a verse, and that ver.se commonly which they call golden, or two substantives and two adjectives, with a verb between them to keep the peace. Ovid, with all his sweetness, has as little variety of numbers and sound as he [Clau- dian] ; he is always, as it were, upon the hand-gallop, and his verse runs upon carpet- ground. He avoids, like the other, all syna- laephas, or cutting off one vowel when it comes before another in the following word ; so that, minding only smoothness, he wants both variety and majesty. But to return to Virgil : though he is smooth where smooth- ness is required, yet he is so far from affect- ing it, that he seems rather to disdain it ; frequently makes use of synalaephas, and concludes his sense in the middle of his verse. He is everywhere above conceits of epigrammatic wit and gross hyperboles ; he maintains majesty in the midst of plainness ; he shines, but glares not; and is stately without ambition, which is the vice of Luean. I drew my definition of poetical wit from my particular consideration of him ; for propriety of thoughts and words are only to be found in him ; and where they are proper, they will be delightful. Pleasure follows of necessity, as the effect does the cause, and therefore is not to be put into the definition. This exact propriety of Virgil I particularly regarded as a great part of his character; but must confess, to my shame, that I have not been able to translate any part of him so well as to make him appear wholly like himself; for where the original is close no version can reach it in the same compass. Hannibal Caro's, in the Italian, is the near- est, the most poetical, and the most sonorous of any translation of the JEneids ; yet, though he takes advantage of blank verse, he commonly allows two lines for one of Virgil, and does not always hit his sense. SAMUEL PEPYS. 101 THSSO tells us in his letters that Sperone Speroni, a great Italian wit, who was his contemporary, observed of Virgil and Tally, that the Latin orator endeavoured to imitate the copiousness of Homer, the Greek poet ; and that the Latin poet made it his business to reach the conciseness of Demosthenes, the Greek orator. Virgil, therefore, being so very sparing of his words, and leaving so much to be imagined by the reader, can never be translated as he ought in any modern tongue. To make him copious is to alter his character; and to translate him line for line is impossible ; because the Latin is naturally a more succinct language than either the Italian, Spanish, French, or even than the English, which, by reason of its monosyllables, is far the most compendious of them. Virgil is much the closest of any Roman poet, and the Latin hexameter has more feet than the English heroic. . . . He who excels all other poets in his own lan- guage, were it possible to do him right, must appear above them in our tongue, which, as my Lord lloscommon justly observes, ap- proaches nearest to the Roman in its ma- jesty ; nearest, indeed, but with a vast in- terval betwixt them. There is an inimitable grace in Virgil's words, and in them princi- pally consists that beauty which gives so inexpressible a pleasure to him who best understands their force. This diction of his (I must once again say) is never to be copied ; and since it cannot, he will appear but lame in the best translation. The turns of his verse, his breakings, his propriety, his num- bers, and his gravity, I have as far imitated as the poverty of our language and the has- tiness of my performance would allow. I may seem sometimes to have varied from his sense ; but I think the greatest variations may be fairly deduced from him ; and where I leave his commentators, it may be I under- stand him better; at least, I writ without consulting them in many places. But two particular lines in "Mezentius and Lausus" I cannot so easily excuse. They are, in- deed, remotely allied to Virgil's sense ; but they are too like the trifling tenderness of Ovid, and were printed before I had consid- ered them enough to alter them. The first of them I have forgotten, and cannot easily retrieve, because the copy is at the press. The second is this, When Lausus died, I was already slain. This appears pretty enough at first sight ; but I am convinced, for many reasons, that the expression is too bold. That Virgil would not have said it, though Ovid would. The reader may pardon it, if he please, for the freeness of the confession ; and instead of that, and the former, admit these two lines, which are more according to the au- thor, Nor ask I life, nor fought with that design: As I had used my fortune, use thou thine. From the Preface to the Translation of Virgil's JEueid. SAMUEL PEPYS, Secretary to the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., born 1632, died 1703, left a valuable chronicle of his times, a portion of which appeared under the title of Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq., compris- ing his Diary from 1659 to 1669, deciphered by the Rev. John Smith from the Original short-hand MS. in the Pepysian Library, and a Selection from his Private Correspondence. Edited by Richard, Lord Braybrooke, Lond., 1825, 2 vols. royal 4to: and other editions. But the only correct edition is the follow- ing : The Diary and Correspondence of Sam- uel Pepys, Esq., F.R.S. , from his MS. Cypher in the Pepysian Library, with a Life and Notes by Richard, Lord Braybrooke ; deci- phered with Additional Notes by the Rev. Mynors Bright, M.A., President and Senior Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Bickers and Son, 1875, 6 vols. med. 8vo, containing about one-third fresh and un- published matter. " If quitting the broad path of history, we seek for minute information concerning ancient man- ners and customs, the progress of arts and sciences, and the various branches of antiquity, we have never seen so rich a mine as the volumes before us. The variety of Pepys's tastes and pursuits led him into almost every department of life." Sire WALTER SCOTT: (London) Quarterly Rev., xxxiii. 308. " Of very great interest and curiosity." LORD JEFFREY : Edin. Rev., xliii. 26. THE PLAGUE IN LONDON IN 1665. September 2()th. To Lambeth. But, Lord! what a sad time it is to see no boats upon the river, and grass grows all up and down White Hall court, and nobody but poor wretches in the streets! and, which is worse than all, the duke showed us the number of the plague this week, brought in the last night from the Lord Mayor ; that it is in- creased about 600 more than the last, which is quite contrary to our hopes and expecta- tions, from the coldness of the late season. For the whole general number is 8297, and of them the plague 7165 ; which is more in the whole by above 50 than the biggest bill yet: which is very grievous on us all. October 16th. I walked to the Tower; but, Lord ! how empty the streets are and melancholy, so many poor sick people in the streets full of sores ; and so many sad 102 JOHN LOCKE. stories overheard as I walk, everybody talk- ing of this dead, and that man sick, and so many in this place, and so many in that. And they tell me that in Westminster there is never a physician, and but one apothecary left, all being dead ; but that there are great hopes of a great decrease this week : God send it! 29th. In the streets did overtake and almost run upon two women crying and carrying a man's coffin between them ; I suppose the husband of one of them, which, methinks, is a s:id thing. November 27th. I into London, it being dark night, by a hackney-coach ; the first I have durst to go in many a day, and with great pain now for fear. But it being un- safe to go by water in the dark and frosty cold, and unable, being weary with my morning walk, to go on foot, this was my only way. Few people yet in the streets, nor shops open, here and there twenty in a place almost ; though not above five or six o'clock at night. 30th. Great joy we have this week in the weekly bill, it being come to 544 in all, and but 333 of the plague, so that we are en- couraged to get to London as soon as we can. January 5th. I with my Lord Brouncker and Mrs. Williams, by coach with four horses to London, to my Lord's house in Covent Garden. But, Lord ! what staring to see a nobleman's coach come to town ; and porters everywhere bow to us ; and such begging of beggars ! And delightful it is to see the town full of people again ; and shops begin to open, though in many places seven or eight together, and more, all shut: but yet the town is full compared with what it used to be; I mean the city end ; for Covent Garden and Westminster are yet very empty of people, no court nor gentry being there. 13th. Home with his lordship to Mrs. Williams' s in Covent Garden, to dinner (the first time I ever was there), and there met Captain Coke : and pretty merry, though not perfectly so, because of the fear that there is of a great increase again of the plague this week. 22d. The first meeting of Gresham Col- lege since the plague. l)r. Goddard did fill us with talk in defence of his and his fellow- pliysicians going out of town in the plague time; saying that their particular patients were most gone out of town, and they left at liberty ; and a great deal more, &c. 30th. This is the first time that I have been in the church since I left London for the plague, and it frighted me indeed to go through the church more than I thought it could have done, to see so many graves lie so high upon the churchyards, where people have been buried of the plague. I was much troubled at it, and do not think to go through it again a good while. Diary. JOHN LOCKE, the famous author of An Essay concerning the Human Understanding, Lond., 1690, fol., and of other works, philosophical, theological, political, etc., was born 1632, and died 1704. The last, being the 12th, collective edition of his Works was pub- lished, Lond., 1824, 9 vols. 8vo. Philosophi- cal Works, with a Preliminary Essay and Notes by J. A. St. John, Lond., 1843, 8vo, and again 1854, 2 vols. 8vo. "His phraseology, though in general careless and unpolished, has always the merit of that char- acteristical unity and raciiiesoof style which demon- strate that, while he was writing, he conceived himself to be drawing only from his own re- source*. With respect to his style, it may be further observed that it resembles that of a well- educated and well-informed man of the world, rather than that of a recluse student who had made an object of the art of composition. ... It may be presumed to have contributed its share towards his great object of turning the thoughts of his contemporaries to logical and metaphysical inquiries." DUGALD STEWART : First Prtlim. Dis- sert, to Encyc. lirit., 7th ed., i. 104. "Locke and [Adam] Smith chose an easy, clear, and free, but somewhat loose and verbose, style, more concise in Locke, more elegant in Smith, in both exempt from pedantry, but not void of ambiguity and repetition." Sm JAMES MACKIN- TOSH : Works, Lond., 1854, i. 309. CAUSE OF WEAKNESS IN MEN'S UNDER- STANDING. There is, it is visible, great variety in men's understandings, and their natural constitutions put so wide a difference be- tween some men in this respect, that art and industry would never be able to mas- ter ; and their very natures seem to want a foundation to raise on it that which other men easily attain unto. Amongst men of equal education there is a great inequality of parts. And the woods of America, as well as the schools of Athens, produce men of several abilities in the same kind. Though this be so, yet I imagine most men come very short of what they might attain unto in their several degrees by a neglect of their under- standings. A few rules of logic are thought sufficient in this case for those who pretend to the highest improvement ; whereas I think there are a great many natural defects in the understanding capable of amendment which are overlooked and wholly neglected. And it is easy to perceive that men are guilty of a great many faults in the exer- cise and improvement of this faculty of the JOHN LOCKE. 103 mind, which hinder them in their progress, and keep them in ignorance find error all their lives. Some of them I shall take no- tice of, and endeavour to point out proper remedies for, in the following discourse. Besides the want of determined ideas, and of sagacity and exercise in finding out and laying in order intermediate ideas, there are three miscarriages that men are guilty of in reference to their reason, where by this fac- ulty is hindered in them from that service it might do and was designed for. And lie that reflects upon the actions and discourses of mankind, will find their defects in this kind very frequent and very observable. 1. The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think according to the example of others, whether parents, neigh- bours, ministers, or who else they are pleased to make choice of to have an implicit fuitli in, for the saving of themselves the pains and trouble of thinking and examining for themselves. 2. The second is of those who put passion in the place of reason, and being resolved that shall govern their actions and argu- ments, neither use their own, nor hearken to other people's reason, any farther than it suits their humour, interest, or party; and these, one may observe, commonly content themselves with words which have no dis- tinct ideas to them, though in other matters, that they come with an unbiassed indiffer- ency to, they want not abilities to talk and hear reason, where they have no secret in- clination that hinders them from being un- tractable to it. 3. The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason, but for want of having that which one may call large, sound, round-about sense, have not a full view of all that relates to the question, and may be of moment to decide it. We are all short- sighted, and very often see but one side of a matter : our views are not extended to all that has a connexion with it. From this defect, I think, no man is free. We see but in part, and we know but in part, and there- fore it is no wonder we conclude not right from our partial views. This might instruct the proudest esteemer of his own parts how useful it is to talk and consult with others, even such as come short with him in ca- pacity, quickness, and penetration : for since no one sees all, and we generally have dif- ferent prospects of the same thing, according to our different, as I may say, positions to it, it is not incongruous to think, nor beneath any man to try, whether another may not have notions of things which have escaped him, and which his reason would make use of if they came into his mind. The faculty of reasoning seldom or never deceives those who trust to it ; its consequences from what it builds on are evident and certain ; but that which it oftenest, if not only, misleads us in, is, that the principles from which we conclude, the grounds upon which we bottom our reasoning, are hut a part: something is left out which should go into the reckoning to make it just and exact. PRACTICE AXD HABIT. We are born with faculties and powers capable almost of anything, such at least as would carry us farther than can be easily imagined ; but it is only the exercise of those powers which gives us ability and skill in anything, and leads us towards perfection. A middle-aged ploughman will scarce ever be brought to the carriage and language of a gentleman, though his body be as well proportioned, and his joints as supple, and his natural parts not any way inferior. The legs of a dancing-master, and the fingers of a musician, fall, as it were, naturally with- out thought or pains, into regular and ad- mirable motions. Bid them change their parts, and they will in vain endeavour to produce like motions in the members not used to them, and it will require length of time and long practice to attain but some degrees of a like ability. What incredible and astonishing actions do we find rope- dancers and tumblers bring their bodies to ! not but that sundry in almost all manual arts are as wonderful ; but I name those which the world takes notice of for such, because, on that very account, they give money to see them. All these admired motions, beyond the reach and almost the conception of unpractised spectators, are nothing but the mere effects of use and in- dustry in men whose bodies have nothing peculiar in them from those of the amazed lookers on. As it is in the body, so it is in the mind ; practice makes it what it is ; and most even of those excellencies which are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the prod- uct of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch only by repeated actions. Some men are remarked for pleasantness in raillery, others for apologues and apposite diverting stories. This is .apt to be taken for the effect of pure nature, and that the rather, because it is not got by rules, and those who excel in either of them never purposely set themselves to the study of it as an art to be learnt. But yet it is true, that at first some lucky hit which took with somebody, and gained him commendation, encouraged him to try again, inclined his thoughts and endeavours that way, till at last he insensibly got a facility 104 JOHN LOCKE. in it without perceiving how ; and this is attributed solely to nature, which was much more the effect of use and practice. I do not deny that natural disposition may often give the first rise to it; but that never car- ries a man far without use and exercise, and it is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind as well as those of the body to their perfection. Many a good poetic vein is buried under a trade, and never produces anything for want of improvement. We see the ways of discourse and reasoning are very different, even concerning the same matter, at court and in the university. And he that will go but from Westminster-hall to the Exchange will find a different genius and turn in their ways of talking ; and one cannot think that all whose lot fell in the city were born with different parts from those who were bred at the university or inns of court. To what purpose all this, but to show that the difference so observable in men's understandings and parts does not arise so much from the natural faculties as acquired habits? lie would be laughed at that should go about to make a fine dancer out of a country hedger at past fifty. And he will not have much better success who shall en- deavour at that age to make a man reason well, or speak handsomely, who has never been used to it, though you should lay before him a collection of .all the best precepts of logic or oratory. Nobody is made anything by hearing of rules, or laying them up in his memory; practice must settle the habit of doing without reflecting on the rule; and you may as well hope to make a good painter or musician, extempore, by a lecture and instruction in the arts of music and paint- ing, as a coherent thinker, or strict reasoner, by a set of rules, showing him wherein right reasoning consists. This being so, that defects and weakness in men's understandings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds, I am apt to think the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them. We see men frequently dexterous and sharp enough in making a bargain, who if you reason with them about matters of religion appear perfectly stupid. INJUDICIOUS HASTE IN STUDY. The eagerness and strong bent of the mind after knowledge, if not warily regu- lated, is often a hindrance to it. Jt still presses into farther discoveries and new objects, and catches at the variety of knowl- edge, and therefore often stays not long enough on what is before it, to look into it as it should, for haste to pursue what is yet out of sight. He that rides post through a country may be able, from the transient view, to tell in general how the parts lie, and may be able to give some loose descrip- tion of here a mountain and there a plain, here a morass and there a river ; woodland in one part and savannahs in another. Such superficial ideas and observations as these he may collect in galloping over it; but the more useful observations of the soil, plants, animals, and inhabitants, with their several sorts and properties, must necessarily escape him ; and it is seldom men ever discover the rich mines without some digging. Nature commonly lodges her treasures and jewels in rocky ground. If the matter be knotty, and the sense lies deep, the mind must stop and buckle to it, and stick upon it with labour and thought, and close contempla- tion, and not leave it until it has mastered the difficulty and got possession of truth. But here care must be taken to avoid the other extreme: a man must not stick at every useless nicety, and expect mysteries of science in every trivial question or scru- ple that he may raise. He that will stand to pick up and examine every pebble that comes in his way, is as unlikely to return enriched and laden with jewels as the other that travelled full speed. Truths are not the better nor the worse for their obvious- ness or difficulty, but their value is to be measured by their usefulness and tendency. Insignificant observations should not take up any of our minutes ; and those that en- large our view, and give light towards fur- ther and useful discoveries, should not be neglected, though they stop our course, and spend most of our time in a fixed attention. There is another haste that does often and will mislead the mind, if it be left to itself and its own conduct. The understanding is naturally forward, not only to learn its knowledge by variety (which makes it skip over one to get speedily to another part of knowledge), but also eager to enlarge its views by running too fast into general ob- servations and conclusions, without a due examination of particulars enough whereon to found those general axioms. This seems to enlarge their stock, but it is of fancies, not realities ; such theories, built upon narrow foundations, stand but weakly, and if they fall not themselves, are at least very hardly to be supported against the assaults of opposition. And thus men, being too hasty to erect to themselves general notions and ill-grounded theories, find themselves de- ceived in their stock of knowledge, when they come to examine their hastily assumed maxims themselves, or to have them attacked EZEKIEL HOPKINS. 105 by others. General observations, drawn from particulars, are the jewels of knowl- edge, comprehending great store in a little room ; but they are therefore to be made with the greater care and caution, lest if we take counterfeit for true, our loss and shame will be the greater when our stock comes to a severe scrutiny. One or two particulars may suggest hints of inquiry, and they do well who take those hints; but if they turn them into conclusions, and make them pres- ently general rules, they are forward indeed ; but it is only to impose on themselves by propositions assumed for truths without suf- ficient warrant. To make such observations is, as has been already remarked, to make the head a magazine of materials, which can hardly be called knowledge, or at least it is but like a collection of lumber not reduced to use or order; and he that makes every- thing an observation has the same useless plenty, and much more falsehood mixed with it. The extremes on both sides are to be avoided ; and he will be able to give the best account of his studies who keeps his understanding in the right mean between them. EZEKIEL HOPKINS, born 1633, Bishop of Raphoe, 1671, and of Londonderry. 1681 , died 1690, was the author of theological treatises and sermons which have been highly commended. A collective edition of his Works was published, Lond., 1701, fol. New edition, with his life, by Rev. Josiah Pratt, Lond., 1809, 4 vols. 8vo, large paper 8vo. Other editions ; among which are that published by Henry G. Bohn, Lond., 1855, 2 vols. imp. 8vo : and First American from Pratt' s London Edition. Edited by Rev. Charles W. Quick, Philada., 3 vols. 8vo. This last edition is one of The Leighton Publica- tions, a series of reprints of old English divines published at the expense of the late Thomas II. Powers, Esq., of Philadelphia, as presents to clergymen. "Bishop Hopkins, for his excellency in that noble faculty [of preaching] was celebrated by all men. He was followed and admired in all places where he lived, and was justly esteemed one of the best preachers of our age, and his discourses always smelt of the lamp : they were very elaborate and well digested." PRINCE: Worthies of Devon. " Four excellencies appear t8 me to be combined in him as a writer. In doctrine he is sound and discriminating; in style rich and harmonious; in illustration apt and forcible; and in application awakening and persuasive." REV. JOSIAH PRATT. OF THK LAST JUDGMENT. Beside Scripture, reason itself doth clearly show that there shall be a future judgmenu in which God will render to every man ac- cording to his works. i. This appears from the accusing or excus- ing office of Conscience. Whence proceeds that regret, those gnaw- ings and stingings of conscience for sin, which sometimes the very worst of men feel? Because every man doth, as it were, presage a day of judgment, wherein those sinful actions shall be brought to an account, and they punished for them. Even the con- sciences of the heathen themselves, who never had the light of the Scripture to reveal to them the judgment of the last day, would witness against them, disquiet, and trouble them, when they sinned against their natural light: their conscience would bear witness, and their thoughts accuse, or else excuse, them ; as the Apostle speaks, Rom. ii. 15. Now what was it that could trouble their consciences, but only some secret hints and obscure notions of a judgment and wrath to come. We find them all strongly possessed with the apprehensions of a future state in proportion to their present actions: hence their barathrum and di/sium, their hell and paradise : hence their three severe and impartial judges: hence their strange invented punishments, bearing a corre- spondence to the crimes of those who were said to undergo them : which, though they were but the fictions of their poets, yet the very consent of nature and of nations dic- tated that these were torments to be suffered according to the sins here committed. The very workings of natural conscience, there- fore, strongly prove that there shall be a judgment. ii. This too may be evidently proved from the equity and justice of God's nature com- pared with the seemingly strange and un- equal dispensations of his providence. Justice obligeth to do good to those who are good, and to inflict evil upon those who are evil. Yet Providence in this life seems to dispense affairs quite otherwise: whatso- ever this world calls good, the riches, the power, the glory of it, are usually heaped upon wicked men, who swagger and flaunt it here, and fight against God with those very weapons which he puts into their hands: whereas many of those who are truly holy and the sincere servants of God are oftentimes pinched by poverty, perse- cuted causelessly, opposed unjustly, despised and trampled upon, by every one who will but take the pains to do it. This is God's usual dealing and method with men in this world. And it seemed so unjust and un- equal, that hereupon, alone, many of the ancient heathens denied that the world was governed by Providence. . . . There is, therefore, a judgment to come: and then, 106 ROBERT SOUTH. " Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with them : for they shall eat the fruit of their doings ;" but " Woe unto the wicked !" then, " it shall be ill with them ; for the reward of their works shall be given them:" Isa. iii. 10, 11. This shall be the day wherein God will clear up the equity of his justice in all the inequality of his provi- dence. And what, then, are all the fine and gay things of this world ? Believe it, a poor saint, who hath on him the robe of Christ's righteousness, will be found much better clothed than ever Dives was, with all his purple. Death Disarmed of its Sting. ROBERT SOUTH, D.D., born 1633, died 1716, was very famous for pulpit eloquence. Among the late collective editions of his Works are the following: Ox- ford (Clarendon Press), 1823, 7 vols. 8vo, again, 1843, 5 vols. 8vo ; Edin., 1843, 2 vols. 8vo; Lond., 1843, 2 vols. 8vo; Phila., 4 vols. in 2 vols. 8vo ; N. York, 4 vols. 8vo. "Of all the English preachers, South seems to us to furnish, in point of ulyle, the truest speci- mens of the most effective species of pulpit elo- quence. . . . His ftyle is ... everywhere direct, condensed, pungent. His sermons are well worthy of frequent and diligent perusal by every young preacher." HENRY ROGERS: Edin. Rev., Ixxii. 82. " Nor cnn the ingenuity, the subtlety, the bril- liancy of South, though too exuberant in point, and drawing away the attention from the subject to the epigrammatic diction, be regarded other- wise than as proofs of the highest order of intel- lect." LORD ]'ROITGIIAM : Contrib. to Edin. Jtev., 1856, i. 128. See also 113. RELIGION NOT HOSTILE TO PLEASURE. That pleasure is man's chiefest good (be- cause, indeed, it is the perception of good that is properly pleasure) is an assertion most certainly true, though, under the com- mon acceptance of it, not only false, but odious, lor, according to this, pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent; and therefore he that takes it in this sense, alters the subject of the discourse. Sensu- ality is indeed a part, or rather one part, of pleasure, such an one as it is. For pleasure, in general, is the consequent apprehension of a suitable object suitably applied to a rightly disposed faculty ; and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the body and of the soul respectively, as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both. Now, amongst those many arguments used to press upon men the exercise of religion. I know none that are like to be so successful as those that answer and remove the preju- dices that generally possess and bar up the hearts of men against it: amongst which there is none so prevalent in truth, though so little owned in pretence, as that it is an enemy to men's pleasures, that it bereaves them of all the sweets of converse, dooms them to an absurd and perpetual melancholy, designing to make the world nothing else but a great monastery: with which notion of religion nature and reason seem to have great reason to be dissatisfied. For since God never created any faculty, either in soul or body, but withal prepared for it a suitable object, and that in order to its gratification, can we think that religion was designed only for a contradiction to nature, and with the greatest and most irrational tyranny in the world, to tantalize and tie men up from en- joyment, in the midst of all the opportuni- ties of enjoyment? to place men with the most furious affections of hunger and thirst in the very bosom of plenty, and then to tell them that the envy of Providence has sealed up everything that is suitable under the character of unlawful? For certainly, first to frame appetites for to receive pleas- ure, and then to interdict them with a Touch not, taste riot, can be nothing else than only to give them occasion to devour and prey upon themselves, and so to keep men under the perpetual torment of an unsatisfied desire: a thing hugely contrary to the natural felicity of the creature, and conse- quently to the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator. ' He, therefore, that would persuade men to religion both with art and efficacy, must found the persuasion of it on this, that it interferes not with any rational pleasure, that it bids nobody quit the enjoyment of any one thing that his reason can prove to him ought to be enjoyed. 'Tis confessed, when, through the cross circumstances of a man's temper or condition, the enjoyment of a pleasure would certainly expose him to a greater inconvenience, then religion bids him quit it; that is, it bids him prefer the endurance of a lesser evil before a greater, nnd nature itself does no less. Religion, therefore, entrenches upon none of our privileges, invades none of our pleasures : it may, indeed, sometimes command us to change, but never totally to abjure them. Sermons. INGRATITUDE AN INCURABLE VICE. As a man tolerably discreet ought by no means to attempt the making of such an one his friend, so neither is he, in the next place, to presume to think that he shall be able so much as to alter or meliorate the humour of an ungrateful person by any acts of kind- EDWARD STILLINGFLEET. 107 ness, though never so frequent, never so obliging. Philosophy will teach the learned, and experience may teach all, that it is n thing hardly feasible. For, love such an one, and he shall despise you. Commend him, and, as occasion serves, lie shall revile you. Give him, and he shall but laugh at your easiness. Save his life ; but when you have done, look to your own. The greatest favours to such an one are but the motion of a ship upon the waves: they leave no trace nor sign behind them ; they neither soften nor win upon him ; they neither melt nor endear him, but leave him as hard, as rugged, and as unconcerned as ever. All kindnesses descend upon such a temper as showers of rains or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea: the sea swallows them all, but is not at all changed or sweetened by them. I may truly say of the mind of an ungrateful person, that it is kindness-proof. It is impenetrable, uncon- querable: unconquerable by that which con- quers all things else, even by love itself. Flints may be melted we see it daily but an ungrateful heart cannot; no, not by the strongest and the noblest flame. After all your attempts, all your experiments, for any thing that man can do, he that is ungrateful will be ungrateful still. And the reason is manifest: for you may remember that I told you that ingratitude sprung from a principle of ill nature: which being a thing founded in such a certain constitution of blood and spirit, as, being born with a man into the world, and upon that account called nature, shall prevent all remedies that can be ap- plied by education, and leave such a bias upon the mind as is beforehand with all instruction. So that you shall seldom or never meet witli an ungrateful person, but if you look backward, and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so ; and if you could look forward enough, it is a thou- sand to one but you will find that he also dies so : for you shall never light upon an ill- natured man who was not also an ill-natured child, and gave several testimonies of his being so to discerning persons, long before the use of his reason. The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death. I do not by this limit the operation of God's grace, for that may do wonders: but humanly speaking, and according to the method of the world, and the little correctives supplied by art and discipline, it seldom fails but an ill principle has its course, and nature makes good its blow. And therefore, where ingrati- tude begins remarkably to show itself, he surely judges most wisely who takes alarm betimes, and, arguing the fountain from the stream, concludes that there is ill-nature at the bottom ; and so, reducing his judgment into practice, timely withdraws his frus- taneous baffled kindnesses, and sees tho folly of endeavouring to stroke a tiger into a lamb, or to court an Ethiopian out of his colour. Sermons. EDWARD STILLINGFLEET, D.D., born 1635, Bishop of Worcester, 1689, died 1699, was the author of many theological treatises and sermons, of which the fullest edition was published Lond., 1710, 6 vols. fol., and Miscellaneous Discourses, 1735, 8vo. His Origines Britannicse ; or, The Antiq- uities of the British Churches, appeared Lond., 1685, fol., 1837, 8vo, 1840, 8vo, with Lloyd on Church Government, edited by T. P. Pantin, Oxf., 1842, 8vo. Dr. John Inett's Origines Anglicanse, vol. i., Lond., 1704, fol., vol. ii., Oxf., 1710, fol., new edition by the Rev. John Griffiths, Oxf., 1855, 3 vols. 8vo, was intended as a continuation of the Ori- gines Britannicae. Stillingueet's Origines Sacrae ; or, A Rational Account of the Chris- tian Faith, &c., was published Lond., 1662, 4to, and frequently since; recently, Oxf., 1836 (some 1837), 2 vols. 8vo. " He [the student] will begin with a defence of Revelation in general, as it lies in Grotius de Veritate Christianas Heligionis, enlarged by Still- ingfleet's Origines SacrtB, which may be consid- ered a kind of Commentary on the other's Text. The work I mean is that written by Mr. Stilling- fleet; not that unfinished little work which bears the same title written when he became Bishop of Worcester." BISHOP WARBUKTO.V : Directions to hia Student. " Justly esteemed one of the best defences of revealed religion that ever was extant in our own or any other language." DR. GOODWIN. TRUE WISDOM. That is the truest wisdom of a man which doth most conduce to the happiness of life. For wisdom, as it refers to action, lies in the proposal of a right end and the choice of the most proper means to attain it : which end doth not refer to any one part of a man's life, but to the whole as taken to- gether. He, therefore, only deserves tho name of a wise man, not that considers how to be rich and g;eat when he is poor and mean, nor how to be well when he is sick, nor how to escape a present danger, nor how to compass a particular design ; but lie that considers the whole course of his life to- gether, and what is fit for him to make the ins EDWARD ST1LLINGFLEET. end of it, and by what means he may best enjoy the happiness of it. I confess it is one great part of a wise man never to propose to himself too much happiness here ; for whoever doth so is sure to find himself deceived, and consequently is so much more miserable as he fails in his greatest expectations. But since God did not make men on purpose to be miserable, since there is a great difference as to men's conditions, since that difference depends very much on their own choice, there is a great deal of reason to place true wisdom in the choice of those things which tend most to the comfort and happiness of life. That which gives a man the greatest sat- isfaction in what he doth, and either pre- vents, or lessens, or makes him more easily bear, the troubles of life, doth the most con- duce to the happiness of it. It was a bold say- ingof Epicurus, " That it is in ore desirable to be miserable by acting according to reason than to be happy in going against it ;" and I cannot tell how it can well agree with his notion of felicity ; but it is a certain truth, that in the consideration of happiness, the satisfaction of a man's own mind weighs down all the external accidents of life. For, suppose a man to have riches and honours as great as Ahasuerus bestowed on his high- est favourite, Hainan, yet by his sad in- stance we find that a small discontent, when the mind suffers it to increase and to spread its venom, doth so weaken the power of rea- son, disorder the passions, make a man's life so uneasy to him, as to precipitate him from the height of his fortune into the depth of ruin, lint on the other side, if we suppose a man to be always pleased with his condi- tion, to enjoy an even and quiet mind in every state, being neither lifted up with prosperity nor cast down with adversity, he is really happy in comparison with the other. It is a mere speculation to discourse of any complete happiness in this world ; but that which doth either lessen the number, or abate the weight, or take off the malignity of the troubles of life, doth contribute very much to that degree of happiness which may be expected here. The integrity and simplicity of a man's mind doth all this. In the first place it gives the greatest satisfaction to a man's own mind. For, although it is impossible for a man not to be liable to error and mistake, yet, if he doth mistake with an innocent mind, he hath the comfort of his innocency when he thinks himself bound to correct his error. But if a man prevaricates with himself, and acts against the sense of his own mind, though his conscience did not judge aright at that time, yet the goodness of the bare act, with respect to the rule, will not prevent the sting that follows the want of inward integrity in doing it. " The back- slider in heart," saith Solomon, "shall be filled with his own ways, but a good man shall be satisfied from himself." The doing just and worthy and generous things with- out any sinister ends and designs, leaves a most agreeable pleasure to the mind, like that of a constant health, which is better felt than expressed. Sermons. IMMODERATE SELF-LOVE. There is a love of ourselves which is founded on nature and reason, and is made the measure of our love to our neighbour ; for we are to love our neighbour as our- selves ; and if there were no due love of ourselves, there could be none of our neigh- bour. But this love of ourselves, which is so consistent with the love of our neigh- bour, can be no enemy to our peace : for none can live more quietly and peaceably than those who love their neighbours as themselves. But there is a self-love which the Scripture condemns, because it makes men peevish and froward, uneasy to them- selves and to their neighbours, filling them with jealousies and suspicions of others with respect to themselves, making them apt to mistrust the intention and designs of others towards them, and so producing ill-will to- wards them ; and where that hath once got into men's hearts, there can be no long peace with those they bear a secret grudge and ill-will to. The bottom of all is, they have a wonderful value for themselves and those opinions, and notions, and parties, and fac- tions, they happen to be engaged in, and these they make the measure of their esteem and love of others. As far as they comply and suit with them, so far they love them, and no farther. If we ask, " Cannot good men differ about some things, and yet bo good still?" "Yes." "Cannot such love one another notwithstanding such differ- ence?" " No doubt they ought." Whence comes it, then, that a small difference in opinion is so apt to make a breach in affec- tion ? In plain truth it is, every one would be thought to be infallible, if for shame they durst to pretend to it ; and they have so good an opinion of themselves that they cannot bear such as do not submit to them. From hence arise quarrellings and disput- ings, and ill language, not becoming men or Christians. But all this conies from their setting up themselves and their own notions and practices, which they would make n rule to the rest of the world ; and if others have the same opinions of themselves, it ia impossible but there must be everlasting LADY RACHEL RUSSELL. SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE. 109 clashing and disputing*, and from thence falling into different parties and factions ; which can never be prevented till they come to more reasonable opinions of themselves, and more kind and charitable towards others. Sermons. LADY RACHEL RUSSELL, the wife of Lord William Russell, who was unjustly executed for alleged treason, 1683, was born 1636, and died 1723. As we have remarked in another place, " her constancy to her husband in his mis- fortunes, her services in court as his aman- uensis, and her efforts to save him from the fatal block, together with her Letters, first published fifty years after her death, have embalmed her memory in the hearts of thousands." Letters of Lady Rachel Russell, Lond., 1773, 4to, and later editions. Of modern editions, we notice, Lond., 1821, 2 vols. 18mo; 1825, 2 vols. 12mo; with additional Letters, 1853, 2 vols. p. 8vo. See also, Life of Lady Russell and her Correspondence with her Husband, 1672 to 1682, by Lord John [now Earl] Russell, Lond., 1820, 8vo, and The Married Life of Rachel, Lady Rus- sell, by M. Guizot, translated from the French [by John Morton], Lond., 1855, cr. 8vo. " It is very remarkable how much better women write than men. I have now before me a volume of letters written by the widow of the beheaded Lord Russell, which are full of the most moving and expressive eloquence. I want the Duke of Bedford to let them be printed." Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Oct. 14, 1751: WALPOLE'S LETTERS, ed. 1861, ii. 371. See also V. 448, n., 462. " Her letters are written with an elegant sim- plicity, with truth and nature, which can flow only from the heart. The tenderness and con- stancy of her affection for her murdered lord pre- sents an image to melt the soul." BISHOP BURXET. FROM LADY RUSSELT, TO DOCTOR FITZ- WILLIAM. SOUTH AMPTO* HOUSE, 17th July, 1685. Never shall I, good doctor, I hope, forget your work (as I may term it) of labour and love : so instructive and comfortable do I find it, that at any time when I have read any of your papers I feel a heat within me to be repeating my thanks to you anew, which is all I can do towards the discharge of a debt you have engaged me in ; and though nobody loves more than I to stand free from all engagements I cannot answer, yet I do not wish for it here, I would have it as it is ; and although I have the present advantage, you will have the future reward : and if I can truly reap what I know you design me by it, a religious and quiet sub- mission to all providences, I am assured you will esteem to have attained it here in some measure. Never could you more seasonably have fed me with such discourses, and left me with expectations of new repasts, in a more seasonable time than these my miser- able months, and in those this very week in which I have lived over again that fatal day that determined what fell out a week after, and that has given me so long and so bitter a time of sorrow. But God has a compass in his providences that is out of our reach, and as he is all good and wise, that consid- eration should in reason slacken the fierce rages of grief. But, sure, doctor, it is the nature of sorrow to lay hold on all things which give a new ferment to it: then how could I choose but feel it in a time of so much confusion as these last weeks have been, closing so tragically as they have done ; anil sure never any poor creature, for two whole years together, has had more awakers to quicken and revive the anguish of its soul than I have had : yet I hope I do most truly desire that nothing may be so bitter to me as to think that I have in the least offended thee, my God, and that nothing may be so marvellous in my eyes as the exceeding love of my Lord Jesus : that heaven being my aim, and the longi>ig expectation of my soul, I may go through honour and dis- honour, good report and bad report, pros- perity and adversity, with some evenness of mind. The inspiring me with these desires is, I hope, a token of his never-failing love to- wards me, though an unthankful creature, for all the good things I have enjoyed, and do still in the lives of hopeful children by so beloved a husband. God has restored me my little girl ; the surgeon says she will do well. . . . Sure nobody has enjoyed more pleasure in the conversations and tender kindnesses of a husband and a sister than myself, yet how apt am I to be fretful that I must not still do so! but I must follow that which seems to be the will of God, how unacceptable soever it may be to me. Letters of Lady Rachel Russell. SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE, born 1636, died 1691, was the author of a number of legal, moral, political, poetical and other works, but is best known as an essayist : see his Essays upon Several Moral Subjects; To which is Prefixed an Account of his Life and Writings, Lond., 1713, 8vo. " His Miscellaneous Essays, both in prose and verse, may now be dispensed with, or laid aside, without difficulty. They have not vigour enough for long life. But, if they be considered as the elegant amusement of a statesman and lawyer, 110 THOMAS SPRAT. who had little leisure for the culture of letter?, they afford a striking proof of the variety of his accomplishments and the refinement of his taste. In several of his Moral Essays both the subject and the manner betray an imitation of Cowley, who was at that moment beginn ng the reforma- tion of English style. 1 ' SIR JAMKS MACKINTOSH : Edin. Rev., xxxvi. 5, and in his Works, ii. 120. " The Essays of Sir George Mackenzie are empty and diffuse : the style is full of pedantic words to a degree of barbarism ; and though they were chiefly written after the Revolution, he seems to have wholly formed himself on the older writers, such as Sir Thomas Browne, or even Feltham." 11 AI.I.AM : Lit. Hist of Europe, 4th ed., Lond., 1854, iii. 559. VIRTUE MORE PLEASANT THAN VICE. The first objection, whose difficulty de- serves an answer, is that virtue obliges us to oppose pleasures, and to accustom our- selves with such rigours, seriousness, and patience, as cannot but render its practice uneasy. And if the reader's own ingenuity supply not what may be rejoined to this, it will require a discourse that shall have no other design besides its satisfaction. And really to show by what means every man may make himself easily happy, and how to soften the appearing rigours of philosophy, is a design which, if I thought it not worthy of a sweeter pen, should be assisted by mine ; and for whicli I have, in iny current experience, gathered some loose reflections and observations, of whose cogency I have this assurance, that they have often mod- erated the wildest of my own straying incli- nations, and so might pretend to a more prevailing ascendant over such whose reason and temperament make them much more reclaimable. But at present my answer is, that philosophy enjoins not the crossing of our own inclinations, but in order to their accomplishment; and it proposes pleasure as its end, as well as vice, though, for its more fixed establishment, it sometimes com- mands what seems rude to such as are strangers to its intentions in them. Thus temperance resolves to heighten the pleas- ures of enjoyment, by defending us against all the assaults of excess and oppressive loathing ; and when it lessens our pleasures, it intends not to abridge them, but to make them fit and convenient for us, even as sol- diers, who, though they purpose not wounds and starvings, yet if without these they cannot reach those laurels to which they climb, they will not so far disparage their own hopes as to think they should fix them upon anything whose purchase deserves not the suffering of these. Physic cannot be called a cruel employment, because to preserve what is sound it will cutoff what is tainted; and these vicious persons whose laziness forms this doubt do answer it when they endure the sickness of drunkenness, the toiling of avarice, the attendance of rising vanity, and the watchings of anxiety ; and all this to satisfy inclinations whose shortness allows little pleasures, and whose prospect ex- cludes all future hopes. Such as disquiet themselves by anxiety (which is a fre- quently repeated self-murder), are more tortured than they could be by the want of what they pant after: that longed-for pos- session of a neighbour's estate, or of a pub- lic employment, makes deeper impressions of grief by their absence than their enjoy- ment can repair. And a philosopher will sooner convince himself of their not being the necessary integrants of our happiness, than the miser will, by all his assiduous- ness, gain them. THOMAS SPRAT, born 1636, Bishop of Rochester, 1684, died 1713. was the author of a History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge, Lond., 1667, etc., 4to, and of some other works, including poems. "The correctest writer of the age, and comes nearest to the great original of Greece and Home, by a studious imitation of the ancients. . . . Ilia sermons are truly fine." DR. II. FELTOH : Dintei-t. on Readiiiy the Ctaisicn, 1711. " His language is always beautiful. . . . All his sermons deserve a reading." DR. DODDRJDGE. VIEW OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT AFFORDED BY EXPERIMENTAL PHILOSOPUT. We are guilty of false interpretations of providence and wonders when we either make those to be miracles that are none, or when we put a false sense upon those that are real ; when we make general events to have a private aspect, or particular accidents to have some universal signification. Though both these may seem at first to have the strictest appearance of religion, yet they are the greatest usurpations on the secrets of the Almighty, and unpardonable presump- tions on his high prerogatives of punish- ment and reward. And now, if a moderating of these ex- travagances must be esteemed profaneness, I confess I cannot absolve the experimental philosopher. It must be granted that he will be very scrupulous in believing all manner of commentaries on prophetical vis- ions, in giving liberty to new predictions, and in assigning the causes and marking out the paths of God's judgments amongst his creatures. He cannot suddenly conclude all extraor- THOMAS SPRAT. Ill dinary events to be the immediate finger of God ; because he familiarly beholds the in- ward workings of things, and thence per- ceives that many effects which used to af- fright the ignorant are brought forth by the common instruments of nature. He cannot be suddenly inclined to pass censure on men's eternal condition from any temporal judgments that may befall them; because his long converse with all matters, times and places has taught him the truth of what the Scripture says, that "all things happen alike to all." He cannot blindly consent to all imaginations of devout men about future contingencies, seeing he is so rigid in exam- ining all particular matters of fact. He cannot be forward to assent to spiritual raptures and revelations ; because he is truly acquainted with the tempers of men's bodies, the composition of their blood, and the power of fancy, and so better understands the dif- ference between diseases and inspirations. But in all this he commits nothing that is irreligious. 'Tis true, to deny that God has heretofore warned the world of what was to come, is to contradict the very Godhead itself; but to reject the sense which any private man shall fasten to it, is not to dis- dain the Word of God, but the opinions of men like ourselves. To declare against the possibility that new prophets may be sent from heaven, is to insinuate that the same infinite Wisdom which once showed itself that way is now at an end. But to slight all pretenders that come without the help of miracles is not a contempt of the Spirit, but a just circumspection that the reason of men be not over-reached. To deny that God directs the course of human things, is stupidity; but to hearken to every prodigy that men frame against their enemies, or for themselves, is not to reverence the power of God, but to make that serve the passions, the interests, and revenges of men. It is a dangerous mistake, into which many good men fall, that we neglect the dominion of God over the world, if we do not discover in every turn of human actions many supernatural providences and miracu- lous events. Whereas it is enough for the honour of his government, that he guides the whole creation in its wonted course of causes and effects : as it makes as much for the reputation of a prince's wisdom, that he can rule his subjects peaceably by his known and standing laws, as that he is often forced to make use of extraordinary justice to punish or rewai'd. Let us. then, imagine our philosopher to have all slowness of belief, and rigour of trial, which by some is miscalled a blind- ness of mind and hardness of heart. Let us suppose that he is most unwilling to grant that anything exceeds the force of nature, but where a full evidence convinces him. Let it be allowed that he is always alarmed, and ready on his guard, at the noise of any miraculous event, lest his judgment should be surprised by the dis- guises of faith. But does he by this dimin- ish the authority of ancient miracles? or does he not rather confirm them the more, by confining their number, and taking care that every falsehood should not mingle with them? Can he by this undermine Chris- tianity, which does not now stand in need of such extraordinary testimonies from heaven ? or do not they rather endanger it who still venture its truths on so hazardous a chance, who require a continuance of signs and wonders, as if the works of our Saviour and his apostles had not been sufficient? Who ought to be esteemed the most carnally- minded the enthusiast that pollutes reli- gion with his own passions, or the experi- menter that will not use it to flatter and obey his own desires, but to subdue them ? Who is to be thought the greatest enemy of the Gospel he that loads men's faith by so many improbable things as will go near to make the reality itself suspected, or he that only admits a few arguments to confirm the evangelical doctrines, but then chooses those that are unquestionable ? It cannot be an ungodly purpose to strive to abolish all holy cheats, which are of fatal consequence both to the deceivers and those that are deceived : to the deceivers, because they must needs be hypocrites, having the argument in their keeping ; to the deceive:!, because if their eyes shall ever bo opened, and they chance to find that they have been deluded in any one thing, they will be apt not only to re- ject that, but even to despise the very truths themselves which they had before been taught by those deluders. It were, indeed, to be confessed that this severity of censure on religious things were to be condemned in experimenters, if, while they deny any wonders that are falsely at- tributed to the true God, they should ap- prove those of idols or false deities. But that is not objected against them. They make no comparison between his power and the works of any others, but only between the several ways of his own manifesting himself. Thus, if they lessen one heap, yet they still increase the other; in the main, they diminish nothing of his right. If they take from the prodigies, they add to the ordinary works of the same Author. And those ordinary works themselves they do almost raise to the height of wonders, by the exact discovery which they make of their excellencies; while the enthusiast goes near to bring down the price of the true and 112 WILLIAM BEVERIDGE. primitive miracles, by such n vast and such a negligent augmenting of their number. By this, I hope, it appears that this in- quiring, this scrupulous, this incredulous temper, is not the disgrace, but the honour, of experiments. And, therefore, I will de- clare them to be the most seasonable study for the present temper of our nation. This wild amusing men's minds with prodigies and conceits of providence, has been one of the most considerable causes of those spir- itual distractions of which our country has long been the theatre. This is a vanity to which the English seem to have been always subject above others. There is scarce any modern historian that relates our foreign wars but he has this objection against the disposition of our countrymen, that they used to order their affairs of the greatest importance according to some obscure omens or predictions that passed amongst them on little or no foundations. And at this time, especially this last year [1066], this gloomy and ill-boding humour has prevailed. So that it is now the fittest season for experi- ments to arise, to teach us a wisdom which springs from the depths of knowledge, to shake off the shadows, and to scatter the mists, which fill the minds of men with a vain consternation. This is a work well becoming the most Christian profession. For the most apparent effect which attended the passion of Christ was the putting of an eternal silence on all the false oracles and dissembled inspirations of ancient times. History of the Royal Society. WILLIAM BEVERIDGE, D.D., born 1^38, Bishop of St. Asaph, famous for his learning, piety, and good works, was the author of many theological works, of which a collective edition of those in English was first published, with a Memoir of the Au- thor, and a Critical Examination of his Writings, by Thomas Hartwell Home. M.A., Lond., 1X24, 9 vols. 8vo. New edition of Bishop Beveridge's Works, in Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, 1848, 10 vols. 8vo. "Our learned and venerable bishop delivered himself with those ornaments alone which his sub- ject suggested to him, and wrote in that plainness and solemnity of style, that gravity and simplicity, which gave authority to the sacred truths he taught, and unanswerable evidence to the doctrines he defended. There is something so great, primi- tive, and apostolical in his writings, that it creates an awe and veneration in our mind : the impor- tance of his subjects is above the decoration of words j and what is great and majestic in itself looketh most like itself the less it is adorned." DR. HENRY FELTOX. " Beveridge's Practical Works are much like Henry's, but not equal to his." DR. DODDUIUGK. SELF-DENIAL. Christ hath said in plain terms, " If any man will come after me, let him deny him- self;" implying that he that doth not deny himself cannot go after him. But besides that, there is an impossibility in the thing itself, that any one should be a true Christian or go after Christ, and not deny himself, as may be easily perceived if we will but consider what true Christianity requires of us, and what it is to be a real Christian. A true Christian, we know, is one that lives by faith, and not by sight; that " looks not at the things which are seen, but at those things which are not seen;" that believes whatsoever Christ hath said, trusteth on whatsoever he hath prom- ised, and obeyeth whatsoever he hath com- manded ; that receiveth Christ as his only Priest to make atonement for him. as his only Prophet to instruct, and as his only Lord and Master to rule and govern him. In a word, a Christian is one that gives up himself and all he hath to Christ, who gave himself and all he hath to him ; and there- fore the very notion of true Christianity im- plies and supposes the denial of ourselves, without which it is as impossible for a man to be a Christian as it is for a subject to be rebellious and loyal to his prince at the same time; and therefore it is absolutely neces- sary that we go out of ourselves before we can go to him. We must strip ourselves of our very selves before we can put on Christ ; for Christ himself hath told us that "no man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other." We cannot serve both "God and Mammon," Christ and ourselves too : so that we must either deny ourselves to go after Christ, or else deny Christ to go after our- selves, so as to mind our own selfish ends and designs in the world. And verily it is a hard case if we cannot deny ourselves for him, who so far denied himself for us as to lay down his life to re- deem ours. He who was equal to God him- self, yea, who himself was the true God, so far denied himself as to become man. yea, " a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs," for us; and cannot we deny our- selves so much as a fancy, a conceit, a sin, or lust, for him ? How, then, can we expect that he should own us for his friends, hia servants, or his disciples? No, he will never do it. Neither can we in reason ex- pect that he should give himself and all the THOMAS DECKER. 113 merits of his death and passion unto us, so long as we think much to give ourselves to him, or to deny ourselves for him. And therefore if we desire to be made partakers of all those glorious things that he hath purchased with his own most precious blood for the sons of men, let us beiiin here, in- dulge our flesh no longer, but deny ourselves whatsoever God hath been pleased to forbid. Arid for this end, let us endeavour each day more and more to live above ourselves, above the temper of our bodies, and above the al- lurements of the world: live as those who believe and profess that they are none of their own, but Christ's, his by creation : it was he that made us, his by preservation: it is he that maintains us, and his by re- demption : it is he that hath purchased and redeemed us with his own blood. And therefore let us deny ourselves for the future to our very selves, whose we are not, and devote ourselves to him, Avhose alone we are. By this we shall manifest ourselves to be Christ's disciples indeed, especially if we do not only deny ourselves, but also take up our cross and follow him. Private Thoughts on a Christian Life, Part II THOMAS DECKER, OR DEK- KER, was well known in the reign of James I. as a writer of plays and tracts (more than fifty in number) and as a co-author with Web- ster, Rowley, Ford, and Johnson of various dramas. The best known of his productions is entitled The Gvll's Ilorne-booke, Lond., 1609, 4to ; new ed., by Dr. Nott, Bristol, 1812, 4to. '' His ' Gul's Horne-Booke, or fashions to please all sorts of Guls,' first printed in 1609, exhibits a very curious, minute, and interesting picture of the manners and habits of the middle class of so- ciety, and on this account will be hereafter fre- quently referred lo in these pages." Di-nke't Shak- speare and His Times. "The pamphlets and plays of Decker alone would furnish a more complete view of the habits and customs of his contemporaries in vulgar and middle life than could easily be collected from all the grave annals of the times." (Lond.) Qiinr. Rev. In his description of London life, in The Fortunes of Nigel, Sir Walter Scott draws largely from The Gull's IIorne-Booke, of which we give some specimens. How A GALLAXT SHOULD BEHAVE HIMSELF IN PAUL'S WALKS. lie that would strive to fashion his legs to his silk stockings, and his proud gait to his broad garters, let him whiff down these 8 observations : for if he once get to walk by the book, and I see no reason but he may, as well as fight by the book, Paul's may be proud of him: Will Clarke shall ring forth encomiums in his honour; John, in Paul's churchyard, shall fit his head for an excel- lent block; whilst all the inns of court re- joice to behold his most handsome calf. Your Mediterranean isle is then the only gallery wherein the pictures of all your true fashionate and complimental gulls are, and ought to be, hung up. Into that gal- lery carry your neat body ; but take heed you pick out such an hour Avhen the main shoal of islanders are swimming up and down. And first observe your doors of en- trance, and your exit ; not much unlike the players at the theatres ; keeping your de- corums even in fantasticality. As, for ex- ample, if you prove to be a northern gentle- man, I would wish you to pass through the north door, more often especially than any of the other ; and so, according to your countries, take note of your entrances. Now for your venturing into the walk. Be circumspect, and wnry what pillar you come in at ; and take heed in any case, as you love the reputation of your honour, that you avoid the serving man's leg, and approach not within five fathom of that pillar ; but bend your course directly in the middle line, that the whole body of the church may appear to be yours ; where, in view of all, you may publish your suit in what manner you affect most, either with the slide of your cloak from the one shoulder ; and then you must, as 'twere in angor, suddenly snatch at the middle of the inside, if it be taffeta at the least ; and so by that means your costly lining is betrayed, or else by the pretty language of compliment. But one note by the way do I especially woo you to, the neglect of which makes many of our gallants cheap and ordinary, that by no means you be seen above four turns ; but in the fifth make yourself away, either in some of the sernsters' shops, the new tobacco office, or amongst the booksellers, where, if you cannot read, exercise your smoke, and in- quire who has writ against this divine weed. &c. For this withdrawing yourself a little will much benefit your suit, which else, by too long walking, would be stale to the whole spectators: hut howsoever, if Paul's jacks l>e once up with their elbows, and quarrelling to strike eleven ; as soon as ever the clock has parted them, and ended the fray with his hammer, let not the duke's gallery contain you any longer, but pass away apace in open view ; in which depart- ure, if by chance you either encounter, or aloof off throw your inquisitive eye upon any knight or squire, being your familiar, 114 THOMAS ELL WOOD. salute him not by his name of Sir such-a- one, or so ; but call him Ned or Jack, &c. This will set off your estimation with great men ; and if, though there be a dozen com- panies between you, 'tis the better he call aloud to you, for that is most genteel, to know where he shall find you at two o'clock ; tell him at such an ordinary, or such ; and be sure to name those that are dearest, and whither none but your gallants resort. After dinner you may appear again, having trans- lated yourself out of your English cloth cloak into a slight Turkey grogram, if you have that happiness of shifting; and then be seen, for a turn or two, to correct your teeth with some quill or silver instrument, and to cleanse your gums with a wrought handkerchief; it skills not whether you dined or no ; that is best known to your stomach, or in what place you dined ; though it were with cheese, of your own mother's making, in your chamber, or study. The GuWs Horne-Booke. THOMAS ELLWOOD, born 1639, died 1713, was the author of Sacred History, or The Historical Part of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, Digested into due Method, with Observations, 1705-9, Lond., 1794, 2 vols. 8vo. and other works, of which a History of His Life, 1714, 8vo, is especially valuable on account of its description of Milton, to whom Ellwood was reader. ELLWOOD'S DESCRIPTION OF MILTON. He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who introduced me, jis of Isaac Penington, who recommended me. to both of whom he bore a good respect; .and having inquired divers things of me, with respect to my former progressions in learning, he dismissed me, to provide my- self of such accommodations as might be most suitable to my future studies. I went, therefore, and took myself a lodg- ing as near to his house (which was then in Jewin-Street) as conveniently I could; and, from thenceforward, went every day, in the afternoon (except on the first days of the week), and sitting by him in his dining- room, read to him such books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to hear me read. At my first sitting to read to him, observ- ing that I used the English pronunciation, lie told me if I would have the benefit of the Latin tongue (not only to read and under- stand Latin authors, but to converse with foreigners, either abroad or at home), I must learn the foreign pronunciation. To this I consenting, he instructed me how to sound the vowels, so different from the common pronunciation used by the English (who speak Anglice their Latin), that (with some few other variations in sounding some consonants, in particular cases, as C, before E or I, like Ch ; Sc, before I, like Sh, &c.) the Latin thus spoken seemed as different from that which was delivered as the Eng- lish generally speak it, as if it was another language. I had, before, during my retired life at my father's, by unwearied diligence and industry, so far recovered the rules of gram- mar (in which I had once been very ready), that I could both read a Latin author and, after a sort, hammer out his meaning. But this change of pronunciation proved a new difficulty to me. It was now harder to me to read than it was before to understand when read. But Labor omnia vincit Iinprobus. Incessant pains The end obtains. And so did I, which made my reading the more acceptable to my master. He, on the other hand, perceiving with what earnest desire I pursued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, but all the help, he could; for, having a curious ear, he under- stood, by rny tone, when I understood what I read, and when I did not ; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me. Thus I went on for about six weeks' time, reading to him in the afternoons, and exer- cising myself, with my own books, in my chamber, in the forenoon. I was sensible of an improvement. But, alas 1 I had fixed my studies in a wrong place. London and I could never agree for health. My lungs (as I suppose) were too tender to bear the sulphureous air of that city ; so that I soon began to droop, and in less than two months' time I was fain to leave both my studies and the city, and return into the country to preserve life ; and much ado I had to get thither. . . . [Having recovered, and gone back to Lon- don,] I was very kindly received by iny master, who had conceived so good an opin- ion of me that my conversation (I found) was acceptable to him ; and he seemed heart- ilv glad of my recovery and return ; and into our old method of study we fell again, I read- ing to him, and he explaining to me as occa- sion required. . . . Some little time before I went to Aylos- bury prison I was required by my quondam master, Milton, to take a house for him in the neighbourhood where I dwelt, that he WILLIA M SIIERL CK. 115 might get out of the city, for the safety of himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended to have waited on him, and see him well settled in it, but was prevented by that imprison- ment. But now, being released, and returned home, I soon made a visit to him, to wel- come him into the country. After some common discourse had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me to take it home with me, and read it at my leisure, and, when I had so done, return it to him with my judgment thereupon. When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he entitled " Paradise Lost." After I had, with the utmost attention, read it through, I made him another visit, and returned him his book, with due acknowl- edgment for the favour he had done me in communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly but freely told him ; and after some further discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?" He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse; then br:>ke off that discourse, and fell upon another subject. After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when, after- wards, I went to wait on him there (which I seldom failed of doing, whenever my occa- sions drew me to London), he showed me his second poem, called " Paradise Regained," and. in a pleasant tone, said to me, "This is owing to you, for you put it into my head at Chalfont: which before I had not thought of." Eilwoo/.Vs History of his Life. WILLIAM SHERLOCK, D.D., born 1641, Prebendary of St. Paul's, 1681, Master of the Temple, 1684, Dean of St. Paul's, 1691, died 1707, was the author of more than sixty publications, chiefly books and pamphlets against Romanism, theological and political tracts, and single sermons. We notice : Discourse concern- ing the Knowledge of Jesus Christ and our Union with Him, Lond., 1674, 8vo ; The Case of Resistance to the Supreme Powers, 1684, 8vo ; Practical Discourses concerning Death, Lond., 1689, 8vo, 19th edit., 1723, 8vo ; A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, and of the Incarnation of the Son of God, Lond., 1690, 1691, 1694, 4to; Prac- tical Discourse concerning a Future Judg- ment, Lond., 1692, 8vo, 5th edit., 1699, 8vo, etc.; Scripture Proofs of our Saviour's Di- vinity, 1706, 8vo. A collection of his Ser- mons edited by Mr. White was published 1700, 8vo, 3d edit, 1719, 8vo, vol. ii., 1719, 8vo, new edit, of both vols., 1755, 2 vols. 8vo. "He was a clear, a polite, and a strong writer, . . . but he was apt to assume too much to him- self, and to treat his adversaries with contempt: this created him many enemies, and made him pass for an insolent, haughty man." BISHOP BUH- NET: Own Time*, edit. 1833, iv. 388. " On moral subjects his arguments are generally strong, exceeding proper for conviction. He is plain and manly, great and animated. His repre- sentations are exceeding awful ; therefore his 'Death' and 'Judgment' are his best books. His book on ' Providence' is by many thought to be the best on that subject." DR. DODDRIDGE. LIFE NOT TOO SHORT. Such a long life [as that of the antedilu- vians] is not reconcilable with the present state of the world. What the state of the world was before the flood, in what manner they lived, and how thev employed their time, we cannot tell, for Moses has given no account of it; but taking the world as it is, and as we find it, I dare undertake to con- vince those men who are most apt to com- plain of the shortness of life, that it would not be for the general happiness of mankind to have it much longer: for, 1st, The world is at present very unequally divided ; some have a large share and portion of it, others have nothing but what they can earn by very hard labour, or extort from other men's charity by their restless importunities, or gain by more ungodly arts. Now, though the rich and prosperous, who have the world at command, and live in ease and pleasure, would be very well contented to spend some hundred years in this world, yet I should think fifty or threescore years abundantly enough for slaves and beggars ; enough to spend in hunger and want, in a jail and a prison. And those who are so foolish as not to think this ''nough, owe a great deal to the wisdom and goodness of God that he does. So that the greatest part of mankind have great reason to be contented with the short- ness of life, because they have no temptation to wish it longer. 2dly, The present state of this world re- quires a more quick succession. The world is pretty well peopled, and is divided amongst its present inhabitants; and but very few, in comparison, as I observed before, have any considerable share in the division. Now, let us but suppose that all our ancestors, who 116 WILLIAM SHERLOCK. lived an hundred or two hundred years ago, were alive still, and possessed their old es- tates and honours, what had become of this present generation of men, who have now taken their places, and make as great a show and hustle in the world as they did? And if you look back three, or four, or five hun- dred years, the case is still so much the worse ; the world would be over-peopled ; and where there is one miserable man now, there must have been five hundred; or the world must have been common, and all men reduced to the same level ; which, I believe, the rich and happy people, who are so fond of long life, would not like very well. This would utterly undo our young prodigal heirs, were their hopes of succession three or four hundred years off, who, as short as life is now, think their fathers make very little haste to their graves. This would spoil their trade of spending their estates before they have them, and make them live a dull sober life, whether they would or no ; and such a life, I know, they don't think worth having. And therefore, I hope at least they Avill not make the shortness of their fathers' lives an argument against providence ; and yet such kind of sparks as these are com- monly the wits that set up for atheism, and, when it is put into their heads, quarrel with everything which they fondly conceive will weaken the belief of a God and a providence, and, among other things, with the shortness of life : which they have little reason to do, when they so often outlive their estates. 3dly, The world is very bad as it is; so bad, that good men scarce know how to spend fifty or threescore years in it; but consider how bad it would probably be were the life of men extended to six, seven, or eight hundred years. If so near a prospect of the other world as forty or fifty years cannot restrain men from the greatest vil- lanies, what would they do if they could as reasonably suppose death to be three or four hundred years off'? If men make such im- provements in wickedness in twenty or thirty years, what would they do in hundreds? And what a blessed place then would this world be to live in ! We see in the old world, when the life of men was drawn out to so great a length, the wickedness of man- kind grew so insufferable that it repented God he had made man ; and he resolved to destroy that whole generation, excepting Noah and his family. And the most prob- able account that can be given how they came to grow so universally wicked, is the long and prosperous lives of such wicked men, who by degrees corrupted others, and they others, till there was but one righteous family left, and no other remedy left but to destroy them all ; leaving only that righteous family as the seed and future hopes of the new world. And when God had determined in himself and promised to Noah never to destroy the world again by such an universal destruc- tion, till the last and final judgment, it was necessary by degrees to shorten the lives of men, which was the most effectual means to make them more governable, and to remove bad examples out of the world, which would hinder the spreading of the infection, and people and reform the world again by new examples of piety and virtue. For when there are such quick successions of men, there are few ages but have some great and brave examples, which give a new and better spirit to the world. ON OUR IGNORANCE OF THE TIME OF DEATH. For a conclusion of this argument, I shall briefly vindicate the wisdom and goodness of God in concealing from us the time of our death. This we are very apt to com- plain of, that our lives are so very uncertain, that we know not to-day but what we may die to-morrow ; and we would be mighty glad to meet with any one who would cer- tainly inform us in this matter, how long we are to live. But if Ave think a little better of it, we shall be of another mind. For, 1st, Though I presume many of you would be glad to know that you shall cer- tainly live twenty, or thirty, or forty veara longer, yet would it be any comfort to know that you must die to-morrow, or some few months, or a year or two hence ? which may be your case for ought you know ; and this, I believe, you are not very desirous to know ; for how would this chill your blood and spirits ! How would it overcast all the pleas- ures and comforts of life ! You would spend your days like men under the sentence of death, while the execution is suspended. Did all men who must die young certainly know it, it would destroy the industry and improvements of half mankind, which would half destroy the world, or be an insupport- able mischief to human societies : for what man who knows that he must die at twenty, or five-and-twenty, a little sooner or later, would trouble himself with ingenious or gainful arts, or concern himself any more with this world than just to live so long in it? And yet, how necessary is the service of such men in the world ! What great things do they many times do ! and what great im- provements do they make! How pleasant and diverting is their conversation while it is innocent ! How do they enjoy themselves, and give life and spirit to the graver age 1 How thin would our schools, our shops, our SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 117 universities, and all places of education, be did they know how little time many of them were to live in the world ! For would such men concern themselves to learn the arts of living, who must die as soon as they have learnt them ? Would any father be at a great expense in educating his child, only that he might die with a little Latin and Greek, logic and philosophy? No: half the world must be divided into cloisters and nunneries, and nurseries, for the grave. Well, you'll say, suppose that ; and is not this an advantage above all the inconveni- ences you can think of, to secure the salva- tion of so many thousands who are now eternally ruined by youthful lusts and vani- ties, but would spend their days in piety and devotion, and make the next world their only care, if they knew how little while they were to live here ? llight: I grant this might be a good way to correct the heat and extravagances of youth, and so it would be to show them heaven and hell ; but God does not think fit to do either, because it offers too much force and violence to men's minds ; it is no trial of their virtue, of their reverence for God, of their conquests and victory over this world by the power of faith, but makes re- ligion a matter of necessity, not of choice: now, God will force and drive no man to heaven ; the gospel dispensation is the trial and discipline of ingenuous spirits; and if the certain hopes and fears of another world, and the uncertainty of our living here, will not conquer these flattering temptations, and make men seriously religious, as those who must certainly die, and go into another world, and they know not how soon, God will not try whether the certain knowledge of the time of their death will make them religious. That they may die young, and that thou- sands do so, is reason enough to engage young men to expect death, and prepare for it ; if they will venture, they must take their chance, and not say they had no warn- ing of dying young, if they eternally mis- carry by their wilful delays. And besides this, God expects our youth- ful service and obedience, though we were to live on till old age : that we may die young is not the proper, much less the only, reason why we should remember our Creator in the days of our youth, but be- cause God has a right to our youthful strength and vigour; and if this will not oblige us to an early piety, we must not expect that God will set death in our view, to fright and terrify us: as if the only de- sign God had in requiring our obedience was, not that we live like reasonable crea- tures, to the glory of their Maker and Re- deemer, but that we might repent of our sins time enough to escape hell. God is so merciful as to accept of returning prodigals, but does not think fit to encourage us in sin, by giving us notice when we shall die, and when it is time to think of repentance. 2dly, Though I doubt not but that it would be a great pleasure to you to know that you should live till old age, yet con- sider a little with yourselves, and then tell me whether you yourselves can judge it wise and fitting for God to let you know this? I observed to you before what danger there is in flattering ourselves with the hopes of long life ; that it is apt to make us too fond of this world when we expect to live so long in it ; that it weakens the hopes and fears of the next world, by removing it at too great a distance from us ; that it encourages men to live in sin, because they have time enough before them to indulge their lusts, and to repent of their sins, and make their peace with God before they die : and if the uncertain hope of this undoes so many men, what would the certain knowledge of it do ? Those who are too wise and considerate to be imposed on by such uncertain hopes, might be conquered by the certain knowl- edge of a lonsr life. SIR ISAAC NEWTON, the most illustrious of natural philosophers, born 1642, died 1727, in addition to his works upon mathematics, philosophy, chro- nology, etc., was the author of Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apoc- alypse of St. John. Lond., 1733, 4to, and other Biblical treatises. In a review of the characteristics and achievements of the great minds which ruled the republic of letters and the domain of science in the latter days of Charles II., an eloquent historian remarks: " But the glory of these men, eminent as they were, is cast into the shade by the transcendent lustre of one immortal name. In Isaac Newton two kinds of intellectual power which have little in common and which are not often found together in a very high degree of vigour, but which, never- theless, are equally necessary in the most sublime departments of natural philosophy were united as they have never been united before or since. There may have been minds as happily constituted as his for the cultivation of pure mathematical science ; there may have been minds as happily constituted for the cultivation of science purely experimental; but in no other mind have the de- monstrative faculty and the inductive faculty co- existed in such supreme excellence and perfect harmony. Perhaps in an age of Scotists and Thomists even his intellect might have run to waste, as many intellects ran to waste which were inferior only to his. Happily, the spirit of the age in which his lot was cast gave the right direc- 118 SIR ISAAC NEWTON. tion to his mind, anil his mind reacted with ten- fold force on the spirit of the age. In the year 1(585, his fame, though splendid, was only dawn- ing : but his genius was in the meridian. His great work that work which effected a revolution in the most important provinces of natural phi- losophy had been completed [it was completed in May, 1686], but was not yet published [in mid- Butnmer, 1687], and was just about to be submitted to the consideration of the Royal Society [sub- mitted May, 1686]." LORD MACAULAY : Hist, of Enylattd, vol. i. ch. iii. The results of Newton's diligent exami- nation of the Scriptures should be given in his own words: "I find," he remarks, " more sure marks of the authenticity of the Bible than in any profane history what- ever. . . . Worshipping God and the Lamb in the temple: God, for his benefaction in creating all things, and the Lamb, for his benefaction in redeeming us with his blood." THE PROPHETIC LANGUAGE. For understanding the prophecies, we are, in the first place, to acquaint ourselves with the figurative language of the prophets. This Janguage is taken from the analogy between the world natural and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic. Accordingly, the whole world natural, consisting of heaven and earth, signifies the whole world politic, consisting of thrones and people; or so much of it as is considered in the prophecy. And the things in that world signify the analogous things in this. For the heavens, and the things therein, signify thrones and dignities, and those who enjoy them ; and the earth, with the things thereon, the inferior people; and the lowest part of the earth, called Hades, or Hell, the lowest or most miserable part of them. Whence, ascending towards heaven, and descending to the earth, are put for rising and falling in power and honour ; rising out of the earth or waters, and falling into them, for the rising up to any dignity or dominion, out of the inferior state of the people, or falling down from the same into that inferior state ; descending into the lower parts of the earth, for descending to a very low and un- happy state ; speaking with a faint voice out of the dust, for being in a weak and low condition ; moving from one place to another, for translation from one office, dignity, or dominion to another; great earthquakes, and the shaking of heaven and earth, for the shaking of dominions, so as to distract and overthrow them ; the creating a new heaven and earth, and the passing away of nn old one, or the beginning and end of the world, for the rise and reign of the body politic signified thereby. In the heavens, the sun and moon are, by the interpreters of dreams, put for the per- sons of kings and queens. But in sacred prophecy, which regards not single persons, the sun is put for the whole species and race of kings, in the kingdom or kingdoms of the world politic, shining with regal pomp and glory ; the moon for the body of the common people, considered as the king's wife ; the stars for subordinate princes and great men, or for bishops and rulers of the people of God, when the sun is Christ; light for the glory, truth, and knowledge wherewith great and good men shine and illuminate others; darkness for obscurity of condition, and for error, blindness, and ignorance ; darkening, smiting, or settling of the sun, moon, and stars, for the ceasing of a king- dom, or for the desolation thereof, propor- tional to the darkness; darkening the sun, turning the moon into blood, and falling of the stars, for the same ; new moons, for the return of a dispersed people into a body politic or ecclesiastic. Fire and meteors refer to both heaven and earth, and signify as follows : Burning any- thing with fire, is put for the consuming thereof by war ; a conflagration of the earth or turning a country into a lake of fire, for the consumption of a kingdom by war ; the being in a furnace, for the being in slavery under another nation ; the ascending up of the smoke of any burning thing for ever and ever, for the continuation of a conquered people under the misery of perpetual sub- jection and slavery; the scorching heat of the sun, for vexatious wars, persecutions, and troubles inflicted by the king; riding on the clouds, for reigning over much people; covering the sun with a cloud, or with smoke, for oppression of the king by the armies of an enemy ; tempestuous winds, or the motion of clouds, for wars; thunder, or the voice of a cloud, for the voice of a multitude; a storm of thunder, lightning, hail, and overflowing rain, for a tempest of war descending from the heavens and clouds politic on the heads of their enemies; rain, if not immoderate, and dew, and living water, for the graces and doctrines of the Spirit ; and the defect of rain, for spiritual barrenness. In the earth, the dry land and congregated waters, as a sea, a river, a flood, are put for the people of several regions, nations, and dominions ; embittering of waters, for great affliction of the people by war and persecu- tion ; turning things into blood, for the mys- tical death of bodies politic, that is, for their dissolution ; the overflowing of a sea or river, for the invasion of the earth politic, by the people of the waters ; drying up of waters, for the conquest of their regions, by the earth ; fountains of waters for cities, tho WILLIAM PENN. 119 permanent heads of rivers politic ; moun- tains and islands, for the cities of the earth and sea politic, with the territories and dominions belonging to those cities ; dens and rocks of mountains, for the temples of cities; the hiding of men in those dens and rocks, for the shutting of idols in their tem- ples ; houses and ships, for families, assem- blies, and towns in the earth and sea politic ; and a navy of ships of war, for an army of that kingdom that is signified by the sea. Animals also, and vegetables, are put for the people of several regions and conditions; and particularly trees, herbs, and land ani- mals, for the people of the earth politic ; flags, reeds, and fishes, for those of the waters politic; birds and insects, for those of the politic heaven and earth ; a forest, for a kingdom ; and a wilderness, for a desolate and thin people. If the world politic, considered in proph- ecy, consists of many kingdoms, they are represented by as many parts of the world natural, as the noblest by the celestial frame, and then the moon and clouds are put for the common people; the less noble, by the earth, sea, and rivers, and by the animals or vegetables, or buildings therein ; and thon the greater and more powerful animals and taller trees, are put for kings, princes, and nobles. And because the whole kingdom is the body politic of the king, therefore the sun, or a tree, or a beast, or a bird, or a man, whereby the king is represented, is put in a large signification for the whole kingdom; and several animals, as a lion, a bear, a leopard, a goat, according to their qualities, are put for several kingdoms and bodies politic ; and sacrificing of beasts, for slaugh- tering and conquering of kingdoms ; and friendship between beasts, for peace between kingdoms. Yet sometimes vegetables and animals are, by certain epithets or circum- stances, extended to other significations; as a tree, when called the " tree of life" or " of knowledge" ; and a beast, when called " the old serpent," or worshipped. WILLIAM PENN, the founder of Pennsylvania, a man illus- trious for wisdom and virtue, born 1644, died 1718, was the author of No Cross, No Crown, a Discourse shewing the Nature and Discipline of the Holy Cross of Christ, Lond., 1669, 12mo; Brief Account of the llise and Progress of the People called Quakers, Lond., 1694, 12mo, etc.; Fruits of a Father's Love : being the Advice of William Penn to his Children, Lond., 1726, 12mo, and of other works. See the Select Works of William Penn, with a Journal of his Life, Lond., 1771, fol., large paper; 2d ed., Lond., 1782, 5 vols. 8vo ; Lond., 1825, 3 vols. 8vo. " It should be sufficient for the glory of William Penn that he stands upon record as the most hu- mane, the most moderate, and the most pacific of all rulers." LORD JEFFREY: Contrib. to Edin. Itev., 1853,849. " To William Penn belongs the distinction, des- tined to brighten as men advance in virtue, of first in human history establishing the Law 'if Love as a rule of conduct in the intercourse of nations." CHAULES SUMXER: The True Grandeur of Nations: Orations and Speeches, 1850, i. 114. TUB PRIDE OF NOBLE BIRTH. That people are generally proud of their persons is too visible and troublesome, espe- cially if they have any pretence either to blood or beauty ; the one has raised many quarrels among men, and the other among women, and men too often, for their sakes, and at their excitements. But to the first: what a pother has this noble blood made in the world, antiquity of name or family, whose father or mother, great-grandfather or great-grandmother, was best descended or allied? what stock or what clan they carne of? what coat of arms they have? which had, of right, the precedence? But, methinks, nothing of man's folly has less show of reason to palliate it. For, first, what matter is it of whom any one descended, that is not of ill fame ; since 'tis his own virtue that must raise, or vice depress him ? An ancestors character is no excuse to a man's ill actions, but an ag- gravation of his degeneracy ; and since vir- tue comes not by generation, I neither am the better nor the worse for my forefather : to be sure not in God's account ; nor should it be in man's. Nobody would endure in- juries the easier, or reject favours the more, for coming by the hand of a man well or ill descended. I confess it were greater honour to have had no blots, and with an hereditary estate to have had a lineal descent of worth : but that was never found ; no, not in the most blessed of families upon earth ; I mean Abraham's. To be descended of wealth and titles fills no man's head with brains, or heart with truth : those qualities come from a higher cause. 'Tis vanity, then, and most condemnable pride, for a man of bulk and character to despise another of less size in the world, and of meaner alliance, for want of them ; because the latter may have the merit, where the former has only the effects of it in an ancestor : arid though the one be great by means of a forefather, the other is so too, but 'tis by his own ; then, pray, which is the bravest man of the two? 120 WILLIAM PENN. " 0," says the person proud of blood, " it was never a good world since we have had so many upstart gentlemen !" But what should others have said of that man's ances- tor, when he started first up into the knowl- edge of the world? For he, and all men and families, ay, and all states and king- doms too, have had their upstarts, that is, their beginnings. This is like being the True Church, because old. not because good ; for families to be noble by being old, and not by being virtuous. No such matter : it must be age in virtue, or else virtue before age; for otherwise, a man should be noble by means of his predecessor, and yet the predecessor less noble than he, because he was the acquirer: which is a paradox that Avill puzzle all their heraldry to explain. Strange! that they should be more noble than their ancestor, that got their nobility for them ! But if this be absurd, as it is, then the upstart is the noble man ; the man that got it by his virtue: and those only are entitled to his honour that are imitators of his virtue ; the rest may bear his name from his blood, but that is all. If virtue, then, give nobility, which heathens themselves agree, then families are no longer truly noble than they are virtuous. And if virtue go not by blood, but by the qualifications of the descendants, it follows, blood is ex- cluded ; else blood would bar virtue, and no man that wanted the one should be allowed the benefit of the other ; which were to stint and bound nobility for want of antiquity, and make virtue useless. No : let blood and name go together ; but pray, let nobility and virtue keep com- pany, for they are nearest of kin. 'Tis thus posited by God himself, that best knows how to apportion things with an equal and just hand. He neither likes nor dislikes by de- scent ; nor does he regard what people were, but are. He remembers not the righteous- ness of any man that leaves his righteous- ness, much less any unrighteous man for the righteousness of his ancestor. No Cross, No Crown. PE\\'S ADVICE TO HIS CHILDREN. Next, betake yourselves to some honest, industrious course of life, and that not of sordid covetousness, but for example, and to avoid idleness. And if you change your condition and marry, choose with the knowl- edge and consent of your mother, if living, or of guardians, or those that have the charge of you. Mind neither beauty nor riches, but the fear of the Lord, and a sweet and amiable disposition, such as you can love above all this world, and that may make your habitations pleasant and desirable to you. And being married, be tender, affectionate, patient, and meek. Live in the fear of the Lord, and he will bless you and your off- spring. Be sure to live within compass; borrow not, neither be beholden to any. Ruin not yourselves by kindness to others ; for that exceeds the due bounds of friend- ship, neither will a true friend expect it. Small matters I heed not. Let your industry and parsimony go no further than for a sufficiency for life, and to make a provision for your children, and that in moderation, if the Lord gives you any. I charge you help the poor and needy; let the Lord have a voluntary share of your in- come for the good of the poor, both in our society and others ; for we are all his crea- tures ; remembering that he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. Know well your incomings, and your out- goings may be better regulated. Love not money nor the world : use them only, and they will serve you ; but if you love them you serve them, which will debase your spirits as well as offend the Lord. Pity the distressed, and hold out a hand of help to them ; it may be your case, and as you mete to others God will mete to you again. Be humble and gentle in your con- versation ; of few words, I charge you, but always pertinent when you speak, hearing out before you attempt to answer, and then speaking as if you would persuade, not im- pose. Affront none, neither revenge the affronts that are done to you ; but forgive, and you shall be forgiven of your Heavenly Father. In making friends, consider well first ; and when you are fixed, be true, not wavering by reports, nor deserting in affliction, for that becomes not the good and virtuous. Watch against anger ; neither speak nor act in it: for, like drunkenness, it makes a man a beast, and throws people into desper- ate inconveniences. Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise; their praise is costly, designing to get by those they bespeak ; they are the worst of creatures ; they lie to flatter, and flatter to cheat ; and, which is worse, if you believe them, you checit yourselves most dan- gerously. Butthevirtuous, though poor, love, cherish, and prefer. Remember David, who, asking the Lord, "Who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell upon thy holy hill?" answers, " He that walketh uprightly, worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart ; in whose eyes the vile person is contemned, but honoureth them who fear the Lord !" Next, my children, be temperate in all things : in your diet, for that is physic by prevention ; it keeps, nay, it makes, people ROBERT BARCLAY. 121 healthy, and their generation sound. This is exclusive of the spiritual advantage it brings. Be also plain in your apparel: keep out that lust which reigns too much over some: let your virtues be your orna- ments, remembering life is more than food, and the body than raiment. Let your fur- niture be simple and cheap. Avoid pride, avarice, and luxury. Read my " No Cross, No Crown." There is instruction. Make your conversation with the most eminent for wisdom and piety, and shun all wicked men sis you hope for the blessing of God and the comfort of your father's living and dying prayers. Be sure you speak no evil of any, no, not of the meanest, much less of your superiors, as magistrates, guardians, tutors, teachers, and elders in Christ. Be no busybodies ; meddle not with other folk's matters, but when in conscience and duty pressed ; for it procures trouble, and is ill manners, and very unseemly to wise men. In your families remember Abraham, Moses, and Joshua, their integrity to the Lord, and do as you have them for your ex- amples. Let the fear and service of the living God be encouraged in your houses, and that plainness, sobriety, and moderation in all things, as becometh God's chosen people ; and as I advise you, my beloved children, do you counsel yours, if God should give you any. Yea, I counsel and command them as my posterity, that they love and porve the Lord God with an upright heart, that he may bless you and yours from gen- eration to generation. And as for you, who are likely to be con- cerned in the government of Pennsylvania and my parts of East Jersey, especially the first. I do charge you before the Lord God and his holy angels, that you be lowly, dili- gent, and tender, fearing God, loving the people, and hating covetousness. Let jus- tice have its impartial course, and the law free passage. Though to your loss, protect no man against it; for you are not above the law, but the law above you. Live, there- fore, the lives yourselves you would have the pe iple live, and then you have right and Ijoldness to punish the transgressor. Keep upon the square, for God sees you : there- fore, do your duty, and be sure you see with your own eyes, and hear with your own ears. Entertain no lurchers, cherish no in- formers for gain or revenge, use no tricks, fly to no devices to support or cover injus- tice : 1m t let your hearts be upright before the Lord, trusting in him above the contri- vances of men, and none shall be able to hurt or supplant. Fruits of a Father's Love. ROBERT BARCLAY, born at Gordonstown, Morayshire, Scotland, 1648, died 1690, will always be known by An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth, and preached by the people, Called, in Scorn, Quakers, etc., [Aberdeen?] 1678, 4to; 2d edit. [London?], 1678, 4to. Original, in Latin, Lond., 1676, 4to. In English, 8th edit., Birmingham, Baskerville, 1765. royal 4to. For other edi- tions and translations, see Joseph Smith's Descriptive Catalogue of Friends' Books, 1867, i. 179-184. " A man of eminent gifts and great endowments, expert not only in the language of the learned, but also well versed in the writings of the ancient Fathers, and other ecclesiastical writers, and fur- nished with a great understanding, being not only of a sound judgment, but also strong in argu- ments." SEWEL: Hist, of the Quaker*. " I take him to be so great a man, that I profess freely, I had rather engage against a hundred Bellannines, Hardings, and Stapletons, than with one Barclay." Nonius OP BEMERTOX : Second Treatise of the Liyht Within. In his Apology Barclay gives his reasons against TITLES OF HONOUR. We affirm positively, That it is not lawful for Christians either to give or receive these titles of honour, as Your Holiness, Your Majesty, Your Excellency, Your Eminency, &c. First, because these titles are no part of that obedience which is due to magistrates or superiors ; neither doth the giving of them add to or diminish from that subjection we owe to them, which consists in obeying their just and lawful commands, not in titles and designations. Secondly, we find not that in the Scrip- ture any such titles are used, either under the law or the gospel : but that in the speaking to kings, princes, or nobles, they used only a simple compellation, as, " King !" and that without any further designation, save, per- haps, the name of the person, as, '' King Agrippa," &c. Thirdly, it lays a necessity upon Chris- tians most frequently t') lie ; because the persons obtaining these titles, either by election or hereditarily, may frequently be found to have nothing really in them de- serving them, or answering to them : as some to whom it is said, u Your Excellency," having nothing of excellency in them; and who is called "Your Grace," appear to be an enemy to grace ; and he who is called " Your Honour," is known to be base and ignoble. I wonder what law of man, or what patent, ought to oblige me to make a lie, in calling good evil, and evil good. I 122 M. DE RAPIN SIEUR DE THOTRAS. wonder what law of man can secure me, in so doing, from the just judgment of God, that will make me account for every evil word. And to lie is something more. Surely, Christians should he ashamed that such laws, manifestly crossing the law of God, should be among them. . . . Fourthly, as to those titles of " Holi- ness," "Eminency," and "Excellency," used among the Papists to the Pope and Cardinals, &c. ; and "Grace," "Lordship," and " Worship," used to the clergy among the Protestants, it is a most blasphemous usurpation. For if they use " Holiness" and "Grace," because these things ought to be in a Pope or in a Bishop, how come they to usurp that peculiarly to themselves? Ought not holiness and grace to be in every Christian ? And so every Christian should say, " Your Holiness," and " Your Grace," one to another. Next, how can they in rea- son claim any more titles than were practised and received by the apostles and primitive Christians, whose successors they pretend they are ; and as whose successors (and no otherwise) themselves, I judge, will confess any honour they seek is due to them ? Now, if they neither sought, received, nor ad- mitted such honour, nor titles, how came these by them ? If they say they did, let them prove it if they can : we find no such thing- in the Scripture. The Christians speak to the apostles without any such denomination, neither saying, "If it please your Grace," "your Holiness," nor "your Worship;" they are neither called " My Lord Peter," nor " My Lord Paul ;" nor yet Master Peter, nor Mas- ter Paul ; nor Doctor Peter, nor Doctor Paul ; but singly Paul and Peter ; and that not only in the Scripture, but for some hundreds of years after: so this appears to be a manifest fruit of the apostasy. For if these titles arise either from the office or worth of the persons, it will not be denied but the apostles deserved them better than any now that call for them. But the case is plain : the apostles had the holiness, the excellency, the grace ; and because they were holy, excellent, and gracious, they neither used nor per- mitted such titles; but these having neither holiness, excellency, nor grace, will needs be so called to satisfy their ambitious and ostentatious mind, which is a manifest token of their hypocrisy. Fifthly, as to that title of "Majesty," usually ascribed to princes, we do not find it given to any such in the Holy Scripture ; but that it is specially and peculiarly ascribed unto God. . . . We find in the Scripture the proud 'king Nebuchadnezzar assuming this title to himself, who at that time received a sufficient reproof by a sudden judgment which came upon him. Therefore in all the compilations used to princes in the Old Testament, it is not to be found, nor yet in the New. Paul was very civil to Agrippa, yet he gives him no such title. Neither was this title used among Christians in the primitive times. M. DE RAPIN SIEUR DE THOYRAS, born at Castres, France, 1661, died 1725, was the author of the following work, The History of England (from the Earliest Period to the Revolution in 1688), written in French by Mr. Rapin de Thoyras, translated into English, with additional Notes (and a Con- tinuation to the Accession of K. George II.), by N. Tindal, M.A., Lond., 1743-47, 5 vols. folio. Other editions. " The historian Rapin is remarkable for his im- partiality and candour. Although the edition of 1743 is usually called the best, that of 1732 is p ref- erable as regards impressions of the plates. The pagination of the two editions is the same ; nnd there is perceptible difference in the text." Lowxden's liibl. Man., Bohn's edit., iv. 2047, q. v. "Hume wrote his History for fame, Rapin for instruction ; and both gained their ends." VOL- TAIRE : Martin Sherlock's Letters from an Eiiylivh Traveller, Lond., 1780, 4to. CHARACTER OF ELIZABETH. Elizabeth had a great deal of wit. and was naturally of a sound and solid judg- ment. This was visible by her whole man- agement, from one end of her reign to the other. Nothing shews her capacity more than her address in surmounting all the difficulties and troubles created by her ene- mies, especially when it is considered who these enemies were ; persons the most power- ful, the most artful, the most subtile, and the least scrupulous in Europe. The following are the maxims which she laid down for the rule and measures of her whole conduct, and from which she never swerved : " To make herself beloved by her people : To be frugal of her treasure: To keep up dissen- sion amongst her neighbours." Her enemies pretend that her abilities consisted wholly in overstrained dissimula- tion, and a profound hypocrisy. In a word, they say she was a perfect comedian. For my part, I don't deny that she made great use of dissimulation, as well with regard to the courts of France and Spain as to the queen of Scotland and the Scots. I am also persuaded that, being as much concerned to gain the love and esteem of her subjects, she affected to speak frequently, and with CHARLES ROLLIN. 123 them. And that she had a mind to make it believed that she did some tilings from an excessive love to her people, which she was led to more by her own interest. Avarice is another failing which her own friends reproach her with. I will not deny that she was too parsimonious, and upon some occasions stuck too close to the maxims she had laid down, not to be at any expence but what was absolutely necessary. How- ever, in general I maintain, that if her cir- cumstances did not require her to be covet- ous, at least they required that she should not part with her money but with great caution, both in order to preserve the affec- tion of her people, and to keep herself always in a condition to withstand her ene- mies. . . . It is not so easy to justify her concerning the death of the Queen of Scots. Here it must be owned she sacrificed equity, justice, and it may be her own conscience, to her safety. If Mary was guilty of the murder of her husband, as there is ground to believe, it was not Elizabeth's business to punish her for it. And truly it was not for that she took away her life ; but she made use of that pretence to detain her in prison, under the deceitful colour of making her innocence appear. On this occasion her dissimulation was blameworthy. This first piece of in- justice drew her in afterwards to use a world of artful devices to get a pretence to ren- der Mary's imprisonment perpetual. From hence arose in the end the necessity of put- ting her to death on the scaffold. This doubtless is Elizabeth's great blemish, which manifestly proves to what degree she carried the fear of losing a crown. The continued fear and uneasiness she was under on that account is what characterises her reign, because it was the mainspring of almost all her acting. The best thing that can be said in Elizabeth's behalf is, that the Queen of Scots and her friends had brought matters to such a pass, that one of the two queens must perish, and it was natural that the weakest should fall. I don't believe any- body ever questioned her being a true Prot- estant. But, as it was her interest to be, some have taken occasion to doubt whether the zeal she expressed for her religion was the effect of her persuasion or policy. All that can be said is, that she happened some- times to prefer her temporal concerns before those of religion. To sum up in two words what may serve to form Elizabeth's char- acter, I shall add, she was a good and illus- trious queen, with many virtues and noble qualities and few faults. But what ought above all things to make her memory pre- cious is, that she caused the English to enjoy a state of felicity unknown to their ancestors, under most part of the kings, her predeces- sors. The History of England. CHARLES ROLLIN, born in Paris, 1661, Professor of Rhetoric in the College du Plessis, 1687, and of Elo- quence in the Royal College de France, 1688; Principal of the University of Paris, 1694-1696, died 1741, was the author of a work on the Study of Belles-Lettres (Trait6 de la Maniere d'enseigner et 6tudier les Belles-Lettres, 1726) ; of an Ancient His- tory (Histoire Ancienne, 1730-38, 12 vols.) ; and of a History of Rome (Histoire Ro- maine, 1738). GENERAL REFLECTIONS upon what is called Good Taste, as it now falls under our consideration, that is, with reference to the reading of authors, and composition, is a clear, lively, and distinct discerning of all the beauty, truth, and just- ness of the thoughts and expressions which compose a discourse. It distinguishes what is conformable to eloquence and propriety in every character, and suitable in different cir- cumstances. And whilst, with a delicate and exquisite sagacity, it notes the graces, turns, manners, and expressions most likely to please, it perceives also all the defects which produce the contrary effect, and dis- tinguishes precisely wherein those defects consist, and how far they are removed from the strict rules of art and the real beauties of nature. This happy faculty, which it is more easy to conceive than define, is less the effect of genius than judgment, and a kind of nat- ural reason wrought up to perfection by study. It serves in composition to guide and direct the understanding. It makes use of the imagination, but without submitting to it, and keeps it always in subjection. It consults nature universally, follows it step by step, and is a faithful image of it. Re- served and sparing in the midst of abun- dance and riches, it dispenses the beauties and graces of discourse with temper and wisdom. It never suffers itself to be daz- zled with the false, how glittering a figure soever it may make. 'Tis equally offended with too much and too little. It knows pre- cisely where it must stop, and cuts off, with- out regret or mercy, whatever exceeds the beautiful and perfect. 'Tis the want of this quality which occasions the various species of bad style ; as bombast, conceit, and witti- cism ; in which, as Quinctilian says, the genius is void of judgment, and suffers itself 124 DANIEL DE FOE. to be carried away with an appearance of beauty, quoties iiujenium judicio caret, and specie boni fallitur. Taste, simple and uniform in its principle, is varied and multiplied an infinite num- ber of ways, yet so as under a thousand different forms, in prose or verse, in a de- clamatory or concise, sublime or simple, jo- cose or serious style, 'tis always the same, and carries with it a certain character of the true and natural, immediately perceived by all persons of judgment. We cannot say the style of Terence, Phaedrus, Sallust. Cae- sar, Tully, Livy, Virgil, and Horace is the same. And yet they have all, if I may be allowed the expression, a certain tincture of a common spirit, which in that diversity of genius and style makes an affinity between them, and the sensible difference also be- twixt them and the other writers, who have not the stamp of the best age of antiquity upon them. I have already said that this distinguish- ing faculty was a kind of natural reason wrought up to perfection by study. In re- ality all men bring the first principles of taste with them into the world, as well as those of rhetoric and logic. As a proof of this, we may urge that every good orator is almost always infallibly approved of by the people, and that there is no difference of taste and sentiment upon this point, as Tully observes, between the ignorant and the learned. The case is the same with music and painting. A concert that has all its parts well composed and well executed, both as to instruments and voices, pleases universally. But if any discord arises, any ill tone of voice be intermixed, it shall displease even those who are absolutely ignorant of music. They know not what it is that offends them, but they find somewhat grating in it to their ears. And this proceeds from the taste and sense of harmony implanted in them by nature. In like manner, a fine picture charms and transports a spectator who has no idea of painting. Ask him what pleases him, and why it pleases him, and he cannot easily give an account, or specify the real reasons ; but natural sentiment works almost the same effect in him as art and use in con- noisseurs. The like observations will hold good as to the taste we are here speaking of. Most men have the first principles of it in themselves, though in the greater part of them they lie dormant in a manner, for want of instruc- tion or reflection ; as they are often stifled or corrupted by vicious education, bad cus- toms, or reigning prejudices of the age and country. But how depraved soever the taste may be, it is never absolutely lost. There are certain fixed remains of it, deeply rooted in the understanding, wherein all men agree. Where these secret seeds are cultivated with care, they may be carried to a far greater height of perfection. And if it so happens that any fresh light awakens these first notions and renders the mind attentive to the immutable rules of truth and beauty, so as to discover the natural and necessary con- sequences of them, and serves at the .same time for a model to facilitate the application of them, we generally see that men of the best sense gladly cast off their ancient errors, correct the mistakes of their former judgments, and return to the justness and delicacy which are the effects of a refined taste, and by degrees draw others after them into the same way of thinking. To be convinced of this, we need only look upon the success of certain great orators and celebrated authors, who, by their natural talents, have recalled these primitive ideas, and given fresh life to these seeds, which lie concealed in the mind of every man. In a little time they united the voices of those who made the best use of their reason in their fervour ; and soon after gained the ap- plause of every age and condition, both ignorant and learned. It would be easy to point out amongst ns the date of the good taste which now reigns in all arts and sciences ; by tracing each up to its original we should see that a small number of men of genius have acquired the nation this glory and advantage. Study of Belles-Lettres. DANIEL DE FOE, born 1661, died 1731, was the author of more than two hundred works (see Bohn's Lown- dc.s's Bibliographer's Manual, ii. 612-622), of which Robinson Crusoe, and A Journal of the Plague Year (1665): written by a Citizen who continued all the while in Lon- don, Never made publick before, Lond., 1722, 8vo, are the best known. Both are fictitious. " Perhaps there exists no work, either of in- struction or entertainment, in the English lan- guage, which has been more generally read, and more universally admired, than the Life and Ad- ventures of Robinson Crusoe. It is difficult to sny in whnt the charm consists, by which persons of all classes and denominations are thus fasci- nated ; yet the majority of readers will recollect it ns among the first works that awakened and inter- ested their youthful attention; and feel, even in advanced life, and in the maturity of their under- standing, that there nre still associated with Rob- inson Crusoe the sentiments peculiar to that period when all is new. all glittering in prospect, and when those visions are most bright which the ex- JONATHAN SWIFT. 125 perience of after-life tends only to darken and de- stroy." SIR WALTER SCOTT. " Most of our readers are probably familiar with De Foe's history of that great calamity (the Plague), a work in which fabulous incidents and circumstances are combined with authentic narra- tives with an art and verisimilitude which no other writer has ever been able ta communicate to no- tion." Edln. licciew, xxiv. 321. THE PLAGUE ix LOVDOX ix 1G85. The Plague, like a great fire, if a few houses only are contiguous where it hap- pens, can only burn a few houses ; or if it begins in a single or, as we call it, a lone house, can only burn that lone house where it begins: but if it begins in a close-built town, or city, and gets a-liead, there its fury increases, it rages over the whole place, and consumes all it can reach. . . . It is true; hundreds, yea thousands, of families fled away at this last Plague, but then of them many fled too late, and not only died in their flight, but carried the distemper with them into the countries where they went, and infected those whom they went among for safety: which confounded the thing, and made that be a propagation of the distemper which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it; and that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others, I say this proves that so it was ; for such people infected the very towns they went through ; and it was by that means that al- most all the great towns in England had the distemper among them, more or less; and always they would tell you such a Londoner or such a Londoner brought it down. It must not be omitted that, when I speak of those people who were really thus dan- gerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their own condition ; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such as in- deed they were, they must have been a kind of wilful murderers, if they would have gone abroad among healthy people, and it would have verified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, and which I thought seemed untrue, viz., that the in- fected people were utterly careless as to giv- ing the infection to others, and rather forward to do it than not ; and I believe it was partly from this very thing that they raised that suggestion, which I hope was not really true in fact. I confess no particular case is sufficient to prove a general, but I could name several people within the knowledge of some of their neighbours and families yet living who shewed the contrary to an extreme. One man, a master of a family in my neighbour- hood, having had the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor workman whom he employed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went for some work that he wanted to have finished, and he had some apprehensions even while he was at the po:>r workman's door, but did not discover it fully, but the next day it discovered itself, and lie was taken very ill ; upon which he imme- diately caused himself to be carried infr> an outbuilding which he had in his yard, and where there was a chamber over a work- house, the man being a brazier ; here he lay, and here he died, and would be tended by none of his neighbours, but by a nurse from abroad, and would not suffer his wife, nor children, nor servants to come up into the room, lest they should be infected, but sent them his blessing and prayers for them by the nurse, who spoke it to them at a dis- tance, and all this for fear of giving them the distemper, and without which, he knew as they were kept up, they could not have it. And here I must observe also, that the Plague, as I suppose all distempers do, oper- ated in a different manner on different con- stitutions: some were immediately over- whelmed with it, and it came to violent fevers, vomitings, insufferable headaches, pains in the back, and so up to ravings and ragings with those pains ; others with swell- ings and tumours in the neck or groin, or armpits, which, till they could be broke, put them into insufferable agonies and tor- ment ; while others, as I have observed, were silently infected, the fever preying upon their spirits insensibly, and they seeing little of it, till they fell into swooning, and faint- ings and death, without pain. A Journal of the 1'layue year. JONATHAN SWIFT, D.D., famous alike for his wit, his genius, his love affairs with Varina, Stella, and Vanessa, and his political warfare, was born in Dublin, 1G67, and died in a state of mental imbe- cility, 1745. Among his best-known works are Tale of a Tub, with an Account of a Battle between the Ancient and Modern Books in St. James's Library, Lond., 1704, 8vo; The Conduct of the Allies, etc., Lond., 1712, 8vo; Law is a Bottomless Pit, Lond., 1712, 8vo; Drapier's Letters, 1724, with Prometheus, etc., Dubl., 1725, 8vo, Lond., 1730, 8vo; Gulliver's Travels, Lond., 1726- 27, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d. ed., Lond., 1727, 2 vols. 126 JONATHAN SWIFT. 8vo. There were collective editions of his Works, Lond., 1755-1779, etc., 25 vols. 8vo, nnd 18mo; Lond., by John Nichols, 1801, 19 vols. 8vo, and royal 8vo ; again, 1803 (some 1804), 24 vols. i8niO; again, 1808, 19 vols. 8vo; New York, 1812-13, 24 vols. 12rno ; Edin., by Sir Walter Scott, with Life, 1814 (some 1815), 1250 copies, 19 vols. 8vo, and royal 8vo ; 2d ed., 1250 copies, 19 vols. 8vo; Lond., with Memoir by Thomas Roscoe, 1841, also 1848, 1851, 1853, 1858, 1868, each in 2 vols. demy 8vo; New York (" first com- plete American edition"), 1859, 6 vols> 12mo; again, Dec. 1862, 6 vols. 12mo. A new edition of Swift's Works, prefaced by a Life, Journal, and Letters, has been an- nounced by Mr. John Murray, of London. Of his Select Works there have been a number of editions. "In his works he has given very different speci- mens both of sentiments and expressions. His ' Tale of a Tub' has little resembhince to his other pieces. It exhibits a vehemence and rnpidity of mind, a copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction such as he afterwards never possessed or never exerted. It is of amode so distinct and pecu- liar that it must be considered by itself; what is true of that is not true of anything else which he has written. ...['' What a genius 1 had when I wrote that book !" Swift, in old age.] In his other works is found an equable tenour of easy language, which rather trickles than flows. His delight was in simplicity. That he has in his works no mc'taphor, as has been said, is not true; but his few metaphors seem to be received rather by necessity than choice. . . . His style was well suiU-d to his thoughts, which are never subtleised by nice disquisitions, decorated by sparkling con- ceits, elevated by ambitious sentences, or varie- gatod by I'ar-sought learning. ... In the poetical works of Dr. Swift there is not much upon which the critic can exercise his powers. They are often humorous, almost always light, and have the qualities which recommend such compositions, easiness and gnyety. They are, for the most part, what their author intended. The diction is cor- rect, the numbers are smooth, and the rhymes exact. There seldom occurs a hard-laboured ex- pression, or a redundant epithet; all his verses exemplify his own definition of good style, they consist of proper words in proper places." DR. JOHNSON: Life of Swift, in Cunningham's ed. of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, 1854, iii. 190, 191, 199: q. v. (Index) for the editor's illus- trative Notes. See also Croker's Boswell's John- son. Index. " His style is, in its kind, one of the models of English composition: it is proper, pure, precise, perspicuous, significant, nervous, deriving a cer- tain dignity from a masterly contempt of puerile ornaments, in which every word seems to convey the intended meaning with the decision of tho writer's character ; not adapted, indeed, to ex- press nice distinctions of thought or shades of feeling, or to convey those new and large ideas which must be illustrated by imagery but qualified beyond any other to discuss the common business of life in such a manner as to convince and per- suade the generality of men, and, where occasion allows it, meriting in its vehement plainness the praise of the most genuine eloquence. His verse is only, apparently, distinguished by the accident of measure ; it has no quality of poetry, nnd, like his prose, is remarkable for sense and wit." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH : Life, ii., ch. iii. See chaps. i., ii., vii. REMARKS ON A PROPOSED ABOLITION OF CHRISTIANITY. I am very sensible how much the gentle- men of wit and pleasure are apt to murmur and be shocked at the sight of so many daggle-tail parsons, who happen to fall in their way, and offend their eyes ; but, at the same time, those wise reformers do not con- sider what an advantage and felicity it is for great wits to be always provided with objects of scorn and contempt, in order to exercise and improve their talents, and divert their spleen from falling on each other, or on themselves; especially when all this may be done without the least im- aginable danger to their persons. And to urge another argument of a parallel nature : if Christianity were once abolished, how could the free-thinkers, the strong reason- ers, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject so calculated in all points whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would, therefore, be never able to shine or distinguish themselves on any other subject? We are daily complain- ing of the great decline of wit among us, and would we take away the greatest, perhaps the only, topic we have left? Who would ever have suspected Asgill for a wit, or Toland for a philosopher, if the inexhaust- ible stock of Christianity had not been at hand to provide them with materials ? What other subject through all art or nature could have produced Tindal for a profound author, or furnished him with readers? It is the wise choice of the subject that alone adorneth and distinguished the writer. For had a hundred such pens as these been em- ployed on the side of religion, they would immediately have sunk into silence and ob- livion. Nor do I think it wholly groundless, or my fears altogether imaginary, that the abolishing of Christianity may, perhaps, bring the church in danger, or at least put the senate to the trouble of another securing vote. I desire I may not be misunderstood : I am far from presuming to affirm or think that the church is in danger at present, or as things now stand, but we know not how soon it may be so, when the Christian reli- gion is repealed. As plausible as this pro- JONATHAN SWIFT. 127 ject seems, there may a dangerous design lurk under it. Nothing can be more notori- ous than that the atheists, deists, socinians, anti-trinitarians, and other subdivisions of free-thinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment. Their declared opinion is for repealing the sacra- mental test; they are very indifferent with regard to ceremonies ; nor do they hold the jus divinum of episcopacy. Therefore this may be intended as one politic step towards altering the constitution of the church estab- lished, and setting up presbytery in its stead ; which I leave to be farther considered by those at the helm. And therefore if, notwithstanding all I have said, it shall still be thought necessary to have a bill brought in for repealing Chris- tianity, I would humbly offer an amendment, that, instead of the word Christianity, may be put religion in general ; which I conceive will much better answer all the good ends proposed by the projectors of it. For as lung as we leave in being a God and his Providence, with all the necessary conse- quences which curious and inquisitive men will be apt to draw from such premises, we do not strike at the root of the evil, although we should ever so effectually annihilate the present scheme of the Gospel. For of what use is freedom of thought if it will not pro- duce freedom of action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of all objections against Christianity? And therefore the free-thinkers consider it a sort of edifice, wherein all the parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that if you happen to pull out one single nail the whole fabric must fall to the ground. THOUGHTS AXD APHORISMS. If the men of wit and genius would re- solve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any. Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them, as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscoat can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible and greeing with what he fancied. Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, be- cause they arc apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination. This I once said to my Lord Bolingbroke, and desired he would observe that the clerks in his office used a sort of ivory knife with a blunt edge to divide a sheet of paper, which never failed to cut it even, only re- quiring a steady hand ; whereas if they should make use of a sharp penknife, the sharpness would make it often go out of the crease and disfigure the paper. " He who does not provide for his own house," St. Paul says, "is worse than an infidel ;" and I think he who provides only for his own house is just equal with an infidel. I never yet knew a wag (as the term is) who was not a dunce. When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side" or cir- cumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones. The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former. Would a writer know how to behave him- self with relation to posterity, let him con- sider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments. One argument to prove that the common relations of ghosts and spectres are generally false, may be drawn from the opinion held that spirits are never seen by more than one person at a time ; that is to say, it seldom happens to above one person in a company to be possessed with any high degree of spleen or melancholy. It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laving taxes on the next: "Future ages shall" talk of this;" "This shall be famous to all posterity :" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now. I never heard a finer piece of satire against lawyers than that of astrologers, when they pretend by rules of art to tell when a suit will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or defendant ; thus making the matter depend entirely upon the influence of the stars, without the least regard to the merits of the cause. I have known some men possessed of good qualities, which were very serviceable to others but useless to themselves : like a sun- dial on the front of a house, to inform the neighbours and passengers, but not the owner within. If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, &c., beginning from his youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last! The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. The reason why so few marriages are happy is, because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cnges. The power of fortune is confessed only by 128 WILLIAM WHISTON. the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit. Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion. The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words : for who- ever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt in speaking to hesitate upon the choice of both ; whereas common speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in ; and these are always ready at the mouth : so people come faster out of church when it is almost empty than when a crowd is at the door. WILLIAM WHISTON, born 1G67, died 1752, was author of many mathematical and theological works (some of them opposed to trinitarian views), and published a Translation of Josephus, Lond., 1737, etc., which has been, or ought to be, superseded by the translation of Rev. Dr. Robert Traill, Lond., 1846-51, 3 vote, super- royal 8vo. Among his works were : New Theory of the Earth, Lond., 1696, 8vo; Vin- dication of the New Theory, Lond., 1698, 8vo ; Short View of the Chronology of the Old Testament, and of the Harmony of the Four Evangelists, Camb., 1702, 4to, 1707, 4to ; Essay on the Revelation of St. John, Camb., 1706, 4to, some large paper, 2d ed., Lond., 1744, 4to ; The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies: Boyle Lecture, Camb., 1708, 8vo ; Primitive Christianity Revived, Lond., 1711-12, 5 vola. 8vo ; Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Philosophy Demon- strated, Lond., 1716, 8vo ; Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Winston, Lond., 1749-50, 3 vols. Svo. " The Memoirs of this singular man, published by himself, contain some curious information re- specting his times, and afford a view of great honesty and disinterestedness, combined with an extraordinary degree of superstition and love of the marvellous." Ornie'* Bill. Jiib., 467. "The honest, pious, visionary Winston." GIB- BON: Decline and Fa/I, ch. xliii., n. " Poor Whiston, who believed in everything but the Trinity.' 1 LOUD MACAULAY : Hint, of En JOHN ARBUT-HNOT, M.D., born 1G75, died 1735, was associated with Pope, Gray, Swift, Harley, Atterbury, and Congreve, in the Scriblerus Club, and was sole or joint author of Memoirs of the Ex- traordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus, which were pnl>- lished in Pope's Works. Among his other productions were a treatise on the Useful- ness of Mathematical Learning, 1700, The History of John Bull, 1712, and Tables of Ancient Coins, Weights, and Measures, Lond., 1727, 4to. JOHN ARBUTHNOT. 141 " He has more wit than we all have, and his humiinity is equal to his wit." SWIFT. " His good morals were equal to any man's, but his wit and humour superior to all mankind.'' POPE. " I think Dr. Arbuthnot the first man among them [the eminent writers in Queen Anne's reign]. He was the most universal genius, being an excel- lent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour." Du. JOHNSON. USEFULNESS OF MATHEMATICAL LEARNING. The advantages which accrue to the mind by mathematical studies consist chiefly in these things : 1st, In accustoming it to at- tention. 2d, In giving it a habit oi' close and demonstrative reasoning. 3d, In freeing it from prejudice, credulity, and superstition. First, the mathematics make the mind attentive to the objects which it considers. This the} 7 do by entertaining it with a great variety of truths, which are delightful and evident, but not obvious. Truth is the same thing to the understanding as music to the ear and beauty to the eye. The pursuit of it does really as much gratify a natural fac- ulty implanted in us by our wise Creator as the pleasing of our senses: only in the former case, as the object and faculty are more spiritual, the delight is more pure, free from the regret, turpitude, lassitude, and in- temperance that commonly attend sensual pleasures. The most part of other sciences consisting only of probable reasonings, the mind has not where to fix. and wanting suf- ficient principles to pursue its searches upon, gives them over as impossible. Again, as in mathematical investigations truth may be found, so it is not always obvious. This spurs the mind, and makes it diligent and attentive. . . . The second advantage which the mind reaps from mathematical knowledge is a habit of clear, demonstrative, and method- ical reasoning. We are contrived by nature to learn by imitation more than by precept; and I believe in that respect reasoning is much like other inferior arts (as dancing, singing, &c.), acquired by practice. By ac- customing ourselves to reason closely about quantity, we acquire a habit of doing so in other things. It is surprising to see what superficial inconsequential reasonings sat- isfy the most part of mankind. A piece of wit. a jest, n simile, or a quotation of an author, passes for a mighty argument : with such things as these are the most part of authors stuffed ; and from these weighty premises they infer thoir conclusions. This weakness and effeminacy of mankind, in being persuaded where they are delighted, have made them the sport of orators, poets, and men of wit. Those Inmina rationis are indeed very good diversion for the fancy, but are not the proper business of the un- derstanding ; and where a man pretends to write on abstract subjects in a scientific method, he ought not to debauch in them. Logical precepts are more useful, nay, they are absolutely necessary, for a rule of for- mal arguing in public disputations, and confounding an obstinate and perverse ad- versary, and exposing him to the audience or readers. But, in the search of truth, an imitation of the method of the geometers will carry a man farther than all the dialectical rules. Their analysis is the proper model we ought to form ourselves upon, and imitate in the regular disposition and progress of our inquiries ; and even he who is ignorant of the nature of mathematical analysis uses a method somewhat analogous to it. The composition of the geometers, or their method of demonstrating truths already found out, namely, by definition of words agreed upon, by self-evident truths, and propositions that have been already demonstrated, is practica- ble in other subjects, though not to the same perfection, the natural want of evidence in the things themselves not allowing it ; but it is imitable to a considerable degree. I dare appeal to some writings of our own age and nation, the authors of which have been mathematically inclined. I shall add no more on this head, but that one who is ac- customed to the methodical systems of truth which the geometers have reared up in the several branches of those sciences which they have cultivated, will hardly bear with the confusion and disorder of other sciences, but endeavour, as far as he can, to reform them. Thirdly, mathematical knowledge adds vigour to the mind, frees it from prejudice, credulity, and superstition. This it does in two ways: 1st, By accustoming us to exam- ine, and not to take things upon trust. 2d, By giving us a clear and extensive knowl- edge of the system of the world, which, as it creates in us the most profound reverence of the Almighty and wise Creator, so it frees us from the mean and narrow thoughts which ignorance and superstition are apt to beget. . . . The mathematics are friends to religion, inasmuch as they charm the pas- sions, restrain the impetuosity of imagina- tion, and- purge the mind from error and Erejudice. Vice is error, confusion, and ilse reasoning; and all truth is more or less opposite to it. Besides, mathematical studies may serve for a pleasant entertain- ment for those hours which young men are apt to throw away upon their vices ; the de- lightfulness of them being such as to make solitude not only easy but desirable. Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning. 142 SAMUEL CLARKE. SAMUEL CLARKE, D.D., one of the most famous of English philoso- phers and divines, born 1675, entered Caius College, Cambridge, 1691 ; at twenty, by his notes to his new translation of Rohault's Physics substituted at Cambridge the New- tonian for the Cartesian philosophy ; became Hector of St. Bennet's, Paul's Wharf, Lon- don, 1706, and of St. James's, Westminster, 1709; published his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, etc.. Lond., 1705-6, 2 vols. 8vo, The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, Lond., 1712, 8vo (an Arian treatise), and other works ; died 1729. Works, with Account, by Benjamin [IloadlyJ Bishop of Winchester, Lond., 1738, 4 vols. 8vo. In vol. iii. will be found his Paraphrase on the Four Evangelists, which has been frequently reprinted, and generally accompanies Pyle on the Epistles. "Dr. Clarke's paraphrase on the Evangelists deserves an attentive reading ; he narrates a story in handsome language, and connects the parts well together; but fails much in emphasis, and seems to mistake the order of the histories." DR. DOD- DRIPGE. " He rarely reaches the sublime or aims at the pathetic ; but in a clear manly flowing style he delivers the most important doctrines, confirmed on every occasion by well-applied passages from Scripture. He was not perfectly orthodox in his opinions; a circumstance which has lowered his character among many." DR. KNOX. " I should recommend Dr. Clarke's Sermons were he orthodox ; however, it is very well known where he was not orthodox, which was upon the doctrine of the Trinity, as to which he is a condemned her- etic: so one is aware of it." DR. JOHNSON: Jios- tcell'ii Life of Johnson. " Eminent at once as a divine, a mathematician, a metaphysical philosopher, and a philologer; and as the interpreter of Homer and Caesar, the scholar of Newton, and the antagonist of Leibnitz, ap- proved himself not unworthy of correspondence with the highest order of human spirits." SIR J. MACKINTOSH. NATURAL AND ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE OF RIGHT AND WRONG. The principal thing that can, Avith any colour of reason seem to countenance the opinion of those who deny the natural and eternal difference of good and evil, is the difficulty there may sometimes be to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong; the variety of opinions that have obtained even among understanding and learned men, con- cerning certain questions of just and unjust, especially in political matters ; and the many contrary laws that have been made in divers ages and in different countries concerning these matters. But as, in painting, two very different colours, by diluting each other very slowly and gradually, may, from the highest in- tenseness in either extreme, terminate in the midst insensibly, and so run one into the other that it shall not be possible even for si skilful eye to determine exactly where the one ends and the other begins ; and yet the colours may really differ as much as can be, not in degree only, but entirely in kind, as red and blue, or white and black : so, though it may perhaps be very difficult in some nice and perplexed cases (which yet are very far from occurring frequently) to define exactly the bounds of right and wrong, just and unjust (and there may be some latitude in the judg- ment of different men, and the laws of divers nations), yet right and wrong are neverthe- less in themselves totally and essentially different; even altogether as much as white and black, light and darkness. The Spartan law, perhaps, which permitted their youth to steal, may, as absurd as it was, bear much dispute whether it was absolutely unjust or no: because every man having an absolute right in his own goods, it may seem that the members of any society may agree to trans- fer or alter their own properties upon what conditions they shall think n't. But if it could be supposed that a law had been made at Sparta, or at Rome, or in India, or in any other part of the world, whereby it had been commanded or allowed that every man might rob by violence, and murder, whomsoever he met with, or that no faith should be kept with any man, nor any equitable compacts performed, no man with any tolerable use of his reason, whatever diversity of judgment might be among them in other matters, would have thought that such a law could have au- thorized or excused, much less have justified, such actions, and have made them become good : because 'tis plainly not in men's power to make falsehood be truth, though they may alter the property of their goods as they please, ftow if in flagrant cases the natural and essential difference between good and evil, right and wrong, cannot but be con- fessed to be plainly and undeniably evident, the difference between them must be also essential and unalterable in all, even the smallest, and nicest and most intricate cases, though it be not so easy to be discerned and accurately distinguished. For if, from the difficulty of determining exactly the bounds of right and wrong in many perplexed cases, it could truly be concluded that just and un- just were not essentially different by nature, but only by positive constitution and custom, it would follow equally that they were not really, essentially, and unalterably different, even in the most flagrant cases that can be supposed ; which is an assertion so very ab- surd that Mr. Hobbes himself could hardly vent it without blushing, and discovering plainly, by his shifting expressions, his secret BENJAMIN HOADLY. 143 Belf-condemnation. There are therefore cer- tain necessary and eternal differences of things, and certain fitnesses or unfitnesses of the application of different things, or dif- ferent relations one to another, not depend- ing on any positive constitutions, but founded unchangeably in the nature and reason of things, and unavoidably arising from the differences of the things themselves. BENJAMIN HOADLY, D.D., born 1676, Bishop of Bangor, 1713, Bishop of Salisbury, 17^3, Bishop of Winchester, 1734, died 1761, was the author of a num- ber of theological treatises, of which A Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Lord's Supper, 1735, 8vo (A Defence of the same, 1735, 1748, 8vo), and a sermon, entitled My Kingdom is not of this AVorld, 1717 (which gave rise to the famous Bango- rian Controversy, comprised in forty to fifty tracts), are the best known. A collection of his Sermons was published, 1754-55, 2 vols. 8vo (Discourses, 4th edit., 1734, 8vo), and his Works, with an Index and an Introduc- tory Account of the Author, appeared, Lond., 1773, 3 vols. fol. " A long and celebrated war of pens instantly commenced, known by the name of the Bangorian Controversy; managed, perhaps on both sides, with all the chicanery of polemical writers, and disgusting both from its tediousness, imd from the manifest unwillingness of the disputants to speak ingenuously what they meant." HALLAM : Constit. Hist, of England, edit. 1854, iii. 243-214. Mr. Hallam appends this note : "These qualities are so apparent, that, after turning over some forty or fifty tracts, and con- suming a good many hours on the Bangorian Con- troversy, I should find some difficulty in stating with decision the propositions in dispute." PROTESTANT INFALLIBILITY. Your holiness is not perhaps aware how near the churches of us Protestants have at length come to those privileges and per- fections which you boast of as peculiar to your own : so near that many of the most quick-sighted and sagacious persons have not been able to discover any other differ- ence between us, as to the main principle of all doctrine, government, worship, and discipline, but this one, namely, that you cannot err in anything you determine, and we never do : that is, in other words, that you are infallible, and we always in the right. We cannot but esteem the advantage to be exceedingly on our side in this case ; because we have all the benefits of infalli- bility without the absurdity of pretending to it, and without the uneasy task of main- taining a point so shocking to the under- standing of mankind. And you must par- don us if we cannot help thinking it to be as great and as glorious a privilege in us to be always in the right, without the pretence of infallibility, as it can be in you to be always in the wrong, with it. Thus, the synod of Dort (for whose un- erring decisions public thanks to Almighty God are every three years offered up with the greatest solemnity by the magistrates in that country), the councils of the reformed in France, the assembly of the kirk of Scot- land, and (if I may presume to name it) the convocation of England, have been all found to have the very same unquestionable authority which your church claims, solely upon the infallibility which resides in it, and the people to be under the very same strict obligation of obedience to their de- terminations, which with you is the con- sequence only of an .absolute infallibility. The reason, therefore, why we do not openly set up an infallibility is, because we can do without it. Authority results as well from power as from right, and a majority of votes is as strong a foundation for it as infallibility itself. Councils that may err, never do : and besides, being composed of men whose pecu- liar business it is to be in the right, it is very immodest for any private person to think them not so ; because this is to set up a private corrupted understanding above a public uncorrupted judgment. Thus it is in the north, as well as the south, abroad as well as at home. All maintain the exercise of the same authority in themselves which yet they know not how so much as to speak of without ridicule in others. In England it stands thus: The synod of Dort is of no weight; it determined many doctrines wrong. The assembly of Scotland hath nothing of a true authority : and is very much out in its scheme of doctrines, worship, and government. But the church of England is vested with all authority, and justly challengeth all obedience. If one crosses a river in the north, there it stands thus : The church of England is not enough reformed ; its doctrines, Avor- ship, and government have too much of antichristian Rome in them. But the kirk of Scotland hath a divine right from its only head, Jesus Christ, to meet and to enact what to it shall seem fit for the good of his church. Thus, we left you for your enormous un- justifiable claim to an unerring spirit, and have found out a way, unknown to your holiness .and your predecessors, of claiming all the rights that belong to infallibility j 144 JOHN HUGHES. even whilst we disclaim and abjure the thing itself. As for us of the church of England, if we will believe many of its greatest advocates, we have bishops in a succession as certainly uninterrupted from the apostles as your church could communicate it to us. And upon this bottom, which makes us a true church, we have a right to separate from you; but no persons living have a right to differ or separate from us. And they again, who differ from us, value themselves upon something or other in which we are sup- posed defective, or upon being free from some superfluities which we enjoy ; and think it hard that any will be still going further, and refine upon their scheme of worship and discipline. Thus we have indeed left you; but we have fixed ourselves in your seat, and make no scruple to resemble you in our defences of ourselves and censurers of others when- ever we think it proper. From the Dedication to Pope Clement XL prefixed to Sir R. Steele's Account of the State of the Roman Catholic Religion throughout the World. JOHN HUGHES, born 1677, died 1720, was a contributor to The Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian ; co-author with Sir Richard Blackmore of the Essays, Discourses. &c., of the Lay Monk, (in 40 Numbers, Nov. 10, 1713-Feb. 15, 1714, 2d edit., The Lay Monastery, Lond., 1714, 12mo) ; author of the Siege of Damas- cus, 1720, 8vo, and of other productions, together with translations. His Poems and Essays in Prose were published, Lond., 1735, 2 vols. 12ino, and his Correspondence, with Notes, Lond., 1772, 3 vols. 12mo, 2d edit., 1773, 3 vols. 8vo. His poems were included in Dr. Johnson's collection, with a meagre sketch without any estimate of his merits. " He [Hughes] is too grave a poet for me, and, I think, among the Mediocrists in prose as well as verse." SWIFT TO POPE. " What he wanted in genius he made up as an honest man ; but he was of the class you think him." POPE TO SWIFT. " Hughes has more merit as a translator of poetry than as an original poet. . . . On the prose of Hughes I am inclined to bestow more praise than on his poetry. . . . All the periodical essays of Hughes are written in a style which is, in gen- eral, easy, correct, and elegant : they occasionally exhibit wit and humour; and they uniformly tend to inculcate the best precepts, moral, pruden- tial, and religious." DR. DRAKE : Einys Illustra- tive of the Tatler, Spectator, nnd Guardian, iii. 26 50, q. v. for an account of Hughes's share in these periodicals; and see the Prefaces to the various editions of those works. IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. To THE SPECTATOR. SIR, I am fully persuaded that one of the best springs of generous and worthy actions is the having generous and worthy thoughts of ourselves. Whoever has a mean opinion of the dignity of his nature will act in no higher a rank than he has allotted himself in his own estimation. If he con- siders his being as circumscribed by the un- certain term of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to any thing great and noble who only believes that, after a short turn on the stage of this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his con- sciousness forever? For this reason I am of opinion that so useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the soul's immortality cannot be resumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human rnind than to be fre- quently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments ; nor a more effectual means to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity. It is a very great satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of mankind in all nations and ages asserting as with one voice this their birthright, and to find it ratified by an express revelation. At the same time if we turn our thoughts inwards upon our- selves, we may mef;t with a kind of secret sense concurring with the proofs of our own immortality. You have, in my opinion, raised a good presumptive argument from the increasing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained per- fection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a short life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress through the several stages of it. '' We are complaining," as you observed in a former speculation, " of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little set- tlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it." Now let us consider what happens to 113 when we arrive at these imaginary points of rest. Do we stop our motion and sit down satisfied in the settlement we have gained? or are we not removing the boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to which we press forward with the like eagerness, and HENRY ST. JOHN. 145 which cease to be such as fast as we attain them ? Our case is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his prospect ; but he no sootier arrives at it than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and con- tinues to travel on as before. This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no one who has observed any thing but may observe that as fast as his time wears away his appetite to some- thing future remains. The use, therefore, I would make of it is, that since Nature (as some love to express it) does nothing in vain, or to speak properly, since the Author of our being has planted no wandering pas- sion in it, no desire which has not its object, futurity is the proper object of the passion so constantly exercised about it: and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to farther stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may be to others) as a kind of instinct, or natural symptom, which the mind of men has of its own immortality. I take it at the same time for granted that the immortality of the soul is sufficiently es- tablished by other arguments: and if so, this appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds strength to the conclu- sion. But I am amazed when I consider there are creatures capable of thought, who, in spite of every argument, can form to themselves a sullen satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted ambition of that man who can hope for annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole fabric shall one day crumble into dust, and mix with the mass of inanimate beings, that it equally deserves our admiration and pity. The mys- tery of such men's unbelief is not hard to be penetrated ; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so. This brings me hack to my first observa- tion, and gives me occasion to say farther, that as worthy actions spring from worthy thoughts, so worthy thoughts are likewise the consequence of worthy actions. But the wretch who has degraded himself below the character of immortality is very willing to resign his pretensions to it, and to substi- tute in its room a dark negative happiness in the extinction of his being. The Spectator, No. 210, Wednesday, Octo- ber 31, 1711, 10 HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE, born 1678, became Secretary of War, 1704, Secretary of State, 1710, fled to France to avoid impeachment, 1715, and was absent until 17-3; for ten years was in political opposition to Sir Robert "\Valpole, and died 1751. He was a man of profligate prin- ciples and great intellectual and literary abilities. The Craftsman, by Caleb D' Anvers (Dec. 5, 1725, et seq., Lond., 14 vols. 12mo), was'the vehicle of Wyndhanvs, Pulteney'n, and Bolingbroke's fierce attacks upon AVal- pole ; and in the same paper first appeared Bolingbroke's Dissertations upon Parties (in a volume, Lond., 1735, 4to). His Re- marks on the History of England were published, Lond., 1743, 4to ; his Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism, on the Idea of a Patriot King, and on the State of Parties at the Accession of George I., appeared together in a volume, Lond., 1749, 8vo. Pope had previously printed and circulated more copies of The Idea of a Patriot King than the author intended. A collective edition of Boling- broke's Works was published by David Mal- let, Lond., 1754, 5 vols. 4to (again, Lond., 178G, 11 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1809, 8 vols. 8vo, Boston, Mass., 1844, 4 vols. 8vo), and his Letters, Correspondence, with State Papers, etc., were published by the Rev. Gilbert Parke, Lond., 1798, 2 vols. 4to. " I really think there is something in that great man which looks as if he was placed here by mis- take. When the comet appeared to us a month or two ago, I had sometimes an imagination th.it it might possibly be come to our world to carry him home; as a coach comes to one's door for other visitors." POPE: Spence's Anecdotes. " When Tully attempted poetry he became as- ridiculous as Bolingbroke when he attempted phi- losophy and divinity : we look in vain for that genius which produced the Dissertation on Parties in the tedious philosophical works, of which it is no exaggerated satire to say that the reason of them is sophistical and inconclusive, the style dif- fuse and verbose, and the learning seemingly con- tained in them not drawn from the originals, but picked up and purloined from French critics and translations." JOSEPH WARTOS : Life of Pope. ON USELESS LEARNING. Some [histories] are to be read, some are to be studied, and some may be neglected entirely, not only without detriment, but with advantage. Some are the proper ob- jects of one man's curiosity, some of another's, and some of all men's; but all history is not an object of curiosity for any man. He who improperly, wantonly, and absurdly makes it so, indulges a sort of canine appetite; the curiosity of one, like the hunger of the other, devours ravenously, and without distinction, whatever falls in its 146 HENRY ST. JOHN. way, but neither of them digests. They heap crudity upon crudity, and nourish and improve nothing but their distemper. Some such characters I have known, though it is not the most common extreme into which men are apt to fall. One of them I knew in this country [Bishop Warburton]. lie joined to a most athletic strength of body a prodigious memory, and to both a pro- digious industry. He had read almost con- stantly fourteen or fifteen hours a day for twenty-five or thirty years, and had heaped together as much learning as could be crowded into a head. In the course of my acquaintance witli him I consulted him once or twice not oftener, for I found this mass of learning of as little use to me as to the owner. The man was communicative enough, but nothing was distinct in his mind. How could it be otherwise? he had never spared time to think, all was employed in read- ing. His reason had not the merit of com- mon mechanism. When you press a watch, or pull a clock, they answer your question with precision ; for they repeat exactly the hour of the day, and tell you neither more nor less than you desire to know. But when you asked this man a question, he overwhelmed you by pouring forth all that the several terms or words of your question recalled to his memory ; and if he omitted anything, it was the very thing to which the sense of the whole question should have led him and confined him. To ask him a question was to wind up a spring in his memory, that rattled on with vast rapidity and confused noise, till the force of it was spent; and you went away with all the noise in your ears, stunned and uninformed. I never left him that I was not ready to say to him, Dieu vous fasse la grace de devenir mains savant! a wish that La Mothe le Vayer mentions upon some occasion or other, and that he would have done well to have applied to himself upon many. lie who reads with discernment and choice will acquire less learning, but more knowl- edge; and as this knowledge is collected with design, and cultivated with art and method, it will be at all times of immediate and ready use to himself and others. Thus useful arms in magazines we place, All ranged in order, and disposed with grace; Nor thus alone the curious eye to please, But to be found, when need requires, with case. You remember the verses, my lord, in our friend's [Pope's] Essay on Criticism, which was the work of his childhood almost; but is such a monument of good sense and poetry as no other, that I know, has raised in his riper years. He who reads without this discernment and choice, and, like Bodin's pupil, resolves to read all, will not have time, no, nor capa- city neither, to do anything else. He will not be able to think, without which it is impertinent to read ; nor to act, without which it is impertinent to think. He will assemble materials with much pains, and purchase them at much expense, and have neither leisure nor skill to frame them into proper scantlings, or to prepare them for use. To what purpose should he husband his time, or learn architecture? he has no design to build. But then, to what purpose all these quarries of stone, all these moun- tains of sand and lime, all these forests of oak and deal ? Essay on the Study of History : Boling- broke's Works, 1754, *'*' 330. COMPLAINTS OF THE SHORTNESS OP HUMAN LIFE. I think very differently from most men of the time we have to pass, and the business we have to do in this world. I think we have more of one, and less of the other, than is commonly supposed. Our want of time, and the shortness of human life, are some of the principal commonplace complaints which we prefer against the established order of things : they are the grumblings of the vulgar, and the pathetic lamrnta- tions of the philosopher; but they are im- pertinent and impious in both. The man of business despises the man of pleasure for squandering the time away ; the man of pleasure pities or laughs at the man of busi- ness for the same thing; and yet both con- cur superciliously and absurdly to find fault with the Supreme Being for having given them so little time. The philosopher, who misspends it very often as much as the others, joins in the same cry, and authorizes this im'piety. Theophrastus thought it ex- tremely hard to die at ninety, and to go out of the world when he had just learned how to live in it. His master, Aristotle, found fault with nature for treating man in this respect worse than several other animals : both very nnphilosophically ! and I love Seneca the better for his quarrel with the Stagirite on this head. We see, in so many instances, a just proportion of things, ac- cording to their several relations to one another, that philosophy should lead us to conclude this proportion preserved, even when we cannot discern it ; instead of lead- ing us to conclude that it is not preserved where we do not discern it, or where we think that we see the contrary. To conclude otherwise is shocking presumption. It is to presume that the system of the universe would have been more wisely contrived, if HENRY ST. JOHN. creatures of our low rank among intellectual natures had been called to the councils of the Most High ; or that the Creator ought to mend his work by the advice of the creature. That life which seems to our self-love so short, when Ave compare it with the ideas we frame of eternity, or even with the dura- tion of some other beings, will appear suf- ficient, upon a less partial view, to all the ends of our creation, and of a just propor- tion in the successive course of generations. The term itself is long ; we render it short; and the want we complain of flows from our profusion, not from our poverty. We are all arrant spendthrifts: some of us dis- sipate our estates on the trifles, some on the superfluities, and then we all complain that we want the necessaries, of life. The much greatest part never reclaim, but die bankrupts to God and man. Others reclaim late, and they are apt to imagine, when they make up their accounts, and see how their fund is diminished, that they have not enough remaining to live upon, because they have not the whole. But they deceive themselves : they were richer than they thought, and they are not yet poor. If they husband well the remainder, it will be found sufficient for all the necessaries, and for some of the superfluities, and trifles too, perhaps, of life ; but then the former order of expense must be inverted, and the necessaries of life must be provided before they put themselves to any cost for the trifles or superfluities. Let us leave the men of pleasure and of business, who are often candid enough to own that they throw away their time, and thereby to confess that they complain of the Supreme Being for no other reason than this, that he has not proportioned his bounty to their extravagance. Let us con- sider the scholar and philosopher, who, far from owning that he throws any time away, reproves others for doing it; that solemn mortal who abstains from the pleasures, and declines the business, of the world, that he may dedicate his whole time to the search of truth and the improvement of knowledge. When such a one complains of the short- ness of human life in general, or of his re- maining share in particular, might not a man, more reasonable, though less solemn, expostulate thus with him: "Your com- plaint is, indeed, consistent with your prac- tice; but you would not possibly renew your complaint if you reviewed your prac- tice. Though reading makes a scholar, yet every scholar is not a philosopher nor every philosopher a wise man. It cost you twentv years to devour all the volumes on one side of your library ; you came out a great critic in Latin and Greek, in the oriental tongues, in history and chronology ; but you were not satisfied. You confessed that these were the literal nihil sanantes, and you wanted more time to acquire other knowledge. You have had this time : you have passed twenty years more on the other side of your library, among philosophers, rabbis, commentators, schoolmen, and whole legions of modern doc- tors. You are extremely well versed in all that has been written concerning the nature of God, and of the soul of man, about matter and form, body and spirit, and space and eter- nal essences, and incorporeal substances, and the rest of those profound speculations. You are a master of the controversies that have arisen about nature and grace, about pre- destination and free will, and all the other abstruse questions that have made so much noise in the schools and so much hurt in the world. You are going on, as fast as the infirmities you have contracted will permit, in the same course of study ; but you begin to foresee that you shall want time, and you make grievous complaints of the shortness of human life. Give me leave now to ask you how many thousand years God must prolong your life in order to reconcile you to his wisdom and goodness? It is plain, at least highly probable, that a life as long as that of the most aged of the patriarchs would be too short to answer your purposes , since the researches and disputes in which you are engaged have been already for a much longer time the objects of learned inquiries, and remain still as imperfect and undetermined as they were at first. But let me ask you again, and deceive neither your- self nor me, have you, in the course of these forty years, once examined the first prin- ciples and the fundamental facts on which all those questions depend, with an absolute indifference of judgment, and with a scrup- ulous exactness? with the same that you have employed in examining the various consequences drawn from them, and the heterodox opinions about them? Have you not taken them for granted in the whole course of your studies? Or, if you have looked now and then on the state of the proofs brought to maintain them, have you not done it as a mathematician looks over a demonstration formerly made to refresh his memory, not to satisfy any doubt? If you have thus examined, it may appear marvel- lous to some that you have spent so much time in many parts of those studies, which have, reduced you to this hectic condition of so much heat and weakness. But if you have not thus examined, it must be evident to all, nay, to yourself, on the least reflec- tion, that you are still, notwithstanding all your learning, in a state of ignorance. For knowledge can alone produce knowledge : and without such an examination of axioms 148 THOMAS SHERLOCK. and facts, you can have none about infer- ences !" In this manner one might expostulate very reasonably with many a great scholar, many a profound philosopher, many a dog- matical casuist. And it serves to set the complaints about want of time, and the shortness of human life, in a very ridiculous but a true light. THOMAS SHERLOCK, D.D., son of William Sherlock, D.D., born 1678, Master of the Temple, 1704, Prebendary of London, 1713, and of Norwich, 1719, Bishop of Bangor, Feb. 4, 1727-28, Bishop of Salis- bury, 1734, Bishop of London, 1748, de- clined the archbishopric of Canterbury, 1747, died 1761, published a collective edition of his Discourses at the Temple Church, Lond., 1754-58. 4 vols. 8vo, 8th edit. 1775, 3 vols. 12mo; vol. v., Oxf., 1797, 8vo ; first com- plete edition of .Sherlock's Works, by Rev. T. S. Hughes, Lond., 1830, 5 vols. 8vo. His best-known works are The Use and Intent of Prophecy, etc., Lond., 1725, 8vo, 4th edit., Lond., 1744. 8vo ; 1755, Svo (usually added as a 5th volume to the early editions of the Discourses) ; and The Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, Lond., 1729, 8vo, 16th edit., Lond., 1807, 8vo ; with the Sequel of the Trial, Lond., II. G. Bohn, 1848, Svo (In the series entitled "Christian Literature"). "They [Shorlosk's Sermons] contain admirable defences of the truths of religion, and powerful incitements to the practice of it. They rouse the virtues of Christians l>y proper motive?, and put to silence the doubts and cavils of Infidels by most convincing arguments." Du. HUGH BLAIR. "Still break the benches, Henley ! with thy strain. While Sherlock, ILire, and Gibson preach in vain." POPE : Dunciud, Book iii., 203. " Sherlock's style is very elegant, though he has not made it his principal study." DR. JOHNSON: lioswell's Life, year 1778. RELIGION. Religion is founded in the principles of sense and nature ; and, without supposing this foundation, it would be as rational an act to preach to horses as to men. A man who has the use of reason cannot consider his condition and circumstances in this world, or reflect on his notions of good and evil, and the sense he feels in himself that he is an accountable creature for the good or evil he does, without asking himself how he came into this world, and for what purpose, and to whom it is that he is, or possibly may be, accountable. When, by tracing his own being to the original, he finds that there is one supreme all-wise cause of all things; when by experience lie sees that this world neither is nor can be the place for taking a just and adequate account of the actions of men ; the presumption that there is another state after this, in which men shall live, grows strong and almost irresistible ; when he considers further the fears and hopes of nature with respect to futurity, the fear of death common to all, the desire of continu- ing in being, which never forsakes us ; and reflects for what use and purpose these strong impressions were given us by the Author of nature; he cannot help concluding that man was made not merely to act a short part upon the stage of this world, but that there is another and more lasting state to which he bears relation. And from hence it must necessarily follow that his religion must be formed on a view of securing a future hap- piness. Since, then, the end that men propose to themselves by religion is such, it will teach us wherein the true excellency of religion consists. If eternal life and future happi- ness are what we aim at. that will be the best religion which will most certainly lead us to eternal life and future happiness: and it will be to no purpose to compare religions together in any other respects which have no relation to this end. Let us, then, by this rule examine the pre- tensions of revelation, and, as we go along, compare it with the present state of natural religion, that we may be able to judge ''to whom we ought to go." Eternal life and happiness are out of our power to give ourselves, or to obtain by any strength and force, or any policy or wisdom. Could our own arm rescue us from the jaws of death, and the powers of the kingdom of darkness ; could we set open the gates of heaven for ourselves, and enter in to take possession of life and glory, we should want no instructions or assistances from religion ; since what St. Peter said of Christ every man might apply to himself, and say, "I have the words, or means, of eternal life." But since we have not this power of life and death, and since there is One who has, whogovernethall things in heaven and earth, who is over all God blessed for evermore, it necessarily follows that either we must have no share or lot in the glories of futurity, or else that we must obtain them from God, and receive them as his gift .and favour; and consequently if eternal life be the end of religion, and likewise the gift of God, religion can be nothing else but the means proper to be made use of by us to obtain of God this most excellent and perfect gift of eternal life : for if eternal life be the end of religion, religion must be the means of ol> HENRY PEL TON. 149 taining eternal life: and if eternal life can only be had from the gift of God, religion must be the means of obtaining this gift of God. And thus far all religions that ever have appeared in the world have agreed : the question has never yet been made by any whether God is to be applied to for eternal happiness or no ; but every sect has placed its excellency in this, that it teaches the properest and most effectual way of making this application. Even natural religion pre- tends to no more than this : it claims not eternal life as the right of nature, but the right of obedience, and of obedience to God, the Lord of nature : and the dispute between natural and revealed religion is not, whether God is to be applied to for eternal happiness ; but only whether nature or revelation can best teach us how to make this application. Prayers, and praises, and repentance for sins past are acts of devotion, which nature pretends to instruct and direct us in: but why does she teach us to pray, to praise, or to repent, but that she esteems one to be the proper method of expressing our wants, the other of expressing our gratitude, and the third of making atonement for iniquity and offences against God? In all these acts reference is had to the overruling power of the Almighty; and they amount to this con- fession, that the upshot of all religion is, to please God in order to make ourselves happy. Several Discourses Preached at the Temple C/iurch: Discourse I., Part II. : John vi. 67-60. HENRY FELTON, D.D., born 1679, Principal of Edmund Hall, 1722. died 1740, was author of A Dissertation on Reading the Classics, and Forming a Just Style, 1711; 4th edit., Lond., 1757, 12mo. A good book. Ox THE SUBLIME. We have no instances to produce of any writers that rise at all to the majesty and dignity of the Divine Attributes except the sacred penmen. No less than Divine Inspi- ration could enable men to write worthily of God, and none but the spirit of God knew how to express his gi'eatness, and dis- play his glory : in comparison of these divine writers, the greatest geniuses, the noblest wits, of the Heathen world, are low and dull. The sublime majesty and royal mag- nificence of the Scripture poems are above the reach and beyond the power of all mortal wit. Take the best and liveliest poems of antiquity, and read them as we do the Scriptures, in a prose translation, and they are flat and poor. Horace, and Virgil, and Homer lose their spirits and their strength in the transfusion, to that degree that we have hardly patience to read them. But the sacred writings, even in our translation, preserve their majesty and their glory, and very far surpass the brightest and noblest compositions of Greece and Home. And this is not owing to the rich- ness and solemnity of the eastern eloquence (for it holds in no other instance), but to the divine direction and assistance of the holy writers. For. let me only make this remark, that the most literal translation of the Scriptures, in the most natural significa- tion of the words, is generally the best; and the same punctualness which debases other writings preserves the spirit and majesty of the sacred text: it can suffer no improve- ment from human wit: and we may observe that those who have presumed to heighten the expression by a poetical translation or paraphrase have sunk in the attempt: and all the decorations of their verse, whether Greek or Latin, have not been able to reach the dignity, the majesty, and solemnity of our prose: so that the prose of Scripture cannot be improved by verse, and even the divine poetry is most like itself in prose. One observation more I would leave with you : Milton himself, as great a genius as he was, owes his superiority over Homer and Virgil, in majesty of thought and splen- dour of expression, to the Scriptures: they are the fountain from which he derived his light; the sacred treasure that enriched his fancy, and furnished him with all the truth and wonders of God and his creation, of angels and men. which no mortal brain was able either to .discover or conceive : and in him, of all human writers, you will meet all his sentiments and words raised and suited to the greatness and dignity of the Subject. I have detained you the longer on this majesty of style, being perhaps myself car- ried away with the greatness and pleasure of the contemplation. What I have dwelt so much on with respect to divine subjects is more easily to be observed with respect to human : for in all things below divinity we are rather able to exceed than fall short ; and in adorning all other subjects our words and sentiments may rise in a just propor- tion to them : nothing is above the reach of man but heaven ; and the same wit can raise a human subject that only debases a divine. A Dissertation on Reading the Classics. THE FORMATION OF A RIGHT TASTE. A perfect mastery and elegance of style is to be learned from the common rules, but 150 GEORGE BERKELEY. must be improved by reading the orators and poets, and the celebrated masters in every kind : this will give you a right taste and a true relish ; and when you can dis- tinguish the beauties of every finished piece, you will write yourself with equal commen- dation. I do not assert that every good writer must have a genius for poetry ; I know Tully is an undeniable exception : but I will venture to affirm that a soul that is not moved with poetry, and has no taste that way, is too dull and lumpish ever to write with any prospect of being read. It is a fatal mistake, and simple superstition to discourage youth from poetry, and en- deavour to prejudice them against it; if they are of a poetical genius, there is no restraining them : Ovid, you know, was deaf to his father's frequent admonitions. But if they are not quite smitten and be- witched with love of verse, they should be trained to it, to make them masters of every kind of poetry, that by learning to imitate the originals they may arrive at a right conception and a true taste of their authors : and being able to write in verse upon occa- sion, I can assure you, is no disadvantage to prose : for without relishing the one, a man must never pretend to any taste for the other. Taste is a metaphor, borrowed from the palate by which we approve or dislike what we eat and drink from the agreeableness or disagrecableness of the relish in our mouth. Nature directs us in the common use, and every body can tell sweet from bitter, what is sharp, or sour, or vapid, or nauseous ; but it requires senses more refined and ex- ercised to discover every taste that is more perfect in its kind ; every palate is not to judge of that, and yet drinking is more used than reading. All that I pretend to know of the matter is, that wine should be, like a style, clear, deep, bright, and strong, sincere and pure, sound and dry (as our advertisements do well express it), which last is a commendable term, that contains the juice of the richest spirits, and only keeps out all cold and dampness. it is common to commend a man for an ear to music, and a taste for painting ; which are nothing but a just discernment of what is excellent and most perfect in them. The first depends entirely on the ear ; a man can never expect to be a master that has not an ear tuned and set to music ; and you can no more sing an ode without an ear than without a genius you can write one. Painting, we should think, requires some understanding in the art, and exact knowledge of the best masters' manner, to be a judge of it; but this faculty, like the rest, is founded in nature : knowledge in the art, and frequent conversation with the best originals, will certainly perfect a man's judg- ment ; but if there is not a natural sagacity and aptness, experience will be of no great service. A good taste is an argument of a great soul, as well as a lively wit. It is the infirmity of poor spirits to be taken with every appearance, and dazzled by every- thing that sparkles: but to pass by what the generality of the world admires, and to be detained with nothing but what is most perfect and excellent in its kind, speaks a superior genius, and a true discernment. A Dissertation on Reading the Classics. GEORGE BERKELEY, D.D., born in the county of Kilkenny, Ireland, 1684, in 1709 published An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, Dublin, 8vo (and a Vindication of this Theory, in 1733), in 17 10 The Principles of Human Knowledge, Dub- lin, 8vo, in 1713 Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philolonous ; made Dean of Derry, 1724 ; in 1728 emigrated to Americfi to carry out his " scheme for converting the savage Americans to Christianity by a col- lege to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermudas" (Berkeley), and at Newport, Rhode Island, awaited for a long time in vain the receipt of a parliamentary grant to enable him to complete his project ; in 1732 published Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, in seven Dialogues, containing an Apology for the Christian Religion against Free-Think- ers, Lond., 2 vols. 8vo ; in 1734 was made Bishop of Cloyne, and refused to exchange his see for that of Clogher, of double its value; in 1747 published Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries re- specting the Virtues of Tar Water in the Plague, Lond., 8vo, and in 1752 Farther Thoughts on Tar Water, Lond., 8vo, and died in the next year. In 1776 was pub- lished An Account of his Life, with Notes, containing Strictures upon his Works, vo: in 1784 his Whole Works, with an Account of his Life, and several of his Letters to Thomas Prior, Esq.. Dean Gervais. and Mr. Pope, etc., by T. Prior, Esq., 2 vols. 4to, appeared. There have been two recent edi- tions of his Works, one in 3 vols. 8vo, and another by Rev. G. N. Wright, in 2 vols. 8vo, 1843. Mr. W. gives a translation of the Latin Essays ( Arithmetica, Miscellanea, Mathematica, and DeMotu) ami Notes on the Introduction to Human Knowledge. Among his works is The Querist : containing several Queries proposed to the Consideration of the GEORGE BERKELEY. 151 Public, 1735. He was also the author of fourteen of The Guardians. " Possessing a mind which, however inferior to that of Locke in depth of reflection and in sound- ness of judgment, was fully its equal in logical acuteness and invention, and in learning, fancy, and taste far its superior, Berkeley was singularly fitted to promote that reunion of Philosophy and of the Fine Arts which is so essential to the pros- perity of both. . . . With these intellectual and moral endowments, admired and blazoned as they were by the most distinguished wits of his age, it is not surprising that Berkeley should have given a popularity and fashion to metapbyaioa] pursuits which they had never before acquired in England." DUGALD STEWART : \xt Prelim. Dissert, to Eitcyc. Brit. " Ancient learning, exact science, polished so- ciety, modern literature, and the fine arts contrib- uted to adorn and enrich the mind of this accom- plished man. All his contemporaries agreed with the satirist [Pope] in ascribing ' To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.' Adverse factions and hostile wits concurred only in loving, admiring, and contributing to advance him. The severe sense of Swift endured his vis- ions ; the modest Addison endeavoured to reconcile Clarke to his ambitious speculations. His charac- ter converted the satire of Pope into fervid praise. Even the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent Attcrbury said, after an interview with him, 'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman.' . . . Of the exquisite grace and beauty of his diction, no man accustomed to English com- position can need to be informed. His works are, beyond dispute, the finest models of philosophical style since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in the wonderful art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most remote and evanescent parts of the most subtile of human conceptions. Perhaps he also surpassed Cicero in the charm of simplicity." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH : Id Prelim. JJisfsert. to Encyc. Brit. GROUNDS TO EXPECT A FUTURE STATE PROVED. Let the most steadfast unbeliever open his eyes, and take a survey of the sensible world, and then say if there be not a connexion, and adjustment, and exact and constant order discoverable in all the parts of it. Whatever be the cause, the thing itself is evident to all our faculties. Look into the animal system, the passions, senses, and locomotive powers , is not the like contrivance and propriety ob- servable in these too? Are they not fitted to certain ends, and are they not by nature directed to proper objects? Is it possible, then, that the smallest bodies should, by a management superior to the wit of man, be disposed in the most excellent manner agreeable to their respective natures, and yet the spirits or souls of men be neg- lected, or managed by such rules as fall short of man's understanding? Shall every other passion be rightly placed by nature, and shall that appetite of immortality nat- ural to all mankind be alone misplaced, or designed to be frustrated? Shall the in- dustrious application of the inferior animal powers in the meanest vocations be answered by the ends we proposed, and shall not the generous efforts of a virtuous mind be re- warded ? In a word, Shall the corporeal world be order and harmony : the intellec- tual, discord and confusion ? He who is bigot enough to believe these things must bid adieu to that natural rule, " of reasoning from analogy ;" must run counter to that maxim of common sense, " that men ought to form their judgments of things unexperi- enced from what they have experienced." If anything looks like a recompense of calamitous virtue on this side the grave, it is either an assurance that thereby we ob- tain the favour and protection of heaven, and shall, whatever befalls us in this, in another life meet with a just return, or else that applause and reputation which is thought to attend virtuous actions. The former of these our free-thinkers, out of their singular wisdom and benevolence to man- kind, endeavour to erase from the minds of men. The latter can never be justly dis- tributed in this life, where so many ill actions are reputable, and so many good actions disesteemed or misinterpreted ; where subtle hypocrisy is placed in the most en- gaging light, and modest virtue lies con- cealed ; where the heart and the soul are hid from the eyes of men, and the eyes of men are dimmed and vitiated. . . . Let us suppose a person blind and deaf from his birth, who, being grown to men's estate, is by the dead palsy, or some other cause, de- prived of his feeling, tasting, and smelling, and at the same time has the impediment of his hearing removed, and the film taken from his eyes. What the five senses are to us, that the touch, taste, and smell were to him. And any other ways of perception of a more refined and extensive nature were to him as inconceivable, as to us those are which will one day be adapted to perceive those things which "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive." And it would be just as reasonable in him to conclude that the loss of those three senses could not possibly be succeeded by any new inlets of percep- tion, as in a modern free-thinker to imagine there can be no state of life and perception without the senses he enjoys at present. Let us farther suppose the same person's eyes, at their first opening, to be struck with a great variety of the most gay and pleasing objects, and his ears with a melodi- 152 GEORGE BERKELEY. ous concert of vocal and instrumental music. Behold him amazed, ravished, transported ; and you have some distant representation, some faint and glimmering idea of the ec- static state of the soul in that article in which she emerges from this sepulchre of flesh into life and immortality. The Guardian, Ao. 27, Saturday, April 11, 1713. ON PLEASURES, NATURAL AND FANTASTICAL. It is of great use to consider the pleasures which constitute human happiness, as they are distinguished into natural and fantasti- cal. Natural pleasures I call those which, not depending on the fashion and caprice of any particular age or nation, are suited to human nature in general, and Avere intended by Providence as rewards for the using our faculties agreeably to the ends for which they were given us. Fantastical pleasures are those which having no natural fitness to delight our minds, presuppose some partic- ular whim or taste accidentally prevailing in a set of people, to which it is owing that they please. Now I take it that the tranquillity and cheerfulness with which I have passed my life, are the effect of having, ever since I came to years of discretion, continued my inclinations to the former sort of pleas- ures. . . . The various objects that compose the world were by nature formed to delight our senses, and as it is this alone that makes them de- sirable to an uncorrupted taste, a man may be said naturally to possess them when he possesseth those enjoyments which they are fitted by nature to yield. Hence it is usual with me to consider my- self as having a natural property in every object that administers pleasure to me. When I am in the country, all the fine seats near the place of my residence, and to which I have access, I regard as mine. The same I think of the groves and fields where I walk, and muse on the folly of the civil landlord in London, who has the fantastical pleasure of draining dry rent into his cof- fers, but is a stranger to fresh air and rural enjoyment's. By these principles I am pos- sessed of half a dozen of the finest seats in England, which in the eye of the law belong to certain of my acquaintance, who being men of business choose to live near the court. . . . When I walk the streets I use the forego- ing natural maxim (viz., That he is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he that owns it without the enjoyment of it), to convince myself that I have a prop- erty in the gay part of all the gilt chariots that I meet, which I regard as amusements designed to delight my eyes, and the imagi- nation of those kind people who sit in them gayly attired only to please me. I have a real, and they only an imaginary, pleasure from their exterior embellishments. Upon the same principle, I have discovered that I am the natural proprietor of all the dia- mond necklaces, the crosses, stars, brocades, and embroidered clothes, which I see at a play or birth-night, as giving more natural delight to the spectator than to those that wear them. And I look on the beaux and ladies as so many paroquets in an aviary, or tulips in a garden, designed purely for my diversion. A gallery of pictures, a cabinet, or library, that I have free access to, I think my own. In a word, all that I desire is the use of things, let who will have the keeping of them. By which maxim I am grown one of the richest men in Great Britain ; with this difference, that I am not a prey to my own cares, or the envy of others. . . . Every day, numberless innocent and natu- ral gratifications occur to me, while I behold my fellow-cre.atures labouring in a toilsome and absurd pursuit of trifles: one, that he may be called by a particular appellation ; .another, that he may wear a particular orna- ment, which I regard as a bit of riband that has an jvgreeable effect on my sight, but is so far from supplying the place of merit where it is not, that it serves only to make the want of it more conspicuous. Fair weather is the joy of my soul: about noon I behold a blue sky with rapture, and re- ceive great consolation from the rosy dashes of light which adorn the clouds of the morn- ing and evening. When I am lost among green trees, I do not envy a great man with a great crowd at his levee. And I often lay aside thoughts of going to an opera, that I may enjoy the silent pleasure of walking by moonlight, or viewing the stars sparkle in their azure ground ; which I look upon as part of my possessions, not without a secret indignation at the tastelessness of mortal men, who, in their race through life, over- look the real enjoyment of it. But the pleasure which naturally affects a human mind with the most lively and transporting touches, I take to be the. sense that we act in the eye of infinite Wisdom, Power, and Goodness, that will crown our virtuous endeavours here, with a happiness hereafter, large as our desires, and lasting as our immortal souls. This is a perpetual spring of gladness in the mind. This les- sens our calamities and doubles our joys. Without this the highest state of life is in- sipid, and with it the lowest is a paradise. The Guardian, No. JjO, Thursday, May 7, 1713. EUSTACE BUDGELL. 153 THE ATTRACTION'S OF FRIENDSHIP AND BE- NEVOLENCE. If we consider the whole scope of the creation that lies within our view, the moral and intellectual, as well as the natural and corporeal, we shall perceive throughout a certain correspondence of the parts, a simi- litude of operation, and unity of design, which plainly demonstrate the universe to be the work of one infinitely good and wise Being; and that the system of thinking beings is actuated by laws derived from the same divine power which ordained those by which the corporeal system is upheld. . . . Now if we carry our thoughts from the cor- poreal to the moral world, we may observe in the spirits or minds of men a like prin- ciple of attraction, whereby they are drawn together in communities, clubs, families, friendships, and all the various species of society. As in bodies where the quantity is the same the attraction is strongest be- tween those which are placed nearest to each other, so it is likewise in the mind of men, cceteris paribus, between those which are most nearly related. . . . A man who has no family is more strongly attracted towards his friends and neighbours ; and if absent from these, he naturally falls jnto an acquaintance with those of his own city or country, who chance to be in the same place. Two Englishmen meeting at Rome or Constantinople soon run into a famili- arity. And in China or Japan, Europeans would think their being so a good reason for their uniting in particular converse. Farther, in case we suppose ourselves trans- lated into Jupiter or Saturn, and there to meet a Chinese or other more distant native of our own planet, we should look on him as a near relation, and readily commence a friendship with him. These are natural re- flections, and such as may convince us that Ave are linked by an imperceptible chain to every individual of the human race. . . . The mutual gravitation of bodies cannot be explained any other way than by resolv- ing it into the immediate operation of God, who never ceases to dispose and actuate his creatures in a manner suitable to their re- spective beings. So neither can that recip- rocal attraction in the minds of men be accounted for by any other cause. It is not the result of education, law, or fashion; but is a principle originally ingrafted in the very first formation of the soul by the Author of our nature. And as the attractive pnwer in bodies is the most universal principle which produceth innumerable effects, and is a key to explain the various phenomena of nature, so the cor- responding social appetite in human souls is the great spring and source of moral actions. This it is that inclines each individual to an intercourse with his species, and models every one to that behaviour which best suits with the common well-being. Hence that sympathy in our nature, whereby we feel the pains and joys of our fellow-creatures. Hence that prevalent love in parents towards their children, which is neither founded on the merit of the object, nor yet on self- interest. It is this that makes us inquisitive concerning the affairs of distant nations, which can have no influence on our own. It is this that extends our care to future gener- ations, and excites us to acts of beneficence towards those who are not yet in being, and consequently from whom we can expect no recompense. In a word, hence .arises that diffusive sense of humanity so unaccount- able to the selfish man who is untouched with it, and is indeed a sort of monster, or anomalous production. These thoughts do naturally suggest the following particulars : first, that as social inclinations are absolutely necessary to the well-being of the world, it is the duty and interest of each individual to cherish and improve them to the benefit of mankind: the duty, because it is agreeable to the in- tention of the Author of our being, who aims at the common good of his creatures, and, as an indication of his will, hath implanted the seeds of mutual benevolence in our souls ; the interest, because the good of the whole is inseparable from that of the parts : in promoting, therefore, the common good, every one doth at the same time promote his own private interest. Another observation I shall draw from the premises is, that it makes a signal proof of the divinity of the Christian religion that the main duty which it inculcates above all others is Charity. Different maxims and precepts have distin- guished the different sects of philosophy and religion : our Lord's peculiar precept is, " Love thy neighbour as thyself. By this shall all men know that you are my dis- ciples, if you love one another." The Guardian, No. 126, August 5, 1713. EUSTACE BUDGELL, born 1685. best known by his intimacy with Addison, his quarrel with Pope, and his contributions to The Spectator (37 or 38 papers, marked X, and a letter), The Guar- dian (Nos. 25, 31), and The Craftsman, also published The Characters of Theophrastus, translated from the Greek. Lond., 1713, 8vo (commended by Addison), Memoirs of the illustrious Family of the Boyles, 3d edit., 154 EUSTACE BUD G ELL. Lond., 1737, 8vo, and some political and other pieces, and poems. He was of a quar- relsome temper, and drowned himself in the Thames in 1736. " The humour and wit of Budgell appear to advantage in several of his communications : es- pecially in his 'Observations on Beards (Specta- tor, No. 331) ; on Country Wakes (No. 161),' etc." Drake's Etssays, vol. iii. Ox BEARDS. When I was last with my friend Sir Roger in Westminster-abbey I observed that lie stood longer than ordinary before the bust of a venerable old man. I was at a loss to guess the reason of it; when, after some time, he pointed to the figure, and asked me if I did not think that our fore- fathers looked much wiser in their beards than we do without them? "For my part,'" says he, " when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were of my age, I cannot forbear regarding them us so many old patriarchs, and, at the same time, looking upon myself as an idle smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings." The knight added, " if I [The Spectator] would recommend beards in one of my papers, and endeavour to restore human faces to their ancient dignity, that, upon a month's warning, he would undertake to lead up the fashion himself in a pair of whiskers." I smiled at my friend's fancy ; but after we parted, could not forbear reflecting on the metamorphosis our faces have under- gone in this particular. The beard, conformable to the notion of my friend Sir Roger, was for many ages looked upon as the type of wisdom. Lucian more than once rallies the philosophers of his time, who endeavoured to rival one an- other in beards; and represents a learned man who stood for a professorship in phi- losophy, as unqualified for it by the short- ness of his beard. /Elian, in his account of Zoilus, the pre- tended critic, who wrote against Homer and Plato, and thought himself wiser than all who had gone before him. tells us that this Zoilus had a very long beard that hung down upon his breast, but no hair upon his head, which he always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems, the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which, if they had been suffered to grow, might have drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and by that means have starved his beard. I have read somewhere that one of the popes refused to accept an edition of a saint's works, which were presented to him, because the saint, in his effigies before the book, was drawn without a beard. We see by these instances what homage the world has formerly paid to beards ; and that a barber was not then allowed to make those depredations on the faces of the learned, which have been permitted him of late years. Accordingly, several wise nations have been so extremely jealous of the least ruffle offered to their beards that they seem to have fixed the point of honour principally in that part. The Spaniards were wonder- fully tender in this particular. Don Quevedo, in his third vision on the last judgment, has carried the humour very far, when he tells us that one of his vain-glorious countrymen, after having received sentence, was taken into custody by a couple of evil spirits, but that his guides happening to disorder his mustachoes, they were forced to recompose them with a pair of curling-irons before they could get him to file off. If we look into the history of our own nation we shall find that the beard flour- ished in the Saxon heptarchy, but was very much discouraged under the Norman line. It shot out, however, from time to time, in several reigns under different shapes. The last effort it made seems to have been in Queen Mary's days, as the curious reader may find, if he pleases to peruse the fig- ures of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner ; though, at the same time, I think it may be questioned if zeal against popery has not induced our Protestant painters to extend the beards of these two persecutors be} r ond their natural dimensions, in order to make them appear more terrible. I find but few beards worth taking notice of in the reign of King James the First. During the civil wars there appeared one which makes too great a figure in story to be passed over in silence: I mean that of the redoubted Hudibras, an account of which Butler has transmitted to posterity in the fol- lowing lines: His tawny beard was th' equal grace Both of his wisdom and his face; In cut and dye so like a tile, A sudden view it would beguile ; The upper part thereof was whey, The nether orange mixt with gray. The whisker continued for some time among us after the extirpation of beards ; but this is a subject which I shall not here enter upon, having discussed it at large in a distinct treatise, which I keep by me in manuscript, upon the mustachoe. If my friend Sir Roger's project of intro- ducing beards should take effect, I fear the RALPH ERSKINE. THOMAS TICKELL. 155 luxury of the present age would make it a very expensive fashion. There is no ques- tion but the beaux would soon provide them- selves with false ones of the lightest colours and the most immoderate lengths. A fair beard of the tapestry size, which Sir Roger seems to approve, could not come under twenty guineas. The famous golden beard of ^sculapius would hardly be more valu- able than one made in the extravagance of the fashion. Besides, we are not certain that the ladies would not come into the mode when they take the air on horseback. They already appear in hats and feathers, coats and peri- wigs : and I see no reason why we may not suppose that they would have their riding- beards on the same occasion. 1 may give the moral of this discourse in another paper. X. The Spectator, No. 331, Thursday, March 20, 1711-12. RALPH ERSKINE, b^rn 1685, minister at Dunfermline, 1711, joined the Seceders, 1734, died 1752, pub- lished a number of Sermons, Theological Treatises, Scripture Songs, Gospel Songs, etc., 1738-52, and several of his works were published after his death. Works: Glasg., 1764-66, 2 vols. fol. ; Glasg., 1777, 10 vols. 8vo; Lond., 1821, 10 vols. 8vo ; Gospel Sonnets, new edit., 1844, 24m o ; Sermons of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, Selected, with a Preface, by the Rev. Thomas Brad- bury, 1738, 3 vols. ; 1757, 3 vols. 8vo; Ser- mons by Rev. Ralph Erskine, A.M., Selected from the British Editions of 1777 and 1821 ; with a Preface by the Rev. Stephen II. Tvng, D.D., Leighton Publications, Phila., 1863, 2 vols. 8vo. "The works of Ralph Erskine are highly evan- gelical; the productions of minds very strongly attached to truth, devotional and zealous." WIL- LIAMS'S C/irintitin Prencher. " The two Erskines Cecil calls the best Scotch divines, but speaks of them as dry and laboured. He did not at this moment recollect Leighton, Ruth- erford, Maclaurin, etc." BICKEUSTETH'S Christian /Student. THE MERCY OF GOD. There are some merciful intimations and communications that they sometimes get to make them sing of mercy. Sometimes he intimates his love, saying, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Sometimes he intimates pardon, saying, I, even I. am he that blotteth out thy transgressions, and will remember thy sins no more : Sometimes he intimates acceptance, saying, man, greatly beloved ; and the intimation sets them a wondering and praising : Sometimes he communicates his mind and his secrets to them, The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will shew unto them his covenant : Sometimes the secrets of his providence : he will tell them what he hath a mind to do with themselves, and what he hath a mind to do with such a friend, and such a child, and such a land or church : Shall I hide from Abraham that which I do? Sometimes he communicates himself to them, saying I am thy God, I am thy shield ; Fear not, for I am with thee : Sometimes such intimations and communi- cations are given as make all their bones to say, Who is like unto thee? There are merciful visits after desertion, and after backsliding, that they sometimes get, to make them sing of mercy, when they have been heaping up mountains of sin and provocation betwixt them and him : yet, after all, he hath come and given them oc- casion to say, " The voice of my beloved ! behold he cometh, leaping upon the moun- tains, skipping upon the hills," Cant. ii. 8. The voice of my Beloved ! an exceed- ing sweet and powerful voice ! It had a sound of heaven ; I thought the mountains would have kept him away, but I heard the sound of his feet upon the mountains, that made my heart warm toward him again ; I had departed from him by an evil heart of unbelief, and I thought he would never return ; but, he restored my soul, and helped me anew to wrestle with him : We found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us. There are merciful accomplishments of promises that they sometimes get, to make them sing of mercy. The Lord sometimes lets in a promise with life and power, and gives them a word on which he causes them to hope. It may be he will give them a promise for themselves, and it may be a promise for their children ; such as that, I will be thy Godj and the God of thy seed ; and some- times a promise for the church ; such as that, Upon all the glory there shall be a defence ; and sometimes he gives a wonder- ful accomplishment of promises, like that of Hezekiah : What shall I say? he hath both spoken, and himself hath done it : He hath come to my soul, and made me see that he is as good as his word ; and that faithfulness is the girdle of 'his loins. Sermon XXII. The, Militant's Song. THOMAS TICKELL, horn 1686, Fellow of Queen's College, Ox- ford, 1710, was introduced to literary circles 156 ALEXANDER POPE. and public employment by Addison, who in 1717, when he became Secretary of State, made Tickell Under-Secretary ; was ap- pointed Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland in 1724. and held this post until his death, 1740. He published The First Book of Homer's Iliad, translated into English Verse by Thomas Tickell, Esq., Lond., 1715, 4to (supposed by Pope to be really trans- lated by Addison for the purpose of injur- ing his translation), contributed papers to The Spectator and The Guardian, and pub- lished a number of poems, of which his Elegy to Addison, prefixed to his edition of that poet's Works, Lond., 1721, 4 vols. 4to, is the best known. "The Elegy by Mr. Tickell is one of the finest in our language. There is so little new th;it can be said upon the death of a friend, after the com- plaints of Ovid and the Latin Italians, in this way, that one is surprised to see so much novelty in this to strike us, and so much interest to affect." GOLDSMITH. " Many tributes wore paid to the memory of Addison; but one alone is now remembered. Tick- ell bewailed his friend in an elegy which would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, and which unites the energy and magnificence of Dryden to the tenderness and purity of Cowper." LORD MACAULAV : Life and Writing* of Addition, Ed in, Itcv., July, 1843, and in his Etmaye. PLEASURES OF SPRING Music OF BIRDS. Men of my age receive a greater pleasure from fine weather than from any other sensual enjoyment of life. In spite of the auxiliary bottle, or any artificial heat, we are apt to droop under a gloomy sky ; and taste no luxury like a blue firmament, and sunshine. I have often, in a splenetic fit, wished myself a dormouse during the winter ; and I never see one of those snug animals, wrapt up close in his fur, and compactly happy in himself, but I contemplate him witli envy beneath the dignity of a philos- opher. If the art of flying were brought to perfection, the use that I should make of it would be to attend the sun round the world, and pursue the spring through every sign of the Zodiac. His love of warmth makes my heart glad at the return of the spring. How amazing is the change in the face of nature, when the earth from being bound with frost, or covered with snow, begins to put forth her plants and flowers, to be clothed with green, diversified with ten thousand various dyes; and to exhale such fresh and charm- ing odours as fill every living creature with delight! Full of thoughts like these, I make it a rule to lose as little as I can of that blessed season ; and accordingly rise with the sun, and wander through the fields, throw my- self on the banks of little rivulets, or lose myself in the woods. I spent a day or two this spring at a country gentleman's seat, where I feasted my imagination every morn- ing with the most luxurious prospect I ever saw. I usually took my stand by the wall of an old castle built upon a high hill. A noble river ran at the foot of it, which, after being broken by a heap of misshapen stones, glided away in a clear stream, and wander- ing through two woods on eacli side of it in many windings, shone here and there at a great distance through the trees. I could trace the mazes for some miles, until my eye was led through two ridges of hills, and terminated by a vast mountain in another county. I hope the reader will pardon me for taking his eye from our present subject of the spring by this landscape, since it is at this time of the year only that prospects excel in beauty. But if the eye is delighted, the ear hath likewise its proper entertain- ment. The music of the birds at this time of the year hath something in it so wildly sweet as makes me less relish the most elaborate compositions of Italy. . . . The sight that gave me the most satisfaction was a flight of young birds, under the conduct of the father, and indulgent directions and assistance of the dam. I took particular notice of a beau goldfinch, who was pick- ing his plumes, pruning his wings, and with great diligence adjusting all his gaudy fur- niture. When he had equipped himself with great trimness and nicety, he stretched his painted neck, which seemed to brighten with new glowings, and strained his throat into many wild notes and natural melody. He then flew about the nest in several cir- cles and windings, and invited his wife and children into open air. It was very entertain- ing to see the trembling and the fluttering little strangers at their first appearance in the world, and the different care of the male and female parent, as suitable to their sev- eral sexes. I could not take my eye quickly from so entertaining an object ; nor could I help wishing that creatures of a superior rank would so manifest their mutual affec- tion, and so cheerfully concur in providing for their offspring. The Guardian, No. 125, Tuesday, ^August 4, 1713, ALEXANDER POPE, born in London, 1688. died at Twickenham, 1744, famous as a poet, has also claims to be reckoned among prose writers from his Prefaces to his works, and his letters : see Pope's Literary Correspondence for Thirty ALEXANDER POPE. 157 Years, from 1704 to 1734, Lond., 1735-37, 5 vols. small 8vo, and other volumes enu- merated in Bohn's Lowndes's Bibliogra- pher's Manual, vol. iv., 1916, and especially Ilev. Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope's Works, now (1879) in course of publication. " Pope seems to have thought that unless a sen- tence was well turned, and every period pointed with some conceit, it was not worth the carriage. Accordingly, he is to ine, except in a very few in- stances, the most disagreeable maker of epistles that I ever met with." COWPER TO Us WIN, June 8, 1780. " It is a mercy to have no character to maintain. Your predecessor, Mr. Pope, laboured his letters :is much as the ' Essay on Man ;' and as they were written to every body, they do not look as if they had been written to any body." HORACE WALPOLE TO REV. WM. MASO.V, Mar. 13, 1777: Letters, edit. 1861, vi. 422. " Pope's letters and prose writings neither take away from, nor add to, his poetical reputation. There is occasionally a littleness of manner and an unnecessary degree of caution. He appears anx- ious to say a good thing in every word as well as every sentence. They, however, give a very fa- vourable idea of his moral character in all re- spects; and his letters to Atterbury in disgrace and exile do equal honour to both." HAZLITT : Lecta. on the English 1'uetn, Lect. I V, Ox HOMER AND VIRGIL. The beauty of his [Homer's] numbers is allowed by the critics to be copied but faintly by Virgil himself, though they are so just as to ascribe it to the nature of the Latin tongue : indeed, the Greek has some advan- tages, both from the natural sound of its words, and the turn and cadence of its verse, Avhich agree with the genius of no other language. Virgil was very sensible of this, and used the utmost diligence in working up a more intractable language to whatso- ever graces it was capable of; and in par- ticular never failed to bring the sound of his line to a beautiful agreement with its sense. If the Grecian poet has not been so fre- quently celebrated on this .account us the Roman, the only reason is, that fewer critics have understood one language than the other. Dionysius of Halicarnassus has pointed out many of our author's beauties in this kind, in his treatise of the Composition of Words. It suffices at present to observe of his num- bers, that they flow with so much ease as to make one imagine Homer had no other care than to transcribe as fast as the Muses dic- tated ; and at the same time with so much force and aspiring vigour that they awaken and raise us like the sound of a trumpet. They roll along as a plentiful river, always in motion, and always full ; while we are borne away by a tide of verse, the most rapid and yet the most smooth imaginable. Thus, on whatever side we contemplate Homer, what principally strikes us is his Invention. It is that which forms the char- acter of each part of his work ; and accord- ingly we find it to have made his fable more extensive and copious than any other, his manners more lively and strongly marked, his speeches more affecting and transported, his sentiments more warm and sublime, his images and descriptions more full and animated, his expression more raised and daring, and his numbers more rapid and various. I hope, in what has been said of Virgil, with regard to any of these heads, I have in no way derogated from his char- acter. Nothing is more absurd and endless than the common method of comparing emi- nent writers by an opposition of particular passages in them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole. We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and distinguishing excellence of each : it is in that we are to consider him, and in proportion to his de- gree in that we are to admire him. No author or man ever excelled all the world in more than one faculty ; and as Homer has done this in Invention, Virgil has in Judgment. Not that we are to think Ho- mer wanted Judgment, because Virgil has it in a more eminent degree, or that Virgil wanted Invention, because Homer possessed a larger share of it: each of these great authors had more of both than perhaps any man besides, and are only said to have less in comparison with one another. Homer was the greater genius, Virgil the better artist. In one we most admire the man. ia the other the work : Homer hurries and transports us with a commanding impetu- osity, Virgil leads us with an attractive majesty: Homer scatters with a generous profusion, Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence: Homer, like the Nile, pours out his riches with a boundless overflow, Virgil, like a river in its banks, with a gen- tle and constant stream. When we behold their battles, methinks the two poets resem- ble the heroes they celebrate: Homer, bound- less and irresistible as Achilles, bears all before him, and shines more and more as the tumult increases; Virgil, calmly daring like ^Eneas, appears undisturbed in the midst of the action ; disposes all about him, and conquers with tranquillity. . And when we look upon their machines, Homer seems like his own Jupiter in his terrors, shaking Olympus, scattering the lightnings, and firing the heavens ; Virgil, like the same power in his benevolence, counselling with the gods, laying plans for empires, and regularly or- dering his whole creation. Preface to the Translation of Homer. 158 SAMUEL RICHARDSON. POPE TO BISHOP ATTERBURY, ix THE TOWER BEFORE HIS E.XILE. May 17, 1723. Once more I write to you, as I promised, and this once, I fear, will be the last ! The curtain will soon be drawn between rny friend and me, and nothing left but to wish you a long good-night. May you enjoy a state of repose in this life not unlike that sleep of the soul which some have believed is to suc- ceed it, where we lie utterly forgetful of that world from which we are gone, and ripening for that to which we are to go. If you retain any memory of the past, let it only image to you what has pleased you best ; sometimes present a dream of an ab- sent friend, or bring you back an agreeable converscition. But, upon the whole, I hope' you will think less of the time past thcin of the future, as the former has been less kind to you than the latter infallibly will be. Do not envy the world your studies ; they will tend to the benefit of men against whom you can have no complaint; I mean of all posterity : and perhaps at your time of life nothing else is worth your care. What is every year of a wise man's life but a cen- sure or critic on the past? Those whose date is the shortest live long enough to laugh at one-half of it; the boy despises the infant, the man the boy. the philosopher both, and the Christian all. You may now begin to think your manhood was too much a puerility, and you will never suffer your age to be but a second infancy. The toys and baubles of your childhood are hardly now more below you than those toys of our riper and our declining years, the drums and rattles of ambition, and the dirt and bubbles of avarice. At this time, when you are cut off from a little society, and made a citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents, not to serve a party or a few, but all mankind. Your genius should mount above that mist in which its partici- pation and neighbourhood witli earth long involved it: to shine abroad, and to heaven, ought to be the business and the glory of your present situation. Remember it was at such a time that the greatest lights of antiquity dazzled and blazed the most, in their retreat, in their exile, or in their death. But why do I talk of dazzling or blazing? it was then that they did good, that they gave light, and that they became guides to mankind. Those aims alone are worthy of spirits truly great, and such I therefore hope will be yours. Resentment, indeed, may remain, perhaps cannot be quite extinguished in the noblest minds : but revenge never will har- bour there. Higher principles than those of the first, and better principles than those of the latter, will infallibly influence men whose thoughts and whose hearts are en- larged, and cause them to prefer the whole to any part of mankind, especially to so small a part as one's single self. Believe me, my lord, I look upon you as a spirit entered into another life, as one just upon the edge of immortality, where the passions and affections must be much more exalted, and where you ought to despise all little views and all mean retrospects. No- thing is worth your looking hack : and, therefore, look forward, and make (as you can) the world look after you. But take care that it be not with pity, but with esteem and admiration. I am, with the greatest sincerity and pas- sion for your fame as well as happiness, your, &c. SAMUEL RICHARDSON, " The inventor of the English novel," the author of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded, Lond., 1741, 2 vols. 12mo, Clarissa Harlowe, Lond., 1751, 7 vols. 8vo, and the History of Sir Charles Grandison, Lond., 1754, 6 vols. 8vo, was born in Derbyshire, 1089, com- menced master printer in Fleet Street, 1719, and died, after a prosperous career, in 1761. "Richardson, with the mere advantages of na- ture, improved by a very moderate progress in education, struck out at once, and of his own ac- cord, into a new province of writing, in which he succeeded to admiration; and, what is more re- markable, he not only began, but finished, the plan on which he set out, leaving no room for any one after him to render it more complete ; and not one of the various writers that have ever since attempted to imitate him has in any respect or at all ap- proached near him. This kind of romance is peculiarly his own : and I consider him as a truly great natural genius; as great nnd super-eminent in his way as Shakspeare and Milton were in theirs." DR. YOUNG, Author of the Nif/ht Thought*. " The great excellence of Richardson's novels consists, we think, in the unparalleled minuteness and copiousness of his descriptions, and in the pains he takes to make us thoroughly acquainted with every particular in the character and situa- tion of the personages with whom we are occupied. . . . In this art Richardson is undoubtedly with- out an equal, nnd, if we except De Foe, without ft competitor, we believe, in the whole history of literature." Lonn JEFFREY: Edin. Rev., \. 43, and in his Contrib. to Edin. Itev., edit. 1853, 151. ADVICE TO UNMARRIED LADIES. The reader is indebted for this day's enter- tainment to an author from whom the age has received greater favours, who has en- larged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue (Dr. Johnson). SAMUEL RICHARDSON. 159 To THE RAMBLER. SIR, When the Spectator was first pub- lished in single papers, it gave me so much pleasure than it is one of the favourite amusements of my age to recollect it; and when I reflect on the foibles of those times, as described in that useful work, and com- pare them with the vices now reigning among us, I cannot but wish that you would oftener take cognizance of the manners of the bet- ter half of the human species, that if your precepts and observations be carried down to posterity, the Spectators may shew to the rising generation what were the fashionable follies of their grandmothers, the Rambler of their mothers, and that from both they may draw instruction and warning. . . . fn the time of the Spectator, excepting sometimes an appearance in the ring, some- times at a good and chosen play, sometimes on a visit at the house of a grave relation, the young ladies contented themselves to be found employed in domestic duties ; for then routs, drums, balls, assemblies, and such like markets for women, were not known. Modesty and diffidence, gentleness and meekness, were looked upon as the appro- priate virtues and characteristic graces of the sex. And if a forward spirit pushed itself into notice, it was exposed in print as it de- served. The churches were almost the only places where single women were to be seen by strangers. Men went thither expecting to see them, and perhaps too much for that only purpose. . . . Every inquiry he made into the lady's domestic excellence, which, when a wife is to be chosen, will surely not be neglected, confirmed him in his choice. He opens his heart to a common friend, and honestly dis- covers the state of his fortune. His friend applies to those of the young lady, whose parents, if they approve his proposals, dis- close them to their daughter. She, perhaps, is not an absolute stranger to the passion of the young gentleman. His eyes, his assiduities, his constant attendance at a church whither, till of late, he used seldom to come, and a thousand little observ- ances that he paid her, had very probably first forced her to regard, and then inclined her to favour him. That a young lady should be in love, and the love of the young gentleman undeclared, is a heterodoxy which prudence, and even policy, must not allow. But thus applied to she is all resignation to her parents. Charm- ing resignation, which inclination opposes not. Her relations applaud her for her duty ; friends meet; points are adjusted; delight- ful perturbations, and hopes, and a few lovers' fears, fill up the tedious space, till an interview is granted : for the young lady had not made herself cheap at public places. The time of interview arrives. She is modestly reserved ; he is not confident. He declares his passion : the consciousness of her own worth, and his application to her parents, take from her any doubt of his sincerity ; and she owns herself obliged to him for his good opinion. The inquiries of her friends into his character have taught her that his good opinion deserves to be valued. She tacitly allows of his future visits; he renews them ; the regard of each for the other is confirmed ; and when he presses for the favour of her hand, he receives a declara- tion of an entire acquiescence with her duty, and a modest acknowledgment of esteem for him. He applies to her parents, therefore, for a near day ; and thinks himself under obliga- tion to them for the cheerful and affectionate manner in which they receive his agreeable application. With this prospect of future happiness the marriage is celebrated. Gratulations pour in from every qunrter. Parents and relations on both sides, brought acquainted in the course of the courtship, can receive the happy couple with countenances illu- mined, and joyful hearts. The brothers, the sisters, the friends of one family are the brothers, the sisters, the friends of the other. Their two families, thus made one, are the world to the young couple. Their home is the place of their principal delight, nor do they ever occasionally quit it but they find the pleasure of returning to it augmented in proportion to the time of their absence from it. Ah, Mr. Rambler ! forgive the talkative- ness of an old man ! When I courted and married my Laetitia, then a blooming beauty, every thing passed just so ! But how is the case now? The ladies, maidens, wives, and widows are engrossed by places of open resort and general entertainment, which fill every quarter of the metropolis, and being constantly frequented, make home irksome. Breakfasting-places, dining-places ; routs, drums, concerts, balls, plsiys. operas, mas- querades for the evening, and even for all night; and, lately, public sales of the goods of broken housekeepers, which the general dissoluteness of manners has contributed to make very frequent, come in as another seasonable relief to those modern, time- killers. . . . Two thousand pounds in the last age, with a domestic wife, would go farther than tea 160 SAMUEL RICHARDSON. thousand in this. Yet settlements are ex- pected that often, to a mercantile man espe- cially, sink a fortune into uselessness ; and pin-money is stipulated for, which makes a wife independent, and destroys love, by put- ting it out of a man's power to lay any obli- gation upon her, that might engage gratitude and kindle affection. When to all this the card-tables are added, how can a prudent man think of marrying? . . . But should your expostulations and reproof have no effect upon those who are far gone in fashion- able folly, they may be retailed from their mouths to their nieces (marriage will not often have entitled them to daughters), when they, the meteors of a day, find them- selves elbowed off the stage of vanity by other flutterers ; for the most admired women cannot have many Tunbridge, many Bath seasons to blaze in ; since even fine faces often seen are less regai'ded than new faces, the proper punishment of showy girls for rendering themselves so impoliticly cheap. I am, Sir, your sincere admirer, &c. The Rambler, No. 97, Tuesday, February ID, 1751. RICHARDSON TO LADY BRADSIIAIGII ox LEARNING ix WOMEN. DEAR MADAM, You do not approve of great learning in women. Learning in women may be either rightly or wrongly placed, according to the uses made of it by them. And if the sex is to be brought up with a view to make the individuals of it inferior in knowledge to the husbands they may happen to have, not knowing who those husbands are, or what, or whether sensible or foolish, learned or illiterate, it would be best to keep them from writing and rend- ing, and even from the knowledge of the common idioms of speech. Would it not be very pretty for parents on both sides to make it the first subject of their inquiries, whether the girl, as a recommendation, were a greater fool, or more ignorant, than the young fellow ; and if not, that they should reject her, for the booby's sake? and would not your objection stand as strongly .against a preference in mother wit in the girl, as against what is called learning: since linguists (I will not call all linguists learned men) do very seldom make the figure in conversation that even girls from sixteen to twenty make. If a woman has genius, let it take its course, as well as in men ; provided she neglects not any thing that is more peculi- arly her province. If she has good sense, she will not make the man she chooses, who wants her knowledge, uneasy, nor despise him for that want. Her good sense will teach her what is her duty ; nor will she want reminding of the tenor of her marriage vow to him. If she has not, she will find a thousand ways to plague him, though she know not one word beyond her mother- tongue, nor how to write, read, or speak properly in that. The English, madam, and particularly what we call the plain English, is a very copious and very expressive lan- guage. But, dear madam, does what you say in the first part of the paragraph under my eye, limiting the genius of women, quite cohere with the advantages which, in the last part, you tell me they have over us? "Men do well," you say, "to keep women in ignorance:" but this is not generally in- tended to be the case, I believe. Girls, I think you formerly said, were compounded of brittle materials. They are not, they cannot be, trusted to be sent abroad to semi- naries of learning, as men are. It is neces- sary that they should be brought up to a knowledge of the domestic duties. A young man's learning time is from ten to twenty- five, more or less. At fifteen or sixteen a girl starts into woman ; and then she throws her purveying eyes about her : and what is the learning she is desirous to obtain? Dear lady, discourage not the sweet souls from acquiring any learning that may keep them employed, and out of mischief, and that may divert them from attending to tho whisperings within them, and to the flat- teries without them, till they have taken in a due quality of ballast, that may hinder them, all their sails unfurled and streamers flying, from being overset at their first en- trance upon the voyage of life. To LADY BRADSIIAIGH ON MEN AND WOMEN. NORTH-END, Dec. 26, 1751. Tell you sincerely, which do I think, upon the whole, men or women, have the greatest trials of patience, and which bears them the best? You mean, you say, from one sex to the other only? What a ques- tion is here! Which? Why women, to be sure. Man is an animal that must bustle in the world, go abroad, converse, fight bat- tles, encounter other dangers of seas, winds, and I know not what, in order to protect, provide for, maintain, in ease and plenty, women. Bravery, anger, fierceness, occa- sionally are made familiar to them. They buffet and are buffeted by the world ; are impatient and uncontrollable. They talk of honour, and run their heads against stone walls to make good their pretensions to it; and often quarrel with one another, and fight duels, upon any other silly thing that happens to raise their choler ; with their shadows, if you please. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU. 161 While women are meek, passive, good creatures, who, used to stay at home, set their maids at work, and formerly them- selves, get their houses in order, to receive, comfort, oblige, give joy to their fierce, fight- ing, bustling, active protectors, providers, maintainers, divert him with pretty pug's tricks, tell him soft tales of love, and of who and who's together, and what has been done in his absence, bring to him little master, so like his own dear papa ; and little pretty miss, a soft, sweet, smiling soul, with her sampler in her hand, so like what her meek mamma was at her years ! And with these differences in education, nature, employ- ments, your ladyship asks, whether the man or the woman bears more from each other? has the more patience? Dearest lady! how can you be so severe upon your own sex, yet seem to persuade yourself that you are defending them ? What you say of a lover's pressing his mistress to a declaration of her love for him, is sweetly pretty, and very just; but let a man press as he will, if the lady answers him rather by her obliging manners than in words, she will leave herself something to declare, and she will find herself rather more than less respected for it: such is the nature of man ! A man hardly ever pre- sumes to press a lady to make this declara- tion, hut when he thinks himself sure of her. He urges her, therefore, to add to his own consequence ; and hopes to quit scores with her, when he returns love for love, and favour for favour: and thus "draws the tender-hearted soul to professions which she is often upbraided for all her life after," says your ladyship. But these must be the most ungenerous of men. All I would suppose is that pride and triumph is the meaning of the urgency for a declara- tion which pride and triumph make a man think unnecessary ; and perhaps to know how far he may go, and be within allowed compass. A woman who is brought to own her love to the man, must act accordingly towards him ; must be more indulgent to him ; must, in a word, abate of her own significance, and add to his. And have you never seen a man strut upon the occasion, and how tame and bashful a woman looks sifter she has submitted to make the acknowl- edgment? The behaviourof each to the other, upon it and after it, justifies the caution to the sex, which I would never have a woman forget, always to leave to herself the power of granting something: yet her denials may be so managed as to lie more attractive than her compliance. AVomen, Lovelace says (and he pretends to know them), are fond of ardours ; but there is an end of them when a lover is secure. He can then look about 11 him, and be occasionally, if not indifferent, unpunctual, and delight in being missed, expected, and called to tender account for his careless absences: and he will bo less and less solicitous about giving good reasons for them, as she is more and more desirous of his company. Poor fool! he has brought her to own that she loves him : and will she not bear with the man she loves? She, her- self, as I have observed, will think she must act consistently with her declaration ; and he will plead that declaration in his favour, let his neglects or slights be what they will. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, eldest daughter of Evelyn, Earl of Kingston (afterwards Marquis of Dorchester, finally Duke of Kingston), by his wife the Lady Mary Fielding, daughter of William, Earl of Denbigh, born about 1690, and married in 1712 to Edward Wortley Montagu, ac- companied her husband during his resi- dence as ambassador to the Porte, 1716-18 ; resided without her husband on the Conti- nent, 1739-1761 ; returned to England, Octo- ber, 1761, and died August 21, 1762. Whilst abroad she wrote many epistles, of which the best collection will be found in The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, edited by her great-grandson, Lord Wharn- clitfe, Lond., 1837, 5 vols. 8vo; 2d and best edit, also 1837. See also her Letters from the Levant, edited by J. A. St. John, Lond. r 1838, fp. 8vo, and her Works, with Memoirs, Lond., 1803, 5 vols. 8vo. By her exertions inoculation for the small- pox was introduced into England. Pope quarrelled with, and, of course, abused her. " The letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu are not unworthy of being named after those of Madame de Sevigne. They have much of the French ea?e and vivacity, and retain more tho character of agreeable epistolary style than per- haps any other letters which have appeared in the English language." DR. HUGH BLAIR: Lects. OH lihetoric niid Belles- Letters, Led. xxfrii. " A reader need only glance at Lady Mary's letters to see that she was not less distinguished for wit than prone to indulge in sarcasm, in scan- dal, and in a very free range of opinions of all sorts. . . . We have no doubt whatsoever that one of the things which drove Lady Mary from Eng- land was the enmity she caused all around her by the license of her tongue and pen. She was always writing scandal : a journal full of it was burnt by her family ; her very panegyrics were sometimes malicious, or were thought so, in consequence of her character, as in the instance of the extraordi- nary verses addressed to Mrs. Murray in connexion with a trial for a man's life. Pope himself, with all the temptations of his wit and resentment, would 162 LADY MART WORTLEY MONTAGU. hardly have written of her as he did had her rep- utation for offence been less a matter of notoriety." LEIGH HUNT: Men, \Vomen, and Book*, vol. ii. LADV MONTAGU TO E. W. MONTAGU, ESQ., IN PROSPECT OF MARRIAGE. One part of my character is not so good, nor t'other so bud, as you fancy it. Should we ever live together you would be disap- pointed both ways : you would find an easy equality of temper you do not expect, and a thousand faults you do not imagine. You think if you married me I should be passion- ately fond of you one month, and of some- body else the next. Neither would happen. 1 can esteem, 1 can be a friend ; but I don't know whether I can love. Expect all that is complaisant and easy, but never what is fond, in me. As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great pleasure, and could easily quit London upon your account; but a retire- ment in the country is not so disagreeable to me as I know a few months would make it tiresome to you. Where people are tied for life 'tis their mutual interest not to grow weary of one another. If I had all the per- sonal charms that I want, a face is too slight a foundation for happiness. You would be soon tired of seeing every day the same thing. Where you saw nothing else, you would have leisure to remark all the defects : which would increase in proportion as the novelty lessened, which is always a great charm. I should have the displeasure of seeing a coldness, which, though I could not reasonably blame you for, being involuntary, yet it would render me uneasy; and the more, because I know a love may be revived, which absence, inconstancy, or even infi- delity has extinguished ; but there is no re- turning from a dfyo&t given by satiety. . . . TO THE SAME ON MATRIMONIAL HAPPINESS. If we marry, our happiness must consist in loving one another: 'tis principally my concern to think of the most probable method of making that love eternal. You object against living in London : I am not fond of it myself, and readily give it up to you, though I am assured there needs more art to keep a fondness alive in solitude, where it generally preys upon itself. There is one article absolutely necessary to be ever be- loved, one must be ever agreeable. There is no such thing as being agreeable without a thorough good humour, a natural sweet- ness of temper enlivened by cheerfulness. Whatever natural funds of gaiety one is born with, 'tis necessary to be entertained with agreeable objects. Any body capable of tast- ing pleasure, when they confine themselves to one place, should take care 'tis the place in the world the most agreeable. Whatever you may now think (now, perhaps, you have some fondness for me), though your love should continue in its full force, there are hours when the most beloved mistress would be troublesome. People are not forever (nor is it in human nature that they should be) disposed to be fond ; you would be glad to find in me the friend and the companion. To be agreeably the last, it is necessary to be gay and entertaining. A perpetual solitude in a place where you see nothing to raise your spirits at length wears them out, and conversation insensibly falls into dull and insipid. When I have no more to say to you, you will like me no longer. How dreadful is that view ! You will reflect, for my sake you have abandoned the conversation of a friend that you liked, and your situation in a country where all things would have contributed to make your life pass in (the true volupte) a smooth tran- quillity. / shall lose the vivacity which should entertain you, and you will have nothing to recompense you for what you have lost. Very few people that have set- tled entirely in the country but have grown at length weary of one another. The lady's conversation generally falls into a thousand impertinent effects of idleness ; and the gen- tleman falls in love with his dogs and his horses, and out of love with everything else. I am not now arguing in favour of the town ; you have answered me as to that point. In respect of your health, 'tis the first thing to be considered, and I shall never ask you to do anything injurious to that. But 'tis my opinion, 'tis necessary to be happy that we neither of us think any place more agreeable than that where we are. To THE COUNTESS OF BUTE ON FEMALE EDUCATION. LOUVERE, Jan. 28, N. S., 1753. DEAR CHILD, You have given me a great deal of satisfaction by your account of your eldest daughter. I am particularly pleased to hear she is a gocd arithmetician ; it is the best proof of understanding: the knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and brutes. . . . Learning, if she has a real taste for it, will not only make her contented, but happy in it [retirement], No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor regret the loss of expen- sive diversions, or variety of company, if she can be amused with an author in her closet. To render this amusement complete, she should be permitted to learn the languages. I have heard it lamented that boys lose so many years in mere learning of words : this JOSEPH BUTLER. 163 is no objection to a girl, whose time is not so precious: she cannot advance herself in any profession, and has therefore more hours to spare ; and as you say her memory is good, she will be very agreeably employed this way. There are two cautions to be given on this subject: first, not to think her- self learned when she can read Latin, or even Greek. Languages are more properly to be called vehicles of learning than learn- ing itself, as may be observed in many schoolmasters, who, though perhaps critics in grammar, are the most ignorant fellows upon earth. True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words. I would no further wish her a linguist than to enable her to read books in their originals, that are often corrupted, and always injured by trans- lations. Two hours' application every morn- ing will bring this about mnch sooner than you can imagine, and she will have leisure enough besides to run over the English poetry, which is a more important part of a woman's education than it is generally sup- posed. Many a young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of verses which she would have laughed at if she had known it had been stolen from Mr. Waller. . . . The second caution to be given her (and which is most absolutely necessary), is to conceal whatever learning she attains, with as much solicitude as she would hide crookedness or lameness: the parade of it can only serve to draw on her the envy, and consequently the most inveterate hatred, of all he and she fools, which will certainly be at least three parts in four of her acquaintance. The use of knowledge in our sex, beside the amuse- ment of solitude, is to moderate the pas- sions, and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life ; and it may be preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves, and will not suffer us to share. You will tell me I have not observed this rule myself; but you are mistaken : it is only inevitable accident that has given me any reputation that way. I have always care- fully avoided it, and ever thought it a mis- fortune. The explanation of this paragraph would occasion a long digression, which I will not trouble you with, it being my pres- ent design only to say what I think useful to my granddaughter, which I have much at heart. If she has the same inclination (I should say passion) for learning that I was born with, history, geography, and philoso- phy will furnish her with materials to pass away cheerfully a longer life than is allotted to mortals. I believe there are few heads capable of making Sir Isaac Newton's cal- culations, but the result of them is not diffi- cult to be understood by a moderate capacity. Do not fear this should make her affect the character of Lady , or Lady , or Mrs. : those women are ridiculous, not because they have learning, but because they have it not. One thinks herself a complete historian, after reading Echard's Roman History; another a profound philosopher, having got by heart some of Pope's unin- telligible essays; and a third an able divine, on the strength of AVhitefield's sermons: thus you hear them screaming politics and controversy. It is a saying of Thncydides, that igno- rance is bold and knowledge reserved. In- deed it is impossible to be far advanced in it without being more humbled by a convic- tion of human ignorance than elated by learning. At the same time I recommend books, I neither exclude work nor drawing. I think it is as scandalous for a woman not to know how to use a needle, as for a man not to know how to use a sword. JOSEPH BUTLER, D.C.L., born 1692, Preacher at the Rolls, 1718-1726, Clerk of the Closet to Queen Caroline, 1736, Bishop of Bristol, 1738, Bishop of Durham, 1750, died 1752, will always be remem- bered for his great work The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Con- stitution and Course of Nature, to which are added Two Brief Dissertations: 1. On Per- sonal Identity; 2. On the Nature of Virtue. The first edition of the Analogy was pub- lished in 1736. The Works, with an Ac- count by Bishop Halifax, appeared, Oxford, 1807, 2 vols. 8vo ; same, Oxford. 1849, 2 vols. 8vo; Works, New York, 1845, 8vo. The Works contain The Analogy and Two Dis- sertations, twenty-one Sermons, A Charge, and Correspondence between Dr. Butler and Dr. [Samuel] Clarke. " The author to whom I am under the greatest obligations is Bishop Butler. . . . The whole of this admirable treatise one of the most remark- able that any language can produce is intended to show that the principles of moral government taught in the Scriptures are strictly analogous to those everywhere exhibited in the government of the world as seen in natural religion." DR. FRAN- CIS WAYLAND : Moral Phil., p. 5 ; Intellec. Phil., p. 338. ''The most original find profound work extant in any language on the philosophy of religion." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH : 2d Prelim. Dissert, to Encyc. Brit. " I have derived greater aid from the views and reasonings of Bishop Butler than I have been able to find besides in the whole range of our extant authorship." DR. T. CHALMERS : Bridgewater Trentixe, Prcf. Butler's Sermons also are very valuable. 164 JOSEPH BUTLER. REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. That which makes the question concerning a future life to be of so great importance to us, is our capacity of happiness and misery. And that which makes the consideration of it to be of so great importance to us, is the supposition of our happiness or misery here- after depending upon our actions here. Without this indeed, curiosity could not but sometimes bring a subject, in which we may be so highly interested, to our thoughts; es- pecially upon the mortality of others, or the near prospect of our own. But reasonable men would not take any further thought about hereafter, than what should happen thus occasionally to rise in their minds, if it were certain that our future interest no way depended upon our present behaviour; whereas, on the contrary, if there be ground, either from analogy or anything else, to think it does, then there is reason also for the most active thought and solicitude to secure that interest; to behave so as that we may escape that misery, and obtain that happiness in another life which we not only suppose ourselves capable of, but which we apprehend also is put in our own power. And whether there be ground for this last apprehension certainly would deserve to be most seriously considered, were there no other proof of a future life and interest than that presumptive one which the fore- going observations amount to. Now in the present state, all which we enjoy, and a great part of what we suffer, is put in our own power. For pleasure and pain are the consequences of our actions; and we are endued by the Author of our nature with capacities for foreseeing these consequences. We find by experience he does not so much as preserve our lives, ex- clusively of our own care and attention to provide ourselves with, and to make use of, that sustenance by which he has appointed our lives shall be preserved ; and without which he has appointed they shall not be preserved at all. And in general we foresee that the external things which are the objects of our various passions can neither be ob- tained nor enjoyed without exerting our- selves in such and such manners : but by thus exerting ourselves we obtain and enjoy these objects in which our natural good con- sists ; or by this means God gives us the possession and enjoyment of them. I know not that we have any one kind or degree of enjoyment but by the means of our own actions. And by prudence and care we may, for the most part, pass our days in tolerable ease and quiet: or, on the contrary, we may, by rashness, ungoverned passion, wilfuluess, or even by negligence, make our- selves as miserable as ever we please. And many do please to make themselves extremely miserable, i.e., to do what they know before- hand will render them so. They follow those ways the fruit of which they know, by instruction, example, experience, will be disgrace, and poverty, and sickness, and un- timely death. This every one observes to be the general course of things; though it is to be allowed we cannot find by experience that all our sufferings are owing to our own follies. Why the Author of Nature does not give his creatures promiscuously such and such perceptions without regard to their beha- viour; why he does not make them happy without the instrumentality of their own actions, and prevent their bringing any suf- ferings upon themselves, is another matter. Perhaps there may be some impossibilities in the nature of things, which we are unac- quainted with. Or less happiness, it may be, would upon the whole be produced by such a method than is by the present. Or perhaps divine goodness, with which, if I mistake not, we make very free in our spec- ulations, may not be a bare single disposi- tion to produce happiness ; but a disposition to make the good, the faithful, the honest man happy. ANALOGY, Chap. II. CONSCIENCE. There is a principle of reflection in men by which they distinguish between, approve and disapprove their own actions. We are plainly constituted such sort of creatures as to reflect upon our own nature. The mind can take a view of what passes within itself, its propensions, aversions, passions, affec- tions, as respecting such objects, and in such degrees ; and of the several actions conse- quent thereupon. In this survey it approves of one, disapproves of another, and towards a third is affected in neither of these ways, but is quite indifferent. This principle in man, by which he approves or disapproves his heart, temper, and actions, is conscience ; for this is the strict sense of the word, though sometimes it is used so as to take in more. And that this faculty tends to restrain men from doing mischief to each other, and leads them to do good, is too manifest to need being insisted upon. Thus a parent has the affection of love to his children : this leads him to take care of, to educate, to make due provision for them ; the natural affection leads to this: but the reflection that it is his proper business, what belongs to him, that it is right and commendable so to do ; this added to the affection becomes a much more settled principle, and carries him on JOSEPH BUTLER. 165 through more labour and difficulties for the sake of his children than he would undergo from that affection alone if he thought it, ami the course of action it led to, either in- different or criminal. This indeed is impossible, to do that which is good and not to approve of it; for which reason they are frequently not considered as distinct, though they really are: for men often approve of the actions of others which they will not imitate, and likewise do that which they approve not. It cannot possibly be denied that there is this principle of re- flection or conscience in human nature. Sup- pose a man to relieve an innocent person in great distress; suppose the same man after- wards, in the fury of anger, to do the greatest mischief to a person who had given no just cause of offence ; to aggravate the injury, add the circumstances of former friendship and obligation from the injured person : let the man who is supposed to have done these two different actions coolly reflect upon them afterwards, without regard to their conse- quences to himself: to assert that any com- mon man would be affected in the same way towards these different actions, that he would make no distinction between them, but approve or disapprove them equally, is too glaring an absurdity to need being con- futed. There is therefore this principle of reflection or conscience in mankind. It is needless to compare the respect it has to private good with the respect it has to public: since it plainly tends as much to the latter as to the former, and is commonly thought to tend chiefly to the latter. This faculty is now mentioned merely as another part in the inward frame of man, pointing out to us in some degree what we fire in- tended for, and as what will naturally and of course have some influence. Sermon upon Human Nature. SELF-DECEIT. There is not anything relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccount- able, than this partiality to themselves which is observable in many; as there is nothing of more melancholy reflection, respecting morality, virtue, and religion. Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own characters. They think, and reason, and judge quite differently upon any matter relating to themselves from what they do in cases of others where they are not in- terested. Hence it is one hears people ex- posing follies which they themselves are eminent for; and talking with great severity against particular vices which, if all the world be not mistaken, they themselves are notoriously guilty of. This self-ignorance and self-partiality may be in all different degrees. It is a lower degree of it which David himself refers to in these words, Who can tell how oft he offendeth ? O cleanse thou me from my secret faults. This is the ground of that advice of Elihu to Job: fin-rely it in meet to be said unto God, That which I see not, teach thou me; if I have done iniquity, I will do no more. And Solomon saw this thing in a very strong light when he said, He that trusteth his own heart is a fool. This likewise was the reason why that precept, Know thyself, was so frequently inculcated by the philosophers of old. For if it were not for that partial and fond regard to our- selves it would certainly be no great difficulty to know our own character, what passes within the bent and bias of our mind ; much less would there be any difficulty in judging rightly of our own actions. But from this partiality it frequently comes to pass that the observation of many men's being them- selves last of all acquainted with what falls out in their own families may be applied to a nearer home, to what passes within their own breasts. There is plainly, in the generality of man- kind, an absence of doubt or distrust, in a very great measure, as to their moral char- acter and behaviour : and likewise a disposi- tion to take for granted that all is right and well with them in these respects. The former is owing to their not reflecting, not exercising their judgment upon themselves ; the latter, to self-love. I am not speaking of that extrava- gance, which is sometimes to be met with ; instances of persons declaring in words at length, that they never were in the wrong, nor ever had any diffidence of the justness of their conduct, in their whole lives. No, these people are too far gone to have any- thin? said to them. The thing before us is indeed of this kind, but in a lower degree, and confined to the moral character; some- what of which we almost all of us have, without reflecting upon it. Now consider how long and how grossly a person of the best understanding might be imposed upon by one of whom he had not any suspicion, and in whom he placed an entire confidence ; especially if there were friendship and real kindness in the case : surely this holds even stronger with respect to that self we are all so fond of. Hence arises in men a disregard of reproof and instruction, rules of conduct and moral discipline, which occasionally come in their way : a disregard, I say, of these ; not in every respect, but in this single one. namely, as what may be of service to them in particular towards mend- ing their own hearts and tempers, and mak- ing them better men. It never in earnest comes into their thoughts whether such ad- 166 PHILIP DORMER STANHOPE. monitions may not relate and be of service to themselves, and this quite distinct from a positive persuasion to the contrary, a per- suasion from reflection that they are innocent and blameless in these respects. Sermon upon Sdf-Deceit. PHILIP DORMER STANHO'PE, EARL OF CHESTERFIELD, born 1694, died 1773, famous in his day as a wit, a courtier, a politician, and patron of literature, is still remembered for his Letters to his Son Philip Stanhope, Lond., 1774, 2 vols. 4to; Ne\v edition, with Additions, edited by Lord Mahon [5th Earl Stanhope], Lond., 1845-53, 5 vols. 8vo. The first edition was republished in Boston, Mass., in 1779. Miscellaneous Works, with Memoirs by M. Maty, M.D., Lond., 1777-78, 2 vols. 4to; Supplement to his Letters, Lond., 1787, 4to. " It was not to be wondered at that they had so great a sale, considering that they were the let- ters of a statesman, a wit, one who had been much in the mouths of mankind, one long accustomed vlrum volitnre per oi-it. . . . Does not Lord Ches- terfield give precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces? . . . Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, I think, might be made a very pretty book. Take out the i in morality, and it should be put into the hands of every gentleman." DR. JOHNSON. It may here be remarked that Johnson's letter to Chesterfield was grossly unjust. GOOD BREEDING. A friend of yours and mine has very justly defined good breeding to be, "the re- sult of much pood sense, some pood nature, and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to obtain the same indul- gence from them." Taking this for granted (as I think it cannot be disputed), it is aston- ishing to me that anybody who has good sense and good nature can essentially fail in good breeding. As to the modes of it, indeed, they vary according to persons, places, and circumstances, and are only to be acquired by observation and experience ; but the substance of it is everywhere and eternally the same. Good manners are, to particular societies, what good morals are to society in general their cement and their security. And as laws are enacted to enforce good morals, or at least to prevent the ill effects of bad ones, so there are certain rules of civility, universally implied and received, to enforce good manners and punish bad ones. And indeed there seems to be less difference between the crimes and punish- ments than at first one would imagine. The immoral man who invades another's prop- erty is justly hanged for it; and the ill-bred man who by his ill manners invades and disturbs the quiet and comforts of private life is by common consent as justly banished society. Mutual complaisances, attentions, and sacrifices of little conveniences, are as natural an implied contract between civilized people as protection and obedience are be- tween kings and subjects ; whoever, in either case, violates that compact justly forfeits all advantages arising from it. For my own part I really think that, next to the con- sciousness of doing a good action that of doing a civil one is the most pleasing ; and the epithet which I should covet the most, next to that of Aristides, would be that of well-bred. Thus much for good breeding in general: I will now consider some of the various modes and degrees of it. Very few, scarcely any, are wanting in the respect which they should show to those whom they acknowledge to be infinitely their superiors, such as crowned heads, princes, and public persons of distinguished and eminent posts. It is the manner of showing that respect which is different. The man of fashion and of the world expresses it in its fullest extent, but naturally, easily, and without concern ; whereas a man who is not used to keep good company expresses it awkwardly ; one sees that he is not used to it, and that it costs him a great deal ; but I never saw the worst-bred man living guilty of lolling, whistling, scratching his head, and such like indecencies, in company that he respected. In such companies, there- fore, the only point to be attended to is, to show that respect which everybody means to show, in an easy, unembarrassed, and graceful manner. This is what observation and experience must teach you. In mixed companies, whoever is admitted to make part of them is, for the time at least, supposed to 1)6 on a footing of equality with the rest: and, consequently, as there is no one principal object of awe and respect, peo- ple are apt to take a greater latitude in their behaviour, and to be less upon their guard : and so they may, provided it be within cer- tain bounds, which are upon no occasion to be transgressed. But upon these occasions, though no one is entitled to distinguished marks of respect, every one claims, and very justly, every mark of civility and good breeding. Ease is allowed, but careless- ness and negligence are strictly forbidden. If a man accosts you, and talks to you ever so dully or frivolously, it is worse than rude- ness, it is brutality, to show him, by a mani- fest inattention to what he says, that you think him a fool or a blockhead, and not worth hearing. It is much more so with WILLIAM WARBURTON. 167 regard to women, who, of whatever rank they are, are entitled, in consideration of their sex, not only to an attentive, but an officious good breeding from men. Their little wants, likings, dislikes, preferences, antipathies, and fancies must be officiously attended to, and, if possible, guessed at and anticipated, by a well-bred man. You must never usurp to yourself those conveniences and gratifications which are of common right, such as the best places, the best dishes, &c. ; but on the contrary always decline them yourself, and offer them to others, who, in their turns, will offer them to you ; so that, upon the whole, you will in your turn enjoy your share of the common right. It would be endless for me to enumerate all the par- ticular instances in which a well-bred man shows his good breeding in good company ; and it would be injurious to you to suppose that your own good sense will not point them out to you ; and then your own good nature will recommend and your self-inter- est enforce the pr.ictice. There is a third sort of good breeding in which people are the most apt to fail from a very mistaken notion that they cannot fail at all. I mean with regard to one's most familiar friends and acquaintances, or those who really are our inferiors; and there, un- doubtedly, a greater degree of ease is not only allowed, but proper, and contributes much to the comforts of a private social life. But ease and freedom have their bounds, which must by no means be violated. A certain degree of negligence and careless- ness becomes injurious and insulting, from the real or supposed inferiority of the per- sons ; and that delightful liberty of conver- sation among a few friends is soon destroyed, as liberty often has been, by being carried to licentiousness. But example explains things best, and I will put a pretty strong case : Suppose you and me alone together: I be- lieve you will allow that I have as good a right to unlimited freedom in your company as either you or I can possibly have in any other ; and I am apt to believe, too, that you would indulge me in that freedom as far as anybody would. But, notwithstand- ing this, do you imagine that I should think there was no bounds to that freedom? I assure you I should not think so; and I take myself to be as much tied down by a certain degree of good manners to you, as by other degrees of them to other people. The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connexions, and friendships require a de- gree of good breeding both to preserve and cement them. The best of us have our bad sides, and it is as imprudent as it is ill-bred to exhibit them. I shall not use ceremony with you ; it would be misplaced between us ; but I shall certainly observe that degree of good breeding with you which is, in the first place, decent, and which, I am sure, is absolutely necessary to make us like one another's company long. Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. WILLIAM WARBURTON, D.D., born 1698, left school (he was never at col- lege) 1715, and for about four years prac- tised as an attorney at Newark ; received deacon's orders, 1723, Preacher to Lincoln's Inn, 1746, Prebendary of Gloucester, 1753, and of Durham, 1755, Dean of Bristol, 1757, Bishop of Gloucester, 1759, died 1779. He was author of Miscellaneous Translations, Lond., 1723 (some 1724), 12tno; Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles, as related by Histo- rians, Lond., 1727, I2mo (this and the Trans- lations were suppressed) ; The Alliance be- tween Church and State, Lond.. 1741, 8vo ; Julian, 1750, 8vo ; and other works. His greatest production was The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated, Lond., 1737, etc., never completed : new edition, Lond., Tegg, 1846, 3 vols. 8vo ; Warburton's Works [edited by Bishop Ilurd], Lond., 1788, 7 vols. 4to ; new edition, Lond., 1811, 12 vols. 8vo. " Warburton's Divine Legation delighted me more than any book I had yet [at 15] read. . . . The luminous theory of hieroglyphics, as a stage in the progress of society, between picture-writing and alphabetic character, is perhaps the only addition made to the stock of knowledge in this extraordinary work; but the uncertain and prob- ably false suppositions about the pantheism of the ancient philosophers and the object of the myste- ries (in reality, perhaps, somewhat like the free- masonry of our own times) are well adapted to rouse and exercise the adventurous genius of youth." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH: Life, eh. i. " The Divine Legation of Moses is a monument, already crumbling into dust, of the vigour and the weakness of the human rnind. If Warburton's new argument proved anything, it would be a demonstration against the legislator who left his people without the knowledge of a future state. But some episodes of the work, on the Greek philosophy, the hieroglyphics of Egypt, &c., are entitled to the praise of learning, imagination, and discernment." EDWARD GIBBON: Miscelt. Works, edit. 1837, 88, n. The reader will find a graphic portrait of Warburton by a good painter in our article on Lord Bolingbroko in this volume. BISHOP WARBUUTOX TO HURD. PRIOR PARK, Dec. 27, 1761. Let me wish you (as we all do) all the happiness that goodness can derive from this season. 1G8 JOSEPH SPENCE. The honour this country derives from the Duke of York's visit can hardly compensate the bad news of a Spanish war, which puts the city of London in a consternation. This event does honour to Mr. Pitt's sagacity, and the wisdom of his advice upon it. Whether this war, which was foreseen by nobody to be inevitable but by him, can be successfully managed by anybody but by him, time must show ; for I would not pretend to be wiser than our teachers, I mean, the news-writers, who refer all doubtful cases, as the Treasury does all desperate payments, to time. . . . What you say of Hume is true: and (what either I said in my last, or intended to say) you have taught him to write so much bet- ter, that he has thoroughly confirmed your system. I have been both too ill and too lazy to finish my Discourse on the Holy Spirit. Not above half of it is yet printed. I have been extremely entertained with the wars of Fingal [OssianJ. It can be no cheat, for I think the enthusiasm of this su- perficial sublime could hardly be counterfeit. A modern writer would have been less simple and uniform. Thus far had I writ- ten when your letter of Christmas-day came to hand ; as you will easily understand by my submitting to take shame upon me, ( and assuring you that I am fully convinced of my false opinion delivered just above con- cerning Fingal. I did not consider the mat- ter as I ought. Your reasons for the for- gery are unanswerable. And of all these reasons but one occurred to me, the want of external evidence; and this. I own, did shock me. But you have waked me from a very pleasing dream ; and made me hate the im- postor, which is the most uneasy sentiment of our waking thoughts. . . . Sterne has published his fifth and sixth volumes of Tristram. They are wrote pretty much like the first and second ; but whether they will restore his reputation as a writer with the public is another question. The fellow himself is an irrecoverable scoun- drel. . . . I think the booksellers have an intention of employing Baskerville to print Pope in 4to ; so they sent me the last octavo to look over. I have added the enclosed to the long note in the beginning of the Rape of the Lock, in answer to an impertinence of Joseph War ton. When you have perused it, you will send it back. I have sometimes thought of collecting my scattered anecdotes and critical observations together, for the foun- dation of a life of Pope, which the booksellers tease me for. If I do that, all of that kind must be struck out of the notes of that edi- tion. You could help ine nobly to fill up the canvas. JOSEPH SPENCE, born 1699, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, 17-8-38, and Regius Professor of Modern History, 1742, Prebendary of Durham, 1754, was drowned in a canal in his garden, 1768. Among his works are An Essay on Pope's Translation of Homer's Odyssey, Lond., 1727, 8vo ; Polyrnetis ; or, An Enquiry con- cerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets and the Remains of the Ancient Artists, Lond., 1747, royal fol. ; Crito, by Sir Harry Beaumont, Lond., 1752, 8vo : Moralities, by Sir Harry Beaumont, Lond., 1753, 8vo. He left a valuable MS. collection of Observations. Anecdotes, and Characters, which were first published in 1820, crown 8vo, two editions, one edited by E. Maione, one by S. W. Singer, pub- lished the same day : Malone's edition is only a Selection ; Singer's edition, 2d edit., 1858, fp. 8vo, professes to be authentic. "Enough has been proved to show thnt, instead of a 'verbatim' reprint, what was wanted was a carefully revised, collected, and annotated edition, and that Mr. Singer's, neat and cheap, unhappily stops the way." Lond. Athen., 1859, 250. THE AND VIRGIL'S GENIUS. It preserves more to us of the religion of the Romans than all the other Latin poets (excepting only Ovid) put together ; and gives us tlie forms and appearances of their deities as strongly as if we had so many pic- tures of them preserved to us, done by some of the best hands in the Augustan age. It is remarkable that he is commended by some of the ancients themselves for the strength of his imagination as to this particular, though in general that is not his character so much as exactness. He was certainly the most correct poet even of his time ; in which all false thoughts and idle ornaments in writing were discouraged : and it is cer- tain that there is but little of invention in his ^neid ; much less, I believe, than is gener- ally imagined. Almostall the little facts in it are built on history; and even as to the particular lines no one perhaps ever bor- rowed more from the poets that preceded him than he did. He goes so far back as to old Ennius : and often inserts whole verses from him and some other of their earliest writers. The obsoleteness of their style did not hinder him much in this ; for he was a particular lover of their old language ; and no doubt inserted many more antiquated words in his poem than we can discover at present. Judgment is his distinguishing character ; and his great excellence consisted in chusing and ranging things aright. What- ever he borrowed he had the skill of making his own, by weaving it so well into his work GILBERT WEST. 1G9 that it looks all of a piece : even those parts of his poems where this may be most prac- tised resembling a fine piece of Mosaic, in which all the parts, though of such different marbles, unite together; and the various shades and colours are so artfully disposed as to melt off insensibly into one another. One of the greatest beauties in Virgil's private character was his modesty and good- nature. He was apt to think humbly of him- self and handsomely of others ; and was ready to show his love of merit even where it might seem to clash with his own. He was the first who recommended Horace to Maecenas. OBSERVATIONS ON HORACE. Horace was the fittest man in the world for a court where wit was so particularly encouraged. No man seems to have had more, and all of the genteelest sort ; or to have been better acquainted with mankind. His gaiety, and even his debauchery, made him still the more agreeable to Maecenas: so that it is no wonder that his acquaintance with that Minister grew up to so high a degree of friendship as is very uncommon between a first Minister and a poet; and which had probably such an effect upon the latter as one shall scarce ever hear of be- tween any two friends the most on a level : for there is some room to conjecture that he hastened himself out of this world to accom- pany his great friend in the next. Horace has been most generally celebrated for his lyric poems , in which he far exceeded all the Roman poets, and perhaps was no un- worthy rival of several of the Greek : which seems to have been the height of his ambi- tion. His next point of merit, as it has been usually reckoned, was his refining satire; and bringing it from the coarseness and harshness of Lucilius to the genteel, easy manner which lie, and perhaps nobody but he and one person more in all the ages since, has ever possessed. I do not remem- ber that any one of the ancients says any- thing of his Epistles: and this has made me sometimes imagine that his Epistles and Satires might originally have passed under one and the same name ; perhaps that of Sermons. They are generally written in a style approaching to that of conversation ; and are so much alike that several of the satires might just as well be called epistles, as several of his epistles have the spirit of satire in them. This latter part of his works, by whatever name you please to call them (whether satires and epistles, or dis- courses in verse on moral and familiar sub- jects), is what, I must own, I love much bet- ter even than the lyric part of his works. It is in these that he shews that talent for crit- icism in which he so very much excelled ; especially in his long epistle to Augustus; and that other to the Pisos, commonly called his Art of Poetry. They abound in strokes which shew his great knowledge of mankind, and in that pleasing way he had of teaching philosophy, of laughing away vice, and in- sinuating virtue into the minds of his read- ers. They may serve as much as almost any writings can, to make men wiser and better: for he has the most agreeable way of preaching that ever was. He was, in general, an honest good man himself: at least he does not seem to have had any one ill-natured vice about him. Other poets we admire ; but there is not any of the ancient poets that I could wish to have been ac- quainted with so much as Horace. One cannot be very conversant with his writings without having a friendship for the man ; and longing to have just such another a; he was for one's friend. GILBERT WEST, LL.D., born about 1700 to 1705, died 1756, pub- lished among other things Odes of Pindar, with several other Pieces in Prose and Verse, translated from the Greek, etc., Lond., 1749, 4to; Observations on the His- tory and Evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, Lond., 1747, Svo. " This is one of the acutest and b^st-reasoned works which have appeared in English on the Resurreution of Christ." OUME'S Bill. liib., 464. " His work is noticed here on account of the lumi- nous and satisfactory manner in which he has har- monized the several accounts of the evangelical his- tory of the resurrection." HORNE'S Bibl. liib., 138. THE SIMPLICITY OF THE SACRED WRITERS. I cannot forbear taking notice of one other mark of integrity which appears in all the compositions of the sacred writers, and par- ticularly the evangelists; and that is the simple, unaffected, unornamental, and unos- tentatious manner in which they deliver truths so important and sublime, and facts so magnificent and wonderful, as are capa- ble, one would think, of lighting up a flame of oratory, even in the dullest and coldest breasts. They speak of an angel descend- ing from heaven to foretell the miraculous conception of Jesus ; of another proclaim- ing his birth, attended by a multitude of the heavenly host praising God. "and saying Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men ;" of his star appearing in the East; of angels minister- ing to him in the wilderness ; of his glory in the mount ; of a voice twice heard from 170 PHILIP DODDRIDGE. heaven, saying, (> This is my beloved son ;" of innumerable miracles performed by him, and by his disciples in his name; of his knowing the thoughts of men; of his fore- telling future events; of prodigies accom- panying his crucifixion and death ; of an angel descending in terrors, opening his sepulchre, and frightening away the soldiers who were set to guard it ; of his rising from the dead, ascending into heaven, and pour- ing down, according to his promise, the va- rious and miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit upon his apostles and disciples. All these amazing incidents do these inspired histo- rians relate nakedly and plainly without any of the colourings and heightenings of rhet- oric, or so much as a single note of admira- tion ; without making any comment or re- mark upon thorn, or drawing from them any conclusion in honour either of their master or themselves, or to the advantage of the religion they preached in his name ; but con- tenting themselves with relating the naked truth, whether it seems to make for thorn or against them : without either magnifying on the one hand, or palliating on the other, they leave their cause to the unbiassed judg- ment of mankind, seeking, like genuine apos- tles of the Lord of truth, to convince rather than to persuade; and therefore coming, as St. Paul speaks of his preaching, "not with excellency of speech, not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but with demonstra- tion of the Spirit, and of power, that,' : adds he, " your faith should not stand in the wis- dom of men, but in the power of God." And let it l>e remembered that he who speaks this wanted not learning, art, or eloquence, as is evident from his speeches recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, and from the testimony of that great critic Longinus, who, in reck- oning up the Grecian orators, places among them Paul of Tarsus. PHILIP DODDRIDGE, D.D., born 1702, died 1751, published a number of theological treatises, sermons, &c., but ia best known by his Family Expositor; or, A Paraphrase and Version of the New Tes- tament, with Critical Notes and Practical Improvements, Lond., 1760-G2, 6 vols. 4to ; with his Life by Dr. Kippis, Lond., 1808, 4 vols. 4to. or 6 vols. 8vo; new edition, Lond., 1839, imperial fol., also 1840, 4 vols. 8vo ; other editions. AVhole Works, by D. Wil- liams and the Rev. E. Parsons, Leeds, 1802, 10 vols. 8vo and royal 8vo. A Course of Lectures on the Principal Subjects in Pneu- inatology, Ethics, and Divinity, published by llev. Samuel Clarke, Lond., 1763, 4to ; 3d edit., by A. Kippis, D.D., Lond., 1794, 2 vols. 8vo. Miscellaneous Works, by Rev. T. Morell, Lond., 1839, imp. 8vo. Letters, Shrewsb., 1790, 8vo. Memoirs, byJobOrton, Salop, 1761), 8vo. Life and Correspondence, Lond., 1831, 5 vols. 8vo. His Rise and Pro- gress of Religion in the Soul, Lond., 1750, 12mo, has been frequently republished. " The Family Expositor is a very judicious work. It has long been highly esteemed, nml is worthy of all the credit it has among religious people." DR. ADAM CLARKE. " And let me tell you, a man who comments on the Bible affords all the opportunity a caviller could wish for. But your judgment is always so true, and your decision so right, that I am as un- profitable a reader to you as the least of your flock." BISHOP WARBUIITON TO DR. DODDRIDGE, Cambridge, April 4, 1739. DEVOTIONAL FEELINGS. I hope, my dear, you will not be offended when I tell you that I am, what I hardly thought it possible, without a miracle, that I should have been, very easy and happy without you. My days begin, pass, and end in pleasure, and seem short because they are so delightful. It may seem strange to say it, but really so it is, I hardly feel that I want anything. I often think of you, and pray for you, and bless God on your account, and please myself with the hope of many comfortable days, and weeks, and years with you ; yet I am not at all anxious about your return, or indeed about anything else. And the reason, the great and sufficient reason, is that I have more of the presence of God with me than I remember ever to have en- joyed in any one month of my life. He enables me to live for him, and to live with him. When I awake in the morning, which is always before it is light, I address myself to him, and converse with him, speak to him while I am lighting my candle and putting on my clothes, and have often more delight before I come out of my chamber, though it be hardly a quarter of an hour after my awaking, than I have enjoyed for whole days, or, perhaps, weeks, of my life. IIo meets me in my study, in secret, in family devotions. It is pleasant to read, pleasant to compose, pleasant to converse with my friends at home; pleasant to visit those abroad the poor, the sick; pleasant to write letters of necessary business by which any good can be done; pleasant to go out and preach the gospel to poor souls, of which some are thirsting for it, and others dying without it; pleasant in the week-day to think how near another Sabbath is ; but, oh! much more, much more pleasant, to think how near eternity is, and how short the journey through this wilderness, and that it is but a step from earth to heaven. ROBERT DODSLEY.SOAME JENYNS. 171 I cannot forbear, in these circumstances, pausing a little, and considering whence this happy scene just at this time arises, and whither it tends. Whether God is about to bring about me any peculiar trial, for which this is to prepare me ; whether he is shortly about to remove me from the earth, and so is giving me more sensible preliba- tions of heaven, to prepare me for it ; or whether he intends to do some peculiar services by me just at this time, which many other circumstances lead me sometimes to hope ; or whether it be that, in answer to your prayers, and in compassion to that distress which I must otherwise have felt in the absence and illness of her who has been so exceedingly dear to me, and was never more sensibly dear to me than now, he is pleased to favour me with this teaching ex- perience ; in consequence of which, I freely own I am less afraid than ever of any event that can possibly arise, consistent with his nearness to my heart, and the tokens of his paternal and covenant love. I will muse no further on the cause. It is enough the effect is so blessed. To Mrs. Doddridge, from Northampton, October, 1743. ROBERT DODSLEY, born 1703, died 1764, after serving as ap- prentice to a tradesman, and subsequently acting as a footman, became author and bookseller by profession, lie published A Muse in Livery, or The Footman's Miscel- lany, Lond., 1732, small 8vo ; A Select 'Col- lection of Old Plays, Lond., 1744, 12 vols. 12mo; Miscellanies, Lond., 1745, 2 vols. 8vo ; The Preceptor, Lond., 1748, 2 vols. 8vo , The (Economy of Human Life, Lond., 1751, 8vo; Fugitive Pieces, Lond., 17^4, 2 vols. small 8vo ; was the author of The Toy Shop, The King and the Miller of Mansfield, and The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (these three are plays), and other pro- ductions, and published The Annual Regis- ter, Lond., 1758, etc., suggested by Edmund Burke. PRUDENCE. Hear the words of Prudence, give heed unto her counsels, and store them in thy heart: her maxims are universal and all the virtues lean upon her: she is the guide and mistress of human life. Put a bridle on thy tongue ; set a guard before thy lips, lest the words of thine own mouth destroy thy peace. Let him that scoflfeth at the lame take care that he halt not himself: whosoever speaketh of another's failings with pleasure. shall hear of his own with bitterness of heart. Of much speaking cometh repentance, but in silence is safety. A talkative man is a nuisance to society ; the ear is sick of his babbling, the torrent of his words overwhelmed! conversation. Boast not of thyself, for it shall bring contempt upon thee; neither deride another, for it is dangerous. A bitter jest is the poison of friendship ; and he that cannot restrain his tongue shall have trouble. Furnish thyself with the proper accom- modations belonging to thy condition ; yet spend not to the utmost of what thou canst afford, that the providence of thy youth may be a comfort to thy old age. Let thine own business engage thy atten- tion : leave the care of the state to the gov- ernors thereof. Let not thy recreations be expensive, lest the pain of purchasing them exceed the pleasure thou hast in their enjoyment. Neither let prosperity put out the eyes of circumspection, nor abundance cut off the hands of frugality: he that too much in- dulgeth in the superfluities of life shall live to lament the want of its necessaries. From the experience of others do thou learn wisdom ; and from their failings cor- rect thine own faults. Trust no man before thou hast tried him ; yet mistrust not without reason : it is un- charitable. But when thou hast proved a man to be honest, lock him up in thine heart as a treasure ; regard him as a jewel of inesti- mable value. llefuse the favours of a mercenary man ; they will be a snare unto thee: thou shalt never be quit of the obligations. Use not to-day what to-morrow may want: neither leave that to hazard what foresight may provide for, or care prevent. The fool is not always unfortunate, nor the wise man always successful ; yet never had a fool a thorough enjoyment; never was a wise man wholly unhappy. (Economy of Human Life, Part I. SOAME JENYNS, born 1704, died 1787, noted as a politician, essayist, infidel, and subsequently as a cham- pion of Christianity, was author of A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil, Lond., 1757. 12mo (ridiculed by Dr. Johnson in The Literary Magazine), with his Poems, 17l')l, 2 vols. 12mo; View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion, Lond., 172 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 1776, 12mo; Bohn, 1850, 8vo, and other productions, for which see The Works of Soame Jenyns, Esq., etc., with Life by C. N. Cole, Lond., 17 ( JO, 4 vols. 8vo. " His Poetry does not rise above mediocrity : indeed, it scarcely deserves the name: but the st.vle of his pro^e is smooth and lucid, his turns of thought are neat and unexpected ; and when he sports in irony, in which he apparently delights to indulge, he is uncommonly playful and airy. . . . Jenyns has evidently a predilection for parodoxi- cal opinions: and why, he might reasonably urge in his defence, should a man address the Public, who has nothing new to offer to it?" GREEN: Diary f a Lover of Lit. CRUELTY TO INFERIOR ANIMALS. We see children laughing at the miseries which they inflict on every unfortunate animal that comes within their power, all savages are ingenious in contriving and happy in executing the most exquisite tor- tures ; and the common people of all coun- tries are delighted with nothing so much as bull-baiting, prize-fightings, executions, and all spectacles of cruelty and horror. Though civilization may in some degree abate this native ferocity, it can never quite extirpate it: the most polished are not ashamed to be pleased with scenes of little less barbarity and, to the disgrace of human nature, to dignify them with the name of sports. They arm cocks with artificial weapons, which nature had kindly denied to their malevo- lence, and, with shouts of applause and triumph, see them plunge them into each other's hearts: they view with delight the trembling deer and defenceless hare, flying for hours in the utmost agonies of terror and despair, and at last, sinking under fatigue, devoured by their merciless pur- suers: they see with joy the beautiful pheasant and harmless partridge drop from their flight, weltering in their blood, or per- haps perishing with wounds and hunger under the cover of some friendly thicket to which they have in vain retreated for safety : they triumph over the unsuspecting fish whom they have decoyed by an insidious pretence of feeding, and drag him from his native element by a hook fixed to and tear- ing out his entrails: and, to add to all this, they spare neither labour nor expense to preserve and propagate these innocent ani- mals for no other end but to multiply the objects of their persecution. What name would we bestow on a superior being whose whole endeavours were em- ployed, and whose pleasure consisted, in terrifying, ensnaring, tormenting, and de- stroying mankind; whose superior faculties were exerted in fomenting animosities among them, in contriving engines of destruction, and inciting them to use them, in maiming and murdering each other? whose power over them was employed in assisting the rapacious, deceiving the simple, and op- pressing the innocent? who, without provo- cation or advantage, should continue from day to day, void of all pity and remorse, thus to torment mankind for diversion, and at the same time endeavour with his utmost care to preserve their lives, and to propagate their species, in order to increase the number of victims devoted to his malevolence, and be delighted in proportion to the miseries he occasioned? I say, what name detestable enough could we find for such a being? Yet, if we impartially consider the case, and our intermediate situation, we must acknowledge that, with regard to inferior animals, such a being is a sportsman. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, L.L.D., born in Boston, 1706, emigrated to Phila- delphia, 1723 ; worked as a printer in Lon- don. 1724 to 1726, when he returned to Phil- adelphia ; Clerk of the Provincial Assembly, 1736; Deputy Postmaster at Philadelphia, 1737, and Postmaster-General for British America, 1753; Agent for Pennsylvania in England, 1757 to 1762, and again for several of the colonies, 1764 to 1775; Minister Plen- ipotentiary to France, 1776 to 1785, when he returned to Philadelphia; President of Penn- sylvania, 1785 to 1788, and in 1787 was a member of the Federal Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States; died in Philadelphia, 1790. For a detailed ac- count of his services to politics, science, and philosophy, see his Autobiography prefixed to his Works, new edition, by Jared Sparks, Phila., 1858, 10 vols. 8vo, and especially Big- elow's edition of Franklin's Autobiography, 1868, 8vo, his Life of Franklin as told by Himself, 3 vols. 8vo, and James Parton's Life and Times of Franklin, new edit., Bost., 1867, 2 vols. 12mo. " Science appears in his language in a dress won- derfully decorous, best adapted to display her native loveliness. He has in no instance exhibited that false dignity by which philosophy is kept aloof from common applications; and he has sought rather to make her an useful inmnte and servant in the common habitations of man, than to pre- serve her merely as an object of admiration in temples and palaces." SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. " His style has all the vigour and even concise- ness of Swift, without any of his harshness. It is in no degree more flowery, yet both elegant and lively. The wit, or rather humour, which prevails in his works, varies with the subject. Sometimes he is bitter and sarcastic; often gay and even droll : reminding us in this respect far more fre- quently of Addison than of Swift, as might natu- rally be expected from his admirable temper, or BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 173 the happy turn of his investigation." LORD JEF- FREY : Edin. Rev. : see viii. 327-344, xxviii. 275- 302. GOOD WORKS. For my own part, when I am employed in serving others I do not look upon myself as conferring favours, but as paying debts. In my travels, and since my settlement, I have received much kindness from men to whom I shall never have an opportunity of making the least direct return ; and number- less mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our services. Those kind- nesses from men I can therefore only return on their fellow-men; and I can only shew my gratitude for these mercies from God by a readiness to help his other children, and my brethren. For I do not think that thanks and compliments, though repeated weekly, can discharge our real obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator. You will see in this my notion of good works : that I am far from expecting to merit heaven by them. By heaven we un- derstand a state of happiness, infinite in degree and eternal in duration : I can do nothing to deserve such rewards. He that for giving a draught of water to a thirsty person should expect to be paid with a good plantation would be modest in his demands compared with those who think they deserve heaven for the little good they do on earth. Even the mixed, imperfect pleasures we enjoy in this world are rather from God's goodness than our merit: how much more such hap- piness of heaven ! The faith you mention has certainly its use in the world : I do not desire to see it diminished, nor would I endeavour to lessen it in any man. But I wish it were more pro- ductive of good works than I have generally seen it : I mean real good works : works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit; not holiday- keeping, sermon -reading, or hearing ; performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity. The worship of God is a duty ; the hearing and reading of sermons are useful ; but if men rest in hearing and praying, as too many do, it is as if a tree should value itself on being watered and putting forth leaves, though it never produced any fruit. Your great Master thought much less of these outward appearances and professions than many of his modern disciples. He pre- ferred the doers of the word to the mere hear- ers ; the son that seemingly refused to obey his father and yet performed his commands, to him that professed his readiness, but neg- lected the work : the heretical but charita- ble Samaritan to the uncharitable though orthodox priest and sanctified Levite : and those who gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, raiment to the naked, entertain- ment to the stranger, and relief to the sick, though they never heard of his name, he declares shall in the last day be accepted ; when those who cry Lord ! Lord ! who value themselves upon their faith, though great enough to perform miracles, but have neg- lected good works, shall be rejected, lie professed that he came not to call the right- eous, but sinners to repentance, which im- plied his modest opinion that there were some in his time who thought themselves so good that they need not hear even him for improvement: but now-a-days we have scarce a little parson that does not think it the duty of every man within his reach to sit under his petty ministrations, and that whoever omits them offends God. 1 wish to such more humility, and to you health and hap- piness, being your friend and servant. To Rev. George Whitefield: Philadelphia, Jane 6, 1753. EARLY MARRIAGES. DEAR JACK, You desire, you say, my impartial thoughts on the subject of an early marriage, by way of answer to the numberless objections that have been made by numerous persons to your own. You may remember, when you consulted me on the occasion, that I thought youth on both sides to be no objection. Indeed, from the marriages that have fallen under my obser- vation, I am rather inclined to think that early ones stand the best chance of happi- ness. The temper and habits of the young are not yet become so stiff and uncomply- ing as when more advanced in life: they form more easily to each other, and hence many occasions of disgust are removed. And if youth has less of that prudence which is necessary to manage a family, yet the par- ents and elder friends of young married per- sons are generally at hand to afford their .advice, which amply supplies that defect ; and by early marriage youth is sooner formed to regular and useful life ; and pos- sibly some of those accidents or connexions that might have injured the constitution, or reputation, or both, are thereby happily pre- vented. Particular circumstances of par- ticular persons may possibly sometimes make it prudent to delay entering into that state ; but in general, when nature has rendered our bodies fit for it, the presumption is in nature's favour, that she has not judged amiss in making us desire it. Late mar- riages are often attended, too, with this far- ther inconvenience, that there is not the same chance that the parents shall live to 1T4 HENRY FIELDING. wee their offspring educated. " Late chil- dren," says the Spanish proverb, "are early orphans,'' a melancholy reflection to those AY hose case it may be. With us, in America, marriages are generally in the morning of life ; our children are therefore educated and settled in the world by noon ; and thus, our business being done, we have an afternoon and evening of cheerful leisure to ourselves; such as our friend at present enjoys. By these early marriages we are blessed Avith more children ; and from the mode among us, founded by nature, of every mother suck- ling and nursing her own child, more of them are raised. Thence the swift progress of population among us, unparalleled in Eu- rope. In tine, I am glad you are married, and congratulate you most cordially upon it. You are now in the way of becoming a use- ful citizen ; and you have escaped the unnat- ural state of celibacy for life, the fate of inanj' here [in England], Avho never intended it, but who, having too long postponed the change of their condition, find, at length, that it is too late to think of it, and so live, all their lives, in a situation that greatly les- sens a man's value. An odd volume of a set of books bears not the value of its proportion to the set: what think you of the value of the odd half of a pair of scissors? It can't Avell cut any thing; it may possibly serve to scrape a trencher. 1'ray make my compliments and best Avishes acceptable to your bride. I am old and heavy, or I should, ere this, have pre- sented them in person. I shall make but small use of the old man's privilege, that of giving advice to younger friends. Treat your wife always with respect: it will pro- cure respect to you, not only from her, but from all that observe it. Never use a slighting expression to her, even in jest; for slights in jest, after fre- quent bandyings, are apt to end in angry earnest. Bo studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal, and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate, and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy. At least you will, by such conduct, stand the best chance for such consequences. I pray God to bless you both ; being ever your affectionate friend. To John Alleyne, Esq., Craven Street, Au- gust 9, 1768. THE FAME OF WASHINGTON. SIR, I have received but lately the letter your excellency did me the honour of writ- ing to me in recommendation of the Marquis de la Fayette. His modesty detained it long in his own hands. We became acquainted, however, from the time of his arrival at Paris ; and his zeal for the honour of our country, his activity in our affairs here, and his firm attachment to our cause, and to you, impressed me with the same regard and esteem for him that your excellency's letter would have done had it been immediately delivered to me. Should peace arrive after another cam- paign or two, and afford us a little leisure. 1 should be happy to see your excellency in Europe, and to accompany you, if my age and strength would permit, in visiting some of its ancient and most famous kingdoms. You would on this side the sea enjoy the great reputation you have acquired, pure and free from those little shades that the jealousy and envy of a man's countrymen and contem- poraries are ever endeavouring to cast over living merit. Here you would know, and enjoy, what posterity will say of Washing- ton : for a thousand leigues have nearly the same effect as a thousand years. The feeble voice of those grovelling passions cannot ex- tend so far either in time or distance. At present I enjoy that pleasure for you : as I frequently hear the old generals of this martial country (who studied the maps of America, and mark upon them all your operations) speak with sincere approbation and great applause of your conduct; and join in giving you the character of one of the greatest captains of the age. I must soon quit the scene, but you may live to see our country flourish, as it will amazingly and rapidly after the war is over : like a field of young Indian corn, which long fair weather and sunshine had enfeebled and discoloured, and Avhich, in that weak state, by a thunder-gust of violent wind, hail, and rain, seemed to be threatened with absolute destruction ; yet, the storm being past, it re- covers fresh verdure, shoots up with double vigour, and delights the eye not of its owner only, but of every observing traveller. The best wishes that can be formed for your health, honour, and happiness ever attend you, from yours, &c. To General Washington: Passy, March 5, 1780. HENRY FIELDING, one of the greatest of English novelists, born 1707, died 1754, was a son of Lieu- tenant-General Fielding and great-grandson of William, third Earl of Denbigh, a descend- ant of the Counts of Ilapsburg, the Gorman branch of Avhich has counted among its members Emperors of Germany and Kings of Spain. In addition to his novels of The Adven- HENRY FIELDING. 175 tures of Joseph Andrews. Lond., 1742, 2 vols. 12mo, History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, Lond., 1749," 2 vols. 12mo, and Amelia, Lond., 1752. 4 vols. 12mo, he also published History of Jonathan AVild the Great, Love in Several Masks, The Author's Farce, The Grul) Street Opera, The Modern Husband, many other comedies, and poems, and es- says. Among the collective editions of his "Works are those of Chalmers, 1821, 10 vols. 8vo, and lloscoe, 1840, etc., imp. 8vo. Novels, with Memoir by Sir AV. Scott, Edin., 1821, 8vo. " Smollett and Fielding were so eminently suc- cessful as novelists that no other English author of that class has a right to be mentioned in the s;ime breath. We readily grant to Smollett an equal rank with his great rival, Fielding, while we place both far above any of their successors in the same line of fictitious composition. Perhaps no books ever written excited such peals of inex- haustible laughter as those of Smollett." SIR AV ALTER SCOTT. "I go to Sterne for the feelings of nature; Fielding for its vices; Johnson for a knowledge of the workings of its powers; and Shakspeare fur every thing." ABERNKTHY. " Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, ' He was a blockhead !' and upon expressing my astonishment at so strange an assertion, he said, ' What I mean by his being a blockhead is, that he was a barren rascal!' BOSWKLL: 'Will you not allow, sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life ?' JOHNSOX : ' Why. sir, it is of very low life.' " BOSWELL : Life of Johnson. PARTRIDGE AT THE PLAYHOUSE. As soon as the play, which was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, began, Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the entrance of the ghost; upon which he asked Jones, "AVliat man that was in the strange dress : something," said he, " like what I have seen in a picture. Sure it is not armour, is it?" Jones answered, "That is the ghost." To which Partridge replied, with a smile, "Persuade me to that, sir, if you can. Though I can't say I ever actually saw a ghost in my life, yet I am certain I should know one if I saw him better than that comes to. No, no, sir ; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as that neither." In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the neighbourhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue till the scene between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr. Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the stage? "0 la! sir," said he, ' I perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of anything, for I know it is but a play ; and if it was really a ghost, it could do one no harm at such a distance, and in so much company ; and yet if I was frightened I am not the only person." " Why, who," cries Jones, "dost thou take to be such a coward here beside thyself?" " Nay, you may call me coward if you will ; but if that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man fright- ened in my life. Ay, ay; go along with you! Ay to be sure! Who's fool then? Will you? Lud have mercy upon such fool- hardiness! Whatever happens, it is good enough for you. Follow you ! I'd follow the devil as soon. Nay, perhaps it is the devil, for they say he can put on what likeness he pleases. Oh! here he is again. No farther! No, you have gone far enough already ; farther than I'd have gone for all the king's dominions." Jones offered to speak, but Partridge cried, " Hush, hush, dear sir, don't you hear him ?" And during the whole speech of the ghost he sat with his eyes fixed partly on the ghost, and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open ; the same passions which succeeded each other in Hamlet succeeding likewise in him. When the scene was over, Jones said, "Why, Partridge, you exceed my expecta- tions. You enjoy the play more than I conceived possible." "Nay, sir," answered Partridge, " if you are not afraid of the devil, I can't help it; but to be sure, it is natural to be surprised at such things, though I know there is nothing in them : not that it was the ghost that surprised me neither; for I should have known that to have been only a man in a strange dress ; but when I saw the little man so frightened himself, it was that which took hold of me." " And dost thou imagine, then, Partridge," cries Jones, " that he was really frightened?" "Nay, sir," said Partridge, "did not you yourself observe afterwards, when he found it was his own father's spirit, and how he was murdered in his garden, how his fear forsook him by degrees, and he was struck dumb with sorrow, as it were, just as I should have been had it been my own case. But hush ! Ola! what noise is that ? There he is again. Well, to be certain, though I know there is nothing at all in it, I am glad I am not down yonder where those men .are." Then turning his eyes again upon Hamlet, " Ay, you may draw your sword : what signifies a sword against the power of the devil?" During the second act Partridge made very few remarks. He greatly admired the fineness of the dresses; nor could he help observing upon the king's countenance. "Well," said he, " how people may be de- ceived by faces! Nalla fides front is, I find, a true saying. Who would think, by look- 176 WILLIAM PITT, ing into the kind's face, that he had ever committed a murder?" He then inquired after the ghost; but Jones, who intended he should be surprised, gave him no other satisfaction than " that he might possibly see him again soon, and in a flash of tire." Partridge sat in fearful expectation of this; and now, when the ghost made his next appearance, Partridge cried out, " There, sir, now: what say you now? is he fright- ened now or no? As much frightened as YOU tli ink me. and, to be sure, nobody can help some fears. I would not be in so bad a condition as what's his name? Squire Hamlet is there, for all the world. Bless me! what's become of the spirit? As I am a living soul, I thought I saw him sink into the earth;" "Indeed you saw right," an- swered Jones. " Well, well," cries Par- tridge, " I know it is only a play ; and be- sides, if there was anything in all this, Madam Miller would not laugh so; for as to you, sir, you would not be afraid, I be- lieve, if the devil was here in person. There, there, ay, no wonder you are in such a pas- sion ; shake the vile wicked wretch to pieces. If she was my own mother I should serve her so. To be sure all duty to a mother is forfeited by such wicked doings. Ay, go about your business: I hate the sight of you !" Our critic was now pretty silent till the play which Hamlet introduces before the king. This he did not at first understand till Jones explained it to him; but he no sooner entered into the spirit of it, than he began to bless himself that he had never committed murder. Then turning to Mrs. Miller, he asked her "If she did not imag- ine the king looked as if he was touched ; though he is," said he, "a good actor, and doth all he can to hide it. Well, I would not have so much to answer for as that wicked man there hath, to sit upon a much higher chair than he sits upon. No wonder he run away: for your sake I'll never trust an innocent face again." The grave-digging scene next engaged the attention of Partridge, who expressed much surprise at the number of skulls thrown upon the stage, to which Jones answered, " That it was one of the most famous burial- places about town." " No wonder, then," cries Partridge, " that the place is haunted. But I never saw in my life a worse grave- digger. I had a sexton when I was clerk that should have dug three graves while he is digging one. The fellow handles a spade as if it was the first time he had ever one in his hand. Ay, ay, you may sing. You had rather sing than \vork, I believe!" Upon Hamlet's taking up the skull, he cried out, "Well! it is strange to see how fear- less some men are. I never could bring my- self to touch anything belonging to a dead man on any account. He seemed fright- ened enough too at the ghost, I thought. Nemo omnibus horis sapit" Little more worth remembering occurred during the play; at the end of which Jones asked him "Which of the players he had liked best?" To this he answered, with some appearance of indignation at the question, " The king, without doubt." " Indeed. Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller, "you are not of the same opinion with the town ; for they are all agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the stage." " He the best player !" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer; "why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen a ghost I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why, Lord help me, any man, that is. any good man, that had such a mother, would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me: but, indeed madam, though I was never at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the country ; and the king for my money: bespeaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other. Anybody may see he is an actor !" History of Tom Jones. RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM, born 1708, and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, after serving a short time as a cornet in the Blues, British army, was in 1735 chosen M.P. for Old Sarum, was premier for five months in 1757, and subse- quently gained great glory in the same high position ; Earl of Chatham, 1766; died 1778. See Letters written by the late Earl of Chat- ham to his Nephew Thomas Pitt (after- wards Lord Camelford), then at Cambridge, Lond., 1804, crown 8vo : large paper ; Cor- respondence of the Earl of Chatham, Lond., 1838, 2 vols. 8vo ; History of the Earl of Chatham, by the Rev. Francis Thackeray, A.M., Lond., 1807, 2 vols. 4to ; Goodrich's Select British Eloquence, N. York, 1852. 8vo. " His eloquence was of the very highest order : vehement, fiery, close to the subject, concise, some- times eminently, even boldly, figurative : it was original nnd surprising, yet quite natural. The fine passages or felicitous hit* in which all popular assemblies take boundless delight . . . form the grand charm of Lord Chatham's oratory. . . . lie is the person to whom every one would at once WILLIAM PITT. point if desired to name the most successful states- man and most brilliant orator that this country ever produced. Some fragments of his speeches have been handed down to us; but these bear so very small a proportion to the prodigious fame which his eloquence has left behind it, that far more is manifestly lost than has reached us." LOUD BROUGHAM : Statesmen of the Time of Georye 11 1. EMPLOYMENT OF INDIANS IN THE WAR WITH AMERICA. I cannot, my lords, I will not, join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment; it is not a time for adulation ; the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now neces- sary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must, if possible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelope it, and display, in its full danger and genuine col- ours, the ruin which is brought to our doors. Can ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation ? Can parliament be so dead to their dignity and duty as to give their support to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them. measures, my lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to scorn and contempt? But yester- day, and England might have stood against the world ; now, none so poor to do her reverence ! The people whom we at first despised as rebels, but whom we now ac- knowledge as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, have their interest consulted, and their am- bassadors entertained by your inveterate enemy ; and ministers do not, arid dare not, interpose with dignity or effect. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. No man more highly esteems and honours the English troops than I do ; I know their virtues and their valour; I know they can achieve anything but impos- sibilities ; and I know that the conquest of British America is an impossibility. You cannot, my lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot: your attempts will be forever vain and impotent, doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely ; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your adversaries, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hirelingcruelty. If I were an American, as I am an English- man, while a foreign troop was landed in 12 my country I never would lay down my arms. Never ! Never ! Never ! But, my lords, who is the man that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman inhabitant of the woods? to delegate to the merciless Indian the de- fence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality : " for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, " to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands." I am as- tonished, I am shocked, to hear such princi- ples confessed ; to hear them avowed in this house or in this country. My lords, I did not intend to encroach so much on your at- tention ; but I cannot repress my indigna- tion, I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity. " That God and nature have put into our hands" ! What ideas of God and nature that noble lord may entertain I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attrib- ute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping- knife ! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blool of his mangled victims ! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles, and this more abomi- nable avowal of them, demand the most de- cisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench to vindicate the religion of their God, to sup- port the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn ; upon the judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and hu- manity of my country to vindicate the na- tional character. I invoke the Genius of the Constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these Avails the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty and establish the religion of Britain against the tyranny of Rome if these Avorse than Popish cruelties and in- quisitorial practices are endured among us. LORD GEORGE LYTTELTON. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirst- ing for blood! against whom? your Prot- estant brethren ! to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name by the aid and instru- mentality of these horrible hell-hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast pre-emi- nence in barbarity. She armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched na- tives of Mexico : we, more ruthless, loose these dogs of war against our countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I solemnly call upon your lordships, and upon every order of men in the state, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. More particularly I call upon the holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity : let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more ; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles. LORD GEORGE LYTTELTON, born 1708-9, entered Parliament 1730, and warmly opposed Sir Robert AValpole's admin- istration ; became a Lord of the Treasury, 1744, and Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1756; created Lord Lyttelton, 1757; died 1773. lie was the author of Letters from a Persian in England to his Friend at Ispa- han, vol. 5., Loud., 1735. 8vo, 5th edit., 1744, 12mo; vol. ii. ,3d edit., 1736, 12mo ; Monody to the Memory of a Lady lately Deceased [his wile], Lond., 1747, fol.; Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of Saint Paul, Lond., 1747, 8vo, and in Christian Evidences, Bohn, 1850, royal 8vo ; Dia- logues of the Dead, Lond., 17rn 1710, a Commissioner of Bankruptcy, 1756, died 1790, published a Translation of the Letters of Pliny the Consul, with Occa- sional Remarks, Lond., 1746. 2 vols. 8vo ; re- printed in 2 vols. 8vo in 1747, '48, '57, '70, '86, '96, 1807 ; Translations of the Letters of Cicero to several of his Friends, with Re- marks, 1753, 3 vols. 8vo; reprinted in 3 vols. 8vo. 1778 and '79, and in 2 vols. 8vo, 1814; Translation of Cato; or, An Essay upon Old Age, and Loelius, or An Essay on Friend- ship, with Remarks. 1773-77, 2 vols. 8vo (the Cato was reprinted 1777, '85, 8vo, the Laelius, 1785, 8vo) ; some poems, and Letters [74] on Several Subjects, by Sir Thomas Fitz- osborne [William Melmoth], 1740, 8 vo, 14th edit., 1814, 8vo ; Boston, Mass., 1805. 8vo. See Memoirs of a late Eminent Advocate [Win. Melmoth, K.C.] and Bencher, etc., Lond., 1796, 8vo, pp. 72. "His Translations of Cicero and Pliny will speak for him while Roman and English eloquence can be united." MATHIAS: Pursuits of Lit., 1797, edit. 1812, roy. 4to, 300, n. " A translation [of Pliny] supposed to equal the original both in beauty and tone." DB. ADAM CLARKE. "One of the few translations that are better than the original." DR. WARTON, in a note on Pope's works. REFLECTIONS UPON STYLE. The beauties of style seem to be generally considered as below the attention both of an author and a reader. I know not, therefore, whether I may venture to acknowledge, that among the numberless graces of your late performance, I particularly admired that strength and elegance with which you have enforced and adorned the noblest senti- ments. There was a time, however (and it was a period of the truest refinements), when an excellence of this kind was esteemed in the number of the politest accomplishments ; as it was the ambition of some of the greatest names of antiquity to distinguish themselves in the improvement of their native tongue. Julius Caesar, who was not only the greatest hero, but the finest gentleman, that ever per- haps appeared in the world, was desirous of adding this talent to his other most shining endowments: and we are told he studied the language of his country with much applica- tion : as we are sure he possessed it in its highest elegance. What a loss, Euphronius, is it to the literary world that the treatise which he wrote upon this subject is perished, with many other valuable works of that age ! But though we are deprived of the benefit of his observations, we are happily not with- out an instance of, their effects ; and his own memoirs will ever remain as the best and brightest examplar, not only of true gen- eralship, but of fine writing. lie published them, indeed, only as materials for the use of those who should be disposed to enlarge upon that remarkable period of the Roman story; yet the purity and gracefulness of his style were such that no judicious writer durst attempt to touch the subject after him. Having produced so illustrious an in- stance in favour of an art for which I have ventured to admire you, it would be imper- tinent to add a second, were I to cite a less 188 WILLIAM MELMOTH. authority than that of the immortal Tully. This noble author, in his dialogue concern- ing the celebrated Roman orators, frequently mentions it as a very high encomium, that they possessed the elegance of their native language ; and introduces Brutus as declar- ing that he should prefer the honour of being esteemed the great master and im- prover of Roman eloquence, even to the glory of many triumphs. But to add reason to precedent, and to view this art in its use as well as its dig- nity: will it not be allowed of some impor- tance, when it is considered that eloquence is one of the most considerable auxiliaries of truth? Nothing, indeed, contributes more to subdue the mind to the force of reason than her being supported by the powerful assistance of masculine and vigorous ora- tory. As, on the contrary, the most legit- imate arguments may be disappointed of that science they deserve by being attended with a spiritless and enfeebled expression. Accordingly, that most elegant of writers, the inimitable Mr. Addison, observes, in one of his essays, that " There is as much difference between comprehending a thought clothed in Cicero's language and that of an ordinary writer, as between seeing an ob- ject by the light of a taper and the light of the sun." It is surely then a very strange conceit of the celebrated Malebranche, who seems to think the pleasure which arises from perus- ing a well-written piece is of the criminal kind, and has its source in the weakness and effeminacy of the human heart. A man must have a very uncommon severity of temper indeed who can find anything to condemn in adding charms to truth, and gaining the heart by captivating the ear ; in uniting roses with the thorns of science, and joining pleasure with instruction. The truth is, the mind is delighted with a fine style upon the same principle that it prefers regularity to confusion, and beauty to deformity. A taste of this sort is indeed so far from being a mark of any depravity of our nature, that I should rather consider it as evidence, in some degree, of the moral rectitude of its constitution, as it is a proof of its retaining some relish at least of har- mony and order. One might be apt indeed to suspect that certain writers amongst us had considered all beauties of this sort in the same gloomy view with Malebranche : or, at least, that they avoided every refinement in style as unworthy a lover of truth and philosophy. Their sentiments are sunk by the lowest expressions, and seem condemned to the first curse of creeping upon the ground all the days of their life. Others, on the con- trary, mistake pomp for dignity; and, in order to raise their expressions above vul- gar language, lift them up beyond common apprehensions, esteeming it * (one should imagine) a mark of their genius that it re- quires some ingenuity to penetrate their meaning. But how few writers, like Euphronius, know how to hit that true medium which lies between those distant extremes! How seldom do we meet with an author whose ex- pressions, like those of my friend, are glow- ing but not glaring, whose metaphors are natural but not common, whose periods are- harmonious but not poetical : in a word, whose sentiments are well set, and shown to the understanding in their truest and most advantageous lustre. Fitzosbornds Letters. Ox THE LOVE OF FAME. I can by no means agree with you in think- ing that the love of fame is a passion which either reason or religion condemns. I con- fess, indeed, there are some who have repre- sented it as inconsistent with both : and I remember, in particular, the excellent author of The Religion of Nature Delineated has treated it as highly irrational and absurd. As the passage falls in so thoroughly with your own turn of thought, you will have no objection, I imagine, to my quoting it at large, and I give it you, at the same time, as a very great authority on your side. " In reality," says that writer, " the man is not known ever the more to posterity because his name is transmitted to them : he doth not live because his name does. When it is said Julius Caesar subdued Gaul, conquered Pompey, &c., it is the same thing as to say, The conqueror of Pompey was Julius Caesar, i.e., Caesar and the conqueror of Pompey is the same thing; Caesar is as much known by one designation as by the other. The amount then is only this : that the conqueror of Pompey conquered Pompey; or, rather, since Pompoy is as little known now as Caesar, somebody conquered somebody. Such a poor business is this boasted immortality ! and such is the thing called glory among us ! To discerning men this fame is mere air; and what they despise, if not shun." But surely '"Tvvere to consider too curi- ously," as Horatio says to Hamlet, " to con- sider thus." For though fame with posterity should be. in the strict analysis of it, no other than that what is here descri?jed, a mere un- interesting proposition amounting to nothing more than that somebody acted meritori- ously, yet it would not necessarily follow that true philosophy would banish the de- sire of it from the human breast. For this DAVID HUME. 189 passion may be (as most certainly it is) wisely implanted in our species, notwith- standing the corresponding object should in reality be very different from what it appears in imagination. Do not many of our most refined and even contemplative pleasures owe their existence to our mistakes? It is but extending (I will not say improving) some of our senses to a higher degree of acuteness than we now possess them, to make the fairest views of nature, or the noblest productions of art, appear horrid and deformed. To see things as they truly and in themselves are, would not always, perhaps, be of advantage to us in the intel- lectual world, any more than in the natural. But, after all, who shall certainly assure us that the pleasure of virtuous fame dies with its possessor, and reaches not to a farther scene of existence? There is nothing, it should seem, either absurd or unphilosophi- cal in supposing it possible, at least, that the praises of the good and the judicious, that sweetest music to an honest ear in this world, may be echoed back to the mansions of the next: that the poet's description of fame may be literally true, and though she walks upon earth, she may yet lift her head into heaven. But can it be reasonable to extinguish a passion which nature has universally lighted up in the human breast, and which we con- stantly find to burn with most strength and brightness in the noblest and best formed bosoms? Accordingly, revelation is so far from endeavouring (as you suppose) to erad- icate the seed which nature has thus deeply planted, that she rather seems, on the con- trary, to cherish and forward its growth. To be exalted with honour, and to be had in everlasting remembrance, are in the number of those encouragements which the Jewish dispensation offered to the virtuous ; as the person from whom the sacred author of the Christian system received his birth, is her- self represented as rejoicing that all genera- tions should call her blessed. To be convinced of the great advantage of cherishing this high regard to posterity, this noble desire of an after-life in the breath of others, one need only look back upon the history of the ancient Greeks and Romans. What other principle was it which produced that exalted strain of virtue in those days, that may well serve as a model to these : Was it not the consentiens laus bonorum, the incorrupta vox bene judicantum (as Tally calls it), the concurrent approbation of the good, the uncorrupted applause of the wise, that animated their most generous pursuits? To confess the truth, I have been ever in- clined to think it a very dangerous attempt to endeavour to attempt to lessen the motives of right conduct, or to raise any suspicion con- cerning their solidity. The temper and dispo- sitions of mankind are so extremely different that it seems necessary they should be called into action by a variety of incitements. Thus, while some are willing to wed virtue for her personal charms, others are engaged to take her for the sake of her expected dowry, and since her followers and admirers have so little hopes from her in present, it were pity, methinks, to reason them out of any imagined advantage in reversion. Fitzosbor ue's Letters. DAVID HUME, born in Edinburgh, 1711, after unsatisfac- tory experiences of the study of law and commerce, came to London in 1737, and published his Treatise of Human Nature, Lond., 1739, 3 vols. 8vo; Essays, Moral and Political, and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 1741-42-51-52-57, 5 vols. 12mo ; Essays and Treatises, 3d edit., 1756, 4 vols. 12rno ; other Essays (see his Philosophical Works, now first collected, Edin., 1826, 4 vols. 8vo, with Additions, Boston, Mass., 1854, 4 vols. 8vo) ; and his History of Eng- land, Lond., 1754-62, 6 vols. 4to; many edi- tions. See his Life and Writings by T. E. Ritchie, Lond., 18U7, 8vo ; Life and Corre- spondence, edited by J. H. Burton, Edin., 1847, 2 vols. 8vo ; Letters of Eminent Per- sons to David Hume, Edin., 1849, 8vo. "It was in his twenty-seventh year that Mr. Hume published at London the Treatise of Human Nature, the first systematic attack on all the prin- ciples of knowledge and belief, and the most for- midable, if universal scepticism could ever be more than a mere exercise of ingenuity. . . . The great speculator did not in this work amuse him- self, like Bayle, with dialectical exercise:), which only inspire a disposition towards doubt, by show- ing in detail the uncertainty of most opinions. He aimed at proving, not th;it nothing wns known, but that nothing could be known, from the struc- ture of the understanding to demonstrate that we are doomed forever to dwell in absolute and uni- versal ignorance." Sm JAMES MACKINTOSH : Din- sert. on the Proyrest of Ethical Pliilos., prefixed to Enei/c. Brit., nlsn in his Mincell. Work*, " [HumeV] Essays on Commerce, Interest, Bal- ance of Trade, Money, Jealousy of Trade, and Public Ore Jit, display the same felicity of style and illustration that distinguish the other works of their celebrated author." J. R. McCuLLOCH: Lit, of Potit. Econ., Lond., 1845, 8vo. As an historian Hume's carelessness and inaccuracy are notorious: " Hume was not, indeed, learned and well- grounded enough for those writers and investiga- tors of history who judged his works from the usual point of view, because he was not only neg- ligent in the use of the sources of history, but also 190 DAVID HUME. superficial." SCHT.OSSER'S Hist, of the ISth Cent., Udvison's (ran*., Lond., 1844, ii. 78. " Hume is convicted [by Mr. Brodie] of so many inaccuracies and partial statements, that we really think his credit among historians for correctness of assertion will soon be nearly as low as it has long been with theologians for orthodoxy of belief." Ed in. Rev., xi. 92-146 : review of lii-odie. " The conversation now turned upon Mr. David Hume's style. JOHNSON: 'Why, sir, his style is not English; the structure of his sentences is French. Now, the French structure and the Eng- lish structure miiy in the nature of things be equally good. But if you allow that the English language is established, he is wrong. My name might originally have been Nicholson as well as Johnson ; but were you to call me Nicholson now, you would call me very absurdly.' " BOSWELL'S J<>hn*,,n, edit. 1847, 150. " The perfect composition, the nervous lan- guage, the well-turned periods of Dr. Robertson, inflamed me to the ambitious hope that I might one day tread in his footsteps : the calm philoso- phy, the careless inimitable beauties of his friend and rival often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair. 1 ' GIB- BON : Autobiography, in his Miscell. Works. CHARACTER OF ALFRED, KING OF ENGLAND. The merit of this prince, both in public and private life, may with advantage be set in opposition to that of any monarch or citizen which the annals of any age or nation can present to us. He seems, in- deed, to be the complete model of that per- fect character which, under the denomina- tion of a sage or wise man, the philosophers have been fond of delineating, rather as a fiction of their imagination, than in hopes of ever seeing it reduced to practice : so happily were all his virtues tempered to- gether, so justly were they blended, and so powerfully did each prevent the other from exceeding its proper bounds. He knew how to conciliate the most enterprising spirit with the coolest moderation ; the most ob- stinate perseverance with the easiest flexi- bility ; the most severe justice with the greatest lenity ; the greatest rigour in com- mand with the greatest affability of deport- ment; the highest capacity and inclination for science with the most shining talents for action. His civil and his military virtues are almost equally the objects of our admiration, excepting only, that the former being more rare among princes, as well as more use- ful, seem chiefly to challenge our applause. Nature, also, as if desirous that so bright a production of her skill should be set in the fairest light, had bestowed on him all bodily accomplishments, vigour of limbs, dignity of shape and air, and a pleasant, engaging, and open countenance. Fortune alone, by throwing him into that barbarous age, de- prived him of historians worthy to transmit his fame to posterity ; and wo wish to see him delineated in more lively colours, and with more particular strokes, that we may at least perceive some of those small specks and blemishes from which, as a man, it is impossible he should be entirely exempted. History of England. CHARACTER OF HENRY VIII. It is difficult to give a just summary of this prince's qualities ; he was so different from himself in different parts of his reign, that, as is well remarked by Lord Herbert, his history is his best character and descrip- tion. The absolute and uncontrolled author- ity which he maintained at home, and the regard he obtained among foreign nations, are circumstances which entitle him to the appellation of a great prince; while his tyranny and cruelty seem to exclude him from the character of a good one. He possessed, indeed, great vigour of mind, which qualified him for exercising dominion over men : courage, intrepidity, vigilance, inflexibility : and though these qualities lay not always under the guidance of a regular and solid judgment, they were accompanied with good parts and an exten- sive capacity ; and every one dreaded a con- test with a man who was never known to yield or to forgive ; and who in every con- troversy was determined to ruin himself or his antagonist. A catalogue of his vices would compre- hend many of the Avorst qualities incident to human nature : violence, cruelty, profu- sion, rapacity, injustice, obstinacy, arro- gance, bigotry, presumption, caprice: but neither was he subject to all these vices in the most extreme degree, nor was he at intervals altogether devoid of virtues. He was sincere, open, gallant, liberal, and capable at least of a temporary friendship and attachment. In this respect he was unfcrtunate, that the incidents of his times served to display his faults in their full light: the treatment he met with from the court of Rome provoked him to violence; the danger of a revolt from his superstitious subjects seemed to require the most extreme severity. But it must at the same time be acknowledged that his situation tended to throw an additional lustre on what was great and magnanimous in his character. The emulation between the Emperor and the French King rendered his alliance, not- withstanding his impolitic conduct, of great importance to Europe. The extensive powers of his prerogative, and the submission, not to say slavish disposition of his parliament, made it more easy for him to assume and maintain that entire dominion by which his reign is so much distinguished in English history. It may seem a little extraordinary that DAVID HUME. 191 notwithstanding his cruelty, his extortion, his violence, his arbitrary administration, this prince not only acquired the regard of his subjects, but never was the object of their hatred : he seems even, in some degree, to have possessed their love and affection. His exterior qualities were advantageous, and fit to captivate the multitude ; his magnificence and personal bravery rendered him illustri- ous to vulgar eyes; and it may be said with truth, that the English in that age were so thoroughly subdued that, like eastern slaves, they were inclined to admire even those acts of violence and tyranny which were exer- cised over themselves, and at their own ex- pense. History of England. CHARACTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. Some incidents happened which revived her tenderness for Essex, and filled her with the deepest sorrow for the consent which she had unwarily given to his execution. The Earl of Essex, after his return from the fortunate expedition against Cadiz, ob- serving the increase of the queen's fond attachment towards him, took occasion to regret that the necessity of the service re- quired him often to be absent from her per- son, and exposed him to all those ill offices which his enemies, more assiduous in their attendance, could employ against him. She was moved with this tender jealousy ; and making him the present of a ring, desired him to keep that pledge of her affection, and assured him that into whatever disgrace he should full, whatever prejudices she might be induced to entertain against him, yet if he sent her that ring, she would immediately upon sight of it recall her former tenderness, would afford him a patient hearing, and would lend a favourable ear to his apology. Essex, notwithstanding all his misfortunes, reserved this precious gift to the last ex- tremity ; but after his trial and condemna- tion he resolved to try the experiment, and he committed the ring to the Countess of Nottingham, whom he desired to deliver it to the queen. The countess was prevailed on by her husband, the mortal enemy of Essex, not to execute the commission; and Elizabeth, who still expected that her fa- vourite would make this last appeal to her tenderness, and who ascribed the neglect of it to his invincible obstinacy, was, after much delay and many internal combats, pushed by resentment and policy to sign the warrant for his execution. The Countess of Notting- ham falling into sickness, and affected with the near approach of death, was seized with remorse for her conduct ; and having ob- tained a visit from the queen, she craved her pardon, and revealed to her the fatal secret. The queen, astonished with this in- cident, burst into a furious passion: she shook the dying countess in her bed ; and crying to her that Goil might pardon her, but she never could, she broke from her, and thenceforth resigned herself over to the deepest and most incurable melancholy. She rejected all consolation : she even refused food and sustenance ; and, throwing herself on the floor, she remained sullen and im- movable, feeding her thoughts on her afflic- tions, and declaring life and existence an insufferable burden to her. Few words she uttered ; and they were all expressive of some inward grief which she cared not to reveal : but sighs and groans were the chief vent which she gave to her despondency, and which, though they discovered her sorrows, were never able to ease or assuage them. Ten days and nights she lay upon the carpet, leaning on cushions which her maids brought her ; and her physicians could not persuade her to allow herself to be put to bed, much less to make trial of any remedies which they prescribed to her. Her anxious mind at last had so long preyed on her frail body, that her end was visibly approaching; and the council being assembled, sent the keeper, admiral, and secretary to know her will with regard to her successor. She an- swered with a faint voice that as she had held a regal sceptre, she desired no other than a royal successor. Cecil requesting her to explain herself more particularly, she subjoined that she would have a king to succeed her; and who should that be but her nearest kinsman, the King of Scots? Being then advised by the Archbishop of Canterbury to fix her thoughts upon God, she replied that she did so, nor did her mind in the least wander from him. Her voice soon after left her; her senses failed; she fell into a lethargic slumber, which con- tinued some hours, and she expired gently, without farther struggle or convulsion (March 24), in the seventieth year of her age and forty-fifth of her reign. So dark a cloud overcast the evening of that day which had shone out with a mighty lustre in the eyes of all Europe ! There are few great personages in history who have been more exposed to the calumny of enemies and the adulation of friends than Queen Elizabeth ; and yet there is scarcely any whose reputa- tion has been more certainly determined by the unanimous consent of posterity. The unusual length of her administration, and the strong features of her character, were able to overcome all prejudices ; and oblig- ing her detractors to abate much of their invectives, and her admirers somewhat of their panegyrics, have at last, in spite of po- litical factions and, what is more, of religious 192 JEAN JA CQ UES R USSEA U. animosities, produced a uniform judgment with regard to her conduct. Her vigour, her constancy, her magnanimity, her pene- tration, vigilance, nnd address, are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any person that ever filled a throne: a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, more sincere, more indulgent to her people, would have been requisite to form a perfect character. By the force of her mind she controlled all her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from running into excess : her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active temper from turbulency and vain ambition. She guarded not herself with equal care or equal success from lesser in- firmities, the rivalship of beauty, the desire of admiration, the jealousy of love, and the sallies of anger. Her singular talents for government were founded equally on her temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself, she soon obtained an uncon- trolled ascendant over her people; and while she merited all their esteem by her real virtues, she also engaged their affections hy her pretended ones. Few sovereigns of England succeeded to the throne in more diilicult circumstances; and none ever con- ducted the government with such uniform success and felicity. Though unacquainted with the practice of toleration, the true secret fur maintaining religious factions, she preserved her people, by her superior prudence, from those confusions in which theological controversy had involved all the neighbouring nations : and though her ene- mies were the most powerful princes of Eu- rope, the most active, the most enterprising, the least scrupulous, she was able by her vigour to make deep impressions on their states ; her own greatness meanwhile re- mained untouched and unimpaired. The wise ministers and brave warriors who flourished under her reign share the praise of her success ; but instead of lessen- ing the applause due to her, they make great addition to it. They owed, all of them, their advancement to her choice; they were sup- ported by her constancy, and with all their abilities, they were never able to acquire any undue ascendant over her. In her family, in her court, in her kingdom, she remained equally mistress: the force of the tender passions was great over her, but the force of her mind was still superior ; and the combat which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the firmness of her resolution, and the loftiness of her am- bitious sentiments. The fame of this princess, though it has surmounted the prejudices both of faction and bigotry, yet lies still exposed to another prejudice, which is more durable because more natural, and which, according to the different views in which we survey her, is capable either of exalting beyond measure or diminishing the lustre of her character. This prejudice is founded on the considera- tion of her sex. When we contemplate her as a woman, we are apt to be struck with the highest admiration of her great qualities and extensive capacity ; but we are also apt to require some more softness of disposition, some greater lenity of temper, some of those amiable weaknesses by which her sex is dis- tinguished. But the true method of esti- mating her merit is to lay aside all these considerations, and consider her merely as a rational being placed in authority, and in- trusted with the government of mankind. We may find it difficult to reconcile our fancy to her as a wife or a mistress ; but her qualities as a sovereign, though with some considerable exceptions, are the object of undisputed applause and approbation. History of England. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, born at Geneva, Switzerland, 1712, died 1778, was the author of many works, of which, and of the career of their author, we shall make no attempt to give a description in a volume of English selections. A speci- men of his style, so far as that can be judged of in a translation (which we find in Knight's Half-Hours with the Best Authors, vol. ii, 276-280), we herewith present. " Here the self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau, The npostle of affliction, he who threw Enchnntment over passion, and from woe Wrung overwhelming eloquence, first drew The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew How to make madness beautiful, and cast O'er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue Of words, like sunbeams, dnzzling ns they pass'd The eyes which o'er them shed tears feelingly and fast. * *.-.#.. His life was one long war with self-sought foes, Or friends by him self-banished : for his mind Had grown Suspicion's sanctuary, and chose For its own cruel sacrifice the kind, 'Gainst whom he raged with fury strange and blind: But he was phrenzied, wherefore, who may know? Since cause might be which skill could never find: But he was frenzied by disease or woe To that worst pitch of all, which wears a reasoning show." Chilile Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto Hi., stanzas Ivii., Ixxx. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU. 193 "Though I see some tincture of extravagance in all his writings, I also think I see so much elo- quence nnd force of imagination, such an energy of expression, and such a boldness of conception, as entitle him to a place amongst the first writers of his age." DAVID HUME. (Quoted in Ein-i/c. Brit.) THE HAPPINESS OF SOLITUDE. I can hardly tell you, sir, how concerned I have been to see that you consider me the most miserable of men. The world, no doubt, thinks as you do, and that also dis- tresses me. Oil ! why is not the existence I have enjoyed known to the whole universe ! every one would wish to procure for himself a similar lot, peace would reign upon the earth, man would no lunger think of injur- ing his fellows, and the wicked would no longer be found, for none would have an interest in being wicked. But what then did I enjoy when I was alone? Myself; the entire universe; all that is; all that can be; all that is beautiful in the world of sense: all that is imaginable in the world of intel- lect. I gathered around me all that could delight my heart; my desires were the limit of my pleasures. No, never have the voluptuous known such enjoyments ; and I have derived a hundred times more hap- piness from my chimeras than they from their realities. When my sufferings make me measure sadly the length of the night, and the agita- tion of fever prevents me from enjoying a single instant of sleep, I often divert my mind from my present state in thinking of the various events of my life; and repent- ance, sweet recollections, regrets, emotions, help to make me for some moments forget my sufferings. What period do you think, sir, I recall most frequently and most will- ingly in my dreams? Not the pleasures of my youth : they were too rare, too much mingled with bitterness, and are now too distant. I recall the period of my seclu- sion, of my solitary walks, of the fleeting but delicious days that I have passed entirely by myself, with my good and simple house- keeper, with my beloved dog, my old cat, with the birds of the field, the hinds of the forest, with all nature, and her inconceiv- able Author. In getting up before the sun to contemplate its rising from my garden, when a beautiful day was commencing, my first wish was that no letters or visits might come to disturb the charm. After having devoted the morning to various duties, that I fulfilled with pleasure, because I could have put them off to another time, I hast- ened to dine, that I might escape from importunate people, and insure a longer afternoon. Before one o'clock, even on the hottest days, I started in the heat of the sun with my faithful Achates, hastening my 13 steps in the fear that some one would take possession of me before I could escape ; but when once I could turn a certain corner, with what a beating heart, with what a flutter of joy, I began to breathe, as I felt that I was safe ; and I said, Here no\v am I my own master for the rest of the day ! I went on then at a more tranquil pace to seek some wild spot in the forest, some desert place, where nothing indicating the hand of man announced slavery and power, some refuge to which I could believe I was the first to penetrate, and where no wearying third could step in to interpose between nature and me. It was there that she seemed to display before my eyes an ever new magnificence. The gold of the broom, and the purple of the heath, struck my sight with a splendour that touched my heart. The majesty of the trees that covered me with their shadow, the delicacy of the shrubs that flourished around me. the .aston- ishing variety of the herbs and flowers that I crushed beneath my feet, kept my mind in a continued alternation of observing and of admiring. This assemblage of so many interesting objects contending for my atten- tion, attracting me incessantly from one to the other, fostered my dreamy and idle humour, and often made me repeat to my- self, No, "even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." The spot thus adorned could not long re- main a desert to my imagination. I soon peopled it with beings after my own heart,, and dismissing opinion, prejudice, and all factitious passions, I brought to these sanc- tuaries of nature men worthy of inhabiting, them. I formed with these a charming: society, of which I did not feel myself un- worthy. I made a golden age according to- my fancy, and, filling up these bright days with alTthe scenes of my life that had left the tenderest recollections, and with all that my heart still longed for, I affected myself to tears over the true pleasures of humanity. pleasures so delicious, so pure, and yet so> far from men ! Oh, if in these moments any. ideas of Paris, of t4ie age, and of my little author vanity, disturbed my reveries, with what contempt I drove them instantly away r to give myself up entirely to the exquisite sentiments with which my soul was filled. Yet, in the midst of all thin, I confess the nothingness of my chimeras would some- times appear, and sadden me in a moment. If all my dreams had turned to reality, they would not have sufficed, I should still have imagined, dreamed, desired. I discovered in myself an inexplicable void that nothing could have filled, a certain yearning of my heart towards another kind of happiness, of which I had no definite idea, but of which 194 LAURENCE STERNE. I felt the want. Ah, sir, this even was an enjoyment, for I was filled with a lively sense of what it was, and with a delightful sadness of which I should not have wished to be deprived. From the surface of the earth I soon raised my thoughts to all the beings of Nature, to the universal system of tilings. to the incomprehensible Being who enters into all. Then, as my mind was lost in this immensity, I did not think, I did not reason, I did not philosophize. I felt, with a kind of voluptuousness, as if bowed down by the weight of this universe ; I gave my- self up with rapture to this confusion of grand ideas. I delighted in imagination to lose myself in space; my heart, confined within the limits of the mortal, found not room : I was stifled in the universe ; I would have sprung into the infinite. I think that, could I have unveiled all the mysteries of Nature, my sensations would have been less delicious than was this bewildering ecstasy, to which my mind abandoned itself without control, and which, in the excitement of my transports, made me sometimes exclaim, " Oh, Great Being! oh, Great Being!" with- out being able to say or think more. Thus glided on in a continued rapture the most charming days that ever human creature passed ; and when the setting sun made me think of retiring, astonished at the flight of time, I thought I had not taken sufficient ad- vantage of my day : I fancied I might have enjoyed it more ; and, to regain the lost time, I said I will come back to-morrow. I returned slowly home, my head a little fatigued, but my heart content. I reposed agreeably on my return, abandoning myself to the impression of objects, but without thinking, without imagining, without doing anything beyond feeling the calm and the happiness of my situation. I found the cloth laid upon the terrace: I supped with a good appetite, amidst my little household. No feeling of servitude or dependence dis- turbed the good will that united us all. My dog himself was my friend, not my slave. We had always the same wish ; but he never obeyed me. My gaiety during the whole evening testified to my having been alone the whole day. I was very different when I had seen company. Then I was rarely contented with others, and never with my- self. In the evening I was cross and taci- turn. Tin's remark was made by my house- keeper; and since she has told me so I have always found it true, when I watched my- self. Lastly, after having again taken in the evening a few turns in my garden, or sung an air to my spinnet, I found in iny bed repose of body and soul a hundred times sweeter than sleep itself. These were the days that have made the true happiness of my life, a happiness without bitterness, without weariness, with- out regret, and to which I would willingly have limited my existence. Yes, sir, let such days as these fill up my eternity ; I do not ask for others, nor imagine that I am much less happy in these exquisite con- templations than the heavenly spirits. But a suffering body deprives the mind of its liberty: henceforth I arn not alone; I have a guest who importunes me; I must free myself of it to be myself. The trial that I have made of these sweet enjoyments serves only to make me with less alarm await the time when I shall taste them without interruption. Letter to the President de Maleshei-bes, 1762. LAURENCE STERNE, born 1713, on leaving Cambridge obtained the living of Sutton, Yorkshire, and Jan. 16, 1740-41, a prebend in York Cathedral, and subsequently the living of Stillington, Yorkshire; curate of Coxwold, Yorkshire, 1760; resided chiefly in France, 1762-17<>7 : died in London, 1768. He was the author of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, 1759-1767, 9 vols. 12mo, and later editions ; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, by Mr. Yorick. 1768, 2 vols. 12mo; Sermons collected, 1760-1769. 7 vols., and again, 1775, 6 vols. 12mo, 1777, 6 vols. Ii2mo, etc. Several collections of his Letters were published, 1775, 3 vols. 12mo, etc. : and col- lective editions of his Works appeared 1780, 10 vols. crown 8vo, etc. ; seeBohn's Lowndcs, 2509-251 1. The edition before us boars date, Lond., II. G. Bohn, 1853, 8vo. His Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey are dis- tinguished for wit and indecency. " His style is ... at times the most rapid, the most haj>py, the most idiomatic, of any that is to be found. It is the pure essence of English con- versational style. His works consist only of w<,r- ceaity, of brilliant passages. I wonder that Gold- smith, who ought to have known better, rlnuM call him a 'dull fellow.' His wit is poignant, though artificial ; and his characters (though the ground work of some of them had boon laid be- fore) have yet invaluable original differences; and the spirit of the execution, the master-strokes con- stantly thrown into them, are not to be surpassed. It is sufficient to name them : Yorick, Dr. Slop, Mr. Shandy, My Uncle Toby, Trim, Susanna, and tho Widow W adman." HAZLITT: Lectt.un the Eiiyli*h Comic Writer*, Le.ct. VI. : On the Enf papers in The Gentle- man's Magazine; and in 1773 (3 vols. 4to) gave to the world an Account of the Voyages of Byron, AVallis, Cartaret, and Cook, by which he gained 6000. "His imagination was fertile and brilliant, his diction, pure, elegant, and unaffected. . . . His manners were polished and affable, and his conver- sation has been described as uncommonly fascinat- ing." DR. DRAKE : Literary Life of Dr. haickea- woi-th : Dr. Drake's Essays, vol. v., q. v. Ox NARRATIVE. No species of writing affords so general entertainment as the relation of events; but 196 JOHN HAWKESWORTH. all relations of events do not entertain in the same degree. It is always necessary that facts should appear to be produced in a regular and con- nected series, that they should follow in a quick succession, and yet that they should be delivered with discriminating circum- stances. If they have not a necessary and apparent connexion, the ideas which they excite obliterate each other, and the mind is tantalized with an imperfect glimpse of innu- merable objects that just appear and vanish ; if they are too minutely related they become tiresome; and if divested of all their cir- cumstances, insipid : for who that reads in a table of chronology, or an index, that a city was swallowed up by an earthquake, or a kingdom depopulated by a pestilence, finds either his attention engaged or his curiosity gratified ? Those narratives are most pleasing which not only excite and gratify curiosity, but engage the passions. History is a relation of the most natural and important events: history, therefore, gratifies curiosity, but it does not often ex- cite either terror or pity ; the mind feels not that tenderness for a falling state which it feels for an injured beauty; nor is it so much alarmed at the migration of barba- rians who mark their way with desolation and fill the world with violence and rapine, as at the fury of a husband, who, deceived into jealousy by false appearances, stabs a faithful and affectionate wife, kneeling at his feet, and pleading to be heard. Voyages and travels have nearly the same excellences, and the same defects : no passion is strongly excited except wonder; or if we feel any emotion at the danger of the trav- eller, it is transient and languid, because his character is not rendered sufficiently impor- tant : he is rarely discovered to have any excellencies but daring curiosity ; he is never the object of admiration and seldom of esteem. Biography would always engage the pas- sions if it could sufficiently gratify curiosity : but there have been few among the whole human species whose lives would furnish a single adventure: I mean such a complica- tion of circumstances as hold the mind in an anxious yet pleasing suspense, and gradually unfold in the production of some unforeseen and important event : much less such a series of facts as will perpetually vary the scene, and gratify the fancy, with new views of life. But nature is now exhausted : all her won- ders have been accumulated, every recess has been explored, deserts have been traversed, Alps climbed, and the secrets of the deep dis- closed ; time has been compelled to restore the empires and the heroes of antiquity ; all have passed in review ; yet fancy requires new gratifications, and curiosity is still un- satisfied. The resources of Art yet remain : the simple beauties of nature, if they cannot be multiplied, may be compounded, and an in- finite variety produced, in which by the union of different graces both may be height- ened, and the coalition of different powers may produce a proportionate effect. The Epic Poem at once gratifies curiosity and moves the passions; the events are various and important; but it is not the fate of a nation, but of the hero, in which they terminate, and whatever concerns the hero engages the passions: the dignity of his character, his merit, and his importance, compel us to follow him with reverence and solicitude, to tremble when he is in danger, to weep when he suffers, and to burn when he is wronged : with the vicissitudes of pas- sion every heart attends Ulysses in his wan- derings and Achilles to the field. Upon this occasion the Old Romance may be considered as a kind of Epic, since it was intended to produce the same effect upon the mind nearly by the same means. In both these species of writing truth is apparently violated: but though the events are not always produced by probable means, yet the pleasure arising from the story is not much lessened; for fancy is still captivated with variety, and passion has scarce leisure to reflect that she is agitated with the fate of imaginary beings, and interested in events that never happened. The Novel, though it bears a near resem- blance to truth, has yet less power of enter- tainment; for it is confined within the nar- rower bounds of probability, the number of incidents is necessarily diminished, and if it deceives us more, it surprises us less. The distress is indeed frequently tender, but the narrative often stands still ; the lovers com- pliment each other in tedious letters and set speeches; trivial circumstances are enumer- ated with a minute exactness, and the reader is wearied with languid descriptions and im- pertinent declamations. But the most extravagant, and yet per- haps the most generally pleasing, of all literary performances are. those in which supernatural events are every moment pro- duced by Genii and Fairies: such are the Arabian Nights' Entertainment, the Tales of the Countess d'Anois, and many others of the same class. It may be thought strange that the mind should with pleasure acquiesce in the open violation of the most known and obvious truths; and that rela- tions which contradict all experience, and exhibit a series of events that are not only impossible but ridiculous, should be read by JOHN II A WKES WOR TIL 197 almost every taste and capacity with equal eagerness and delight. . . . Dramatic Poetry, especially tragedy, seems to unite all that pleases in each of these species of writing, with a stronger resem- blance of truth, and a closer imitation of nature : the characters are such as excite attention and solicitude ; the action is im- portant, its progress is intricate yet natural, and the catastrophe is sudden and striking ; and as we are present to every transaction, the images are more strongly impressed, and the passions more forcibly moved. The Adventurer, No. 4, Saturday, Novem- ber 18, 1752. HAPPINESS AND MISERY, VIRTUE AND VICE. Among other favourite and unsuspected topics is the excellency of virtue. Virtue is said necessarily to produce its own happi- ness, and to be constantly and adequately its own reward ; as vice, on the contrary, never fails to produce misery, and inflict upon itself the punishment it deserves: prop- ositions of which every one is ready to affirm that they may be admitted without scruple and believed without danger. But from hence it is inferred that future rewards and punishments are not necessary either to furnish adequate motives to the practice of virtue, or to justify the ways of God. In consequence of their being not necessary, they become doubtful : the Deity is less and less the object of fear and hope ; and as vir- tue is said to be that which produces ulti- mate good below, whatever is supposed to produce ultimate good below is said to be virtue: right cind wrong are confounded, because remote consequences cannot per- fectly be known ; the principal barrier by which appetite and passion is restrained is broken down ; the remonstrances of con- science are overborne by sophistry; and the acquired and habitual shame of vice is sub- dued by the perpetual efforts of vigorous resistance. But the inference from which these dread- ful consequences proceed, however plausi- ble, is not just; nor does it appear from ex- perience that the premises are true. That li virtue alone is happiness below," is indeed a maxim in speculative morality, which all the treasures of learning have been lavished to support, and all the flowers of wit col- lected to recommend ; it has been the fa- vourite of some among the wisest and best of mankind in every generation ; and is at once venerable for its age and lovely in the bloom of a new youth. And yet if it be al- lowed that they who languish in disease and indigence, who suffer pain, hunger, and nakedness, in obscurity and solitude, are less happy than those who, with the same degree of virtue, enjoy health, and ease, and plenty, who are distinguished by fame, and courted by society ; it follows that virtue alone is not efficient of happiness, because virtue cannot always bestow those things upon which hap- piness is confessed to depend. It is indeed true that virtue in prosperity enjoys more than vice, and that in adversity she suffers less: if prosperity and adversity, therefore, were merely accidental to virtue and vice, it might be granted that setting aside those things upon which moral con- duct has no influence, as foreign to the question, every man is happy, either nega- tively or positively, in proportion as he is virtuous : though it were denied that virtue alone could put into his possession all that is essential to human felicity. But prosperity and adversity, affluence and want, are not independent upon moral conduct : external advantages are frequently obtained by vice, and forfeited by virtue ; for as an estate may be gained by secreting a will, or loading a die, an estate may also be lost by withholding a vote, or rejecting a job. . . . If it be possible by a single act of vice to increase happiness upon the whole of life, from what rational motives can the tempta- tion to that act be resisted? From none, surely, but such as arise from the belief of a future state in which virtue will be re- warded and vice punished : for to what can happiness be wisely sacrificed but to greater happiness ? and how can the ways of God be justified, if a man by the irreparable in- jury of his neighbour becomes happier upon the whole, than he would have been if he had observed the eternal rule, and done to another as he would that another should do to him? Perhaps I may be told that to talk of sacrificing happiness to greater happiness, as virtue, is absurd ; and that he who is re- strained from fraud or violence merely by the fear of hell, is no more virtuous than he who is restrained merely by the fear of the gibbet. But supposing this to be true, yet with respect to society mere external rectitude answers all the purposes of virtue ; and if I travel without being robbed, it is of little consequence to me whether the persons whom I meet on the road were restrained from attempting to invade my property by the fear of punishment or the abhorrence of vice: so that the gibbet, if it does not pro- duce virtue, is yet of such incontestable utility, that I believe those gentlemen would be very unwilling that it should be removed, who are, notwithstanding, so zealous to steel every breast against the fear of damna- tion : nor would they be content, however 198 JOHN HAWKESWORTH. negligent of their souls, that their property should be no otherwise secured than by the power of Moral Beauty, and the prevalence of ideal enjoyments. The Adventurer, No. 10, Saturday, Decem- ber- 9, 1752. THE POSITIVE DUTIES OF RELIGION AND MORAL CONDUCT. Of the duties and the privileges of reli- gion, prayer is generally acknowledged to be the chief : and yet I am afraid that there are few who will not be able to recollect some seasons in which their unwillingness to pray has been more than in proportion to the labour and the time that it required ; seasons in which they would have been less willing to repeat a prayer than any other composition; and rather than have spent five minutes in an address to God, would have devoted an equal space of time wholly to the convenience of another, without any enjoyment or advantage to themselves. . . . A man who lives apparently without re- ligion declares to the world that he is with- out virtue, however he may otherwise con- ceal his vices : for when the obstacles to virtue are surmounted, the obstacles to re- ligion are few. AVhat should restrain him who has broken the bonds of appetite from rising at the call to devotion ? Will not he who has accomplished a work of difficulty secure his reward at all events, when to se- cure it is easy? Will not he that has panted in the race stretch forth his hand to receive the prize ? It may, perhaps, be expected that from this general censure I should except those who believe that all religion is the contri- vance of tyranny and cunning; and that every human action which has Deity for its object is enthusiastic and absurd. But of these there are few who do not give other evidence of their want of virtue than their neglect of religion ; and even of this few it must be acknowledged that they have not equal motives to virtue, and therefore to say that they have not equal virtue, is only to affirm that effects are proportionate to their causes : a proposition which, I am confident, no philosopher will deny. By these motives I do not mean merely the hope and fear of future reward and pun- ishment; but such as arise from the exer- cise of religious duties, both in public and private, and especially of prayer. I know that concerning the operation and effects of prayer there has been much doubt- ful disputation, in which innumerable meta- physical subtilties have been introduced, and the understanding has been bewildered in sophistry, and affronted with jargon. Those who have no other proof of the fit- ness and advantage of a prayer than are to be found among these speculations are but little acquainted with the practice. He who has acquired an experimental knowledge of this duty knows that nothing so forcibly restrains from ill as the remem- brance of a recent address to Heaven for protection and assistance. After having petitioned for power to resist temptation, there is so great an incongruity in not con- tinuing the struggle, that we blush at the thought, and persevere, lest we lose all rever- ence for ourselves. After fervently devot- ing our souls to God, we start with horror at immediate apostacy. Every act of delib- erate wickedness is then complicated with hypocrisy and ingratitude : it is a mockery of the Father of Mercy ; the forfeiture of that peace in which we closed our address, and a renunciation of the hope which it inspired. For a proof of this, let every man ask himself, as in the presence of " Him who searches the heart," whether he has never been deterred from prayer by his fondness for some criminal gratification which he could not with sincerity profess to give up, and which he knew he could not afterward repeat without greater compunction. If prayer and immorality appear to be thus incompatible, prayer should not surely be lightly rejected by those who contend that moral virtue is the summit of human per- fection ; nor should it be encumbered with such circumstances as must inevitably render it less easy and less frequent. It should be considered as the wings of the soul, and should be always ready when a sudden impulse prompts her to spring up to God. We should not think it always necossury to be either in a church, or in our closet, to express joy, love, desire, trust, reverence, or complacency, in the fervour of a silent ejacu- lation. Adoration, hope, and even a petition, may be conceived in a moment; and the desire of the heart may ascend, without words, to "Him to whom our thoughts are known afar off." He who considers him- self as perpetually in the presence of the Almighty need not fear that gratitude or homage can ever be ill-timed, or that it is profane thus to worship in any circum- stances that are not criminal. There is no preservative from vice equal to this habitual and constant intercourse with God: neither does anything equally alleviate distress or heighten prosperity : in distress, it sustains us with hope; and in prosperity, it adds to every other enjoyment the delight of gratitude. The Adventurer, Saturday, February 10, 1753. ELIZABETH CARTER. 199 ELIZABETH CARTER, born 1717, died 1806, published in 1738 Poems upon Several Occasions, Lond., 4to, some of which were republished, 1762, new editions, 1776, 1789, 8vo ; and subsequently gave to the world translations from Anac- reon, Cronsaz, and Algorotti ; but her great work was All the Works of Epictetus which are now Extant, with an Introduction and Notes by the Translator, Lond., 1758, 4to, 4th edit, Lond., 1807, 2 vols. 8vo. This is an excellent translation. Miss Carter was acquainted with Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Ital- ian, Spanish, French, and German. See Memoirs of her Life, by the Rev. M. Penn- ington, Lond., 1807, 4to, etc. ; her Letters to Miss Talbot and Mrs. Vesey, 1808, 2 vols. 4to, and to Mrs. Montagu. 18l7, 3 vols. 8vo. Dr. Johnson (see Boswell's Johnson) was a great admirer of this learned and excellent woman. STOICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. Stoicism is indeed in many points inferior to the doctrine of Socrates, which did not teach that all externals were indifferent; which did teach a future state of recompense ; and agreeably to that, forbade suicide. It doth not belong to the present subject to show how much even this best system is excelled by Christianity. It is sufficient just to observe, that the author of it died in a profession which he had always made of his belief in the popular deities, whose su- perstitious and impure worship were the great source of corruption in the heathen world ; and the last words he uttered were a direction to a friend for the performance of an idolatrous ceremony. This melancholy instance of ignorance and error in the most illustrious character for wisdom and virtue in all heathen antiquity is not mentioned as a reflection on his memory, but as a proof of human weakness in general. Whether reason could have discovered the great truths which in these days are ascribed to it, be- cause now seen so clearly by the light of the Gospel, may be a question; but that it never did, is an undeniable fact ; and that is enough to teach us thankfulness for the blessing of a better information. Socrates, who had, of all mankind, the fairest preten- sions to set up for an instructor and reformer of the world, confessed that he knew nothing, referred to tradition, and acknowledged the want of a superior guide: and there is a remarkable passage in Epictetus in which he represents it as the office of his supreme God, or of one deputed by him, to appear among mankind as a teacher and example. Upon the whole, the several sects of heathen philosophy serve as so many striking instances of the imperfection of human wisdom ; and of the extreme need of a divine assistance, to rectify the mistakes of depraved reason, and to replace natural religion on its true foundation. The Stoics every where testify the noblest zeal for virtue and the honour of God ; but they attempted to establish them on principles inconsistent with the nature of man, and contradictory to truth and experience. By a direct con- sequence of these principles they were lia- ble to be seduced, and in fact they were seduced, into pride, hard-heartedness, and the last dreadful extremity of human guilt, self-murder. But however indefensible the philosophy of the Stoics in several instances may be, it appears to have been of very important use in the Heathen world ; and they are, on many accounts, to be considered in a very respectable light. Their doctrine of evidence and fixed prin- ciples was an excellent preservative from the mischiefs that might have arisen from the scepticism of the Academics and Pyr- rhonists, if unopposed ; and their zealous defence of a particular providence, a valu- able antidote to the atheistical scheme of Epicurus. To this may be added, that their strict notions of virtue in most points (for tney sadly failed in some), and the lives of several among them, must contribute a great deal to preserve luxurious states from an absolutely universal dissoluteness, and the subjects of arbitrary government from a wretched and contemptible pusillanimity. Even now, their compositions may be read with great advantage, as containing excellent rules of self-government and of social behaviour ; of a noble reliance on the aid and protection of heaven, and of a perfect resignation and submission to the divine will : points which are treated with great clearness, and with admirable spirit, in the lessons of the Stoics: and though their directions are seldom practicable, their principles, in trying cases, may be rendered highly useful in subordination to Christian reflections. If among those who are so unhappy as to remain unconvinced of the truth of Chris- tianity, any are prejudiced against it by the influence of unwarran table inclinations, such persons will find very little advantage in re- jecting the doctrines of the New Testament for those of the Portico; unless they think it an advantage to be laid under moral re- straints almost equal to those of the Gospel, while they are deprived of its encourage- ments and supports. Deviations from the rules of sobriety, justice, and piety meet with small indulgence in the stoic writings ; 200 HORACE WALPOLE. and they who profess to admire Epictetus, unless they pursue that severely virtuous conduct which he every where proscribes will find themselves treated by him with the utmost degree of scorn and contempt. An immoral character is, indeed, more or less, the outcast of all sects of philosophy ; and Seneca quotes even Epicurus to prove the universal obligation of a virtuous life. Of this great truth God never left himself without witness. Persons of distinguished talents and opportunities seem to have been raised, from time to time, by Providence, to check the torrent of corruption, and to pre- serve the sense of moral obligations on the minds of the multitude, to whom the various occupations of life left but little leisure to form deductions of their own. But then they wanted a proper commission to enforce their precepts; they intermixed with them, through false reasoning, many gross mis- takes; and their unavoidable ignorance, in several important points, entangled them with doubts which easily degenerated into pernicious errors. If there are others, who reject Christianity from motives of dislike to its peculiar doc- trines, they will scarcely fail of entertaining more favourable impressions of it, if they can be prevailed on, with impartiality, to compare the Holy Scriptures, from whence alone the Christian religion is to be learned, with the stoic writings ; and then fairly to consider whether there is anything to be met with in the discoveries of our blessed Saviour, in the writings of his apostles, or even in the obscurest parts of the prophetic books, by which, equitably interpreted, either their senses or their reason are con- tradicted, as they are by the paradoxes of these philosophers ; and if not, whether notices from above of things in which, though we comprehend them but imper- fectly, we are possibly much more interested than at present we discern, ought not to be received with implicit veneration ; as useful exercises and trials of that duty which finite understandings owe to infinite wisdom. HORACE WALPOLE, born 1717, became fourth Earl of Orford 1791, and died 1797. He was the author of ./Edes Walpolianae, Lond.. 1747. 4to ; Fugitive Pieces in Prose and Verse, Straw- berry Hill, 1758, 8vo ; Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Strawberry Hill, 1758, 2 vols. sin. 8vo, by T. Park. Lond., 180(5, 5 vols. 8vo ; Anecdotes of Painting in England, from the MSS. of George Virtue, Strawberry Hill, 1702-71 , '63, 5 vols. 4to, by R. N. Wornum, Esq., Lond., 1839, etc., 3 vols. 8vo ; The Castle of Otranto, Lond., 1765. 8vo; The Mysterious Mother, a Tragedy, Strawberry Ili'll, 1768, 8vo; His- toric I'oubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third. Lond., 1768, 4to ; Me- moirs of the Last Ten Years, 1751-1760, of the Reign of King George II., Lond., 1822, 2 vols. royal 4to ; Memoirs of the Reign of King George III., Lond., 1845, 4 yols. 8vo ; Journal of the Reign of King George the Third, Lond., 1859,2 vols. demy 8vo : and other works (see Bonn's Lowndes, 2818- 2823). A collective edition of his Letters, by Peter Cunningham, w r as published, Lond., Bentley, 1857-59, 9 vols. 8vo, Bohn, 1861, 9 vols. demy 8vo. A collective edition of his Works, edited by Robert Berry (and Agnes and Mary Berry), was published, Lond., 1795, 5 vols. 4 to. "Walpole's ' Letters' are generally considered as his best performances, and, we think, with reason. His faults are far less offensive to us in his cor- respondence than in his books. His wild, absurd, and ever-chnnging opinions about men and things are easily pardoned in familiar letters. His bitter, scoffing, depreciating disposition does not show itself in so unmitigated a manner as in his ' Me- moirs.' A writer of letters must be civil and friendly to his correspondent, at least, if to no other person." LORD MACAULAY : Edi*. Jtev., Iviii. 240, and in his Essays. TIIE SCOTTISH REBELLIOX. The rebels are come into England : for two days we believed them near Lancaster, but the ministry must own that they don't know if they have passed Carlisle. Some think that they will besiege that town, which has an old wall, and all the militia in it of Cumberland and Westmoreland ; but as they can pass by it, I don't see why they should take it, for they are not strong enough to leave garrisons. Several desert them as they advance south ; and altogether, good men and bad, nobody believes them ten thousand. By their marching westward to avoid Wade, it is evident that they are not strong enough to fight him. They may yet retire back into their moun- tains, but if once they get to Lancaster their retreat is cut off; for Wade will not stir from Newcastle till he has embarked them deep into England, and then he will be behind them. He has sent General Ilandasyde from Berwick with two regiments to take posses- sion of Edinburgh. The rebels are certainly in a very desperate situation : they dared not meet Wade ; and if they had waited for him their troops would have deserted. Unless they meet with great risings in their favour in Lancashire, I don't see what they can hope, except from a continuation of our neglect. That, indeed, has nobly exerted HORACE W ALP OLE. 201 itself for them. They were suffered to inarch the whole length of Scotland, and take possession of the capital, without a man appearing against them. Then two thousand sailed to them, to run from them. Till the flight of Cope's army, Wade was not sent. Two roads still lay into England, and till they had chosen that which Wade had not taken, no army was thought of being sent to secure the other. Now Ligonier, with seven old regiments, and six of the new, is ordered to Lancashire ; before this first di- vision of the army could get to Coventry, they are forced to order it to halt, for fear the enemy should be up with it before it was all assembled. It is uncertain if the rebels will march to the north of AVales, to Bristol, or towards London. If to the latter, Ligonier must fight them ; if to either of the other, which I hope, the two armies may join and drive them into a corner, where they must all perish. They cannot subsist in Wales, but by being supplied by the Papists in Ireland. The best is, that we are in no fear from France ; there is no prep- aration for invasions in any of their ports. Lord Clantary, a Scotchman [Irishman] of great parts, but mad and drunken, and whose family forfeited 90.000 a year for King James, is made vice-admiral at Brest. The Duke of Bedford goes in his little round person with his regiment ; he now takes to the land, and says he is tired of being a pen- and-ink-man. Lord Gower insisted, too, upon going with his regiment, but is laid up with the gout. With the rebels in England you may im- agine we have no private news, nor think of foreign. From this account you may judge that our case is far from desperate, though disagreeable. The prince [Ferdinand of Wales], while the princess lies-in, has taken to give dinners, to which he asks two of the ladies of the bed-chamber, two of the maids of honour, &c., by turns, and five or six Others. To Sir Horace Mann, Nov. 15, 1743. LONDOX EARTHQUAKES, ETC. " Portents and prodigies arc grown so frequent That they have lost their name." DRYDEN. My text is not literally true ; but as far as earthquakes go towards lowering the price of wonderful commodities, to be sure we are overstocked. We have had a second, much more violent than the first; and you must not be surprised if, by next post, you hear of a burning mountain sprung up in Smitlifield. In the night between Wednes- day and Thursday last (exactly a month since the first shock), the earth had a shiv- ering fit between one and two, but so slight that, if no more had followed, I don't be- lieve it would have been noticed. I had been awake, and had scarce dozed again on a sudden I felt my bolster lift up my head : I thought somebody was getting from under my bed, but soon found it was a strong earthquake that lasted near half a minute, with a violent vibration and great roaring. I rang my bell ; my servant came in, fright- ened out of his senses : in an instant we heard all the windows in the neighbourhood flung up. I got up and found people run- ning into the streets, but saw no mischief done : there has been some : two old houses flung down, several chimneys, and much china-ware. The bells rung in several houses. Admiral Knowles, who has lived long in Jamaica, and felt seven there, says this was more violent than any of them : Francesco prefers it to the dreadful one at Leghorn. The wise say, that if we have not rain soon, we shall certainly have more. Several people are going out of town, for it has nowhere reached above ten miles from London. ... A parson who came into White's the morningof earthquake the first, and heard bets laid on whether it was an earthquake or the blowing up of powder-mills, went away exceedingly scandalized, and said, " I pro- test they are such an impious set of people, that I believe if the last trumpet was to sound they would bet puppet-show against Judgment." If we get any nearer still to the torrid zone, I shall pique myself on sending you a present of cedrati and orange- flower water. I am already planning a ter- reno for Strawberry Hill. ... I will jump to another topic ; I find all this letter will be detached scraps; I can't at all contrive to hide the seams. But I don't care. I began my letter merely to tell you of the earthquake, and I don't pique myself upon doing any more'than telling you what you would be glad to have told you. 1 told you. too, how pleased I was with the triumphs of another old beauty, our friend the prin- cess [Croon]. Do you know, I have found a history that has great resemblance to hers ; that is, that will be very like hers, if hers is but like it. I will tell it you in as few words as I can. Madame la Marechale de I'Hopital [Mary Mignot] was the daughter of a semp- stress; a young gentleman fell in love with her, and was going to be married to her, but the match was broken off. An old fer- mier-general, who had retired into the prov- ince where this happened, hearing the story, had a curiosity to see the victim : lie liked her, married her, died, and left her enough not to care for her inconstant. She came to Paris, where the Mnrechal de I'llopital mar- ried her for her riches. After the Maro- chal's death, Casimir, the abdicated king of 202 HUGH BLAIR. Poland, who was retired into France, fell in love with the Marechale, and privately mar- ried her. If the event ever happens, I shall certainly travel to Nancy, to hear her talk of ma helle fille la Heine de France. To Sir Horace Mann, March 11, 1750. HUGH BLAIR, D.D., born in Edinburgh, 1718, minister of Coles- sie, Fifeshire, 1742-1743, of the Canongate of Edinburgh, 1743-1754, and of the High Church of Edinburgh, 1758 until his death in 18UO, was the author of some famous Sermons, Edin. and Lond., 1788-18U1, 5 vols. 8vo, many editions, and of Lectures on llhetoric and Belles-Lettres, Lond., 1783, 2 vols. 4to ; again, Lond., 1798, 3 vols. 8vo, and later. " Dr. Blair's sermons are now universally com- mended, but let him think that I had the honour of first finding and first praising his excellencies. I did not stay to add my voice to that of the pub- lic." DR. JOHNSON TO BOSWELL, 1777: Dosicell's Juhnnoii ; where see Johnson and Domcell on lilalr's Lectures on llhetoric and Helles-Lettres. Ox THE CULTIVATION OF TASTE. Such studies have this peculiar advantage, that they exercise our reason without fa- tiguing it. They lead to inquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry or abstruse. They strew flowers in the path of science, and while they keep the mind bent in some degree and active, they relieve it at the same time from that more toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acqui- sition of necessary erudition or the investi- gation of abstract truth. The cultivation of taste is further recom- mended by the happy effects which it nat- urally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man in the most active sphere cannot be always occupied by business. Men of serious professions cannot always be on the stretch of anxious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford cany man the power of fill- ing all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How, then, shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agreeable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertainments of taste, and the study of polite literature ? He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these, has always at hand an innocent and irreproach- able amusement for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many a pernicious passion. lie is not in hazard of being a burden to himself. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence. Providence seems plainly to have pointed out this useful purpose to which the pleas- ures of taste may be applied, by interposing them in a middle station between the pleas- ures of sense and those of pure intellect. We were not designed to grovel always amohg objects so low as the former ; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind after the toils of the intellect and the labours of abstract study ; and they gradually raise it above the at- tachments of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue. So consonant is this to experience, that in the education of youth no object has in every age appeared more important to wise men than to tincture them early with a relish for the entertainments of taste. The transition is commonly made with ease from these to the discharge of the higher and more important duties of life. Good hopes may be entertained of those whose minds have this liberal and elegant turn. It is favour- able to many virtues. Whereas, to be en- tirely devoid of relish for eloquence, poetry, or any of the fine arts, is justly construed to bean unpromising symptom of earth ; and raises suspicions of their being prone to low gratifications, or destined to drudge in the more vulgar and illiberal pursuits of life. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. ON STYLE. It is not easy to give a precise idea of what is meant by Style. The best defini- tion I can give of it is, the peculiar manner in which a man expresses his conceptions, by means of language. It is different from mere language or words. The words which an author employs may be proper and fault- less ; and his Style may, nevertheless, have great faults ; it may be dry, or stiff, or feeble, or affected. Style has always some reference to an author's manner of thinking. It is a picture of the ideas which rise in his mind, and of the manner in which they rise there; and hence, when we are examining an author's composition, it is, in many cases, extremely difficult to separate the Style from the sentiment. No wonder these two should be so intimately connected, as Style is nothing else than that sort of ex- ELIZABETH MONTAGU. 203 pression winch our thoughts most readily assume. Hence different countries have been noted for peculiarities of Style suited to their different temper and genius. The eastern nations animated their style with the most strong and hyperbolical figures. The Athenians, a polished and acute people, formed a Style accurate, clear, and neat. The Asiatics, gay, and loose in their man- ners, affected a Style florid and diffuse. The like sort of characteristical differences are commonly remarked in the Style of the French, the English, and the Spaniards. In giving the general characters of Style it is usual to talk of a nervous, a feeble, or a spirited Style; which are plainly the char- acters of a writer's manner of thinking, as well as of expressing himself: so difficult it is to separate these two things from one another. Of the general characters of Style I am afterwards to discourse, but it will be necessary to begin with examining the more simple qualities of it; from the assemblage of which its more complex denominations, in a great measure, result. All the quali- ties of a good Style may be ranged under two heads, Perspicuity and Ornament. For all that can possibly be required of Lan- guage is, to convey our ideas clearly to the minds of others, and at the same time in such address as, by pleasing and interesting them, shall most effectually strengthen the impressions which we seek to make. When both these ends are answered, we certainly accomplish every purpose for which we use Writing and Discourse. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles- Lettres. Ox PURITY AND PROPRIETY. Purity and Propriety of Language are often used indiscriminately for each other ; and. indeed, they are very nearly allied. A distinction, however, obtains between them. Purity is the use of such words, and such constructions, as belong to the idiom of the Language which we speak, in opposition to words and phrases that are imported from other Languages, or that are obsolete or new coined or used without proper authority. Propriety is the selection of such words in the Language as the best and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express by them. It implies the correct and happy application of them, according to that usage, in opposition to vulgarisms, or low expressions ; and to words and phrases which would be less significant of the ideas that we mean to convey. Style may be pure, that is, it may all be strictly English, without Scotticisms or Gallicisms, or ungrammatical, irregular expressions of any kind, and may, nevertheless, be defi- cient in propriety. The words may be ill- chosen ; not adapted to the subject, nor fully expressive of the author's sense. lie has taken all his words and phrases from the general mass of English language ; but he has made his selection among these words unhappily. Whereas Style cannot be proper without being also pure ; and where both Purity and Propriety meet, besides making Style perspicuous, they also render it grace- ful. There is no standard, either of Purity or of Propriety, but the practice of the best writers and speakers in the country. When I mentioned obsolete or new-coined words as incongruous with Purity of Style, it will be easily understood that some ex- ceptions are to be made. On certain occa- sions they may have grace. Poetry admits of greater latitude than prose, with respect to coining or, at least, new-compounding words; yet, even here, this liberty should be used with a sparing hand. In prose, such innovations are more hazardous, and have a worse effect. They are apt to give Style an affected and conceited air ; and should never be ventured upon except by such whose established reputation gives them some degree of dictatorial power over Language. The introduction of foreign and learned words, unless where necessity re- quires them, should always be avoided. Bar- ren Languages may need such assistances ; but ours is not one of these. Dean Swift, one of our most correct writers, valued himself much on using no words but such as were of native growth : and his Language may, indeed, be considered as a standard of the strictest Purity and Propriety in the choice of words. At present, we seem to be depart- ing from this standard. A multitude of Latin words have, of late, been poured in upon us. On some occasions, they give an appearance of elevation and dignity to Style. But often, also, they render it stiff and forced: and, in general, a plain native Style, as it is more intelligible to all readers, so, by a proper management of words, it may be made equally strong and expressive with this latinized English. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. ELIZABETH MONTAGU, born 1720, was married in 1742 to Edward Montagu, cousin of Edward Wortley Mon- tagu, the husband of Lady Mary. Left a widow of fortune in 1775, she became famous for her hospitalities to the leaders of fashion and letters. Died 1800. " Mrs. Montagu had built a superb new house [Portuian Square, London], which was magnifi- 204 RICHARD HURD. cently fitted up, and appeared to be rather appro- priate for princes, nobles, and courtiers than for poet*, philosophers, and blue-stocking votaries." MADAME D'AUBLAY : Diary. " These were the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and ex- changed repartees under the rich peacock- hangings of Mrs. Montagu." She was the author of Three Dialogues of the Dead, in the 4th edition of Lord Lyttelton's New Dialogues of the Dead, Lond., 1765, 8vo ; An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear, etc., 1769, 8 vo. See The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, Lond., 1809-13, 4 vols. 8vo. Ox VANITY. ALLERTIIORPE, Nov. 19, 1742. MADAM, "What prophets are my fears ! they whispered to me your grace was not well, and I find their suggestions were true. Hard state of things, that one may believe one's fears, but cannot rely upon one's hopes! I imagined concern would have an ill effect on your constitution : 1 know you have many pledges in the hands of fate, and I feared for you, and every thing that was near and dear to you. I am sensible your regard and ten- derness for Lady Oxford will make you suf- fer extremely when you see her ill: she has there fore a double portion of my good wishes, on her own and your grace's account. When sensibility of heart and head makes you feel all the outrages that fortune and folly offer, why do you not envy the thoughtless giggle and unmeaning smile? "In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble Joy." Wisdom's cup is often dashed with sorrow, but the nepenthe of stupidity is the only medicine of life: fools neither are troubled with fear nor doubt. What did the wisdom of the wisest man teach him ? Verily, that all was vanity and vexation of spirit! A painful lesson fools will never learn, for they are of all vanities most vain. And there is not so sweet a companion as that same vanity : when we go into the world it leads us by the hand; if we retire from it, it follows us; it meets us at court, and finds us in the coun- try; commends the hero that gains the world, arid the philosopher that forsakes it; praises the luxury of the prodigal, and the prudence of the penurious; feasts with the voluptuous, fasts with the abstemious, sits on the pen of the author, and visits the paper of the critic; reads dedications, and writes them : makes court to superiors, receives homage of inferiors: in short, it is useful, it is agreeable, and the very thing needful to happiness. Had Solomon felt some inward vanity, sweet sounds had been ever in his ears without the voices of men-singers, or women-singers: he had not then said of laughter, What is it? and of mirth, What doeth it? Vanity and a good set of teeth would have taught him the ends and pur- poses of laughing, that fame may be ac- quired by it, where, like the proposal for the grinning wager, "The frightfulest grinner Is the winner." Did not we think Lady C would get nothing by that broad grin but the tooth- ache? But vanity, profitable vanity, was her better counsellor; and as she always imagined the heart of a lover was caught between her teeth, I cannot say his delay is an argument of her charms, or his gallantry, but she has him secure by an old proverb, that what is bred in the bone will never out of the flesh, and no doubt but this love was bred in the bone, even in the jaw-bone. No wonder if tame weak man is subdued by that weapon with which Samson killed the mighty lion. To the Duchess of Portland. RICHARD HURD, D.D., born 1720, Preacher of Lincoln's Inn, 1765, Archdeacon of Gloucester, 1767, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 1775, and of Worces- ter, 1781, declined the Archbishopric of Can- terbury, 1783, died 1808. He published: Commentary on Horace's Ars Poetica, 1749, 4th edit., 1763, 3 vols. 8vo; Commentary on Horace's Epistola ad Augustum, etc., 1751, new edit., Lond., 1776, 3 vols. cr. 8vo ; Dia- logues on Sincerity, Retirement, etc., 1759, 8vo ; with his Letters on Chivalry and Ro- mance (1762, 8vo), and Dialogues on Foreign Travel (1764, 8vo), under the title of Dia- logues, Moral and Political, 1765, 3 vols. 8vo, 3d edit., 1771, 3 vols. stn. 8vo ; again, 1788, 3 vols. 8vo ; Select Works of Cowley, 1769, 2 vols. 8vo; An Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies, 1772, 8vo, 1778, 2 vols. 8vo ; Sermons Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1776-1780, 3 vols. 8vo, 1785, 3 vols. 8vo; Sermons Preached before the Lords. 1777, 4to ; Works of Bishop Warhurton, 1788, 7 vols. 4to, new edit., 1811, 12 vols. 8vo, and Life of Warburton, 1794, 4to; Addison's Works, 1810. C vols. 8vo. " Kurd has, perhaps, the merit of being the first who, in this country, aimed at philosophical criti- cism : he had great ingenuity, a good deal of read- ing, and a felicity in applying it; but he did not feel very deeply, was somewhat of a coxcomb, and having always before his eyes a model neither good in itself, nor made for him to emulate, he assumes a dogmatic arrogance, which, as it always offends the reader, so for the most part stands in the way of the author's own search for truth." HALLAJI : Lit. Hist, of Europe, 4th ed., iii. 475, n. RICHARD HURD. 205 TRUE AXD FALSE POLITENESS. It is evident enough that the moral and Christian duty of preferring one another in honour respects only social peace and char- ity, and terminates in the good and edifica- tion of our Christian brother. Its use is to soften the minds of men, and to draw them from that savage rusticity which engenders many vices, and discredits the virtuous them- selves. But when men had experienced the benefit of this complying temper, and further saw the ends, not of charity only, but of self-interest, that might be answered liy it, they considered no longer its just purpose and application, but stretched it to that of- ficious sedulity and extreme servility of adu- lation which we too often observe and lament in polished life. Hence that infinite attention and consid- eration, which is so rigidly exacted and so duly paid, in the commerce of the world : hence that prostitution of mind, which leaves a man no will, no sentiment, no principle, no character ; all which disappear under the uniform exhibition of good manners: hence those insidious arts, those studied disguises, those obsequious flatteries, nay, those multi- plied and nicely-varied forms of insinuation and address, the direct aim of which may be to acquire the fame of politeness and good-breeding, but the certain effect, to cor- rupt every virtue, to soothe every vanity, and to inflame every vice, of the human heart. These fatal mischiefs introduce themselves under the pretence and semblance of that humanity which the Scriptures encourage and enjoin : but the genuine virtue is easily distinguished from the counterfeit, and by the following plain signs. True politeness is modest, unpretending, and generous. It appears as little as may be ; and when it does, a courtesy would will- ingly conceal it. It chooses silently to forego its own claims, not officiously to with- draw them. It engages a man to prefer his neighbour to himself, because he really esteems him ; because he is tender of his reputation ; because he thinks it more inanlv, more Christian, to descend a little himself than to degrade another. It respects, in a word, the credit and estimation of his neigh- bour. The mimic of this amiable virtue, false politeness, is, on the other hand, ambitious, servile, timorous. It affects popularity : is solicitous to please, and to he taken notice of. The man of this character does not offer, but obtrudes, his civilities ; because he would merit by his assiduity ; because in despair of winning regard by any worthier qualities, he would be sure to make the most of this ; and lastly, because of all things he would dread, by the omission of any punctilious observance, to give offence. In a word, this sort of politeness respects, for its immediate object, the favour and consideration of our neighbour. Again : the man who governs himself by the spirit of the Apostle's precept, expresses his preference of another in such a way as is worthy of himself: in all innocent com- pliances, in all honest civilities, in all decent and manly condescensions. On the contrary, the man of the world, who rests in the letter of this command, is regardless of the means by which he con- ducts himself, lie respects neither his own dignity, nor that of human nature. Truth, reason, virtue, are all equally betrayed by this supple impostor. He assents to the errors, though the most pernicious ; he applauds the follies, though the most ridiculous ; he soothes the vices, though the most flagrant, of other men. He never contradicts, though in the softest form of insinuation ; he never disapproves, though by a respectful silence ; he never condemns, though it be only by a good example. In short, he is solicitous for nothing but by some studied devices to hide from others, and, if possible, to palliate to himself, the grossness of his illiberal adu- lation. Lastly : we may be sure that the uUimat", ends for which these different objects are pursued, and by so different means, must also lie wide of each other. Accordingly, the true polite man would, by all proper testimonies of respect, pro- mote the credit and estimation of his neigh- bour ; because he sees that, by this generous consideration of each other, the peace of the world is, in a good degree, preserved ; be- cause he knows that these mutual attentions prevent animosities, soften the fierceness of men's manners, and dispose them to all the offices of benevolence and charity ; because, in a word, the interests of society are best served by this conduct ; and because he understands it to be his duty to love his neighbour. The falsely polite, on the contrary, are anxious, by all means whatever to procure the favour and consideration of those they converse with ; because they regard, ulti- mately, nothing more than their private interest : because they perceive that their own selfish designs are best carried on by such practices ; in a word, because they love themselves. Thus we see that genuine virtue consults the honour of others by worth y means, and for the noblest purposes ; the counterfeit solicits their favour by dishonest compli- ances, and for the basest end. 206 CATHERINE TALBOT. CATHERINE TALBOT, horn 1720, died 1770, was the author of Reflections on the Seven Days of the Week, 1770, Oth edit, Lond., 1771, 12mo; Essays, 1772, 2 vols. 12mo; Letters to a Friend on a Future State ; Dialogues, and other works in prose and verse. Collective edition of her Works hy . Carter, new edit., 1795, 8vo; by Rev. M. Pennington, A.M., 1809, 8vo, 9th edit., 1819, 8vo. "So excellent are the compositions of Miss Talbot which have come down to us, that it i8 to be greatly regretted that she did not devote more time to writing." MRS. ELLWOOD : Lit. Ladies of Eng., i. 143. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SUNDAY. MR. RAMBLER, There are few tasks more ungrateful than for persons of modesty to speak their own praises. In some cases, however, this must be done for the general good, and a generous spirit will on such occasions assert its merit, and vindicate itself with becoming warmth. My circumstances, Sir, are very hard and peculiar. Could the world be brought to treat me as I deserve, it would be a public benefit. This makes me apply to you, that iny case being fairly stated in a paper so generally esteemed, I may suffer no longer from ignorant and childish prejudices. My elder brother was a Jew. A very respectable person, but somewhat austere in his manner ; highly and deservedly valued by his near relations and intimates, but utterly unfit for mixing in a larger society, or gaining a general acquaintance with mankind. In a venerable old age he re- tired from the world, and I. in the bloom of youth, carne into it, succeeding him in all his dignities, and formed, as I might reasonably natter myself, to be the object of universal love and esteem. Joy and gladness were born with me ; cheerfulness, good humour, and benevolence always at- tended and endeared my infancy. That time is long past. So long, that idle imagina- tions arc apt to fancy me wrinkled, old, and disagreeable: but unless my looking-glass deceives me, 1 have not yet lost one charm, one beauty, of my earliest years. However, thus far it is too certain I am to every body just what they choose to think me, so that to very few 1 appear in my right shape; and though naturally I am the friend of human kind, to few, very few, comparatively, am I useful or agreeable. This is the more grievous, as it is utterly impossible for me to avoid being in all sorts of places and companies ; and I am there- fore liable to meet with perpetual affronts and injuries. Though I have as natural an antipathy to cards and dice as some people have to a cnt, many and many an assembly am I forced to endure ; and though rest and composure are my peculiar joy, am worn out and harassed to death with journeys by men and women of quality, who never take one but when I can be of the party. Some, on a contrary extreme, will never re- ceive me but in bed, where they spend at least half of the time I have to stay with them ; and others are so monstrously ill- bred as to take physic on purpose when they have reason to expect me. Those who keep upon terms of more politeness with me are generally so cold and constrained in their behaviour that I cannot but perceive my- self an unwelcome guest; and even among persons deserving of my esteem, and who certainly have a value for me, it is too evi- dent that generally, whenever I come, I throw a dulness over the whole company, that I am entertained with a formal stiff civility, and that they are glad when I am fairly gone. How bitter must this kind of reception be to one formed to inspire de light, admiration, and love ! To one capa- ble of answering and rewarding the greatest warmth and delicacy of sentiments! I was bred up among a set of excellent people, who affectionately loved me. and treated me with the utmost honour and re- spect. It would be tedious to relate the variety of my adventures, and strange vicis- situdes of my fortune in many different coun- tries. Here in England there was a time when I lived according to my heart's desire. Whenever I appeared, public assemblies ap- pointed for my reception were crowded with persons of quality and fashion, early dressed as for a court, to pay me their devoirs. Cheerful hospitality every where crowned my board, and I was looked upon in every country parish as a kind of social bond be- tween the squire, the parson, and the ten- ants. The laborious poor every where blest my appearance: they do so still, and keep their best clothes to do me honour ; though as much as I delight in the honest country folks, they do now and then throw a pot of ale at my head, and sometimes an unlucky boy will drive his cricket-ball in my face. Even in these my best days there were persons who thought me too demure and grave. I must forsooth by all means be in- structed by foreign masters, and taught to dance and "piny- This method of education was so contrary to my genius, formed for much nobler entertainment, that it did not succeed at all. I fell next into the hands of a very differ- ent set. They were so excessively scandal- ized at the gaiety of iny appearance, as not JAMES USHER. 207 only to despoil me of the foreign fopperies, the paint arid the patches that I had been tricked outwith by my last misj adding tutors, but they robbed me of every innocent orna- ment I had from my infancy been used to gather in the fields and gardens ; nay, they blacked my face, and covered me all over with a habit of mourning, and that too very coarse and awkward. I was now obliged to spend my whole life in hearing sermons, nor permitted so much as to smile upon any occa- sion. In this melancholy disguise I became a perfect bugbear to all children and young folks. Wherever I came there was a gen- eral hush, an immediate stop to all pleasant- ness of look or discourse ; and not being permitted to talk with them in my own lan- guage at that time, they took such a disgust to me in those tedious hours of yawn ing, that having transmitted it to their children, I cannot now be heard, though it is long since I have recovered my natural form and pleasing tone of voice. Would they but receive my visits kindly, and listen to what I could tell them let me say it without vanity how charming a companion should I be ! to every one could I talk on the sub- jects most interesting and most pleasing. With the great and Jimbitious I would dis- course of honours and advancements, of distinctions to which the whole world should be witness, of unenvied dignities and dura- ble preferments. To the rich I would tell of inexhaustible treasures, and the sure method to attain them. I would teach them to put out their money on the best interest, and instruct the lovers of pleasure how to secure and improve it to the highest degree. The beauty should learn of me how to preserve an everlasting bloom. To the afflicted I would administer comfort, and relaxation to the busy. As I dare promise myself you will attest the truth of all I have advanced, there is no doubt but many will be desirous of improv- ing their acquaintance with me; and that I may not be thought too difficult. I will tell you, in short, how I wish to be received. You must know I equally hate lazy idle- ness and hurry. I would every where be welcomed at a tolerably early hour with decent good humour and gratitude. I must be attended in the great halls peculiarly appropriated to me with respect; but I do not insist upon finery: propriety of appear- ance and perfect neatness is all I require. I must at dinner be treated with a temper- ate, but cheerful, social meal ; both the neighbours and the poor should be the bet- ter for me. Some time I must have a tete- a-tete with my kind entertainers, and the rest of my visit should be spent in pleasant walks and airings among sets of agreeable people, in such discourse as I shall natu- rally dictate, or in reading some few selected out of those numberiess books that are dedi- cated to me, and go by my name. A name that, alas! as the world stands at present, makes them oftener thrown aside than taken up. As those conversations and books should be both well chosen, to give some advice on that head may possibly furnish you with a future paper, and any thing you shall offer on my behalf will be of great service to, good Mr. Rambler, Your faithful friend and servant, " SUNDAY." The Rambler, No. 30, Saturday, Jane 30, 1750. JAMES USHER, a descendant of Archbishop Usher, born about 1720, was successively a farmer, a linen-draper, a priest of the Church of Rome, and a school-teacher; died 1772. He was the author of New System of Philosophy, Lond., 1764, 8vo ; Clio ; or a Discourse on Taste, Lond., 1772, 2 vols. 8vo; An Elegy, sine anno; privately printed: 1860, with MS. notes by Professor Porson, 3 10s. Usher contributed to The Public Ledger. THOUGHTS ON ELEGANCE. When we take a view of the separate parts that constitute personal elegance, we imme- diately know the seeds that are proper to be cherished in the infant mind to bring forth the beauteous production. The virtues should be cultivated early with sacred care. Good nature, modesty, affability, and a kind concern for others, should be carefully in- culcated; and an easy unconstrained do- minion acquired by habit over the passions. A mind thus finally prepared is capable of the highest lustre of elegance ; which is afterwards attained with as little labour as our first language, by only associating with graceful people of different characters, from whom an habitual gracefulness will be ac- quired, that will bear the natural unaffected stamp of our minds: in short, it will be our own character and genius stripped of its native rudeness, and enriched with beauty and attraction. Nature, that bestows her favours without respect of persons, often denies to the great the capacity of distinguished elegance, and flings it away in obscure villages. You sometimes see it at a country fair spread an amiableness over a sun-burnt girl, like the light of the moon through a mist: but such, madam, is the necessity of habitual elegance 208 JAMES USHER. acquired by education and converse, that even if you were born in that low class, you could be no more than the fairest damsel at the May-pole, and the object of the hope and jealousy of a few rustics. People are rendered totally incapable of elegance by the want of good-nature, and the other gentle passions; by the want of modesty and sensibility ; and by a want of that noble pride which arises from a con- sciousness of lofty and generous sentiments. The absence of these native charms is gen- erally supplied by a brisk stupidity, an impu- dence unconscious of defect, a cast of malice, and an uncommon tendency to ridicule: as if nature had given these her step-children an instinctive intelligence that they can rise out of contempt only by the depression of others. For the same reason it is, that per- sons of true and finished taste seldom affect ridicule, because they are conscious of their own superior merit. Pride is the cause of ridicule in the one. as it is of candour in the other; but the effects differ as the studied parade of poverty does from the negligent grandeur of riches. You will see nothing more common in the world, than for people, who by stupidity and insensibility are in- capable of the graces, to commence wits on the strength of the petite talents of mimicry, and the brisk tartness that ill-nature never fails to supply. From what I have said it appears that a sense of elegance is a sense of dignity, of virtue, and innocence, united. Is it not natural then to expect that, in the course of a liberal education, men should cultivate the generous qualities they approve and assume ? But instead of them, men only aim at the appearances, which require no self-denial ; and thus without acquiring the virtues, they sacrifice their honesty and sincerity : whence it comes to pass that there is often the least virtue where is the greatest appearance of it, and that the polished part of mankind only arrive at the subtle corruption of uniting vice with the dress and complexion of virtue. I have dwelt on personal elegance, because the ideas and principles in this part of good taste are more familiar to you. We may then take them for a foundation in our future observations, since the same prin- ciples of easy grace and simple grandeur will animate our ideas with an unstudied propriety, and enlighten our judgments in beauty, in literature, in sculpture, painting, and other departments of fine taste. ON PERSONAL BEAUTT. I shall but slightly touch on our taste of personal beauty, because it requires no direc- tions to be known. To ask what is beauty, says a philosopher, is the question of a blind man. I shall therefore only make a few re- flections on this head, that lie out of the common track. But, prior to what I have to say, it is necessary to make some obser- vations on physiognomy. There is an obvious relation between the mind and the turn of the features, so well known by instinct, that every one is more or less expert at reading the countenance. We look as well as speak our minds ; and amongst people of little experience, the look is generally most sincere. This is so well understood, that it becomes a part of educa- tion to learn to disguise the countenance, which yet requires a habit from early youth, and the continual practice of hypocrisy, to deceive an intelligent eye. The natural virtues and vices not only have their places in the aspect; even acquired habits that much affect the mind settle there; contem- plation, in length of time, gives a cast of thought on the countenance. Now to come back to our subject. The assemblage called beauty is the image of noble sentiments and amiable passions in the face; but so blended and confused that we are not able to separate and distinguish them. The mind has a sensibility, and clear knowledge, in many instances, without re- flection, or even the power of reasoning upon its own perceptions. We can no more account for the relation between the passions of the mind and a set of features than we can account for the relation between the sounds of music and the passions : the eye is judge of the one without principles or rules, as the ear is of the other. It is im- possible you should not take notice of the remarkable difference of beauty in the same face, in a good and in ill humour; and if the gentle passions in an indifferent face do not change it to perfect beauty, it is because nature did not originally model the features to the just and familiar expression of those passions, and the genuine expressions of nature can never be wholly obliterated. . . . Complexion is a kind of beauty that is only pleasing by association. The brown, the fair, the black, are not any of them original beauty ; but when the complexion is united in one picture on the imagination, with the assemblage that forms the image of the tender passion, with gentle smiles and kind endearments, it is then inseparable from our ideas of beauty, and forms a part of it. From the same cause, a national set of features appear amiable to the inhabitants, who have been accustomed to see the amiable dispositions through them. This observation resolves a difficulty that often occurs in the reflections of men on our present subject. We all speak of beauty as WILLIAM ROBERTSON. 209 if it were acknowledged and settled by a public standard ; yet we find, in fact, that people in placing their affections often have little regard to the common notions of beauty. The truth is, complexion and form being the charms that are visible and con- spicuous, the common standard of beauty is generally restrained to those general attrac- tions : but since personal grace and the en- gaging passions, although they cannot be delineated, have a more universal and uni- form power, it is no wonder people, in re- signing their hearts, so often contradict the common received standard. Accordingly, as the engaging passions and the address are discovered in conversation, the tender attachments of people are generally fixed by an intercourse of sentiment, and seldom by a transient view, except in romances and. novels. It is further to be observed that when once the affections are fixed, a new face with a higher degree of beauty will not always have a higher degree of power to remove them, because our affections arise from a source within ourselves, .as well as from external beauty ; and when the tender passion is attached by a particular object, the imagination surrounds that object with a thousand ideal embellishments that exist only in the mind of the lover. Ox CONVERSATION. From external beauty we come to the charms of conversation and writing. Words, by representing ideas, become the picture of our thoughts, and communicate them with the greatest fidelity. But they are not only the signs of sensible ideas, they exhibit the very image and distinguishing likeness of the mind that uses them. Conversation does not require the same merit to please that writing does. The hu- man soul is endued with a kind of natural expression, which it does not acquire. The expression I speak of consists in the signifi- cant modulations and tones of voice, accom- panied, in unaffected people, by a propriety of gesture. This native language was not intended by nature to represent the transi- tory ideas that come by the senses to the imagination, but the passions of the mind and its emotions only: therefore modulation and gesture give life and passion to words ; their mighty force in oratory is very con- spicuous : but although their effects be milder in conversation, yet they are very sensible; they agitate the soul by a variety of gentle sensations, and help to form that sweet charm that makes the most trifling subjects engaging. This fine expression, which is not learned, is not so much taken notice of as it deserves, because it is much superseded by the use of artificial and ac- 14 quired language. The modern system of philosophy has also concurred to shut it out from our reflections. It is in conversation people put on all their graces, and appear in the lustre of good-breeding. It is certain, good-breeding, that sets so great a distinction between in- dividuals of the same species, creates nothing new (I mean a good education), but only draws forth into prospect, with skill and address, the .agreeable dispositions and sen- timents that lay latent in the mind. You may call good-breeding artificial; but it is like the art of a gardener, under whose hand a barren tree puts forth its own bloom, and is enriched with its specific fruit. It is scarce possible to conceive any scene so truly agree- able as an assembly of people elaborately educated, who assume a character superior to ordinary life, and support it with ease and familiarity. The heart is won in conversation by its own passions. Its pride, its grandeur, its affections, lay it open to the enchantment of an insinuating address. Flattery is a gross charmer, but who is proof against a gentle and yielding disposition, that infers your superiority with a delicacy so fine that you cannot see the lines of which it is composed ? Generosity, disinterestedness, a noble love of truth that will not deceive, a feeling of the distresses of others, and greatness of soul, inspires us with admiration along with love, and takes our affections as it were by storm; but, above all, we are seduced by a view of the tender and affectionate passions : they carry a soft inflection, and the heart is betrayed to them by its own forces. If we are to judge from symptoms, the soul that engages us so powerfully by its reflected glances is an object of infinite beauty. I observed before, that the modulations of the human voice that express the soul move us powerfully ; and indeed we are affected by the natural emotions of the mind expressed in the simplest language: in short, the happy art that, in conversation and the intercourse of life, lays hold upon our affections, is but a just address to the engaging passions in the human breast. But this syren power, like beauty, is the gift of nature. " Soft pleasing speech and graceful outward show, No arts can gain them, but the gods bestow." Pope's Homer. WILLIAM ROBERTSON, D.D., born 1721, minister of Gladsmuir, 1743, and from 1759 until his death, in 1793, one of the ministers (Dr. John Erskine was his col- league) of the Old Grey-Friars' Church, Edin- burgh, was for thirty years, 1762-1792, Prin- 210 WILLIAM ROBERTSON. cipal of the University of Edinburgh, and for the same period the controlling spirit of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He was the author of The Situ- ation of the World at the Time of Christ's Appearance, and its Connection with the Success of his Religion Considered, a Ser- mon, Edin.. 1755, 8vo ; The History of Scot- land during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI. till his Succession to the Crown of England, etc., Lond., 1758-59, 2 vo!s. 4to, 17th edit., 1806. 3 vols. 8vo ; The History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V., etc., Lond., 1709, 3 vols. 4to, lUth edit., 1802, 4 vols. 8vo ; the History of America, Books I.-VIIL, Lond., 1777, 2 vols. 4to, Books IX. and X., Lond., 1796, 4to and 8vo ; An Historical Disquisition Concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India, etc., Lond., 1791, 4to. Collective edi- tions of Robertson's Works have frequently been published (most of them with Stewart's Life of Robertson). Among the last editions are those of London. 1828, 9 vols. 8vo, 1840, 8 vols. 8vo, 1860, imp. 8vo, 1865, imp. 8vo. " Inferior probably to Mr. Gibbon in the vigour of his powers, unequal to him perhaps in compre- hension of intellect and variety of knowledge, the Scottish historian has far surpassed him in sim- plicity and perspicuity of narrative, in picturesque and pathetic description, in the sober use of figura- tive language, and in the delicate perception of that scarcely discernible boundary which separates ornament from exuberance and elegance from af- fectation." Sin J. MACKINTOSH : Lond. Month. lieeiew. '' Robertson's style, Mr. Prescott remarked, was that of a schoolmistress. He thought him greatly wanting in narrative power, and in the faculty of picturesque description. He instanced the bald and commonplace account of the battle of Pavia as a specimen of Robertson's inability to do jus- tice to a great and splendid subject. At the same time he did justice to that historian's eminent qual- ities of another kind, to his clearness, penetra- tion, and philosophic tone. He attributed his de- fects of style to his age rather than to any defect in himself." Recollections of Prescnlt by JU'K former Secretary: Prescott Memorial, 1859, pp.21, 22. CHARACTER OF MARY, QUEEX OF SCOTS. To all the charms of beauty and the utmost elegance of external form she added those accomplishments which render their impres- sion irresistible. Polite, affable, insinuating, sprightly, and capable of speaking and of writing with equal ease and dignity. Sud- den, however, and violent in all her attach- ments, because her heart was warm and un- suspicious. Impatient of contradiction, lie- cause she had been accustomed from her infancy to be treated as a queen. No stranger, on some occasions, to dissimula- tion, which in that perfidious court where she received her education was reckoned among the necessary arts of government. Not insensible of flattery, or unconscious of that pleasure with which almost every woman beholds the influence of her own beauty. Formed with the qualities which we love, not with the talents that we admire, she was an agreeable woman rather than an illustrious queen. The vivacity of her spirit, not sufficiently tempered with sound judg- ment, and the warmth of her heart, which was not at all times under the restraint of dis- cretion, betrayed her both into errors and into crimes. To say that she was always unfortunate will not account for that long and almost uninterrupted succession of calamities which befell her: we must likewise add that she was often imprudent. Her passion for Darn- ley was rash, youthful, and excessive. And though the sudden transition to the opposite extreme was the natural effect of her ill-re- quited love, and of his ingratitude, insolence, and brutality, yet neither these nor Both- well's .artful address and important services can justify her attachment to that nobleman. Even the manners of the age, licentious as they were, are no apology for this unhappy passion ; nor can they induce us to look on that tragical and infamous scene which fol- lowed upon it with less abhorrence. Hu- manity will draw a veil over this part of her character which it cannot approve, .and may, perhaps, prompt some to impute her actions to her situation, more than to her disposi- tions, and to lament the unhappiness of the former, rather than accuse the perverseness of the latter. Mary's sufferings exceed, both in degree and in duration, those tragi- cal distresses which fancy has feigned to excite sorrow and commiseration ; and while we survey them, we are apt altogether to forget her frailties ; we think of her faults with less indignation, and approve of our tears as if they were shed for a person who had attained much nearer to pure virtue. With regard to the queen's person, a cir- cumstance not to be omitted in writing the history of a female reign, all contemporary authors agree in ascribing to Mary the ut- most beauty of countenance and elegance of shape of which the human form is capable. Her hair was black, though, according to the fashion of that age, she frequently wore bor- rowed locks, and of different colours. Her eyes were a dark grey, her complexion was exquisitely fine, and her hands and arms remarkably delicate, both as to shape and colour. Her stature was of a height that rose to the majestic. She danced, she walked, and rode witli equal grace. Her taste for music was just, and she both sung and played upon the lute with uncommon skill. Towards the end of her life she began to WILLIAM ROBERTSON. 211 grow fat, and her long confierr.ent and the coldness of the houses in which she had been imprisoned, b rough Jon a rheumatism, which deprived her of the use of her limbs. ' No man,'' says Brantome, " ever beheld her person without admiration and love, or will read her history without sorrow." History of Scotland. CHARACTER OF CHARLES V. As Charles was the first prince of his age in rank and dignity, the part which he acted, whether we consider the variety, or the success of his undertaking, was the most conspicuous. It is from an attentive obser- vation to his conduct, not from the exag- gerated praises of the Spanish historians, or the undistinguishing censure of the French, that a just idea of Charles's genius and abili- ties is to be collected. He possessed quali- ties so peculiar, as strongly mark his char- acter, and not only distinguish him from the princes who were his contemporaries, but account for that superiority over them which he so long maintained. In forming his schemes he was, by nature as well as by habit, cautious and considerate. Born with talents which unfolded themselves slowly, and were late in attaining maturity, he was accustomed to ponder every subject that de- manded his consideration with a careful and deliberate attention. He bent the whole force of his mind towards it, and dwelling upon it with serious application, undi- verted by pleasure, and hardly relaxed by any amusement, he revolved it in silence in his own breast: he then communicated the matter to his ministers; .and after hearing their opinions took his resolution with a de- cisive firmness which seldom follows such slow consultations. In consequence of this, Charles's measures, instead of resembling the desultory and irregular sallies of Henry VIII., or Francis I., had the appearance of a consistent system, in which all the parts were arranged, the effects were foreseen, and the accidents were provided for. His promptitude in execution was no less re- markable than his patience in deliberation. He consulted with phlegm, but he acted with vigour; and did not discover greater sagacity in his choice of the measures which it was proper to pursue, than fertility of genius in finding out the means for rendering his pursuit of them successful. Though he had naturally so little of the martial turn that during the most ardent and bustling period of life he remained in the cabinet in- active, yet when he chose at length to ap- pear at the head of his armies, his mind was so formed for vigorous exertions in every di- rection, that he acquired such knowledge in the art of war, and such talents for com- mand, as rendered him equal in reputation and success to the most able generals of the age. But Charles possessed in the most eminent degree the science which is of greatest importance to a monarch, that of knowing men, and of adapting their talents to the various departments which he allotted to them Fom the death of Chievres to the end of his reign, he employed no general in the field, no minister in the cabinet, no am- bassador to a foreign court, no governor of a province, whose abilities were inadequate to the trust which he reposed in them. Though destitute of that bewitching affa- bility of manner which gained Francis the hearts of all who approached his person, he was no stranger to the virtues which secured fidelity and attachment. He placed un- bounded confidence in his generals ; he re- warded their services with munificence; he neither envied their fame, nor discovered any jealousy of their power. Almost all the generals who conducted his armies may be placed on a level with those illustrious personages who have attained the highest eminence of military glory : and his advan- tages over his rivals are to be ascribed so manifestly to the superior abilities of the commanders whom he set in opposition to them, that this might seem to detract, in some degree, from his own merit, if the talent of discovering and employing such instruments were not the most undoubted proof of his capacity for government. There were, nevertheless, defects in his political character which must considerably abate the admiration due to his extraor- dinary talents. Charles's ambition was in- satiable ; and though there seems to be no foundation for an opinion prevalent in his own age, that he had formed the chimerical project of establishing an universal mon- archy in Europe, it is certain that his de- sire of being distinguished as a conqueror involved him in continual wars, which ex- hausted and oppressed his subjects, and left him little leisure for giving attention to the interior police and improvement of his king- doms, the great /objects of every prince who makes the happiness of his people the end of his government. History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. CHARACTER OF MARTIX LUTHER. As he [Luther] was raised up by Provi- dence to be the author of one of the greatest and most interesting revolutions recorded in history, there is not any person, perhaps, whose character has been drawn with such opposite colours. In his own age. one party, struck with horror and inflamed with rage, when they saw with what a daring hand he 212 WILLIAM ROBERTSON. overturned everything which they held to be sacred, or valued as beneficial, imputed to him not only all the defects and vices of a man, but the qualities of a demon. The other, warmed with the admiration and gratitude which they thought he merited as the restorer of light and liberty to the Chris- tian church, ascribed to him perfections above the condition of humanity, and viewed all his actions with a veneration bordering on that which should be paid only to those who are guided by the immediate inspira- tion of heaven. It is his own conduct, not the undistinguishing censure or the exag- gerated praise of his contemporaries, that ought to regulate the opinions of the present age concerning him. Zeal for what he re- garded as truth, undaunted intrepidity to maintain his own system, abilities, both na- tural and acquired, to defend his principles, and unwearied industry in propagating them, are virtues which shine so conspicuously in every part of his behaviour, that even his enemies must allow him to have possessed them in an eminent degree. To these may be added, with equal justice, such purity and even austerity of manners as became one who assumed the character of a reformer; such sanctity of life as suited the doctrine which he delivered; and such perfect disin- terestedness as affords no slight presumption of his sincerity. Superior to all selfish con- siderations, a stranger to the elegancies of life, and despising its pleasures, he left the honours and emoluments of the church to his disciples, remaining satisfied himself in his original state of professor in the univer- sity, and pastor of the town of Wittemberg, with the moderate appointments annexed to these offices. His extraordinary qualities were alloyed with no inconsiderable mix- ture of human frailty and human passions. These, however, were of such a nature that they cannot be imputed to malevolence or corruption of heart, but seem to have taken their rise from the same source with many of his virtues. His mind, forcible and ve- hement in all its operations, roused by great objects, or agitated by violent passions, broke out, on many occasions, with an im- petuosity which astonishes men of feebler spirits, or such as are placed in a more tran- quil situation. By carrying some praise- worthy dispositions to excess, he bordered sometimes on what was culpable, and was often betrayed into actions which exposed him to censure. His confidence that his own opin- ions were well-founded, approached to arro- gance ; his courage in asserting them, to rashness; his firmness in adhering to them, to obstinacy; and his zeal in confuting his adversaries, to rage and scurrility. Accus tomed himself to consider everything as subordinate to truth, he expected the same deference for it from other men ; and with- out making any allowances for their timidity or prejudices, he poured forth against such as disappointed him in this particular a tor- rent of invective mingled with contempt. Regardless of any distinction of rank or character when his doctrines were attacked, he chastised all his adversaries indiscrimi- nately with the same rough hand : neither the royal dignity of Henry VIII., nor the eminent learning and abilities of Erasmus, screened them from the same gross abuse with which he treated Tetzel or Eccius. But these indecencies of which Luther was guilty must not be imputed wholly to the violence of his temper. They ought to be charged in part on the manners of the age. Among a rude people, unacquainted with those maxims which, by putting con- tinual restraint on the passions of individuals, have polished society and rendered it agree- able, disputes of every kind were managed with heat, and strong emotions were uttered in their natural language without reserve or delicacy. At the same time the works of learned men were all composed in Latin, and they were not only authorized, by the ex- ample of eminent writers in that language, to use their antagonists with the most illib- eral scurrility, but in a dead tongue, inde- cencies of every kind appear less shocking than in a living language, whose idioms and phrases seein gross, because they are familiar. In passing judgment upon the characters of men, we ought to try them by the prin- ciples and maxims of their own age, not by those of another: for although virtue and vice are at all times the same, manners and customs vary continually. Some parts of Luther's behaviour which appear to us most culpable, gave no disgust to his contem- poraries. It was even by some of those qualities which we are now apt to blame, that he was fitted for accomplishing the great work which he undertook. To rouse mankind, when sunk in ignorance or super- stition, and to encounter the rage of bigotry armed with power, required the utmost ve- hemence of zeal, as well as a temper daring to excess. A gentle call would neither have reached nor excited those to whom it was addressed. A spirit more amiable but less vigorous than Luther's would have shrunk back from the dangers which he braved and surmounted. History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT. 213 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT, M.D., born in Dumbartonshire, Scotland, 1721, died at Leghorn, Italy, 1771, was the author of many works, of which the following are the best known : The Adventures of Rod- erick Random, Lond., 1748, 2 vols. 12mo; The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, 1751, 4 vols. 12mo: The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, 1752, 2 vols. 12mo; Don Quixote, Translated from the Spanish, 1755, 2 vols. 4to ; A Compendium of Authentic and Entertaining Voyages, 1757, 7 vols. 12rno: A Compleat History of England to 1748, '1757-17.58, 4 vols. 4to ; The" Adven- tures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, 1762, 2 vols. 12mo ; Gil Bias, Translated from the French of Le Sage. 1761, 4 vols. 12mo; Travels through France and Italy, 1766, 2 vols. 8vo; The Uistorv and Adventures of an Atom, 1749 (really 1769), 2 vols. 12mo; The Ex- pedition of Humphrey Clinker, 1771, 2 vols. 12mo; The Adventures of Telemachus, Translated from the French of Fenelon, 1776, 2 vols. 12mo. As a poet he is best known by his Tears of Scotland, 1746. His Plays and Poems, with Memoirs, 1777, 8vo. Of the collective editions of his Works we notice that of T. Roscoe, Lond., 1840, etc., med. 8vo, and Nhmuo's, Edin., 1869, r. 8vo. " Smollett seems to have had more touch of romance than Fielding, but not so profound and intuitive a knowledge of humanity's hidden treas- ures. There is nothing in his works comparable to Parson Adams ; but then, on the other hand, Fielding has not anything of the kind equal to Strap. Partridge is dry :ind hard, compared with this poor barber boy, with his generous overflow- ings of affection. Roderick Random, indeed, with its varied delineation of life, is almost a romance. Its hero is worthy of its name." SIR T. N. TAL- FOUIID: N?w Month. May., and in his Grit, and Mined/.. Writings. ''Smollett inherited from nature a strong sense of ridicule, a great fund of original humour, and a happy versatility of talent, by which he could accommodate his style to almost every species of writing. He could adopt, alternately, the sol- emn, the lively, the sarcastic, the burlesque, and the vulgar. To these qualifications he joined an inventive genius and a vigorous imagination." LORD WOODHOCSLEH (TYTLER): Essay on the Prin- ciples of Translation. FEAST IN THE MANNER OF THE ANCIENTS. Our young gentleman [Peregrine Pickle], by his insinuating behaviour, acquired the full confidence of the doctor, who invited him to an entertainment, which he intended to prepare in the manner of the ancients. Pickle, struck with this idea, eagerly em- braced the proposal, which he honoured with many encomiums, as a plan in all respects worthy of his genius and appre- hension ; and the day was appointed at some distance of time, that the treater might have leisure to compose certain pickles and confections which were not to be found among the culinary preparations of these degenerate days. AVith a view of rendering the physician's taste more conspicuous, and extracting from it the more diversion, Peregrine proposed that some foreigners should partake of the banquet; and the task being left to his care and discretion, he actually bespoke the com- pany of a French marquis, an Italian count, and a German baron, whom he knew to bo egregious coxcombs, and therefore more likely to enhance the joy of the entertain- ment. . . . The mutual compliments that passed on this occasion were scarce finished when a servant, coming into the room, announced dinner; and the entertainer led the way into another apartment; where they found along table, or rather two boards joined together, and furnished with a variety, of dishes, the steams of which had such evi- dent effect upon the nerves of the company that the marquis made frightful grimaces, under pretence of taking snuff; the Italian's eyes watered, the German's visage under- went several divstortions of feature ; our hero found means to exclude the odour from his sense of smelling by breathing only through his mouth ; and the poor painter, running into another room, plugged his nostrils with tobacco. The doctor himself, who was the only person then present whose organs were not discomposed, pointing to a couple of couches placed on each side of the table, told his guests that he was sorry he could not procure the exact triclinia of the ancients, which were somewhat different from these conveniences, and desired they would have the goodness to repose themselves without ceremony, each in his respective couchette, while he and his friend Mr. Pallet would place themselves upright at the ends, that they might have . che pleasure of serving those that lay along. This disposition, of which the strangers had no previous idea, disconcerted and perplexed them in a most ridiculous manner; the marquis and baron stood bowing to each other on pretence of disputing the lower seat, but, in reality, with a view of profiting by the example of each other; for neither of them understood the manner in which they were to loll ; and Peregrine, who enjoyed their confusion, handed the count to the other side, where, with the most mischievous politeness, he insisted upon his taking possession of the upper place. 214 TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT. In this disagreeable and ludicrous sus- pense, they continued acting a pantomime of gesticulations, until the doctor earnestly entreated them to waive all compliment and form, lest the dinner should be spoiled be- fore the ceremonial could be adjusted. Thus conjured, Peregrine took the lower couch on the left-hand side, laying himself, gently down, with his face towards the table. The marquis in imitation of this pattern (though lie would have much rather fasted three days than run the risk of discomposing his dress by such an attitude), stretched him- self upon the opposite place, reclining upon his elbow in a most painful and awkward situation, with his head raised above the end of the couch, that the economy of his hair might not suffer by the projection of his body. The Italian, being a thin, limber creature, planted himself next to Pickle, without sustaining any misfortune but that of his stocking being torn by a ragged nail of the seat, as he raised his legs on a level with the rest of his limbs. But the baron, who was neither so wieldly nor so supple in his joints as his companions, flounced him- self down with such precipitation, that his feet, suddenly tilting up, came in furious contact with the head of the marquis, and demolished every curl in a twinkling, while his own skull, at the same instant, descended upon the side of his couch with such vio- lence that his periwig was struck off, and the whole room filled with pulvilio. The drollery of distress that attended this disaster entirely vanquished the affected gravity of our young gentleman, who was obliged to suppress his laughter by cram- ming his handkerchief in his mouth; for the bare-headed German asked pardon with such ridiculous confusion, and the marquis admitted his apology with such rueful com- plaisance, as were sufficient to awake the mirth of a Qtiietist. This misfortune being repaired, as well as the circumstances of the occasion would per- mit, and every one settled according to the arrangement already described, the doctor graciously undertook to give some account of the dishes as they occurred, that the company might 1)0 directed in their choice ; and with an air of infinite satisfaction thus began: '"This here, gentlemen, is a boiled goose, served up in a sauce composed of pepper, lov- age, coriander, mint, rue, anchovies, and oil. I wish, for your sakes, gentlemen, it was one of the geese of Ferrara, so much celebrated among the ancients for the magnitude of their livers, one of which is said to have weighed two pounds ; with this food, exquisite as it was, did the tyrant Ileliogabalus regale his hounds. But I beg pardon, I had almost forgot the soup, which I hear is so necessary an article .at all tables in France. At each end there are dishes of the salacacabia of the Romans: one is made of parsley, penny- royal, cheese, pine-tops, honey, vinegar, brine, eggs, cucumbers, onions, and hen- livers : the other is much the same as the soup-maigre of this country. Then there is a loin of boiled veal with fennel and cara- way seed, on a pottage composed of pickle, oil, honey, and flour, and a curious hashis of the lights, liver, and blood of a hare, together with a dish of roasted pigeons. Monsieur le Baron, shall I help you to a plate of this soup?" The German, who did not at all disapprove of the ingredients, assented to the proposal, and seemed to relish the composition ; while the marquis, being asked by the painter which of the silly-kickabys he chose, was, in consequence of his desire, accommodated Avith a portion of the soup-maigre; and the count, in lieu of spoon-meat, of which he said he was no great admirer, supplied himself with apigeon, therein conforming to the choice of our young gentleman, Avhose example he de- termined to follow through the whole course of the entertainment. The Frenchman having swallowed the first spoonful, made a full pause: his throat swelled as if an egg had stuck in his gullet, his eyes rolled, and his mouth underwent a series of involuntary contractions and dila- tations. Pallet, who looked steadfastly at this connoisseur, Avith a view of consulting his taste before he himself would venture upon the soup, began to be disturbed at these emotions, and observed, with some concern, that the poor gentleman seemed to be going into a fit; when Peregrine assured him that these were symptoms of ecstacy, and, for further confirmation, asked the marquis how he found the soup. It was with infinite difficulty that his complaisance could so far master his disgust as to enable him to answer, "Altogether excellent, upon my honour!" And the painter being certi- fied of his approbation, lifted the spoon to his mouth Avithout scruple ; but far from justifying the eulogium of his taster, when this precious composition diffused itself upon his palate, he seemed to be deprived of all sense and motion, and sat like the leaden statue of some river god, with the liquor flowing out at both sides of the mouth. The doctor, alarmed at this indecent phe- nomenon, earnestly inquired into the cause of it; and when Pallet recovered his recol- lection, and swore that he would rather swal- low porridge made of burning brimstone than such an infernal mess as that which he had tasted, the physician, in his OAvn vindi- cation, assured the company that, except the usual ingredients, he had mixed nothing in TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT. 215 the soup but some sal-ammoniac, instoail of the usual nitrum, which could not now be procured ; and appealed to the marquis whether such a succedaneum was not an im- provement on the whole. The unfortunate petit-maitre, driven to the extremity of his condescension, acknowledged it to be a masterly refinement; and deeming himself obliged, in point of honour, to evince his sentiments by his practice, forced a few more mouthfuls of this disagreeable potion down his throat, till his stomach was so much offended that he was compelled to start up of a sudden, and in the hurry of his elevation overturned his plate into the bosom of the baron. The emergency of his occasions would not permit him to stay and make apologies for this abrupt behaviour, so that he flew into another apartment . . . and a chair at his desire being brought to the door, he slipped into it more dead than alive, conjuring his friend Pickle to make his peace with the company, and in partic- ular excuse him to the baron, on account of the violent fit of illness with which he had been seized. It was not without reason that he employed a mediator; for when our hero returned to the dining-room, the German had got up, and was under the hands of his own lacquey, who wiped the grease from a rich, embroidered waistcoat, while he, almost frantic with his misfortune, stamped upon the ground, and in high Dutch cursed the unlucky banquet, and the impertinent en- tertainer, who all this time, with great de- liberation, consoled him for the disaster by assuring him that the damage might be re- paired with some oil of turpentine and a hot iron. Peregrine, who could scarce refrain from laughing in his face, appeased his in- dignation by telling him how much the Whole company, and especially the marquis, was mortified at the accident; and the un- happy salacacabia being removed, the places were filled with two pies, one of dormice liquored with sirup of white poppies, which the doctor had substituted in the room of toasted poppy-seed, formerly eaten with honey as a dessert ; and the other composed of a hock of pork baked in honey. Pallet, hearing the first of these dishes described, lifted up his hands and eyes, and, witli signs of loathing and amazement, pro- nounced, "A pie made of dormice and sirup of poppies! . . . What beastly fellows those llomans were !" His friend checked him for his irreverent exclamation with a severe look, and recommended the veal, of which lie himself cheerfully ate, with such enco- miums to the company that the baron re- solved to imitate his example, after having called fora bumper of Burgundy, which the physician, for his sake, wished to have been the true wine of Falernum. The painter, seeing nothing else upon the table which he would venture to touch, made a merit of ne- cessity, and had recourse to the veal silso ; although he could not help saying that he would not give one slice of the roast beef of old England for all the dainties of a Roman emperor's table. But all the doctor's invi- tations and assurances could not prevail upon his guests to honour the hashis and the goose ; and that course was succeeded by another, in which he told them were divers of those dishes which among the ancients had obtained the appellation of politeles, or magnificent. ' That which smokes in the middle," said he, " is a sow's stomach, filled with a composition of minced pork, hog's brains, eggs, pepper, cloves, garlic, aniseed, rue, ginger, oil, wine, and pickle. On the right-hand side are the teats and belly of a sow, just farrowed, fried with sweet wine, oil, flour, lovage, and pepper. On the left is a fricassee of snails, fed or rather purged with milk. At that end, next Mr. Pallet, are fritters of pompions, lovage, origanum, and oil, and here are a couple of pullets, roasted and stuffed in the manner of Api- cius." The painter, who had by wry faces testi- fied his abhorrence of the sow's stomach, which he compared to a bagpipe, and the snails which had undergone purgation, no sooner heard him mention the roasted pul- lets than he eagerly solicited a wing of the fowl ; upon which the doctor desired he would take the trouble of cutting them up, and accordingly sent them round, while Mr. Pallet tucked the table-cloth under his chin, and brandished his knife and fork witli singular address ; but scarce were they set down before him, when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he called aloud, in a manifest disorder, "Zounds! this is the essence of a whole bed of garlic!" That he might not, however, disappoint or dis- grace the entertainer, he applied his instru- ments to one of the birds ; and when he opened up the cavity, was assaulted by such an irruption of intolerable smells that, with- out staying to disengage himself from the cloth, he sprung away with an exclamation . . . and involved the whole table in havoc, ruin, and confusion. Before Pickle could accomplish his escape he was sauced with a sirup of the dormice pie, which went to pieces in the general wreck : and as for the Italian count, he was overwhelmed by the sow's stomach, which, burstin government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the vari- ous ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength and reme- dies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In 236 EDMUND BURKE. tli.it deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the phy- sician, rather than the professor of meta- physics. The science of constructing a common- wealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experi- ence that can instruct us in that practical science ; because the real effects of moral causes are nob always immediate, but that which in the first instance is prejudicial may be excellent in its remoter operation, and its excellence may arise even from the ill effects it produces in the beginning. The reverse also happens ; and very plausible schemes, with very pleasing commencements, have often shameful and lamentable conclusions. In states there are often some obscure and almost latent causes, things which appear at first view of little moment, on which a very great part of its prosperity depend. The science of government being, therefore, so practical in itself, and intended for such practical purpose-, a matter which requires experience, and even more experience than any person can gain in his whole life, how- ever sagacious and observing he may be, it is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society, or on building it up again without having models and patterns of approved utility be- fore his eyes. Jtcjlectiuns on the Revolution in France, 1790. IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS. In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany upon Warren Has- tings, in this last moment of my application to you [the House of Lords]. My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my Lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my Lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent. My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I believe, my Lords, that the sun, in his beneficent pro- gress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, sepa- rated from a remote people by the material bounds and barriers of Nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community, all the Commons of England resenting, as their own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India. Do we want a tribunal? My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imag- ination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the crown under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority, what we all feel in real- ity and life, the beneficent powers .and pro- tecting justice of his Majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to the crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England wish an heir-apparent of the crown to be. We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject, offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch. My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here, those who have their own honour, the honour of their ancestors, and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves by various merits, by great military services which have extended the fame of this coun- try from the rising to the setting sun. We have those who, by various civil merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favour of their sovereign and the good opinion of their fellow- sulijects, and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters that were the other day upon a level with them now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sym- pathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they administered high, though subordinate, justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge and to strengthen with their votes those principles which have-distinguished the courts in which they have presided. My Lords, you have here also the lights of our religion, you have the bishops of England. My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church, in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that religion which says that their God THOMAS WAR TON. 237 is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is chanty, a religion which so much hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, He did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, hut in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the Person who was the master of Nature chose to appear Himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression, knowing that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself " the servant of all." My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with con- fidence, that ordered by the Commons, I im- peach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach him in the name of the Com- mons of Great Britain in Parliament assem- bled, whose Parliamentary trust he has be- trayed. I impeach him in the name of .all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonoured. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he lias subverted, whose properties he has de- stroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. Speech in Opening: Fourth Day. THOMAS WARTON, a brother of Joseph Warton, supra, born 172S, Professor of Poetry, at Oxford, 1757- 1767, instituted to the living of Kidding- ton. 1771, and presented to the donative of Hill Farrance. 1782, became Camden Pro- fessor of Ancient History and Poet-Laureate, both in 1785, and retained these posts until his death, 1790. Among his publications are Observations on the Faerie Queene of Spenser, Lond., 1754, 4to ; Inscriptionum Romanoruin Metricarum Delectus, accedunt XotuljB, 1758, 4to; Life and Literary Re- mains of Ralph Bathurst, M.D., Lond., 1761, Svo; Anthologiae Grascae, Oxon., 1766, 8vo; Theocritii Syracusii quae supersunt, etc., Oxon., 1770. 2 vols. 4to; Life of Sir Thomas Pope, Lond., 1772, 8vo ; The History of English Poetry, Lond., 1774-78-81, 3 vols. 4to ; and Portion I. of vol. iv., pp. 88 ; Poems, Lond., 1777, 8vo, and later ; Specimen of a History of Oxfordshire, 1782, 4to : pri- vately printed, 2d edit., Lond., 1783, 4to, 3d edit, Lond., 1815, 4to, 1. p. 4to. To the ordinary reader Warton is only now known by his History of English Poetry. " He loved poetry well, and he wrote its history well; that book being a mine." PHOFESSOR WIL- sox : li/nckw. Mncj , xxx. 483. " We have nothing historical as to our own poetry but the prolix volumes of Warton. They have ob- tained, in my opinion, full as much credit as they deserve : without depreciating a book in which so much may be found, and which has been so great a favourite with the literary part of the public, it may be observed that its errors as to fact, especially in names and dates, are extraordinarily frequent, and that the criticism, in points of taste, is not of a very superior kind." HALLAM: Lit. Hist, of Europe, Pi-ef. to 1st edit., 1837-39. POETRY OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. The age of Queen Elizabeth is commonly called the golden age of English poetry. It certainly may not improperly be styled the most poetical age of these annals. . Among the great features which strike us in the poetry of this period, are the predom- inancy of fable, of fiction, and fancy, and a predilection for interesting adventures and pathetic events. I will endeavour to assign and explain the cause of this characteristic distinction, which may chiefly be referred to the following prin- cipals, sometimes blended and sometimes op- erating singly : the revival and vernacular versions of the classics, the importation and translation of Italian novels, the visionary reveries or refinements of false philosophy, a degree of superstition sufficient for the purpose of poetry, the adoption of the ma- chineries of romance, and the frequency and the improvements ot allegoric exhibition in the popular spectacles. . When the corruptions and impostures of popery were abolished, the fashion of culti- vating the Greek and Roman learning be- came universal : and the literary character was no longer appropriated to scholars by profession, but assumed by the nobility and gentry. The ecclesiastics had found it their interest to keep the languages of .antiquity to themselves, and men were eager to know what had been so long injuriously con- cealed. Truth propagates truth, and the mantle of mystery was removed not only 238 THOMAS WAR TON. from religion but from literature. The laity, who had now been taught to assert their natural privileges, became impatient of the old monopoly of knowledge, and de- manded admittance to the usurpations of the clergy. The general curiosity for new discoveries, heightened either by just or imaginary idea of the treasures contained in the Greek and Roman writers, excited all persons of leisure and fortune to study the classics. The pedantry of the present age was the politeness of the last. An ac- curate comprehension of the phraseology and peculiarities of the ancient poets, his- torians, and orators, which yet seldom went further than a, kind of technical erudition, was an indispensable and almost the prin- cipal object in the circle of a gentleman's education. Every young lady of fashion was carefully instituted in classical letters; and the daughter of a duchess was taught, not only to distil strong waters, but to con- strue Greek. Among the learned females of high distinction, Queen Elizabeth her- self was the most conspicuous. Roger As- chain, her preceptor, speaks with rapture of her astonishing progress in the Greek nouns ; and declares with no small degree of triumph, that, during a long residence at Windsor Cas- tle, she was accustomed to read more Greek in a day than "some prebendary of that church did Latin in one week ;" and al- though a princess looking out words in a lexicon, and writing down hard phrases from Plutarch's Lives, may be thought at present a more incompatible and extraordi- nary character, than a canon of Windsor understanding no Greek and but little Latin, yet Elizabeth's passion for these acquisitions was then natural, and resulted from the genius and habitudes of her age. The books of antiquity being thus famil- iarized to the great, everything was tinc- tured with ancient history and mythology. The heathen gods, although discountenanced by the Calvinists, on a suspicion of their tendency to cherish and revive a spirit of idolatry, came into general vogue. When the queen paraded through a country town, almost every pageant was a pantheon. When she paid a visit at the house of any of her nobility, at entering the hall she was saluted by the Penates, and conducted to her privy- chamber by Mercury. Even the pastry-cooks were expert mythologists. At dinner, select transformations of Ovid's Metamorphoses were exhibited in confectionery; and the splendid icing of an immense historic plum- cake was embossed with a delicious basso- relievo of the destruction of Troy. In the afternoon, when she condescended to walk in the garden, the lake was covered with Tritons and Nereids; the pages of the fam- ily were converted into wood-nymphs who peeped from every bower; and the footmen gambolled over the lawns in the figure of satyrs. 1 speak it without designing to insinuate any unfavourable suspicions, but it see?ns difficult to say why Elizabeth's virginity should have been made the theme of per- petual and excessive panegyric: nor does it immediately appear that there is less merit or glory in a married than a maiden queen. Yet, the next morning, after sleeping in a room hung with a tapestry of the vovugo of ^Eneas, when her Majesty hunted in the park, she was met by Diana, who, pronoun- cing our royal prude to be the brightest par- agon of unspotted chastity, invited her to groves free from the intrusions of Actaeon. The truth is, she was so profusely flattered for this virtue because it was esteemed the characteristical ornament of the heroines, as fantastic honour was the chief pride of the champions, of the old barbarous ro- mance. It was in conformity to the senti- ments of chivalry, which still continued in vogue, that she was celebrated for chastity : the compliment, however, was paid in a classical allusion. Queens must be ridiculous when they would appear as women. The softer attrac- tions of sex vanish on the throne. Eliza- beth sought all occasions of being extolled for her beauty, of which, indeed, in the prime of her youth, she possessed but a small share, whatever 7night have been her pretensions to absolute virginity. Notwith- standing her exaggerated habits of dignity and ceremony, and a certain affectation of imperial severity, she did not perceive this ambition of being complimented for beauty to be an idle and unpardonable levity, to- tally inconsistent with her high station and character. As she conquered all nations with her arms, it matters not what were the triumphs of her eyes. Of what consequence was the complexion of the mistress of the world? Not less vain of her person than her politics, this stately coquette, the guar- dian of the Protestant faith, the terror of the sea, the mediatrix of the factions of France, and the scourge of Spain, was in- finitely mortified if an ambassador, at the first audience, did not tell her she was the h'rtest woman in Europe. No negotiation succeeded unless she was addressed as a goddess. Encomiastic harangues drawn from this topic, even on the supposition of youth and beauty, were surely superfluous, unsuitable, and unworthy ; and were of- fered and received with an equal impropri- ety. Yet when she rode through the streets of Norwich, Cupid, at the command of the mayor and alderman, advancing from a THOMAS WAR TON. 239 group of gods who had left Olympus to grace the procession, gave her a golden arrow, the most effective weapon of his well-furnished quiver, which under the in- fluence of such irresistible charms was sure to wound the most obdurate heart. " A gift," says honest Ilolinshed, "which her majesty, now verging to her fiftieth year, received very thankfully." In one of the fulsome interludes at court, where she was present, the singing-boys of her chapel pre- sented the story of the three rival goddesses on Mount Ida, to which her Majesty was ingeniously added as a fourth ; and Paris was arraigned in form for adjudging the golden apple to Venus which was due to the queen alone. This inundation of classical pedantry soon infected our poetry. Our writers, already trained in the school of fancy, were sud- denly dazzled with these novel imagina- tions, and the divinities and heroes of pagan antiquity decorated every composition. The perpetual allusions to ancient fable were often introduced without the least regard to propriety. Shakspere's Mrs. Page, who is not intended in any degree to be a learned or an affected lady, laughing at the cum- bersome courtship of her corpulent lover Falstaff, says, " I had rather be a giantess and lie under Mount Pelion." This famil- iarity with the pagan story was not, how- ever, so much owing to the prevailing study of the original authors, as to the numerous English versions of them which were con- sequently made. The translation of the classics, which now employed every pen, gave a currency and a celerity to these fancies, and had the effect of diffusing them among the people. No sooner were they delivered from the pale of the scholastic languages, than they acquired a general notoriety. Ovid's Metamorphoses just trans- lated by Golding, to instance no further, dis- closed a new world of fiction even to the illiterate. As we had now all the learned fabrics in English, learned allusions, Avhether in a poem or a pageant, were no longer ob- scure and unintelligible to common readers and common spectators. And here we are led to observe that at this restoration of the classics, we were first struck only with their fabulous inventions. We did not attend to their regularity of design and justness of sentiment. A rude age, beginning to read these writers, imitated their extravagances, not their natural beauties. And these, like other novelties, were pursued to a blameable excess. I have given a sketch of the introduction of classical stories, in the splendid show ex- hibited at the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn. But that is a rare and a premature instance ; and the pagan fictions are there complicated with the barbarisms of the Catholic worship, and the doctrines of scholastic theology. Classical learning was not then so widely spread either by study or translation as to bring these learned spectacles into fashion, to frame them with sufficient skill, and to present them with propriety. Another capital source of the poetry peculiar to this period consisted in the numerous translations of Italian tales into English. These narratives, not dealing altogether in romantic inventions, but in real life and manners, and in artful ar- rangements of fictitious yet probable events, afforded a new gratification to a people which yet retained their ancient relish for tale-telling, and became the fashionable amusement of all who professed to read for pleasure. This gave rise to innumer- able plays and poems which would not otherwise have existed ; and turned the thoughts of our writers to new inventions of the same kind. Before these books be- came common, affecting situations, the com- bination of incident, and the pathos of catas- trophe, were almost unknown. Distress, especially that arising from the conflicts of the tender passion, had noc yet been shown in its most interesting forms. It was hence our poets, particularly the dramatic, bor- rowed ideas of a legitimate plot, and the complication of facts necessary to consti- tute a story either of the tragic or comic species. In proportion as knowledge in- creased, genius had wanted subjects and materials. These species usurped the place of legends and chronicles. And although the old historical songs of the minstrels contained much bold adventure, heroic en- terprise, and strong touches of rude delinea- tion, yet they failed in that multiplication and disposition of circumstances, and in that description of characters and events approaching nearer to truth and reality, which were demanded by a more discerning and curious age. Even the rugged features of the original Gotbic romance were soft- ened by this sort of reading ; and the Italian pastoral, yet with some mixture of the kind of incidents described in Ileliodorus's Ethi- opic History, now newly translated, was en- grafted on the feudal manners in Sydney's Arcadia. But the Reformation had not yet destroyed every delusion, nor disenchanted all the strongholds of superstition. A few dim characters were yet legible in the moulder- ing creed of tradition. Every goblin of ignorance did not vanish at the first glim- merings of the morning of science. Reason suffered a few demons still to linger, which 240 THOMAS WAR TON. she chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hov- ering around who brought with them airs from heaven, or blasts from hell: that the ghost was duly released from his prison of torment at the sound of the curlew; and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this cre- dulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound speculation. Prospero had not yet broken and buried his staff, nor drowned his book deeper than did ever plum- met sound. It was now that the alchymist, and the judicial astrologer, conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came ob- sequious to his call, and was bound to ac- complish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers to evoke the queen of the fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendent lustre. The Shakspere of a more instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the caldron of incantation. Undoubtedly most of these notions were credited and entertained in a much higher degree in the preceding periods. But the arts of composition had not then made a sufficient progress, nor would the poets of those periods have managed them with so much address and judgment. We were now arrived at that point when the national cre- dulity, chastened by reason, had produced a sort of civilised superstition, and left a set of traditions, fanciful enough for poetic deco- ration, and yet not too violent and chimerical for common sense. Ilobbes, although no friend to this doctrine, observes' happily, " In a good poem both judgment and fancy are required ; but the fancy must be more eminent, because they please for the extravagancy, but ought not to displease by indiscretion." In the mean time the Gothic romance, al- though somewhat shook by the classical fictions, and by the tales of Boccace and Bandello, still maintained its ground ; and the daring machineries of giants, dragons, and enchanted castles, borrowed from the magic storehouse of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso, began to be employed by the epic muse. The Gothic and pagan fictions were now frequently blended and incorporated. The Lady of the Lake floated in the suite of Neptune before Queen Elizabeth at Ken- ilworth, and assumes the semblance of a sea- nymph ; and Hecate, by an easy association, conducts the rites of the weird sisters in Macbeth. Allegory had been derived from the re- ligious dramas into our civil spectacles. The masques and pageantries of the age of Elizabeth were not only furnished by the heathen divinities, but often by the virtues and vices impersonated, significantly dec- orated, accurately distinguished by their proper types, and represented by living ac- tors. The ancient symbolical shows of this sort began now to lose their old barbarism and a mixture of religion, and to assume a degree of poetical elegance and precision. Nor was it only in the conformation of par- ticular figures that much fancy was shown, but in the contexture of some of the fables or devices presented by groups of ideal per- sonages. These exhibitions quickened cre- ative invention, and reflected back on poetry what poetry had given. From their fa- miliarity and public nature they formed a national taste for allegory : and the alle- gorical poets were now writing to the people. Even romance was turned into this channel. In the " Faery Queen" allegory is wrought upon chivalry, and the feats and figments of Arthur's Round Table are moralized. The virtues of magnificence and chastity are here personified ; but they are imaged with the forms and under the agency of romantic knights and damsels. What was an after- thought in Tasso appears to have been Spenser's premeditated and primary design. In the mean time we must not confound these moral combatants of the ''Faery Queen" with some of its other embodied abstrac- tions, which are purely and professedly alle- gorical. It may here be added that only a feAv crit- ical treatises, and but one Art of Poetry were now written. Sentiment and images were not absolutely determined by the ca- nons of composition, nor was genius awed by the consciousness of a future and final arraignment at the tribunal of taste. A certain dignity of inattention to niceties ia now visible in our writers. Without too closely consulting a criterion of correctness, every man indulged his own capricious- ness of invention. The poet's appeal was chiefly to his own voluntary feelings, his own immediate and peculiar mode of con- ception ; and this freedom of thought was often expressed in an undisguised frankness of diction. No satires, properly so called, were written till towards the latter end of the queen's reign, and then but a few. Pictures drawn at large of the vices of the times did not suit readers who loved to wander in the regions of artificial manners. The muse, like the people, was too solemn and reserved, GEORGE IIORNE. 241 too ceremonious and pedantic, to stoop to common life. Satire is the poetry of a na- tion highly polished. The importance of the female character was not yet acknowledged, nor were women admitted into the general commerce of so- ciety. The effect of that intercourse had not imparted a comic air to poetry, nor soft- ened the severer tone of our versification with the levities of gallantry and the famil- iarities of compliment, sometimes, perhaps operating on serious subjects, and imper- ceptibly spreading themselves in the gen- eral habits of style and thought. I do not mean to insinuate that our poetry has suffered from the great change of manners, which this assumption of the gentler sex, or rather the improved state of female ed- ucation, has produced, by giving elegance and variety to life, by enlarging the sphere of conversation, an I by multiplying the topics and enriching the stores of wit and humour; but I am marking the peculiarities of composition, and my meaning was to sug- gest that the absence of so important a cir- cumstance from the modes and constitution of ancient life must have influenced the contemporary poetry. All or most of these circumstances con- tributed to give a descriptive, a picturesque, and a figurative cast to the poetical language. This effect appeal-seven in the prose compo- sitions of the reign of Elizabeth. In the subsequent age prose became the language of poetry. In the mean time general knowledge was increasing with a wide diffusion and a hasty rapidity. Books began to be multiplied, and a variety of the most useful and rational topics had been discussed in our own lan- guage. But science had not made too great advances. On the whole we were now ar- rived at that period, propitious to the opera- tions of original and true poetry, when the coyness of fancy was not always proof against the approaches of reason ; when genius was rather directed than governed by judgment; and when taste and learning had so far only disciplined imagination as to suffer its excesses to pass without censure or control for the sake of the beauties to which they were allied. The History of English Poetry. GEORGE HORNE, D.D., a divine of the Ilutchinsonian school, born 1730, became President of Magdalene Col- lege, Oxford, 1768, Vice-Chancel lor of the University of Oxford, 1776, Dean of Canter- bury, 1781, Bishop of Norwich, 1790, died 16 1792. He published many theological trea- tises, mostly controversial, but is now only known by A Commentary on the Book of Psalms, 1771, 2 vols. 4to; Oxf., 1776, 2 vols. 4to ; with Essay, by Rev. Ed. Irving, Glasg., 3 vols. 12mo; Lond., 1836, 3 vols. 12mo; 1848, 2 vols. 12mo; 1848, 8vo; 1852, 8vo; 1856, 8vo ; and other editions. Discourses 1779-94, 4 vols. 8vo. Works, with Life, by W. Jones, 1795-99, 6 vols. 8vo ; 1809, 6 void. 8vo; 1812, 6 vols. 8vo ; 1824, 3 vols. 8vo ; 1831, 2 vols. 8vo ; 1845, 2 vols. 8vo. " This Commentary on the Psalms is his capital performance, and the one by which he will be known so long as piety and elegant learning are loved in England. It is altogether a beautiful work. The preface is a masterpiece of composition and good sense. . . . Perhaps he carries his applications to the Messiah and his church occasionally rather far ; but this is less hurtful than the opposite extreme, which has more generally been adopted.'' ORME : VM. Bib. THE BEAUTIES OF THE PSALMS. Greatness confers no exemption from the cares and sorrows of life ; its share of them frequently bears a melancholy proportion to its exaltation. This the Israelitish monarch experienced. He sought in piety that peace which he could not find in empire, and alle- viated the disquietudes of state with the ex- ercises of devotion. His invaluable Psalms convey those com- forts to others which they afforded to himself. Composed upon particular occasions, yet de- signed for general use; delivered out as services for Israelitics under the Law, yet no less adapted to the circumstances of Christians under the Gospel, they present religion to us in the most engaging dress ; communicating truths which philosophy could never investigate, in a style which poetry can never equal ; while history is made the vehicle of prophecy, and creation lends all its charms to paint the glories of redemption. Calculated alike to profit and to please, they inform the understanding, elevate the affections, and entertain the im- agination. Indited under the influence of Him to whom all hearts are known, and all events foreknown, they suit mankind in all situations, grateful as the manna which de- scended from above, and conformed itself to every palate. The fairest productions of human wit, after a few perusals, like gath- ered flowers, wither in our hands, and lose their fragrancy : but these unfading plants of paradise become, as we are accustomed to them, still more and more beautiful ; their bloom appears to be daily heightened ; fresh odours are emitted, and new sweets extracted from them. He who hath once tasted their excellencies will desire to taste them yet 242 WILLIAM COWPER. again ; and he who tastes them oftenest will relish them best. And now, could the author flatter himself that any one would take half the pleasure in reading the following exposition which he hath taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labour. The employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, the din of politics, and the noise of folly ; vanity and vexation flew away for a season, care and disquietude came not near his dwelling. He rose fresh as the morning to his task ; the silence of the night invited him to pursue it; and he can truly say that food and rest were not preferred before it. Every Psalm improved infinitely upon his acquaintance with it, and no one gave him uneasiness but the last; for then he grieved that his work was done. Happier hours than those which have been spent in these meditations on the Songs of Sion he never expects to see in this world. Very pleas- antly did they pass, and moved smoothly and swiftly along : for when thus engaged, he counted no time. They are gone, but have left a relish and a fragrance upon the mind, and the remembrance of them is sweet. A Commentary on the Book of Psalms : Preface. WILLIAM COWPER, born 1731, from his tenth to his seventeenth year was educated at Westminster School, whore he acquired an intimate acquaintance with the classics; nominally studied, but really neglected, law for three years, and afterwards resided for eleven years at the Temple, and in the last of those years (1763) was appointed Reading Clerk and Clerk of the Committees in the House of Lords, but by his dread of appearing at the bar of the House for examination was driven to at- tempts at suicide; subsequently resided in retirement, chiefly at Olney, and after re- peated attacks of melancholia, died in 1800. Cowper is chiefly known as a poet, as the author of Truth, Table Talk, Hope, Charity, Conversation, etc. (all published in one vol- ume, Lond., 1782. 8 vo). John Gilpin, 1782, The Task. Lond.. 1784, 12mo, and increased his fame by his translation of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, in English Blank Verse, Lond., 1791.2 vols. 4to, 2d edit., 1802, 4 vols. 8vo ; but his Letters entitle him to a high position among the English Prose Writers. " I have always considered the Letters of Mr. Cowper as the finest specimen of the epistolary style in our language. . . . To an air of inimitable ease and carelessness they unite a high degree of correctness, such as could result only from the clearest intellect, combined with the most finished taste. I have scarcely found a single word which is capable of being exchanged for a better. . . . In iny humble opinion the study of Cowper's prose may on this account be as useful in forming the tnste of young persons as his poetry." REV. ROBERT HALL TO REV. Dn. JOHNSON. THE FUTURE STATE OF THE HEATHEX. MONDAY, April 23, 1781. To THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. MY DEAR FRIEND, Having not the least doubt of your ability to execute just such a preface as I should wish to see prefixed to my publication, and being convinced that you have no good foundation for those which you yourself entertain upon the subject, I neither withdraw my requisition, nor abate one jot of the earnestness with which I made it. I admit the delicacy of the occa- sion, but am far from apprehending that you will therefore find it difficult to succeed. You can draw a hair-stroke where another man would make a blot as broad as a six- pence. With respect to the Heathen and what I have said about them, the subject is of that kind which every man must settle for him- self, and on which we can proceed no further than hypothesis and opinion will carry us. I was willing, however, to obviate an objec- tion I foresaw, and to do it in a way not de- rogatory from the truth of the Gospel, yet at the same time as conciliatory as possible to the prejudices of the objector. After all, indeed, I see no medium : either we must suppose them lost, or if saved, saved by vir- tue of the only propitiation. They seem to me, on the principles of equity, to stand in much the same predicament, and to be entitled (at least according to human ap- prehensions of justice) to much the same allowance as Infants: both partakers of a sinful nature, and both unavoidably igno- rant of the remedy. Infants I suppose uni- versally saved, because impeccable ; and the virtuous Heathen, having had no oppor- tunity to sin against Revelation, and having made a conscientious use of the light of Nature, I should suppose saved too. But I drop a subject on which I could say a good deal more, for two reasons : first, because I am writing a letter, and not an essay ; and, secondly, because after all I might write about it, I could come to no certain con- clusion. I once had thoughts of annexing a few smaller pieces to those I have sent you ; but having only very few that I account as worthy to bear them company, and those for the most part on subjects less calculated for utility than amusement, I changed my mind. If hereafter I should accumulate a sufficient number of these minutiae to make a miscel- WILLIAM COWPER. 243 laneous volume, which is not impossible, I may perhaps collect and print them. I am much obliged for the interest you take in the appearance of my Poems, and am much pleased by the alacrity with which you do it. Your favourable opinion of them affords me a comfortable presage with re- spect to that of the public ; for though I make allowance for your partiality to rne and mine, because mine, yet I am sure you would not suffer me unadmonished to add myself to the multitude of insipid rhymers with whose productions the world is already too much pestered. ON HIS OWN POEMS. Oct. 19, 1781. To MRS. COWPER. MY DEAR COUSIN, Your fear lest I should think you unworthy of my correspondence, on account of your delay to answer, may change sides now, and more properly belongs to me. It is long since I received your last, and yet I believe I can say truly, that not a post has gone by me since the receipt of it that has not reminded me of the debt I owe you, for your obliging and unreserved com- munications both in prose and verse, espe- cially for the latter, because I consider them as marks of your peculiar confidence. The truth is, I have been such a verse-maker myself, and so busy in preparing a volume for the press [Truth, Table Talk, Hope, Charity, Conversation, etc., Lond., 1782, 8vo] which I imagine will make its appear- ance in the course of the winter, that I hardly had leisure to listen to the calls of any other engagement. It is, however, fin- ished, and gone to the printer's, and I have nothing now to do with it but to correct the sheets as they are sent to me, and consign it over to the judgment of the public. It is a bold undertaking at this time of day, when so many writers of the greatest abilities have gone before, who seem to have anticipated every valuable subject, as well as all the graces of poetical embellishment, to step forth into the world in the character of a bard, especially when it is considered that luxury, idleness, and vice have debauched the public taste, and that nothing hardly is welcome but childish fiction, or what has at least a tendency to excite a laugh. I thought, however, that I had stumbled upon some subjects that had never before been poetically treated, and upon some others to which I imagined it would not be difficult to give an air of novelty by the manner of treating them. My sole drift is to be use- ful ; a point which, however, I knew I should in vain a,im at unless I could be likewise entertaining. I have therefore fixed these two strings upon my bow, and by the help of both have done my best to send my arrow to the mark. My readers will hardly have begun to laugh before they will be called upon to correct that levity, and peruse me with a more serious air. As to the effect, I leave it alone in His hands who alone can produce it : neither prose nor verse can reform the manners of a dissolute age, much less can they inspire a sense of religious obligation, unless assisted and made efficacious by the power who super- intends the truth he has vouchsafed to im- part. You made my heart ache with a sympa- thetic sorrow when you described the state of your mind on occasion of your late visit into Hertfordshire. Had I been previously informed of your journey before you made it I should have been able to have foretold all your feelings with the most unerring certainty of prediction. You will never cease to feel upon that subject : but with your principles of resignation, and acquies- cence in the divine will, you will always feel as becomes a Christian. We are for- bidden to murmur, but we are not forbidden to regret ; and whom we loved tenderly while living we may still pursue with an affectionate remembrance without having any occasion to charge ourselves with rebel- lion against the sovereignty that appointed a separation. A day is coining when I am confident you will see and know that mercy to both parties was the principal agent in a scene the recollection of which is still painful. W. C. LORD THURLOW, JOSEPHUS, AND TACITUS. Nov. 21, 1783. To THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN. MY DEAR WILLIAM, An evening unex- pectedly retired, and which your mother and I spend without company (an occur- rence far from frequent), affords me a favour- able opportunity to write by to-morrow's post, which else I could not have found. You are very good to consider my literary necessities with so, much attention, and I feel proportionally grateful. Blair's Lec- tures (though I suppose they must make a part of my private studies, not being ad captam fceminaruni) will be perfectly welcome. You say you felt my verses. I assure you that in this you followed my example, for I felt them first. A man's lordship is nothing to me, any farther than in connex- ion with qualities that entitle him to my respect. If he [Lord Thurlow] thinks him- self privileged by it to treat me with neglect, I am his humble servant, and shall never be at a loss to render him an equivalent. . . . 244 GEOR GE WA SUING TON. I Avill not, however, belie my knowledge of mankind so much as to seem surprised at a treatment which I had abundant reason to expect. To these men, with whom I was once intimate, and for many years, I am no longer necessary, no longer convenient, or in any respect an object. They think of me as of the man in the moon ; and whether I have a lantern, or a dog and faggot, or whether I have neither of those desirable accommodations, is to them a matter of per- fect indifference : upon that point we are agreed ; our indifference is mutual ; and were I to publish again, which is not pos- sible, I should give them a proof of it. L'Estrange's Joseph us has lately fur- nished us with evening lectures. But the historian is so tediously circumstantial, and the translator so insupportably coarse and vulgar, that we are all three weary of him. IIow would Tacitus have shone upon such a subject! great master as he was of the art of description, concise without ob- scurity, and affecting without being poetical. But so it was ordered, and for wise reasons no doubt, that the greatest calamities any people ever .suffered, and an accomplish- ment of one of the most signal prophecies in the Scripture, should be recorded by one of the worst writers. The man was a tem- porizer too, and courted the favour of his Roman masters at the expense of his own creed ; or else an infidel, and absolutely disbelieved it. You will think me very dif- ficult to please : I quarrel with Josephus for the want of elegance, and with some of our modern historians for having too much. With him, for running right forward like a gazette, without stopping to make a single observation by the way ; and with them for pretending to delineate characters that ex- isted two thousand years ago. and to dis- cover the motives by which they were in- fluenced, witli the same precision as if they had been their contemporaries. Simplicity is become a very rare quality in a writer. In the decline of great kingdoms, and where refinement in all the arts is carried to an excess, I suppose it is always rare. The latter Roman writers are remarkable for false ornament: they were yet no doubt admired by the readers of their own day : and with respect to authors of the present sera the most popular among them appear to me equally censurable on the same ac- count. Swift and Addison were simple; Pope knew how to be so, but was fre- quently tinged with affectation ; since their day I hardly know a celebrated writer who deserves the character. Your mother wants room for a postscript, BO my lecture must conclude abruptly. Yours, W. C. GEORGE WASHINGTON, the illustrious Commander-in-Chief of the American armies during the Revolutionary war. born on Pope's Creek, county of West- moreland, Virginia, Feb. 22, 1732, died at Mount Vernon, Dec. 14, 1799, wrote a great deal and wrote very well ; and therefore not for the first time we rank him with authors. " He read little, but with close attention. What- ever he took in hand he applied himself to with ease; and his papers which have been preserved show how he almost imperceptibly gained the power of writing correctly, always expressing himself with clearness and directness, often with felicity of language and grace." GEORGE BAN- CROFT: Hint, of the United States, vol. vii., 1858. ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE OF TREXTOX. HEAD-QUARTERS, MORRISTOWN, Dec. 27, 1776. To THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS. SIR, I have the pleasure of congratula- ting you upon the success of an enterprise which I had formed against a detachment of the enemy lying in Trenton, and which was executed yesterday morning. The evening of the twenty-fifth I ordered the troops intended for this service to parade back of McKonkey's ferry, that they might begin to pass as soon as it grew dark, imag- ining we should be able to throw them all over, with the necessary artillery, by twelve o'clock, and that we might easily arrive at Trenton by five in the morning, the distance being about nine miles. But the quantity of ice made that night impeded the passage of the boats so much that it was three o'clock before the artillery could all be got over; and near four before the troops took up their line of march. This made me despair of surprising the town, as I well knew we could not reach it before the day was fairly broke. But as I was certain there was no making a retreat without being discovered, and harassed on re-passing the river, I determined to push on at all events. I formed my detachment into two divisions, one to march by the lower or river road, the other by the upper or Pennington road. As the divisions had nearly the same distance to march, I ordered each of them, immediately upon forcing the out-guards, to push directly into the town, that they might charge the enemy before they had time to form. The upper division arrived at the enemy's advanced post exactly at eight o'clock : and in three minutes after I found, from the fire on the lower road, that that division had also got up. The out-guards made but small opposition, though, for their numbers, they behaved very well, keeping up a constant GEORGE WASHINGTON. 245 retreating fire from behind houses. We presently saw their main body formed ; but from their motions, they seemed undeter- mined how to act. Being hard pressed by our troops, who had already got possession of their artillery, they attempted to file off by a road on their right, leading to Princeton. But, perceiving their intention, I threw a body of troops in their way ; which immediately checked them. Finding, from our disposition, that they were surrounded, and that they must inevitably be cut to pieces if they made any further resistance, they agreed to lay down their arms. The number that submitted in this manner was twenty-three officers and eight hundred and eighty-six men. Colonel llahl the commanding officer, and seven others, were found wounded in the town. I do not exactly know how many they had killed : but 1 fancy not above twenty or thirty, as they never made any regular stand. Our loss is very trifling indeed, only two officers and one or two privates wounded. I find that the detachment consisted of the three Hessian regiments of Lanspach, Kniphausen, and Rahl, amounting to about fifteen hundred men, and a troop of British light horse: but immediately upon the be- ginning of the attack, all those who were not killed or taken pushed directly down towards Bordentown. These would like- wise have fallen into our iiands could my plan have been completely carried into exe- cution. General Ewingwas to have crossed before day at Trenton ferry, and taken possession of the bridge leading out of town : but the quantity of ice was so great that, though he did every thing in his power to effect it, he could not get over. This difficulty also hindered General Cadwallader from crossing with the Pennsylvania militia from Bristol. lie got part of his foot over : but finding it impossible to embark his artillery, he was obliged to desist. I am fully confident that, could the troops under Generals Ewing and Cadwallader have passed the river, I should have been able, with their assistance, to have driven the enemy from all their posts below Trenton. But the numbers I had with me being in- ferior to theirs below me, and a strong bat- talion of light infantry being at Princeton above me, I thought it most prudent to re- turn the same evening with the prisoners and the artillery we had taken. We found no stores of any consequence in the town. Injustice to the officers and men. I must add that their behaviour upon this occasion reflects the highest honour upon them. The difficulty of passing the river in a very severe night, and their march through a violent storm of snow and hail, did not in the least abate their ardour: but when they came to the charge each seemed to vie with the other in pressing forward : and were I to give a preference to any particular corps I should do great injustice to the others. Colonel Baylor, my first aide-de-camp, will have the honour of delivering this to you ; and from him you may be made ac- quainted with many other particulars. His spirited behaviour upon every occasion re- quires me to recommend him to your par- ticular notice. I have the honour to be, etc., G. W. THE BATTLE OF PRINCETON. PLUCKEMIN, January 5, 1777. To THE PRESIDENT OF CONGRESS. SIR, I have the honour to inform you that since the date of my last from Trenton, I have removed with the army under my command to this place. The difficulty of crossing the Delaware, on account of the ice, made our passage over tedious, and gave the enemy an opportunity of drawing in their several cantonments, and assembling their whole force at Princeton. Their large piquets advanced towards Trenton, their great preparations, and some intelligence I had received, added to their knowledge that the first of January brought on a disso- lution of the best part of our army, gave me the strongest reasons to conclude that an attack upon us was meditating. Our situa- tion was most critical and our force small. To remove immediately was again destroy- ing every dawn of hope which had begun to revive in the breasts of the Jersey militia; and to bring those troops which had first crossed the Delaware, and were lying at Crosswix's, under General Cadwallader, and those under General Mifliin at Bordentown (amounting in the whole to about three thousand six hundred), to Trenton, was to bring them to an exposed place. One of the two, however, was unavoidable : the latter was preferred, and frhey were ordered to join us at Trenton, which they did, by a night inarch, on the first instant. On the second, according to my expec- tation, the enemy began to advance upon us ; and, after some skirmishing, the head of their column reached Trenton about four o'clock, whilst their rear was as far back as Maidenhead. They attempted to pass San- pink Creek, which runs through Trenton, at different places; but finding the fords guarded, halted and kindled their fires. We were drawn up on the other side of the creek. In this situation we remained till dark, cannonading the enemy, and receiving 246 RICHARD CUMBERLAND. the fire of their field-pieces, which did us but little damage. Having by this time discovered that the enemy were greatly superior in number, and that their design was to surround us, I or- dered all our baggage to be removed silently to Burlington soon after dark ; and at twelve o'clock, after renewing our fires, and leaving guards at the bridge in Trenton, and other passes on the same stream above, marched by a roundabout road to Princeton, where I knew they could not have much force left, and might have stores. One thing I was certain of, that it would avoid the appear- ance of a retreat (which it was of course, or to run the hazard of the whole army being cut off), whilst we might, by a fortunate stroke, withdraw General Howe from Tren- ton, and give some reputation to our arms. Happily, we succeeded. We found Prince- ton about sunrise, with only three regi- ments, and three troops of light horse in it, two of which were on their march to Tren- ton. These three regiments, especially the two first, made a gallant resistance, and in killed, wounded, and prisoners, must have lost five hundred men : upwards of one hun- dred of them were left dead on the field ; and, with what I have with me, and what were taken in the pursuit and carried across the Delaware, there are near three hundred prisoners, fourteen of whom are officers, all British. This piece of good fortune is counterbal- anced by the loss of the brave and worthy General Mercer, Colonels Hazlet and Potter, Captain Neal of the artillery, Captain Flem- ing, who commanded the First Virginia Reg- iment, and four or five other valuable officers, who, with about twenty-five or thirty pri- vates, were slain in the field. Our whole loss cannot be ascertained, as many who were in pursuit of the enemy (who were chased three or four miles) are not yet come in. The rear of the enemy's army, lying at Maidenhead (not more than five or six miles from Princeton), was up with us before our pursuit was over : but as I had the precau- tion to destroy the bridge over Stony Brook (about half a mile from the scene of action), they were so long retarded there as to give us time to move off in good order for this place. We took two brass field-pieces ; but, for want of horses, could not bring them away. We also took some blankets, shoes, and a few other trifling articles, burned the hay, and destroyed such other things as the shortness of the time would admit of. My original plan, when I set out for Tren- ton, was to have pushed on to Brunswick : but the harassed state of our troops (many of them having had no rest for two nights and a day), and the danger of losing the advantage we had gained by aiming at too much, induced me, by the advice of my offi- cers, to relinquish the attempt : but, in my judgment, six or eight hundred fresh troops, upon a forced march, would have destroyed all their stores and magazines. taken (as we have since learned) their military chest, containing seventy thousand pounds, and put an end to the war. The enemy, from the best intelligence I have been able to get, were so much alarmed at the apprehension of this, that they marched immediately to Brunswick, without halting, except at the bridges (for I .also took up those on Mill- stone, on the different routes to Brunswick), and got there before day. From the best information I have received, General Howe has left no men either at Princeton or Trenton. The truth of this I am endeavouring to ascertain, that I may regulate my movements accordingly. The militia are taking spirits, and, I am. told, are coming in fast from this state : but I fear those from Philadelphia will scarcely submit to the hardships of a winter cam- paign much longer, especially as they very unluckily sent their blankets with their bag- gage to Burlington. I must do them the justice, however, to add, that they have un- dergone more fatigue and hardship than I expected militia (especially citizens) would have done at this inclement season. I am just moving to Morristown, where I shall endeavour to put them under the best cover I can : hitherto we have been without any ; and many of our poor soldiers quite barefoot, and ill clad in other respects. I have the honour to be, &c., G. W. RICHARD CUMBERLAND, grandson of the famous Grecian, Doctor Richard Bentley, born 1732, died 1811, was author of the comedies of The West Indian, The Wheel of Fortune, The Jew, and The Fashionable Lover; Anecdotes of Eminent Painters in Spain, Lond., 1782. 2 vols. 12mo; The Observer, Lond., 1785, 2 vols. 8vo, 1786, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, 1788, 5 vols., 1790, 5 vols., 1796, 3 vols., and in The British Classics 1803, and in The British Essayists ; the novels of Arundel, Lond., 1789, 2 vols. 12mo, Henry, Lond., 1795, 4 vols. 12mo, and John de Lancaster, 3 vols. ; Calvary, or The Death of Christ, a Poem, Lond., 1792, 4to; A Poetical Version of Certain [50] Psalms, Tunbridge Wells, 1801, 8vo; Me- moirs, Lond., 1806, 4to, Supplement, 1807, 4to, with Illustrative Notes by Henry Flan- ders, Phila., 1856, 8vo ; The Exodiadj in two RICHARD CUMBERLAND. 247 Parts, Lond., 1807-8, 4to (in conjunction with Sir J. B. Buries) ; Retrospection, a Poem, Lond., 1811, 4to, theological tracts, etc. See The Posthumous Dramatic Works of Richard Cumberland, edited by T. W. Jansen, Lond., 1813, 2 vols. 8vo. " The Observer, though the sole labour of an in- dividual, is yet rich in variety, both of subject and manner; in this respect, indeed, as well as in lit- erary interest, and fertility of invention, it may be classed with the Spectator and Adventurer." DR. DUAKE: Essays, vol. v. THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST. "With regard to the gospel account of Christ's miracles, I may be allowed, in gen- eral, to observe, that these forgeries of Por- phyry and Jarnblichus, in imitation of them, warrant a fair presumption that if these writers could have disproved the authority of the Evangelists, and controverted the matter of fact, they would not have resorted to so indecisive and circuitous a mode of opposing them as this which we are now examining: men of such learning as these writers would not have risked extravagant fictions merely to keep way with a history which they had more immediate means of refuting: on the other hand, if their absurd- ity should lead any man to suppose that they forged these accounts by way of parody, and in ridicule of the gospels, the accounts themselves give the strongest evidence to the contrary, and it is clear beyond a doubt, that both Porphyry and Jamblichus mean to be credited in their histories of Pytha- goras, as seriously as Philostratus does in his of Apollonius Tyaneus. This will more fully appear by referring to the circumstances that occasioned these histories to be written. Christ having performed his miracles openly and before so many witnesses, it is not found that the matter of fact was ever questioned by any who lived in that age : on the contrary, we see it was acknowledged by his most vigilant enemies, the Pharisees: they did not deny the miracle, but they as- cribed it to the aid of the prince of the devils : so weak a subterfuge against the evidence of their own senses probably satisfied neither themselves nor others: if it had, this accusa- tion of sorcery (being capital by the law, and also by that of the Romans) would have been heard of, when they were so much to seek for crimes, wherewith to charge him on his trial: if any man shall object, that this is arguing out of the gospels in favour of the gospels, I contend that this matter of fact does not rest solely on the gospel evi- dence, but also upon collateral historic proof: for this very argument of the Phari- sees, and this only, is made use of by those Jews whom Celsus brings in arguing against the Christian religion ; and those Jews, on this very account, rank Christ with Pytha- goras ; and I challenge the cavillers against Christ's miracles either to controvert what is thus asserted, or to produce any other argument of Jewish origin, except this as- cribed to the Pharisees by the gospel, either from Celsus, as above mentioned, or any other writer. Celsus, it is well known, was a very learned man, and wrote in the time of Adrian, or something later; this was not above fifty years after the date of Christ's miracles. Celsus did not controvert the accounts of them who were witnesses of the miracles, or attempt to shew any inconsist- ency or chicanery in the facts themselves ; he takes up at second-hand the old Pharisai- cal argument of ascribing them to the power of the devil ; in short, they were performed, he cannot deny it; there was no trick or artifice in the performance, he cannot dis- cover any; the accounts of them are no for- geries, he cannot confute them ; they are recent histories, and their authenticity too notorious to be called in question : he knows not how the miracles were performed, and therefore they were done by the invocation of the devil : he cannot patiently look on and see that learning, so long the glory of all civilized nations, and which he himself was to an eminent degree possessed of, now brought into disgrace by a new religion, pro- fessing to be a divine revelation, and origi- nating from amongst the meanest and most odious of all the provincial nations, and propagated by disciples who were as much despised and hated by the Jews in general as the Jews were by all other people. Observer, No. 10. THE ROMAN LIBRARIES. Little attention was paid to literature by the Romans in the early and more martial ages : I read of no collections antecedent to those made by Emilias, Paulus, and Lu- cullus, the latter of whom, being a man of great magnificence, allowed the learned men of his time to have free access to his library, but neither in his lifetime, nor at his death, made it public property. Corne- lius Sylla, before his dictatorship, plundered Athens of a great collection of books, which had been accumulating from the time of the tyranny, and these he brought to Rome, but did not build or endow any library for public use. This was at last undertaken by Julius Caesar upon an imperial scale not long be- fore his death, and the learned M. Varro was employed to collect and arrange the books for the foundation of an ample lib- 2-48 SAMUEL UORSLEY. rary : its completion, which was interrupted by the death of Julius and the civil wars subsequent thereto, was left for Augustus, who assigned a fund out of the Dalmatian booty for this purpose, which he put into the hands of the celebrated Asinius Pollio, who therewith founded a temple to liberty on Mount Aventine, and with the help of Sylla's and Varro's Collections, in addition to his own purchases, opened the first public library in Home in an apartment annexed to the temple above mentioned. Two others were afterward instituted by the same em- peror, which he called the Octavian and Palatine libraries ; the first, so named in honour of his sister, was placed in the temple of Juno ; the latter, as its title spe- cifies, was in the imperial palace: these libraries were royally endowed with estab- lishments of Greek and Latin librarians, of which C. Julius Ilyginus, the grammarian, was one. The Emperor Tiberius added another library to the palace, and attached his new building to that front which looked towards the Via Sacra, in which quarter he himself resided. Vespasian endowed a public library in the temple of Peace. Trajan founded the famous Ulpian library in his new forum, from whence it was at last removed to the Collis Viminalis to furnish the baths of Dio- clesian. The Capitoline library is supposed to have been founded by Domitian, and was consumed, together with the noble edifice to which it was attached, by a stroke of light- ning in the time of Commodus. The Em- peror Hadrian enriched his favourite villa with a superb collection of books, and lodged them in a temple dedicated to Hercules. Those were, in succeeding times, so multi- plied by the munificence and emulation of the several emperors, that in the reign of Constantino Home contained no less than twenty-nine public libraries, of which the principal were the Palatine and the Ulpian. Though books were then collected at an immense expense, several private citizens of fortune made considerable libraries. Tyran- nic, the grammarian, even in the time of Sylla was possessed of three thousand vol- umes: Epaphroditus, a grammarian also, had in later times collected thirty thousand of the most select and valuable books ; but Sammonicus Serenus bequeathed to the Em- peror Gordian a library containing no less than sixty-two thousand volumes. It was not always a love of literature that tempted people to these expenses, for Seneca com- plains of the vanity of the age in furnishing their banquetting rooms with books, not for use, but for show, and in a mere spirit of profusion. Their baths, both hot and cold, were always supplied with books to fill up an idle hour amongst the other recreations of the place; in like manner their country houses and even public offices were provided for the use and amusement of their guests and clients. The Roman libraries, in point of disposi- tion, much resembled the present fashion observed in our public ones ; for the books were not placed against the walls, but brought into the area of the room, in sep- arate cells and compartments, where they were lodged in presses: the intervals be- tween these compartments were richly orna- mented with inlaid plates of glass and ivory, and marble bass-relievos. In these compart- ments, which were furnished with desks and couches for the accommodation of readers, it was usual to place statues of learned men, one in each ; and this we may observe is one of the few elegances which Rome was not indebted to Greece for, the first idea having been started by the accomplished Pollio, who in his library on Mount Aventine set up the statue of his illustrious contemporary Varro, even whilst he was living : it was usual also to ornament the press where any considerable author's works were con- tained, with his figure in brass or plaster of a smaller size. There is one more circumstance attending these public libraries, which ought not to be omitted, as it marks the liberal spirit of their institution : it was usual to appropriate an adjoining building for the use and accom- modation of students, where every thing was furnished at the emperor's cost : they were lodged, dieted, and attended by servants specially appointed, and supplied with every thing, under the eye of the chief librarian, that would be wanting whilst they were en- gaged in their studies, and had occasion to consult the books: this establishment was kept up in a very princely style at Alexan- dria in particular, where a college was en- dowed and a special fund appointed for its support, with a president and proper officers under him, for the entertainment of learned strangers, who resorted thither from various parts to consult those invaluable collections which that famous library contained in all branches of science. Observer, No, 51. SAMUEL HORSLEY, LL.D., born in London, 1733, became Prebendary of Gloucester, 1787, Bishop of St. David's 1788, of Rochester, 1793, and of St. Asaph's, 1802, and died 1806. He published several theological, philological, and mathematical works, a complete edition of the Works of SAMUEL HORSLEY. 249 Sir Isaac Newton, Lond., 1779-85, 5 vols. 4to, and became widely known by his contro- versy with Dr. Priestley, who in An History of the Corruptions of Christianity, Birm., 1782, 2 vols. 8vo, contended that neither Trinitarianism nor Arianism, but Socinian- ism, was the unanimous faith of the first Christians. A collective edition of Horsley's Theological Works was published by Long- man, Lond., 1845, 6 vols. 8vo. These con- tain his Biblical Criticism (Lond., 1820, 4 vols. 8vo, 2d edit, 1844, 2 vols. 8vo), 2 vols. ; Psalms, Translated from the Hebrew (1815, 2 vols. 8vo), 4th edit., 1 vol. ; Sermons (1810- 15, 4 vols. 8vo, etc.), 2 vols. ; Charges (1813, 8vo, etc.,), 1 vol. " His sermons are fine specimens of command- ing eloquence, and contain many deep and original views of Scripture facts and prophecies." Du. E. WILLIAMS : Christian Preacher. THE NEW COMMANDMENT. In that memorable night when divine love and infernal malice had each their perfect work, the night when Jesus was betrayed into the hands of those who thirsted for his blood, and the mysterious scheme of man's redemption was brought to its accomplish- ment, Jesus, having finished the Paschal supper, and instituted those holy mysteries by which the thankful remembrance of his oblation of himself is continued in the church until his second coining, and the believer is nourished with the food of ever- lasting life, the body and blood of the cruci- fied Redeemer ; when all this was finished, and nothing now remained of his great and p'ainful undertaking but the last trying part of it, to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and to make his life a sacrifice for sin, in that trying hour, just before he retired to the garden, where the power of darkness was to be permitted to display on him its last and utmost effort, Jesus gave it solemnly in charge to the eleven apostles (the twelfth, the son of perdition, was already lost ; he was gone to hasten the execution of his in- tended treason), to the eleven, whose loy- alty remained as yet unshaken, Jesus in that awful hour gave it solemnly in charge ''to love one another, as he had loved them." And because the perverse wit of man is ever fertile in plausible evasions of the plainest duties, lest this command should be inter- preted, in after-ages, as an injunction in which the apostles only were concerned, im- posed upon them in their peculiar character of the governors of the church, our great Master, to obviate any such wilful miscon- struction of his dying charge, declared it to be his pleasure and his meaning, that the exercise of mutual love, in all ages, and in all nations, among men of all ranks, call- ings, and conditions, should be the general badge and distinction of his disciples: " By this shall all men know that ye are my dis- ciples, if ye love one another." And this inj unction of loving one another as he had loved them, he calls a new commandment: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another." It is commonly said, and sometimes strenu- ously insisted, as a circumstance in which the ethic of all religions falls short of the Christian, that the precept of universal be- nevolence, embracing all mankind, without distinction of party, sect, or nation, had never been heard of till it was inculcated by our Saviour. But this is a mistake. Were it not that experience and observation afford daily proof how easily a sound judg- ment is misled by the exuberance even of an honest zeal, we should be apt to say that this could be maintained by none who had ever read the Old Testament. The obligation indeed upon Christians to make the avowed enemies of Christianity the objects of their prayers and of their love, arises out of the peculiar nature of Christianity, considered as the work of reconciliation. Our Saviour too was the first who showed to what extent the specific duty of mutual forgiveness is included in the general command of mutual love; but the command itself, in its full extent, " That every man should love his neighbour as himself," we shall find, if we consult the Old Testament, to be just as old as any part of the religion of the Jews. The two max- ims to which our Saviour refers the whole of the law and the prophets were maxims of the Mosaic law itself. Had it indeed been otherwise, our Saviour, when he alleged these maxims in answer to the lawyer's question, " Which is the chief commandment of the law?" would not have answered with that wonderful precision and discernment which on so many occasions put his adver- saries to shame and silence. Indeed had these maxims not been found in the law of Moses, it would still have been true of them that .they contain everything which can be required of man as matter of general, indispensable duty ; insomuch that nothing can become an act of duty to God or to our neighbour otherwise than as it is capable of being referred to the one or the other of these two general topics. They might be said therefore to be, in the nature of the thing, the supreme and chief of all commandments ; being those to which all others are naturally and necessarily subor- dinate, and in which all others are contained as parts in the whole. All this would have been true though neither of these maxims had had a place in the law of Moses. But 250 JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. it would not have been a pertinent answer to the lawyers question, nor would it have taken the effect which our Lord's answer actually took with the subtle disputants with whom he was engaged, " that no man durst ask him any more questions." The lawyer's question was not, what thing might, in its own nature, be the best to be commanded. To this indeed it might have been wisely answered, that the love of God is the best of all things, and that the next best is the love of man ; although Moses had not ex- pressly mentioned either. But the question was, " Which is the great commandment in the law?" that is, in Moses's law; for the expression "the law," in the mouth of a Jew, could carry no other meaning. To this it had been vain to allege " the love of God or man," had there been no express requisi- tion of them in the law, notwithstanding the confessed natural excellence of the things ; because the question was not about natural excellence, but what was to be reckoned the first in authority and importance among the written commandments. Those masters of sophistry with whom our Saviour had been for some hours engaged, felt themselves over- come when he produced from the books of the law two maxims which, forming a com- plete and simple summary of the whole, and not only of the whole of the Mosaic law, but of every law which God ever did or ever will prescribe to man, evidently claimed to be the first and chief command- ments. Sermons : Sermon xi. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL.D., a Unitarian divine, born near Leeds, Eng- land, 1733, died at Northumberland, Penn- sylvania, 1804, published 141 works and treatises, great and small, for a list of which we must refer to Rutt's Collection of his Theological and Miscellaneous Works (ex- cluding the Scientific), Hackney, 1817-32 (new title-pnge 1824), 26 vols. 8vo. Vols. i. and ii. comprise his Life and Correspond- ence. Among his works are the following: History and Present State of Electricity, Lond., 1767, 4to, 5th edit., 1794, 4to; Es- says on the Principles of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and .Reli- gious Liberty, 1768, 8vo. 1771, 8vo : Chart of History, 1770, 8vo ; History and Present State of Discoveries relating to Vision, Light, and Colours, 1772, 2 vols. 4to ; Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, 1772-3-4, 3 vols. 12mo; On the Elements of Natural Religion, 1772, 8vo ; Experiments and Ob- servations on Different Kinds of Air, 1774- 77, 3 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1781-86, 6 vols. 8vo ; Abridged, with Additions, 1790, 5 vols. 8vo; Harmony of the Evangelists in Greek, 1777, '88, 4to ; in English, 1780, 4to ; Experiments and Observations relating to Natural Phi- losophy, 1779-86, 3 vols. 8vo ; History of the Corruptions of Christianity, Birrn., 1782, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d ed., 1793, 2 vols. 8vo ; His- tory of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ, compiled from Original Writers ; Proving that the Christian Church was at first Unitarian, Birm., 1786, 4 vols. 8vo, 2d edit, 1806, 4 vols. 8vo. " He laid the basis of the chemistry of the gases, and of those modes of investigation in the pneu- matic branch of the science which are still pur- sued. He discovered a great variety of facts in this department of the science; To him we are indebted for the knowledge of oxygon, binoxide of nitrogen, sulphurous acid, fluosilicic acid, mu- riatic acid, ammonia, carburetted hydrogen, and carbonic acid." DR. R. D. THOMPSON. " Dr. Priestley's metaphysical creed embraces four leading doctrines : he adopted the theory of vibrations, the association of ideas, the scheme of philosophical necessity, and the soul's materiality. On all these topics he hns furnished us with ex- tended dissertations; and, whatever opinions may be entertained of any or all of them, there are few persons but will readily admit that the doctor has displayed both great zeal and great ability in de- fence of them. . . . Dr. Priestley is Dr. Reid's most able and popular opponent." BLAKBY : Hint. o/Philoa. <>f Mind, iii. 202, 303. FRANKLIN AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. NORTHUMBERLAND, Nov. 10, 1802. To THE EDITOR OF THE MONTHLY MAGAZINE. SIR, I have just read in the [London] Monthly Review, vol. 36, p. 357 [359], that the late Mr. Pennant said of Dr. Franklin that " living under the protection of our mild government he was secretly playing the incendiary, and too successfully inflam- ing the minds of our fellow-subjects in Amer- ica, till that great explosion happened, which forever disunited us from our once happy colonies [colonists]." As it is in my power, as far as my testimony will be regarded, to refute this charge, I think it due to our friendship to do it. It is probable that no person now living was better acquainted with Dr. Franklin, and his sentiments on all subjects of importance, than myself, for several years before the American war. I think I knew him as well as one man can generally know another. At that time I spent the winters in London, in the family of the Marquis of Lansdown, and few days passed without my seeing more or less of Dr. Franklin ; and the last day that he passed in England, having given out that he should depart the day before, we spent together, without any interruption, from morning to night. JOSEPH PRIESTLEY. 251 Now, he was so far from wishing for a rupture with the colonies, that he did more than most men would have done to prevent it. His constant advice to his countrymen, he always said, was " to bear everything from England, however unjust;" saying, that " it could not last long, as they would soon outgrow all their hardships." On tliis account, Dr. Price, who then corresponded with some of the principal persons in Amer- ica, said, he began to be very unpopular there, lie always said, " If there must be a war, it will be a war of ten years, and I shall not live to see the end of it." This I have heard him say many times. It was at his request, enforced by that of Dr. Fothergill, that I wrote an anonymous pamphlet, calculated to show the injustice and impolicy of a war with the colonies, previous to the meeting of a new parlia- ment. As I then lived at Leeds, he cor- rected the press himself; and to a passage in which I lamented the attempt to estab- lish arbitrary power in so Large a part of the British empire, he added the following clause, " to the imminent danger of our most valuable commerce, and of that na- tional strength, security, and felicity which depend on union and on liberty." The unity of the British empire, in all its parts, was a favourite idea of his. He used to compare it to a beautiful China vase, which, if once broken, could never be put together again : and so great an admirer was he, at the time, of the British constitution, that he said he saw no inconvenience from its being extended over a great part of the globe. With these sentiments he left Eng- land ; but when, on his arrival in America. he found the war begun, and that there was no receding, no man entered more warmly into the interests of what he then considered as his country, in opposition to that of Great Britain. Three of his letters to me, one written immediately on his landing, and published in the collection of his Miscella- neous Works, pp. 365, 552, and 555, will prove this. By many persons Dr. Franklin is consid- ered as having been a cold-hearted man, so callous to every feeling of humanity, that the prospect of all the horrors of a civil war could not affect him. This was far from being the case. A great part of the day, above mentioned, that we spent together, he was looking over a number of American newspapers, directing me what to extract from them for the English ones ; and in reading them, he was frequently not able to proceed for the tears literally running down his cheeks. To strangers he was cold and re- served ; but where he was intimate, no man indulged in more pleasantry and good hu- mour. By this he was the delight of a club, to which he alludes in one of the letters above referred to, called the Whig-club, that met at the London coffee-house, of which Dr. Price, Dr. Kippis, Mr. John Lee, and others of the same stamp, were members. Hoping that this vindication of Dr. Frank- lin will give pleasure to many of your readers, I shall proceed to relate some par- ticulars relating to his behaviour when Lord Loughborough, then Mr. Wedderburn, pro- nounced his violent invective against him at the privy-council, on his presenting the com- plaints of the province of Massachusetts (I think it was) against their governor. Some of the particulars may be thought amusing. On the morning of the day on which the cause was to be heard, I met Mr. Burke in Parliament-street, accompanied by Dr. Doug- las, afterwards bishop of Carlisle ; and, after introducing us to each other, as men of letters, he asked me whither I was going. I said I could tell him where I wished to go. He then asked me where that was. I said to the privy-council, but that I was afraid I could not get admission. He then desired me to go along with him. Accordingly I did ; but when we got into the ante-room we found it quite filled with persons as desirous of getting admittance as ourselves. Seeing this, I said we should never get through the crowd. He said, " Give me your arm ;" and locking it fast in his, he soon made his way to the door of the privy-council. I then said, "Mr. Burke, you are an excellent leader;" he replied, "I wish other persons thought so too." After waiting a short time, the door of the privy-council opened, and we entered the first; when Mr. Burke took his stand behind the first chair next to the president, and I behind that the next to his. When the busi- ness was opened, it was sufficiently evident, from the speech of Mr. Wedderburn, who was counsel for the governor, that the real object of the court was to insult Dr. Frank- lin. All this time he stood in a corner of the room, not far from me, without the least apparent emotion. Mr. Dunning, who was the leading coun- sel on the part of the colony, was so hoarse that he could hardly make himself heard; and Mr. Lee, who was the second, spoke but feebly in reply ; so that Mr. Wedderburn had a complete triumph. At the sallies of his sarcastic wit all the members of the council, the president himself (Lord Gower) not excepted, frequently laughed outright. No person belonging to the council behaved with decent gravity, except Lord North, who, corning late, took his stand behind the chair opposite to me. When the business was over, Dr. Frank- 252 JAMES BEATTIE. lin, in going out, took me by the hand, in a manner that indicated some feeling. I soon followed him, and going through the ante- room, saw Mr. Wedderburn there surrounded with a circle of his friends and admirers. Being known to him, he stepped forwards as if to speak to me ; but I turned .aside, and made what haste I could out of the place. The next morning I breakfasted with the doctor, when he said, " lie had never before been so sensible of the power of a good conscience ; for that, if he had not considered the thing for which he had been so much in- sulted as one of the best actions of his life, and what he should certainly do again in the same circumstances, he could not have supported it." lie was accused of clandes- tinely procuring certain letters, containing complaints against the governor, and send- ing them to America with a view to excite their animosity against him, and thus to em- broil the two countries. But he assured me that he did not even know that such letters existed till they were brought to him as agent for the colony, in order to be sent to his constituents : and the cover of the letters on which the direction had been written being lost, he only guessed at the person to whom they were addressed by the con- tents. That Dr. Franklin, notwithstanding he did not show it at the time, was much impressed by the business of the privy-council, ap- peared from this circumstance: when he at- tended there, he was dressed in a suit of Manchester velvet; and Silas Deane told me that, when they met at Paris to sign the treaty between France and America he pur- posely put on that suit. Hoping that this communication will be of some service to the memory of Dr. Frank- lin, and gratify his friends, I am, sir, yours, &c. J. PRIESTLEY. Monthly Magazine, Feb. 1803. JAMES BEATTIE, LL.D., born 1735, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic in Marischal College, Aberdeen, from 1760 until within a short time before his death in 1803, published in 1770 An Essay on Truth (7th edit., Lond., 1807, 8vo), intended as an antidote to the scepti- cal philosophy of Hume; in 1771 Book First, and in 1774 Book Second (Book Third by Mr. Merivale, 1808, 4to), of The Minstrel (with other Poems, and Life by Alex. Chalmers, Lond., 1811, 12mo) ; in 1776, Edin., 4to, a new edition of An Essay on Truth, with Essays on Poetry and Music, etc. ; in 1786, Lond., "2 vols. 8vo, Disserta- tions Moral and Critical ; in the same year, Lond., 2 vols. I2mo, Evidences of the Chris- tian Religion, reprinted 1788, 2 vols., 1814, 1 vol. ; in 1788, 8vo, Theory of Language (first published in his Dissertations, vupra)] in 1790-93, 2 vols. 8vo. Elements of Moral Science, reprinted, Edin., 1807, 2 vols. 8vo, and in 1817, 2 vols. 8vo ; in 1779, Lond., 12mo, he published the Miscellanies of his son, James Hay Beattie. See Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, LL.D., including many of his Original Let- ters, by Sir W. Forbes, Edin., 18()ii, 2 vols. 4to, some large paper ; again, 1807, 3 vols. 8vo, and 1824, 2 vols. 8vo. " Beattie, the most agreeable and amiable writer I ever met with, the only author I have seen whose critical and philosophical researches are diversified and embellished by a poetical imagina- tion, that makes even the driest subject and the leanest a feast for an epicure in books. He is so much at his ease, too, that his own character ap- pears in every page, and, which is very rare, we see not only the writer, but the man ; and the man so gentle, so well-tempered, so happy in his religion, and so humane in his philosophy, that it is neces- sary to love him if one has any sense of what is lovely." Cow PER. " Superior to the whole crew of Scotch metaphy- sicians." BISHOP WARBURTON. To THE RIGHT IIox. THE DOWAGER LADY FORCES. ABERDEEN, "12th October, 1772. I wish the merit of the " Minstrel" were such .as would justify all the kind things you have said of it. That it has merit, every body would think me a hypocrite if I were to deny : I am willing to believe that it has even considerable merit ; and I acknowl- edge, with much gratitude, that it has ob- tained from the public a reception far more favourable than I expected. There are in it many passages, no doubt, which I admire more than others do ; and, perhaps, there are some passages which others are more struck with than I am. In all poetry this. I believe, is the case, more or less ; but it is much more the case in poems of a senti- mental cast, such as the " Minstrel" is, than in those of the narrative species. In epic and dramatic poesy there is a standard acknowl- edged, by which we may estimate the merit of the piece: whether the narrative be prob- able, and the characters well drawn and well preserved ; whether all the events be con- ducive to the catastrophe ; whether the action is unfolded in such a way as to command per- petual attention, and undiminished curiosity, these are points of which, in reading an epic poem, or tragedy, every reader possessed of good sense, or tolerable knowledge of the art, may hold himself to be a competent judge. Common life, and the general tenour JAMES BEATTIE. 253 of human affairs, is the standard to which these points may be referred, and according to which they may be estimated. But of sentimental poetry (if I may use the ex- pression) there is no external standard. By it the heart of the reader must be touched at once, or it cannot be touched at all. Here the knowledge of critical rules, and a general acquaintance of human affairs, will not form a true critic: sensibility and a lively imagination are the qualities which alone constitute a true taste for sentimental poetry. Again, your ladyship must have observed that some sentiments are common to all men ; others peculiar to persons of a certain character. Of the former sort are those which Gray has so elegantly expressed in his " Church-yard Elegy,'' a poem which is universally understood and admired, not only for its poetical beauties, but also, and perhaps chiefly, for its expressing senti- ments in which every man thinks himself interested, and which, at certain times, are familiar to all men. Now the sentiments expressed in the " Minstrel," being not com- mon to all men, but peculiar to persons of a certain cast, cannot possibly be interesting, because the generality of readers will not understand nor feel them so thoroughly as to think them natural. That a boy should take pleasure in darkness or a storm, in the noise of thunder, or the glare of lightning; should be more gratified with listening to music at a distance than Avith mixing in the merriment occasioned by it; should like better to see every bird happy and free than to exert his ingenuity in destroying or en- snaring them, these and such like senti- ments, which, I think, would be natural to persons of a certain cast, will, I know, be condemned as unnatural by others who have never felt them in themselves, nor observed them in the generality of mankind. Of all this I was sufficiently aware before I pub- lished the " Minstrel," and, therefore, never expected that it would be a popular poem. Perhaps, too, the 'structure of the verse (which, though agreeable to some, is not to all) and the scarcity of incidents may contribute to make it less relished than it would have been if the plan had been differ- ent in these particulars. From the questions your ladyship is pleased to propose in the conclusion of your letter, as well as from some things I have had the honour to hear you advance in conversation, I find you are willing to suppose that in Edwin I have given only a picture of myself, as I was in my younger days. I confess the supposition is not groundless. I have mnde him take pleas- ure in the scenes in which I took pleas- ure, and entertain sentiments similar to those of which, even in my early youth, I had repeated experience. The scenery of a mountainous country, the ocean, the sky, thoughtfulness and retirement, and some- times melancholy objects and ideas, had charms in my eyes, even when I was a school-boy ; and at a time when I was so far from being able to express, that I did not understand, my own feelings, or per- ceive the tendency of such pursuits and amusements; and as to poetry and music, before I was ten years old I could play a little on the violin, and was as much master of Homer and Virgil as Pope's and Dryden's translations could make me. But I am ashamed to write so much on a subject so trifling as myself and my own works. Be- lieve me, madam, nothing but your ladyship's comments could have induced me to do it. O.v THE LOVE OF NATURE. Homer's beautiful description of the heavens and earth, as they appear in a calm evening by the light of the moon and stars, concludes with this circumstance. "And the heart of the shepherd is glad." Madame Daeier, from the turn she gives to the pas- sage in her version, seems to think, and Pope, in order perhaps to make out his couplet, insinuates, that the gladness of the shepherd is owing to his sense of the utility of those luminaries. And this may in part be the case; but this is not in Homer-, nor is it a necessary consideration. It is true that, in contemplating the material universe, they who discern the causes and effects of things must be more rapturously entertained than those who perceive nothing but shape and size, colour and motion. Yet, in the mere outside of nature's works (if I may so express myself), there is a splendour and a magnificence which even untutored minds cannot attend without great delight. Not that all peasants or all philosophers are equally susceptible of these charming impressions. It is strange to observe the callousness of some men before whom all the glories of heaven and earth pass in daily succession, without touching their hearts, elevating their fancy, or leaving any durable remembrance. Even of those who pretend to sensibility how many are there to whom the lustre of the rising or setting sun, the sparkling concave of the midnight sky, the mountain forest tossing and roaring to the storm, or warbling with all the melodies of a summer evening; the sweet interchange of hill and dale, shade and sunshine, grove, lawn, and water, which an extensive land- scape offers to the view ; the scenery of the ocean, so lovely, so majestic, and so tremen- dous, and the many pleasing varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdom, could never 254 JAMES BEATTIE. afford so much real satisfaction as the steams and noise of a ball-room, the insipid fiddling and squeaking of an opera, or the vexations and wranglings of a card-table I But some minds there are of a different make, who, even in the early part of life, receive from the contemplation of nature a species of delight which they would hardly exchange for any other ; and who, as avarice and ambition are not the infirmities of that period, would, with equal sincerity and rapture, exclaim, " I care not, Fortune, what you me deny : You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living streams at eve." Such minds have always in them the seeds of true taste, and frequently of imitative genius. At least, though their enthusiastic or visionary turn of mind, as the man of the world would call it, should not always in- cline them to practise poetry or painting, we need not scruple to affirm that, without some portion of this enthusiasm, no person ever became a true poet or painter. For he who would imitate the works of nature must first accurately observe them, and accurate observation is to be expected from those only who take great pleasure in it. To a mind thus disposed, no part of crea- tion is indifferent. In the crowded city and howling wilderness, in the cultivated prov- ince and solitary isle, in the flowery lawn and craggy mountain, in the murmur of the rivulet and in the uproar of the ocean, in the radiance of summer and gloom of winter, in the thunder of heaven and in the whisper of the breeze, he still finds something to rouse or to soothe his imagination, to draw forth his affections, or to employ his under- standing. And from every mental energy that is not attended with pain, and even from some of those that are, as moderate terror and pity, a sound mind derives satis- faction : exercise being equally necessary to the body and the soul, and to both equally productive of health and pleasure. This happy sensibility to the beauties of nature should be cherished in young per- sons. It engages them to contemplate the Creator in his wonderful works; it purifies and harmonizes the soul, and prepares it for moral and intellectual discipline; it sup- plies a never-failing source of amusement ; it contributes even to bodily health ; and, as a strict analogy subsists between material and moral beauty, it leads the heart by an easy transition from the one to the other, and thus recommends virtue for its transcen- dent loveliness, and makes vice appear the object of contempt and abomination. An intimate acquaintance with the best descrip- tive poets, Spenser, Milton, and Thomson, but above all with the divine Georgics, joined to some practice in the art of draw- ing, will promote this amiable sensibility in early years ; for then the face of nature has novelty superadded to its other charms, the passions are not pre-engaged, the heart is free from care, and the imagination is warm and romantic. But not to insist longer on those ardent emotions that are peculiar to the enthusiastic disciple of nature, may it not be affirmed of all men without exception, or at least of all the enlightened part of mankind, that they are gratified by the contemplation of things natural as opposed to unnatural? Mon- strous sights please but for a moment, if they please at all ; for they derive their charm from the beholder's amazement, which is quickly over. I have read, indeed, of a man of rank in Sicily who chooses to adorn his villa with pictures and statues of most unnatural deformity; but it is a singular instance ; and one would not be much more surprised to hear of a person living without food, or growing fat by the use of poison. To say of anything that it is contrary to nature denotes censure and disgust on the part of the speaker ; as the epithet natural intimates an agreeable quality, and seems for the most part to imply that a thing is as it ought to be, suitable to our own taste, and congenial with our own constitution. Think with what sentiments we should peruse a poem in which nature was totally misrepresented, and principles of thought and of operation supposed to take place repugnant to every- thing we had seen or heard of: in which, for example, avarice and coldness were ascribed to youth, and prodigality and pas- sionate attachment to the old ; in which men were made to act at random, sometimes according to character, and sometimes con- trary to it; in which cruelty and envy were productive of love, and beneficence and kind affection of hatred ; in which beauty was invariably the object of dislike, and ugli- ness of desire ; in which society was ren- dered happy by atheism and the promiscuous perpetration of crimes, and justice and forti- tude were held in universal contempt. Or think how we should relish a painting where no regard was had to the propor- tions, colours, or any of the physical laws of nature ; where the eyes and ears of ani- mals were placed in their shoulders ; where the sky was green and the grass crimson ; where trees grew with their branches in the earth, and their roots in the air; where men were seen fighting after their heads were cut off, ships sailing on the land, lions entangled RICHARD WATSON. 255 in cobwebs, sheep preying on dead carcasses, fishes sporting in the woods, and elephants walking on the sea. Could such figures and combinations give pleasure, or merit the ap- pellation of sublime or beautiful? Should we hesitate to pronounce their author mad? And are the absurdities of madmen proper subjects either of amusement or of imitation to reasonable beings ? Essays. RICHARD WATSON, D.D., born 1737, Bishop of LlnndafF, 1782, died 1816, published Institutionum Chemicarum, Pars Metallurgies, Camb., 1768, 8vo; Essay on the Subjects of Chemistry and their Gen- eral Divisions, 1771, 8vo ; An Apology for Christianity, in a Series of Letters to Ed- ward Gibbon, 1770, 12mo, 6th edit., Lond., 1797, 12uio; Chemical Essays, 1781-87, 5 vols. 12mo, 7th edit., 18UO, 5 vols. 12mo; Collection of Theological Tracts, Camb., 1785, 6 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., Lond., 1791, 6 vols. 8vo, large paper, royal 8vo ; Sermons, Camb., 1788, 8vo ; An Apology for the Bible, in a Scries of Letters addressed to Thomas Paine, Lond., 1796, 12mo, 8th edit., 1799 ; Miscellaneous Tracts, 1815, 2 vols. 8vo; and other publications. See Anecdotes of his Life by Himself, 1817, 4to, 2d edit., 1818, 2 vols. 8vo, Phila., 1818, 8vo. " His autobiography affords a singular display of great tulents, high independence, iinJ disap- pointed pride." OKME : liibl. Bib., 460. CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL RELIGION. GENTLEMEN, Suppose the mighty work accomplished, the cross trampled upon, Christianity everywhere proscribed, and the religion of nature once more become the religion of Europe ; what advantage will you have derived to your country, or to yourselves, from the exchange? I know your answer. you will have freed the world from the hypocrisy of priests and the tyr- anny of superstition. No; you forget that Lycurgus, and Numa, and Odin, and Mango- Copac, and all the great legislators of ancient or modern story, have been of the opinion that the affairs of civil society could not well be conducted without some religion ; you must of necessity introduce a priesthood, with, probably, as much hypocrisy ; a reli- gion with, assuredly, more superstition than that which you now reprobate with such in- decent and ill-grounded contempt. But I will tell you from what you will have freed the world : you will have freed it from its abhorrence of vice, and from every powerful incentive to virtue ; you will, with the re- ligion, have brought back the depraved mo- rality of Paganism ; you will have robbed mankind of their firm assurance of another life ; and thereby you will have despoiled them of their patience, of their humility, of their charity, of their chastity, of all those mild and silent virtues which (however despicable they may appear in your eyes) are the only ones which meliorate and sub- lime our nature ; which Paganism never knew, which spring from Christianity alone, which do or might constitute our comfort in this life, and without the possession of which, another life, if after all there should happen to be one, must be more vicious and more miserable than this is, unless a miracle be exerted in the alteration of our disposition. Perhaps you will contend that the univer- sal light of religion, that the truth and fit- ness of things, are of themselves sufficient to exalt the nature and regulate the man- ners of mankind. Shall we never have done with this groundless commendation of nat- ural law? Look into the first chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans, and you will see the extent of its influence over the Gen- tiles of those days; or, if you dislike Paul's authority and the manners of antiquity, look into the more admired accounts of modern voyagers, and examine its influence over the Pagans of our own times, over the sensual inhabitants of Otaheite, over the cannibals of New Zealand, or the remorseless savages of America. But these men are Barbarians. Your law of nature, notwithstanding, ex- tends even to them, but they have mis- used their reason, they have then the more need of. and would be more than thankful for, that revelation which you, with an ig- norant and fastidious self-sufficiency, deem useless. But they might, of themselves, if they thought fit, become wise and virtuous. I answer with Cicero, Ut nihil interest, utrum nemo valeat, au nemo valere possit ; sic non intelligo quid intersit, utrum nemo sit sapiens, au nemo esse possit. These, however, you will think, are ex- traordinary instances ; and that we ought not from these to take our measure of the excel- lency of the law of nature ; but rather from the civilized states of China and Japan, or from the nations which flourished in learn- ing and arts before Christianity was heard of in the world. You mean to say that by the law of nature, which you are desirous of substituting in the room of the gospel, you do not understand those rules of conduct which an individual, abstracted from the community, and deprived of the institution of mankind, could excogitate for himself; but such a system of precepts as the most enlightened men of the most enlightened ages have recommended to our observance. Where do you find this system ? We cannot 256 EDWARD GIBBON. meet with it in the works of Stobaeus, or the Scythian Anacharsis, nor in those of Plato, nor in Cicero, nor in those of the Emperor Antoninus, or the slave Epictetus : for we are persuaded that the most animated considerations of the wfen-oy, and the hones- tum, of the beauty of virtue, and the fit- ness of things, are not able to furnish even a Brutus himself with permanent princi- ples of action ; much less are they able to purify the polluted recesses of a vitiated heart, to curb the irregularities of appetite, or restrain the impetuosity of passion in common men. If you order us to examine the works of Grotius, or Puffendorf, of Bur- lamaqui, or Ilutchinson, for what you un- derstand by the law of nature, we appre- hend that you are in a great error in taking your notions of natural law, as discoverable by natural reason, from the elegant systems of it which have been drawn up by Chris- tian philosophers; since they have all laid their foundations, either tacitly or expressly, upon a principle derived from revelation, a thorough knowledge of the being and at- tributes of God : and even those amongst ourselves who. rejecting Christianity, still continue Theists, are indebted to revelation (whether you are either aware of, or disposed to acknowledge, the debt or not) for those sublime speculations concerning the Deity, which you have fondly attributed to the excellency of your own unassisted reason. If you would know the real strength of nat- ural reason, and how far it can proceed in the investigation or enforcement of moral duties, you must consult the manners and the writings of those who have never heard of either the Jewish or the Christian dispen- sation, or of those other manifestations of himself which God vouchsafed to Adam and to the patriarchs before and after the flood. It would be difficult perhaps any where to find a people entirely destitute of tradition- ary notices concerning a deity, and of tra- ditionary fears or expectations of another life ; and the morals of mankind may have, perhaps, been no where quite so abandoned as they would have been had they been left wholly to themselves in these points: how- ever, it is a truth which cannot be denied, how much soever it may be lamented, that though the generality of mankind have always had some faint conception of God and his providence ; yet they have been always greatly inefficacious in the produc- tion of good morality, and highly deroga- tory to his nature, amongst all the people of the earth except the Jews and Chris- tians; and some may perhaps be desirous of excepting the Mahometans, who derive all that is good in their Koran from Chris- tianity. EDWARD GIBBON, born at Putney, Surrey, England, 1737, spent fourteen months at Magdalene Col- lege, Oxford; in 1753 abjured, at the feet of a Roman Catholic priest in London, what he considered the errors of Protestantism : eighteen months afterwards, on Christinas, 1754. received the sacrament in theCalvin- istic church at Lausanne; in 1761, Lond., small 8vo (in English, Lond., 1764, sm. 8vo) published, in French, Essai sur 1'etude de la Litterature ; in 1767-68, Lond., 2 vols. sin. 8vo, published in conjunction with his friend Deyverdun, Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne, 1767 et 1768; from 1768 was employed chiefly in the composition of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Lond., 1776-88, 6 vols. 4to; from 1783 to 1793 resided at Lausanne, where, in 1789, he lost by death his attached friend Deyverdun, in whose house he had resided since his settlement in Switzerland ; died at the house of Lord Sheffield, London, Jan. 16, 1794. Referring to his admission to the Protestant church at Lausanne, Gib- bon remarks : ' It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries, acquiescing with im- plicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants." Gibbon " no- where openly avows his disbelief," and it is impossible to discover from his writings and recorded conversation how far his faith went. See the Miscellaneous "Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, Composed by Himself: Illustrated from his Letters, with Occasional Notes and Narrative, bv John, Lord Sheffield, Lond., 1799-1815, 3" vols. 4to (vols. i. and ii., Dubl., 1796, 3 vols. 8vo; Basil, 1796-97, 7 vols. 8vo) ; Lond., 1814, 5 vols. 8vo, large paper, r. 8vo; 1837, 8vo; Life [autobiography], with Selections from his Correspondence, and Illustrations, by the Rev. II. II. Mil- man, Lond., 1839. 8vo. As regards Gibbon's History we recom- mend the third edition of Milman's edition, with Additional Notes by Dr. Win. Smith, portrait and maps, Lond., Murray, 1854-55, 5 vols. 8vo. "This book, in spite of its faults, will always be a noble work. . . . We may correct his errors, and combat his prejudices, without ceasing to admit that few men have combined, if we are not to sny in so high a degree, at least in a manner so com- plete and so well regulated, the necessary qualifi- cations for a writer of history." GUIZOT. See Lond. Qitar. Ken., \. 290. "Whenever the subject is suited to his style, nnd when his phlegmatic temper is warmed by those generous emotions of which, as we have said, it was sometimes susceptible, he exhibits his ideas in the most splendid and imposing forms of EDWARD GIBBON. which the English language is capable.' 1 WM. H. PRESCOTT : Biog. and Crit. Miscellanies. OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS ox THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colours the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philoso- phers with regard to the immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of arming their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate, as an obvious though melan- choly position, that the fatal stroke of our dissolution releases us from the calamities of life ; and that those can no longer suffer who no longer exist. Yet there were a few sages of Greece and Rome who had con- ceived a more exalted and, in some respects, a justcr idea of human nature; though it must be confessed that in the sublime in- quiry their reason had often been guided by their imagination, and that their imagi- nation had been prompted by their vanity. When they viewed with complacency the extent of their own mental powers; when they exercised the various faculties of memory, of fancy, and of judgment, in the most profound speculations, or the most im- portant labours ; and when they reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into future ages, far beyond the bounds of death and of the grave; they were unwill- ing to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of dura- tion. With this favourable prepossession they summoned to their aid the science, or rather the language, of metaphysics. They soon discovered, that as none of the proper- ties of matter will apply to the operations of the mind, the human soul must conse- quently be a substance distinct from the body, pure, simple, and spiritual, incap- able of dissolution, and susceptible of a much higher degree of virtue and happiness after the release from its corporeal prison. From these specious and noble principles the philosophers who trod in the footsteps of Plato deduced a very unjustifiable con- clusion, since they asserted not only the future immortality, but the past eternity, of the human soul, which they were too apt to consider as a portion of the infinite and self-existing spirit which pervades and sus- tains the universe. A doctrine thus removed beyond the senses and the experience of man- kind might serve to amuse the leisure of a philosophic mind; or, in the silence of soli- tude, it might sometimes impart a ray of comfort to desponding virtue ; but the faint impression which had been received in the 17 school was soon obliterated by the commerce and business of active life. We are suffici- ently acquainted with the eminent persona who flourished in the age of Cicero, and of the first Caesars, with their actions, their characters, and their motives, to be assured that their conduct in this life was never regulated by any serious conviction of the rewards and punishments of a future state. At the bar and in the senate of Rome the ablest orators were not apprehensive of giv- ing offence to their hearers by exposing that doctrine as an idle and extravagant opinion, which was rejected with contempt. by every man of a liberal education and understanding. Since, therefore, the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or at most the possibility, of a future state, there is nothing except a divine revelation that can ascertain the existence and describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body. DESCRIPTION OF MAHOMET. According to the tradition of his com- panions Mahomet was distinguished by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which is seldom despised except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke the orator engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They ap- plauded his commanding presence, his ma- jestic aspect, his piercing eye ; his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his country: his respectful attention to the rich and pow- erful was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca; the frankness of his manner con- cealed the artifice of his views; and the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal benevolence. His- memory was capacious and retentive, his wit easy and social, his imagination sublime, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action ; and although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he entertained of his divine mis- sion bears the stamp of an original and su- perior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect, of Arabia ; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and sensible silence. With these powers of 258 EDWARD GIBBON. eloquence. Mahomet was an illiterate bar- barian : his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing ; the common ignorance exempted him from shame and reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was open to his view ; and some fancy has been indulged in the political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Ara- bian traveller. He compares the nations and religions of the earth ; discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman mon- archies ; beholds with pity and indignation the degeneracy of the times ; and resolves to unite, under one God and one king, the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more accurate inquiry will suggest that, instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the east, the two journeys of Mahomet into Syria were con- fined to the fairs of Bostra and Damascus ; that he was only thirteen years of age when he accompanied the caravan of his uncle, and that his duty compelled him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchan- dise of Cadijah. In these hasty and super- ficial excursions the eye of genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser companions : some seeds of knowledge might be cast upon a fruitful soil ; but his igno- rance of the Syriac language must have checked his curiosity, and I cannot perceive in the life or writings of Mahomet that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled by the calls of de- votion and commerce : in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native tongue, might study the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and prac- tice of the Jews and Christians. Some use- ful strangers might be tempted or forced to implore the rites of hospitality ; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their aid to the com- position of the Koran. Conversation en- riches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet was ad- dicted to religious contemplation : each year, during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world and from the arms of Ca- dijah: in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or en- thusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens but in the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, lie preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction. that there is only one God, and that Ma- homet is the apostle of God. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. ON READING. " Reading is to the mind," said the Duke of Vivonne to Louis XIV., "what your partridges are to my chops." It is in fact the nourishment of the mind : for by reading we know our Creator, his works, ourselves chiefly, and our fellow-creatures. But this nourishment is easily converted into poison. Salmasius had read as much as Grotius, perhaps more; but their different modes of reading made the one an enlightened phi- losopher, and the other, to speak plainly, a pedant, puffed up with a useless erudition. Let us read with method, and propose to ourselves an end to which all our studies may point. Through neglect of this rule, gross ignorance often disgraces great read- ers : who, by skipping hastily and irregu- larly from one subject to another, render themselves incapable of combining their ideas. So many detached parcels of knowl- edge cannot form a whole. This inconstancy weakens the energies of the mind, creates in it a dislike to application, and even roba it of the advantages of natural good sense. Yet let us avoid the contrary extreme, and respect method, without rendering ourselves its slaves. While we propose an end in our reading, let not this end be too remote ; and when once we have attained it, let our attention be directed to a different subject. Inconstancy weakens the understanding ; a long and exclusive application to a single object hardens and contracts it. Our ideas no longer change easily into a different channel, and the course of reading to which we have too long accustomed ourselves is the only one that we can pursue with pleasure. \Ve ought, besides, to be careful not to make the order of our thoughts subservient to that of our subjects; this would be to sacrifice the principal to the accessory. The use of our reading is to aid us in thinking. The perusal of a particular work gives birth, perhaps, to ideas unconnected with the sub- ject of which it treats. I wish to pursue these ideas ; they withdraw me from ray proposed plan of reading, and throw me into a new track, and from thence, perhaps, into a second and a third. At length I begin to perceive whither my researches tend. Their results perhaps, may be profitable; it is worth while to try : whereas, had I followed the high road, I should not have been able, THOMAS JEFFERSON. 259 at the end of my long journey, to retrace the progress of my thoughts. Tliis plan of reading is not applicable to our early studies, since the severest method is scarcely sufficient to make us conceive objects altogether new. Neither can it be adopted by those who read in order to write, and who ought to dwell on their subject till they have sounded its depths. These reflec- tions, however, I do not absolutely warrant. On the supposition that they are just, they may be so, perhaps, for myself alone. The constitution of minds differs like that of bodies ; the same regimen will not suit all. Each individual ought to study his own. To read with attention, exactly to define the expressions of our author, never to ad- mit a conclusion without comprehending its reason, often to pause, reflect, and interro- gate ourselves, these are so many advices which it is easy to give, but difficult to fol- low. The same may be said of that almost evangelical maxim of forgetting friends, country, religion, of giving merit its due praise, and embracing truth wherever it is to lie found. But what ought we to read? Each indi- vidual must answer this question for him- self, agreeably to the object of his studies. The only general precept that I would ven- ture to give is that of Pliny, "to read much, rather than many things," to make a careful selection of the best works, and to render them familiar to us by attentive and repeated perusals. Without expatiating on the authors so generally known and ap- proved, I would simply observe, that in matters of reasoning, the best are those who have augmented the number of useful truths ; who have discovered truths, of what- ever nature they may be; in one word, those bold spirits who, quitting the beaten track, prefer being in the wrong alone to being in the right with the multitude. Such authors increase the number of our ideas, and even their mistakes are useful to their successors. With all the respect due to Mr. Locke, I would not, however, neglect the works of those academicians who destroy errors without hoping to substitute truth in their stead. In works of fancy, invention ought to bear away the palm; chiefly that invention which creates a new kind of writing; and next, that which displays the charms of novelty in its subject, character, situation, pictures, thoughts, and sentiments. Yet this invention will miss its effect un- less it be accompanied Avith a genius capa- ble of adapting itself to every variety of the subject. successively sublime, pathetic, flowery, majestic, and playful : and with a judgment which admits nothing indecorous, and a style which expresses well whatever ought to be said. As to compilations which are intended merely to treasure up the thoughts of others, i ask whether they are written with perspicuity, whether superflu- ities are lopped off, and dispersed observa- tions skilfully collected: and agreeably to my answers to those questions I estimate the merit of such performances. Abstract of my Readings, Preface. THOMAS JEFFERSON, born at Shadwell, Albemarle County. Vir- ginia, April 2, 1743, became a member of the National Congress, 1775, and in 177(5 reported the celebrated Declaration of In- dependence, of which he has the credit of the authorship ; Governor of Virginia, 1779-1781, member of Congress, 1783, Min- ister of the United States at Paris, 1785- 1789, Secretary of State, 1789-1793, Vice- President of the United States, 1797-1801, and President of the Republic, 1801-1809, died July 4, 1826. See The Writings of Thomas Jefferson ; being his Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Ad- dresses, and other Writings, etc., edited by II. A. Washington, New York, 1854, 9 vols. 8vo ; and The Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry S. llandall, LL.D., New York, 1857, 3 vols. 8vo. Mr. Jefferson's best-known work is Notes on the State of Virginia, Paris, 1782 (really 1784), 8vo: 200 copies privately printed; in French, by the Abbe Morellet, with some alterations by the au- thor, Paris, 1786, 8vo ; in English, Lond., 1787, 8vo : other editions. " The merit of this paper [Declaration of Inde- pendence] is Mr. Jefferson's. Some changes were made in it at the suggestion of other members of the committee, and others by Congress while it was under discussion. But none of them altered the tone, the frame, the arrangement, or the gen- eral character of the instrument. As a composi- tion, the Declaration is Mr. Jefferson's. It is the production of his mind, and the high honour of it belongs to him clearly and absolutely. To say that he performed his great work well would be doing him injustice. To say thnt he did excel- lently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say that he so discharged the duty assigned him, that all Ameri- cans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him." DANIEL WEBSTER : Discourse in Commemoration of the Lives and Services of John Adams l their blood, a remedy that often succeeded. Vathek discovered also a predilection for theological controversy ; but it was not with the orthodox that he usually held. By this means he induced the zealots to oppose him, and then persecuted them in return ; for he resolved, at any rate, to have reason on hia side. The great prophet, Mahomet, whose vicars the caliphs are, beheld with indignation from his abode in the seventh heaven the irreligious conduct of such a vicegerent. "Let us leave him to himself," said he to the genii, who are always ready to receive his commands; " let us see to what lengths his folly and impiety will carry him : if he run into excess, we shall know how to chas- tise him. Assist him, therefore, to complete the tower, which, in imitation of Nimrod, he hath begun ; not, like that great warrior, to escape being drowned, but from the inso- lent curiosity of penetrating the secrets of Heaven : he will not divine the fate that awaits him." The genii obeyed ; and when the work- men had raised their structure a cubit in the day time, two cubits more were added in the night. The expedition with which the fabric arose was not a little flattering to the vanity of Vathek : he fancied that even insensible matter showed a forwardness to subserve hia designs, not considering that the successes of the foolish and wicked form the first rod of their chastisement. His pride arrived at its height when, hav- ing ascended for the first time the fifteen hundred stairs of. his tower, he cast his eyea below, and beheld men not larger than pis- mires, mountains than shells, and cities than bee-hives. The idea which such an elevation inspii-ed of his own grandeur completely be- wildered him : he was almost ready to adore himself, till, lifting his eyes upwards, he saw the stars as high above him as they appeared when he stood on the surface of the earth. He consoled himself, however, for this in- truding and unwelcome perception of his littleness with the thought of being great in the eyes of others; and flattered himself that the light of his mind would extend be- 280 ROBERT HALL. yond the reach of his sight, and extort from the stars the decrees of his destiny. Vathek. ROBERT HALL, the most eminent of Baptist divines, horn 17G4, commenced preaching 1780, was min- ister at Broadmead, Cambridge, Leicester, and again, 1825-1831, at Broadmead (Bris- tol), and died 1831. In November, 1804, and again about a twelvemonth later in con- sequence of intense mental application, he suffered from mental derangement. His best- known publications are Christianity Consist- ent with a Love of Freedom, Lond., 1791, Apology for the Freedom of the Press, 1793, Modern Infidelity Considered, 180D, Reflec- tions on War, 1802, The Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis, 1803, The Discourage- ments and Supports of the Christian Minis- try, On Terms of Communion, 1815 (against Kinghorn, who advocated "close commun- ion''), A Sermon occasioned by the Death of Her late Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales. 1817, 6th edit., 1818. Works, with Memoir by Dr. 0. Gregory and Observations by John Foster. Lond., 1831- 33, vols. 8vo, llth edit., 1853, 6 vols. 8vo. "In his higher flights, what he said of Burke might, with the slightest deduction, be applied to himself, that his imperial fancy hiid all nature uncler tribute, and collected riches from every scene of the creation and every walk of art; and at the same time, that could he affirmed of Mr. Hall which could not bo affirmed of Mr. Burke. that he never fatigued and oppressed by gaudy and superfluous imagery. . . . Ills inexhaustible variety augmented the general effect. The same images, the same illustrations, scarcely ever re- curred." DR. Ol.l.NTHIlS (JllKGORY. '' Whoever wishes to see the English language in its perfection must read the writings of that great divine, Robert Hall. He combines the beau- ties of Johnson, Addison, and Burke, without their imperfections." DUGALD STEWART. THE HORRORS OF WAR. Though the whole race of man is doomed to dissolution, and we are all hastening to our long homo, yet at each successive moment, life and death seem to divide be- tween them the dominion of mankind, and life to have the larger share. It is otherwise in war: death reigns there without a rival, and without control. War is the work, the element, or rather the sport and triumph, of death, who glories, not only in the extent of his conquest, but in the richness of his spoil. In the other methods of attack, in the other forms which death assumes, the feeble and the aged, who at the best can live but a short time, are usually the victims; here it is the vigorous and the strong. It is remarked by an ancient historian [Herodo- tus] that, in peace children bury their pa- rents, in war parents bury their children : nor is the difference small. Children lament their parents, sincerely indeed, but with that moderate and tranquil sorrow which it is natural for those to feel who are conscious of retaining many tender ties, many ani- mating prospects. Parents mourn for their children with the bitterness of despair: the aged parent, the widowed mother, loses, when she is deprived of her children, every- thing but the capacity of suffering; her heart, withered and desolate, admits no other object, cherishes no other hope. It is Rachel weep- in(j for her children and refusing to be com- forted, because they are not. But to confine our attention to the number of the slain would give us a very inadequate idea of the ravages of the sword. The lot of those who perish instantaneously may be considered, apart from religious prospects, as comparatively happy, since they are exempt from those lingering diseases and slow tor- tures to which others are liable. We cannot see an individual expire, though a stranger or an enemy, without being sensibly moved, and prompted by compassion to lend him every assistance in our power. Every trace of re- sentment vanishes in a moment: every o*ther emotion gives way to pity and terror. In these last extremities we remember nothing but the respect and tenderness due to our common nature. What a scene then must a field of battle present, where thousands are left without assistance and without pity, with their wounds exposed to the piercing air, while the blood, freezing as it flows, binds them to the earth, amid the trampling of horses and the insults of an enraged foe! If they are spared by the humanity of the enemy and carried from the field, it is but a prolongation of torment. Conveyed in un- easy vehicles, often to a remote distance, through roads almost impassable, they are lodged in ill-prepared receptacles for the wounded and the sick, where the variety of distress baffles all the efforts of humanity and skill, and renders it impossible to give to each the attention he demands. Far from their native home, no tender assiduities of friendship, no well-known voice, no wife, or mother, or sister is near to soothe their sor- rows, relieve their thirst, or close their eyes in death. Unhappy man ! and must you be swept into the grave unnoticed and unnum- bered, and no friendly tear be shed for your sufferings or mingled with your dust ! We must remember, however, that as a very small proportion of a military life is spent in actual combat, so it is a very small part of its miseries which must be ascribed to this source. More are consumed by the ROBERT HALL. 281 rust of inactivity than by the edge of the sword: confined to a scanty or unwholesome diet, exposed in sickly climates, harassed with tiresome inarches and perpetual alarms, their life is a continual scene of hardships and dangers. They grow familiar with hunger, cold, and watchfulness. Crowded into hospitals and prisons, contagion spreads among their ranks, till the ravages of dis- ease exceed those of the enemy. We have hitherto only adverted to the sufferings of those who are engaged in the profession of arms, without taking into our account the situation of the countries which are the scene of hostilities. How dreadful to hold everything a.t the mercy of an enemy, and to receive life itself as a boon dependent on the sword- How boundless the fears which such a situation must inspire, where the issues of life and death are determined by no known laws, principles, or customs, and no conjecture can be formed of our des- tiny, except as far as it is dimly deciphered in characters of blood, in the dictates of re- venge, and in the caprices of power. Con- ceive but a moment the consternation which the approach of an invading army would impress on the peaceful villages in this neighbourhood. When you have placed yourselves for an instant in that situation, you will learn to sympathize with those un- happy countries which have sustained the ravages of arms. But how is it possible to give you an idea of these horrors ? Here you behold rich harvests, the bounty of heaven and the reward of industry, con- sumed in a moment or trampled under foot, while famine and pestilence follow the steps of desolation. There the cottages given up to the flames, mothers expiring through fear, not for themselves but their infants; the inhabitants flying with their helpless babes in all directions, miserable fugitives on their native soil ! In another part you witness opulent cities token by storm ; the streets, where no sounds were heard but those of peaceful industry, filled on a sudden with slaughter and blood, resounding with the cries of the pursuing and the pursued; the palaces of nobles demolished, the houses of the rich pillaged, the chastity of virgins and of matrons violated, and every age, sex, and rank mingled in promiscuous massacre and ruin. Reflections on War: a Sermon, June 1, 1802. TIME AND ETERNITY. The impotence of the world never appears more conspicuous than when it has exhausted its powers in the gratification of its votaries by placing them in a situation which leaves them nothing further to hope. It frustrates the sanguine expectations of its admirers as much by what it bestows as by what it with- holds, and reserves its severest disappoint- ment for the season of possession. The agi- tation, the uncertainty, the varied emotions of hope and fear which accompany the pur- suit of worldly objects, create a powerful interest, and maintain a brisk and whole- some circulation ; but when the pursuit is over, unless some other is substituted in its place, satiety succeeds to enjoyment, and pleasures cease to please. Tired of tread- ing the same circle, of beholding the same spectacles, of frequenting the same amuse- ments, and repeating the same follies, with nothing to awaken sensibility, or to stimu- late to action, the minion of fortune is ex- posed to an insuperable languor; he sinks under an insupportable weight of ease, and falls a victim to incurable dejection and de- spondency. Keligion, by presenting objects ever interesting and ever new, by bestowing much, by promising more, and dilating the heart with the expectation of a certain in- definite good, clearly ascertained though in- distinctly seen, the pledge and earnest of which is far more delightful than all that irreligious men possess, is the only effectual antidote to this evil. He that drinketh oftliis water shall never thirst. The vanity which adheres to the world in every form, when its pleasures and occupations are regarded as ultimate objects, is at once corrected when they are viewed in connexion with a bound- less futurity ; and whatever may be their intrinsic value, they rise into dignity and importance when considered as the seed of a future harvest, as the path which, however obscure, leads to honour and immortality, as the province of labour allotted us. in order to work out our salvation with fear and trem- bling. Nothing is little which is related to such a system ; nothing vain or frivolous which has the remotest influence on such prospects. Considered as a state of proba- tion, our present condition loses all its in- herent meanness ; it derives a moral gran- deur even from the shortness of its duration, when viewed as a contest for an immortal crown, in which thfe candidates are exhibited on a theatre, a spectacle to beings of the highest order, who, conscious of the tremen- dous importance of the issue, of the magni- tude of the interest at stake, survey the com- batants from on high with benevolent and trembling solicitude. Finally, we are made for the enjoyment of eternal blessedness ; it is our high calling and destination ; and not to pursue it with diligence is to be guilty of the blackest in- gratitude to the Author of our being, as well as the greatest cruelty to ourselves. To fail of such an object, to defeat the end 282 ROBERT HALL. of our existence, and in consequence of neg- lecting the great salvation, to sink at last under the frown of the Almighty, is a calam- ity which words were not invented to ex- press, nor finite minds formed to grasp. Eternity, it is surely not necessary to re- mind you, invests every state, whether of bliss or of suffering, with a mysterious and awful importance, entirely its own, and is the only property in the creation which gives that weight and moment to whatever it attaches, compared to which all sublunary joys and sorrows, all interests which know a period, fade into the most contemptible insignificance. In appreciating every other object it is easy to exceed the proper esti- mate ; and even of the distressing event which has so recently occurred, the feeling which many of us possess is probably ade- quate to the occasion. The nation has certainly not been wanting in the proper expression of its poignant re- gret at the sudden removal of this most lamented princess, nor of their sympathy with the royal family, deprived by this visi- tation of its brightest ornament. Sorrow is painted in every countenance. The pursuits of business and of pleasure have been sus- pended, and the kingdom is covered with the signals of distress. But what, my breth- ren, if it be lawful to indulge such a thought, what would be the funeral obsequies of a lost soul? Where shall we find the tears fit to be wept at such a spectacle? or, could we realize the calamity in all its extent, what tokens of commiseration and concern would be deemed equal to the occasion ? Would it suffice for the sun to veil his light and the moon her brightness ; to cover the ocean with mourning and the heavens with sack- cloth ? or, were the whole fabric of nature to become animated and vocal, would it be possible for her to utter a groan too deep, or a cry too piercing, to express the magni- tude and extent of such a catastrophe? Sermon Occasioned by the Death of Her late Jtoi/al Highness The Princess Charlotte of Wales, Nov. 6, 1817. THE VALUE OF CONTROVERSY". However some may affect to dislike con- troversy, it can never be of ultimate disad- vantage to the interests of truth or the happi- ness of mankind. Where it is indulged in its full extent, a multitude of ridiculous opin- ions will no doubt be obtruded upon the public; but any ill influence they may pro- duce cannot continue long, as they are sure to be opposed with at least equal ability and that superior advantage which is ever at- tendant on truth. The colours with which wit or eloquence may have adorned a false system will gradually die away, sophistry be detected, and everything estimated at length according to its true value. Publi- cations, besides, like everything that is hu- man, are of a mixed nature, where truth is often blended with falsehood, and important hints suggested in the midst of much im- pertinent or pernicious matter ; nor is there any way of separating the precious from the vile but by tolerating the whole. Where the right of unlimited inquiry is exerted, the human faculties will be upon the advance ; where it is relinquished, they will be of a necessity at a stand, and will probably de- cline. If we have recourse to experience, that kind of enlarged experience in particular which history furnishes, we shall not be apt to entertain any violent alarm at the greatest liberty of discussion : we shall there see that to this we are indebted for those improvements in arts and sciences which have meliorated in so great a degree the condition of mankind. The middle ages, as they are called, the darkest period of which we have any particular accounts, were remarkable for two things, the extreme ignorance that prevailed, and an excessive veneration for received opinions: circum- stances which having been always united, operate on each other, it is plain, as cause and effect. The whole compass of science was in those times subject to restraint; every new opinion was looked upon as dan- gerous. To affirm the globe we inhabit to be round was deemed heresy, and for assert- ing its motion the immortal Galileo was confined in the prisons of the Inquisition. Yet it is remarkable, so little are the human faculties fitted for restraint, that its utmost rigour was never able to effect a thorough unanimity, or to preclude the most alarm- ing discussions and controversies. For no sooner was one point settled than another was started ; and as the articles on which men professed to differ were always ex- tremely few and subtle, they came the more easily into contact, and their animosities were the more violent and concentrated. The shape of the tonsure, or manner in which a monk should shave his head, would then throw a whole kingdom into convul- sions. In proportion as the world has be- come more enlightened this unnatural policy of restraint has retired, the sciences it has entirely abandoned, and has taken its last stand on religion and politics. The first of these was long considered of a nature so peculiarly sacred, that every attempt to alter it, or to impair the reverence for its received institutions was regarded, under the name of heresy, as a crime of the first magnitude. Yet dangerous as free inquiry may have ANNE RADCLIFFE. 283 been looked upon when extended to the principles of religion, there is no depart- ment where it was more necessary, or its interference more decidedly beneficial. By nobly daring to exert it when all the pow- ers on earth were combined in its suppres- sion, did Luther accomplish that reformation which drew forth primitive Christianity, long hidden and concealed under a load of abuses, to the view of an awakened and astonished world. So great is the force of truth when it has once gained the attention, that all the arts and policy of the court of Ilome, aided throughout every part of Europe by a ven- eration for antiquity, the prejudices of the vulgar, and the cruelty of despots, were fairly baffled and confounded by the opposi- tion of a solitary monk. And had this principle of free inquiry been permitted in succeeding times to have full scope, Chris- tianity would at this period have been much better understood, and the animosity of sects considerably abated. Religious toleration has never been complete even in England ; but having prevailed more here than per- haps in any other country, there is no place where the doctrines of religion have been set in so clear a light or its truth so ably de- fended. The writings of Deists have con- tributed much to this end. Whoever will compare the late defences of Christianity by Locke, Butler, or Clarke, with those of the ancient apologists, will discern in the former far more precision and an abler method of reasoning than in the latter ; which must be attributed chiefly to the superior spirit of inquiry by which modern times are distin- guished. Whatever alarm there may have been taken at the liberty of discussion, religion it is plain hath been a gainer by it ; its abuses corrected, and its divine au- thority settled on a firmer basis than ever. An Apology : On the Right of Public Dis- cussion, Lect. i. ANNE RADCLIFFE, horn 1764, died 1823, was the author of the following works, of which The Mysteries of Udolpho (an excellent novel, displaying great powers of description) is the best known: The Castles of Athlin and Dumbayne, a Highland Story, Lond., 1789, 12mo; A Sicil- ian Romance, Lond., 1790, 12mo; The Ro- mance of the Forest, interspersed with some Pieces of Poetry, Lond., 1791, 12mo ; The Mysteries of Udolpho, interspersed with some Pieces of Poetry, Lond., 1794, 4 vols. 12mo ; A Journey made in the Summer of 1794, through Holland, etc., Lond., 1794, 4to : The Italian, or, The Confessional of the Black Penitent, a Romance, Lond., 1797, 3 vols. 12mo ; Gaston de Blondeville, or, The Court of Henry III. resting in Ardennes, a Ro- mance; St. Alban's Abbey, a Metrical Tale, with some Poetical Pieces, to which is pre- fixed a Memoir of the Author [by Sir T. N. Talfourd], with Extracts from her Journals, Lond., 1826, 4 vols. post 8vo : reissued in 1833, with the title Posthumous Works, etc.: subsequently divided: Gaston de Blondeville. 2 vols. 8vo, Poetical Works, 1834, 2 vols. '8vo ; St. Alban's Abbey, a Metrical Tale, was published separately, Phila., 1826, 12mo. " We would not pass over without a tribute of gratitude Mrs. Radcliffe's wild and wondrous tales. When we read them, the world seeins shut out, and we breathe only an enchanted region, where lovers' lutes tremble over placid waters, moulder- ing castles rise conscious of deeds of blood, and the sad voices of the past echo through deep vaults and lonely galleries. ... Of all romance-writers Mrs. Radcliffe is the most romantic." SIR T. NOON TALFOURD: Miscell. Writings. " The Shakspeare of Romance-writers, who to the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa has added the solter graces of a Claude." DR. DRAKE. THE CASTLE OF UDOLPHO. Towards the close of the day the road wound into a deep valley. Mountains, whose shaggy sides appeared to be inaccessible, almost surrounded it. To the east a vista opened, and exhibited the Apennines in their darkest horrors ; and the long per- spective of retiring summits, rising over each other, their ridges clothed with pines, exhibited a stronger image of grandeur than any that Emily had yet seen. The sun had just sunk below the top of the mountains she was descending, whose long shadow stretched athwart the valley, but his slop- ing rays, shooting through an opening of the cliffs, touched with a yellow gleam the summits of the forest that hung upon the opposite steeps, and streamed in full splen- dour upon the towers and battlements of a castle that spread its extensive ramparts along the brow of a precipice above. The splendour of these illumined objects was heightened by the contrasted shade which involved the valley below. " There," said Montoni, speaking for the first time in several hours, " is Udolpho." Emily gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she understood to be Mon- toni's ; for, though it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the Gothic greatness of its features, and its mouldering walls of dark gray stone, rendered it a gloomy and sublime object. As she gazed the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and deeper as the thin vapour crept up the mountain, 284 ANNE RADCLIFFE. while the battlements above were still tipped with splendour. From these, too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was in- vested with the solemn darkness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all who dared to invade its solitary reign. As the twilight deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity, and Emily continued to gaze till its cluster- ing towers were alone seen rising over the tops of the woods, beneath whose thick shade the carriage soon after began to ascend. The extent and darkness of these tall woods awakened terrific images in her mind, and she almost expected to see banditti start up from under the trees. At length the car- riages emerged upon a heathy rock, and soon after reached the castle gates, where the deep tone of the portal bell, which was struck upon to give notice of their arrival, in- creased the fearful emotions that had as- sailed Emily. While they waited till the servant within should come to open the gates, she anxiously surveyed the edifice; but the gloom that overspread it allowed her to distinguish little more than a part of its outline, with the massy walls of the ramparts, and to know that it was vast, ancient, and dreary. From the parts she saw, she judged of the heavy strength and extent of the whole. The gateway before her, leading into the courts, was of gigantic size, and was defended by two round towers, crowned by overhanging turrets, embattled, where instead of banners, now waved long grass and wild plants that had taken root among the mouldering stones, and which seemed to sigh, as the breeze rolled past, over the desolation around them. The towers were united by a curtain, pierced and embattled also, below which appeared the pointed arch of a huge portcullis sur- mounting the gates; from these the walls of the ramparts extended to other towers, overlooking the precipice, whose shattered outline, appearing on a gleam that lingered in the west, told of the ravage of war. Be- yond these all was lost in the obscurity of evening. A NEAPOLITAN CHURCH. "Within the shade of the portico, a person with folded arms, and eyes directed towards the ground, was pacing behind the pillars the whole extent of the pavement, and was apparently so engaged in his own thoughts as not to observe that strangers were ap- proaching. He turned, nowever, suddenly, as if startled by the sound of steps, and then, without farther pausing, glided to a door that opened into the church, and disap- peared. There was something too extraordinary in the figure of this man, and too singular in his conduct, to pass unnoticed by the visitors. He was of a tall thin figure, bend- ing forward from the shoulders ; of n sallow complexion and harsh features, and had an eye which, as it looked up from the cloak that muffled the lower part of his counte- nance, was expressive of uncommon ferocity. The travellers, on entering the church, looked round for the stranger who had passed thither before them, but he was nowhere to be seen ; and through all the shade of the long aisles only one other per- son appeared. This was a friar of the ad- joining convent, who sometimes pointed out to strangers the objects in the church which were most worthy of attention, and who now, with this design, approached the party that had just entered. When the party had viewed the different shrines, and whatever had been judged worthy of observation, and were returning through an obscure aisle towards the por- tico, they perceived the person who had ap- peared upon the steps passing towards a confessional on the left, and as he entered it, one of the party pointed him out to the friar, and inquired who he was. The friar, turn- ing to look after him, did not immediately reply ; but on the question being repeated, he inclined his head as in a kind of obei- sance, and calmly replied, " He is an as- sassin." " An assassin !" exclaimed one of the Eng- lishmen ; " an assassin, and at liberty !" An Italian gentleman who was of the party smiled at the astonishment of his friend. " He has sought sanctuary here." replied the friar : "within these walls he may not be hurt." "Do your altars, then, protect a mur- derer?" said the Englishman. " He could find shelter nowhere else," answered the friar meekly. . . . "But observe another confessional," added the Italian : "that beyond the pillars on the left of the aisle, below a painted window. Have you discovered it? The col- ours of the glass throw, instead of a light, a shade over that part of the church, which ferhaps prevents your distinguishing what mean." The Englishman looked whither his friend pointed, and observed a confessional of oak, or some very dark wood, adjoining the wall, and remarked also that it was the same which the assassin had just entered. It consisted of three compartments, covered with a black canopy. In the central division was the chair of the confessor, elevated by several steps above the pavement of the SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. 285 church; and on either hand was a small closet or box, with steps leading up to a grated partition, at which the penitent might kneel, and, concealed from observa- tion, pour into the ear of the confessor the consciousness of crimes that lay heavy at his heart. ' You observe it?'' said the Italian. " I do," replied the Englishman : " it is the same which the assassin had passed into, and I think it one of the most gloomy spots lever beheld : the view of it is enough to strike a criminal with despair." ' We in Italy are not so apt to despair," replied the Italian smilingly. 'Well, but what of this confessional?" inquired the Englishman. " The assassin entered it." " He has no relation with what I am about to mention," said the Italian: "but I wish you to mark the place, because some very extraordinary circumstances belong to it." " What are they?" said the Englishman. " It is now several years since the confes- sion which is connected with them was made at that very confessional," added the Italian : " the view of it, and the sight of the assassin, with your surprise at the liberty which is allowed him. led me to a recollection of the story. When you return to the hotel I will communicate it to you, if you have no pleas- anter mode of engaging your time." ''After I have taken another view of this solemn edifice," replied the Englishman, ''and particularly of the confessional you have pointed to my notice." While the Englishman glanced his eye over the high roofs and along the solemn perspectives of the Santa del Pianto, he per- ceived the figure of the assassin stealing from the confessional across the choir, and, shocked on again beholding him, he turned his eyes and hastily quitted the church. The friends then separated, and the Eng- lishman soon after returning to his hotel, received the volume. He read as follows. The Italian. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, M.D., LL.D., born near Inverness, 1705, and educated at King's College, Aberdeen, was recorder of Bombay, 1804-1811, was M.P. for Nairn, 1813, and for Knaresborough, Yorkshire. 1818, '20, '26, '30, '31 ; Lord-Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1822, '23, Professor of Law and General Politics in the East In- dian College of Ilaileybury, 1818-1824, Com- missioner for Indian Affairs, 1830, died 1832. lie was the author of Vindiciae Gallicae: Defence of the French Revolution, etc., Lond., 1791, 4to; A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations, etc., Lond., 1799, 8vo ; The Trial of Jean Peltier, for a Libel against Napoleon Buonaparte, etc., Lond., 1803, 8vo; Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, Edin., 1830, 4to (from Encyc. Brit.) ; History of England, B.C. 55 to A.D. 1572, Lond., 1830-32, 3 vols. 12mo (Lardner's Cab. Cyc.) ; History of the Revolution in England in 1688, etc., Lond., 1834, 4to ; Life of Sir Thomas More, Lond., 1844, fp. 8vo (from Lives of British States- men in Lardner's Cab. Cyc.). See his Tracts and Speeches, 1787-1831, Lond., 1840, 8vo (25 copies privately printed), and his Mis- cellaneous Works, Lond., 1846, 3 vols. 8vo, and 1854, 3 vols. fp. 8vo, also in 1 vol. 8vo, 1850 and 1851. See also Memoirs of his Life, Edited by his Son. 11. J. Mackintosh, Lond., 1835, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1836, 2 vols. 8vo./ " His range of study and speculation was nearly as large ns that of Bacon ; and there were, in faelj but few branches of learning with which he wa not familiar. But in any attempt at delineating his intellectual character, it is necessary to bear it mind that his mastery was in mental philosophy, not merely in its metaphysical departments, but in its still more important application to conduct and affairs, and in their higher branches of poli- tics and legislation, which derive their proofs and principles from history, and give authority to its lessons in return. Upon all these subjects he was probably the most learned man of his age." LOUD JEFFREY: Maekintoik's Life, vol. ii. chap, viii. " Till subdued by age and illness, his conversa- tion was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted. His memory (vast and pro- digious as it was) he so managed as to make it a source of pleasure and instruction, rather than that dreadful engine of colloquial oppression into which it is sometimes erected." REV. SYDNEY SMITH: Mnckininnh'n Life, vol. ii. chap, viii., and Smith's Works, iii. 434. " Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh was the ripe fruit of study and of meditation. It was the same with his con- versation. . . . You never saw his opinions in the making, still rude, still inconsistent, and requir- ing to be fashioned by thought and discussion. They came forth like the pillars of that temple in which no sound of axes or hammers was heard, fin- ished, rounded, and exactly suited to their places." LORD MACAULA.Y : Edin. Rev., Ixi. 269, and his Exaay*. THE FRENCH REVOLUTIOV. Gentlemen, the French Revolution I must pause after I have uttered words which present such an overwhelming idea. But I have not now to engage in an en- terprise so far beyond my force as that of examining and judging that tremendous revolution. I have only to consider the character of the factions which it must have left behind it. The French Revolu- tion began with great and fatal errors. 286 SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. These errors produced atrocious crimes. A mild and feeble monarchy was succeeded by bloody anarchy, which very shortly gave birth to military despotism. France, i a few years, described the whole circle of hu- man society. All this was in the order of nature. When every principle of authority and civil discipline, when every principle which enables some men to command and disposes others to obey, was extirpated from the mind by atrocious theories and still more atrocious examples, when every old institu- tion was trampled down with contumely, and every new institution covered in its cradle with blood, when the principle of property itself, the sheet-anchor of society, was annihilated, when in the persons of the new possessors, whom the poverty of lan- guage obliges us to call proprietors, it was contaminated in its source by robbery and murder, and became separated from the edu- cation and the manners, from the general presumption of superior knowledge and more scrupulous probity which form its only liberal titles to respect, when the people were taught to despise every thing old, and compelled to detest every thing new, there remained only one principle strong enough to hold society together, a prin- ciple utterly incompatible, indeed, with lib- erty, and unfriendly to civilization itself, a tyrannical and barbarous principle, but, in that miserable condition of human affairs, a refuge from still more intolerable evils : I mean the principle of military power, which gains strength from that confusion and bloodshed in which all the other elements of society are dissolved, and which, in these terrible extremities, is the cement that pre- serves it from total destruction. Under such circumstances Buonaparte usurped the su- preme power in France : I say usurped, be- cause an illegal assumption of power is an usurpation. But usurpation, in its strongest moral sense, is scarcely applicable to a period of lawless and savage anarchy. The guilt of military usurpation, in truth, belongs to the authors of those confusions which sooner or later give birth to such an usurpation. Thus, to use the words of the historian, " by recent as well as all ancient example, it be- came evident that illegal violence, with whatever pretences it may be covered, and whatever object it may pursue, must inev- itably end at last in the arbitrary and des- potic government of a single person." [Hume: Hist, of England, vol. vii. p. 220.] But though the government of Buonaparte has silenced the Revolutionary factions, it has not and it cannot have extinguished them. No human power could re-impress upon the minds of men all those sentiments and opinions which the sophistry and an- archy of fourteen years had obliterated. A faction must exist, which breathes the spirit of the Ode now before you. Defence of Jean Peltier. SIR THOMAS MORE. The letters and narratives of Erasmus dif- fused the story of his friend's fate [executed by Henry VIII.] throughout Europe. Cardi- nal Pole bewailed it with elegance and feel- ing. It filled Italy, then the most cultivated portion of Europe, with horror. Paulo Jovio called Henry "a Phalaris," though we shall in vain look in the story of Phalaris, or of any other real or legendary tyrant, for a victim worthy of being compared to More. The English ministers throughout Europe were regarded with averted eyes as the agents of a monster. At Venice, Henry, after this deed, was deemed capable of any crimes : he was believed there to have murdered Catherine, and to be about to murder his daughter Mary. The Catholic zeal of Spain, and the resentment of the Spanish people against the oppression of Catherine, quick- ened their sympathy with More, and aggrav- ated their detestation of Henry. Mason, the envoy at Valladolid, thought every pure Latin phrase too weak for More, and de- scribes him by one [Ter maximus ille Morns] as contrary to the rules of that language as " thrice greatest" would be to those of ours. When intelligence of his death was brought to the Emperor Charles V. he sent for Sir T. Elliot, the English ambassador, and said to him, " My lord ambassador, we understand that the king your master has put his wise counsellor, Sir Thomas More, to death." Elliot, abashed, made answer that he under- stood nothing thereof. " Well," said the Emperor, " it is too true ; and this we will say, that if we had been master of such a servant, we should rather have lost the best city in our dominions than have lost such a worthy counsellor;" "which matter," says Roper, in the concluding words of his beautiful narrative, "was by Sir T. Elliot told to myself, my wife, to Mr. Clement and his wife, and to Mr. Heywood [Heron?] and his wife." Of all men nearly perfect, Sir Thomas More had, perhaps, the clearest marks of individual character. His peculiarities, though distin- guishing from all others, were yet withheld from growing into moral faults. It is not enough to say of him that he was unaffected, that he was natural, that he was simple : so the larger part of truly great men have been. But there is something homespun in More which is common to him with scarcely any other, and which gives to all his faculties and qualities the appearance of being the native growth of the soil. The homeliness of his ISAAC DISRAELI. 287 pleasantry purifies it from show. He walks on the scaffold clad only in his household goodness. The unrefined benignity with which he ruled his patriarchal dwelling at Chelsea enabled him to look on the axe without being disturbed by feeling hatred for the tyrant. This quality bound together his genius and learning, his eloquence and fame, with his homely and daily duties, bestowing a genuineness on all his good qualities, a dignity on the most ordinary offices of life, and an accessible familiarity on the virtues of a hero and a martyr, which silences every suspicion that his excellences were magnified, lie thus simply performed great acts, and uttered great thoughts, be- cause they were familiar to his great soul. The charm of this inborn and homebred character seems as if it would have been taken off by polish. It is this household character which relieves our notion of him from vagueness, and divests perfection of that generality and coldness to which the attempt to paint a perfect man is so liable. It will naturally, and very strongly, excite the regret of the good in every age. that the life of this best of men should have been in the power of one who has been rarely sur- passed in wickedness. But the execrable Henry was the means of drawing forth the magnanimity, the fortitude, and the meek- ness of More. Had Henry been a just and merciful monarch, we should not have known the degree of excellence to which human nature is capable of ascending. Catholics ought to see in More that mildness and candour are the true ornaments of all modes of faith. Protestants ought to be taught humility and charity from this instance of the wisest and best of men falling into, what they deem, the most fatal errors. All men, in the fierce contests of contend- ing factions, should, from such an example, learn the wisdom to fear lest in their most hated antagonist they may strike down a Sir Thomas More : for assuredly virtue is not so narrow as to be confined to any party ; and we have in the case of More a signal example that the nearest approach to perfect excellence does not exempt men from mistakes which we may justly deem mis- chievous. It is a pregnant proof that we should beware of hating men for their opin- ions, or of adopting their doctrines because we love and venerate their virtues. Life of Sir Thomas More. ISAAC DISRAELI, the son of a Venetian merchant of Jewish extraction, and the father of the Rt. Hon. Ben- jamin Disraeli, raised to the peerage as Earl of Beaconsfield, 1876, was born at Enfield, near London, 1766, and died 1348. Works: Poetical Epistle on the Abuse of Satire, Lond., 1789 ; A Defence tff Poetry, with a Specimen of a New Version of Telemachus, 1790, 4to; Curiosities of Literature, First Series, vol. i., 1791, 8vo, ii., 1793. 8vo, iii., 1817, 8vo; Second Series, 1823, 3 vols. 8vo ; First and Second Series, 1839. r. 8vo, 1^45, 6 vols. 12mo, 1851, r. 8vo, 1854, r. 8vo; 14th edit., with a View of his Character and Writings by his Son (the Earl of Beacons- field), 1849, 3 vols. 8vo, 1870, 3 vols. p. 8vo : A Dissertation on Anecdote, 1793, 8vo ; Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character, 1795, 8vo ; Miscellanies, or Literary Recreations, 1796, 8vo : Vaurien, or Sketches of the Times, a Philosophical Novel, 1797, 2 vols. p. 8vo ; Romances, con- sisting of a Persian, a Roman, and an Ar- cadian Romance. 1799, 8vo, 1807, 8vo; Literary Miscellanies, including a Disserta- tion on Anecdotes, 1801, 12mo; Narrative Poems, 1803, 4to ; Flim Flams, or, The Life and Errors of my Uncle, and the Amours of my Aunt, 1805, 3 vols. 12mo, 2d edit., 1806 ; Despotism, or, The Fall of the Jesuits, a Novel, 1811, 2 vols. sm. 8vo; Calamities of Authors, 1812, 2 vols. p. 8vo ; with Quar- rels of Authors, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. 8vo ; Quarrels of Authors, 1814, 3 vols. p. Svo, with Calamities of Authors, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. Svo ; Inquiry into the Liter- ary and Political Character of King James I., 1816, p. Svo; Illustrations of the Literary Character, 1816. Svo, 2d edit., 1818, Svo, 3d edit., 1822, 2 vols. p. Svo, 5th edit., 1839, sm. Svo, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. Svo; The History of Psyche (1823), 4to; Com- mentaries on the Life and Reign of King Charles I., 1828-31, 5 vols. Svo, 2d edit,, Edited by his Son, 1850, 2 vols. Svo; Eliot, Hampden, and Pym, 1832, Svo; Genius of Judaism, 1833, p. Svo ; The Illustrator Illus- trated, 1838, Svo (an answer to Bolton Cor- ney's New Curiosities of Literature, or D'lsraeli Illustrated, 1838, p. Svo. 2d edit., 1839) ; Amenities of Literature, 1841, 3 vols. Svo, 2d edit., 1842, 3 vols. Svo, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. Svo. See also Miscellanies of Literature: con- taining Literary Miscellanies, Quarrels of Authors, Calamities of Authors, Character of James the First, and The Literary Char- acter, 1840, r. Svo. "He is one of the most learned, intelligent, lively, and agreeable authors of our era ; he has composed a series of works, which while they shej abundance of light on the character and condition of literary men, and show us the state of genius in this land, have all the attractions for general readers of the best romances.*' ALLAN CUNNING- HAM : 7/1017. """' Orit. Hint, of the Lit. of the Last Fifty Years, 1853. 288 ISAAC DISRAELI "That most entertaining and searching writer, D'lsraeli, whose works in general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any other English author whatever." LORD BYRON. THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS. In antique furniture we sometimes dis- cover a convenience which long disuse had made us unacquainted with, and are surprised by the aptness which we did not suspect was concealed in its solid forms. We have found the labour of the workman to have been as admirable as the material itself, which is sstill resisting the mouldering touch of time among those modern inventions, elegant and unsubstantial, which, often put together with unseasoned wood, are apt to warp and fly into pieces when brought into use. We have found how strength consists in the selection of materials, and that, whenever the substitute is not better than the original, we are losing something in that test of ex- perience which all things derive from dura- tion. Be this as it may. I shall not unreason- ably await for the artists of our novelties to retrogade into massive greatness, although I cannot avoid reminding them how often they revive the forgotten things of past times. It is well known that many of our novelties were in use by our ancestors. In the history of the human mind there is, in- deed, a sort of antique furniture which I collect, not merely for their antiquity, but for the sound condition in which I still find them, and the compactness which they still show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their solidity! and the utility and dolightfulness which they still afford make them look as fresh and as ingenious as any of our patent inventions. By the title of the present article the reader has anticipated the nature of the old furniture to which I allude. I propose to give what, in the style of our times, may be called The Philosophy of Proverbs, a topic which seems virgin. The art of reading proverbs has not, indeed, always been ac- quired eVen by some of their admirers ; but my observations, like their subjects, must be versatile and unconnected; and I must bespeak indulgence for an attempt to illus- trate a very curious branch of literature, rather not understood than quite forgotten. Proverbs have long been in disuse. "A man of fashion," observes Lord Chesterfield, ' never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms ;" and, since the time his lordship so solemnly interdicted their use, they ap- pear to have withered away under the ban of his anathemas. His lordship was little conversant with the history of proverbs, and would unquestionably have smiled on those " men of fashion" of another stamp, who, in the days of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, were great collectors of them ; would appeal to them in their conversations, and enforce them in their learned or their statesman-like correspondence. Few, perhaps, even now, suspect that these neglected fragments of wisdom, which exist among all nations, still offer many interesting objects for the studies of the philosopher and the historian; and for men of the world still open an extensive school of human life and manners. The home-spun adages, and the rusty " sayed-saws," which remain in the mouths of the people, are adapted to their capacities and their humours. Easily remembered, and readily applied, these are the philos- ophy of the vulgar, and often more sound than that of their masters. Who ever would learn what the people think, and how they feel, must not reject even these as insignifi- cant. The proverbs of the street and of the market, true to nature, and lasting only be- cause they are true, are records that the populace at Athens and at Rome were the same people as at Paris and at London, and as they had before been in the city of Jeru- salem. Proverbs existed before books. The Span- iards date the origin of their refranes gue dicen las viejas tras elfuego, " sayings of old wives by their firesides," before the existence of any writings in their language, from the circumstance that these are in the old romance or rudest vulgar idiom. The most ancient poem in the Edda, " the sublime speech of Odin," abounds with ancient prov- erbs, strikingly descriptive of the ancient Scandinavians. Undoubtedly proverbs in the earliest ages long served as the unwrit- ten language of morality, and even of the earliest arts ; like the oral traditions of the Jews, they floated down from age to age on the lips of successive generations. The name of the first sage who sanctioned the saying would in time be forgotten, while the opinion, the metaphor, or the expres- sion, remained, consecrated into a proverb. Such was the origin of those memorable sentences by which men learnt to think and to speak appositely : they were precepts which no man could contradict, at a time when authority was valued more than opin- ion, and experience preferred to novelty. The proverbs of a father became the inheri- tance of a son ; the mistress of a family per- petuated hers through her household; the workman condensed some traditional secret of his craft into a proverbial expression. When countries are not yet populous, and property has not yet produced great in- equalities in its ranks, every day will show them how *' the drunkard and the glutton JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 289 come to poverty, and drowsiness clothes a man with rags." At such a period he who gave counsel gave wealth. . . . Some difficulty has occurred in the defini- tion. Proverbs must he distinguished from proverbial phrases, and from sententious maxims ; but as proverbs have many faces, from their miscellaneous nature, the class itself scarcely admits of any definition. When Johnson defined a proverb to be " a short sentence frequently repeated by the people," this definition would not include the most curious ones, which have not always circulated among the populace, nor even belong to them ; nor does it designate the vital qualities of a proverb. The pithy quaintness of Old Howell has admirably described the ingredients of an exquisite proverb to be sense, shortness, and salt. A proverb is distinguished from a maxim or an apophthegm by that brevity which con- denses a thought or a metaphor, where one thing is said and another is to be applied. This often produces wit, and that quick pun- gency which excites surprise, but strikes with conviction; this gives it an epigram- matic turn. George Herbert entitled the small collection which he formed ''Jacula Prudentiuin," Darts or Javelins: something hurled and striking deeply : a characteristic of a proverb which possibly Herbert may have borrowed from a remarkable passage in Plato's dialogue of " Protagoras, or the Sophists." Proverbs have ceased to be studied or em- ployed in conversation since the time we have derived our knowledge from books ; but in a philosophical age they appear to offer infinite subjects for speculative curios- ity. Originating in various eras, these me- morials of manners, of events, and of modes of thinking, for historic ( al as well as for moral purposes, still retain a strong hold on our attention. The collected knowledge of suc- cessive ages, and of different people, must always enter into some part of our own. Truth and nature can never be obsolete. Proverbs embrace the wide sphere of human existence, they take all the colours of life, they are often exquisite strokes of genius, they delight by their airy sarcasm or their caustic satire, the luxuriance of their humour, and the tenderness of their sentiment. They give a deep insight into domestic life, and open for us the heart of man, in all the various states which he may occupy, a frequent review of proverbs should enter into our readings; and al- though they are no longer the ornaments of conversation, they have not ceased to be the treasuries of thought. Cariosities of Literature, vol. Hi. : The Philosophy of Proverbs. 19 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, sixth President of the United States, 1825- 18:29, born at Braintree, Massachusetts, 1767. died at Washington, D. C., 1848, occupied many important public posts, for accounts of which we refer to the work from which the extract following is taken, Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams, by Josiali Quincy, LL.D., Boston, 1858, 8vo. WOMEN IN POLITICS. One of the topics agitated during this debate [June 16 to July 7, 1838] arose upon a speech of Mr. Howard, of Maryland. Among the petitions against the annexation of Texas were many signed by women. On these Mr. Howard said, he always felt a regret when petitions thus signed were pre- sented to the house, relating to political subjects. He thought these females could have a sufficient field for the exercise of their influence in the discharge of their duties to their fathers, their husbands, or their children, -cheering the domestic circle, and shedding over it the mild radiance of the social virtues, instead of rushing into the fierce struggles of political life. He considered it discreditable, not only to their political section of country, but also to the national character. Mr. Adams immediately entered into a long and animated defence of the right of petition by women ; in the course of which he asked " whether women, by petitioning this house in favor of suffering and distress, perform an office 'discreditable' to them- selves, to the section of the country where they reside, and to this nation. The gen- tleman says that women have no right to petition Congress on political subjects. Why? Sir, what does the gentleman understand by 'political subjects?' Every thing in which the house has an agency, every thing which relates to peace and relates to war, or to any other of the great interests of society. Are women to have no opinions or actions on subjects relating to the general welfare? Where did the gentleman get this principle? Did he find it in sacred history, in the lan- guage of Miriam the prophetess, in one of the noblest and most sublime songs of tri- umph that ever met the human eye or ear? Did the gentleman never hear of Deborah, to whom the children of Israel came up for judgment? Has he forgotten the deed of Joel, who slew the dreaded enemy of her country? Has he forgotten Esther, who, by HER PETITION, saved her people and her country? Sir, I might go through the whole of the sacred history of the Jews to the advent of our Saviour, and find innu- merable examples of women, who not only 290 NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. took an active part in the politics of their times, but who are held up with honour to posterity for doing so. Our Saviour him- self, while on earth, performed that most stupendous miracle, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, at the petition of a woman! To go from sacred history to profane, does the gentleman there find it 'discreditable' for women to take any interest or any part in political affairs? In the history of Greece, let him read and examine the character of Aspasia, in a country in which the character and conduct of women were more restricted than in any modern nation, save among the Turks. Has he forgotten that Spartan mother, \vlio said to her son, when going out to battle, ' My son, come back to me with thy shield, or upon thy shield?' Does he not remember Claelia and her hundred compan- ions, who swam across the river, under a shower of darts, escaping from Porsenna? Has he forgotten Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, who declared that her children were her jewels? And why? Because they were the champions of freedom. Does he not remember Portia, the wife of Brutus and daughter of Cato, and in what terms she is represented in the history of Rome? Has he not read of Arria, who, under im- perial despotism, when her husband was condemned to die by a tyrant, plunged the sword into her own bosom, and handing it to her husband, said, ' Take it, Paetus, it does not hurt,' and expired? " To come to a later period, what says the history of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors? To say nothing of Boadicea, the British heroine in the time of the Caesars, what name is more illustrious than that of Eliza- beth? Or, if he will go to the Continent, will he not find the names of Maria Theresa of Hungary, the two Catherines of Russia, and of Isabella of Castile, the patroness of Columbus, the discoverer in substance of this hemisphere, for without her aid that discovery would not have been made? Did she bring discredit on her sex by mingling in politics? To come nearer home, what were the women of the United States in the struggle of the Revolution ? Or what would the men have been but for the influence of the women of that day ? Were they devoted exclusively to the duties and enjoyments of the fireside? Take, for example, the ladies of Philadelphia." Mr. Adams here read a long extract from Judge Johnson's Life of General Greene, relating that during the Revolutionary War a call came from General Washington stat- ing that the troops were destitute of shirts, and of many indispensable articles of cloth- ing. " And from whence," writes Judge Johnson, " did relief arrive, at last ? From the heart where patriotism erects her fa- vourite shrine, and from the hand which is seldom withdrawn when the soldier solicits. The ladies of Philadelphia immortalized themselves by commencing the generous work, and it was a work too grateful to the American fair not to be followed up with zeal and alacrity." Mr. Adams then read a long quotation from Dr. Ramsay's History of South Caro- lina, "which speaks," said he, "trumpct- tongued, of the daring and intrepid spirit of patriotism burning in the bosoms of the ladies of that State." After reading an ex- tract from this History, Mr. Adams thus comments upon it : " ' Politics,' sir I ' rush- ing into the vortex of politics !' glorying in being called rebel ladies ; refusing to attend balls and entertainments, but crowding to the prison-ships ! Mark this, and remember it was done with no small danger to their own persons, and to the safety of their fami- lies. But it manifested the spirit by which they were animated ; and, sir, is that spirit to be charged here, in this hall where we are sitting, as being ' discreditable' to our country's name? Shall it be said that such conduct was a national reproach, because it was the conduct of women who left ' their domestic concerns, and rushed into the vor- tex of politics !' Sir, these women did more ; they petitioned, yes, they petitioned, and that in a matter of politics. It was for the life of Hayne." NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, born at Ajaccio, Corsica, August 15, 1769, Commander-in-Chief of the French Army in Italy, 1796, First Consul of France, 1799, Emperor of the French. 1804, defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815, pris- oner at St. Helena. October 15, 1815, until his death, May 5, 1821. NAPOLEON'S ARGUMENT FOR THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST, AND THE SCRIPTURES, IN A CONVERSATION WITH GENERAL BERTRAND, AT ST. HELENA. True, Christ offers to our faith a series of mysteries. He commands us authoritatively to believe, and gives no other reason than his awful word I am God. True, this is an article of mere faith, and upon it depend all the other articles of the Christian system; but the doctrine of the divinity of Christ once admitted, Christianity appears with the precision and clearness of algebra; it has the connectedness and unity of a science. This doctrine resting upon the Bible, best NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. 291 explains the traditions prevalent in the world. It throws light upon them ; and all the other doctrines of Christianity are strictly connected with it, as links of the same chain. The nature of Christ's exist- ence is mysterious, I admit ; but this mys- tery meets the wants of man : reject it, and the world is an inexplicable riddle, believe it, and the history of our race is satisfac- torily explained. Christianity has one advantage over all systems of philosophy and all religions: Christians do not delude themselves in re- gard to the nature of things. You can- not reproach them with the subtleties and artifices of those idealists who think to solve profound theological problems by their empty dissertations. Fools ! their efforts are those of the infant who tries to touch the sky with his hand, or cries to have the moon for his plaything. Christianity says simply. "No man hath seen God but God. God re- veals what he is : his revelation is a mys- tery which neither imagination nor reason can conceive. But when God speaks, man must believe." This is sound common sense. The Gospel possesses a secret virtue of indescribable efficacy, a warmth which in- fluences the understanding and softens the heart; in meditating upon it, you feel as you do in contemplating the heavens. The Gospel is more than a book ; it is a living thing, active, powerful, overcoming every obstacle in its way. See upon this table this book of books, and here the emperor touched it reverently, I never cease reading it, and always with new delight. Christ never hesitates, never varies in his instructions, and the least of his assertions is stamped with a simplicity and a depth which captivate the ignorant and the learned, if they give it their attention. Nowhere is to be found such a series of beautiful thoughts, fine moral maxims, fol- lowing one another like rairks of a celestial army, and producing in the soul the same emotion as is felt in contemplating the in- finite extent of the resplendent heavens on a fine summer night. Not only is our mind absorbed ; it is con- trolled, and the soul can never go astray with this book for its guide. Once master of our mind, the Gospel is a faithful friend. God himself is our Friend, our Father, and truly our God. A mother has not greater care for the infant on her breast. The soul, captivated by the beauty of the Gospel, is no longer its own. God occupies it alto- gether ; he directs its thoughts and all its faculties : it is his. What a proof it is of the divinity of Christ, that with so absolute an empire, his single aim is the spiritual melioration of individ- uals, their purity of conscience, their union to the truth, their holiness of soul. My last argument is. There is not a God in heaven, if a mere man was able to con- ceive and execute successfully the gigantic design of making himself the object of su- preme worship, by usurping the name of God. Jesus alone dared to do this : he alone said clearly and unfalteringly of him- self, / am God; which is quite different from saying, Iain a god, or ihere are gods. History mentions no other individual who has appropriated to himself the title of God in the absolute sense. Heathen mythology nowhere pretends that Jupiter and the other gods themselves assumed divinity. It would have been on their part the height of pride and absurdity. They were deified by their posterity, the heirs of the first despots. As all men are of one race, Alexander could call himself the son of Jupiter; but Greece laughed at the silly assumption ; and in making gods of their emperors, the Romans were not serious. Mahomet and Confucius merely gave out that they were agents of the Deity. Numa's goddess Egeria was only the personification of his reflections in the solitude of the woods. The B rah mas of India are only deifications of mental attri- butes. How then should a Jew, the particulars of whose history are better attested than that of any of his contemporaries, how should he alone, the son of a carpenter, give out all at once that he was God, the Creator of all things? He arrogates to him- self the highest adoration. He constructs his worship with his own hands, not with stones but with men. You are amazed at the conquests of Alexander. But here is a conqueror who appropriates to his own advantage, who incorporates with himself, not a nation, but the human race. Wonder- ful ! the human soul with all its faculties be- comes blended with the existence of Christ. And how? by a prodigy surpassing all other prodigies he seeks the love of men, the most difficult thing in the world to obtain : he seeks what a wise man would fain have from a few friends, a father from his chil- dren, a wife from her husband, a brother from a brother, in a word, the heart: this he seeks, this he absolutely requires, and he gains his object. Hence I infer his divinity. Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, Louis XIV., with all their genius, failed here. They conquered the world and had not a friend. I am perhaps the only person of my day who loves Hannibal, Caesar, Alexander. Louis XIV., who shed so much lustre upon France and the world, had not a friend in all his kingdom, not even in his own family. True, we love our children, but it is from instinct, 292 NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. from a necessity which the beasts them- selves obey: and how many children mani- fest no proper sense of our kindness and the cares we bestow on them, how many un- grateful children ! Do your children, Gen- eral Bertrand, love you ? You love them, but you are not sure of being requited. Neither natural affection nor your kindness will ever inspire in them such love as Chris- tians have lor God. When you die your children will remember you, doubtless while spending your money ; but your grand- children will hardly know that you ever existed. And yet you are General Bertrand! And we are here upon an island, where all your cares and all your enjoyments are centred in your family. Christ speaks, and at once generations become his by stricter, closer ties than those of blood ; by the most sacred, most indis- soluble of all unions. He lights up the flame of a love which consumes self-love, which prevails over every other love. In this wonderful power of his will we recognize the Word that created the world. The founders of other religions never con- ceived of this mystical love, which is the essence of Christianity, and is beautifully called charity. Hence it is that they have struck upon a rock. In every attempt to effect this thing, namely, to make himself beloved, man deeply feels his own impotence. So that Christ's greatest miracle undoubt- edly is the reign of charity. He alone succeeded in lifting the heart of man to things invisible, and in inducing him to sacrifice temporal things : he alone, by influencing him to this sacrifice, has formed a bond of union between heaven and earth. All who sincerely believe in him taste this wonderful, supernatural ex- alted love, which is beyond the power of reason, above the ability of man : a sacred fire brought down to earth by this new Prometheus, and of which Time, the great destroyer, can neither exhaust the force nor limit the duration. The more I, Napoleon, think of this, I admire it the more. And it convinces me absolutely of the divinity of Christ. I have inspired multitudes with such af- fection for me that they would die for me. God forbid that I should compare the sol- dier's enthusiasm with Christian charity, which are as unlike as their cause. But after all, my presence was necessary, the lightning of my eye, my voice, a word from me: then the sacred fire was kindled in their hearts. I do indeed possess the secret of this magical power which lifts the eoul, but I could never impart it to any one: none of my generals ever learnt it from me; nor have I the secret- of perpetuating my name and love for me in the hearts of men, and to effect these things without physical means. Now that I am at St. Helena. now that I am alone chained to this rock, who fights and wins empires for me? Where are any to share my misfortunes, any to think of me? Who bestirs himself for me in Europe? Who remains faithful to me : where are my friends? Yes, two or three of you, who are immortalized by this fidelity, ye share, ye alleviate my exile. Here the emperor's voice choked with grief. Yes, my life once shone with all the bril- liance of the diadem and the throne, and yours, Bertrand, reflected that brilliance, as the dome of the " Invalides," gilt by me, re- flects the rays of the sun. But disasters came, the gold gradually became dim, and now all the brightness is effaced by the rain of misfortune and outrage with which I am continually pelted. We are mere lead now, General Bertrand, and soon I shall be in my grave. Such is the fate of great men. So it was with Csesar, and Alexander, and I too am forgotten ; and the name of a conqueror and an emperor is a college theme ! our ex- ploits are tasks given to pupils by their tutor, who sits in judgment upon us, award- ing us censure or praise. How different the opinions formed of the great Louis XIV. ! Scarcely dead, the great king was left alone in his solitary chamber at Versailles, neglected by his courtiers, and perhaps the object of their ridicule. He was no more their master. lie was a dead body, in his coffin, the prey of a loath- some putrefaction. And mark what is soon to become of me, assassinated by the English oligarchy, I die before my time, and my dead body too must return to the earth to become food for worms. Such is soon to be the fate of the Great Napoleon ! What a wide abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, adored, and which is extending over all the earth ! Is this death? Is it not life rather? The death of Christ is the death of a God. The emperor paused, and as General Ber- trand did not answer, the emperor resumed : You do not perceive that Jesus Christ is God ? then I did wrong to appoint you general I The above is translated from a French tract, printed in Paris, with the title " Na- poleon." The narrative is confirmed by a letter from the Rev. Dr. G. De Felice, Pro- fessor in the Theological Seminary at Mon- tauban, France, in a communication inserted in the New York Observer of April 16, 1842. JUNIUS. 293 Professor De Felice states that the Ilev. Dr. Bogue sent Napoleon at St. Helena a copy of liis "Essay on the Divine Authority of the New Testament," which eye-witnesses attest that he read with interest and satis- faction. He also states that similar wit- nesses attest that he read much in the Bible, and spoke of it with profound respect ; and further, that there was a religious revival among the inhabitants of St. Helena, which extended to the soldiers, who prayed much for the conversion and salvation of the noble prisoner. Professor De Felice closes his communication by translating from a recent French journal the following conversation related by Count de Montholon, the faithful friend of the emperor: I know men, said Napoleon, and I tell you that Jesus is not a man : The religion of Christ is a mystery which subsists by its own force, and proceeds from a mind which is not a human mind. We find in it a marked individuality, which originated a train of words and maxims un- known before. Jesus borrowed nothing from our knowledge. He exhibited in himself the perfect example of his precepts. Jesus is not a philosopher; for his proofs are miracles, and from the first his disciples adored him. In fact, learning and philosophy are of no use in salvation ; and Jesus came into the world to reveal the mysteries of heaven and the laws of the Spirit. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and my- self founded empires : but upon what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone founded his empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for him. It was not a day or a battle which achieved the triumph of the Christian religion in the world. No : it was a long war, a contest for three centuries, begun by the apostles, then continued by the flood of Christian genera- tions. In this war all the kings and poten- tates of earth were on one side : on the other I see no army, but a mysterious force, some men scattered here and there in all parts of the world, and who have no other rallying point than a common faith in the mysteries of the cross. 1 die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to become food for worms. Such is the fate which so soon awaits him who has been called The Great Napoleon. AVhat an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ, which is proclaimed, loved, and adored, and which is extending over the whole earth ! Call you this dying? Is it not living rather? The death of Christ is the death of a God! JUNIUS. The Letters of Junius were originally published in The Public Advertiser of Lon- don, by Henry Sampson Woodfall, the first letter bearing date January 21, 1769, and the last January 21, 1772. They are ad- dressed to the Printer of The Public Ad- vertiser, Sir William Draper, the Duke of Grafton, the Duke of Bedford, Lord North, Lord Mansfield, the King of England, Rev. Mr. Home, and others. Who Junius was is as yet (July 8, 1878) unknown : we have re- viewed the controversy at length in another place (Allibone's Critical Dictionary, vol. i. pp. 1001-1005), to which we refer the in- quirer, adding to our authorities Notes and Queries and (London) Athenaeum, 1849, et seq., Indexes. Is it not possible that Sir Philip Francis was the amanuensis, or one of the amanuenses, of Junius, probably in ignorance himself of the author? " The classic purity of their language, the ex- quisite force and perspicuity of their argument, the keen severity of their reproach, the extensive information they evince, their fearless and decisive tone, and, above all, their stern and steady attach- ment to the purest principles of the Constitution, acquired for them, with an almost electric speed, a popularity which no series of letters have since possessed, nor, perhaps, ever will; and, what is of far greater consequence, diffused among the body a clearer knowledge of their constitutional rights than they had ever before attained, and animated them with a more determined spirit to maintain them inviolate." JOHN MASON GOOD, M.D. : Essay on Juniim and his Writing*. See the Letters of Junius, third edition, by John Wade, Lond., 1850. 2 vols. post 8vo (Bonn's Stand. Lib.). In his Supplementary Essay Mr. Wade espouses the claims of Sir Philip Francis; Lords Macaulay, Brougham, and Campbell, Sir James Mackintosh, and many others were of the same opinion. FROM JUNIUS'S LETTER TO THE KING. When the complaints of a brave and power- ful people are observed to increase in propor- tion to the wrongs they have suffered ; when, instead of sinking into submission, they are roused to resistance, the time will soon arrive at which every inferior consideration must yield to the security of the sovereign, and to the general safety of the state. There is a moment of difficulty and danger at which flattery can no longer deceive, and simplicity itself can no longer be misled. Let us sup- pose it arrived. Let us suppose a gracious, well-intentioned prince made sensible at List of the great duty he owes to his people and of his own disgraceful situation ; that he looks round him for assistance, and asks for no advice, but how to gratify the wishes, and secure the happiness of his subjects. In these circumstances, it may be matter of 294 JUNIUS. curious speculation to consider, if an honest man were permitted to approach a king, in what terms he would address himself to his sovereign. Let it bo imagined, no matter how improbable, that the first prejudice against his character is removed ; that the ceremonious difficulties of an audience are surmounted ; that he feels himself animated by the purest and most honourable affections to his king and country ; and that the great person whom he addresses has spirit enough to bid him speak freely and understanding enough to listen to him with attention. Un- acquainted with the vain impertinence of forms, he would deliver his sentiments with dignity and firmness, but not without respect: SIR : It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress which has attended your gov- ernment, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth until you heard it in the complaints of your people. It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your education. We are still in- clined to make an indulgent allowance for the pernicious lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence of your dis- position. We are far from thinking you capable of a direct, deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on which all their civil and political liber- ties depend. Had it been possible for us to entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should long since have adopted a style of remonstrance very distant from the humility of complaint. The doc- trine inculcated by our laws, " that the king can do no wrong,'' is admitted without re- luctance. We separate the amiable, good- natured prince from the folly and treachery of his servants, and the private virtues of the man from the vices of the government. Were it not for this just distinction, I know not whether your majesty's condition, or that of the English nation, would deserve most to be lamented. I would prepare your mind for a favourable reception of a truth, by removing every painful offensive idea of personal reproach. Your subjects, sir, wish for nothing, but that, as they are reasonable and affectionate enough to separate your per- son from your government, so you, in your turn, should distinguish between the conduct which becomes the permanent dignity of a king and that which serves only to promote the temporary interest and miserable ambi- tion of a minister. You ascended the throne with a declared (and, I doubt not, a sincere) resolution of giving universal satisfaction to your sub- jects. You found them pleased with the novelty of a young prince, whose counte- nance promised even more than his words, and loyal to you, not only from principle, but passion. It was not a cold profession of allegiance to the first magistrate, but a partial, animated attachment to a favourite prince, the native of their country. They did not wait to examine your conduct, nor to be determined by experience, but gave you a generous credit for the future blessings of your reign, and paid you in advance the dearest tribute of their affections. Such, sir, was once the disposition of a people who now surround your throne with reproaches and complaints. Do justice to yourself. Banish from your mind those unworthy opinions with which some interested persons have laboured to possess you. Distrust the men who tell you that the English are naturally light and inconstant; that they complain without a cause. Withdraw your confidence equally from all parties ; from ministers, favourites, and relations; and let there be one moment in your life when you have consulted your own understanding. . . . These sentiments, sir, and the style they are conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, because they are new to you. Accustomed to the language of courtiers, you measure their affections by the vehemence of their expressions ; and when they only praise you indirectly, you admire their sincerity. But this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. They deceive you, sir, who tell you that you have many friends whose affections are founded upon a principle of personal attach- ment. The first foundation of friendship is not the power of conferring benefits, but the equality with which they are received, and may be returned. The fortune which made you a king forbade you to have a friend : it is a law of nature, which cannot be violated with impunity. The mistaken prince who looks for friendship will find a favourite, and in that favourite the ruin of his affairs. The people of England are loyal to the house of Hanover, not from a vain prefer- ence of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, sir. is a principle of allegiance equally solid and ra- tional ; fit for Englishmen to adopt and well worthy of your majesty's encouragement. We cannot long he deluded by nominal dis- tinctions. The name of Stuart of itself is only contemptible : armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example; and while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that as it was acquired by one revolution, it may he lost by another. JOHN FOSTER. 295 JOHN FOSTER, born 1770, in 1792 commenced preaching, and officiated among the Baptists at New- castle-upon-Tyne, Dublin, Chichester, Down- end, near Bristol, and Frome in Somerset- shire ; afterwards retired, in consequence of ill health, to Stapleton, near Bristol, and died in 1843. He was for thirteen years the chief contributor to The Eclectic Review. See his Life and Correspondence by J. E. llyland, with Notices of Mr. Foster as a Preacher and Companion, by John Shep- pard, Lond., 1846, 2 vols. post 8vo, 2d edit., 1848, 2 vols. 8vo ; again (Bolm's Stand. Lib.), 1852, also 1855, 2 vols. p. 8vo ; Boston, 1850, 2 vols. in 1, 12mo. Foster's Works : Essays in a Series of Letters (On Decision of Char- acter, On a Man's Writing a Memoir of Himself, On the Epithet Romantic, On the Aversion of Men of Taste to Evangel- ical Religion, etc.), Lond., 1823, 8vo, 21st edit., 1850, p. 8vo, new edit, 1856, fp. 8vo; Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, etc., Lond., 1834, 8vo, new edit., 1856, fp. 8vo ; Lectures Delivered in Broadmead Chapel, Bristol, Lond., 1844, 8vo, Second Series, 1847, 8vo, both, 1848, 2 vols. 12mo, and in Bohn's Stand. Lib., 2 vols. p. 8vo ; Contributions, Biographical. Literary, and Philosophical, to the Eclectic Review, Lond., 1844, 2 vols. 8vo, and in Bohn's Stand. Lib., as Critical Essays. 2 vols. p. 8vo ; Fosteriana, Edited by II. G. Bohn, Lond., 1858, p. 8vo. "I have read, with the greatest admiration, the Essays of Mr. Foster. He is one of the most pro- found and eloquent writers that England has pro- duced." SIR J. MACKINTOSH. ON A MAN'S WRITING A MEMOIR OF HIM- SELF. Though in memoirs intended for publica- tion a large share of incident and .action would generally be necessary, yet there are some whose mental history alone might be very interesting to reflective readers ; as, for instance, that of a thinking man remarkable for a number of complete changes of his spec- ulative system. From observing the usual tenacity of views once deliberately adopted in mature life, we regard as a curious phe- nomenon the man whose mind has been a kind of caravansera of opinions, enter- tained a while, and then sent on pilgrim- age ; a man who has admired and dismissed systems with the same facility with which John Buncle found, adored, married, and interred his succession of wives, each one being, for the time, not only better than all that went before, but the best in the crea- tion. You admire the versatile aptitude of a mind sliding into successive forms of be- lief in this intellectual metempsychosis, by which it animates so many new bodies of doctrines in their turn. And as none of those dying pangs which hurt you in a tale of India attend the desertion of each of these speculative forms which the soul has a while inhabited, you are extremely amused by the number of transitions, and eagerly ask what is to be the next, for you never deem the present state of such a man's views to be for permanence, unless perhaps when he has terminated his course of believing every thing in ultimately believing nothing. Even then, unless he is very old, or feels more pride in being a sceptic, the conqueror of all sys- tems, than he ever felt in being the cham- pion of one, even then it is very possible he may spring up again, like a vapour of fire from a bog, and glimmer through new mazes, or retrace his course through half of those which he trod before. You will observe that no respect attaches to this Proteus of opinions after his changes have been multi- plied, as no party expect him to remain with them, nor deem him much of an acquisition if he should. One, or perhaps two, consid- erable changes will be regarded as signs of a liberal inquirer, and therefore the party to which his first or his second intellectual con- version may assign him will receive him gladly. But he will be deemed to have ab- dicated the dignity of reason when it is found that he can adopt no principles but to betray them ; and it will be perhaps justly suspected that there is something extremely infirm in the structure of that mind, whatever vigour may mark some of its operations, to which a series of very different, and sometimes contrasted, theo- ries can appear in succession demonstra- tively true, and which imitates sincerely the perverseness which Pertruchio only af- fected, declaring that which was yesterday to a certainty the sun, to be to-day as cer- tainly the moon. It would be curious to observe in a man, who should make such an exhibition of the course of his mind, the sly-deceit of self- love. While he despises the system which he has rejected, he does not deem it to imply so great a want of sense in him once to have embraced it, as in the rest who wore then or are now its disciples and advocates. No : in him it was no debility of reason ; it was at the utmost but a merge of it; and probably he is prepared to explain to you that such peculiar circumstances as might warp even a very strong and liberal mind attended his consideration of the subject, and misled him to admit the belief of what others prove themselves fools by believing. Another thing apparent in a record of changed opinions would be, what I have noticed before, that there is scarcely any 296 JOHN FOSTER. such thing in the world as simple conviction. It would be amusing to observe how reason had, in one instance, been overruled into acquiescence by the admiration of a cele- brated name, or another into opposition by the envy of it ; how most opportunely reason discovered the truth just at the time that interest could be essentially served by avow- ing it; how easily the impartial examiner could be induced to adopt some part of an- other man's opinions, after that other had zealously approved some favourite, especially if unpopular, part of his, as the Pharisees almost became partial even to Christ at the moment that he defended one of their doc- trines against the Sadducees. It would be curious to see how a professed respect for a man's character and talents, and concern for his interests, might be changed, in conse- quence of some personal inattention experi- enced from him, into illiberal invective against him or his intellectual performances, and yet the railer, though actuated solely by petty revenge, account himself the model of equity and candour all the while. It might lie seen how the patronage of power could elevate miserable prejudices into revered wisdom, while poor old Experience was mocked with thanks for her instruction ; and how the vicinity or society of the rich and, as they are termed, great could perhaps melt a soul that seemed to be of the stern con- sistence of early Koine, into the gentlest wax on which Corruption could wish to im- print the venerable creed, " The right di- vine of kings to govern wrong," with the pious inference that justice was outraged when virtuous Tarquin was expelled. I am supposing the observer to perceive all these accommodating dexterities of reason ; for it were probably absurd to expect that any mind should itself be able in its review to detect all its own obliquities, after having been so long beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I remember to have read, who followed the direction of their compass, in- fallibly right as they thought, till they ar- rived at an enemy's port, where they were seized and doomed to slavery. It happened that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship, had concealed a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle. On the notions and expectations of one stage of life I suppose all reflecting men look back with a kind of contempt, though it may be often witli the mingling wish that some of its enthusiasm of feeling could be recovered, I mean the period between proper childhood and maturity. They will allow that their reason was then feeble, and they are prompted to exclaim, What fools we have been, while they recollect how sin- cerely they entertained and advanced the most ridiculous speculations on the interests of life and the questions of truth ; how regret- fully astonished they were to find the mature sense of some of those around them so com- pletely wrong ; yet in other instances, what veneration they felt for authorities for which they have since lost all their respect; what a fantastic importance they attached to some most trivial things; what complaints against their fate were uttered on account of disap- pointments which they have since recollected with gaiety or self-congratulation ; what happiness of Elysium they expected from sources which would soon have i'ailed to im- part even common satisfaction ; and how certain they were that the feelings and opinions then predominant would continue through life. If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest where it had lain forgotten fifty years a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim many passages of the language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost every other writing could at his age inspire? He would half lose the assurance of his identity, under the impression of this immense dis- similarity. It would seem as if it must be the tale of the juvenile days of some an- cestor, with whom he had no connexion but that of name. He would feel the young man thus introduced to him separated by so wide a distance of character as to render all con- genial sociality impossible. At every sen- tence he would be tempted to repeat, Fool- ish youth, I have no sympathy with your feelings, I can hold no converse with your understanding. Thus, you see that in the course of a long life a man may be several moral persons, so various from one another, that if you could find a real individual that should nearly exemplify the character in one of these singes, and another that should ex- emplify it in the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these several persons to- gether into one society, which would thus be a representation of the successive states of one man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous party, would oppose and prob- ably despise one another, and soon sifter separate, not caring if they were never to meet again. If the dissimilarity in mind were as great as in person, there would in both respects be a most striking contrast be- tween the extremes at least, between the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy. The one of these contrasts an old man might contemplate if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of his life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he JOHN FOSTER. 297 looks at his present countenance; and the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person in early life to pre- serve for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental like- ness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy. DECISIOX OP CHARACTER. I have frequently remarked to you in con- versation the effect of what has been called a ruling passion. When its object is noble, and an enlightened understanding directs its movements, it appears to me a great felicity : but whether its object be noble or not, it in- fallibly creates, where it exists in great force, that active, ardent constancy, which I de- scribe as a capital feature of the decisive character. The subject of such a command- ing passion wonders, if indeed he were at leisure to wonder, at the persons who pretend to attach importance to an object which they make none but the most languid efforts to secure. The utmost powers of the man are constrained into the service of the favourite cause of this passion, which sweeps away, as it advances, all the trivial objections and little opposing motives, and seems almost to open its way through impossibilities. This spirit comes on him in the morning as soon as lie recovers his consciousness, and com- mands and impels him through the day with a jiower from which he could not emancipate himself if he would. When the force of habit is added the determination becomes invincible, and seems to assume rank with the great laws of nature, making it nearly as certain that such a man will persist in his course as that in the morning the sun will rise. A persisting, untamable efficacy of soul gives a seductive and pernicious dignity even to a character and a course which every moral principle forbids us to approve. Often in the narrations of history and fiction, an agent of the most dreadful designs compels a sentiment of deep respect for the uncon- querable mind displayed in their execution. While we shudder at his activity, we say with regret, mingled with an admiration which borders on partiality, AVhat a noble being this would have been if goodness had been his destiny ! The partiality is evinced in the very selection of terms, by which we fchow that we are tempted to refer his atrocity rather to his destiny than to his choice. I wonder whether an emotion like this has not been experienced by each reader of "Paradise Lost," relative to the leader of the infernal spirits: a proof, if such were the fact, that a very serious error has been committed by the greatest poet. In some of the high examples of ambition we almost revere the force of mind which impelled them forward through the longest series of action, superior to doubt or fluctuation, and disdainful of ease, of pleasures, of opposi- tion, and of hazard. We bow to the ambi- tious spirit which reached the true sublime, in the reply of Pompey to his friends, who dissuaded him from venturing on a tempest- uous sea, in order to be at Home on an im- portant occasion : " It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary for me to Jive." llevenge has produced wonderful examples of this unremitting constancy to a purpose. Zanga is a well-supported illustration. And you may have read a real instance of a Spaniard, who, being injured by another in- habitant of the same town, resolved to de- stroy him : the other was apprised of this, and removed with the utmost secrecy, as he thought, to another town to a considerable distance, where, however, he had not been more than a day or two, before he found that his enemy was arrived there. He re- moved in the same manner to several parts of the kingdom, remote from each other; but in every place quickly perceived thak his deadly pursuer was near him. At last he went to South America, where he had en- joyed his security but a very short time before his unrelenting enemy came up with him and effected his purpose. You may recollect the mention, in one of our conversations, of a young man who wasted in two or three years a large patri- mony in profligate revels with a number of worthless associates who called themselves his friends, and who, when his last means were exhausted, treated him, of course, with neglect or contempt. Reduced to absolute want, he one day went out of the house with an intention to put an end to his life ; but wandering a while unconsciously, he came to the brow of an eminence which overlooked what were lately his estates. Here he sat down and remained fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a vehement, exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates should be his again : he had formed his plan, too, which he instantly began to execute. He walked hastily forward, de- termined to seize the very first opportu- nity, of however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it were ever so despicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could help it. a farthing of whatever he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of 298 JOHN FOSTER. carts on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed. He received a few pence for the labour; and then, in pursuance of the saving part of his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which was given him. He then looked out for the next thing that might chance to offer, and went, with indefatigable industry, through a succession of servile employments, in different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scrupu- lously avoiding, as far as possible, the ex- pense of a penny. He promptly seized every opportunity which could advance his design, without regarding the meanness of occupation or appearance. By this method he had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into second advantages ; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony ; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear, or have forgotten, the continued course of his life ; but the final result was, that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth 60,000. I have always recollected this as a signal instance, though in an unfortunate and ignoble direc- tion, of decisive character, and of the ex- traordinary effect which, according to general laws, belongs to the strongest form of such a character. But not less decision has been displayed by men of virtue. In this distinction no man ever exceeded, for instance, or ever will exceed, the late illustrious Howard. The energy of his determination was so great, that if, instead of being habitual, it had been shown only for a short time, on particular occasions, it would have appeared a vehement impetuosity ; but by being un- intermitted it had an equability of manner which scarcely appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so totally the reverse of anything like turbulence or agita- tion. It was the calmness of an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the character of the individual forbidding it to be less. The habitual passion of his mind was a measure of feeling almost equal to the temporary extremes and paroxysms of common minds : as a great river, in its customary state, is equal to a small or moderate one when swollen to a torrent. The moment of finishing his plans in de- liberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I wonder what must have been the amount of that bribe in emolument or pleasure that would have detained him a week inactive after their final adjustment! The law which carries water down a declivity was not more unconquerable and invariable than the determination of his feelings towards the main object. The importance of this ob- ject held his faculties in a state of excitement which was too rigid to be affected by lighter interests, and on which therefore the beauties of nature and of art had no power. lie had no leisure feeling which he could spare to be diverted among the innumerable varieties of the extensive scenes which he traversed : all his subordinate feelings lost their separate existence and operation by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds to mark this as a fault in his character. But the mere men of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as How- ard : he is above their sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits who fulfil their com- mission of philanthropy among mortals do not care about pictures, statues, and sump- tuous buildings; and no more did he, when the time in which he must have inspected and admired them would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his life. The curiosity which he might feel was reduced to wait till the hour should arrive when its gratification should be pre- sented by conscience, which kept a scrupu- lous charge of all his time, as the most sacred duty of that hour. If he was at every hour, when it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts but the second claim, they might be sure of their revenge ; for no other man will ever visit Rome under such a despotic consciousness of duty as to refuse himself time for surveying the mag- nificence of its ruins. Such a sin against taste is very far beyond the reach of com- mon saintship to commit. It implied an inconceivable severity of conviction that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a con- centration of his forces, as to idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. His attention was so strongly and tena- ciously fixed on his object that, even nt the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyra- mids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinctness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him, that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement nnd every day was an approximation. As his method referred everything he did and thought to the end, and as his exertion did not relax for a mo- ment, he made the trial, so seldom made, SYDNEY SMITH. 299 what is the utmost effect which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent: and therefore what he did not accomplish, he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence. Unless the eternal happiness of mankind be an insignificant concern, and the passion to promote it an inglorious distinction, I may cite George Whitefield us a noble in- stance of this attribute of tlie decisive char- acter, this intense necessity of action. The great cause which was so languid a thing in the hands of many of its advocates, as- sumed in his administrations an unmitigable urgency. Many of the Christian missionaries among the heathens, such as Brainerd, Elliot, and Schwartz, have displayed memorable ex- amples of this dedication of their whole being to their office, this external abjuration of all the quiescent feelings. This would be the proper place for intro- ducing (if I did not hesitate to introduce in any connexion with merely human in- stances) the example of Him who said, " 1 must be about my Father's business." " My meat and drink is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." " I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." SYDNEY SMITH, born at Woodford, Essex, 1771, Fellow of New College, Oxford, 1790, one of the founders of The Edinburgh Review, 1802, Hector of Foston-le-Clay, Yorkshire, 1806. Prebendary of Bristol, 1828 ; Rector of Cornbe-Florey, Somersetshire, 1829, Canon Residentiary of St. Paul's Cathedral, 1831, died in London, 1845. He published a number of sermons, po- litical pamphlets, articles in The Edinburgh Review, and Letters on the Subject of the Catholics to my Brother Abraham, who Lives in the Country, by Peter Plymley, 1807, et seq., 21st edit., Lond.. 1838, p. 8vo, and a collective edition of his Works, Lond., 1839-40, 4 vols. 8vo: reprinted as The Li- brary Edition, The Traveller's Edition. The People's Edition. After his death appeared : Fragments on the Roman Catholic Church, Lond., 1845, 8vo ; Sermons Preached at St. Paul's Cathedral, etc., Lond., 1846, 8vo; Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy, etc., Edited by Lord Jeffrey, 1849, 8vo; pri- vately printed, 100 copies: published. Lond., 1850, fp. 8vo. See also Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. Sydney Smith, etc.. with a Bio- graphical Memoir and Notes by Evert A. Duyckinck, New York, 1856, 12mo; new edit, 1865, small p. 8vo, and 50 copies large paper ; also A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, by his Daughter, Lady Holland, etc., Edited by Mrs. Austin, Lond., 1856, 2 vols. 8vo. " He is universally admitted to have been a great reasoner, and the greatest master of ridicule that has appeared among us since Swift." LORD MACAULAY, 1847 : Letter to Mrs. Sydney Smith, in. Memoir costume nnd character in his novels, he has raise 1 them to historic importance without im- pairing their interest as works of art. Who now would imagine that he could form a satisfactory notion of the golden days of Queen Bess that had not read ' Kenilworth,' or of Richard Coeur de Lion 308 SIR WALTER SCOTT. and his brave paladins that had not read ' Ivan- hoe'? . . . Scott was, in truth, master of the pic- turesque. He understood better than any historian since the time of Livy how to dispose his lights and shades so as to produce the most striking re- sult. This property of romance he had a right to borrow. This talent is particularly observable in the animated parts of his story, in his battles, for example. No man has painted those terrible scenes with greater effect. ... It is when trending on Scottish ground that he seems to feel all his strength. . . .' I seem always to step more firmly,' he said to some one, 'when on my own native heather.' His mind was steeped in Scottish lore, and his bosom warmed with a sympathetic glow for the age of chivalry." WILLIAM H. PIIESCOTT: liiuyr. and Grit. Mitcell., edit. 1855, 284, 2S5, 286. See also 54, 130, 139, 606, n., 623, 702; N. Amei: Kecitic, xx$v. 187. RAVENSWOOD AND Lucr ASHTON. " Do you know me, Miss Ashton ? I am still that Edgar Ravenswood, who. for your affection, renounced the dear ties by which injured honour bound him to seek ven- geance. I am that Ravenswood, who, for your sake, forgave, nay clasped hands in friendship with the oppressor and pillager of his house, the traducer and murderer of his father.'' " My daughter," answered Lady Ashton, interrupting him, "has no occasion to dis- pute the identity of your person ; the venom of your present language is sufficient to remind her that she speaks with the mortal enemy of her father." " I pray you to be patient, madam," an- swered Ravenswood ; " my answer must come from her own lips. Once more, Miss Lucy Ashton, I am that Ravenswood to whom you granted the solemn engagement which you now desire to retract and can- cel." Lucy's bloodless lips could only falter out the words, " It was my mother." " She speaks truly," said Lady Ashton, " it was I who, authorized alike by the laws of God and man, advised her, and concurred with her, to set aside an unhappy and pre- cipitate engagement, and to annul it by the authority of Scripture itself." "Scripture!" said llavenswood, scorn- fully. " Let him hear the text," said Lady Ash- ton, appealing to the divine, " on which you yourself, with cautious reluctance, de- clared the nullity of the pretended engage- ment insisted upon by this violent man." The clergyman took his clasped Bible from his pocket, and read the following words: u lf a woman vow a vow unto the Lord, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth ; and her father hear her vow, and her bond icherewith she ha1h bound her sonl, and her father shall hold his peace at her : then all her vows shall stand, and ever;/ vow where- with she hath bound her soul shall stand.' 1 ' 1 " And was it not so even with us?'' inter- rupted llavenswood. "Control thy impatience, young man," answered the divine, " and hear what fol- lows in the sacred text : ' But if her father disallow her in the day that he hearcth ; not any of her vows, or of her bonds wherewith she hath bound her soul, shall stand: and the Lord shall forgive her, because her father dis- allowed her.' " " And was not," said Lady Ashton. fiercely and triumphantly breaking in, "was not ours the case stated in the holy writ? Will this person deny that the instant her parents heard of the vow, or bond, by which our daughter had bound her soul, we disallowed the same in the most express terms, and in- formed him by writing of our determina- tion ?" " And is this all ?" said Ravenswood, look- ing at Lucy. "Are you willing to barter sworn faith, the exercise of free will, and the feelings of mutual affection, to this wretched hypocritical sophistry ?" " Hear him !" said Lady Ashton, looking to the clergyman, " hear the blasphemer!" "May God forgive him," said Bide-the- bent, "and enlighten his ignorance." " Hear what I have sacrificed for you," said Ravenswood, still addressing Lucy, "ere you sanction what has been done in your name. The honour of an ancient family, the urgent advice of my best friends, have been in vain used to swav my resolution ; neither the arguments of reason, nor the portents of superstition, have shaken my fidelity. The ver-y dead have arisen to warn me, and their warning has been despised. Are you prepared to pierce my heart for its fidelity with the very weapon which my rash confidence intrusted to your grasp?" " Master of Ravenswood," said Lady Ash- ton, " you have asked what questions you thought fit. You see the total incapacity of my daughter to answer you. But I will reply for her, and in a manner which you cannot dispute. You desire to know whether Lucy Ashton, of her own free will, desires to annul the engagement into which she has been trepanned. You have her letter under her own hand, demanding the surrender of it ; and, in yet more full evidence of her purpose, here is the contract which she has this morning subscribed, in presence of this reverend gentleman, with Mr. Hayston of Bucklaw." Ravenswood gazed upon the deed as if petrified. " And it was without fraud or compulsion," said he, looking towards the clergyman, " that Miss Ashton subscribed this parchment?" SIR WALTER SCOTT. 309 " I vouch it upon my sacred character." "This is indeed, inadamc, an undeniable piece of evidence,'' said Ravenswood, sternly ; " and it will be equally unnecessary and dis- honourable to waste another word in useless remonstrance or reproach. There, madaine," he said, laying down before Lucy the signed paper and the broken piece of gold, " there are the evidences of your first engagement; may you be more faithful to that which you have just formed. I will trouble you to re- turn the corresponding tokens of my ill-placed confidence, I ought rather to say, of my egregious folly." Lucy returned the scornful glance of her lover with a gaze from which perception seemed to have been banished ; yetshe seemed partly to have understood his meaning, for she raised her hands .as if to undo a blue ribbon which she wore around her neck. She was unable to accomplish her purpose, but Lady Ashton cut the ribbon asunder, and detached the broken piece of gold which Miss Ashton had till then concealed in her bosom : the written counterpart of the lovers' engagement she for some time had had in her own possession. With a haughty curtsy she delivered both to Ravenswood, who was much softened when he took the piece of gold. " And she could wear it thus," he said speaking to himself "could wear it in her very bosom could wear it next to her heart even when But complaint avails not," he said, dashing from his eye the tear which had gathered in it, and resuming the stern composure of his manner. He strode to the chimney and threw into the fire the paper and piece of gold, stamping, upon the coals with the heel of his boot, as if to ensure their destruction. "I will be no longer," he then said, " an intruder here. Your evil wishes and your worse offices, Lady Ashton, I will only return, by hoping these will be your last machinations against your daugh- ter's honour and happiness. And to you, madaine," he said, addressing Lucy, " I have nothing farther to say, except to pray to God that you may not become a world's wonder for this act of wilful and deliberate perjury." Having uttered these words, he turned on his heel, and left the apartment. The Bride of Lammermoor, Chap, xxxiii. BOIS-GUILBERT AND REBECCA. '* The friend and protector," said the Tem- plar, gravely, " I will yet be, but mark at what risk, or rather at what certainty, of dishonour : and then blame me not if I make my stipulations, before I offer up all that I have hitherto held dear, to save the life of a Jewish maiden." "Speak," said Rebecca; "I understand thee not." " Well, then," said Bois-Guilbert, " I will speak as freely as ever did doting penitent to his ghostly father, when placed in the tricky confessional. Rebecca, if I appear not in these lists I lose fame and rank, lose that which is the breath of my nostrils ; the esteem, I mean, in which 1 am held by my brethren, and the hopes I have of succeed- ing to that mighty authority which is now wielded by the bigoted dotard Lucas de Beau- manoir, but of which I should make a far different use. Such is my certain doom, ex- cept I appear in arms against thy cause. Accursed be he of Goodalricke, who baited this trap for me! and doubly accursed Albert de Malvoison, who withheld me from the resolution I had formed of hurling back the glove at the face of the superstitious and superannuated fool who listened to a charge so absurd and against a creature so high in mind and so lovely in form as thou art!" " And what now avails rant or flattery?'' answered Rebecca. " Thou hast made thy choice between causing to be shed the blood of an innocent woman, or of endangering thine own earthly state and earthly hopes, what avails it to reckon together? thy choice is made." " No, Rebecca," said the knight, in a softer tone, and drawing nearer towards her; " my choice is NOT made, nay, mark, it is thine t > make the election. If I appear in the lists, I must maintain my name in arms; and if 1 do so, championed or unchampioned, thou diest by the stake and faggot, for there lives not the knight who hath coped with me in arms on equal issue, or on terms of vantage, save Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and his minion of Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe, as thou well knowest, is unable to bear his corslet, and Richard is in a foreign prison. If I appear, then, thou diest, even although thy charms should in- stigate some hot-headed youth to enter the lists in thy defence." " And what avails repeating this so often?" said Rebecca. " Much," replied the Templar; "for thou must learn to look at thy fate on every side." " Well, then, turn the tapestry," said the Jewess, "and let me see the other side." "If I appear," said Bois-Guilbert, "in the fatal lists, thou diest by a slow and cruel death, in pain such as they say is destined to the guilty hereafter. But if I appear not, then am I a degraded and dishonoured knight, accused of witchcraft and of com- munion with infidels, the illustrious name, which has grown yet more so under my wearing, becomes a hissing and a reproach. I lose fame, I lose honour, I lose the pros pect of such greatness as scarce emperors 310 SIR WALTER SCOTT. attain to, I sacrifice mighty ambition. I destroy schemes built as high as the moun- tains with which heathens say their heaven was once nearly scaled, and yet, Rebecca," he added, throwing himself at her feet, " this greatness will I sacrifice, this fame will I renounce, tins power will I forego, even now when it is half within my grasp, if thou wilt say, ' Bois-Guilbert, I receive thee for my lover.' " "Think not of such foolishness, Sir Knight," answered Rebecca, " but hasten to the Regent, the Queen Mother, and to Prince John, they cannot, in honour to the English crown, allow of the proceedings of your Grand Master. So shall you give me pro- tection without sacrifice on your part, or the pretext of requiring any requital from me." " With these I deal not," he continued, holding the train of her robe, " it is thee only I address-; and whatcan counterbalance thy choice? Bethink thee, were I a fiend, yet death is a worse, and it is death who is my rival." " I weigh not these evils," said Rebecca, afraid to provoke the wild knight, yet equally determined neither to endure his passion, nor even feign to endure it. " Be a man, be a Christian ! If, indeed, thy faith recommends that mercy which rather your tongue than your actions pretend, save me from this dreadful death, without seeking a requital which would change thy magna- nimity into base barter." " No, damsel !" said the proud Templar, springing up, " thou shalt not thus impose on me, if I renounce present fame and fu- ture ambition, I renounce it for thy sake, and we will escape in company. Listen to me, Rebecca," he said, again softening his tone; " England Europe is not the world. There are spheres in which we may act, ample enough even for my ambition. We will yo to Palestine, where Conrade, Marquis of Montserrat, is my friend, a friend free as myself from the doting scruples which fetter our free-born reason, rather with Saladin will we league ourselves than endure the scorn of the bigots whom we contemn. I will form new paths to greatness," he con- tinued, again traversing the room with hasty strides, ' Europe shall hear the loud step of him she has driven from her sons! Not the millions whom her crusades send to slaugh- ter can do so much to defend Palestine, not the sabres of the thousands and thou- sands of Saracens can hew their way so deep into that land for which nations are striving, as the strength and policy of me and those brethren, who, in despite of yon- der old bigot, will adhere to me in good and evil. Thou shalt be a queen, Rebecca. on Mount Carmel shall we pitch the throne which my valour will gain for you, and I will exchange my long-desired baton for a sceptre." Ivanhoe, Chap, xxxix. QUEEN ELIZABETH, AMY ROBSART, AND LEICESTER. Urged to this extremity, dragged, as it were, by irresistible force to the verge of the precipice, which she saw but could not avoid, permitted not a moment's respite by the eager words and menacing gestures of the offended Queen, Amy at length uttered in despair, " The Earl of Leicester knows it all." ''The Earl of Leicester!" said Elizabeth, in utter astonishment. " The Earl of Leices- ter ! The Earl of Leicester!" she repeated, with kindling anger. '' AVoman, thou art set on to this, thou dost belie him, he takes no keep of such things as thou art. Thou art suborned to slander the noblest lord and the truest-hearted gentleman in England! But were he the right hand of our trust, or something yet dearer to us, thou shalt have thy hearing, and that in his presence. Come with me, come with me instantly !" As Amy shrunk back with terror, which the incensed Queen interpreted as that of conscious guilt, Elizabeth rapidly advanced, seized on her arm, and hastened with swift and long steps out of the grotto, and along the principal alley of the Pleasance, dragging with her the terrified Countess, whom she still held by the arm, and whose utmost ex- ertions could but just keep pace with those of the indignant Queen. Leicester was at this moment the centre of a splendid group of lords and ladies, as- sembled together under an arcade or portico, which closed the alley. The company had drawn together in that place to attend the commands of her Majesty when the hunting party should go forward, and their astonish- ment may be imagined, when, instead of seeing Elizabeth advance towards them with her usual measured dignity of motion, they beheld her walking so rapidly that she was in the midst of them ere they were aware; and then observed, with fear and surprise, that her features were flushed betwixt anger and agitation, that her hair was loosened by her haste of motion, and that her eyes sparkled as they were wont when the spirit of Henry VIII. mounted highest in his daughter. Nor were they less astonished at the appearance of the pale, extenuated, half dead, yet still lovely female, whom the Queen upheld by main strength with one hand, while with the other she waved aside the ladies and nobles who pressed towards her, under the idea that she was taken sud- denly ill. " Where is my Lord of Leices- JOSIAH QUINCY. 311 ter?" she said, in a tone that thrilled with astonishment all the courtiers who stood around. " Stand forth, iny Lord of Leices- ter!" If in the midst of the most serene day of summer, when all is light and laughing around, a thunderbolt were to fall from the clear blue vault of heaven, and rend the earth at the very feet of some careless trav- eller, he could not gaze upon the smoulder- ing chasm, which so unexpectedly yawned before him, with half the astonishment and fear which Leicester felt at the sight that so suddenly presented itself. He had that instant been receiving, with a political affec- tation of disavowing and misunderstanding their meaning, the half-uttered, half-inti- mated commendations of the courtiers upon the favour of the Queen, carried apparently to its highest pitch during the interview of that morning; from which most of them seemed to augur that he might soon arise from their equal in rank to become their master. And now, while the subdued yet proud smile with which he disclaimed those inferences was yet curling his cheek, the Queen shot into the circle, her passions ex- cited to the uttermost; and, supporting with one hand, and apparently without an effort, the pale and sinking form of his almost expiring wife, and pointing with the finger of the other to her half-dead features, de- manded in a voice that sounded to the ears of the astounded statesman like the last dread trumpet call, that is to summon body and spirit to the judgment-seat, " Knowest thou this woman ?" As, at the blast of that last trumpet the guilty shall call upon the mountains to cover them, Leicester's inward thoughts invoked the stately arch which he had built in his pride, to burst its strong conjunction, and overwhelm them in its ruins. But the cemented stones, architrave and battlement, stood fast ; and it was the proud master himself, who, as if some actual pressure had bent him to the earth, kneeled down before Elizabeth, and prostrated his brow to the marble flag-stones on which he stood. "Leicester," said Elizabeth, in a voice which trembled with passion, " could I think thou hast practised on me, on me thy sovereign on me thy confiding, thy too partial mistress, the base and ungrateful deception which thy present confusion sur- mises, by all that is holy, false lord, that head of thine were in as great peril as ever was thy father's !" Leicester had not conscious innocence, but he had pride, to support him. He raised slowly his brow and features, which were black and swollen with contending emotions, and only replied, " My head cannot fall but by the sentence of my peers, to them I will plead, and not to a princess who thus requites my faithful service." " What ! rny lords," said Elizabeth, look- ing around, "we are defied, I think, defied in the Castle we have ourselves bestowed on this proud man ! My Lord Shrewsbury, you are Marshal of England, attach him of 'I high treason." "Whom does your Grace mean?" said Shrewsbury, much surprised, for he had that instant joined the astonished circle. " Whom should I mean, but that traitor Dudley, Earl of Leicester ! Cousin of Huns- don, order out your band of gentlemen-pen- sioners, and take him into instant custody. I say, villain, make haste !" Hunsdon, a rough old noble, who, from his relationship to the Boleyns, was accustomed to use more freedom with the Queen than al- most any other dared to do, replied bluntly, " And it is like your Grace might order me to the Tower to-morrow for making too much haste. I do beseech you to be patient." " Patient, God's life !" exclaimed the Queen, " name not the word to me, thou know'st not of what he is guilty !" Amy, who had by this time in some de- gree recovered herself, and who saw her husband, as she conceived, in the utmost danger from the rage of an offended Sover- eign, instantly (and alas ! how many women have done the same !) forgot her own wrongs, and her own danger, in her apprehensions for him, and throwing herself before the Queen, embraced her knees, while she ex- claimed, " He is guiltless, madam, he is guiltless, no one can lay aught to the charge of the noble Leicester!' 1 Kenilworth, Chap, xxxiv. JOSIAH QUINCY, LL.D., a son of Josiah Quincy, Junior (an eminent American patriot, born 1744, died 1775), was born in Boston, Massachusetts, Feb. 4. 1772, filled many important political positions; was President of Harvard College, 1829- 1845, and died at his country-seat at Quincy, Massachusetts (the residence of his family for more than two centuries), July 1, 1864. He was the author of Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Jun., Bost., 1825. 8vo : The History of Harvard University, Bost., 1840, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d edit, Bost,, 1860, 2 vols. 8vo ; The History of the Boston Athenaeum, with Biographical Notices of its Deceased Founders, Bost., 1851, 8vo ; A Municipal History of the Town and City of Boston During Two Centuries : From September 17, 1030, to September 17, 1830, Bost., 1830, 8vo j 312 JO SI All QUINCY. Memoir of the Life of John Qiiincy Adams, Bust., 1858, 8vo ; Essays on the Soiling of Cattle, Illustrated by Experience, etc., Bost., 1859-, 8vo, I'd edit., 1860, new edit., 1866, 8vo. lie also published many Addresses, Speeches, etc., and from one of these minor publica- tions we present an extract. " Few men have acquired so just a distinction for unspotted integrity, fearless justice, consistent principles, high talents, and extensive literature. Still fewer possess the merit of having justified the public confidence by the singleness of heart and purpose with which they have devoted themselves to the best interests of society." JUDGE JOSEPH STORY: Dedicution of Story's Miscellaneous Works to the Hon. Josiah Quiiicy, LL.D., October, 1835. THE CHARACTER OF NEW ENGLAND. If, after this general survey of the surface of New England, we cast our - eyes on its cities and great towns, with what wonder should we behold, did not familiarity render the phenomenon almost unnoticed, men, combined in great multitudes, possessing freedom and the consciousness of strength, the comparative physical power of a ruler less than that of a cobweb across a lion's path, yet orderly, obedient, and respectful to authority ; a people, but no populace ; every class in reality existing which the general law of society acknowledges, except one, and this exception characterizing the whole country. The soil of New England is trodden by no slave. In our streets, in our assemblies, in the hcills of election and legis- lation, men of every rank and condition meet, and unite or divide on other princi- ples, and are actuated by other motives than those growing out of such distinctions. The fears and jealousies which in other countries separate classes of men, and make them hos- tile to each other, have here no influence, or a very limited one. Each individual, of what- ever condition, has the consciousness of liv- ing under known laws, which secure equal rights, and guarantee to each whatever por- tion of the goods of life, be it great or small, chance or talent or industry may have be- stowed. All perceive that the honors and rewards of society are open equally to the fair competition of all, that the distinc- tions of wealth, or of power, are not fixed in families, that whatever of this nature exists to-day may be changed to-morrow, or, in a coming generation, be absolutely re- versed. Common principles, interests, hopes, and affections are the result of universal education. Such are the consequences of the equality of rights, and of the provisions for the general diffusion of knowledge, and the distribution of intestate estates, estab- lished by the laws framed by the earliest emigrants to New England. If from our cities we turn to survey the wide expanse of the interior, how do the effects of the institutions and example of our early ancestors appear, in all the local comfort and accommodation which mark the general condition of the whole country ! unobtrusive indeed, but substantial ; in noth- ing splendid, but in everything sufficient ;ind satisfactory. Indications of active talent and practical energy exist everywhere. With a soil comparatively little luxuriant, and in great proportion either rock, or hill, or sand, the skill and industry of man are set'n tri- umphing over the obstacles of nature : mak- ing the rock the guardian of the field ; mould- ing the granite as though it were .clay ; leading cultivation to the hill-top, and spreading over the arid plain hitherto un- known and unanticipated harvests. The lofty mansion of the prosperous adjoins the lowly dwelling of the husbandman ; their respective inmates are in the daily inter- change of civility, sympathy, and respect. Enterprise and skill, which once held chief affinity with the ocean or the sea-board, now begin to delight the interior, haunting our rivers, where the music of the waterfall, with powers more attractive than those of the fabled harp of Orpheus, collects around it intellectual man and material nature. Towns and cities, civilized and happy com- munities, rise, like exhalations, on rocks and in forests, till the deep and far-sound- ing voice of the neighboring torrent is itself lost and unheard, amid the predominating noise of successful and rejoicing labor. What lessons has New England, in every period of her history, given to the world 1 What lessons do her condition and example still give! How unprecedented, yet how practical ! How simple, yet how powerful! She has proved that all the variety of Chris- tian sects may live together in harmony under a government which allows equal privileges to all, exclusive pre-eminence to none. She has proved that ignorance among the multi- tude is not necessary to order, but that the surest basis of perfect order is the informa- tion of the people. She has proved the old maxim, that "No government except a des- potism with a standing army can subsist where the people have arms," to be false. Ever since the first settlement of the coun- try arms have been required to be in the hands of the whole multitude of New Eng- land : yet the use of them in a private quarrel, if it have ever happened, is so rare that a late writer of great intelligence, who had passed his whole life in New England and possessed extensive means of informa- tion, declares, " I know not a single instance of it." [See Travels in New England and New York, by Timothy Dwight, S.T.D., FRANCIS JEFFREY. 313 LL.D., late President of Yale College, vol. iv., p. 334. Foot-note.] She has proved that a people of a character essentially military may subsist without duelling. New Eng- land has at all times been distinguished both on the land and on the ocean for a daring, fearless, ;tnd enterprising spirit; yet the same writer asserts [ibid., p. 336] that, during the whole period of her existence her soil has been disgraced but by jice duels, and that only two of these were fought by her native inhabitants ! Perhaps this asser- tion is not minutely correct. There can, however, be no question that it is suffi- ciently near the truth to justify the position for which it is here adduced, and which the history of New England, as Avell as the ex- perience of her inhabitants, abundantly con- firms, that, in the present and in every past age the spirit of our institutions has, to every important practical purpose, annihi- lated the spirit of duelling. Such are the true glories of the institu- tions of our fathers ! Such the natural fruits of that patience in toil, that frugality of disposition, that temperance of habit, that general diffusion of knowledge, and that sense of religious responsibility, incul- cated by the precepts, and exhibited in the example, of every generation of our ances- tors ! . . . The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history, the language addressed by every past age of New England to all future ages, is this : Human happiness has no per- fect security but freedom ; freedom, none but virtue; virtue, none but knowledge; and neither freedom, nor virtue, nor knowledge has ant/ vigor, or immortal hope, except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion. Men of Massachusetts ! citizens of Boston ! descendants of the early emigrants! con- sider your blessings ; consider your duties. You have an inheritance acquired by the labors and sufferings of six successive gen- erations of ancestors. They founded the fabric of your prosperity in a severe and masculine morality, having intelligence for its cement, and religion for its groundwork. Continue to build on the same foundation, and by the same principles; let the extend- ing temple of your country's freedom rise, in the spirit of ancient times, in proportions of intellectual find moral architecture, just, simple, and sublime. As from the first to this day, let New England continue to be an example to the world of the blessings of a free government, and of the means and capacity of man to maintain it. And in all times to come, as in all times past, may Bos- ton be amon"; the foremost and the boldest to exemplify and uphold whatever constitutes the prosperity, the happiness, and the glory of New England. Address to the Citizens of Boston, XVII. September, MDCCCXXX., the Close of the Second Century from the First Settle- ment of the City, Boat., 1830, 8vo. FRANCIS JEFFREY, born in Edinburgh, 1773, educated at the University of Glasgow and at Queen's Col- lege, Oxford, was admitted an advocate at the Scotch bar 17 1 J4; was editor of The Edinburgh Review (of which he was with Henry Brougham and Sydney Smith a co- founder), July, 1803, to June, 182'J, Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1820, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates, June, 182 ( J, Lord Advocate, 1830, member of Par- liament, 1831-1834, Judge in the Scotch Court of Session, with the title of Lord Jeffrey, from 1834 until his death, 1850. To The Edinburgh Review he contributed 200 articles, No. 1, being the first article in the first number, October, 1802, and No. 200, published January, 1848. Of these, 79 were published together as Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, London, 1843, 4 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1846, 3 vols. 8vo, 3d edit., 1853, 8vo. The 121 remaining articles should be collected. His article on Beauty, republished, with alterations, in the Ency- clopaedia Britanniea, will be found in the Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. " Of all the treatises that have been published on the theory of taste, it is the most complete in its philosophy and the most delightful in its writing ; and it is as sound as the subject admits of." LOUD CoCKBURJf : Life of Lord Jeffrey, vol. i. " Few works of the kind are more questionable in the principle, or more loose in the arrangement and argument." LYALL: Aynuixtet, or Philosoph. Stricture*, eta., Lond., 1856, 18-44. " Mr. Jeffrey is far from a flowery or affected writer: he has few tropes or figures, still less any odd startling thoughts or quaint innovations in ex- pression ; but he has a constant supply of ingeni- ous solutions and pertinent examples; he never proses, never grows dull, never wears an argument to tatters: and by the number, the liveliness, and facility of his transitions, keeps that appearance of vivacity, of novel and sparkling eflt-ct, for which others are too often indebted to singularity of com bination or tinsel ornaments." HAZLITT: Spirit of tlie Aye. See also Selections from the Corres- pondence of the la'e Macvey Napier, Esq. Edited by His Son, Macvey Napier. London, 1879, 8vo. Index, p. 548. PROGRESS OF E.VGUSII LITERATURE. By far the most considerable change which has taken place in the world of letters, in 314 FRANCIS JEFFREY. our days, is that by which the wits of Queen Anne's time have been gradually brought down from the supremacy which they had enjoyed, without competition for the best part of a century. When we were at our studies, some twenty-five years ago, we can perfectly remember that every young man was set to read Pope, Swift, and Addison as regularly as Virgil, Cicero, and Horace. All who had any tincture of letters were familiar with their writings and their history ; allu- sions to them abounded hi all popular dis- courses and all ambitious conversation ; and they and their contemporaries were univer- sally acknowledged as our great models of ex- cellence, and placed without challenge at the head of our national literature. New books, even when allowed to have merit, were never thought of as fit to be placed in the same class, but were generally read and forgotten, and passed away like the transitory meteors of a lower sky ; while they remained in their brightness, and were supposed to shine with a fixed and unalterable glory. All this, however, we take it, is now pretty well altered ; and in so far as persons of our antiquity can judge of the training and habits of the rising generation, those cele- brated writers no longer form the manual of our studious youth, or enter necessarily into the institution of a liberal education. Their names, indeed, are still familiar to our ears ; but their writings no longer solicit our habit- ual notice, and their subjects begin already to fade from our recollection. Their high privileges and proud distinctions, at any rate, have evidently passed into other hands. It is no longer to them that the ambitious look up with envy, or the humble with admira- tion ; nor is it in their pages that the pre- tenders to wit and eloquence now search for allusions that are sure to captivate, and illus- trations that cannot be mistaken. In this decay of their reputation they have few ad- vocates, and no imitators: and, from a com- parison of many observations, it seems to be clearly ascertained that they are declined considerably from " the high meridian of their glory," and may fairly be apprehended to be "hastening to their setting." Neither is it time alone that has wrought this ob- scuration ; for the fame of Shakspeare still shines in undecaying brightness: and that of Bacon has been steadily advancing and gathering new honours during the whole period which has witnessed the rise and decline of less vigorous successors. There are but two possible solutions for phenomena of this sort. Our taste has either degenerated, or its old models have been fairly surpassed : and we have ceased to admire the writers of the last century only because they are too good for us, or be- cause they arc not good enough. Now, we confess we are not believers in the abso- lute and permanent corruption of national taste : on the contrary, we think that it is, of all faculties, that which is most sure to advance and improve with time and experi- ence ; and that, with the exception of those great physical or political disasters which have a check to civilization itself, there has always been a sensible progress in this par- ticular : and that the general taste of every successive generation is better than that of its predecessors. There are little capricious fluctuations, no doubt, and fits of foolish ad miration or fastidiousness, which cannot be so easily accounted for: but the great move- ments are all progressive ; and though the progress consists at one time in withholding toleration from gross faults, and at another in giving their high prerogative to great beauties, this alteration has no tendency to obstruct the general advance; but, on the contrary, is the best and the safest course in which it can be conducted. We are of opinion, then, that the writers who adorned the beginning of the last cen- tury have been eclipsed by those of our own time ; and that they have no chance of ever regaining the supremacy in which they have been supplanted. There is not, however, in our judgment, anything very stupendous in this triumph of our contemporaries ; and the greater wonder with us is that it was so long delayed, and left for them to achieve. For the truth is, that the writers of the former age had not a great deal more than their judgment and industry to stand on ; and were always much more remarkable for the fewness of their faults than the great- ness of their beauties. Their laurels were won much more by good conduct and dis- cipline, than by enterprising boldness or native force : nor can it be regarded as any very great merit in those who had so little of that inspiration of genius, to have steered clear of the dangers to which that inspira- tion is liable. Speaking generally of that generation of authors, it may be said that, as poets, they had no force or greatness of fancy, no pathos, and no enthusiasm ; and, as philosophers, no comprehensiveness, depth, or originality. They are sagacious, no doubt, neat, clear, and reasonable, but for the most part, cold, timid, and superficial. They never meddle with the great scenes of nature, or the great passions of man ; but content themselves with just and sarcastic representations of city life, and of the paltry passions and meaner vices that are bred in that lower element. Their chief care is to avoid being ridiculous in 'the eyes of the witty, and above all to eschew the ridicule of excessive sensibility or enthusiasm, to FRANCIS JEFFREY. 315 be at once witty and rational themselves, with as good a grace as possible ; but to five their countenance to no wisdom, no mcy, and no morality which passes the standards current in good company Their inspiration, accordingly, is nothing more than a sprightly sort of good sense ; and they have scarcely any invention but what is subservient to the purposes of derision and satire. Little gleams of pleasantry and sparkles of wit glitter through their com- positions ; but no glow of feeling no blaze of imagination no flashes of genius ever irradiate their substance. They never pass beyond " the visible diurnal sphere," or deal in any thing that can either lift us above our vulgar nature, or ennoble its reality. AVith these accomplishments, they may pass well enough for sensible and polite writers, but scarcely for men of genius : .and it is cer- tainly far more surprising that persons of this description should have maintained themselves for near a century, at' the head of the literature of a country that had pre- viously produced a Shakspeare, a Spenser, a Bacon, and a Taylor, than that, towards the end of that long period, doubts should have .arisen as to the legitimacy of a title by which they laid claim to that high station. Both parts of the phenomenon, however, \ve dare say, had causes which better ex- pounders might explain to the satisfaction of all the world. We see them but imper- fectly, and have room only for an imperfect sketch of what we sec. Our first literature consisted of saintly legends and romances of chiv.'ilry, though Chaucer gave it a more national and popu- lar character, by his original descriptions of external nature, and the familiarity and gaiety of his social humour. In the time of Elizabeth it received a copious infu- sion of classical images and ideas; but it was still intrinsically romantic, serious, and even somewhat lofty and enthusiastic. Authors were then so few in number that they were looked upon with a sort of vener- ation, and considered as a kind of inspired persons ; at least they were not yet so nu- merous as to be obliged to abuse each other, in order to obtain a share of distinction for themselves; and they neither affected a tone of derision in their writings, nor wrote in fear of derision from others. They were filled with their subjects, and dealt with them fearlessly in their own way ; and the stamp of originality, force, and freedom is conse- quently upon almost all their productions. In the reign of James I. our literature, with some few exceptions, touching rather the form than the substance of its merits, ap- pears to us to have reached the greatest per- fection to which it has yet attained ; though it would probably have advanced still farther in the succeeding reign had not the great national dissensions which then arose turned the talent and energy of the people into other channels, first to the assertion of their civil rights, and afterwards to the discussion of their religious interests. The graces of literature sutfered of course in those fierce contentions, and a deeper shade of austerity was thrown upon the intellectual character of the nation. Her genius, however, though less captivating and adorned than in the happier days which preceded, was still ac- tive, fruitful, and commanding ; and the period of the civil wars, besides the mighty minds that guided the public counsels, and were absorbed in public cares, produced the giant powers of Taylor, and llobbes, and Barrow, the muse of Milton, the learning of Coke, and the ingenuity of Cowley. The Restoration introduced a French court, under circumstances more favourable for the effectual exercise of court influence than ever before existed in England ; but this of itself would not have been sufficient to account for the sudden change in our literature which ensued. It was seconded by causes of far more general operation. The Restoration was undoubtedly a popular act; and, inde- fensible as the conduct of the army and the civil leaders was on that occasion, there can be no question that the severities of Crom- well and the extravagances of the sectaries had made republican professions hateful and religious ardour ridiculous, in the eyes of a great proportion of the people. All the eminent writers of the preceding period, however, had inclined to the party that was now overthrown, and their writings had not merely been accommodated to the character of the government under which they were produced, but were deeply imbued with its obnoxious principles, which were those of their respective authors. When the re- straints of authority were taken off, there- fore, and it became profitable, as well as popular, to discredit the fallen party, it was natural that the leading authors should affect a style of levity and derision, as most oppo- site to that of their opponents, and best cal- culated for the purposes they had in view. The nation, too. was now for the first time essentially divided in point of character and principle, and a much greater proportion were capable both of writing in support of their own notions and of being influenced by what was written. Add to this, that there were real and serious defects in the style and manner of the former generation and that the grace, and brevity, and vivacity of that gayer manner, which was now intro- duced from France, were not only good and captivating in themselves, but had then all 316 FRANCIS JEFFREY. the charms of novelty and of contrast, and it will not be difficult to understand how it came to supplant that which had been estal>- lished of old in the country, and that so sud- denly, that the same generation among whom Milton had been formed to the severe sanc- tity of wisdom and the noble independence of genius, lavished its loudest applauses on the obscenity and servility of such writers as Rochester and Wycherly. This change, however, like all sudden changes, WHS too tierce and violent to be long maintained at the same pitch, and when the wits and profligates of King Charles had sufficiently insulted the seriousness and vir- tue of their predecessors, there would prob- ably have been a revulsion towards the ac- customed taste of the nation, had not the party of the innovators been reinforced by champions of more temperance and judg- ment. The result seemed at one time sus- pended on the will of Dryden, in whose individual person UKJ genius of the English and of the French school of literature may be said to have maintained a protracted struggle. But the evil principle prevailed! Carried by the original bent of his genius, and his familiarity with our older models, to the cultivation of our native style, to which he might have imparted more steadiness and correctness, for in force and in sweetness it was already matchless, he was unluckily seduced by the attractions of fashion, and the dazzling of the clear wit and rhetoric in which it delighted, to lend his powerful wit to the new corruptions and refinements and, in fact, to prostitute his great gifts to the pur- poses of party rage or licentious ribaldry. The sobriety of the succeeding reigns al- layed this fever of profanity, but no genius arose sufficiently powerful to break the spell that still withheld us from the use of our own peculiar gifts and faculties. On the contrary, it was the unfortunate ambition of the next generation of authors to improve and perfect the new style rather than to re- turn to the old one; and it cannot be denied that they did improve it. They corrected its gross indecency, increased its precision and correctness, made its pleasantry and sarcasm more polished and elegant, and spread through the whole of its irony, its narration, and its reflection a tone of clear and condensed good sense, which recom- mended itself to all who had and all who had not any relish for higher beauties. This is the praise of Queen Anne's wits, nnd to this praise they are justly entitled. This was left for them to do, and they did it well. They were invited to it by the cir- cumstances of their situation, and do not seem to have been possessed of any such bold or vigorous spirit as cither to neglect or to outgo the invitation. Coming into life immediately after the consummation of a bloodless revolution, effected much more by the cool sense than the angry passion of the nation, they seem to have felt that they were born in an age of reason rather than of feel- ing or fancy ; and that men's minds, though considerably divided and unsettled upon many points, were in a much better temper to relish judicious argument and cutting satire than the glow of enthusiastic passion or the richness of a luxuriant imagination. To those accordingly they made no preten- sions ; but, writing with infinite good sense, and great grace and vivacity, and, above all, writing for the first time in a tone that was peculiar to the upper ranks of society, and upon subjects that were almost exclusively interesting to them, they naturally figured, at least while the manner was new, as the most accomplished, fashionable, and perfect writers which the world had ever seen ; and made the wild, luxuriant, and humble sweet- ness of our earlier authors appear rude and untutored in the comparison. Men grew ashamed of admiring and afraid of imitating writers of so little skill and smartness ; and the opinion became general, not only that their faults were intolerable, but that even their beauties were puerile and barbarous, and unworthy the serious regard of a polite and distinguishing age. These, and similar considerations, will go far to account for the celebrity which those authors acquired in their day ; but it is not quite so easy to explain how they should have so long retained their ascendant. One cause, undoubtedly, was the real excellence of their productions, in the style which they had adopted. It was hopeless to think of surpassing them in that style: and, recom- mended as it was by the felicity of their ex- ecution, it required some courage to depart from it, and to recur to another, which seemed to have been so lately abandoned for its sake. The age which succeeded, too, was not the age of courage or adventure. There never was, on the whole, a quieter time than the reigns of the two first Georges, and the greater part of that which ensued. There were two little provincial rebellions indeed, and a fair proportion of foreign war; but there was nothing to stir the minds of the people at large, to rouse their passions or excite their imaginations, nothing like the agitations of the Reformation in the six- teenth century, or of the civil wars in the seventeenth. They went on, accordingly, minding their old business, and reading their old books, with great patience and stupidity. And certainly there never was so remarkable a dearth of original talent so long an interregnum of native genius FRANCIS JEFFREY. 317 as during about sixty years in the middle of the last century. The dramatic art was dead fifty years be- fore; and poetry seemed verging to a similar extinction. The few sparks that appeared too, showed that the old fire was burnt out, and that the altar must hereafter be heaped with fuel of another quality. Gray, with the talents rather of a critic than a poet, with learning, fastidiousness, and scrupulous delicacy of taste, instead of fire, tenderness, or invention, began and ended a small school, which we could scarcely have wished to be- come permanent, admirable in many re- spects as some of its productions are, being far too elaborate and artificial either for grace or for fluency, and fitter to excite the admiration of scholars than the delight of ordinary men. However, he had the merit of not being in any degree French, and of restoring to our poetry the dignity of serious- ness, and the tone at least of force and en- ergy. The Wartons, both as critics and as poets, were of considerable service in dis- crediting the high pretensions of the former race, and in bringing back to public notice the great stores and treasures of poetry which lay hid in the records of our older literature. Akenside attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture, which no language could easily have rendered pop- ular, but which had merits of no vulgar or- der for those who could study it. Goldsmith wrote with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style of mellow tenderness and elaborate sim- plicity, lie had the harmony of Pope with- out his quaintness, and his selectness of diction without his coldness and eternal vi- vacity. And last of all came Cowper, with a style of complete originality ; and, for the last time, made it apparent to readers of all descriptions that Pope and Addison were no longer to be the models of English poetry. In philosophy and prose writing in general the case was nearly parallel. The name of Hume is by far the most considerable which occurs in the period to which we have al- luded. But though his thinking was Eng- lish, his style is entirely French ; and, being naturally of a cold fancy, there is nothing of that eloquence or richness about him which characterizes the writings of Taylor, and Hooker, and Bacon ; and continues, with less weight of matter, to please in those of Covvley and Clarendon. Warburton had great powers, and wrote with more force and freedom than the wits to whom he succeeded ; but his faculties were perverted by a paltry love of pai-adox, and rendered useless to mankind by an unlucky choice of subjects, and the arrogance and dogmatism of his temper. Adam Smith was nearly the first who made deeper reasonings and more exact knowledge popular among us ; and Junius and Johnson the first who again familiarized us with more glowing and sonorous diction, and made, us feel the tameness and poorness of the serious style of Addison and Swift. This brings us down almost to the present times, in which the revolution in our litera- ture has been accelerated and confirmed by the concurrence of many causes. The agita- tions of the French Revolution, and the dis- cursions as well as the hopes and terrors to which it gave occasion, the genius of Ed- mund Burke, and some others of his land of genius, the impression of the new literature of Germany, evidently the original of our late school of poetry, and of many innova- tions in our drama, the rise or revival of a more evangelical spirit in the body of the people, and the vast extension of our politi- cal and commercial relations, which have not only familiarized all ranks of people with distant countries and great under- takings, but have brought knowledge and enterprise home, not merely to the imagina- tion, but to the actual experience of almost every individual. all these, and several other circumstances, have so far improved or ex- cited the character of our nation, as to have created an effectual demand for more pro- found speculation and more serious emotion than was dealt in by the writers of the former century, and which, if it has not yet pro- duced a corresponding supply in all branches, has at least had the effect of decrying the commodities that were previously in vogue, as unsuited to the altered condition of the times. SHAKSPEARE. Many persons are very sensible of the effect of fine poetry upon their feelings who do not well know how to refer those feelings to their causes ; and it is always a delightful thing to be made to see clearly the sources from which our delight has proceeded, and to trace the mingled stream that has flowed upon our hearts to the remoter fountains from which it has been gathered ; and when this is done with warmth as well as precis- ion, and embodied in an eloquent description of the beauty which is explained, it forms one of the most attractive, and not the least instructive, of literary exercises. In all works of merit, however, and especially in all works of original genius, there are a thousand retiring and less obtrusive graces, which escape hasty and superficial observers, and only give out their beauties to fond and patient contemplation; a thousand slight and harmonizing touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit 318 ROBERT S OUT HEY. which can only be recognized by those who are iti some measure under its influence, and have prepared themselves to receive it by worshipping meekly at the shrines which it inhabits. In the exposition of these there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr. Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently; particularly in the development of the prin- cipal characters with which Shakspeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers, but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images, that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic in the simple aspect of nature, that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the material elements of poetry, and that fine sense of their un- definable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul, and which, in the midst of Shakspeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins, contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements, which he alone has poured out from the richness of his own mind, without effort or restraint, and contrived to inter- mingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar course of this world's affairs, without deserting for an instant the proper business of the scene, or appearing to pause or digress from love of ornament or need of repose ; he alone, who, when the subject re- quires it, is always keen, and worldly, and practical, and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him as he goes all sounds and shapes of sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peo- ples them with spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace, and is a thousand times more full of imagery and splendour than those who. for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the dis- cussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom, and ridicule, and sagacity than all the moralists and satirists in exist- ence, he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world ; and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader can- not complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Everything in him is in unmeasured abundance and un- equalled perfection ; but everything so bal- anced and kept in subordination as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, im- ages, and descriptions are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple, and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more, rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materi- als. All his excellences, like those of Na- ture herself, are thrown out together ; and instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth ; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator. Review of Hazlitffs Characters of Shake- speare's 1'lays. ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D., born at Bristol, England, 1774, studied at Balliol College, Oxford, 1793-1794; resided at Lisbon part of 1796. in the summer of which he returned to Bristol ; removed to London, February, 1797, entered himself a student of Gray's Inn, and commenced the study of the law, which he soon relin- quished; again visited Lisbon, and after his return became, in 1801, private secretary to Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for Ireland, which post he resigned in a little over six months, and resolved to devote himself to literature, to which he had al- ready made some published contributions; in 1804 established himself at Greta Hall, Keswick, Cumberland, and there spent the remaining forty years of a most industrious life; lost his first wife (Edith Fricker). who had previously suffered for about three years under derangement, Nov. 16, 1837 ; married Miss Cfiroline Anne Bowles, June 5, 1839; shortly afterwards sank into a state of men- tal imbecility, from which he never fully recovered, and died, in his 69th year, March 21, 1843. In his youth he was a short time " a liberal," both in politics and religion : his later opinions respecting Church and State were of a very different cast. Among his many publications were the following: Joan of Arc, an Epic Poem, ROBERT SOUTHEY. 319 Bristol, 1796, 4to; Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal, etc., Bristol, 1797, 8vo ; Thalaba the De- stroyer, Lorid., 1801, 2 vols. crown 8vo ; Ainadis of Gaul, from the Spanish Version of G. do Montalvo, Lond., 18U3, 4 vols. 12mo; Madoc, a Poem, Lond., 1805, 4to ; Specimens of the Later English Poets, with Preliminary Notices, Lond., 1807, 3 vols. crown 8vo ; Palmerin of England, from the Portuguese, Lond., 1807,4 vols. 12mo; Let- ters from England, by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, Lond., 1807,4 vols. 12mo; Chron- icle of the Cid Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, the Campeador. from the Spanish, Lond., 1808, 4to, Lowell, Mass., 1846, royal 8vo; The History of Brazil, Lond., 1810-17-19, 3 vols. 4to ; Omniana: seu Horge Otiosiores, Lond., 1812, 2 vols. 12mo ; The Life of Nelson, Lond., 1813, 2 vols. fp. 8vo, large paper, East 8vo ; Roderick, the Last of the Goths, ond., 1814, 4to; The Life of John Wesley, and the Rise and Progress of Methodism, Lond., 1820, 2 vols. 8vo ; A Vision of Judg- ment, Lond., 1821, 4to ; History of the Peninsular War, Lond., 1823-27-32, 3 vols. 4to; The Book of the Church, Lond., 1824, 2 vols. 8vo; Sir Thomas More; or, Collo- quies on the Progress and Prospects of So- ciety, Lond., 1829, 2 vols. 8vo: Naval His- tory of England, Lond. (Lardner's Cab. Cyc., 123-27), 5 vols. 12mo (part of vol. v. by Robert Bell). He also edited Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Lond., 1830, 8vo, large paper, royal 8vo; Select Works of British Poets, Lond., 1831, med. 8vo; Cowper's Works, Lond., 1833-37, 15 vols. fp. 8vo ; Watte' s Lyric Poems, Lond., 1834, 12mo. See The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, col- lected by Himself. Lond., 1837-38, 10 vols. fp. 8vo ; Sou they 'H Common-Place Book, Edited by his Son-in-law, John Wood War- ter, B.D., Lond., 1849-51, 4 vols. sq. crown 8vo; The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, Edited by his Son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, Lond., 1849-50, 6 vols. 8vo. " Mr. Southey's prose style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain, clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with a grave and sparkling admixture of archaism* in its orna- ments and occasional phrnseology. He is the best and most natural prose writer of any poet of the day: we mean that he is far better than Lord By- ron, Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for in- ftance." WILLIAM HAZLITT: Spirit of the Aye (Mr. Southey). Sec also his Table-Talk, Essay XXIV. : On the Prose Style of Poets. " His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much for the present generation : posterity will probably select. He has passages equal to any thing. At present he has a part;/, but no public, except for his prose writings. The Life of Nelson is beauti- ful." LORD BYRON: Journal, Nov. 22, 1813: Moore's Byron, vol. i. "The Life of Nelson is beautiful!" ex- claims Lord Byron. Can this term be prop- erly applied to the shocking narrations of human slaughter which compose " The Life of Nelson" ? Whilst our Christian youth peruse for their classical studies the obscen- ities of the Greek and Roman poets, and for their hours of recreation the warlike ex- ploits of Alexander, Caesar, Frederick, Na- poleon, Hastings, Clive, Wellington, and Nelson, can we expect them to exemplify in their lives those principles of purity and peace which Avere inculcated by the Great Teacher? (S. A. A.) THE BATTLE OF THE NILE. The French fleet arrived at Alexandria on the 1st of July, and Brueys, not being able to enter the port, which time and neglect had ruined, moored the ships in Aboukir Bay, in a strong and compact line of battle ; the headmost vessel, according to his own account, being as close as possible to a shoal on the north-west, and the rest of the fleet forming a kind of curve along the line of deep water, so as not to be turned by any means in the south-west. The advantage of numbers, both in ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. They had thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, carrying 1196 guns and 11,230 men. The English had the same number of ships of the line, and one fifty-gun ship, carrying 1012 guns and 8068 men. The English ships were all seventy-fours; the French had three eighty-gun ships, and one three-decker of one hundred and twenty. During the whole pursuit it had been Nelson's practice, whenever circumstances would permit, to have his captains on board the Vanguard, and explain to them his own ideas of the different and best modes of at- tack, and such plans as he proposed to exe- cute on falling in with the enemy, whatever their situation might be. There is no possi- ble position, it is said, which he did not take into consideration. His officers were thus fully acquainted with his principles of tactics ; and such was his confidence in their abilities, that the only thing determined upon, in case they should find the French at anchor, was for the ships to form as most convenient for their mutual support, and to anchor by the stern. " First gain your vic- tory," he said, "and then make the best use of it you can." The moment he perceived the position of the French, that intuitive genius with which Nelson was endowed dis- played itself: and it instantly struck him that where there was room for an enemy's ship to swing there was room for one of ours to anchor. The plan which he intended to 320 ROBERT SOU THEY. pursue, therefore, was to keep entirely on the outer side of the French line, and station his ships, as far as he was able, one on the outer bow and another on the outer quarter of each of the enemy's. Captain Berry, when he comprehended the scope of the de- sign, exclaimed with transport, "If we suc- ceed, what will the world say?" " There is no if in the case," replied the admiral : ' that we shall succeed is certain. Avho may live to tell the story is a very different question." As the squadron advanced, they were as- sailed by a shower of shot and shell from the batteries on the island, and the enemy opened a steady fire from the starboard side of their whole line, within half-gunshot dis- tance, full into the bows of our van ships. It was received in silence; the men on board every ship were employed aloft in furling sails, and below in tending the braces, and niiiking ready for anchoring: a miserable sight for the French, who, with all their skill and all their courage, and all their advantages of number and situation, were upon that element on which, when the hour ot trial comes, a Frenchman has no hope. Admiral Brueys was a brave and able man; yet the indelible character of his country broke out in one of his letters, wherein he delivered it as his private opinion that the English had missed him, because, not being superior in force, they did not think it pru- dent to try their strength with him. The moment was now come in which he was to be undeceived. A French brig was instructed to decoy the English, by manoeuvring so as to tempt them towards a shoal lying off the island of Beguieres ; but Nelson either knew the danger, or suspected some deceit, and the lure was unsuccessful. Captain Foley led the way in tlie Goliath, outsailing the Zeal- ous, which for some minutes disputed this post of honour with him. He had long con- ceived that, if the enemy were moored in line of battle in with the land, the best plan of attack would be to lead between them and the shore, because the French guns on that side were not likely to be manned, nor even ready for action. Intending, there- fore, to fix himself on the inner bow of the Guerrier, he kept as near the edge of the bank as the depth of water would admit: but his anchor hung, and having opened his fire, he drifted to the second ship, the Con- qugrant, before it was cleared, then anchored by the stern, inside of her, and in ten min- utes shot away her masts. Hood, in the Zealous, perceiving this, took the station which the Goliath intended to have occu- pied, and totally disabled the Guerrier in twelve minutes. The third ship which doubled the enemy's van was the Orion, Sir J. Saumarez; she passed to windward of the Zealous, and opened her larboard guns as long as they bore on the Guerrier; then, passing inside the Goliath, sunk a frigate which annoyed her, hauled towards the French line, and. anchoring inside between the fifth and sixth ships from the Guerrier, took her station on the larboard bow of the Franklin and the quarter of the Peiiple Souverain. The Theseus, Captain Miller, followed, brought down the Guerrier's re- maining main and mizzen masts, then an- chored inside the Spartiate the third in the French line. While these advanced ships doubled the French line, the Vanguard was the first that anchored on the outer side of the enemy, within half-pistol shot of their third ship, the Spartiate. Nelson had six colours fly- ing in different parts of the rigging lest they should be shot away. that they should be struck, no British admiral considers as a possibility. He veered half a cable, and in- stantly opened a tremendous fire, under cover of which the other four ships of his division, the Minotaur, Bellerophon, Defence, and Ma- jestic, sailed on ahead of the admiral. In a few minutes every man stationed at the first six guns in the fore part of the Vanguard's deck was killed or wounded, these guns were three times cleared. Captain Louis, in the Minotaur, anchored next ahead, and took off the fire of the Aqnilon, the fourth in the enemy's line. The Bellerophon, Captain Darby, passed ahead, and dropped her stern anchor on the starboard bow of the Orient, seventh in the line. Bruey's own ship, of one hundred and twenty guns, whose difference in force was in proportion of more than seven to three, and whose weight of ball, from the lower deck alone, exceeded that from the whole broadside of the Bellerophon. Captain Peyton, in the Defence, took his station ahead of the Minotaur and engaged the Franklin, the sixth in the line ; by which judicious movement the British line re- mained unbroken. The Majestic, Captain Westcott, got entangled with the main rig- ging of one of the French ships astern of the Orient, and suffered dreadfully from that three-decker's fire ; but she swung clear, and closely engaging the Hereiix, the ninth ship in the starboard bow, received also the fire of the Tonnant, which was the eighth in the line. The other four ships of the British squadron, having been detached previous to the discovery of the French, were at a con- siderable distance when the action began. It commenced at half-after six, about seven the night closed, and there was no other liilht than that from the fire of the contend- ing fleets. ROBERT SOUTHEY. 321 Trowbridge, in the Cullodcn, then foremost of the remaining ships, was two leagues astern. He came on sounding, as the others had done. As he advanced, the increasing darkness increased the difficulty of the navi- gation, and suddenly, after having found eleven fathoms' water, before the lead could be hove again, he was fast aground ; nor could all his own exertions, joined to those of the Leander and the Mutin6 brig, which came to his assistance, get him off in time to bear a part in the action. His ship, how- ever, served as a beacon to the Alexander and Swiftsure, which would else, from the course they were holding, have gone con- siderably farther on the reef, and must in- evitably have been lost. These ships entered the bay and took their stations, in the dark- ness, in a manner still spoken of with admira- tion by all who remember it. Captain Hal-. lowell, in the Swiftsure, as he was bearing down, fell in with what seemed to be a strange sail. Nelson had directed his ships to hoist four lights horizontally at the mizz.en peak as soon as it became dark, and this vessel had no such distinction. Hallowcll, however, with great judgment, ordered his men not to fire. " If she was an enemy," he said, "she was in too disabled a state to escape ; but from her sails being loose, and the way in which her head was, it was probable she might be an English ship." It was the Bel- lerophon, overpowered by the huge Orient. Her lights had gone overboard, nearly two hundred of her crew were killed or wounded, all her masts and cables had been shot away, and she was drifting out of the line towards the lee side of the bay. Her station at this important time was occupied by the Swift- sure, which opened a steady fire on the quar- ter of the Franklin and the bows of the French admiral. At the same instant Cap- tain Ball, with the Alexander, passed under his stern, and anchored within sight on his larboard quarter, raking him, and keeping a severe fire of musketry upon his decks. The last ship which arrived to complete the de- struction of the enemy was the Leander. Captain Thompson, finding that nothing could l)e done that night to get off the Cullo- den, advanced with the intention of anchor- ing ath wart-hawse of the Orient. The Frank- lin was so near her ahead that there was not room for him to pass clear of the two : he therefore took his station athwart-hawse of the latter, in such a position as to rake both. The first two ships of the French line had been dismasted within a quarter of an hour after the commencement of the action ; and the others in that time suffered so severely that victory was already certain. The third, fourth, and fifth were taken possession of at half-past eight. Meantime Nelson received a severe wound on the head from a piece of langrage shot. Captain Berry caught him in his arms as he was falling. The great effusion of blood occasioned an apprehension that the wound was mortal. Nelson him- self thought so ; a large flap of the skin of the forehead, cut from the bone, had fallen over the eye 5 and the other being blind, he was in total darkness. When he was car- ried down, the surgeon, in the midst of a scene scarcely to be conceived by those who have never seen a cockpit in time of action, and the heroism which is displayed amid its horrors, with a natural but pardonable eagerness, quitted the poor fellow then under his hands, that he might instantly attend the admiral. "No!" said Nelson, '' I will take my turn with my brave fel- lows." Nor would he suffer his own wound to be examined till every man who had been previously wounded was properly at- tended to. Fully believing that the wound was mortal, and that he was about to die, as he had ever desired, in battle and in vic- tory, he called the chaplain, and desired him to deliver what he supposed to be his dying remembrance to Lady Nelson ; he then sent for Captain Louis on board from the Mino- taur, that he might thank him personally for the great assistance he had rendered to the Vanguard ; and, ever mindful of those who deserved to be his friends, appointed Captain Hardy from the brig to the com- mand of his own ship, Captain Perry hav- ing to go home with the news of the victory. When the surgeon came in due time to ex- amine the wound (for it was in vain to en- treat him to let it be examined sooner), the most anxious silence prevailed ; and the joy of the wounded men, and of the whole crew, when they heard that the wound was super- ficial, gave Nelson deeper pleasure than the unexpected assurance that his life was in no danger. The surgeon requested, and, as far as he could, ordered him to remain quiet ; but Nelson could not rest. He called for his secretary, Mr. Campbell, to write the despatches. Campbell had himself been wounded, and was so affected by the blind and suffering state of the admiral that he was unable to write. The chaplain was sent for; but before he came, Nelson, with his characteristic eagerness, took the pen, and contrived to trace a few words, marking his devout sense of the success which had already been obtained. lie was now left alone; when suddenly a cry was heard that the Orient was on fire. In the confusion he found his way up, unassisted and unnoticed ; and, to the astonishment of every one, ap- peared on the quarter-deck, where he imme- diately gave orders that boats should be sent to the relief of the enemy. 322 ROBERT SOUTHEY. It was soon after nine that the fire on board the Orient broke out. Brueys was dead : he had received three wounds, yet would not leave his post. A fourth cut him almost in two. He desired not to be carried below, but to be left to die upon deck. The flames soon mastered his ship. Her sides had just been painted, and the oil-jars and Exinting-buckets were lying on the poop. y the prodigious light of this conflagra- tion the situation of the two fleets could now be perceived, the colours of both being clearly distinguishable. About ten o'clock the ship blew up, with a shock which was felt to the very bottom of every vessel. Many of her officers and men jumped overboard, some clinging to the spars and pieces of wreck with which the sea was strewn ; others swimming to escape from the destruction which they momently dreaded. Some were picked up hy our boats ; and some, even in the heat and fury of the action, were dragged into the lower ports of the nearest British ships by the British sailors. The greater part of her crew, however, stood the danger to the last, and continued to fire from the lower deck. This tremendous explosion was fol- lowed by a silence not less awful : the firing immediately ceased on both sides; and the first sound which broke the silence was the dash of her shattered masts and yards fall- ing into the water from the vast height to which they had been exploded. It is upon record that a battle between two armies was once broken off by an earthquake ; such an event would be felt like a miracle : but no incident in war. produced by human means, lias ever equalled the sublimity of this co- instantaneous pause, and all its circum- stances. About seventy of the Orient's crew were saved by the English boats. Among the many hundreds who perished were the com- modore. Casa Bianca, and his son, a brave boy only ten years old. They were seen floating on a shattered mast when the boat blew np. She had money on board (the plunder of Malta) to the amount of six hun- dred thousand pounds sterling. The masses of burning wreck which were scattered by the explosion excited for some moments ap- prehensions in the English which they had never felt from any other danger. Two large pieces fell into the main and foretops of the Swiftsure, without injuring any per- son. A port-fire also fell into the main-royal of the Alexander: the fire which it occa- sioned was speedily extinguished. Captain Ball had provided, as far as human foresight could provide, against any such danger. All the shrouds and sails of his ship not absolutely necessary for its immediate man- agement were thoroughly wetted, and so rolled up that they were as hard and as little inflammable as so many solid cyl- inders. The firing recommenced with the ships to leeward of the centre, and continued till about three. At daybreak the Gnillaume Tell and the Ge'ne'reuse, the two rears of the enemy, were the only French ships of the line which had their colors flying; they cut their cables in the forenoon, not having been engaged, and stood out to sea, and two frig- ates with them. The Zealous pursued ; but, as there was no other ship in a condition to support Captain Hood, he was recalled. It was generally believed by the officers that if Nelson had not been wounded, not one of these ships could have escaped ; the four certainly could not, if the Culloden had got into action ; and if the frigates belonging to the squadron had been present, not one of 'the enemy's fleet would have left Aboukir Bay. These four vessels, however, were all that escaped ; and the victory was the most complete and glorious in the annals of naval victory. "Victory," said Nelson, "is not a name strong enough for such a scene ; ; ' he called it a conquest. Of thirteen sail of the line, nine were taken and two burnt; of the four frigates, one was sunk ; another, the Artemesie, was burnt in a villanous manner by her captain, M. Estandlet, who, having fired a broadside at the Theseus, struck his colours, then set fire to the ship, and escaped with most of his crew to shore. The British loss, in killed and wounded, amounted to 895. Westcott was the only captain who fell : 3105 of the French, including the wounded, were sent on shore by cartel, and 5225 perished. Tims ended this eventful battle, which exalted the name of Nelson to a level at least with that of the celebrated conqueror whose surprising success at the head of the French armies had then begun to draw the atten- tion of the civilized world. Bonaparte had stained his laurels by the unprecedented baseness of his private conduct; he had not scrupled to turn Turk, and all his public proclamations were disgraced by the absurd phrases of Mohammedan superstition : Nel- son, on the other hand, had no occasion of showing that he was an Englishman .and a Christian: the first words of his despatches on this memorable occasion prove his grati- tude to that Providence which had protected him: "Almighty God has blessed his Ma- jestfis arms. 1 ' The Life of Nelson. THE BATTLE OP TRAFALGAR AND DEATH OF NELSON. An incessant fire was kept up from the Victory, from both sides ; her larboard guna ROBERT SOUTHEY. 323 playing upon the Bucentaure and the huge Sautissima Trinidad. It had been part of Nelson's prayer that the British fleet might be distinguished by humanity in the victory which he expected. Setting an example himself, he twice gave orders to cease tiring upon the Redoubtable, supposing that she had struck because her great guns were silent ; for as she carried no flag, there was no means of instantly ascertaining the fact. From this ship, which he had thus twice spared, he received his death. A ball fired from her mizzen-top, which, in the then situation of the two ves- sels, was not more than fifteen yards from that part of the deck where he was stand- ing, struck the epaulette on his left shoulder, about a quarter after one, just in the heat of action, lie fell upon his face, on the spot which was covered with his poor sec- retary's blood. Hardy, who was a few steps from him, turning round saw three men rais- ing him up. " They have done for me at last, Hardy !" said he. " I hope not !" cried Hardy. " Yes !" he replied : " my back-bone is shot through." Yet even now, not for a moment losing his presence of mind, he observed, as they were carrying him down, that the tiller-ropes, which had been shot away, were not yet replaced, and ordered that new ones should be rove immediately; then, that he might not be seen by the crew, he took out his handkerchief, and covered his face and his stars. Had he but concealed these badges of honour from the enemy, England perhaps would not have had cause to receive with sorrow the news of the bat- tle of Trafalgar. The cockpit was crowded with wounded and dying men, over whose bodies he was with some difficulty conveyed, and laid upon a pallet in the midshipmen's berth. It was soon perceived upon examina- tion that the wound was mortal. This, how- ever, was concealed from all except Captain Hardy, the chaplain, and the medical at- tendants. He himself being certain, from the sensation in his back, and the gush of blood he felt momently within his breast, that no human care could avail him, insisted that the surgeon should leave him, arid at- tend to those to whom he might be useful : "For," said he, "you can do nothing for me." All that could be done was to fan him with paper, and frequently to give him lemonade to alleviate his intense thirst. lie was in great pain, and expressed much anx- iety for the event of the action, which now began to declare itself. As often as a ship struck the crew of the Victory hurrahed ; and at every hurrah a visible expression of joy gleamed in the eye and marked the countenance of the dying hero. But he be- came impatient to see Captain Hardy; and as that officer, though often sent for, could not leave the deck, Nelson feared that some fatal cause prevented him, and repeatedly cried, " Will no one bring Hardy to me"? He must be killed 1 He is surely dead !" An hour and ten minutes elapsed from the time when Nelson received his wound be- fore Hardy could come to him. They shook hands in silence : Hardy in vain struggling to suppress the feelings of that most painful and yet sublimest moment. " Well, Hardy," said Nelson, "how goes the day with us? 11 "Very well," replied Hardy: "ten ships have struck, but five of the van have tacked, and show an intention to bear down upon the Victory. I have called two or three of our fresh ships round, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing." "I hope," said Nelson, "none of our ships have struck?" Hardy answered, " There is no fear of that." Then, and not till then, Nelson spoke of himself. "I am a dead man, Hardy," said he: "I am going fast: it will all be over with me soon. Come nearer to me. Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair and all other things belonging to me." Hardy ob- served, that he hoped Mr. Beatty could yet hold out some prospect of life. " Oh, no !" he replied: "it is impossible: my back is shot through ; Beatty will tell you so." Cap- tain Hardy then once more shook hands with him, and, with a heart almost burst- ing, hastened upon deck. By this time all feeling below the breast was gone ; and Nelson, having made the surgeon ascertain this, said to him, "You know I am gone. I know it. I feel some- thing rising in my breast," putting his hand on his left side, "which tells me so." And upon Beatty's inquiring whether his pain was very great, he replied, so great that he wished that he was dead. "Yet," said he, in a lower voice, " one would like to live a little longer, too !" And after a few minutes, in the same undertone, he added, "What would become of poor Lady Ham- ilton if she knew my situation?" Next to his country she occupied his thoughts. Captain Hardy, some fifty minutes after he left the cockpit, returned ; and, again tak- ing the hand of his dying friend and com- mander, congratulated him on having gained a complete victory. How many of the enemy were taken he did not know, as it was im- possible to perceive them distinctly ; but fourteen or fifteen at least. " That's well," said Nelson ; " but I bargained for twenty." And then, in a stronger voice, he said, "An- chor, Hardy, anchor." Hardy, upon this, hinted that Admiral Collingwood would take upon himself the direction of affairs. " Not while I live. Hardy," said the dying Nelson, ineffectually endeavouring to raise 324 CHARLES LAMB. himself from the bed: "do you anchor." His previous order for preparing to anchor had shown how clearly he foresaw the ne- cessity of this. Presently, calling Hardy back, he said to him in a low voice, " Don't throw me overboard:" and desired that he might be buried by his parents, unless it should please the king to order otherwise. Then reverting to private feelings : " Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy ; take care of poor Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy," said he. Hardy knelt down and kissed his cheek ; and Nelson said, " Now I am satisfied. Thank God ! I have done my duty !" Hardy stood over him in silence for a moment or two, then knelt again, and kissed his forehead. "Who is that?" said Nelson; and being informed, he replied, "God bless you, Hardy!" And Hardy then left him forever. Nelson now desired to be turned upon his right side, and said, " I wish I had not left the deck ; for I shall soon be gone." Death was indeed rapidly approaching. He said to the chaplain, " Doctor, I have not been a great sinner;" and after a short pause, '' .Re- member that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." His articulation now became difficult; but he was distinctly heard to say, " Thank God ! I have done my duty !" These words he re- peatedly pronounced ; and they were the last words which he uttered, lie expired at thirty minutes after four, three hours and a quarter after he had received his wound. The Life of Nelson. CHARLES LAMB, born in London, 1775, and educated at the school of Christ's Hospital, was a clerk in the accountant's office of the East India Company from April, 1792, until March, 1825, when he retired on a pension of 450 per annum ; died 1834. From September, 1796, until his death he had charge of an elder sister, who at the time above stated, in a fit of insanity, stabbed her mother to death with a table-knife. Lamb broke off an en- gagement of marriage, and henceforth de- voted himself to what he considered his first duty. This unfortunate girl Mary Anne Lamb (died 1847) was co-author with her brother of four juvenile works, viz.: Mrs. Leicester's School, Lond., 1808, 12mo ; Tales from the Plays of Shakspeare, Lond., 1807, 2 vols. 12mo"; 4th edit., with 20 plates by Wm. Blake, Lond., 1822; new edit., with 20 wood engravings by Harvey, Lond., Bohn, 1840, 1843, 1849, 1853, 1857; The Adven- tures of Ulysses, Lond., 1808, 12mo, 1845, med. 8vo, 1857. 12mo; Poetry for Children, Lond., 1809, 2 vols. 12mo. Lamb first appeared as an author in Poems by S. T. Coleridge, to which are added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd, Bris- tol, 1797, 12mo, and in the next year Lamb's (28 pages) and Lloyd's portions of this vol- ume were republished as Blank Verse by Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb, Lond.. 1798, 12mo. Lamb subsequently published A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret, Lond., 1798, 8vo: John Woodvil, a Tragedy, etc., Lond., 1802, 12mo ; Mr. II , a Farce, 1806: not printed at the time; Specimens of English Dramatic Poets who Lived about the Time of Shakspeare, with Notes, Lond., 1808, cr. 8vo, and later, Lond., Bohn, 1854, post 8vo: he published a second series (The Garrick Papers) in Hone's Every-Day Book : Works in Prose and Verse, Lond., 1818. 2 vols. 18mo; The Essays of Elia, Lond.. 1823, p. 8vo : Album Verses, with a Few Others, Lond., 1830, post 8vo ; The Last Essavs of Elin, Lond., 1833, cr. 8vo, a.) If you attend to this passage, you will find an express com- mandment positively and clearly given by our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in these words, which occur twice in the course of the pas- sage : " This do in remembrance of me." Christ, then, commanded something to be done. If again you consider the passage, you will find what it was that lie commanded to be done. He was blessing and giving bread and wine, when He told the persons to whom He gave them, to do the same things in re- membrance of Him. To bless and give bread and wine, then, are the things w r hieh Christ commanded to be done. If again you consider the passage, and compare it with the accounts given of the institution of the Lord's Supper by St. Mat- thew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, you will per- ceive that the commandment of Christ to bless and give bread and wine in remem- brance of Him, was first committed to His Apostles, at that time the ministers of His word : and if you further consider it, you will perceive that it was not meant to be confined to them alone r but was also com- mitted to those who should succeed the Apostles as ministers of the Gospel, because St. Paul speaks of "shewing the Lord's death till he come." And as the Lord will not come again before the end of the world, the commandment must remain in force as long as the world shall last. You see, then, that the ministers of Christ are commanded by Him to bless and to give bread and wine in remembrance of Him. And to whom are they to give them ? Why certainly to the people committed to their spiritual charge ; who are therefore as much bound to attend and partake in the Lord's HENRY HALL AM. 335 Supper as the minister is bound to attend and distribute it: for we cannot give as we are commanded, unless you are ready to receive. Is it not, then, the commandment of your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that you par- take in the holy communion of His body and blood? Is not the partaking in it a duty which you owe to Christ who died for you, and to whom you promised obedience at your baptism? And is it not a duty which you owe to yourselves, if you would receive any benefit from His death ? And this I say, Christian brethren, even supposing this to be no more than an ordi- nary commandment of our Saviour. But there are circumstances which distinguish this from all other commandments, and make it in an especial manner your duty. It is the last and, as it were, the dying commandment and request of your Saviour. He who was on the right hand of God the Father, in whom shone the fulness of His Father's glory, and who was the express im- age of his person : He humbled Himself for you ; He took your nature and form upon Him ; He became obedient unto death, even the cruel and ignominious death of the cross ; and when He was now upon the point of fulfilling His surprising love towards you by laying down His life for your sakes, lie gives you this commandment, that you eat and drink the bread and wine offered you by His ministers ! Is not the last request of a dying friend entitled to some regard ? And of Him, too, who was such a friend? It is the way by which you are to show that you " remember" Christ, and have a just sense of His goodness towards you. " This do" (said He) " in remembrance of me." You may indeed say that you re- member Christ, that you have a just sense of His goodness, although you do not par- take in the communion of His body and blood. But if He has appointed a particular way by which He would have you remember Him, I know not how you can show that you do remember Him, except by following that one way ; and I know not how you can stand acquitted of forgetfulness and ingratitude to Him, unless you perform this His command- ment. The partaking in the Lord's Supper is again the only proper act of Christian wor- ship. The professors of other religions, Jews, Turks, and Heathens, worship God by praying too, by thanking, and by prais- ing Him. In addition to these acts of wor- ship, Christians perform that of eating and drinking bread and wine, as Christ has com- manded. So that however devoutly you may worship God in general when you come to Church, you do not in so strict a sense wor- ship as Christians unless you partake in the bread and wine, which represents the body and blood of Christ ; and thus perform that act which Christ has made a mark of dis- tinction to His followers. The partaking in the holy communion is also a duty which you owe to yourselves on account of the benefits which you may re- ceive from it : not only that benefit which may be expected by all who generally fulfil God's commandments, but those particular benefits which follow upon a hearty and conscientious performance of this. Sermons, Vol. i., 2^9. HENRY HALLAM, LL.D., born at Windsor, 1777, and educated $it Eton and Oxford, died 1859, was the author of three great works, "either of which," as 1 have remarked in another place, " is of sufficient merit to confer upon the author literary immortality" : A View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Lond., 1818. 2 vols. 4to (supplementary Notes, 1848, 8vo), llth edit., 1855, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, Popular edition, 1857, 3 vols. p. 8vo, New York, Widdleton, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, in French, by P. Dudouit and A. R. Borghers, Paris, 1830-32, 4 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1837, 4 vols. 8vo : The Constitutional History of Eng- land, from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George II., 1760, Lond., 1827, 2 vols. 4to, 8th edit., 1855, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, Popular edition, 1857, 3 vols. post 8vo, New York, Widdleton, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, in French, edited by Guizot, Paris, 1828, 4 vols. 8vo : add to it Constitutional History of Eng- land since the Accession of George III., 1760-1820, by Sir T. E. May, Lond., 1871, 3 vols. 8vo; New York, 1880, 12mo; Intro- duction to the Literature of Europe, in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, Lond., 1837-39, 4 vols. 8vo, 5th edit., 1856, 4 vols. cr. 8vo, New York, 4 vols. cr. 8vo, in French, by M. A. Borghers, Paris, 1839, 4 vols. 8vo. " The cold academic style of Robertson may suit the comparative calmness of the eighteenth century, but the fervour and animation of its close commu- nicated itself to the historical works of the next. HALLAM was the first historian whose style gave token of the coming change ; his works mark the transition from one age and style of literature to another. In extent and variety of learning, and a deep acquaintance with antiquarian lore, the historian of the Middle Ages may deservedly take a place with the most eminent writers in that style that Europe has produced ; but his style is more imaginative than those of his laborious pre- decessors, and a fervent eloquence or poetic ex- pression often reveals the ardour which the heart- stirring events of his time had communicated to his disposition." SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON : Hist, of Europe, 1815-1852, ch. v. 336 HENRY HALL AM. DON QUIXOTE. The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605. We have no reason, I believe, to suppose it was written long before. It became immediately popular; and the admiration of the world raised up envious competitors, one of whom, Avellnnadn, published a con- tinuation in a strain of invective against the author. Cervantes, who cannot be imagined to have ever designed the leaving his romance in so unfinished a state, took time about the second part, which did not appear until 1615. Don Quixote is the only book in the Spanish language which can now be said to possess much of a European reputation. It has, however, enjoyed enough to compen- sate for the neglect of all the rest. It is to Europe in general what Ariosto is to Italy, and Shakspere to England ; the one book to which the slightest allusions may be made without affectation, but not missed without discredit. Numerous translations and count- less editions of them, in every language, be- speak its adaptation to mankind; no critic has been paradoxical enough to withhold his admiration, no reader has ventured to confess a want of relish for that in which the young and old, in every climate, have, age after age, taken delight. They have, doubtless, believed that they understood the author's meaning : and, in giving the reins to the gaiety that his fertile invention and comio humour inspired, never thought of any deeper meaning than he announces, or delayed their enjoyment for any metaphys- ical investigation of his plan. A new school of criticism, however, has of late years arisen in Germany, acute, in- genious, and sometimes eminently successful in philosophical, or, as they denominate it, aesthetic analysis of works of taste, but glid- ing too much into refinement and conjectural hypothesis, and with a tendency to mislead men of inferior capacities for this kind of in- vestigation into mere paradox and absurdity, An instance is supplied, in my opinion, by some remarks of Bouterwek, still more ex- plicitly developed by Sismondi, on the de- sign of Cervantes in Don Quixote, and which have been repeated in other publications. According to these writers, the primary idea is that of a " man of elevated character, excited by heroic and enthusiastic feelings to the extravagant pitch of wishing to re- store the age of chivalry : nor is it possible to form a more mistaken notion of this work, than by considering it merely as a satire, intended by the author to ridicule the absurd passion for reading old romances." " The fundamental idea of Don Quixote," says Sismondi. " is the eternal contrast be- tween the spirit of poetry and that of prose. Men of an elevated soul propose to them- selves, as the object of life, to be the de- fenders of the weak, the support of the oppressed, the champions of justice and innocence. Like Don Quixote, they find on every side the image of the virtues they worship: they believe that disinterested- ness, nobleness, courage, in short, knight- errantry, are still prevalent, and, with no calculation of their own powers, they expose themselves as a sacrifice to the laws and rules of an imaginary state of society." If this were a true representation of the scheme of Don Quixote, we cannot wonder that some persons should, as M. Sismondi tells they do, consider it as the most melan- choly book that has ever been written. They consider it also, no doubt, one of the most immoral, as chilling and pernicious in its influence on the social converse of man- kind, as the "Prince" of Machiavel is on their political intercourse. " Cervantes," he proceeds, "has shown us, in some measure, the vanity of greatness of soul, and the delusion of heroism. He has drawn in Don Quixote a perfect man (un homme accompli], who is nevertheless the constant object of ridicule. Brave beyond the fabled knights he imitates, disinterested, honourable, gen- erous, the most faithful and respectfuf of lovers, the best of masters, the most accom- plished and well educated of gentlemen, all his enterprises end in discomfiture to him- self, and in mischief to others." M. Sis- mondi descants on the perfections of the Knight of La Mancha with a gravity which is not quite easy for his readers to preserve. It might be answered by a phlegmatic ob- server, that a mere enthusiasm for doing good, if excited by vanity, and not accom- panied by common sense, will seldom be very serviceable to ourselves or to others; that men who, in their heroism and care for the oppressed, would throw open the cages of lions, and set galley-slaves at liberty, not forgetting to break the limbs of harmless persons whom they mistake for wrong-doers, are a class of whom Don Quixote is the real type ; and that the world being much the worse for such heroes, it might not be im- moral, notwithstanding their benevolent en- thusiasm, to put them out of countenance by a little ridicule. This, however, is not, as I conceive, the primary aim of Cer- vantes ; nor do I think that the exhibition of one great truth, as the predominant, but concealed moral of a long work, is in the spirit of his age. He possessed a very thoughtful mind and a profound knowledge of humanity ; yet the generalization which the hypothesis of Bouterwek and Sismondi requires for the leading conceptions of Don Quixote, besides its being a little inconsist- HENRY HALL AM. 337 ent with the valorous and romantic charac- ter of its author, belongs to a more advanced period of philosophy than his own. It will, ut all events, I presume, be admitted that we cannot reason tibout Don Quixote except from the book, and I think it may be shown in a few words that these ingenious writers have been chiefly misled by some want of consistency which circumstances produced in the author's delineation of his hero. In the first chapter of this romance, Cer- vantes, with a few strokes of a great master, sets before us the pauper gentleman, an early riser and keen sportsman, who, "when he was idle, which was most part of the year," gave himself up to reading books of chivalry till he lost his wits. The events that follow are in every one's recollection : his lunacy consists, no doubt, only in one idea ; but this is so absorbing that it perverts the evi- dence of his senses, and predominates in all his language. It is to be observed, there- fore, in relation to the nobleness of soul ascribed to Don Quixote, that every senti- ment he utters is borrowed with a punctil- ious rigour from the romances of his library : he resorts to them on every occasion for pre- cedents. If he is intrepidly brave, it is be- cause his madness and vanity have made him believe himself unconquerable ; if he bestows kingdoms, it is because Ainadis would have done the same ; if he is honour- able, courteous, a redresser of wrongs, it is in pursuance of these prototypes, from whom, except that he seems rather more scrupulous in chastity, it is his only boast not to diverge. Those who talk of the ex- alted character of Don Quixote seem really to forget, that, on these subjects, he has no character at all : he is the echo of romance ; and to praise him is merely to say, that the tone of chivalry, which these productions studied to keep up, and, in the hands of inferior artists, foolishly exaggerated, was full of moral dignity, and has, in a subdued degree of force, modelled the character of a man of honour in the present day. But throughout the first two volumes of Don Quixote, though in a few unimportant pas- sages he talks rationally, I cannot find more than two in which he displays any other knowledge or strength of mind than the original delineation of the character would have led us to expect. The case is much altered in the last two volumes. Cervantes had acquired an im- mense popularity, and perceived the oppor- tunity, of which he had already availed himself, that this romance gave for display- ing his own mind. He had become attached to a hero who had made him illustrious, and suffered himself to lose sight of the clear outline he had once traced for Quixote's 22 personality. Hence we find in all this sec- ond part, that, although the lunacy as to knights-errant remains unabated, he is, on all other subjects, not only rational in the low sense of the word, but clear, acute, pro- found, sarcastic, cool-headed. His philos- ophy is elevated, but not enthusiastic: his imagination is poetical, but it is restrained by strong sense. There are, in fact, two Don Quixotes: one whom Cervantes first designed to draw, the foolish gentleman of La Mancha, whose foolishness had made him frantic; the other a highly-gifted, ac- complished model of the best chivalry, trained in all the court, the camp, or the college could impart, but scathed in one portion of his mind by an inexplicable visi- tation of monomania. One is inclined to ask why this Don Quixote, who is Cervan- tes, should have been more likely to lose his intellects by reading romances than Cervantes himself. As a matter of bodily disease, such an event is doubtless possible; but nothing can be conceived more improper for fiction, nothing more incapable of afford- ing a moral lesson than the insanity which arises wholly from disease. Insanity is in no point of view a theme for ridicule ; and this is an inherent fault of the romance (for those who have imagined that Cervan- tes has not rendered Quixote ridiculous, have a strange notion of the word) ; but the thoughtlessness of mankind, rather than their insensibility, for they do not connect madness with misery, furnishes some apol- ogy for the first two volumes. In propor- tion as we perceive, below the veil of men- tal delusion, a noble intellect, we feel a painful sympathy with its humiliation ; the character becomes more complicated and interesting, but has less truth and natural- ness: an objection which might also be made, comparatively speaking, to the inci- dent in the latter volumes, wherein I do not find the admirable probability that reigns through the former. . . . But this contrast of wisdom and virtue with insanity in the same subject, would have been repulsive in the primary delineation, as I think any one may judge by supposing Cervantes had, in the first chapter, drawn such a picture of Quixote as Bouterwek and Sismondi have drawn for him. I must, therefore, venture to think as, I believe, the world has generally thought for two centuries, that Cervantes had no more profound aim than he proposes to the reader. If the fashion of reading bad romances of chivalry perverted the taste of his contempo- raries, and rendered their language ridicu- lous, it was natural that a zealous lover of good literature should expose this folly to the world by exaggerating its effects on a fio- 338 HENRY BROUGHAM. titious personage. It has been said by some modern writer, though I cannot remember by whom, that there was a prose side in the mind of Cervantes. There was indeed a side of calm strong sense, which some take for unpoetical. He thought the tone of those romances extravagant. It might naturally occur how absurd any one must appear who should attempt to realize in actual life the adventures of Amadis. Already a novelist, he perceived the opportunities this idea sug- gested. It was a necess.'iry consequence that the hero must be represented as liter- ally insane, since his condupt would have been extravagant beyond the probability of fiction on any other hypothesis ; and from this happy conception germinated, in a very prolific mind, the whole history of Don Quixote. Its simplicity is perfect ; no limit could be found save the author's discretion, or sense, that he had drawn sufficiently on his imagination ; but the death of Quixote, which Cervantes has been said to have de- termined upon lest some one else should a second time presume to continue the story, is in fact the only possible termination that could be given after he had elevated the character to that pitch of mental dignity which we find in the last two volumes. Few books of moral philosophy display as deep an insight into the meclianism of mind as Don Quixote. And when we look also at the fertility of invention, the general probability of events, and the great sim- plicity of the story, wherein no artifices are practised to create suspense or complicate the action, we shall think Cervantes fully de- serving of the glory that attends this monu- ment of his genius. It is not merely that be is superior to all his predecessors and contemporaries. This, though it might ac- count for the European fame of his romance, Avould be an inadequate testimony to its de- sert. Cervantes stands on an eminence below which we must place the best of his successors. We have only to compare him with Le Sage or Fielding to judge of his vast superiority. To Scott, indeed, he must yield in the variety of his power ; but in the line of comic romance, we should hardly think Scott his equal. Introduction to the Literature of Europe. HENRY BROUGHAM, LORD BROUGHAM, born in Edinburgh, Sept. 19, 1778. and edu- cated at the High School and the University of that city, after a brilliant career in the House of Commons, became Lord Chancellor of England, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Brougham and Vaux, Nov. 1830 ; died at his seat at Cannes, France, May 9, 1868. Works : Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers, Lond., 1803, 2 vols. 8vo ; Discourse of Natural Theology, Lond., 1835, p. 8vo ; Dissertations on Sub- jects of Science Connected with Natural Theology, Lond., 1839, 2 vols. p. 8vo (the two preceding works are commonly adjoined to Lord Brougham and Sir Charles Bell's edition of Paley's Natural Theology, Lond., 1836, 2 vols. p. 8vo : in all 5 vols., or abridged, Knight's shilling volumes, 1853, 4 vols. ISmo) ; Speeches, Edin., 1838,4 vols. 8vo ; Speeches, Lond., 1843, 4 vols. !MO; Historical Sketches of Statesmen who flour- ished in the Time of George III., Lond., 1839-43, 3 vols. 8vo ; Political Philosophy, Lond., 1840-44, 3 vols. 8vo, 3d edit., 1853, new edit., 1861, 3 vols. 8vo ; Albert Lunel ; or,The Chateau of Languedoc, Lond., 1844, 3 vols. post 8vo: suppressed, but republishrd ; Lives of Men of Letters and Science of the Time of George III., Lond., 1845-46, 3 vols. royal 8vo; Contributions to the Edinburgh Review, Glasg., 1856, 3 vols. 8vo (he was co- founder with Jeffrey, Murray, and Sydney Smith of the Edinburgh lleview) ; other pub- lications. Works collected by himself, Edin., 1855-57, 10 vols. post 8vo. His Autobiog- raphy, Lond., 3 vols. 8vo, appeared after his dcntli. See also his Life by J. McGilchrist, Lond., fp. 8vo, Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors, and Selections from the Correspondence of the Late Macvey Napier, Esq., Edited by his Son, Macvey Napier, Lond., 1879, 8vb. Index, p. 544. Lord Brougham gained distinction by his proficiency in many departments : as a nat- ural philosopher, a political philosopher, an essayist, an orator, an historian, a biog- rapher, a pleader, and a fair classical scholar. His efforts for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge deserve all praise. SIR WILLIAM GRANT. We have now named in some respects the most extraordinary individual of his time, one certainly than whom none ever better sustained the judicial office, though its func- tions were administered by him upon a some- what contracted scale, one than whom none ever descended from the forum into the senate with more extraordinary powers of argumentation, or flourished there with greater renown. It happened to this great judge to have been for many years at the bar with a very moderate share of practice; and although his parliamentary exertions never tore him away from his profession, yet his public character rested entirely upon their success until he was raised to the bench. HENR Y BRO UGH A J/. 339 The genius of the man then shone forth with extraordinary lustre. His knowledge of law, which had hitherto been scanty, and never enlarged by practice, was now ex- panded to whatever dimensions might seem required for performing his high office ; nor was he ever remarked as at all deficient even in the branch most difficult to master without forensic habits, the accomplishments of a case-lawyer: while his familiarity with the principles of jurisprudence and his knowl- edge of their foundations were ample, as his application of them was easy and mas- terly. The Rolls Court, however, in those days, was one of comparatively contracted business ; and although he gave the most entire satisfaction there, and in presiding at the Privy Council in Prize and Plantation Appeals, a doubt was always raised by the admirers of Lord Eldon whether Sir William Grant could have as well answered the larger demands upon his judicial resources, had he presided in the Court of Chancery. That doubt appears? altogether unfounded. He possessed the first great quality for despatch- ing business (the '''real"' and not "affected despatch 1 ' of Lord Bacon), a power of steadily fixing his attention upon the matter before him, and keeping it invariably directed towards the successive arguments addressed to him. The certainty that not a word was lost deprived the advocate of all excuse for repetition ; while the respect which his judge inspired checked needless prolixity, and deterred him from raising desperate points merely to have them frowned down by a tribunal as severe as it was patient. He had not indeed to apprehend any interruption : that was a course never practised in those days at the Rolls or the Cockpit; but while the judge sat passive and unmoved it was plain that though his powers of endurance had no limits, his powers of discriminating were ever active, as his attention was ever awake ; and as it required an eminent hardi- hood to place base coin before so scrutinizing an eye, or tender light money to be weighed in such accurate scales as Sir William Grant's, so few men ventured to exercise a. patience which yet all knew to be unbounded. It may, indeed, be fairly doubted whether the main force of muscular exertion, so much more clumsily applied by Sir John Leach in the sa?ne court to effect the great object of bis efforts, the close compression of the debate, ever succeeded so well, or reduced the mass to as small a bulk, as the delicate hydraulic press of his illustrious predecessor did, without giving the least pain to the ad- vocate, or in any one instance obstructing the course of calm, deliberate, and unwearied justice. The court in those days presented a spec- tacle which afforded true delight to every person of sound judgment and pure taste. After a long and silent hearing, a hearing of all that could be urged by the counsel of every party, unbroken by a single word, and when the spectator of Sir William Grant (for he was not heard) might suppose that his mind had been absent from a scene in which he took no apparent share, the debate was closed, the .advocate's hour was passed, the parties were in silent expectation of the event, the hall no longer resounded with any voice, it seemed as if the affair of the day for the present was over, and the court was to adjourn, or to call for another cause. No ! The judge's time had now arrived, and another artist was to fill the scene. The great magistrate began to pronounce his judgment, and every eye and every ear were at length fixed upon the bench. Forth came a strain of clear unbroken fluency, disposing alike, in most luminous order, of all the facts and of all the arguments in the cause ; re- ducing into clear and simple arrangement the most entangled masses of broken and conflicting statement; weighing each matter, and disposing of each in succession ; settling one doubt by a parenthetical remark; pass- ing over another difficulty by a reason only more decisive that it was condensed ; and giving out the whole impression of the case, in every material view, upon the judge's mind, with argument enough to show why he so thought, and to prove him right, and without so much reasoning as to make you forget that it was a judgment you were hear- ing, by overstepping the bounds which dis- tinguish a judgment from a speech. This is the perfection of judicial eloquence : not .avoiding argument, but confining it to such reasoning as beseems him who has rather to explain the grounds of his own conviction, than to labour at convincing others ; not . rejecting reference to authority, but never betokening a disposition to seek shelter behind other men's names for what he might fear to pronounce in his own person ; not disdaining even ornaments, but those of the more chastened graces that accord with the severe standard of a judge's oratory. This perfection of judicial eloquence Sir William Grant attained, nnd its effect upon all lis- teners was as certain and as powerful as its merits were incontestable and exalted. In parliament he is unquestionably to be classed with speakers of the first order. His style was peculiar: it was that of the closest and severest reasoning ever heard in any popular assembly ; reasoning which would nave been reckoned close in the argumenta- tion of the bar or the dialectics of the schools. It was, from the first to the last, throughout, pure reason, and the triumph HENRY BROUGHAM. of pure reason. All was sterling, all per- fectly plain ; there was no point in the diction, no illustration in the topics, no or- nament of fancy in the accompaniments. The language was choice, perfectly clear, abundantly correct, quite concise, admira- bly suited to the matter which the words clothed and conveyed. In so far it was fe- licitous, no farther ; nor did it ever leave behind it any impression of the diction, but only of the things said : the words were forgotten, for they had never drawn ofl' the attention for a moment from the things; those things were alone remembered. No speaker was more easily listened to ; none so difficult to answer. Once Mr. Fox, when he was hearing him with a view to making that attempt, was irritated in a way very un- wonted to his sweet temper by the conversa- tion of some near him, even to the show of some crossness, and (after an exclamation) sharply said, " Do you think it so very pleasant a thing to have to answer a speech like that?" The two remarkable occasions on which this great reasoner was observed to be most injured by a reply, were in that of Mr. "Wilberforce quoting Clarendon's re- marks on the conduct of the judges in the Ship Money case, when Sir William Grant bad undertaken to defend his friend Lord Melville; and in that of Lord Lansdowne (then Lord Henry Petty), three years later, when the legality of the famous Orders in Council was debated. Here, however, the speech was made on the one day, and the answer, able and triumphant as it was, fol- lowed on the next. It may safely be said that a long time will elapse before there shall arise such a light to illuminate either the senate or the bench, as the eminent person whose rare excellence we have just been pausing to contemplate. That excellence Avas no doubt limited in its sphere : there was no imagination, no vehe- mence, no declamation, no wit; but the sphere was the highest, and in that highest sphere its place was lofty. The understand- ing alone was addressed by the understand- ing. The faculties that distinguish our nature were those over which the oratory of Sir William Grant asserted its control. His sway over the rational and intellectual por- tion of mankind was that of a more power- ful reason, a more vigorous intellect, than theirs ; a sway which no man had cause for being ashamed of admitting, because the victory was won by superior force of argu- ment ; a sway which the most dignified and exalted genius might hold without stooping from its highest pinnacle, and which some Avho might not deign to use inferior arts of persuasion could find no objection whatever to exercise. Yet in this purely intellectual picture there remains to be noted a discrepancy, a want of keeping, something more than a shade. The commanding intellect, the close reasoner, who could overpower other men's under- standing by the superior force of his own, was the slave of his own prejudices to such an extent, that he could see only the perils of revolution in any reformation of our in- stitutions, and never conceived it possible that the monarchy could be safe, or that anarchy could be warded off, unless all things were maintained upon the same foot- ing on which they stood in early, unen- lightened, and inexperienced ages of the world. The signal blunder, which Bacon long ago exposed, of confounding the youth with the age of the species, was never com- mitted by any one more glaringly than by this great reasoner. He it was who first em- ployed the well-known phrase of the " wis- dom of our ancestors ;" and the menaced innovation, to stop which he applied it, was the proposal of Sir Samuel Romilly to take the step of reform, almost imperceptibly small, of subjecting men's real property to the payment of all their debts. Historical Sketches of Statesmen, etc. CONDITION OF THE CHINESE. The universal respect in which learning is held, and the privileges allowed to it, have not, however, made the Chinese carry far their cultivation of it. They afford, on the contrary, a singular instance of a nation early making some progress, and then stop- ping short for ages ; of a people, all of whom possess the instruments of education, the means of acquiring knowledge, a people most of whom have actually acquired some knowledge, and yet none of whom have ever gone beyond the most elementary studies. This can only be ascribed to the absolute form of their government, and the manifest intention which the sovereigns have always had to limit the literary acqui- sitions of their subjects. The advantages of keeping quiet and indolent a people so numerous as to be able to crush .almost any ruler, and the means of tranquillity which elementary lessons like those of Confucius and his school bestowed, if they were thoroughly learnt, and became, as it were, mixed up with the nature of the people, could not escape the Chinese monarchs. They had a people to deal with whom they found it easy to occupy with such pursuits, and with the innumerable customs and cere- monies which the sacred writings inculcate together with far better things. The occu- pation was more than harmless, it was most useful in extinguishing fierce and turbulent HENRY BROUGHAM. 341 spirits ; and the lessons taught were those of absolute submission to the magistrates, though seasoned with so much other doctrine as prevented them from wearing the appear- ance of a mere design to secure subordina- tion. Beyond the learning of those books, therefore, the government had no desire that Chinese education should be carried. Accordingly, true orthodoxy is closely con- fined to the books of Confucius and Mencius, and one or two commentators on them ; and the government discountenances by every means the acquisition of any other learning. This is the main cause of the stationary knowledge of the Chinese; and one of the most powerful means used by the govern- ment to keep it thus stationary is the pre- ventingof almost all intercourse with foreign nations. The amount of the learning contained in those writings is very moderate. Many of the maxims are admirable; some indeed closely resembling those of our own religion. Thus Confucius distinctly enjoins the duty of doing unto others as we would be done to by them; nor can anything be more urgent than his injunction to watch the secret thoughts of the heart as the fountains of evil. It is also an admirable precept of his to judge ourselves with the severity we apply to others; and to judge others as we do ourselves. But there are wicked "doc- trines mixed with this pure wisdom, as when men are commanded not to live under the same sky with a father's assassin, and be- sides, the merit of all moral maxims is much more in the acting upon them than the laying them down. Wisdom is, properly speaking, the doing what wise sayings recommend ; and he has made but a small progress in philosophy even in the philosophy of morals who has only stored his memory with all the proverbs of Franklin and all the morals of .ZEsop. There are few men so ignorant as not to know the substance of these aphorisms, though they may never have seen them put in terse language, or illustrated by apt comparisons. The diffi- culty really lies in acting up to them. Therefore the learning to which the Chinese almost entirely devote themselves is of a very trifling nature at best. Some of it in- deed is positively useless. The Li-ki, or book of rites and customs, contains three thousand of these, all of which are to be learnt and to be scrupulously observed ; and there is a council of state with the exclusive office of seeing that this observance is com- plete, a manifest contrivance of the gov- ernment to occupy the people with frivolous and harmless studies. It thus happens that the Chinese, after having, long before any other of the nations now deemed most refined, made a consider- able progress in knowledge, and still more in the arts, have stopped short as it were on the threshold, and never attempted the rank of a learned or even a very polished nation. Acquainted with paper-making for above seventeen centuries, with printing for more than nine, they have hardly produced a book which could fix the attention of a European reader in the present day; and yet learning is the passport to political honours, and even to power among them ; and books are so highly valued that it is part of their religious observances never to suffer the treading on, or irreverent treatment of, a scrap of printed or written paper how worthless soever. Possessed of the mariner's compass twelve hundred years before it was known in Eu- rope, they have scarcely ever put it to the use which it really can best serve, but creep along their coasts, from headland to head- land, like the most ignorant of the South Sea Islanders, and rather employ it on shore, where other marks might better serve to guide them. With a kind of glass, or some- thing as near good glass as possible, for ages, they never have yet succeeded in making that most useful and beautiful pro- duct of the arts in its transparent state and plastic fabric. Capable of copying the works of the pencil with a minuteness which seems preternatural, both as to colour and form, they are wholly without invention, and, left to themselves, can make nothing like an imi- tation of nature. Nor in the severer sci- ences have they made any progress beyond the very first elements, although they have known one or two of the fundamental truths in geometry for hundreds of years, by induc- tion rather than demonstration, and could calculate eclipses of the heavenly bodies long before any other nation had emerged from barbarism. It is equally certain, how- ever, that the amount of knowledge which they have so long attained, the repute in which they have been taught to hold the quiet and sedulous pursuit of it, and the de- votion of their attention to it within certain limits, joined to the being debarred from all foreign intercourse, have produced all the ef- fect that could be desired by their rulers : it has so far reclaimed them from the turbu- lent state of uncivilized tribes as to make them easily ruled, by keeping them quiet, sedentary, inactive, even pusillanimous, with- out unfolding their faculties or increasing their knowledge in any degree likely to en- danger the security of a system founded mainly upon the permanent position of all and each of its parts. Political Phuotophy, Vol. i. Ch. vL, Gov- ernment of China. 342 HUMPHRY DAVY. SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, baronet, born at Penzance, Cornwall, 1778, in 1803 became a Fellow, in 1800 Secretary, and in 1820 President, of the Royal Society ; died at Geneva, 1829. He was the author of more than fifty Treatises and Lectures ex- plaining his brilliant chemical discoveries, etc., of Six Discourses delivered before the Royal Society at their Anniversary Meetings, Lond., 1827, 4to, and of the following among other works : Salmonia, or, Days of Fly-fish- ing, with Some Account of the Habits of Fishes belonging to the Genus Salmo. Lond., 1828, 12mo, 2d"edit., 1829, 12mo, 3d edit., 3832, 12mo, 4th edit., with Additions by his Brother, Dr. John Davy, 1851, fp. 8vo ; Con- solations in Travel, or, The Last Days of a Philosopher, Lond., 1830, 12mo. 5th edit., 1851, fp. 8vo. Collected Works, Edited, with Life, by his Brother, John Davy, M.D. The Life appeared separately, Lond., 1H36, 2 vols. 8vo, and a Life by Dr. J. A. Paris, Lond., 1831, 2 vols. 8vo. " Mr. Davy, not yet thirty-two years of age, oc- cupied, in the opinion of all that could judge of such labours, the first rank among the chemists of this or of any other age; it remained for him, by direct service rendered to society, to acquire a similar degree of reputation in the minds of the general public." CUVIER: Eloge of Sir H. Dacy. Ox THE CONSCIOUSNESS OP IMMORTALITY. If there be (which I think cannot be doubted) a consciousness of good or evil constantly belonging to the sentient principle in man, then rewards and punishments nat- urally belong to acts of this consciousness, to obedience or disobedience ; and the inde- structibility of the sentient being is neces- sary to the decrees of eternal justice. On your view, even in this life, just punishments for crimes would be almost impossible ; for the materials of which human beings are composed change rapidly, and in a few years probably not an atom of the primitive struc- ture remains; yet even the materialist is obliged, in old age, to do penance for the sins of his youth, and does not complain of the injustice of his decrepit body, entirely changed and made stiff by time, and suffer- ing for the intemperance of his youthful, flexible frame. On my idea, the conscience is the frame of the mind, fitted for its proba- tion in mortality. And this is exact accord- ance with the foundations of our religion, the divine origin of which is marked no less by its history than its harmony with the principles of our nature. Obedience to its precepts not only prepares for a better state of existence in another world, but is likewise calculated to make us happy here. We are constantly taught to renounce sensual pleas- ure and selfish gratifications, to forget our body and sensible organs, to associate our pleasures with mind, to fix our affections upon the great ideal generalization of intel- ligence in the One Supreme Being: and that we are capable of forming to ourselves an imperfect idea of the eternal mind is, I think, n. strong presumption of our own immortality, and of the distinct relation which our finite knowledge bears to eternal wisdom. . . . The doctrine of the materialists was always, even in my youth, a cold, heavy, dull, and insupportable doctrine to me. and necessarily tending to atheism. When I had heard, with disgust, in the dissecting-rooms, the plan of the physiologist, of the gradual accretion of matter, and its becoming en- dowed with irritability, ripening into sensi- bility, and acquiring such organs as were necessary by its own inherent forces, and at last issuing into intellectual existence, a walk into the green fields or woods, by the banks of rivers, brought back my feelings from Nature to God. I saw in all the powers of matter the instruments of the Deity. The sunbeams, the breath of the zephyr, awaken- ing animation in forms prepared by divine intelligence to receive it, the insensate seed, the slumbering eggs which were to be vivi- fied, appeared, like the new-born animal, works of a divine mind ; I saw love as the creative principle in the material world, and this love only as a divine attribute. Then my own mind I felt connected with new sen- sations and indefinite hopes a thirst for im- mortality ; the great names of other ages and of distant nations appeared to me to be still living around me, and even in the fan- cied movements of the heroic and the great I saw, as it were, the decrees of the in- destructibility of mind. These feelings, though generally considered as poetical, yet, I think, offer a sound philosophical argument in favour of the immortality of the soul. In all the habits and instincts of young animals, their feelings and movements, may be traced an intimate relation to their improved per- fect state ; their sports have always aflinities to their modes of hunting or catching their food ; and young birds, even in the nests, show marks of fondness, which, when their frames are developed, become signs of actions necessary to the reproduction and preserva- tion of the species. The desire of glory, of honour, of immortal fame, and of constant knowledge, so usual in young persons of well-constituted minds, cannot, I think, be other than symptoms of the infinite and progressive nature of the intellect, hopes which, as they cannot be gratified here, be- long to a frame of mind suited to a nobler state of existence. THOMAS BROWN. 343 Religion, whether natural or revealed, has always the same beneficial influence on the mind. In youth, in health, and prosperity, it awakens feelings of gratitude and sub- lime love, and purifies at the same time that it exalts : but it is in misfortune, in sickness, in age, that its effects are most truly and beneficially felt: when submission in faith, and humble trust in the Divine will, from duties become pleasures, underlying sources of consolation : then it creates powers which were believed to be extinct, and gives a fresh- ness to the mind which was supposed to have passed away for ever, but which is now ren- ovated as an immortal hope. Then it is the Pharos, guiding the wave-tost mariner to his home ; as the calm and beautiful still basins or fiords, surrounded by tranquil groves and pastoral meadows to the Norwe- gian pilot escaping from a heavy storm in the North Sea; or as the green and dewy spot, gushing with fountains, to the ex- hausted and thirsty traveller in the midst of the desert. Its influence outlives all earthly enjoyments, and becomes stronger as the organs decay and the frame dissolves. It appears as that evening star of light in the horizon of life, which we are sure is to become in another season a morning star ; and it throws its radiance through the gloom and shadow of death. Consolations in Travel ; or. The Last Days of a Philosopher: The Proteus; or, Im- mortality; Fourth Dialogue. THOMAS BROWN, M.D., born at Kirkmabreck, near Dumfries, Scotland, 1778, graduated M.D. 1803, and read lectures for Dugald Stewart in the Moral Philosophy Class of the University of Edinburgh, 1808-9, and in 1810 became colleague to Stewart in the Chair of Moral Philosophy, in which capacity he gained high distinction; died 1820. lie was the author of Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin, M.D., Edin., 1798, 8vo ; Observations on the Nature and Tendency of Mr. Hume's Doctrine Concerning the Re- lation of Cause and Effect, Edin., 1804, 8vo, 2d edit., 1806, 8vo, 3d edit., Edin., 1818, 8vo, 4th edit., Lond., 1835, 8vo ; Poems, Edin., 1804, 2 vols. 12mo; A Criticism on Charges against Mr. Leslie, 180G, 8vo; The Paradise of Coquettes, Lond., 1814, crown 8vo ; The Bower of Spring, 1816; The War Fiend, 1816 ; The Wanderer in Norway, a Poem, 1816, 8vo ; Emily and other Poems, 2d edit., 1818, 8vo ; Agnes, a Poem, 1818, 8vo ; Lec- tures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Edin., 1820,4 vols. 8vo (posthumous), with a Memoir and Index by Welsh, 1828, 8vo, 1844, 8vo, new edition of Lectures, 1846, 4 vols. 8vo. See Account of his Life and Writings, by Rev. I). Welsh, Edin., 1825, 8vo. See also Selections from the Corre- spondence of the Late Macvey Napier, Esq., Edited by his Son, Macvey Napier, London, 1879, 8vo. Index, p. 545. "The prose of Dr. Brown is brilliant to excess? it must not be denied that its beauty is sometimes womanly ; that it too often melts down precision into elegance; that it buries the main idea under a load of illustration. ... It is darkened by ex- cessive brightness; it loses ease and liveliness by over-dress; and, in the midst of its luscious sweet- ness, we wish for the striking and homely illustra- tions of Tucker, and for the pithy and sinewy sense of Paley, either of whom, by a single short meta- phor from a familiar, perhaps a low, object, could at one blow set the two worlds of Reason and Fancy in movement." Sm J. MACKINTOSH : Dis- sert, un Progress nf Ethicnl Philosophy, prefixed to Eiicyc. Brit., and in his Miscell. Works, edit. 1851, 110. " The style is so captivating, the views so com- prehensive, the arguments so acute, the whole thing so complete, that I was almost insensibly borne along upon the stream of his reasoning and his eloquence. In the power of analysis he greatly transcends all philosophers of the Scottish school who preceded him." MOKELL : Hist, of Modern Philosophy. DESIRE OF THE HAPPINESS OF OTHERS. It is this desire of the happiness of those whom we love which gives to the emotion of love itself its principal delight, by afford- ing to us constant means of its gratification. He who truly wishes the happiness of any one cannot be long without discovering some mode of contributing to it. Reason itself, with all its light, is not so rapid in discov- eries of this sort as simple affection, which sees means of happiness, and of important happiness, where reason scarcely could think that any happiness was to be found, and has already by many kind offices produced the happiness of hours before reason could have suspected that means so slight could have given even a moment's pleasure. It is this, indeed, which contributes in no inconsider- able degree to the perpetuity of affection. Love, the mere feeling of tender admiration, would in many cases have soon lost its power over the fickle heart, and in many other cases would have had its power greatly les- sened, if the desire of giving happiness, and the innumerable little courtesies and cares to which this desire gives birth, had not thus in a great measure diffused over a single passion the variety of many emotions. The love itself seems new at every moment, be- cause there is every moment some new wish of love that admits of being gratified ; or rather it is at once, by the most delightful of all combinations, new, in the tender wishes and cares with which it occupies us, 344 THOMAS BROWN. and makes familiar to us, and endeared the more by the remembrance of hours and years of well-known happiness. The desire of the happiness of others, though a desire always attendant on love, does not, however, necessarily suppose the previous existence of some one of those emo- tions which may strictly be termed love. This feeling is so far from arising neces- sarily from regard for the sufferer that it is impossible for us not to feel it when the suf- fering is extreme, and before our very eyes, though we may at the same time have the utmost abhorrence of him who is agonizing in our sight, and whose very look, even in its agony, still seems to speak only that atrocious spirit which could again gladly perpetrate the very horrors for which public indignation as much as public justice had doomed it to its dreadful fate. It is suffi- cient that extreme anguish is before us ; we wish it relief before we have paused to love, or without reflecting on our causes of hatred ; the wish is the direct and instant emotion of our soul in these circumstances, an emo- tion which, in such peculiar circumstances, it is impossible for hatred to suppress, and which love may strengthen indeed, but is not necessary for producing. It is the same with our general desire of happiness to others. We desire, in a particular degree,, the happiness of those whom we love, be- cause we cannot think of them without ten- der admiration. But though we had known them for the first time simply as human beings, we should still have desired their happiness; that is to say, if no opposite in- terests had arisen, we should have wished them to be happy .rather than to have any distress ; yet there is nothing in this case which corresponds with the tender esteem that is felt in love. There is the mere wish of happiness to them, a wish which itself, indeed, is usually denominated love, and which may without any inconvenience be so denominated in that general humanity which we call a love of mankind, but which we must always remember does not afford on analysis the same results as other affec- tions of more cordial regard to which we give the same name. To love a friend is to wish his happiness indeed, but it is to have other emotions at the same instant, emotions without which this mere wish would be poor to constant friendship. To love the natives of Asia or Africa, of whose individual virtues or vices, talents or imbecility, wisdom or ig- norance, we know nothing, is to wish their happiness ; but this wish is all which con- stitutes the faint and feeble love. It is a wish, however, which, unless when the heart is absolutely corrupted, renders it im- possible for man to be wholly indifferent to man ; and this great object is that which nature had in view. She has by a provident arrangement, which we cannot but admire the more the more attentively we examine it, accommodated our emotions to our means, making our love most ardent where our wish of giving happiness might be most effectual, and less gradually and less in pro- portion to our diminished means. From the affection of the mother for her new-born in- fant which has been rendered the strongest of all affections, because it was to arise in circumstances where affection would be most needed, to that general philanthropy which extends itself to the remotest stranger on spots of the earth which we never are to visit, and which we as little think of ever visiting as of exploring any of the distant planets of our system, there is a scale of benevolent desire which corresponds with the necessities to be relieved, and our power of relieving them, or with the happiness to be afforded, and our power of affording hap- piness. How many opportunities have we of giving delight to those who live in our domestic circle which would be lost before we could diffuse it to those who are distant from us ! Our love, therefore, our desire of giving happiness, our pleasure in having given it, are stronger within the limits of this sphere of daily and hourly intercourse than beyond it. Of those who are beyond this sphere, the individuals most familiar to us are those whose happiness we must al- ways know better how to promote than the happiness of strangers, with whose particu- lar habits and inclinations we are little if at all acquainted. Our love and the desire of general happiness which attends it are there- fore, by the concurrence of many constitu- tional tendencies of our nature in fostering the generous wish, stronger as felt for an intimate friend than for one who is scarcely known to us. If there be an exception to this gradual scale of importance according to intimacy, it must be in the case of one who is absolutely a stranger, a foreigner who comes among a people with whose gen- eral manners he is perhaps unacquainted, and who has no friend to whose attention he can lay claim from any prior intimacy. In this case, indeed, it is evident that our benevo- lence might be more usefully directed to one who is absolutely unknown than to many who are better known by us, that live in our very neighbourhood in the enjoyment of domestic loves and friendships of their own. Accordingly, we find that by a provision which might be termed singular, if we did not think of the universal bounty and wisdom of God, a modification of our general regard has been prepared in the sympathetic tendencies of our nature for this case also. There is a WILLIAM HAZLITT. 345 species of affection to which the stranger gives birth merely as being a stranger. He is received and sheltered by our hospitality almost with the zeal with which our friendship delights to receive one with whom we have lived in cordial union, whose virtues we know and revere, and whose kindness has been to us no small part of the happiness of our life. Is it possible to perceive this general pro- portion of our desire of giving happiness, in its various degrees, to the means which we possess, in various circumstances of afford- ing it, without admiration of an arrange- ment so simple in the principles from which it flows, and at the same time so effectual, an arrangement which exhibits proofs of goodness in our very wants, of wisdom in our very weaknesses, by the adaptation of these to each other, and by the ready re- sources which want and weakness find in these affections which everywhere surround them, like the presence and protection of God himself? Lectures on the Philosophy of the Humcin Mind. WILLIAM HAZLITT, the son of a Unitarian minister of Shrop- shire, born 1778, and educated at the Uni- tarian College at Ilackley. began life as an artist, but soon abandoned the pencil and palette for the pen, and, after a laborious literary career, died in 1830. lie was the author of the following among other works: Essays on the Principles of Human Action, Lond., 1805, crown 8vo, 1834, 12mo. 1835, 12mo; The Eloquence of the British Senate, Lond., 1807, 2 vols. 8vo ; The Hound Table (in conjunction with Leigh Hunt), Edin. and Lond., 1817, 2 vols. 12mo, 3d edit., Lond., 1841, 12mo; Characters of Shake- speare's Plavs, Lond., 1817, 8vo, 2d edit., 1818, 8vo, 3d edit,, 1838, 12mo, 4th edit., 1848, 12mo; The Dramatic Scorpion, a Satire, 1818, 8vo; A View of the English Stage, Lond., 1818, 8vo, 1821. 8vo, 1851, 12mo ; Lectures on the English Poets, Lond., 1818, 8vo, 2d edit., 1819, 8vo, 3d edit, 1841, 12mo; Lectures on the English Comic Writers, Lond., 1819, 8vo, 3d edit., 1840; Political Essays, with Sketches of Public Characters, Lond., 1819, 8vo, 1822, 8vo ; Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, Lond., 1821, 8vo, 3d edit., 1841, 12mo ; Table Talk, or, Original Es- says, Lond., 1821-22, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1824, 3d edit., 1845-46, 2 vols. 8vo, New York, 1S45, 2 vols. post 8vo; Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion, Lond., 1823, 12mo ; Selection of Speeches, Lond., 1823, 8vo ; Characteristics, Lond., 1823, sm. 8vo, 3d edit,, 1837, royal 18mo: Sketches of the Principal Picture Galleries of England, with a Criticism on Marriage a la Mode, Lond., 1824, 12mo ; Criticisms on Art, and Sketches of the Picture Galleries of England, Edited by his Son, Lond., 1843-44, 2 vols. 12mo; Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Por- traits. Lond., 1825, 8vo, 3d edit., Edited by his Son, Lond., 1858, 12mo; Select Poets of Great Britain, to which .are prefixed Crit- ical Notices of each Author, Lond., 1825, 8vo : Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, including Observations on the Fine Arts, Lond., 1826, 8vo ; Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, Two Series, Lond., 1826. 2 vols. 8vo, 2d edit, 1851-52, 2 vols. 12rno; Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Lond., 1828, 4 vols. 8vo, with new title, 1830, New York, 1847, 3 vols. 12mo, Phila.. 3 vols. large 12mo, revised by his Son, Lond., 1852, 4 vols. crown 8vo ; Conversations of James Northcote, Lond., 1830, sm. 8vo ; Literary Remains, with No- tice of his Life by his Son, and Thoughts on his Genius arid Writings by Sir E. L. Bulwer and Sir T. N. Talfourd, Lond., 1836, 8vo, 1839, 2 vols. 8vo; Winterslow: Essays and Characters Written there, Collected by his Son, Lond., 1850, 12mo; Miscellaneous Works, Phila., 5 vols. 12mo, and Napoleon, 8vo. " He seems pretty generally, indeed, in a state of happy intoxication, and has borrowed from his great original [Shakspeare], not indeed the force and brilliancy of his fancy, but something of its playfulness, and a large share of his ap- parent joyousness and self-indulgence in its exer- cise. It is evidently a great pleasure to him to he fully possessed with the beauties of his author, and to follow the impulse of his unrestrained eagerness to impress them upon his readers." LORD JEFFREY: Etliii. Itevieic, 28: 472. " There is scarcely a page of Hazlitt which does not betray the influence of strong prejudice, a love of paradoxical views, and a tendency to sacrifice the exact truth of a question to an effective turn of expression." H. T. TUCKEKM AN : Charac. of Lit., Second Series : The Critic : William Hazlitt. THE LITERATURE OF THE AGE OP ELIZABETH. The age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in our history, by a number of great men, famous in dif- ferent ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours, statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers : Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, Shak- speare, Spenser, Sydney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternized in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and ornaments 346 WILLIAM HAZLITT. of human nature. Their attainments of dif- ferent kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling : what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Per- haps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. . . . For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned ; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in the character of the men who adorned that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their reach. I shall here attempt to give a general sketch of these causes, a,nd of the manner in which they operated to mould and stamp the foetry of the country at the period of which have to treat; independently of incidental and fortuitous causes, for which there is no accounting, hut which, after all, have often the greatest share in determining the most important results. The first cause I shall mention, as con- tributing to this general effect, was the Refor- mation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and in- creased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prej- udices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general ; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown intolerable abuses of centu- ries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience ; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Ger- many first broke the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the watchword ; but England joined the shout, and echoed it back, with her island voice, from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in a longer and a louder strain. With that cry, the genius of Great Britain rose, and threw down the gauntlet to the nations. There was a mighty fermen- tation : the waters were out ; public opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held out to all to think and speak the truth. Men's brains were busy ; their spirits stir- ring; their hearts full ; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death- blow which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy loosened their tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had be- guiled her followers and committed abomi- nations with the people, fall harmless from their necks. The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of re- ligion and morality which had there been locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers, to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common in- terest in a common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It ce- mented their union of character and senti- ment; it created endless diversity and col- lision of opinion. They found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring intre- pidity in maintaining it. Religious contro- versy sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the topics it dis- cusses, and embraces the will by their infi- nite importance. We perceive in the history of this period a nervous masculine intellect. No levity, no feebleness, no indifference ; or, if there were, it is a relaxation from the intense activity which gives a tone to its gen- eral character. But there is a gravity ap- proaching to piety ; a seriousness of impres- sion, a conscientious severity of argument, an habitual fervour and enthusiasm, in their method of handling almost every subject. The debates of the schoolmen were sharp and subtle enough ; but they wanted interest and grandeur, and were besides confined to a few : they did not affect the general mass of the community. But the Bible was thrown open to all ranks and conditions " to run and read," with its wonderful table of contents from Genesis to the Revelations. Every vil- lage in England would present the scene so well described in Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." I cannot think that all this variety and weight of knowledge could be thrown in all at once upon the mind of the people and not make some impression upon it the traces of which might be discerned in the manners and literature of the age. For, to leave more disputable points, and take only the histori- cal parts of the Old Testament, or the moral parts of the New, there is nothing like them in the power of exciting awe and admira- tion, or of riveting sympathy. We see what Milton has made of the account of the Crea- tion, from the manner in which he has treated it, imbued and impregnated with the spirit of the time of which we speak. Or what is there equal (in that romantic interest and patriarchal simplicity which goes to the WILLIAM HAZLITT. 347 heart of a country, and rouses it, as it were, from its lair in wastes and wildernesses) to the story of Joseph and his Brethren, of Rachel and Laban, of Jacob's Dream, of lluth and Boaz, the descriptions in the book of Job, the deliverance of the Jews out of Egypt, or the account of their captivity and return from Babylon? There is, in all these parts of the Scripture, and numberless more of the same kind, to pass over the Orphic hymns cf David, the prophetic denunciations of Isaiah, or the gorgeous visions of Ezekiel, an originality, a vastness of conception, a depth and tenderness of feeling, and a touch- ing simplicity in the mode of narration, which he who does not feel need be made of no "penetrable stuff." There is something in the character of Christ too (leaving the religious faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history, whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime humanity, such as was never seen on earth before nor since. This shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing the disciples' feet the night before his death, that unspeakable instance of humility and love, above all art. all meanness, and all pride ; and in the leave he took of them on that occasion : " My peace I give unto you, that peace which the world cannot give, give I unto you ;" and in his last commandment, that " they should love another." AVho can read the account of his behaviour on the cro-s, when turning to his mother he said, "Woman, behold thy son," and to the dis- ciple John, " Behold thy mother," and " from that hour that disciple took her to his own home," without having his heart smote within ! We see it in his treatment of the woman taken in adultery, and in his excuse for the woman who poured precious ointment on his garment as an offering of devotion and love which is here all in all. His religion was the religion of the heart. We see it in his discourse with the disciples as they walked together towards Emmaus, when their hearts burned within them ; in his sermon from the Mount, in his parable of the Good Samaritan, and in that of the Prodigal Son, in every act and word of his life, a grace, a mildness, a dignity and love, a patience and wisdom, worthy of the Son of God. His whole life and being were imbued, steeped, in this word, charity ; it was the spring, the well- head from which every thought and feeling gushed into act ; and it was thin that breathed a mild glory from his face in that last agony upon the cross, "when the meek 'Saviour bowed his head and died," praying for his enemies. He was the first true teacher of morality : for he alone conceived the idea of a pure humanity. He redeemed man from the worship of that idol, self, and instructed him by precept and example to love his neighbour as himself, to forgive our enemies, to do good to those that curse us and despite- fully use us. He taught the love of good for the sake of good, without regard to per- sonal or sinister views, and made the affec- tions of the heart the sole seat of morality, instead of the pride of the understanding or the sternness of the will. In answering the question, "Who is our neighbour?" as one who stands in need of our assistance, and whose wounds we can bind up, he has done more to humanize the thoughts, and tame the unruly passions, than all who have tried to reform and benefit mankind. The very idea of abstract benevolence, of the desire to do good because another wants our services, and of regarding the human race as one family, the offspring of one common parent, is hardly to be found in any other code or system. It was "to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness." The Greeks and Romans never thought of con- sidering others, but as they were Greeks or Romans, as they were bound to them by cer- tain positive ties, or, on the other hand, as separated from them by fiercer antipathies. Their virtues were the virtues of political machines, their vices were the vices of demons, ready to inflict or to endure pain with obdurate and remorseless inflexibility of purpose. But in the Christian religion " wo perceive a softness coming over the heart of a nation, and the iron scales that fence and harden it melt and drop off." It becomes malleable, capable of pity, of for- giveness, of relaxing in its claims, and remitting its power. We strike it and it does not hurt us : it is not steel or marble, but flesh and blood, clay tempered with tears, and " soft as sinews of the new-born babe." . . . Nor can I help thinking that we may dis- cern the traces of the influence exerted by religious faith in the spirit of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of excit- ing terror and pity, in the delineations of the passions of grief, remorse, love, sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the longings after immortality, in the heaven of hope and the abyss of despair it lays open to us. The literature of this age, then, I would say, was strongly influenced (among other causes), first, by the spirit of Christianity, and secondly, by the spirit of Protestantism. The effects of the Reformation on politics and philosophy may be seen in the writings and history of the next and of following ages. 348 WILLIAM HAZLITT. They are still tit work, and will continue to be so. The effects on the poetry of the time were chiefly confined to the moulding of the characters, and giving a powerful impulse to the intellect of the country. The immediate use or application that was made of religion to subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an obvious ground of separation) so direct or frequent as that which was made of the classical and romantic literature. For, much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of the Greek and Ro- man mythology, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain and Italy, were eagerly ex- plored by the curious, and thrown open in translations to the admiring gaze of the vul- gar. This last circumstance could hardly have afforded so much advantage to the poets of that day, who were themselves, in fact, the translators, as it shows the general curi- osity and increasing interest in such subjects as a prevailing feature of the times. There were translations of Tasso by Fairfax, and of Ariosto by Harrington, of Homer and Ilesiod by Chapman, and of Virgil long be- fore, and of Ovid soon after ; there was Sir Thomas North's translation of Plutarch, of which Shakspeare has made such admirable use in his Coriolanus and Julius Caesar ; and Ben Jonson's tragedies of Catiline and Se- janus may themselves be considered as al- most literal translations into verse of Tacitus, Sallust, and Cicero's Orations in his consul- ship. Petrarch, Dante, the satirist Aretine, Machieval, Castiglion, and others, were fa- miliar to our writers, and they make occa- sional mention of some few French authors, as Ronsard and Du Bartas ; for the French literature had not at this stage arrived at its Augustan period, and it was the imitation of their literature a century afterwards, when it had arrived at its greatest height (itself copied from the Greek and Latin), that en- feebled and impoverished our own. But of the time that we are considering it might be said, without much extravagance, that every breath that blew, that every wave that rolled to our shores, brought with it some acces- sion to our knowledge, which was engrafted on the national genius. . . . What 'gave also an unusual impetus to the mind of men at this period was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voy- ages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as if by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination, of the dreaming speculator. Fairy-land was realised in new and unknown worlds. " For- tunate fields, and groves, and flowery vales, thrice happy isles," were found floating, " like those Hesperian gardens famed of old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt from the zenith. The people, the soil, the clime, everything gave unlimited scope to the curi- osity of the traveller and reader. Other manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of knowledge, and new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is from a voy- age to the Straits of Magellan that Shak- speare has taken the hint of Prospero's En- chanted Island, and of the savage Caliban with his god Setebos. Spenser seems to have had the same feeling in his mind in the production of his Faery Queen. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET. It is the one of Shakspeare's plays that we think of the oftenest, because it abounds most in striking reflections on human life, and because the distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn of his mind, to the general account of humanity. Whatever happens to him, we apply to ourselves, be- cause he applies it to himself as a means of general reasoning. He is a great moraliser ; and what makes him worth attending to is, that he moralises on his own feelings and experience. He is not a commonplace ped- ant. If Lear is distinguished by the greatest depth of passion, Hamlet is the most remark- able for the ingenuity, originality, and un- studied development of character. Shak- speare had more magnanimity than any other poet, and he has shown more of it in this play than in any other. There is no attempt to force an interest: everything is left for time and circumstances to unfold. The at- tention is excited without effort; the inci- dents succeed each other as matters of course; the characters think, and speak, and act, just as they might do if left entirely to themselves. There is no set purpose, no straining at a point. The observations are suggested by the passing scene, the gusts of passion come and go like sounds of music borne on the wind. The whole play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of Denmark at the remote period of time fixed upon, be- fore the modern refinements in morals and manners were heard of. It would have been interesting enough to have been admitted as a bystander in such a scene, at such a time, to have heard and witnessed something of what was going on. But here we are more than spectators. We have not only the out- ward pageants and the signs of grief, but "we have that within which passes show." We read the thoughts of the heart, we catch the passions living as they rise. Other dra- matic writers give us very fine versions and paraphrases of nature ; but Shakspeare, to- WILLIAM HAZLITT. 349 gether with his own comments, gives the original text, that we may judge for our- selves. This is a very great advantage. The character of Hamlet stands quite by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Ham- let is as little of the hero as a man can well be ; but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility, the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune, arid refining on his own feel- ings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situa- tion. He seems incapable of deliberate ac- tion, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect, as in the scene where he kills Polonius ; and, again, where he alters the letters which Rosencrantz and Guilden- stern are taking with them to England, pur- porting his death. At other times, when he is most bound to act, he remains puzzled, undecided, and sceptical : dallies with his purposes till the occasion is lost, and finds out some pretence to relapse into indolence and though tfulneaa again. For this reason he refuses to kill the king when he is at his prayers ; and, by a refinement in malice, Avhich is in truth only an excuse for his own want of resolution, defers his revenge to a more fatal opportunity. . . . The moral per- fection of this character has been called in question, we think by those who did not un- derstand it. It is more interesting than ac- cording to rules ; amiable, though not fault- less. The ethical delineations of "that noble and liberal casuist'' (as Shakspeare has been well called) do not exhibit the drab-coloured quakerism of morality. His plays are not copied cither from The Whole Duty of Man, or from The Academy of Compliments! We confess we are a little shocked at the want of refinement in those who are shocked at the want of refinement in Hamlet. The neglect of punctilious exactness in his be- haviour either partakes of the " license of the time," or else belongs to the very excess of intellectual refinement in the character, which makes the common rules of life, as well as his own purposes, sit loose upon him. He may be said to be amenable only to the tribunal of his own thoughts, and is too much taken up with the airy world of con- templation to lay as much stress as he ought on the practical consequences of things. His habitual principles of action are un- hinged and out of joint with the time. His conduct to Ophelia is quite natural in his circumstances. It is that of assumed severity only. It is the effect of disappointed hope, of bitter regrets, of affection suspended, not obliterated, by the distractions of the scene around him ! Amidst the natural .and pre- ternatural horrors of his situation, he might be excused in delicacy from carrying on a regular courtship. When u his father's spirit was in arms, 1 ' it was not a time for his son to make love in. He could neither marry Ophelia, nor wound her mind by explaining the cause of his alienation, which he durst hardly trust himself to think of. It would have taken him years to have come to a di- rect explanation on the point. In the har- assed state of his mind he could not have done much otherwise than he did. His con- duct does not contradict what he says when he sees her funeral : "I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers Could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum." Characters of Shakspeare's Plays. RICHARD THE THIRD AND MACBETH. The leading features in the character of Macbeth are striking enough, and they form what may be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it with other characters of the same author, we shall perceive the absolute truth and iden- tity which is observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of events. With powerful and masterly strokes, for in- stance, he has marked the different effects of ambition and cruelty, operating on dif- ferent dispositions and in different circum- stances, in his Macbeth and Richard III. Both are tyrants, usurpers, murderers ; both violent and ambitious; both courageous, cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and constitution. Macbeth be- comes so from accidental circumstances. Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and naturally incapable of good. Macbeth is full of " the milk of human kind- ness," is frank, sociable, generous. He is urged to the commission of guilt by golden opportunity, by the instigations of his wife, and by prophetic warnings. " Fate and metaphysical aid" conspire against his vir- tue and his loyalty. Richard, on the con- trary, needs no prompter, but wades through a series of crimes to the height of his ambi- tion, from the ungovernable violence of his passions and a restless love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the success of his villanies; Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts of the murder of Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to commit, and of remorse after its per- petration. Richard has no mixture of com- mon humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred or posterity ; he owns no fellow- ship with others, but is " himself alone." Macbeth endeavours to escape from reflec- 350 JAMES KIRKE PAULDING. tion on his crimes by repelling their conse- quences, and banishes remorse for the past by the meditation of future mischief. This is not the principle of Richard's cruelty, which resembles the cold malignity, the wanton malice, of a fiend, rather than the frailty of human nature. Macbeth is goaded on to acts of violence and retaliation by necessity ; to Richard, blood is a pastime. There are other essential differences. Rich- ard is a man of the world ; a vulgar, plot- ting, hardened villain, wholly regardless of everything but his own ends, and the means to accomplish them. Not so Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the local scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to his character. From the strangeness of the events that surround him, he is full of amazement and fear, and stands in doubt between the world of reality and the world of fancy. He sees sights not shown to mortal eye, and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and disorder within and without his mind ; his purposes recoil upon himself, are broken and disjointed ; he is the double thrall of his passions and his evil destiny. lie treads upon the brink of fate, and grows dizzv with his situation. Richard is not a character either of imagination or pathos, but of pure will. There is no conflict of opposite feelings in his breast. The appari- tions which he sees only haunt him in his sleep; nor does he live, like Macbeth, in a waking dream. There is nothing tight or compact in Macbeth, no tenseness of fibre nor pointed decision of manner. He has indeed considerable energy and manliness of soul ; but then he is " subject to all the skyey influences." He is sure of nothing. All is left at issue. He runs a tilt with fortune, and is baffled with preternatural riddles. The agitation of his mind resem- bles the rolling of the sea in a storm, or he is like a lion in the toils, fierce, impetuous, and ungovernable. Richard, in the busy turbulence of his projects, never loses his self-possession, and makes use of every cir- cumstance that occurs as an instrument of his long-reaching designs. In his last ex- tremity we can only regard him as a cap- tured wild-beast ; but we never entirely lose our concern for Macbeth, and he calls back all our sympathy by that fine close of thought- ful melancholy, "My May of life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf: And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have ; but in their stead, Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth- honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not." Characters of Shakspeare* s Plays. JAMES KIRKE PAULDING, born at Pawling, New York. 1788, Navy Agent for the port of New York for twelve years, until 1837, and Secretary of the Navy, 1837-1841 ; died I860. lie was the author of the following among other works : The Diverting History of John Bull and Brother Jonathan, N. York, 1813, 18mo, new edit., 1835, 12mo ; Letters from the South, etc., N. York. 1817, 2 vols. 12mo, new edit., 1835, 2 vols. 12mo; A Sketch of Old England, by a New England Man, N. York, 1822, 2 vols. 12mo; Koningsmarke, The Long Finne, N. York, 1823, 2 vols. 12mo, 2d edit., entitled Old Times in the New World, 1835, 2 vols. 12mo, Lond., 1843, 2 vols. 12mo; John Bull in America : or, The New Munchausen, N. York, 1824, 12mo ; Merry Tales of the Three Wise Men of Gotham, 1820, 12mo; The Book of St. Nicholas, 1827, 8vo ; The Now Mirror for Travellers and Guide to the Springs, 1828, 12mo; Tales of the Good Woman, by a Doubtful Gentleman, 1829, 8vo; Chronicles of the City of Gotham, 1830, 12mo ; The Dutchman's Fireside, a Tale, N. York, 1831, 12ino, Lond., 1831, etc., 12mo, also in French and Dutch ; Westward Ho ! a Tale, N. York, 1832, 2 vols. 12mo; The Life of George Washington, N. York, 1835, 2 vols. 18mo, Aberdeen, Scotland, 1836, 18mo (5000 copies purchased for public schools in the United States) ; Affairs and Men of New Amsterdam in the Times of Governor Peter Stuyvesandt, N. York, 1843, 12mo; The Old Continental; or, The Price of Liberty, N. York, 1846, 12rno: American Comedies, by J. K. Paulding and [his son] William Irving Paulding, Phila., 1847, Svo ; The Puritan and his Daughter, N. York, 1849, 12mo. His son, W. I. Paulding, pub- lished an account of his father's life in 1867, and four volumes of his works were repub- lished, N. York, 1867-68. He was co-author with Washington Irving and William Irving (who married his sister) of Salmagundi, first series, 1807, and sole author of the second series, 1819. " There is no better literary manner than the manner of Mr. Paulding. Certainly no American, and possibly no living writer of England, has more of those numerous peculiarities which go to the formation of a happy style. It is questionable, we think, whether any writer of any country com- bines as many of these peculiarities with as much of that essential negative virtue, the absence of affectation." EDGAR A. POE : Liternti, 1850, 574. " Hi* works are exclusively and eminently na- tional, and his descriptions of natural scenery nro often singularly beautiful." Lon. Athenseum : Lit. of the Nineteenth Century : America. THE QUARREL OF SQUIRE BULL AND HIS SON. John Bull was a choleric old fellow, who JAMES KIRKE PAUL DING. 351 held a good manor in the middle of a great mill-pond, and which, by reason of its being quite surrounded by water, was generally called Bullock Island. Bull was an ingeni- ous man, an exceedingly good blacksmith, a dexterous cutler, and a notable weaver and pot-baker besides. He also brewed capital porter, ale, and small beer, and was in fact a sort of Jack of all trades, and good at each. In addition to these, he was a hearty fellow and excellent bottle companion, and passably honest as times go. But what tarnished all these qualities was a devilish quarrelsome, overbearing dispo- sition, which was always getting him into some scrape or other. The truth is, he never heard of a quarrel going on among his neigh- bours but his fingers itched to be in the thickest of them ; so that he was hardly ever seen without a broken head, a black eye, or a bloody nose. Such was Squire Bull, as he was commonly called by the country people his neighbours, one of those odd, testy, grumbling, boasting old codgers, that never get credit for what they are, be- cause they are always pretending to be what they are not. The squire was as tight a hand to deal with in doors as out; sometimes treating his family as if they were not the same flesh and blood, when they happened to differ with him in certain matters. One day he got into a dispute with his youngest son Jonathan, who was familiarly called BROTHER JONA- THAN, about whether churches ought to be called churches or meeting-houses; and whether steeples were not an abomination. The squire, either having the worst of the argument, or being naturally impatient of contradiction (I can't tell which), fell into a great passion, and swore he would physic such notions out of the boy's noddle. So he went to some of his doctors and got them to draw up a prescription, made up of thirty- nine different articles, many of them bitter enougli to some palates. This he tried to make Jonathan swallow ; and finding he made villanous wry faces, and would not do it, fell upon him and beat him like furv. After this he made the house so disagreeable to him, that Jonathan, though as hard as a pine knot and as tough as leather, could bear it no longer. Taking his gun and his axe, he put himself in a boat and paddled over the mill-pond to some new lands to which the squire pretended some sort of claim, in- tending to settle them, and build a meeting- house without a steeple as soon as he grew rich enough. When he got over, Jonathan found that the land was quite in a state of nature, cov- ered with wood, and inhabited by nobody but wild beasts. But being a lad of mettle, he took his axe on one shoulder and his gun on the other, inarched into the thickest of the wood, and clearing a place, built a log hut. Pursuing his labours, and handling his axe like a notable woodman, he in a few years cleared the land, which he laid out into thirteen good farms : and building him- self a fine frame house, about half-finished, began to be quite snug and comfortable. But Squire Bull, who was getting old and stingy, and, besides, was in great want of money, on account of his having been made to pay swinging damages for assaulting his neighbours and breaking their heads, the squire, I say, finding Jonathan was getting well to do in the world, began to be very much troubled about his welfare; so he de- manded that Jonathan should pay him a good rent for the land which he had cleared and made good for something. He trumped up I know not what claim against him, and under different pretences managed to pocket all Jonathan's honest gains. In fact, the poor lad had not a shilling left for holyday occasions ; and had it not been for the filial respect he felt for the old man, he would certainly have refused to submit to such imposition. But for all this, in a little time, Jonathan grew up to be very large of his age, and be- came a tall, stout, double-jointed, broad- footed cub of a fellow, awkward in his gait and simple in his appearance ; but show- ing a lively, shrewd look, and having the promise of great strength when he should get his full growth. lie was rather an odd- looking chap, in truth, and had many queer wavs ; but every body that had seen John Bull saw a great likeness between them, and swore he was John's own boy, and a true chip of the old block. Like the old squire, he was apt to be blustering and saucy, but in the main was a peaceable sort of care- less fellow, that would quarrel with nobody if you only let him alone. He used to dress in homespun trousers with a huge bagging seat, which seemed to have nothing in it. This made people to say he had no bottom ; but whoever said so lied, as they f.mnd to their cost whenever they put Jonathan in a passion. He always wore a linsey-wool- sey coat that did not above half cover his breech, and the sleeves of which were so short that his hand and wrist came out be- yond them, looking like a shoulder of mut- ton. All which was in consequence of his growing so fast that he outgrew his clothes. While Jonathan was outgrowing his strength in this way, Bull kept on picking his pockets of every penny he could scrape together ; till at last one day when the squire was even more than usually press- ing in his demands, which he accompanied 352 WILLIAM ELLERT CHANNING. with threats, Jonathan started up in a furious passion, and threw the TEA-KETTLE at the old man's head. The choleric Bull was hereupon exceedingly enraged ; and after calling the poor lad an undutiful, ungrateful, rebellious rascal, seized him by the collar, and forth- with a furious scuffle ensued. This lasted a long time ; for the squire, though in years, was a capital boxer, and of most excellent bottom. At last, however, Jonathan got him under, and before he would let him up, made him sign a paper giving up .ill claim to the farms, and acknowledging the fee-simple to be in Jonathan forever. The Diverting Histoi-y of John Bull and Brother Jonathan. WILLIAM ELLERY CHAN- NING, D.D., an eminent Unitarian preacher and excellent writer, was born at Newport, Rhode Island, 1780, died at Bennington, Vermont, 1842. SELF-CULTURE. It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books ! They .are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and great- est of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwell- ing. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof, if Mil- ton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. To make this means of culture effectual, a man must select good books, such as have been written by right-minded and strong- minded men, real thinkers, who, instead of diluting by repetition what others say, have something to say for themselves, and write to give relief to full, earnest souls; and these works must not be skimmed over for amusement, but read with fixed attention and a reverential love of truth. In select- ing books we may be aided much by those who have studied more than ourselves. But, after all, it is best to be determined in this particular a good deal by our own tastes. The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but oftener those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought. And here it may be well to observe, not only in regard to books, but in other respects, that self-culture must vary with the individual. All means do not equally suit us all. A man must unfold himself freely, and should respect the peculiar gifts or biases by which nature has distinguished him from others. Self-culture does not demand the sacrifice of individuality. It does not regularly apply an established machinery, for the sake of torturing every man into one rigid shape, called perfection. As the human counte- nance, with the same features in us all, is diversified without end in the race, and is never the same in any two individuals, so the human soul, with the same grand powers and laws, expands into an infinite variety of forms, and would be wofully stinted by modes of culture requiring all men to learn the same lesson, or to bend to the same rules. I know how hard it is to some men, espe- cially to those who spend much time in man- ual labour, to fix attention on books. Let them strive to overcome the difficulty by choosing subjects of deep interest, or by reading in company with those whom they love. Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing com- panions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not com- pensate for the good they impart. Let every man, if possible, gather some good books under his roof, and obtain access for him- self and family to some social library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this. One of the very interesting features of our times is the multiplication of books, and their distribution through all condi- tions of society. At a small expense, a man can now possess himself of the most pre- cious treasures of English literature. Books, once confined to a few by their costliness, are now accessible to the multitude ; and in this way a change of habits is going on in society, highly favourable to the culture of the people. Instead of depending on casual rumour and loose conversation for most of their knowledge and objects of thought; instead of forming their judg- ments in crowds, and receiving their chief excitement from the voice of neighbours ; WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. 353 men are now learning to study and reflect alone, to follow out subjects continuously, to determine for themselves what shall engage their minds, and to call to their aid the knowledge, original views, and reasoning of men of all countries and ages ; and the results must be a deliberation and indepen- dence of judgment, and a thoroughness and extent of information unknown in former times. The diffusion of these silent teach- ers books through the whole community is to work greater effects than artillery, ma- chinery, and legislation. Its peaceful agency is to supersede stormy revolutions. The cul- ture, which is to spread, whilst an unspeak- able good to the individual, is also to become the stability of nations. Another means of self-culture is to free ourselves from the power of human opinion and example, except as this is sanctioned by our own deliberate judgment. We are all prone to keep the level of those we live with, to repeat their words, and dress our minds as well as bodies after their fashion ; and hence the spiritless tameness of our characters and lives. Our greatest danger is not from the grossly wicked around us, but from the worldly, unreflecting multi- tude, who are borne along as a stream by foreign impulse, and bear us along with them. Even the influence of superior minds may harm us, by bowing us to servile ac- quiescence and damping our spiritual activ- ity. The great use of intercourse with other minds is to stir up our own, to whet our ap- petite for truth, to carry our thoughts be- yond their old tracks. We need connections with great thinkers to make us thinkers too. One of the chief arts of self-culture is to unite the childlike teachableness, which gratefully welcomes light from every human being who can give it, with manly resistance of opinions, however current, of influences however generally revered, which do not approve themselves to our deliberate judg- ment. On Self-Culture: Channinq 's Complete Works. Ox NATIONAL LITERATURE. We maintain that a people which has any serious purpose of taking a place among improved communities, should sedulously promote within itself every variety of intel- lectual exertion. It should resolve stren- uously to be surpassed by none. It should feel that mind is the creative power through which all the resources of nature are to be turned to account, and by which a people is to spread its influence, and establish the noblest form of empire. It should train within itself men able to understand and to 23 use whatever is thought and discovered over the whole earth. The whole mass of human knowledge should exist among a people, not in neglected libraries, but in its higher minds. Among its most cherished institu- tions should be those which will ensure to it ripe scholars, explorers of ancient learning, profound historians and mathematicians, in- tellectual labourers devoted to physical and moral science, and to the creation of a re- fined and beautiful literature. Let us not be misunderstood. We have no desire to rear in our country a race of pedants, of solemn triflers, of laborious com- mentators on the mysteries of a Greek ac- cent or a rusty coin. We would have men explore antiquity, not to bury themselves in its dust, but to learn its spirit, and so to commune with its superior minds as to accu- mulate on the present age the influence of whatever was great and wise in former times. What we want is, that those among us whom God has gifted to comprehend whatever is now known, and to rise to new truths, may find aids and institutions to tit them for their high calling, and may become at once springs of a higher intellectual life to their own country, and joint workers with the great of all nations and times in carrying forward their race. We know that it will be said that foreign scholars, born under institutions which this country cannot support, may do our intellec- tual work, and send us books and learning to meet our wants. To this we have much to answer. In the first place, we reply that, to avail ourselves of the higher literature of other nations, we must place ourselves on a level with them. The products of foreign machinery we can use, without any portion of the skill that produced them. But works of taste and genius, and profound investiga- tions of philosophy, can only be estimated and enjoyed through a culture and power corresponding to that from which they sprung. In the next place, we maintain that it is an immense gain to a people to have in its own bosom, among its own sons, men of dis- tinguished intellect. Such men give a spring and life to a community by their presence, their society, their fame ; and, what deserves remark, such men are nowhere so felt as in a republic like our own ; for here the differ- ent classes of society flow together and act powerfully on each other, and a free com- munication, elsewhere unknown, is estab- lished between the gifted few and the many. It is one of the many good fruits of liberty that it increases the diffusiveness of intel- lect; and accordingly a free country is, above all others, false to itself in withhold- ing from its superior minds the means of 354 THOMAS CHALMERS. enlargement. We next observe and we think the observation important that the facility with which we receive the literature of foreign countries, instead of being a rea- son for neglecting our own, is a strong motive for its cultivation. We mean not to be para- doxical, but we believe that it would be better to admit no books from abroad than to make them substitutes for our own intel- lectual activity. The more we receive from other countries, the greater the need of an original literature. A people into whose minds the thoughts of foreigners are poured perpetually, needs an energy within itself to resist, to modify, this mighty influence, and, without it, will inevitably sink under the worst bondage, will become intellectually tame and enslaved. We have certainly no desire to complete our restrictive system by adding to it a literary non-intercourse law. We rejoice in the increasing literary connec- tion between this country and the old world ; but sooner would we rupture it than see our country sitting passively at the feet of for- eign teachers. It were better to have no literature than form ourselves unresistingly on a foreign one. The true sovereigns of a country are those who determine its mind, its modes of thinking, its tastes, its princi- ples ; and we cannot consent to lodge this sovereignty in the hands of strangers. A country, like an individual, has dignity and power only in proportion as it is self-formed. There is a great stir to secure to ourselves the manufacturing of our own clothing. We say, let others spin and weave for us, but let them not think for us. A people whose gov- ernment and laws are nothing but the em- bodying of public opinion, should jealously guard this opinion against foreign dictation. We need a literature to counteract, and to use wisely, the literature which we import. We need an inward power proportionate to that which is exerted on us, as the means of self-subsistence. It is particularly true of a people whose institutions demand for their support a free and bold spirit, that they should be .able to subject to a manly and in- dependent criticism whatever comes from abroad. These views seem to us to deserve serious attention. We are more and more a reading people. Books are already among the most powerful influences here. The question is, shall Europe, through these, fashion us after its pleasure? Shall America be only an echo of what is thought and written under the aristocracies beyond the ocean ? On National Literature : Charming' 1 s Com- plete Works. THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D.. LL.D., born at Anstruther, Fifeshire, 1780, after officiating as a minister of the Church of Scotland at Cavers, Kilmany, and Glasgow, in 1824 became Professor of Moral Philoso- phy in the University of St. Andrews ; in 1828 Professor of Theology in the University of Edinburgh ; and resigning this post in 1843, became Principal of, and Primarius Professor of Theology in, the institution of the Seceders from the Church of Scotland, of whom he was the leader; found dead in his bed, 1847. He was the authorof The Evi- dence and Authority of the Christian Reve- lation, Edin., 1814, 12mo; A Series of Dis- courses on the Christian Religion viewed in Connexion with Modern Astronomy, 1817, 8vo ; The Christian and Civil Economy of Large Towns, Glasg., 1821-26, 3 vols. 8vo ; Bridgewater Treatise on the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man, Lond., 1833, 2 vols. 8vo ; and of treatises on Polit- ical Economy, etc. Works, Glasg., 1836-42, 25 vols. 12mo,and Posthumous Works, edited by his Son-in-law, Rev. W. Ilanna, LL.D., Edin., 1848-52, 9 vols. 8vo. See also Dr. Ilanna's Memoirs of Chalmers's Life and Writings, Edin., 1849-52, 4 vols. 8vo; Me- moirs of the Christian Labours of Dr. Chal- mers, by Francis Wayland, D.D., LL.D., and Burning and Shining Lights, by Rev. Robert Steel. " As specimens of sacred eloquence, sound phi- losophy, and as impressive exhibitions of evangeli- cal truth and duty, his works will doubtless be read ns long as the English language is understood." DR. E. WILLIAMS. INEFFICACY OF MERE MORAL PREACHING. And here I cannot but record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years amongst you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny, in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. Now, could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have got the thief to give up his stealing and the evil speaker his censoriousness, and the liar his deviations from truth, I should have felt all the repose of one who has gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all this might have been done, and yet every soul of every hearer have remained in full alienation from God; and that even THOMAS CHALMERS. 355 could I have established in the bosom of one who stole such a principle of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty that he was pre- vailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart as completely un- turned to God, and as totally unpossessed by a principle of love to him, as before. In a word, though 1 might have made him a more upright and honourable man, I might have left him as destitute of the essence of re- ligious principle as ever. But the interest- ing fact is, that during the whole of that period in which I made no attempt against the natural enmity of the mind to God, while I was inattentive to the way in which this enmity is dissolved, even by the free offer on the one hand, and the believing acceptance on the other, of the gospel salva- tion ; while Christ, through whose blood the sinner, who by nature stands afar off, is brought near to the heavenly Lawgiver whom he has offended, was scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in such a way as stripped him of all the importance of his character and his offices, even at this time I certainly did press the reformations of honour, and truth, and integrity among my people ; but I never once heard of any such reformations having been effected amongst them. If there was anything at all brought about in this way, it was more than ever I got any account of. I am not sensible that all the vehemence with which I urged the vir- tues and the proprieties of social life had the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed by the utter alienation of the heart in all its desires and affections from God ; it was not till reconciliation to him became the distinct and the prominent ob- ject of my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the Scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation before them ; it was not till the free offer of forgiveness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their ac- ceptance, and the Holy Spirit given through the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, was set before them as the unceasing object of their dependence and their prayers ; it was not, in one word, till the contemplations of my people were turned to these great and essential elements in the business of a soul providing for its interest with God and the concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of any of those subordi- nate reformations which I aforetime made the earnest and the zealous, but, I am afraid, at the same time, the ultimate object of my earlier ministrations. . . .-You have at least taught me that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching morality in all its branches ; and out of your humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I may be enabled to carry with all its sim- plicity into a wider theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded popula- tion. Address to the Inhabitants of Kilmany, in his Tracts. THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE EARTH. Though the earth were to be burned up, though the trumpet of its dissolution were sounded, though yon sky were to pass away as a scroll, and every visible glory which the finger of the Divinity has inscribed on it were extinguished for ever, an event so awful to us, and to every world in our vicin- ity, by which so many suns would be extin- guished, and so many varied scenes of life and population would rush into forgetful- ness, what is it in the high scale of the Almighty's workmanship? a mere shred, which, though scattered into nothing, would leave the universe of God one entire scene of greatness and of majesty. Though the earth and the heavens were to disappear, there are other worlds which roll afar ; the light of other suns shines upon them ; and the sky which mantles them is garnished with other stars. Is it presumption to say that the moral world extends to these dis- tant and unknown regions? that they are occupied with people? that the charities of home and of neighbourhood flourish there ? that the praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness rejoiced in? that there piety has its temples and its offerings? and the richness of the divine attributes is there felt and admired by intelligent worshippers? And what is this world in the immensity which teems with them ; and what are they who occupy it? The universe at large would suffer as little in its splendour and variety by the destruction of our planet, as the verdure and sublime magnitude of a forest would suffer by the fall of a single leaf. The leaf quivers on the branch which sup- ports it. It lies at the mercy of the slightest accident. A breath of wind tears it from its stem, and it lights on the stream of water which passes underneath. In a moment of time the life, which we know by the micro- scope it teems with, is extinguished ; and an occurrence so insignificant in the eye of man, and on the scale of his observation, carries in it to the myriads which people this little leaf an event as terrible and as decisive as the destruction of a world. Now, on the grand scale of the universe, we, the occupiers of this ball, which performs its little round among the suns and the systems that astronomy has unfolded, we may feel the same littleness and the same insecurity. 356 THOMAS CHALMERS. We differ from the leaf only in this circum- stance, that it would require the operation of greater elements to destroy us. But these elements exist. The fire which ranges Avithin may lift its devouring energy to the surface of our planet, and transform it into one wide and wasting volcano. The sudden formation of elastic matter in the bowels of the earth and it lies within the agency of known substances to accomplish this may explode it into fragments. The exhalation of noxious air from below may impart a virulence to the air that is around us; it may affect the delicate proportion of its in- gredients ; and the whole of animated nature may wither and die under the malignity of a tainted atmosphere. A. blazing comet may cross this fated planet in its orbit, and realise all the terrors which superstition has conceived of it. We cannot anticipate with precision the consequences of an event which every astronomer must know to lie within the limits of chance and probability. It may hurry our globe towards the sun, or drag it to the outer regions of the planetary system, or give a new axis of revolution, and the effect, which I shall simply announce without explaining it, would be to change the place of the ocejin, and bring another mighty flood upon our islands and continents. These are changes which mav happen in a single instant of time, and against which nothing known in the present system of things provides us with any security. They might not annihilate the earth, but they would unpeople it, and we, who tread its surface with such firm and assured footsteps, are at the mercy of devouring elements, which, if let loose upon us by the hand of the Almighty, would spread solitude, and silence, and death over the dominions of the world. Now, it is this littleness and insecurity which make the protection of the Almighty so dear to us, and bring with such emphasis to every pious bosom the holy lessons of hu- mility and gratitude. The God who sitteth above, and presides in high authority over all worlds, is mindful of man ; and though at this moment his energy is felt in the re- motest provinces of creation, we may feel the same security in his providence as if we were the objects of his undivided care. It is not for us to bring our minds up to this mysterious agency. But such is the incomprehensible fact, that the same Being wlipse eye is abroad over the whole universe, gives vegetation to every blade of grass, and motion to every particle of blood which cir- culates through the veins of the minutest animal ; that though his mind takes into his comprehensive grasp immensity and .all its wonders, I am as much known to him as if I were the single object of his attention ; that he marks all my thoughts ; that he gives birth to every feeling and every move- ment within me ; and that, with an exercise of power which I can neither describe nor comprehend, the same God who sits in the highest heaven, and reigns over the glories of the firmament, is at my right hand to give me every breath which I draw, and every comfort which I enjoy. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. Man is the direct agent of a wide and con- tinual distress to the lower animals, and the question is. Can any method be devised for its alleviation ? On this subject that Scrip- tural image is strikingly realized, " The Avhole inferior creation groaning and travail- ing together in pain," because of him. It signifies not to the substantive amount of the suffering whether this be prompted by the hardness of his heart, or only permitted through the heedlessness of his mind. In either way it holds true, not only that the arch-devourer man stands pre-eminent over the fiercest children of the wilderness as an animal of prey, but that for his lordly and luxurious appetite, as well as for his service or merest curiosity and amusement, Nature must be ransacked throughout all her elements. Rather than forego the ver- iest gratifications of vanity, he will wring them from the anguish of wretched and ill- fated creatures; and whether for the indul- gence of his barbaric sensuality or barbaric splendour, can stalk paramount over the sufferings of that prostrate creation which has been placed beneath his feet. That beauteous domain whereof he has been con- stituted the terrestrial sovereign gives out so many blissful and benignant aspects; and whether we look to its peaceful lakes, or to its flowery landscapes, .or its evening skies, or to all that soft attire which over- spreads the hills and the valleys, lighted up by smiles of sweetest sunshine, and where animals disport themselves in all the exu- berance of gaiety, this surely were a more befitting scene for the rule of clemency than for the iron rod of a murderous and remorse- less tyrant. But the present is a mysterious world wherein we dwell. It still bears much upon its materialism of the impress of Paradise. But a breath from the air of Pandemonium has gone over its living generations ; and so " the fear of man and the dread of man is now upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea ; into man's hands are they delivered : every moving thing that liveth ia HORACE BIN NET. 357 meat for him ; yea, even as the green herbs, there have been given to him all things." Such is the extent of his jurisdiction, and with most full and wanton license has he revelled among its privileges. The whole earth labours and is in violence because of his cruelties; and from the amphitheatre of sentient Nature there sounds in fancy's ey his asking the aid of a friend, who had been his trusted minister, to arrange his thoughts, or to improve their expression, upon any public subject on which he felt it his duty to speak. He was so high-spirited and sensitive, as well as sincere, that the glimpse of such a thought would have turned him aside, as certainly, perhaps, as any man that ever lived. The resort to such assist- ance was all the more likely to be made, be- cause no one was more justly entitled to feel conscious that his powers of thought and ex- pression were such as to place him on a per- fect level with his office and duties ; though on occasions when he might encounter criti- cism from enemies or adversaries, and he had them both, he may have thought that his active life had not permitted him to be- come so sure of the various colours and shades of language, or so intimate with the best forms of composition, as to enable him to select with facility, in the face of such critics, the plan and words which would give the most certain and effective expression to his thoughts, and the best protection against their perversion. It is a small question to raise, after the death of two great public men, neither of whom, in his lifetime, suffered the breath of dishonour to condense upon his garments ; and each of whom, in his claims to a death- less reputation, could have referred to a thousand proofs that are stronger than the Farewell Address, or the original draught of it. But having been raised, through ac- cident or design, through levity or malevo- lence, my admiration of each has made me unwilling to withhold the humble labour of putting it in its proper light in regard to both. Having now concluded this Inquiry, after placing in the body of it, or pointing out in the documents it refers to, ample and au- thentic materials from which every reader may form an opinion for himself, there is little occasion for expressing my own upon the whole matter. I must avoid, however, the appearance of affectation, by suppressing it altogether at the conclusion, after having, no doubt, intimated portions of it incident- ally, and sometimes perhaps unintentionally, in the course of the essay. I have not the least intention, however, of either instituting or leading to, a comparison of the respective values of the several con- tributions to the Farewell Address. If that question shall be raised, of which I should think there is little probability, at least among men who have sufficient sentiment to regard that address as the testament of Washington, and Hamilton as the inditer of his Will, the comparison must have dif- ferent results, as it shall be made upon either political, or moral, or literary grounds ; for values of these descriptions are not com- parable altogether in their nature, one or more of them passing by weight, adjusted upon exact principles, and one at least by a variable and rather arbitrary scale of taste or convention. Even the more ponderable parts are by no means on one side only. My disposition is to describe, and not to compare. Washington was undoubtedly the original designer of the Farewell Address ; and not merely by general or indefinite intimation, but by the suggestion of perfectly definite subjects, of an end or object, and of a gen- eral outline, the same which the paper now exhibits. His outline did not appear so dis- tinctly in his own plan, because the subjects were not so arranged in it as to show that they were all comprehended within a regular and proportional figure ; but when they came to be so arranged in the present Ad- dress, the scope of the whole design is seen to be contained within the limits he intended, and to fill them. The subjects were traced by him with adequate precision, though without due connection, with little expan- sion, and with little declared bearing of the parts upon each other, or towards a common centre: but they may now be followed with ease in their proper relations and bearing in the finished paper, such only excepted us lie gave his final consent and approbation to exclude. In the most common and prevalent sense of the word among literary men, this may not, perhaps, be called authorship ; but in the primary etymological sense, the quality of imparting growth or increase, there can be no doubt that it is so. By derivation from himself, the Farewell Address speaks the very mind of Washington. The funda- mental thoughts and principles were his ; but he was not the composer or writer of the paper. JOHN BIRD SUMNER. 359 Hamilton was, in the prevalent literary sense, the composer and writer of the paper. The occasional adoption of Washington's language does not materially take from the justice of this attribution, the new plan, the different form proceeded from Hamilton. He was the author of it, he put together the thoughts of Washington in a new order, and with a new bearing ; and while, as often as he could, he used the words of Washington, his own language was the general vehicle, both of his own thoughts, and for the ex- pansion and combination of AVashington's thoughts. Hamilton developed the thoughts of Washington, and corroborated them, in- cluded several cognate subjects, and added many effective thoughts from his own mind, and united all into one chain by the links of his masculine logic. The main trunk was Washington's ; the branches were stimulated by Hamilton ; and the foliage, which was not exuberant, was altogether his ; and he, more than Wash- ington, pruned and nipped off, with severe discrimination, whatever was excessive, that the tree might bear the fruits which Washington desired, and become his full and fit representative. This is the impression which the proofs have made upon me ; and I am not conscious of the least bias or partiality in receiving it from them. It is quite impossible, I think, to divide the work by anything like a sharp line between Washington and Hamilton ; but there is less difficulty in representing the character of their contributions, by lan- guage in some degree figurative, such as, in one instance, I have used already. We have explicit authority for regarding the whole Man as compounded of BODY, SOUL, and SPIRIT. The Farewell Address, in a lower and figurative sense, is likewise so compounded. If these were divisible and distributable, we might, though not with full and exact propriety, allot the SOUL to Wash- ington, and the SPIRIT to Hamilton. The elementary body is Washington's also; but Hamilton has developed and fashioned it, and he has symmetrically formed and ar- ranged the members, to give combined and appropriate action to the whole. This would point to an allotment of the soul and the elementary body to Washington, and of the arranging, developing, and informing spirit to Hamilton, the same characteristic which is found in the great works he devised for the country, and are still the chart by which his department of the government is ruled. The FAREWELL ADDRESS itself, while in one respect the question of its authorship it has had the fate of the Eikon Basilike, in another it has been more fortunate ; for no Iconodastes has appeared, or ever can ap- pear, to break or mar the image and super- scription of Washington, which it bears, or to rally the principles of moral and political action in the government of a Nation, which are reflected from it with his entire approval, and were in fundamental points dictated by himself. An Inquiry into the Formation of Wash- ington's Farewell Address, 167-171. JOHN BIRD SUMNER, D.D., born at Kenilworth, 1780, became Canon of Durham, 1820, Bishop of Chester, 182?, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1848, and died 1802. He was the author of an Essay on Prophecies, Lond., 1802, 8vo ; Apostolical Preaching, 1815, etc., 8vo; Treatise on the Records of the Creation, etc., 1816, etc., 2 vols. 8vo ; Evidence of Christianity, etc., 1824, etc., 8vo ; Practical Expositions in the Form of Lectures, St. Matthew to St. Jude, 8 vols. 8vo, also in 16 vols. 12mo (Abridg- ment by the Rev. G. Wilkinson, 4 vols. 12mo) ; Charges, 1829-44, 1844, 8vo. He also published four volumes of sermons. " All his works are distinguished by their ear- nest piety, their depth of thought, and elegance of language." CHARLKS KNIGHT: Haif- Hours with the Best Authors, 1850: Second Quarter, 239. THE CHRISTIAN'S DEPENDENCE UPON His REDEEMER. It is scarcely possible to contemplate the Christian character as described in the Gos- pel, and held up to our imitation, without acknowledging an excellence truly divine. This may justly be attributed to that reli- gion which, if it were universally obeyed, would extinguish all the vices which dis- turb human society and disgrace human nature, would subdue pride, violence, self- ishness, and sensuality, and introduce in their stead humility, charity, temperance, mutual forbearance ; would repress all that eager desire after temporal advantages which excites evil passions through the collision of interests; and would unite all men in one pursuit, the only pursuit in which all could unite, and yet assist instead of counteract- ing each other, that of studying to do the will of God for the sake of everlasting happiness. Were men to presume so far as to invent a test by which the divine origin of a religion should be tried, I can imagine none more un- exceptionable than its tendency to overcome what is acknowledged to be evil in human nature, and to raise in an immeasurable de- gree the standard of happiness. I can im- agine no eulogy more complete than this : 360 JOHN BIRD SUMNER. that if all men lived up to the spirit of the Gospel few sources of misery would remain in the world, and even that remainder would receive the utmost alleviation. The only objection which has ever been urged against the true Christian character derives whatever force it has from the dis- obedience of mankind. It has been said that the meekness, the patience under injuries, which it prescribes, is incompatible with our condition on earth, and would expose the man who should strictly comply with its demands to indignities and wrongs without remedy. But if this were true, which it is not to any material extent, as experience proves, even under the present circum- stances of Christianity, it would afford no argument against a religion which requires abstinence from injuries no loss positively than patience under them. Would it im- prove the condition of mankind if resistance were permitted where patience is now en- joined? Or would it be consistent with the Divine Author of the religion to annul one of his laws because another was broken ? Let a human legislator sometimes conde- scend, if necessary, to the refractory subjects with whom he has to deal. But it is not surely, for God to yield to the passions which rebel against his will, but to ordain where their proud waves shall be stayed. In no other way can the standard of human nature be raised and improved. An objection more plausibly reasonable might perhaps be alleged against the Chris- tian character, grounded on the impossibil- ity of reaching and sustaining it, not only from the opposition of the surrounding world, but from the opposition of the natural heart ; which, we confess, nay, avow, rises more or less against all the qualities which form the consistent Christian. The answer to this objection is conveyed in these words, " Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." The Christian has on his side one who is greater than his natural heart. lie " can do all things through Christ that strengthened! him." As there is an insep- arable connection between the faith and practice of a Christian, so is there likewise a mystical union between the Christian and his Redeemer, the " author and finisher of his faith," which enables him both to "will and to do of his good pleasure." This is described by a strong but clear and most in- telligible metaphor, when it is compared to the union between a tree and its branches. It is not pretended that our natural unaided strength would enable us to comply with the demands of the Gospel. Our Lord ex- pressly declares to his disciples, " Without me ye can do nothing." But he promises such assistance of his Spirit from above as shall make them both willing and able in " the day of his power." He compares them to the branch which, itself separated at a distance from the root and the soil which nourishes the root, is made fruitful by the juices which the stem supplies. 1m t can bear no fruit from the time that it is severed from the parent tree. " Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine ; no more can ye, except ye abide in me." But as the expression which exhorts us to "abide in Christ" is confessedly figurative, it becomes necessary to consider in what way we may be said to comply with the con- dition on which our power of obedience de- pends. W T hat is it "to abide in Christ"? It is to live in habitual faith in his redemp- tion, and in habitual reliance upon his Spirit. And first, as to habitual faith. FAITH is a word so familiar to our ears and our lips, that we may be easily misled into a ground- less belief that we understand, nay, adopt it, in its full and scriptural acceptation. But trace it back to its original meaning, and by that signification try your feelings with re- spect to Christ. That signification is such a belief or persuasion as leads to trust, reli- ance, confidence. And if we consider the offer or call of Christ, we shall perceive that the trust or confidence which he requires may be justly termed "abiding in him." He came into the world to deliver mankind from the darkness of ignorance and sin, i.e., from spiritual blindness and alienation from God, a state inconsistent with their salva- tion. He came to redeem them from pun- ishment; to renew their hearts by his Holy Spirit; to assign them rules for such a life as God approves. And in the fulfilment of this purpose his language is, Ye who live in the world, the posterity of Adam, are "ene- mies to God" (who is a God of holiness), " by wicked works." This enmity, this wicked- ness, he does not punish now, but after death there is judgment, when he will in- flict " indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil." But trust in -me, and I will, for you, appease that wrath, and disarm that indignation ; cleave to me, and follow the commandments which I set before you : then will I lead you safely through the "valley of the shadow of death," by which you must pass to an eternal world, and will present you pure and faultless before the throne of your Almighty Judge. Now, an offer of this nature precludes the idea of a passive or hesitating reception. It RICHARD CHENEVIX. 3d is a personal offer, which must be personally accepted or personally rejected. It requires, first, that we see our necessity, and are therefore ready to apply for help ; that we feel our desert of punishment, and therefore desire a ransom. But it requires more also: for one might feel his necessity, and wisli for relief, and yet doubt the power of him who offered it: it requires therefore a firm persuasion that he who makes the offer is able to make the offer good ; and, in the special case of Christ, it requires us to be- lieve that he can and will save us; has ran- somed us ; is able to bestow on us his Holy Spirit, and to prepare us for an eternal kingdom, into which he will hereafter re- ceive us if we follow him obediently here. Such is the corresponding movement on our parts by which his gracious offer must lie met; such is the willing hand which we must stretch out to receive the proffered boon, or it is proposed to us in vain. '' Faith is not merely a speculation, but a practical acknowledgment of Jesus as the Christ; an effort and motion of the mind towards God ; when the sinner, convinced of sin, accepts with thankfulness the prof- fered terms of pardon, and in humble confi- dence applying individually to himself the benefit of the general atonement," in the ele- vated language of a venerable father of the church, u drinks deep of the stream which flows from the Redeemer's side." The ef- fect is, that in a little time he is filled with that " perfect love of God which casteth out fear." he cleaves to God with the entire affection of the soul. And the question, whether we are abiding in Christ, comes to this: Have we that confidence, that trust, that dependence upon him, which induces us to accept his offer; and are we ready to commit ourselves I should rather say, have we committed ourselves into his hands, both for this world and the next, instead of taking our chance for what may come, or instead of trusting to our own power, our own goodness, our own views of religion? Then we can say with the Apostle, " I know in whom I have believed ; and that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day." This acceptance of his offer is FAITH ; and to have so ac- cepted it as to be habitually living by it, and depending on it, is to " abide in Christ:" then he is to the Christian what the stem is to the branch, the sole support on which it leans. RICHARD CHENEVIX, an eminent chemist, a native of Ireland, died 1830, was author of Dramatic Poems, 1801, 8vo ; Chemical Nomenclature, 1802, 12mo; Mineralogical Systems. 1811, 8vo; The Man- tuan Rivals, a Comedy ; Henry Seventh, a Historical Tragedy, 1812, 8vo ; An Essay upon National Character, 1832, 2 vols. 8vo (posthumous) ; and Chemical Papers in Phil- osophical Transactions, Nicholson's Jour- nal, and Transactions of the Irish Academy. See Edinburgh Review, July, 1812, and Gentleman's Magazine, June, 1830, 562 (Obituary). THE INDUSTRY OF THE BRITISH NATION. One of the most remarkable and fortunate circumstances in the above statement is, that the domestic and proper industry of English- men the produce of their hands and minds furnishes four-fifths of their exports. Of all the modes of traffic, the most advanta- geous would be for one and the same people to perform every operation relating to it; that is to say, for them to grow the raw material, and fabricate it at home, and then export the manufactured commodity in ships of their own construction, and manned by them- selves. To complete this process in all its stages has not fallen to the lot of any empire extensively engaged in industry; nor could it be possible for the same country to produce all the materials employed in manufactures, some of which belong to the coldest, others to the warmest climates. But if the soil be occupied in producing what it can best pro- duce, and if the returns of trade bring home other materials, the advantage is nearly as great; and the rationale of industry is fully satisfied by the proportion of labour which remains to be bestowed upon them. Now, though England does not produce the silks which she weaves, or the dyes with which she colours them ; though all the wool which she spins, all the iron which she converts into steel, may not be of native growth, yet her commercial superiority enables her to procure those primary substances at as low a price as they would cost her were they the produce of the land. It is, then, with great wisdom that she has turned her attention, not to compel an unpropitious soil and cli- mate to yield the drugs and spices of the East, but to import them ; not to work un- grateful ores into imperfect instruments, but to purchase the crude matter wherever it is best, and to bestow upon it that which gives it value, labour. Neither is she the only country that has pursued the same prudent system : almost all commercial nations have adopted it. But there never did exist an empire which bestowed so much of its own of itself upon the raw productions of nature, and spun so large a portion of its wealth out of the unsubstantial, intangible, 362 DANIEL WEBSTER. abstract commodity, composed of time, in- tellect, and exertion, and which is market- able only in the staples of civilization. In the ten millions of foreign or colonial pro- duce which England exported in 1823, there was much important labour, much nauti- cal skill and industry; but in the remaining forty millions, there was not merely four times, but perhaps sixty times, as much happy application of time, intellect, and ex- ertion ; and they who appreciate her by her colonies, and by her mere transport of ex- ternal produce, have a feeble idea of her state of improvement. Could any single principle suffice to desig- nate, with absolute precision, the difference between civilization and luxury, it might be the value of time. Time must be estimated by what it produces ; and superior under- standing can make a minute bring more blessings to mankind than ages in the hands of idleness. Neither is it by the selfish en- joyments of luxury that our moments can be rendered precious, but by the acquisition and application of intellectual force, and their productive power is the justest meas- ure of civilization. Now, the productive power of time must be estimated by the quantity and the quality, by the usefulness and the multitude of its productions. The most civilized and en- lightened nation is that whose industry can pour upon the world the greatest proportion of the best and most valuable commodities in the shortest time. From the rapidity with which such a na- tion fabricates good things, is derived a necessary appendage to this mode of appre- ciating civilization, cheapness. It must not, however, be supposed that this is un- limited, or that a low price of manufactures can compensate for their mediocrity. Civil- ization does not make bad things for noth- ing: this is the work of idleness, or of luxury affecting to be industrious. The lent of civilization is to make good things cheap. It is a proud and true distinction, that, in this island, the average consumption of woollens per head is more than double of what it is in the most favoured country of Europe ; and more than four times as much as the average of the entire Continent, in- cluding even its coldest region. An Essay upon National Character. DANIEL WEBSTER, LL.D., an eminent American orator and statesman, was born in Salisbury, New Hampshire, January 18, 1782; graduated at Dartmouth College, 1801 ; was admitted to the Suffolk bar, 1805; removed to Boston, 1816; M.C. 1813-17 and 1823-27, and U. S. Senator 1828-41 and 1845-50 ; visited England, Scotland, and France, 1839 ; Secretary of State under Harrison, 1841, under Tyler, 1841-43, and under Fillmore, July 20, 1850, until his death, at his seat at Marshfield, Mass., October 24, 1852. His Speeches and Forensic Arguments were published in Bos- ton, 1830-35-43, 3 vols. 8vo, 8th edit., 1841 ; his Diplomatic and Official Papers whilst Secretary of State were issued in New York, 1848, 8vo ; and The Speeches, Forensic Ar- guments, and Diplomatic Papers, with a Notice of his Life and Writings, by lion. Edward Everett, were published at Boston, 1851, 6 vols. 8vo, large paper, royal 8vo, llth edit., 1858, new edit., 1864. These vol- umes should be accompanied by The Pri- vate Correspondence (1798-1852) of Daniel AVcbster, Edited by [his son] Fletcher Web- ster, Boston, 1857, 2 vols. 8vo, large paper, royal 8vo, 4th edit., 1857, new edit., 1864, and The Life and Letters of Daniel Webster, by George Ticknor Curtis [one of his literary executors], N.Y., 1870, 2 vols.Svo; The Great Orations and Speeches, Boston, 1879, r. 8vo. " The best speeches of Webster are among the very best that I am acquainted with in the whole range of oratory, ancient or modern. They have always appeared to me to belong to that simple and manly class which may be properly headed by the name of Demosthenes. Webster's speeches sometimes bring before my mind the image of the Cyclopean walls, stone upon stone, compact, firm, and ground. After I had perused, and aloud, too, the last speech which you sent me, I was desirous of testing my own appreciation, and took down Demosthenes, reading him aloud too. It did not lessen my appreciation of Webster's speech. You know that I insist upon the necessity of entire countries for high, modern citizenship : and all my intercourse with Webster made me feel that the same idea or feeling lived in him, although he never expressed it. Webster had a big heart, and for that very reason was a poor party-leader in our modern sense." DR. FRANCIS LIBBER TO S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE, Jan. 16, 1860. PRIDE OF ANCESTRY. It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with what is distant in place or time ; and, looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are never- theless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time nor the spot of earth in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history, and in future by hope and anticipation. By ascend- ing to an association with our ancestors ; by DANIEL WEBSTER. 363 contemplating their example and studying their character; by partaking their senti- ments, and imbibing their spirit; by accom- panying them in their toils; by sympathiz- ing in their sufferings, and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs, we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to belong to their age. We become their con- temporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like manner, by running along the line of future time ; by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are coming. after us ; by attempting something which may pro- mote their happiness, and leave some not dishonourable memorial of ourselves for their regard when we shall sleep with the fathers, we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow com- pass of our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and relig- ious imagination which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb which, amidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings with whom his goodness has peopled the infinite of space ; so neither is it false or vain to con- sider ourselves as interested or connected with our whole race through all time ; allied to our ancestors ; allied to our posterity ; closely compacted on all sides with others : ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its succes- sive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last with the consummation of all things at the throne of God. There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry, which nourishes only a weak pride ; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low .and grovelling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind than a con- sciousness of alliance with excellence which is departed ; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and even in its sen- timents, it may be actively operating on the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to have few stronger con- ceptions, by which it would affect or over- whelm the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry only because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true phi- losophy and morality. It deals with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this state of being is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what sympathy with ourselves ; and when it carries us forward, also, and shows us the long-continued result of all the good we do in the prosperity of those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with sentiments which belong to us as human beings. Discourse delivered at Plymouth, Dec. %2, 1820, in Commemoration of the First Settlement of New England, Boston, 1821, 8vo. THE PRESERVATION OF THE Ujnox. I profess, sir, in my career hitherto to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honour of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that union we owe our safety at home and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests im- mediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look be- yond the union, to see what might lie hid- den in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us to- gether shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the preci- pice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this govern- ment, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering not how the union 3G4 REGINALD HEBER. should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed. While the union lasts we have high, ex- citing, gratifying prospects spread out be- fore us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dis- honoured fragments of a once glorious union ; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather be- hold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honoured throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth? Nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and union after- wards, but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every true American heart, Liberty and union, now and for ever, one and insepa- rable ! Speech in Reply to Nr. Hayne, of South Carolina, on the Resolution of Mr. Foot, of Connecticut, relative to the Public Lands, Washington, 1830, 8vo. ELOQUENCE. When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great inter- ests are at stake, and strong passions ex- cited, nothing is valuable in speech further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which pro- duce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labour and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may .aspire after it, they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreak- ing of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires with sponta- neous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then patriotism is elo- quent; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every fea- ture, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object, this, this is elo- quence ; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action. Discourse in Commemoration of John Ad- ams and Thomas Jefferson, Bost., 1826, 800. REGINALD HEBER, D.D., born at Malpas, Cheshire, 1783, educated at Braxennose College, Oxford, where he distin- guished himself by his Latin poem, Carmen Seculare, his English poem of Palestine, and a prose essay, entitled The Sense of Honour, in 1822 was elected Preacher to Lincoln's Inn, and in 1823 succeeded Dr. Middleton in the bishopric of Calcutta, where he laboured with great zeal and success, until cut off by an apoplectic fit w r hilst bathing, April 3, 1826. Works: Palestine, a Poem, to which is added The Passage of the Red Sea, a Fragment, 1809, 4to ; Europe : Lines on the Present War, 1809, 8vo: reprinted, with Palestine, etc., in Poems and Translations, 1812, small 8vo, and later; The Personality and Office of the Christian Comforter As- serted and Explained ; Sermons at the Bamp- ton Lecture, Oxf., 1816, 8vo, 1818, 8vo ; Hymns Written and Adapted to the Weekly Service of the Year, by Bishop Ileber, etc., Lond., 1827, llth edit., 1842; A Journey through India, from Calcutta to Bombay, with Notes upon Ceylon, and a Journey to Madras and the Southern Provinces, Lond., 1828, 2 vols. 4to (some on fine paper), airain 1828, 3 vols. 8vo, 1829, 3 vols. 8vo, 1830, 3 vols. 8vo, New York, 1828, 2 vols. 8vo, abridged, Lond., 1844, 2 vols. p. 8vo (sold for Mrs. Ileber by Sir R. II. Inglis. for 5000) ; Sermons Prea'ched in England, Lond., 1829, 8vo ; Sermons Preached in India, Lond., 1829, 8vo; Parish Sermons on the Les- sons, the Gospel, or the Epistle, for Every Sunday in the Year, and for Week-day Fes- tivals, "Preached in the Parish Church of REGINALD HEBER. 365 ITodnet. Salop, Loncl., 1837, 3 vols. 8vo, 5th edit.. 1844, '2 vols. 8vo ; The Whole Works of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, with a Life of the Author, and a Critical Examination of his Writings, Lond., 1820-22, 15 vols. 8vo, 2(1 edit., 1828, 15 vols. 8vo, 3d edit., 1839, 15 vols. 8vo : revised by C. P. Eden, 1847-54, 10 vols. 8vo: lleber's Life of Taylor was published separately, 1824, 2 vols. cr. 8vo, 3d edit., 1828, 8vo. See lleber's Life and unpublished Works by his Widow, Lond., 1830, 2 vols. 4to, and The Last Days of Bishop Heber, by Thomas Robinson, 1830, 8vo. " Learned, polished, and dignified, he was un- doubtedly ; yet tar more conspicuously kind, humble, tolerant, and laborious: zealous for his church, too, and not forgetl'ul of his station ; but remembering it more for the duties than for the honours that were attached to it." LORD JKF- FUEY : Editi. Review, 48: 314. TIME AND ETERXITV. There is an ancient fable told by the Greek and Roman Churches, which, fable as it is, may for its beauty and singularity well deserve to be remembered, that in one of the earliest persecutions to which the Christian world was exposed, seven Christian youths sought concealment in a lonely cave, and there, by God's appointment, fell into a deep and death-like slumber. They slept, the legend runs, two hundred years, till the greater part of mankind had received the faith of the Gospel, and that Church which they had left a poor and afflicted orphan, hail "kings" for her "nursing fathers, and queens'' for her " nursing mothers." They then at length awoke, and entering into their native Ephesus, so altered now that its streets were altogether unknown to them, they cautiously inquired if there were any Christians in the city? "Christians!" was the answer, "we are all Christians here!" and they heard with a thankful joy the change, which, since they left the world, had taken place in the opinions of its inhab- itants. On one side they were shown a stately fabric adorned with a gilded cross, and dedicated, as they were told, to the wor- ship of their crucified Master : on another, schools for the public exposition of those Gospels of which so short a time before the bare profession was proscribed and deadly. But no fear was now to be entertained of those miseries which had encircled the cradle of Christianity : no danger now of the rack, the lions, or the sword : the emperor and his prefects held the same faith with themselves, and all the wealth of the east, and all the valour and authority of the western world, were exerted to protect and endow the pro- fessors and the teachers of their religion. But joyful as these tidings must at first have been, their further inquiries are said to have been met with answers which very deeply surprised and pained them. They learned that the greater part of those who called themselves by the name of Christ, were strangely regardless of the blessings which Christ had bestowed, and of the obli- gations which lie had laid on His followers. They found that, as the world had become Christian, Christianity itself had become worldly ; and wearied and sorrowful they besought of God to lay them asleep again, crying out to those who followed them, "You have shown us many heathens who have given up their old idolatry without gaining anything better in its room ; many who are of no religion at all ; and many with whom the religion of Christ is no more than a cloak of licentiousness; but where, where are the Christians?" And thus they returned to their cave ; and there God had compassion on them, releasing them, once for all, from that world for whose reproof their days had been lengthened, and removing their souls to the society of their ancient friends and pastors, the martyrs and saints of an earlier and a better generation. The admiration of former times is a feel- ing at first, perhaps, engrafted on our minds by the regrets of those who vainly seek in the evening of life for the sunny tints which adorned their morning landscape ; and who are led to fancy a deterioration in surround- ing objects, when the change is in themselves, and the twilight in their own powers of per- ception. It is probable that, as each age of the individual or the species is subject to its peculiar dangers, so each has its peculiar and compensating advantages ; and that the difficulties which, at different periods of the world's duration, have impeded the believer's progress to heaven, though in appearance equally various, are, in amount, very nearly equal. It is probable that no age is without its sufficient share of offences, of judgments, of graces, and of mercies, and that the cor- rupted nature of mankind was never other- wise than hostile or indifferent to the means which God has employed to remedy its misery. Had we lived in the times of the infant Church, even amid the blaze of mir- acle on the one hand, and the chastening fires of persecution on the other, we should have heard, perhaps, no fewer complaints of the cowardice sind apostasy, the dissimu- lation and murmuring inseparable from a continuance of public distress and danger, than we now hear regrets for those days of wholesome affliction, when the mutual love of believers was strengthened by their com- mon danger; when their want of worldly advantages disposed them to regard a release 366 WA SHING TON IR VING. from the world with hope far more than with apprehension, and compelled the Church to cling to her Master's cross alone for comfort and for succour. Still, however, it is most wonderful, yea, rather by this very consideration is our won- der increased at the circumstance, that in any or every age of Christianity, such in- ducements and such menaces as the religion of Christ displays, should be regarded with so much indifference, and postponed for ob- jects so trifling and comparatively worthless. If there were no other difference but that of duration between the happiness of the pres- ent life and of the life which is to follow, or though it were allowed us to believe that the enjoyments of earth were, in every other respect, the greater and more desirable of the two, this single consideration of its eternity would prove the wisdom of making heaven the object of our more earnest care and con- cern ; of retaining its image constantly in our minds; of applying ourselves with a more excellent zeal to everything which can help us in its attainment, and of esteeming all things as less than worthless which are set in comparison with its claims, or which stand in the way of its purchase. Accord- ingly, this is the motive which St. Paul as- signs for a contempt of the sufferings and pleasures, the hopes and fears, of the life which now is, in comparison with the pleas- ures and sufferings, the fears and hopes, which are in another life, held out to each of us. And it is a reason which must carry great weight to the mind of every reason- able being, inasmuch as any thing which may end soon, and must end some time or other, is, supposing all other circumstances equal, or even allowing to the temporal good a very large preponderance of pleasure, of exceedingly less value than that which, once attained, is alike safe from accident and de- cay, the enjoyment of which is neither to be checked by insecurity, nor palled by long pos- session, but which must continue thenceforth in everlasting and incorruptible blessedness, as surely as God Himself is incorruptible and everlasting. Sermons Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1823. WASHINGTON IRVING, LL.D., born April 23, 1783, in William Street, be- tween John and Fulton Streets, in the city of New York, after a two years' ( 1804-1806) residence in Italy, Switzerland. France, Eng- land, etc., returned to New York, and was admitted to the New York bar ; again sailed for Europe in 1815, and remained abroad until 1832 : lived in Madrid as United States Minister to Spain from 1842 until 1846, when he retired to his beautiful country- seat of Wolfert's Roost (Sunnyside), on the Hudson, purchased by him some years be- fore, and resided there until his death, Nov. 28, 1859. Works and Life, New York, G. P. Put- nam's Sons, 1851-57, and later, 26 vols. 16mo: vol. i., Bracebridge Hall; ii., Wol- fert's Roost; iii., Sketch Book ; iv., Tales of a Traveller ; v., Knickerbocker's History of New York ; vi., The Crayon Miscellany : vii., Life of Oliver Goldsmith; viii., The Alham- bra; ix., x., xi., Columbus and his Compan- ions; xii., Astoria; xiii., Captain Bonneville's Adventures; xiv.,xv., Mahomet and his Suc- cessors; xvi., The Conquest of Granada; xvii., Salmagundi ; xviii., Spanish Papers ; xix., xx., xxi., xxii., xxiii., Life of George Wash- ington (also published in 5 vols. 4to, 1855- 57, with illustrations, 5 vols. 8vo, 1855-59, 4 vols. 8vo, 1855-57, 2 vols. 8vo, and Abridged, 1 vol. large 12mo) ; xxiv., xxv., xxvi., Life and Letters, by Pierre M. Irving (abridged from the original edition in 4 vols. 12mo. 1862-64). Messrs. Putnam published: I. The River- side Edition, 26 vols. 16mo ; II. The People's Edition, 26 vols. 16mo; III. The Knicker- bocker Edition, 27 vols. large 12mo; IV. Sunnyside Edition, 28 vols. 12mo; Lighter Works, 8 vols. 16mo. II. G. Bohn, of Lon- don, publishes an edition of Irving's Works (including Theodore Irving's Conquest of Florida by Hernando de Soto), in 10 vols. p. 8vo. To either edition of Irving's Works should be added : I. Irving Vignettes : Vign- ette Illustrations of the Writings of Wash- ington Irving, Engraved on Steel by Smillie, Hall, and others ; with a Sketch of his Life and Works, from Allibone's forthcoming " Dictionary of Authors," and Passages from the Works Illustrated, New York, G. P. Putnam, 1857, sq. 12mo, pp. 287; II. Irving Memorial : A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of Washington Ir- ving, delivered before the New York His- torical Society, at the Academy of Music in New York, on the 3d of April, 1860, by William Cullen Bryant, New York, G. P. Putnam, 1860, sq. 12mo, pp. 70; pp. 71- 113, Massachusetts Historical Society; ap- pendix, pp. 7-63, Allibone's Sketch of Ir- ving. " The candour with which the English have recognized Mr. Irving's literary merits is equally honourable to both parties, while his genius has experienced a still more unequivocal homage in the countless imitations to which he has given rise; imitations whose uniform failure, notwith- standing all the appliances of accomplishment and talent, prove their model to be inimitable." WILLIAM II. PHESCOTT : N. Amer. Rev., 35 : 192, July, 1832. WASHINGTON IRVING. 3GT " Other writers may no doubt arise in the course of time, who will exhibit in verse or prose a more commanding talent, and soar a still loftier flight in the empyrean sky of glory. Some western Homer, Shakspeare, Milton, Corneille, or Calde- ron, may irradiate our literary world with a flood of splendour that shall throw all other greatness into the shade. This, or something like it, may or may not happen; but, even if it should, it can never be disputed that the mild and beautiful genius of Mr. Irving was the Morning Star that led up the march of our heavenly host; and that he has a fair right, much fairer certainly than the great Mantuan, to assume the proud device, Primus er/o in patriam." ALEXANDER H. EVERETT: N. Amtr. Rev., 28 : 110, Jan. 1829. A RAINY SUNDAY IN AN INN. It was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight in- disposition, from Avhich I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn ! whoever has had the luck to experience one, can alone judge of my situ- ation. The rain pattered against the case- ments, the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye, but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bed-room looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sitting-room commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travellers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck ; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his droop- ing tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back ; near the cart was a half- dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapour rising from her reeking hide; a wall- eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, Avas poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then between a bark and a yelp ; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped back- wards and forwards through the yards in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drink- ing ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor. I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bells ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite, who, being confined to the house for fear of wetting their Sun- day finery, played off their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance ten- ants of the inn. They at length were sum- moned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further without to amuse me. The day continued lowering and gloomy ; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along ; there was no variety even in the rain ; it was one dull, continued, mo- notonous patter, patter, patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street with outside passengers stuck all over it, cower- ing under cotton umbrellas, and seethed to- gether, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper Benjamins. The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed hostler, and that nonde- script animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn ; but the bustle was transient: the coach again whirled on its way ; and boy .and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes ; the street again became si- lent, and the rain continued to rain on. The evening gradually wore away. The travellers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew round the fire, and told long stories about their horses, about their adven- tures, their overturns and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different mer- chants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty cham- bermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their nightcaps ; that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water or sugar, or some other mixture of the kind ; after which they one after another rang for Boots and the chambermaid, arid walked off to bed in old shoes cut down into marvellously un- comfortable slippers. There was only one man left, a short-legged, long-bodied ple- thoric fellow, with a very large sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port wine 368 WASHINGTON IRVING. negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring, and meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but the spoon, lie gradually fell asleep bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was conta- gious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travel- lers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain drop, drop, drop from the eaves of the house. Bracebridye Hall. THE FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS. Columbus was now at open defiance with his crew, and his situation became desperate. Fortunately, the manifestations of the vi- cinity of land were such on the following day as no longer to admit a doubt. Beside a quantity of fresh weeds, such as grow in rivers, they saw a green fish of a kind which keeps about rocks ; then a branch of thorn with berries on it, and recently separated from the tree, floated by them ; then they picked up a reed, a small board, and, above all, a staff artificially carved. All gloom and mutiny now gave way to sanguine ex- pectation ; and throughout the day each one was eagerly on the watch, in hopes of being the first to discover the long-sought-for land. In the evening, when, according to invari- able custom on board of the admiral's ship, the mariners had sung the salve rcgina, or vesper-hymn to the Virgin, he made an im- pressive address to his crew. He pointed out the goodness of God in thus conducting them by soft and favouring breezes across a tran- quil ocean, cheering their hopes continually with fresh signs, increasing as their fears augmented, and thus leading and guiding them to a promised land. He now reminded them of the orders he had given on board the Canaries, that, after sailing westward seven hundred leagues, they should not make sail after midnight. Present appear- ances authorized such a precaution. He thought it probable they would make land that very night ; he ordered, therefore, a vigilant look-out to be kept from the fore- castle, promising to whomsoever should make the discovery a doublet of velvet, in addition to the pension .to be given by the sovereigns. The breeze had been fresh all day, with more sea than usual, and they had made great progress. At sunset they had stood again to the west, and were ploughing the waves at a rapid rate, the Pinta keeping the lead, from her superior sailing. The greatest animation prevailed throughout the ships ; not an eye was closed that night. As the evening darkened, Columbus took his station on the top of the castle or cabin on the high poop of his vessel, ranging his eye along tho dusky horizon, and maintaining an intense and unremitting Avatch. About ten o'clock he thought he beheld a light glimmering at a great distance. Fearing his eager hopes might deceive him, he called to Pedro Gutier- rez, gentleman of the king's bed-chain her, and inquired whether he saw such a light; the latter replied in the affirmative. Doubt- ful whether it might not yet be some delu- sion of the fancy, Columbus called Kodrigo Sanchez of Segovia, and made the same in- quiry. By the time the latter had ascended the round-house, the light had disappeared. They saw it once or twice afterwards in sudden and passing gleams ; as if it were a torch in the bark of a fisherman, rising and sinking with the waves ; or in the hand of some person on shore, borne up and down as he walked from house to house. So tran- sient and uncertain were these gleams that few attached any importance to them ; Co- lumbus, however, considered them as certain signs of land, and, moreover, that the land was inhabited. They continued their course until two in the morning, when a gun from the Pinta gave the joyful signal of land. It was first descried by a mariner named llodrigo de Triana ; but the reward was afterwards adjudged to the admiral, for having previ- ously perceived the light. The land was now clearly seen about two leagues distant, whereupon they took in sail, and laid to, waiting impatiently for the dawn. The thoughts and feelings of Columbus in this little space of time must have been tumultuous and intense. At length, in spite of every difficulty and danger, he had ac- complished his object. The great mystery of the ocean was revealed ; his theory, which had been the scoff of sages, was triumph- antly established ; he had secured to him- self a glory durable as the world itself. It is difficult to conceive the feelings of such a man, at such a moment ; or the con- jectures which must have thronged upon his mind, as to the land before him, covered with darkness. That it was fruitful, was evident from the vegetables which floated from its shores. lie thought, too, that he perceived the fragrance of aromatic groves. The moving light he had beheld proved it the residence of man. But what were its in- habitants ? Were they like those of the other parts of the globe ; or Avere they some strange and monstrous race, such as the irnagina- WASHINGTON IRVING. 5G9 tion was prone in those times to give to all remote and unknown regions? Had he come upon some wild island far in the Indian sea; or was this the famed Cipango itself, the object of his golden fancies ? A thousand speculations of the kind must have swarmed upon him, as, with his anxious crews, he waited for the night to pass away ; wonder- ing whether the morning light would reveal a savage wilderness, or dawn upon spicy groves, and glittering fanes, and gilded cities, and all the splendour of oriental civiliza- tion. Life and Voyac/es of Christopher Columbus, Book Hi. Ckap. 4. IRVIXG AT ABBOTSFORD. Late in the evening of the 29th of August, 1817, I arrived at the ancient little border town of Selkirk, where I put up for the night. I had come down from Edinburgh, partly to visit Melrose Abbey and its vicin- ity, but chiefly to get a sight of the " mighty minstrel of the north." I had a letter of introduction to him from Thomas Campbell the poet, and had reason to think, from the interest he had taken in some of my earlier scribblings, that a visit from me would not be deemed an intrusion. On the following morning, after an early breakfast, I set off in a post-chaise for the Abbey. On the way thither I stopped at the gate of Abbotsford, and sent the postil- lion to the house with the letter of introduc- tion and my card, on which I had written that I was on my way to the ruins of Mel- rose Abbey, and wished to know whether it would be agreeable to Mr. Scott (he had not yet been made a Baronet) to receive a visit from me in the course of the morning. While the postillion was on his errand, I had time to survey the mansion. It stood some short distance below the road, on the side of a hill sweeping down to the Tweed ; and was as yet but a snug gentleman's cot- tage, with something rural and picturesque in its appearance. The whole front was overrun with evergreens, and immediately below the portal was a great pair of elk horns branching out from beneath the foli- age, and giving the cottage the look of a hunting-lodge. The huge baronial pile, to which this modest mansion in a manner gave birth, was just emerging into exist- ence: part of the walls, surrounded by scaffolding, already had risen to the height of the cottage, and the court-yard in front was encumbered by masses of hewn stone. The noise of the chaise had disturbed the quiet of the establishment. Out sallied the warder of the castle, a black greyhound, and, leaping on one of the blocks of stone. 24 began a furious barking. His alarm brought out the whole garrison of dogs: " Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, ani hound, And curs of low degree ;" all open-mouthed and vociferous. I should correct my quotation ; not a cur was to be seen on the premises : Scott was too true a sportsman, and had too high a veneration for pure blood, to tolerate a mongrel. In a little while the "lord of the castle" himself made his appearance. I knew him at once by the descriptions I had read and heard, and the likenesses that had been published of him. lie was tall, and of a large and pow- erful frame. His dress was simple, and al- most rustic. An old, green shooting-coat, with a dog whistle at the button-hole, brown linen pantaloons, stout shoes that tied at the ankles, and a. white hat that had evidently seen service. He came limping up the gravel walk, aiding himself by a stout walking- staff, but moving rapidly and with vigour. By his side jogged along a large iron-gray staghound of most grave demeanour, who took no part in the clamour of the canine rabble, but seemed to consider himself bound, for the dignity of the house, to give me a courteous reception. Before Scott had reached the gate he called out in a hearty tone, welcoming me to Abbotsford, and asking news of Camp- bell. Arrived at the door of the chaise, he grasped me warmly by the hand : " Come, drive down, drive down to the house," said he; "ye're just in time for breakfast, and afterwards ye shall see all the wonders of the Abbey." I would have excused myself, on the plea of having already made my breakfast. " Hout, man," cried he, "a ride in the morning in the keen air of the Scotch hills is warrant enough for a second breakfast." I was accordingly whirled to the portal of the cottage, and in a few moments found myself seated at the breakfast-table. There was no one present but the family, which consisted of Mrs. Scott, her eldest daughter Sophia, then a fine girl about seventeen, Miss Ann Scott, two or three years younger, Walter, a well-grown stripling, and Charles, a lively boy, eleven or twelve years of age. I soon felt myself quite at home, and my heart in a glow with the cordial welcome I experienced. I had thought to make a mere morning visit, but found I was not to be let off so lightly. " You must not think our neighbourhood is to be read in a morning, like a news- paper," said Scott. ' It takes several days of study for an observant traveller that has a relish for auld world trumpery. After breakfast you shall make your visit to Mel- rose Abbey ; I shall not be able to accoui- 370 WASHINGTON IRVING. pany you, as I have some household affairs to attend to, but I will put you in charge of my son Charles, who is very learned in all things touching the old ruin and the neigh- bourhood it stands in, and he and my friend Johnny Bower will tell you the whole truth about it, with a good deal more that you are not called upon to believe, unless you be a true and nothing doubting antiquary. When you come back I'll take you out on a ramble about the neighbourhood. To-morrow we will take a look at the Yarrow, and the next day we will drive over to Dryburgh Abbey, which is a tine old ruin well worth your seeing" in a word, before Scott had got through with his plan, I found myself com- mitted for a visit of several days, and it seemed as if a little realm of romance was suddenly opened before me. On the following morning the sun darted his beams from over the hills through the low lattice window. I rose at an early hour, and looked out between the branches of eglantine which overhung the casement. To my surprise, Scott was already up and forth, seated on a fragment of stone, and chatting with the workmen employed on the new building. I had supposed, after the time he had wasted on me yesterday, he would be closely occupied this morning, but he appeared like a man of leisure, who had nothing to do but bask in the sunshine and amuse himself. I soon dressed myself and joined him. He talked about his proposed plans of Ab- botsford : happy would it have been for him could he have contented himself with his delightful little vine-covered cottage, and the simple yet hearty and hospitable style, in which he lived at the time of my visit. The great pile of Abbotsford, with the huge expense it entailed upon him of servants, retainers, guests, and baronial style, was a drain upon his purse, a tax upon his exer- tions, and a weight upon his mind that finally crushed him. As yet, however, all was in embryo and perspective, and Scott pleased himself with picturing out his future residence as he would one of the fanciful creations of his own romances. " It was one of his air cas- tles," he said, "which he was reducing to solid stone and mortnr." About the place were strewed various morsels from the ruins of Melrose Abbey, which were to be incor- porated in his mansion. He had constructed out of similar materials a kind of Gothic shrine over a spring, and had surmounted it by a small stone cross. . . . I have thus given, in a rude style, my main recollections of what occurred during my sojourn at Abbotsford, and I feel morti- fied that I can give but such meagre, scat- tered, and colourless details of what was so copious, rich, and varied. During several days that I passed there Scott was in admi- rable vein. From early morn until dinner- time he was rambling about, showing me the neighbourhood, and during dinner, and until late at night, engaged in social conver- sation. No time was reserved for himself; he seemed as if his only occupation was to entertain me; and yet I was almost an en- tire stranger to him, one of whom he knew nothing but an idle book I had written, and which some years before had amused him. But such was Scott; he appeared to have nothing to do but lavish his time, attention, and conversation on those around. It was difficult to imagine what time he found to write those volumes that were incessantly issuing from the press ; all of which, too, were of a nature to require reading and re- search. I could not find that his life was ever otherwise than a life of leisure and hap- hazard recreation, such as it was during my visit. He scarce ever balked a party of pleasure, or a sporting excursion, and rarely pleaded his own concerns as an excuse for rejecting those of others. During my visit I heard of other visitors who had preceded me, and who must have kept him occupied for many days, and I have had an opportu- nity of knowing the course of his daily life for some time subsequently. Not long after my departure from Abbotsford, my friend Wilkie arrived there, to paint a picture of the Scott family. He found the house full of guests. Scott's whole time was taken up in riding and driving about the country, or in social conversation at home. "All this time," said Wilkie to me, " I did not pre- sume to ask Mr. Scott to sit for his portrait, for I saw he had not a moment to spare; I waited for the guests to go away, but as fast as one went another arrived, and so it continued for several days, and with each set he was completely occupied. At length all went off, and we were quiet. I thought-. however, Mr. Scott will now shut himself up among his books and papers, for he has to make up for lost time; it won't do for me to ask him now to sit for his picture. Laid- law, who managed his estate, came in, and Scott turned to him, as I supposed, to con- sult about business. ' Laidlaw,' said he, 'to- morrow morning we'll go across the water and take the dogs with us ; there's a place where I think we shall be able to find a hare!' In short," added Wilkie, " I found that, instead of business, he was thinking only of amusement, as if he had nothing in the world to occupy him ; so I no longer feared to intrude upon him." The conversation of Scott was frank, hearty, picturesque, and dramatic. During WASHINGTON IRVING. 371 the time of my visit he inclined to the comic rather than the grave, in his anecdotes and stories ; and such, I was told, was his gen- eral inclination. He relished a joke, or a trait of humour in social intercourse, and laughed with right good will. He talked not for effect, nor display, hut from the flow of his spirits, the stores of his memory, and the vigour of his imagination. He had a natural turn for narration, and his narra- tives and descriptions were without effort, yet wonderfully graphic. He placed the scene hefore you like a picture ; he gave the dialogue with the appropriate dialect or peculiarities, and described the appearance and characters of his personages with that spirit and felicity evinced in his writings. Indeed, his conversation reminded me con- tinually of his novels; and it seemed to me, that during the whole time I was with him, he talked enough to fill volumes, and that they could not have been filled more delightfully. He was as good a listener as talker, ap- preciating every thing that others said, how- ever humble might be their rank or preten- sions, and was quick to testify his perception of any point in their discourse. He arro- gated nothing to himself, but was perfectly unassuming and unpretending, entering with heart and soul into the business, or pleasure, or, I had almost said, folly of the hour and the company. No one's concerns, no one's thoughts, no one's opinions, no one's tastes and pleasures seemed beneath him. He made himself so thoroughly the companion of those with whom he happened to be, that they forgot for a time his vast superiority, and only recollected and won- dered, when all was over, that it was Scott with whom they had been on such familiar terms, and in whose society they had felt so perfectly at their ease. It was delightful to observe the generous spirit in which he spoke of all his literary contemporaries, quoting the beauties of their works, and this, too, with respect to persons with whom he might have been supposed to be at variance in literature or politics. Jef- frey, it was thought, had ruffled his plumes in one of his reviews, yet Scott spoke of him in terms of high and warm eulogy, both as an author and as a man. His humour in conversation, as in his works, was genial and free from all caus- ticity. He had a quick perception of faults and foibles, but he looked upon poor human nature with an indulgent eye, relishing what was good and pleasant, tolerating what was frail, and pitying what was evil. It is this beneficent spirit which gives such an air of bonhommie to Scott's humour throughout all his works. He played with the foibles and errors of his fellow-beings, and presented them in a thousand whim- sical and characteristic lights, but the kind- ness and generosity of his nature would not allow him to be a satirist. I do not recollect a sneer throughout his conversation any more than there is throughout his works. Such is a rough sketch of Scott as I saw him in private life, not merely at the time of the visit here narrated, but in the casual intercourse of subsequent years. Of his public character and merits all the world can judge. His works have incorporated them- selves with the thoughts and concerns of the whole civilized world for a quarter of a century, and have had a controlling influence over the age in which he lived. But when did a human being ever exercise an influ- ence more salutary and benignant? "Who is there that, on looking back over a great portion of his life, does not find the genius of Scott administering to his pleasures, be- guiling his cares, and soothing his lonely sorrows? Who does not still regard his works as a treasury of pure enjoyment, an armoury to which to resort in time of need, to find weapons with which to fight off the evils and the griefs of life? For my own part, in periods of dejection I have hailed the announcement of a new work from his pen as an earnest of certain pleasure in store for me, and have looked forward to it as a traveller in a waste looks to a green spot at a distance, where he feels assured of solace and refreshment. When I consider how much he has thus contributed to the better hours of my past existence, and how inde- pendent his works Mill make me, at times, of all the world for my enjoyment, I bless my stars that cast my lot in his days, to be thus cheered and gladdened by the outpour- ings of his genius. I consider it one of the greatest advantages that I have derived from my literary career, that it has elevated me into genial communion with such a spirit; and as a tribute of gratitude for his friend- ship, and veneration for his memory, I cast this humble stone upon his cairn, which will soon, I trust, be piled aloft with the contri- butions of abler hands. The Crayon Miscellany. IRVING'S LAST INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT. It was at Sunnyside, on a glorious afternoon in June, 1855, that surrounded by scenei-y which Irving has best described, he narrated to me (S. Austin Allibone) the following account of his last interview with Scott: " I was in London when Scott arrived after his attack of paralysis, on his way to the continent in search of health. I received a note from Lockhart, begging me to come and take dinner with Scott and himself the JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. next day. When I entered the room, Scott grasped my hand, and looked me steadfastly in the face. ' Time has dealt gently with you, my friend, since we parted,' he ex- claimed: he referred to the difference in himself since we had met. At dinner, I could see that Scott's mind was failing. lie was painfully conscious of it himself. He would talk with much animation, and we would listen with the most respectful atten- tion ; but there was an effort and an em- barrassment in his manner: he knew all was not right. It was very distressing, and we [Irving, Lockhart, and Anne ScottJ tried to keep up the conversation between our- selves, that Sir Walter might talk as little as possible. After dinner he took rny arm to walk up-stairs, which he did with diffi- culty. He turned and looked in my face, and said, ' They need not tell a man his mind is not affected when his body is as much impaired as mine.' This was my last interview with Scott. I heard after- wards that he was better ; but I never saw him again." Two years later (in 1857), in narrating the same event, Irving told me that as Scott passed up the stairs with him after dinner, he remarked, " Times are sadly changed since we walked up the Eildnn hills together." Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, ii. 1970: Scott, Sir Walter. JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT, the son of the Rev. Isaac Hunt and Miss Mary Shewell, the daughter of Stephen Shewell, a merchant of Philadelphia, was born 1784, and after a life of great literary ac- tivity, accompanied with pecuniary troubles, died at Putney, England, 1859. See (Lon- don) Gentleman's Magazine, Oct. 1859, 425 (Obituary), his Autobiography and Remi- niscences, 1850, 3 vols. post 8vo, and The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, Edited by his Eldest Son [Thornton Hunt], Lond., 1862, 2 vols. 12rno. Works: Juvenilia, or, A Collection of Poems Written between the Ages of Twelve and Sixteen, 1801, 12mo, 2d edit., 1802 ; Critical Essays on the Per- formers of the London Theatres, etc., Lond., 1S07, 12mo,2dedit., 1808, 12rno; Methodism, 1809, 8vo; Reformist's Reply to the Edin- burgh Review, 1810, Svo; The Reflector, Nos. 1-4, 1810; Reply on the Attorney- General's Information, 1812; Classic Tales, 1813, 5 vols. 12mo ; The Feast of the Poets, etc., 1814, cr. 8vo, 2d edit,, 1815; Descent of Liberty, a Mask, 1815, 12mo; The Story of Rimini, a Poem, 1816, fp. 8vo, 3d edit., 1819, 12mo; Foliage: Poems, 1818, 12mo; The Indicator, 100 numbers, 1819-21, 2 vols. med. 8vo ; Amyntas, a Tale of the Woods, from the Italian of Tasso, 1820, 12mo; Indicator and Companion, 1822, 2 vols. post 8vo, 1834, 2 vols. post 8vo, 1840, roy. 8vo, with The Seer, 1842, roy. 8vo, 1848, roy. 8vo; The Liberal [with Byron, Hazlitt, and Shelley], 1822, 4 pts., 8'vo : The Lit- erary Examiner. 26 numbers, 1823, med.Svo; Blue Stocking Revels, n. d., 12mo; Literary Pocket-Book, n. d., 12mo; Hero and Leander, n. d. ; Bacchus in Tuscany, translated from the Italian, n. d., J2mo ; Months Descriptive of the Year, n. d , 12mo; Ultra-Crepidarius: a Satire on William Gifford ; Recollections of Lord Byron and some of his Contem- poraries, etc., 1828, 4to, 2d edit., 1828, 2 vols. 8vo; The Tatler, 1831-32: Poetical Works, 1832, 8vo, 1833, 8vo, 1844, 32mo; Sir Ralph Esher, a Romance, 1832, 3 vols. post Svo, 1836, 12mo, 1850, post 8vo ; London Journal, 1834-35, 2 vols. fol. ; Captain Sword and Captain Penn, a Poem, 1839, fp. Svo, 3d edit., 1849, 12mo: A Legend of Florence, a Play, 1840, 8vo ; The Seer, or Common Places Refreshed, 1840-41, 2 pts., 8vo, 1848, med.Svo, with The Indicator and Companion, 1842, roy. 8vo, 1848, roy. 8vo; The Palfrey, a Love Story of Old Times, a Poem, 1842, 8vo; One Hundred Romances of Real Life, a Selection, 1843, roy. 8vo ; Imagination and Fancy, or Selections from the English Poets, Illustrative of these First Requisites of their Art, 1844, 8vo, 2d edit., 1845, post 8vo. 3d edit., 1852, cr. Svo; Christiamsm [1846], 12mo: A Manual of Domestic Devotions: Printed only for private circulation : Stories from the Italian Poets, with Lives of the Writers, 1846, 2 vols. post Svo, 1854, 2 vols. post Svo : Wit and Humour, Selected from the English Poets, etc., 1S46, post 8vo. 1852. post Svo ; A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, 1847, post Svo. 1852, 12mo; Men, Women, and Books : Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs [from his uncollected prose wri- tings], 1847, 2 vols. post Svo, 1852, 2 vols. post Svo ; The Town, its Character and Events, 1848, 2 vols. post Svo ; A Book for a Corner : Selections in Prose and Verse, 1849, 2 vols. 12mo, 2d edit., 1851, post Svo, 3d edit., 1858, post Svo ; Autobiography and Reminiscences, 1850, 3 vols. post Svo, 1852, 3 vols. post Svo; Reading for Railways, 1850, 12mo; Table-Talk, Imaginary Conver- sations of Pope and Swift, 1S50, post Svo, 1852, post Svo; Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty, 1853, fp. Svo; The Old Court Suburb, 1855, 2 vols. cr. Svo ; Stories in Verse, 1855, 12mo; The Finest Scenes, Lyrica, and other Beauties, selected from Beaumont and Fletcher, etc., with Preface, 1855, post Svo. JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. 373 Many of his works have been republished in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York. Hunt's Complete Poetical Works, Collected and Arranged by Himself, Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1857, 2 vols. 32mo ; Hunt's Works, New York, Derby & Jackson, 1857, 4 vols. 12mo ; A Day by the Fire, and other Papers, Hitherto Uncollected, by Leigh Hunt, Bos- ton. Roberts Brothers, 1870, 1 vol. In 18U8 he founded The Examiner, and edited it for many years ; he also edited The Monthly Repository; contributed to The News, The Round Table, The. True Sun, Edinburgh Review, and Westminster Review ; edited The Dramatic Works of Wycherly, Con- greve, and Farquhar, with Biographical and Critical Notices, Lond., 1840, roy. 8vo (re- viewed by Lord Macau lay in Edin. Review, Jan. 1841, and in his Essays) ; and made an admirable translation of the Lutrin of Boileau. See Selections from the Corre- spondence of the Late Macvey Napier, Esq., Lond., 1879, 8vo. Index, 547. " To my taste, the Author of Rimini and Editor of the Examiner is among the bust and least cor- rupted of our poetical prose-writers. In his light but well -supported columns we find the raciness, the sharpness, and the sparkling effect of poetry, with Lttle that is extravagant or far-fctched, and no turgidity or pompous pretension." HAZLITT: Ta- ble- Talk : On the Pruse Style of Poets. " His prose is gossiping, graceful, and searching, and charms many readers." ALLA..V CUNNINGHAM : Jii'iij. and Ci-it. Mist, of the Lit. of the Last Fifty Years, 1833. WHAT is POETRY? If a young reader should ask, after all, What is the best way of knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the next best, and so on? the answer is, the only and two- fold way : first, the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention ; and second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they are. Every true reader of poetry partakes a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature; and no one can be completely such who does not love, or take an interest in, everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the daisy, from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable of the low. It is a good practice to read with pen in hand, marking what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, realizes the greatest amount of enjoyment, and facilitates reference. It en- ables the reader also, from time to time, to see what progress he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up to the stature of its exalter. If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the highest? I should say un- doubtedly, The Epic; for it includes the drama, with narration besides ; or the speak- ing and action of the characters, with the speaking of the poet himself, whose utmost address is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, particularly in the passages least sustained by enthusiasm. Whether this class has included the greatest poet, is another question still under trial ; for Shak- speare perplexes all such verdicts, even when the claimant is Homer: though if a judgment may be drawn from his early nar- ratives ("Venus and Adonis," and "The Rape of Lucrece"), it is to be doubted whether even Shakspeare could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and superfoetation of thought, a little less of which may be occasionally desired even in his plays ; if it were possible, once possess- ing anything of his, to wish it away. Next to Homer and Shakspeare come such narra- tors as the less universal but intenser Dante; Milton, with his dignified imagination ; the universal profoundly simple Chaucer; and luxuriant remote Spenser, immortal child in poetry's most poetic solitudes: then the great second-rate dramatists ; unless those who are better acquainted with Greek tragedy than I am demand a place for them before Chaucer: then the airy yet robust univer- sality of Ariosto; the hearty out-of-door na- ture of Theocritus, also a universalist ; the finest lyrical poets (who only take short flights, compared with the narrators) ; the purely contemplative poets who have more thought than feeling ; the descriptive, satiri- cal, didactic, epigrammatic. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the first poet of an inferior class may be superior to fol- lowers in the train of a higher one, though the superiority is by no means to be taken for granted: otherwise Pope would be su- perior to Fletcher, and Butler to Pope. Im- agination, teeming with action and character, makes the greatest poets ; feeling and thought the next ; fancy (by itself) the next ; wit the last. Thought by itself makes no poet at al 1 : for the mere conclusions of the understand- ing can at best be only so many intellectual matters of fact. Feeling, even destitute of conscious thought, stands a far better poet- ical chance ; feeling being a sort of thought without the process of thinking, a grasper of the truth without seeing it. And what is very remarkable, feeling seldom makes the blunders that thought does. An idle distinction has been made between taste and judgment. Taste is the very maker of judgment. Put an artificial fruit in your mouth, or only handle it, and you will soon perceive the difference between judging from taste or tact, and judging from the abstract figment called judgment. The lat- ter does hut throw you into guesses and doubts. Hence the conceits that astonish us 374 JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. in the gravest and even subtlest thinkers, Avhose taste is not proportionate to their mental perceptions; men like Donne, for instance ; who, apart from accidental per- sonal impressions, seem to look at nothing as it really is, but only as to what may be thought of it. Hence, on the other hand, the delightfulness of those poets who never violate truth of feeling, whether in things real or imaginary ; who are always consistent with their object and its requirements ; and who run the great round of nature, not to perplex and be perplexed, but to make them- selves and us happy. And, luckily, delight- fulness is not incompatible with greatness, willing soever as men may be in their pres- ent imperfect state to set the power to sub- jugate above the power to please. Truth, of any kind whatsoever, makes great writing. This is the reason why such poets as Ariosto, though not writing with a constant detail of thought and feeling like Dante, are justly considered great as well as delightful. Their greatness proves itself by the same truth of nature, and sustained power, though in a different way. Their action is not so crowded and weighty ; their sphere has more territories less fertile; but it has enchantments of its own which excess of thought would spoil, luxuries, laughing graces, animal spirits ; and not to recognize the beauty and greatness of these, treated as they treat them, is simply to be defective in sympathy. Ever} 7 planet is not Mars or Saturn. There is also Venus and Mercury. There is one genius of the south, and an- other of the north, and others uniting both. The render who is too thoughtless or too sen- sitive to like intensity of any sort, and he who is too thoughtful or too dull to like any- thing but the greatest possible stimulus of retlection or passion, are equally wanting in complexional fitness for a thorough enjoy- ment of books. Ariosto occasionally says as line things as Dante, and Spenser as Shakspeare ; but the business of both is to enjoy ; and in order to partake their enjoy- ment to its full extent, you must feel what poetry is in the general as well as the par- ticular, must be aware that there are differ- ent songs of the spheres, some fuller of notes, and others of a sustained delight: and as the former keep you perpetually alive to thought or passion, so from the latter you receive a constant harmonious sense of truth and beauty, more agreeable perhaps on the whole, though less exciting. Ariosto, for instance, does not tell a story with the brevity and concentrated passion of Dante; every sentence is not so full of matter, nor the style so removed from the indifference of prose; yet you are charmed with a truth of another sort, equally char- acteristic of the writer, equally drawn from nature, and substituting a healthy sense of enjoyment for intenser emotion. Exclusive- ness of liking for this or that mode of truth, only shows, either that the reader's percep- tions are limited, or that he would sacrifice truth itself to his favourite form of it. Sir Walter Raleigh, who was as trenchant witli his pen as his sword, hailed the " Faerie Queene" of his friend Spenser in verses in which he said that '' Petrarch" was hence- forth to be no more heard of; and that in all English poetry there was nothing he counted "of any price'' but the effusions of the new author. Yet Petrarch is still living ; Chau- cer was not abolished by Sir Walter; and Shakspeare is thought somewhat valuable. A botanist might as well have said that myr- tles and oaks were to disappear because acacias had come up. It is with the poet's creations as with Nature's, great or small. Wherever truth and beauty, whatever their amount, can be shaped into verse, and answer to some demand for it in our hearts, there poetry is to be found ; whether in produc- tions grand and beautiful as some great event, or some mighty, leafy solitude, or no bigger and more pretending than a sweet face or a bunch of violets ; whether in Ho- mer's epic or Gray's "Elegy,"' in the en- chanted gardens of Ariosto and Spenser, or the very pot-herbs of the " Schoolmistress" of Shenstone, the balms of the simplicity of a cottage. Not to know and feel this, is to be deficient in the universality of Nature herself, who is a poetess on the smallest as well as the largest scale, and who calls upon us to admire all her productions ; not in- deed with the same degree of admiration, but with no refusal of it except to defect. I cannot draw this essay towards its con- clusion better than with three memorable words of Milton, who has said that poetry, in comparison with science, is "simple, sen- suous, and passionate." By simple, he means imperplexed and self-evident ; by sensuous, genial and full of imagery ; by passionate, excited and enthusiastic. I am aware that different constructions have been put on some of these words ; but the context seems to me to necessitate those before us. I quote, however, not from the original, but from an extract in the " Remarks on Para- dise Lost," by Richardson. What the poet has to cultivate above all things is love and truth ; what he has to avoid, like poison, is the fleeting and the false. He will get no good by proposing to be "in earnest at the moment." His earn- estness must be innate and habitual; born with him, and felt to be his most precious inheritance. "I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings," says Cole- JOHN WILSON. 375 ridge, in the Preface to his Poems ; " and I consider myself as having been amply re- paid without either. Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward ; i t has soothed my afflictions ; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments ; it has endeared solitude ; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." Pickering' s edition, p. 10. ' Poetry," says Shelley, "lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not famil- iar. It reproduces all that it represents; and the impersonations clothed in itsElysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it co-exists. The great secret of morals is love, or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine in- tensely and comprehensively ; he must put himself in the place of another, and of many others ; the pains and pleasures of his spe- cies become his own. The great instrument of moral good is imagination ; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause.'' Essays and Letters, vol. i. p. 16. I would not willingly say anything after perorations like these; but as treatises on poetry may chance to have auditors who think themselves called upon to vindicate the superiority of what is termed useful knowledge, it may be as well to add, that, if the poet may be allowed to pique himself on any one thing more than other, compared with those who undervalue him, it is on that power of undervaluing nobody, and no at- tainments different from his own, which is given him by the very faculty of imagina- tion which they despise. The greater in- cludes the less. They do not see that their inability to comprehend him argues the smaller capacity. No man recognizes the worth of utility more than the poet: he only desires that the meaning of the term in ay not come short of its greatness, and ex- clude the noblest necessities of his fellow- creatures, lie is quite as much pleased, for instance, with the facilities for rapid convey- ance afforded him by the railroad, as the dullest confiner of its advantages to that single idea, or as the greatest two-idea'd man who varies that single idea with hug- ging himself on his " buttons" or his good dinner. But he sees also the beauty of the country through which he passes, of the towns, of the heavens, of the steam-engine itself, thundering and foaming along like a magic horse ; of the affections that are carry- ing, perhaps, half the passengers on their journey, nay, of those of the great two-idea' d man; and, beyond this, he discerns the in- calculable amount of good, and knowledge, and refinement, and mutual consideration which this wonderful invention is fitted to circulate over the globe, perhaps to the dis- placement of war itself, and certainly to the diffusion of millions of enjoyments. "And a button-maker, after all, invented it!" cries our friend. Pardon me, it was a nobleman. A button-maker may be a very excellent, and a very poetical man too, and yet not have been the first man visited by a sense of the gigantic powers of the combina- tion of water and fire. It was a nobleman who first thought of it, a captain who first tried it, and a button-maker who perfected it. And he who put the nobleman on such thoughts was the great philosopher Bacon, who said that poetry had " something divine in it," and was necessary to the satisfaction of the human mind. Imagination and Fancy. JOHN WILSON ("CHRIS- TOPHER NORTH"), born at Paisley, Scotland, 1785, and edu- cated at the University of Glasgow and Magdalene College, Oxford, became a con- tributor to Blackwood's Magazine, with No. 7, October, 1817, and continued hisconnection with this periodical (acting as literary edi- tor, whilst Blackwood himself managed the business department), writing with more or less frequency, until September, 1852, No. 443, in which appeared his last paper, Dies Boreales, No. x., Christopher under Canvas ; Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Uni- versity of Edinburgh. 1820-1852; died 1854. Works : The Isle of Palms, and other Poems, Edin., 1812, 8vo ; The City of the Plague, and other Poems, Edin., 1816, Svo, 2d edit, 1820, Svo; Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, Euin., 1822, p. 8vo. 1839, fp. 8vo, 1844, fp. 8vo, 1806, fp. 8vo ; The Trials of Marga- ret Lindsay, Edin., 1823, p. 8vo, 1825, fp. 8vo, 1844, fp. 8vo, 1845, fp. 8vo, 1850. fp. Svo, 1854, fp. Svo, 1866, fp. 8vo; The Foresters, Edin., 1825, p. 8vo, 1839, fp. Svo, 1845, fp. Svo, 1852, fp. Svo, 1867, fp. Svo; Poetical and Dramatic Works, Edin., 1825. 2 vols. post 8vo ; Essay on the Life and Writings of Robert Burns, Glasgow, 1841, 4to; The Critical and Miscellaneous Articles of Chris- topher North, Phila., 1842, 3 vols. 12mo (from Blackwood's Magazine incomplete) ; Recreations of Christopher North, Edin., 1842, 3 vols. post Svo (from Blackwood'a 3T6 JOHN WILSON. Magazine) ; Noctes Ambrosianse (from Black- wood's Magazine), Phila.. 1843, 4vols. 12mo: new edition, with Memoirs and Notes by R. Shelton Mackenzie, D.C.L.. New York, 1854, . 5 vols. 12mo, 4th edit., 1857, 4 vols. 12mo, revised edit., 1863, 5 vols. sin. 8vo and 4to : edition by Professor Terrier, Edin., 1855-56, 4 vols. cr. 8vo : being vols. i.-iv. of The Works of Professor Wilson, edited by his son-in-law, Professor Ferrier, Edin., 185558, 12 vols. cr. 8vo ; Specimens of British Crit- ics, Phila., 1846, 12mo (from Blackwood's Magazine) ; Dies Boreales, or, Christopher under Canvas, Phila., 1850, 12mo (from Blackwood's Magazine incomplete). See 41 Christopher North'' : A Memoir of John Wilson, etc., by his Daughter, Mrs. Gordon, Edin., 1862, 2 vols. cr. 8vo, new edit., 1863, 2 vols. cr. Svo, with Preface by 11. S. Mac- kenzie, D.C.L., New York, 1863, cr. Svo, large paper, 100 copies, 4to. " His poetical powers are very varied, that is, he can handle any subject in its own peculiar spirit. . . . Indeed, throughout all his smaller poems there is a deep feeling for nature ; an intimate knowledge of the workings of the heart ; and a liquid fluency of language almost lyrical." AL- LAN CUNNINGHAM : liioy. find Crit. Hint, of the Lit. of the J\iet Fifty Yfai-s, 1833. " As to his poetry, I cannot say that it has been underrated, I only say that it has been eclipsed by his splendid prose. But in The Isl'e of Palms and The City of the Plague, to say no- thing of his smaller poems, there is much which ' the world will not willingly letdie.' Scott, Southey, and Wilson are men who, had they never written prose, would have stood higher among Poets than they do." R. S. MACKENZIE, D.C.L. : Life of Pro- feoaor Wilson, in his edition of the Soctts, ii., xxiv. THE Sxo\v-SxoRM. Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her. and he is alone nor knows it he and the red deer an enormous animal, fast stiffening in the frost of death. Some large flakes of snow are in the air. and they seem to waver and whirl, though an hour ago there was not a breath. Faster they fall and faster, the flakes are almost as large as leaves ; and overhead whence so suddenly has come that huge yellow cloud? " Flora, where are you ? where are you, Flora?" and from the huge hide the boy leaps up, and sees that no Flora is at hand. But yonder is a moving speck, far off upon the snow. 'Tis she, 'tis she ; and again Ronald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and the heart of the hunter burns within him like a new- stirred fire. Shrill as the eagle's cry, dis- turbed in his eyry, he sends a shout down the glen, and Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, is at last by his side. Panting and speechless she stands, and then dizzily inks on his breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that revives her, and her face all moistened by the snow-flakes, now not fall- ing, but driven, for the day has undergone a dismal change, and all over the sky are now lowering savage symptoms of a fast- coming night-storm. Bare is poor Flora's head, and sorely drenched her hair, that an hour or two ago glittered in the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses now the warmth of the plaid, which almost no cold can penetrate, and which had kept the vital current flowing freely in many a bitter blast. What would the miserable boy give now for the coverings lying far away, which, in his foolish pas- sion, he flung down to chase that fatal deer! ' Oh, Flora ! if you would not fear to stay here by yourself, under the protection of God, who surely will not forsake you, soon will I go and come from the place where our plaids are lying; and under the shelter of the deer we may be able to outlive the hurricane you wrapped up in them and folded, my dearest sister, in my arms." " I will go with you down the glen, Ronald ;" and she left his breast ; but weak as a day- old lamb, tottered, and sank down on the snow. The cold intense as if the air was ice had chilled her very heart, after the heat of that long race ; and it was manifest that here she must be for the night to live or to die. And the night seemed already come, so full was the lift of snow; while the glimmer every moment became gloomier, as if the day were expiring long before its time. Howling at a distance down the glen was heard a sea-born tempest from the Linn he Loch, where now they both knew the tide was tumbling in, bringing with it sleet and snow blasts from afar ; and from the opposite quarter of the sky an inland tempest was raging to meet it, while every lesser glen had its own uproar, so that on all hands they were environed with death. " I will go, and, till I return, leave you with God." "Go, Ronald!" and he went and came, as if he had been endowed with the raven's wings. Miles away and miles away had he flown, and an hour had not been with his going and his coming ; but what a dreary wretch- edness meanwhile had been hers ! She feared that she was dying, that the cold snow-storm was killing her, and that she would never more see Ronald, to say to him Farewell. Soon as he was gone all her cour- age had died. Alone, she feared death, and wept to think how hard it was for one so young thus miserably to die. He came, and her whole being was changed. Folded up in both the plaids, she felt resigned. " Oh ! kiss me, kiss me, Ronald : for your love great as it is is not as my love. You JOHN WILSON. 377 must never forget me, Ronald, when your poor Flora is dead." Religion with these two young creatures was as clear as the lightof the Sabbath-day, and their belief in heaven just the same as in earth. The will of God they thought of just as they thought of their parent's will, and the same was their living obedience to its decrees. If she was to die. supported now by the presence of her brother, Flora was utterly resigned ; if she was to live, her heart imagined to itself the very forms of her grateful worship. But all at once she closed her eyes, she ceased breathing, and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the glooin that fell around them like blindness, Ronald almost sunk down, thinking that she was dead. " Wretched sinner that I am ! my wicked madness brought her here to die of cold !" And he smote his breast, and tore his hair, and feared to look up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm. All at once, without speaking a word, Ronald lifted Flora in his arms, and walked away up the glen, here almost narrowed into a pass. Distraction gave him super- natural strength, and her weight seemed that of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly remem- bered, were but a short way off; whether or not they had any roof he had forgotten, but the thought even of such a shelter seemed a thought of salvation. There it was. a snow-drift at the opening that had once been a door, snow up the holes once win- dows, the wood of the roof had been car- ried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was all trampled, as by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low lintel, he saw the place was filled Avith a flock that had fore- known the hurricane, and that, all huddled together, looked on him as on the shepherd, come to see how they were faring in the storm . And a young shepherd he was, with a l.imb apparently dying in his arms. All colour, all motion, all breath seemed to be gone ; and yet something convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, but across an angle of the walls some pine-branches had been flung, as a sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in cruel weather, some pine-branches left by the wood-cut- ters who had felled the yew-trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there, with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of his distracted heart might be felt by her, who was as cold as a corpse. The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock, and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place in which it seemed possible that she might revive, miserable as it was with the mire-mixed snow, and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And she did re- vive, and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the alternoon, night-like though it was, and he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red re- turned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to driv-e death away. "Oh! father, go seek for Ronald, for I dreamt to-night that he was perishing in the snow." " Flora, fear not, God is with us."' *' Wild swans, they say, are come to Loch Phoil. Let us go, Ronald, and see them ; but no rifle, for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful ?" Over them where they lay bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way beneath the increasing weight: but there it still hung, though the drift came over their feet, and up to their knees, and seemed stealing upwards to be their shroud. " Oh ! I am overcome with drowsiness, and fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me and what noise is this in our house?" "Fear not. fear not, Flora, God is with us." " Mother ! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm. Oh, I have had a most dreadful dream !" and with such mutterings as these Flora again relapsed into that peril- ous sleep which soon becomes that of death. Night itself came, but Flora and Ronald knew it not; and both lay motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions, though earth-born, heavenly all, pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last despair, had prostrated the strength they had so long supported ; and the brave boy who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a fever, with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore afraid of some nameless ill had submitted to lay down his head beside his Flora's, and liad soon become, like her, insensible to the night and all its storms. Bright was the peat fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glencoe, and they were among the happiest of the humble, happy, blessing this the birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her. singing her sweet songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran, and tender thoughts of her cousin Ronald w r ere with them in their prayers. No warning came to their ears in the sigh or the howl ; for fear it is that cre- ates its own ghosts, .and all its own ghost-like visitings ; and they had seen their Flora, in 378 JOHN WILSON. the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too, Love, who starts at shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to realities that might well inspire dismay. So it was now with the dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ronald had left them in the morning, night had come, and he and Flora were not there, but the day had been almost like a summer day, and in their infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Gle'ncoe. Ronald had laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by bringing back to them Flora on her birthday, and strange though it afterwards seemed to her to be that belief prevented one single fear from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay down in untroubled sleep. And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night? As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main I But the inland storm had been seen brewing among the mountains round King's-IIouse, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the long cliff-pass of Mealanumy, between Buchael-Etive and the Black Mount, towards the lone house of Dalness, that lies in the everlasting shadows, went a band of shep- herds, trampling their way across a hundred frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength, and then away over the ch-ift-bridgcd chasms toiled that gathering, with their sheep-dogs scouring the loose snows in the van, Fingal, the Red Reaver, with his head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eying the corrie where last he tasted blood. All " plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds laughed at the storm, and hark, you hear the bagpipe play, the music the Highlands love both in war and in peace. " They think then of the owric cattle, And silly sheep." And though they ken 'twill be a moonless night, for the snow-storm will sweep her out of heaven, up the mountain and down the glen they go, marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at midfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth where once stood the old grove of pines. Following their dogs, who know their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so, and why howls Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead body of the boy who so often had shouted him on in the forest when the antlers went by ! Not dead nor dead she who is on his bosom. Yet life in both frozen, and will the red blood in their veins ever again be thawed? Almost pitch dark is the roofless ruin ; and the frightened sheep know not what is that terrible shape that is howling there. But a man enters, and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of those at the doorway, and then lifts up the other; and by the flash of a rifle they see that it is Ronald Cameron and Flora Macdonald, seemingly both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not there, and licks the face of Ro- nald, as if he would restore life to his eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their plaids, how gentlest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and wounded, they bore away the shattered body, yet living, of the youthful warrior, who had shown that of such a clan he was worthy to be the chief. The storm was with them all the way down the glen ; nor could they have heard each other's voices had they spoke ; but mutely they shifted the burden from strong hand to hand, thinking of the hut in Glen- coe, and of what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or the dead. Blind people walk through what to them is the night of crowded day-streets, unpausing turn round corners, unhesitating plungo down steep stairs, wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of fire, and reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For God is with the blind. So lie is with all who walk on ways of mercy. This saving band had no fear, therefore there was no danger, on the edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the mountains, shown mo- mentarily by ghastly gleamings through the fitful night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow, at places where in other weather there was a pool or a water-fall. The dip of the hills, in spite of the drifts, familiar to their feet, did not deceive them now ; and then the dogs, in their instinct, were guides that erred not: and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves, did Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glencoe. lie led the way as if he were in moonlight ; and often stood still when they were shifting their burden, and whined as if in grief. lie knew where the bridges were, stones or logs; HENRY KIRKE WHITE. 379 and he rounded the marshes where at springs the wild fowl feed. And thus instinct, and reason, and faith conducted the saving band along, and now they are at Glencoe, and at the door of the hut. To life were brought the dead ; and there, at midnight, sat they up like ghosts. Strange seemed they fora while to each other's eyes, and at each other they looked as if they had forgotten how dearly once they loved. Then, as if in holy fear, they gazed in each other's faces, thinking that they had awoke together in heaven. "Flora!" said Ronald; and that sweet word, the first he had been able to speak, reminded him of all that had passed, and he knew that the God in whom they had put their trust had sent them de- liverance. Flora, too, knew her parents, who were on their knees ; and she strove to rise up and kneel down beside them, but she was powerless as a broken reed ; and when she thought to join with them in thanks- giving, her voice was gone. Still as death sat all the people in the hut, and one or two who were fathers were not ashamed to weep. liecrcations of Christopher North. HENRY KIRKE WHITE, the son of a butcher in Nottingham, Eng- land, and born in that town 1785, after some experience as a butcher's boy, stocking-loom labourer, and attorney's apprentice, became late in 1804 a sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, where he studied (chiefly with a view to the ministry) with such injudicious zeal that he died in 1806. He published Clifton Grove: a Sketch in Verse, with other Poems, London, 1803, crown 8vo: after his death Robert Southey gave to the world The Remains of Henry Kirke White, etc.. with an Account of his Life, London, 1807, 2 vols. 8vo ; and many editions of the Remains, and his Poetical Works and Letters, have been issued in England and America. " Chatterton is the only youthful poet whom he does not leave far behind him. ... I have in- spected all the existing manuscripts of Chatterton, and they excited less wonder than these." ROB- ERT SOUTHEY: Account of White. ' What an amazing reach of genius appears in the ' Remains of Kirke White' ! How unfortunate that he should have been lost to the world almost as soon as known ! I greatly lament the circum- stances that forced him to studies so contrary to his natural talent." SIR S. E. BKYDGES : Ceiuuria Literaria, is.. 393. Ox TlIEMISTOCLES, AlUSTIDES, AND CoMPO- SITIO.V. NOTTINGHAM, May 6, 1804. DEAR ROBERT, . . . You don't know how I long to hear how your declamation was received ; and " all about it." as we say in these parts. I hope to see it when I see its author and pronouncer. Themistocles, no doubt, received due praise from you for his valour and subtlety, but I trust you poured down a torrent of eloquent indignation upon the ruling principles of his actions, and the motive of his conduct ; while you exalted the mild and unassuming virtues of his more amiable rival. The object of Themistocles was the aggrandizement of himself ; that of Aristides the welfare and prosperity of the state. The one endeavoured to swell the glory of his country ; the other to promote its se- curity, external and internal, foreign and domestic. While you estimated the services which Themistocles rendered to the state, in opposition to those of Aristides, you of course remembered that the former had the largest scope for action, and that he influenced his countrymen to fall into all his plans, while they banished his competitor, not by his su- perior wisdom or goodness, but by those in- trigues and factious artifices which Aristides would have disdained. Themistocles cer- tainly did use bad means to a desirable end, and if we may assume it as an axiom that Providence will forward the designs of a good, sooner than those of a bad man, what- ever inequality of abilities there may be be- tween the two characters, it will follow that had Athens remained under the guidance of Aristides, it would have been better for her. The difference between Themistocles and Aristides seems to me to be this : That the former was a wise and a fortunate man ; and that the latter, though he had equal wisdom, had not equal good fortune. We may admire the heroic qualities and the crafty policy of the one, but to the temper- ate and disinterested patriotism, the good and virtuous dispositions of the other, we can alone give the meed of heart-felt praise. I mean only by this, that we must not infer Themistocles to have been the better or the greater man, because he rendered more essential services to the state than Aristides, nor even that his system was the most judi- cious, but only that, by decision of charac- ter, and by good fortune, his measures suc- ceeded best. . . . The rules of composition are, in my opin<- ion, very few. If we have a mature ac- quaintance with our subject, there is little fear of our expressing it as we ought, pro- vided we have had some little experience in writing. The first thing to be aimed at is perspicuity. That is the great point, which, once attained, will make all other obstacles smooth to us. In order to write perspicu- ously, we should have a perfect knowledge of the topic on which we are about to treat, in all its bearings and dependencies. We 330 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. should think well, beforehand, what will be the clearest method of conveying the drift of our design. This is similar to what painters call the massing, or getting the effect of the more prominent lights and shades by broad dashes of the pencil. When our thesis is well arranged in our mind, and we have predisposed our arguments, reasonings, and illustrations, so as they shall all conduce to the object in view, in regular sequence and gradation, we may sit down and express our ideas in as clear a manner as we can. always using such words as are most suited to our purpose, and when two modes of expression, equally luminous, present themselves, select- ing that which is the most harmonious and elegant. It sometimes happens that writers, in aim- ing at perspicuity, over-reach themselves, by employing too many words, and perplex the mind by a multiplicity of illustrations. This is a very fatal error. Circumlocution seldom conduces to plainness ; and you may take it as a maxim, that, when once an idea is clearly expressed, every additional stroke will only confuse the mind and diminish the effect. When you have once learned to express yourself with clearness and propriety, you will soon arrive at elegance. Every thing else, in fact, will follow as of course. But I warn you not to invert the order of things, and be paying your addresses to the graces, Avhen you ought to be studying perspicuity. Young writers, in general, are too solicitous to round off their periods, and regulate the cadences of their style. Hence the feeble pleonasms and idle repetitions which de- form their pages. If you would have your compositions vigorous and masculine in their tone, let every word TELL ; and when you detect yourself polishing off a sentence with expletives, regard yourself in exactly the same predicament with a poet who should eke out the measure of his verses with " titum, titum, tee, sir." So much for style . Htnnj Kirke White to Mr. R. A. . . . THOMAS DE QUINCEY, born at Manchester, 1786, and educated at Eton and Oxford, attracted great attention by a series of glowing autobiographic papers under the title of Confessions of an Opium- Eater, published in The London Magazine, September and October, 1821, and December, 1822. These were succceeded by some ex- cellent translations from Jean Paul llichter and Lessing, which appeared in The London Magazine and Blackwood, and many articles on biography, metaphysics, philosophy, etc., in The London, Blackwood, and Tail's Ma- gazines, and other periodicals, and The Lives of Shakspeare and Pope in The Encyclopae- dia Britannica. After a life of great literary activity and much suffering from the long- continued and excessive use of opium, he died December 8, 1859, of " senile decay" (funeral circular), in his 75th year. An edition of his Writings, edited by Mr. James T. Field, was published by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, Boston, 1853-59, in 23 vols. 12mo: contents, vol. i., ii., Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers ; iii., iv., Literary Reminiscences; v., vi., Historical and Crit- ical Essays: vii., Life and Manners; viii., Miscellaneous Essays ; ix., Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and Suspiria de Profundis ; x., Biographical Essays ; xi., Cae- sars ; xii., Essays on the Poets and other English Writers; xiii., xiv., Essays on Phil- osophical Writers and other Men of Letters ; xv., xvi., Memorials, and other Papers ; xvii., Note-Book of an English Opium-Eater; xviii., Logic of Political Economy ; xix., xx., Theological Essays, and other Papers; xxi., Letters to a Young Man, and other Pa- pers; xxii., Autobiographic Sketches; xxiii., Avenger, and other Papers. There is also a Boston edition (Riverside edition, Hough- ton, Osgood & Co.) of his Works in 12 vols. cr. 8vo, and a series of his Writings under the title of Selections, Grave and Gay, from Writings, Published and Unpublished, of Thomas De Quincey, Revised and Arranged by Himself, Lond., 1853-60, 14 vols. p. 8vo, to which add vols. xv., xvi. Works, new edit., Lond., 1862, 16 vols. p. 8vo. "They [the Confessions] have an air of reality and life; and they exhibit such strong graphic powers as to throw an interest and even dignity round a subject which in less able hands might have been rendered a tissue of trifles and absurd- ities. They are, indeed, very picturesque nnd vivid sketches of individual character and feel- ings, drawn with a boldness yet an exactness of pencil that is to bo found only in one or two pro- minent geniuses of our day. . . . They combine strong sense with wild and somewhat fantastic inventions, accuracy of detail with poetic illu'tra- tion, and analytical reasoning and metaphysical research with uncommon pathos and refinement of ideas. . . . Much truth and fine colouring are displayed in the descriptions and details of the work ; its qualities are all of a rich and elevated kind, such as high pathos, profound views, and deep reasoning, with a happy vein of ridicule in- dulged at the writer's own expense.' 1 London Monthly Review, 100 : 288. See also London Quar- terly Review, July, 1861. We add an interesting sketch of De Quin- cey communicated to the author of this volume by his daughter a few months after her father's death: THOMAS DE QUINCE T. " Papa was generally a late goer to bed, and a late riser; but he often went to bed late and got up early, making up for lost sleep in his chair: but he existed on a very small amount of sleep. If he had an article on hand, he would .sit up writing it all night, and drink strong coffee or tea to keep him wide awake ; for he was always liable to drop- ping over in his chair into short dozes. He pre- ferred writing during the night-. He always read at niglit, holding a candle in his hand, and would constantly fall asleep with it in this position. When aroused by the information, ' Papa, papa, your hair is on fire!' he would say, 'Is it, my love ?' brush his hand over it, and go to sleep again with the candle in his hand. He got so absorbed in what he was reading that it was a common occurrence setting his hair on fire. He was utterly callous to danger, and it is a miracle that he never set himself on fire. He has often set his bed on fire ; but he was as expert in putting it out as in putting it in. ' He was always more genial nnd talkative among ourselves, and particularly at tea-time and after it. It would be difficult to say what author he was fondest of reading ; for from a penny spell- ing-book up to a Bhakspearc, Milton, or Jeremy Taylor, he would read it, criticise it, turn it up- side-down. In fact, as regards the spelling-book, you would be amazed at the amount of latent knowledge that lay hid in its recesses. I should think any one would guess from his works what a great admiration he had for Shakspeare and Milton, but I do not think that people would gather the same opinion as regards Jeremy Taylor; and yet I think he would have placed him beside those two great towers of strength. He had an im- mense admiration and knowledge of Scripture, although he was far too unsystematic in his ways to make any point of conscience in reading them regularly. He often made points in the Bible subjects for discussion: yet I never heard him breathe a word of disbelief as regards any of them. He was a decided son of the Christian religion, and he had always a great respect and love for the Anglican Church. " Children were always very fond of him, not that he ever romped with them, but he had a great power of interesting them by his talking to them, and his gentle manner won their confidence. He was interested to the most curious extent by all his grandchildren, the thought of them even haunting him into the delirium of his death-bed. His constant talk during his illness was of chil- dren. I heard him say one night, ' Dear, dear little girl ! you are, in some measure, the child of my old age.' ' Who, papa?' I said. The answer was, ' My dear little Eva.' She is my sister, Mrs. Craig's, little girl, and he had seen her when a baby. " When within an hour or two of death, he said, ' They are all leaving me but my dear, dear little children ;' and one night he woke up from a long sleep and said with great animation, ' Emily, those Edinburgh cabmen are the most brutal set of fellows I ever knew of!' ' Why, what have they done ?' ' You must know, my dear, that I and the little children were all invited to a supper by Jesus Christ. So you see, as it was a great honour, I determined to get new dresses for the little chil- dren, and, would you believe it, when I and they Went out in our new dresses, I saw those fellows all laughing at them.'" EMILY DE QUINCEY TO S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE, May 31, 1860. THE EFFECTS OF OPIUM. I have thus described and illustrated my intellectual torpor, in terms that apply, more or less, to every part of the four years during which I -was under the Circean spell of opium. But for misery and suffering, I might, indeed, be said to have existed in a dormant state. I seldom could prevail on myself to write a letter; an answer of a few words, to any that I received, was the utmost that I could accomplish ; and often that not until the letter had lain weeks, or even months, on my writing-table. Without the aid of M all records of bills paid, or to be paid, must have perished ; and my whole domestic economy, whatever became of po- litical economy, must have gone into irre- trievable confusion. I shall not afterwards allude to this part of the case ! it is one, however, which the opium-eater will find, in the end, as oppressive and tormenting as any other, from the sense of incapacity and fee- bleness, from the direct embarrassments in- cident to the neglect or procrastination of each day's appropriate duties, and from the remorse which must often exasperate the stings of these evils to a reflective and con- scientious mind. The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspira- tions : he wishes and longs, as earnestly as ever, to realize what he believes possible and feels to be exacted by duty ; but his in- tellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execu- tion only, but even of power to attempt. He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare: he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to wit- ness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love : he curses the spells which chain him down from motion : he would lay down his life if he might get up and walk, but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise. I now pass to what is the main subject of these later confessions, to the history and journal of what took place in my dreams : for these were the immediate and proximate cause of my acutest suffering. The first notice I had of any important change going on in this part of my physical economy was the re-awakening of a state of eye generally incident to childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms; in some, that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; others have a voluntsiry or a semi-voluntary power to dismiss or to summon them ; or, as a 382 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter. " I can tell them to go and they go ; hut sometimes they come when I don't tell them to come." Whereupon I told him that he had almost as unlimited a command over apparitions as a Roman centurion over his soldiers. In the middle of 1817, I think it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to me : at night, when I lay in bed, vast processions passed along in mourn- ful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before (Edipus or Priam, before Tyre, be- fore Memphis. And, at the same time, a corresponding change took place in my dreams: a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which pre- sented mighty spectacles of more than earthly splendour. And the four following facts may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time : 1 . That as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise be- tween the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point, that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a volun- tary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams, so that I feared to exercise this faculty ; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so what- soever tilings capable of being visually rep- resented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phan- toms of the eye, and by a process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once traced in faint and visionary colours, like writings in sympathetic ink, they were drawn out by the tierce chemistry of my dreams into in- sufferable splendour that fretted my heart. 2. For this and all other changes in my dreams were .accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable bv words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I. by waking, feel that I had re-ascended. This I do not dwell upon : because the state of gloom Avhich at- tended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to utter darkness, as of some sui- cidal despondency, cannot be approached by words. 3. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, etc., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time: I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night, nay. sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience. 4. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived : I could not be said to recollect them ; for if I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to ac- knowledge them as parts of my past expe- rience. But placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances, and accom- panying feelings, I recognized them instan- taneously. I was once told by a near rela- tive of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously as in a mirror; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some opium experiences of mine, I can believe. I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which I am con- vinced is true, viz., that the dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as forgetting possible to the mind. A thousand accidents may, and will, inter- pose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind : ac- cidents of the same sort will always rend away this veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains for ever, just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed when the obscur- ing daylight shall have withdrawn. Having noticed these four facts as mem- orably distinguishing my dreams from those of health, I shall now cite a case illustrative of the first fact, and shall then cite any others that I remember, either in their chro- nological order, or any other that may give them more effect as pictures to the reader. I had been in youth, and even since, for occasional amusement, a great reader of Livy, whom I confess that I prefer, both for style and matter, to any other of the Roman historians; and I had often felt as most solemn and appalling sounds, and most em- phatically representative of the majesty of the Roman people, the two words so often occurring in Livy, Consul Jlomanus ; es- pecially when the consul is introduced in THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. 383 his military character. I mean to say that the words king, sultan, regent, etc., or any other titles of those who embody in their own persons the collective majesty of a great people, had less power over my reverential feelings. I had also, though no great reader of history, made myself minutely and crit- ically familiar with one period of English history, viz., the period of the parliamentary war, having been attracted by the moral grandeur of some who figured in that day, and by the many interesting memoirs which survived those unquiet times. Both these parts of my lighter reading, having fur- nished me often with matter of reflection, now furnished me with matter for my dreams. Often I used to see, after painting upon the black darkness, a sort of rehearsal whilst waking, a crowd of ladies, and perhaps a festival, and dances. And I heard it said, or I said to myself, u These are English ladies from the unhappy times of Charles I. These are the wives and the daughters of those who met in peace, and sat at the same tables, and were allied by marriage or by blood ; and yet, after a certain day in Au- gust, 1042, never smiled upon each other again, nor met but in the field of battle ; and at Marston Moor, at Newbury. or at Naseby, cut asunder all ties of love by the cruel sabre, and washed away in blood the memory of ancient friendship." The ladies danced and looked as lovely as the court of George IV. Yet I knew, even in my dream, that they had been in the grave for nearly two centuries. This pageant would suddenly dissolve ; and, at a clapping of hands, would be heard the heart-quaking sound of Consul Romanus ; and immediately came " sweep- ing by," in gorgeous paludaments, Paulus or Marius, girt round by a company of cen- turions, with the crimson tunic hoisted on a spear, and followed by the Alalagmos of the lloinan legions. Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's Antiquities of Rome, Mr. Cole- ridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of plates by that artist, called his Dreams, and which record the scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account) repre- sented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts of engines and ma- chinery, w r heels, cables, pulleys, levers, cata- pults, etc., etc., expressive of enormous power put forth, and resistance overcome. Creep- ing along the sides of the walls, you per- ceived a staircase ; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little farther, and you perceive it came to a sudden abrupt termination, without any balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the extremity, except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of Piranesi, you sup- pose, at least, that his labours must in some way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is per- ceived, by this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld ; and again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and so on, until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self- reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early stage of my malady, the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly architectural ; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was never yet beheld by the waking eye, unless in the clouds. From a great modern poet I cite part of a passage which describes, as an appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its circumstances I saw frequently in sleep: "The appearance, instantaneously disclosed, Was of a mighty city boldly say A wilderness of building, sinking far And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth, Far sinking into splendour without end ! Fabric it seem'd of diamond and of gold, With alabaster domes, and silver spires, And blazing terrace upon terrace, high Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright In avenues disposed, there towns begirt With battlements that on their restless fronts Bore stars illumination of all gems ! By earthly nature had the effect been wrought Upon the dark materials of the storm Now pacified : on them and on the cones, And mountain-steeps and summits whereunto The vapours had receded, taking there Their station under a cerulean sky," etc., etc. The sublime circumstances " battlements that on their restless fronts bore stars" might have been copied from my architect- ural dreams, for it often occurred. We hear it reported of Dryden, and of Fuseli in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the sake of obtaining splen- did dreams : how much better for such a purpose to have eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any poet is recorded to have done, except the dramatist Shadwell : and in ancient days, Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium. To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of water : these haunted me so much, that I feared (though possibly it will appear ludicrous to a medi- cal man) that some dropsical state or ten- dency of the brain might thus be making 384 THOMAS DE QUINCE Y. itself (to use a metaphysical word) object- ive; and the sentient organ project itself us its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physi- cally I mean), that I used to say of it, as the last Lord Oxford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, except rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However, I got over this attack, though it must have been verging on some- thing very dangerous. The waters now changed their character, from translucent lakes, shining like mir- rors, they now became seas and oceans. And now came a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll, through many months, promised an abiding torment ; and, in fact, it never left me until the wind- ing-up of my case. Hitherto the human face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically, nor with any special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may, now it was that upon the rocking waves of the ocean the human face began to appear : the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens, faces, imploring, wrathful, de- spairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries. My agitation was infinite, my mind tossed, and surged with the ocean. The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every night, through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know not whether others share in my feelings on this point; but I have often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to live in China and among Chinese manners and modes of life and scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep ; and some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia, in general, is the seat of awful images and as- sociations. As the cradle of the human race, it would alone have a dim and rever- ential feeling connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend that the wild, barbarous, and capricious super- stitions of Africa, or of savage tribes else- where, affect him in the way that he is affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions of Indostan, etc. The mere antiquity of Asiatic tilings, of their in- stitutions, histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive, that to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes that have flowed apart, and refused to mix through such immemorial tracts of time ; nor can any man fail to be awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes much to these feelings, that Southern Asia is, and has been for thou- sands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human life, the great of- ficina gentium. Man is a weed in those re- gions. The vast empires, also, into which the enormous population of Asia has always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings associated with all Oriental names or images. In China, over and above what it has in common with the rest of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter ab- horrence, and want of sympathy, placed between us by feelings deeper than I can analyze. I could sooner live with lunatics or brutal animals. AH this, and much more than I can say, or have time to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights, I brought together all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages and ap- pearances, that are found in all tropical re- gions, and assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pa- godas : and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms : I was the idol ; I was the priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia ; Vishnu hated me ; Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Iris and Osiris, I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the croco- dile trembled at. I was buried for a thou- sand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers, at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds and Nilotic mud. I thus give the reader some slight abstrac- tion of my Oriental dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the mon- strous scenery, that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that swal- lowed up the astonishment, and left me, not RICHARD WHATELT. 385 so much in terror, as in hatred and abomi- nation at what I saw. Over every form, and threat, and punishment, and dim, sightless incarceration, brooded a sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppres- sion as of madness. Into these dreams only, it was, with one or two slight exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror en- tered. All before had been moral and spirit- ual terrors. But here the main agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles, espe- cially the last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped some- times, and found myself in Chinese houses, with cane tables, etc. All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon became instinct with life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes, looked out at me, mul- tiplied into a thousand repetitions : and I stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous reptile haunt my dreams, that many times the very same dream was broken up in the very same way : I heard gentle voices speaking to me (I hear every- thing when I am sleeping) ; and instantly I awoke : it was broad noon ; and my chil- dren were standing, hand in hand, at my bedside, come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest, that so .awful was the transition from the damned crocodile, and the other unutterable mon- sters and abortions of my dreams to the sight of innocent human natures, and of in- fancy, that, in the mighty and sudden revul- sion of mind, I wept, and could not forbear, as I kissed their faces. ... As a final speci- men, I cite a dream of a different character from 1820: The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams, a music of preparation and of awakening sus- pense, a music like the opening of the Coro- nation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the feeling of a vast march, of infinite cav- alcades filing off, and the tread of innumer- able armies. The morning was come of a mighty day, a day of crises and of final hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity. Somewhere, I knew not where, somehow, I knewnot how, by some beings, I knew not whom, a battle, a strife, an agony was conducting, was evolving like a great drama, or piece of music, with which my sympathy was the more insup- portable from my confusion as to its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make ourselves central to every move- ment), had the power, and yet had not the 25 power, to decide it. I had the power, if I could raise myself, to will it; and yet again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. " Deeper than ever plum- met sounded," I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some greater interest was at stake ; some mightier cause than ever yet the sword had pleaded or trum- pet had proclaimed. Then came the sudden alarms ; hurryings to and fro ; trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad ; darkness and lights; tempests and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me. and but a mo- ment allowed and clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then everlast- ing farewells ! and with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound was reverberated everlasting farewells ; and again, and yet again rever- berated everlasting farewells ! And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, " I will sleep no more !" Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. RICHARD WHATELY, D.D., born in London, 1787, Fellow of Oriel Col- lege, 1811, Principal of St. Alban Hall, Ox- ford, 1825, Professor of Political Economy, Oxford, 1830, Archbishop of Dublin and Bishop of Glendalagh. 1831, Bishop of Kil- dare, 1846, died in Dublin, Oct. 8, 1863. Works: Historic Doubts relative to Napo- leon Bonaparte, Lond., 1819, 8vo (anon.), 12th edit., 1849, 12mo; The Christian's Duty with Respect to the Established Gov- ernment and the Laws Considered, in Three Sermons, 1821, 8vo ; The Use and Abuse of Party Feeling in Matters of Religion Con- sidered, in Eight Sermons: Bampton Lec- ture, Oxf., 1822, 8vo. 4th edit,, with addi- tions, 1839, 8vo; Essays (First Series) on some of the Peculiarities of the Christian Religion, Oxf., 1825, 8vo, 7th edit., Lond., 1860, 8vo; Elements of Logic, Lond., 1827, 8vo, 10th edit., 1850, demy 8vo, new edit., 1864. post 8vo; Elements of Rhetoric, Oxf., 1828, 8vo, 7th edit., Lond., 1846, demy 8vo r new edit., 1857, crown 8vo : Essays (Second Series) on some of the Difficulties in the Writings of the Apostle Paul, and in other Parts of the New Testament, Lond., 1828, 8vo, 8th edit., 1865, Svo; A View of the Scripture Revelations concerning a Future State, etc., Lond., 1829, 12mo, 9th edit, 1870, fp. 8vo; Essays (Third Series): The 386 RICHARD WHATELT. Errors of Romanism traced to their Origin in Human Nature, Lond., 1830, 8vo, 5th edit., 1856 ; Introductory Lectures on Polit- ical Economy, etc., Lond., 1831, 8vo, 4th edit., 1855, 8vo; Essays on some of the Dangers to Christian Faith, etc., Lond., 1839, 8vo, 10th edit., 1857, 8vo; The King- dom of Christ Delineated in Two Essays, Lond., 1841, 8vo, 5th edit., 1851, 8vo, 6th edit., 8vo ; Introductory Lessons on Chris- tian Evidences, 3d edit., Lond., 1843, 12mo, 8th edit., by T. Arden, 1868, 18mo ; Easy Lessons on Reasoning, 1843, 12mo, 8th edit., 1857, 12mo; Lectures on the History of Re- ligious Worship, Lond., 1847, 12rno, 2d edit., 1849, 12mo, new edit , 1867, 12mo; Treatise on Logic (from the Encyclopaedia Metropoli- tana), Lond., 1849, crown 8vo ; Treatise on Rhetoric (from the Encyclopaedia Metropoli- tana), Lond., 1849, crown 8vo ; Introductory Lessons on the Study of St. Paul's Epistles, 1849, 18mo; Scripture Revelations concern- ing Good and Evil Angels, Lond., 1851, 12mo, 2d edit., 1855, 12mo; Lectures on the Characters of Our Lord's Apostles, Lond., 1851, 12mo ; Cautions for the Times, Lond., 1853, 8vo, 3d edit,, 1868, 8vo; Principles of Elocution, 1854, 12mo; Bacon's Essays: with Annotations, Lond., 1856, 8vo, 6th edit., 1864, 8vo ; Bacon's Essays : a Lecture, Lond., 1856, 8vo ; Introductory Lessons o'n Mind, Bost., 1859, 12mo, 1868, 12mo; In- troductory Lessons on Morals, Lond., 1860, 12mo: Paley's Moral Philosophy, with An- notations, Lond., 1859, 8vo ; Paley's View of the Evidences of Christianity, with An- notations, Lond., 1859, 8vo, 1861, 8vo; Dr. Paley's Works : a Lecture, Lond., 1859, 8vo ; Introductory Lessons on the British Consti- tution, Lond.. 1859, l'2ino ; Lectures on some of the Parables, Lond., 1859, 12mo; General View of the Rise, Progress, and Corruptions of Christianity (from Encyc. Brit., 8th edit.), with a Sketch of the Life of the Author, and a Catalogue of his Writings, New York, 1860, 12mo; Miscel- laneous Lectures and Reviews, now first collected, Lond., 1861, demy 8vo. See also: Detached Thoughts and Apophthegms ex- tracted from some of the Writings of Arch- bishop Whately, First Series, Lond., 1855, 12mo ; Selections from the Writings of Arch- bishop Whately, comprising his Thoughts and Apophthegms, Lond., 1856, fp. 8vo, 1858, fp. 8vo ; Miscellaneous Remains, Ed- ited by Miss E. J. Whately, Lond., 1864, crown 8vo, 3d edit., 1865, crown 8vo ; The Earlier Remains of Archbishop Whately, Lond., 1864, post 8vo ; Memoirs of Arch- bishop Whately. by W. Fitzpatrick, 1864, 2 vols. crown 8vo ; The Life and Correspond- ence of Archbishop Whately, by [his daugh- ter] E. Jane Whately, with two portraits, Lond., 1866, 2 vols. 8vo, Papular Edition, 1866, crown 8vo. He also published many pamphlets, sermons, charges, etc., and contributed to periodicals, etc. "To great powers of argument and illustration, and delightful transparency of diction and style, h-e adds a higher quality still, and a very rare quality it is, an evident and intense honesty 01' purpose, an absorbing desire to arrive nt the exact truth and to state it with perfect f;iirnoss and with the just limitations." HENRY ROGERS: Edir liev., xc. (Oct. 1849), 301, n. FRIENDSHIPS IN HEAVEN. I am convinced that the extension and perfection of friendship will constitute great part of the future happiness of the blest. Many have lived in various and distant ages and countries, perfectly adapted (I mean not merely in their being generally estimable, but in the agreement of their tastes ami suitableness of dispositions) for friendship with each other, but who, of course, could never meet in this world. Many a one se- lects, when he is reading historv. a truly pious Christian, most especially 'in reading sacred history, some one or two favourite characters, with whom he feels that a per- sonal acquaintance would have been pecu- liarly delightful to him. Why should not such a desire be realized in a future state? A wish to see and personally know, for ex- ample, the Apostle Paul, or John, is the most likely to arise in the noblest and purest mind. I should be sorry to think such a wish absurd and presumptuous, or unlikely to be gratified. The highest enjoyment, doubtless, to the blest, will be the personal knowledge of their divine and beloved Mas- ter; yet I cannot but think that some part of their happiness will consist in an intimate knowledge of the greatest of his followers also; and of those of them in particular whose peculiar qualities are, to each, the most peculiarly attractive. In this world, again, our friendships are limited not only to those who live in the same age and country, but to a small portion only even of those who are not unknown to us, and whom we know to be estimable and amiable, and who, we feel, might have been among our dearest friends. Our command of time and leisure to cultivate friendships im- poses a limittotheirextent: they are bounded rather by the occupation of our thoughts than of our affections. And the removal of such impediments in a better world seems to me a most desirable and a most probable change. I see no reason, again, why those who have been dearest friends on earth should not, when admitted to that happy state, continue to be so, with full knowledge and recollec- tion of their former friendship. If a man is CHARLES PHILLIPS. 387 still to continue (as there is every reason to suppose) a social being and capable of friendship, it seems contrary to all proba- bility that he should cast off or forget his former friends, who are partakers with him of the like exaltation. He will, indeed, be greatly changed from what he was on earth, and unfitted, perhaps, for friendship with such a being as one of us is Now ; but his friend will have undergone (by supposition) a corresponding change. And as we have seen those who have been loving playfellows in childhood, grow up, if they grow up with good, and with like, dispositions, into still closer friendship in riper years, so also it is probable that when this our state of child- hood shall be perfected, in the maturity of a better world, the like attachment will con- tinue between those companions who have trod together the Christian path to glory, and have " taken sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of God as friends." A change to indifference towards those who have fixed their hearts on the same objects with ourselves during this earthly pilgrim- age, and have given and received mutual aid during their course, is a change as little, I trust, to be expected, as it is to be desired. It certainly is not such a change as the Scriptures teach us to prepare for. CHARLES PHILLIPS, born at Sligo, Ireland, 1787, admitted to the University of Dublin, 1802, entered the Middle Temple, 1807. called to the Irish bar, 1811, and to the English bar 1821, Com- missioner of Bankruptcy at Liverpool, 1842, and a Commissioner of the Court of Insol- vent Debtors, 1846, until his death, 1859. He acquired great reputation at the bar for impassioned, flowery eloquence. The Conso- lations of Erin, a Poem, 1811, 4to, Lond., 1818, 4to ; The Loves of Celestine and St. Aubert, a Romantic Tale, Lond., 1811, 2 vols. 12mo; The Emerald Isle, a Poem, Lond., 1812, 4to, New York, 1813, ]2mo. Lond., 1818, 8vo ; Historical Character of Napoleon, Lond., 1817, 8vo ; The Lament of the Emerald Isle [for the Princess Char- lotte], 1817, 8vo, 6th edit., Lond., 1818, 8vo : Speeches Delivered at the Bar and on Sev- eral Public Occasions in Ireland and Eng- land, Lond., 1817, 8vo, 1822, 8vo, 1839, 8vo, New York, 1817. 8vo, Phila., 1818, 8vo; Recollections of John Philpot Curran and some of his Contemporaries, Lond., 1818, 8vo, 5th edit., 1857, post 8vo, New York, 1818, 8vo ; Specimens of Irish Eloquence, etc. [with Biographical Notices of Burke, Curran, Plunkett, Flood], Lond., 1819, 8vo, New York, 1820, 8vo ; The Queen's Case Stated in an Address to the King, Lond., 1820, 8vo; Historical Sketch of "Arthur, Duke of Wellington, Brighton, 1852, 8vo ; Napoleon the Third. Lond., 1854, 8vo ; Thoughts on Capital Punishments, Lond., 1857, 8vo, 4th edit., 1859, 8vo, new edit., 1866, demy 8vo (see Brief Reply to, etc., by Rev. J. W. Watkin, Lond., 1858, 8vo). See Speeches of Phillips, Curran, and Grattan, Phila., 1831, 8vo, 1846, 8vo; Lond. Gent. Mag., 1859, i.434 (Obituary), and Allibone's Grit. Dictionary of English Lit., ii. 1581 (Phillips's Defence of Courvoisier). " O'Garnish's style is pitiful to the last degree. He ought by common consent to be driven from the bar." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH TO A. H. EVERETT: N. Amei: Review, Oct. 1832, 448, n. " Charles Phillips was worth a gross of Shells. There were frequent flashes of fine imagination, and strains of genuine feeling in his speeches, that showed Nature intended him for an orator. In the midst of his most tedious and tasteless exaggera- tions, you still feel that Charles Phillips had a heart," etc. CHRISTOPHER NORTH: Noctes Am- bros., Dee. 1828: Bla-'kio. Mag., xxiv. 703, See alsoxii. 58 ; Moore's Memoirs, etc., vii. 1856, 44. CHARACTER OP NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. He is fallen ! We may now pause be- fore that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind bold, independent, and decisive, a will despotic in its dictates, an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character, the most extraordinary, perhaps, that, in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. Flung into life in the midst of a Revolu- tion that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledged no superior, he com- menced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity ! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the lists where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, .and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest, he ac- knowledged no criterion but success, he worshipped no God but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate ; in the hope of a dy- nasty, he upheld the Crescent; for the sake 388 CHARLES PHILLIPS. of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross : the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the Republic: and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the tribune, he reared the fabric of his despotism. A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope ; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country ; and in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Coesars I Through this pantomime of his policy, Fortune played the crown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theo- ries took the colour of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appear- ance of victory, his flight from Egypt con- firmed his destiny ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent ; decision flashed upon his councils ; and it was the same to decide and perform. To inferior intellects his combina- tions appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable : but in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook the character of his mind, if the one never yielded in the cab- inet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount, space no opposition that he did not spurn ; and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity ! The whole continent of Europe trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance ; romance assumed the air of history ; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, Avhen the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most an- cient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became common places in his contemplation ; kings were his people nations were his out- posts ; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board ! Amidst all these changes he stood immut- able as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field or the drawing-room, with the mob or the levee, wearing the Jacobin bon- net or the iron crown. banishing a Bra- ganza or espousing a Ilapsburg, dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leip- <*ic, he was still the same military despot ! Cradled in the camp, he Avas to the last hour the darling of the army ; and whether in the camp or the cabinet, lie never forsook a friend or forgot a favour. Of all his sol- diers, not one abandoned him, till affection was useless, and their first stipulation was for the safety of their favourite. They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodigal of himself 5 and that if he exposed them to peril, he repaid them with plunder. For the soldier he subsidized every body ; to the people he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious veteran glittered with his gains; and the capital, gorgeous with the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must not be omitted. The goaler of the press, he affected the patron- age of letters, the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy. the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning! the assassin of Palm, the silencer of l)e Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consist- ency, were never united in the same char- acter. A Royalist a Republican and an Emperor a Mahometan a Catholic and a patron of the Synagogue a subaltern and a Sovereign a Traitor and a Tyrant a Christian and an Infidel he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original, the same mysterious in- comprehensible self, the man without a model, and without a shadow. His fall, like his life, baffled all specula- tion. In short, his whole history was like a dream to the world, and no man can tell how or why he was awakened from the rev- erie. Such is a faint and feeble picture of Na- poleon Bonaparte, the first Emperor of the French. That he has done much evil there is little doubt; that he has been the origin of much good, there is just as little. Through his means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France have risen to the blessings of a free constitution ; Superstition has found her grave in the ruins of the Inquisition, and the feudal system, with its whole train of tyrannic satellites, has fled forever. Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their noblest, is the interest of the people ; the people are taught by him that there is no despotism so stupendous against which they have not a resource ; and to those who would rise upon the ruins of FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. 389 both, he is a living lesson that if aml>ition can raise them from the lowest station, it can also prostrate them from the highest. Speeches Delivered at the Bar, etc., edit. 1822, 8vo. FRANCOIS PIERRE GUIL- LAUME GUIZOT, horn at Nismes, France, 1787, hecame Min- ister of Foreign Affairs under Louis Phil- ippe in 1840, and retained his power until the revolution of February, 1848, of which his obstinacy in opposing electoral reform was one of the chief causes. Died Sept. 13, 1874. Among his works are the following: Es- sai sur 1'IIistoire de France: complement mix Observations de Mably, Paris, 1823. 8vo ; Histoire Generate de la Civilisation en Europe et en France depuis la Chute de 1'Erapire Remain jusqu'a la Revolution Fran- caise, 7e [8eJ edit., 1859 et 1860, 5 vols. 8vo. et 12mo; Histoire de Charles I. (1625- 49). 5e edit., 1854, 2 vols. 8vo ; Ilistoire de la llepublique d'Angleterre et de Cromwell (1649-58), 1854, 2 vols. 8vo ; Ilistoire du Protectorat de Richard Cromwell et du Re- tablissement des Stuarts (1659-69), 1856, 2 vols. 8vo ; Monk : Chute de la Republique et Retablissement de la Monarchic en An- gleterre en 1660: Etudes llistorique, 1853, 8vo ; Portraits Politiques des Principaux Personnages des divers Parties, Parlemen- taires, Cavaliers, Republicains, Nivelenrs: Etudes Historiques, 1853, 8vo; Etudes sur 1'IIistoire de la Revolution d'Angleterre, 1854, 2 vols. 8vo ; Corneille et son Temps: Etude Litteraire, 1852, 8vo : Shakspeare et son Temps : Etude Litte>aire, 1852, 8vo ; Sir Robert Peel : Etude llistorique Contempo- raine, etc., 1856, 8vo ; Memoirs pour servir a 1'IIistoire de inon Temps, 8vo (in English, Lond., 1858-61, 4 vols. 8vo) ; Collection des Memoires relatifs a 1'IIistoire de France, jusqu'au 13c Siecle, Paris, 1823-35, 31 vols. 8vo; Collection des M6moires relatifs a la Revolution d'Angleterre, Paris, 1827, 25 vols. 8vo. For notices of Guizot and his works, see Nouvelle Biog. G6nerale, lloefer, xxii. (1859), 807-831 (by Lerminier) ; Que- rard's La France Litteraire. " Among this band of great and honourable men we think that M. Guizot will retain in history, as he has occupied in life, the first and highest place. . . . But in the depth and variety of his literary labours, which have enlarged the philosophy of history, in the force and precision of his oratory, which at one swoop could bend an assembly or crush a foe, and in the systematic consistency of his whole political life, . . . M. Guizot has had no equal, either in his own country or, as far as we know, in any other." Edin. Review, Oct. 1858. CIVILIZATION. For a long period, and in many countries, the word civilization has been in use ; people have attached to the word ideas more or less clear, more or less comprehensive ; hut there it is in use, and those who use it. attach some meaning or other to it. It is the gen- eral, human, popular meaning of this word that we must study. There is almost always in the usual acceptation of the most general terms, more accuracy than in the definitions, apparently more strict, more precise, of sci- ence. It is common sense which gives to words their ordinary signification, and com- mon sense is the characteristic of humanity. The ordinary signification of a word is formed by gradual progress, and in the con- stant presence of facts ; so that when a fact presents itself which seems to come within the meaning of a known term, it is received into it, as it were, naturally; the significa- tion of the term extends itself, expands, and by degrees, the various facts, the various ideas which from the nature of the things themselves men should include under this word, are included. When the meaning of a word, on the other hand, is determined by science, this deter- mination, the work of one individual, or of a small number of individuals, takes place under the influence of some particular fact which has struck upon the mind. Thus, scientific definitions are, in general, much more narrow, and hence, much less accurate, much less true, at bottom, than the popular meanings of the terms. In studying as a fact the meaning of the word civilization, in investigating all the ideas which are com- prised within it, according to the common sense of mankind, we shall make greater progress towards a knowledge of the fact itself, than by attempting to give it ourselves a scientific definition, however more clear and precise the latter might appear at first. I will commence this investigation by en- deavouring to place before you some hy- potheses : I will describe a certain number of states of society, and we will then inquire whether general instinct would recognize in them the condition of a people civilizing itself: whether we recognize in them the meaning which mankind attaches to the word civilization ? First, suppose a people whose external life is easy, is full of physical comfort ; they pay few taxes, they are free from suffering ; justice is well administered in their private relations, in a word, material existence is for them altogether happy, and happily reg- ulated. But at the same time, the intel- lectual and moral existence of this people is studiously kept in a state of torpor and in 390 FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. activity ; of, I will not say, oppression, for they do not understand the feeling, but of compression. We are not without instances of this state of things. There has been a great number of small aristocratic repub- lics in which the people have been thus treated like flocks of sheep, well kept and materially happy, but without moral and in- tellectual activity. Is this civilization? Is this a people civilizing itself? Another hypothesis: here is a people whose material existence is less easy, less comfortable, but still supportable. On the other hand, moral and intellectual wants have not been neglected, a certain amount of mental pasture has been served out to them ; elevated, pure sentiments are culti- vated in them ; their religious and moral views have attained a certain degree of de- velopment ; but great care is taken to stifle in them the principle of liberty; the intel- lectual and moral wants, as in the former case the material wants, .are satisfied: each man has meted out to him his portion of truth ; no one is permitted to seek it for himself. Immobility is the characteristic of moral life ; it is the state into which have fallen most of the populations of Asia ; wherever theocratic dominations keep hu- manity in check ; it is the state of the Hin- doos, for example. I ask the same question here as before : is this a people civilizing itself? I change altogether the nature of the hypothesis : here is a people among whom is a great display of individual liberties, but where disorder and inequality are excessive: it is the empire of force and of chance; every man, if he is not strong, is oppressed, suffers, perishes ; violence is the predomi- nant feature of the social state. No one is ignorant that Europe has passed through this state. Is this a civilized state? It may, doubtless, contain principles of civilization which will develop themselves by successive degrees ; but the fact which dominates in such a society is, assuredly, not that which the common sense of mankind calls civil- ization. I take a fourth and last hypothesis : the liberty of each individual is very great, in- equality amongst them is rare, and at all events, very transient. Every man does very nearly just what he pleases, and differs little in power from his neighbour; but there are very few general interests, very few public ideas, very little society, in a word, the faculties and existence of individ- uals appear and then pass away, wholly apart and without acting upon each other, or leaving any trace behind them ; the suc- cessive generations leave society at the same point at which they found it : this is the state of savage tribes : liberty and equality are there, but assuredly not civilization. I might multiply these hypotheses, but I think we have before us enough to explain what is the popular and natural meaning of the word civilization. It is clear that none of the states I have sketched corresponds, according to the na- tural good sense of mankind, to this term. Why? It appears to me that the first fact comprised in the word civilization (and this results from the different examples I have rapidly placed before you), is the fact of progress, of development: it presents at once the idea of a people marching onward, not to change its place, but to change its condition ; of a people whose culture is con- dition itself, and ameliorating itself. The idea of progress, of development, appears to me the fundamental idea contained in the word, civilization. What is this progress ? What this development? Herein is the greatest difficulty of all. The etymology of the word would seem to answer in a clear and satisfactory man- ner: it says that it is the perfecting of civil life, the development of society, properly so called, of the relations of men among themselves. Such is, in fact, the first idea which pre- sents itself to the understanding when the word civilization is pronounced : we at once figure forth to ourselves the extension, the greatest activity, the best organization of the social relations : on the one hand, an increasing production of the means of giv- ing strength and happiness to society ; on the other, a more equitable distribution, amongst individuals, of the strength and happiness produced. Is this all? Have we then exhausted all the natural, ordinary meaning of the word civilization? Does the fact contain nothing more than this? It is almost as if we asked : Is the human species after all a mere ant-hill, a society in which all that is required is order and phys- ical happiness, in which the greater the amount of labour, and the more equitable the division of the fruits of labour, the more surely is the object attained, the progress accomplished? Our instinct at once feels repugnant to so narrow a definition of human destiny. It feels at the first glance, that the word civil- ization comprehends something more exten- sive, more complex, something superior to the simple perfection of the social relations, of social power and happiness. Fact, public opinion, the generally re- ceived meaning of the term, are in accord- ance with this instinct. Take Rome in the palmy days of the re- FRANCOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. 391 public, after the second Punic war, at the time of its greatest virtues, when it was marching to the empire of the world, when its social state was evidently in progress. Then take Rome under Augustus, at the epoch when her decline began, when, at all events, the progressive movement of society was arrested, when evil principles were on the eve of prevailing: yet there is no one Avho does not think and say that the Koine of Augustus was more civilized than the Home of Fabricius or of Cincinnatus. Let us transport ourselves beyond the Alps : let us take the France of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries: it is evi- dent that in a social point of view, consider- ing the actual amount and distribution of happiness amongst individuals, the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was inferior to some other countries of Eu- rope, to Holland and to England, for ex- ample. I believe that in Holland and in England the social activity was greater, was increasing more rapidly, distributing its fruit more fully, than in France; yet fisk general good sense, and it will say that the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the most civilized country in Europe. Europe has not hesitated in her affirmative reply to the question : traces of this public opinion, as to France, are found in all the monuments of European literature. We might point out many other states in which the prosperity is greater, is of more rapid growth, is better distributed amongst individuals than elsewhere, and in which, nevertheless, by the spontaneous instinct, the general good sense of men, the civilization is judged inferior to that of countries not so well portioned out in a purely social sense. What does this mean? What advantages do these latter countries possess? What is it gives them, in the character of civilized countries, this privilege? What so largely compensates in the opinion of mankind for what they so lack in other respects? A development other than that of social life has been gloriously manifested by them ; the development of the individual, internal life, the development of man himself, of his faculties, his sentiments, his ideas. If so- ciety with them be less perfect than else- Avhere, humanity stands forth in more gran- deur and power. There remain, no doubt, many social conquests to be made ; but im- mense intellectual and moral conquests are accomplished; worldly goods, social rights, are wanting to many men ; but many great men live and shine in the eyes of the world. Letters, sciences, the arts, display .all their splendour. Wherever mankind beholds these great signs, these signs glorified by human nature, wherever it sees created these treas- ures of sublime enjoyment, it there recognizes and names civilization. Two facts, then, are comprehended in this great fact; it subsists on two conditions, and manifests itself by two symptoms: the development of social activity, and that of individual activity ; the progress of society and the progress of hu- manity. Wherever the external condition of man extends itself, vivifies, ameliorates itself; wherever the internal nature of man displays itself with lustre, with grandeur; at these two signs, and often despite the profound imperfection of the social state, mankind with loud applause proclaims civ- ilization. Such, if I do not deceive myself, is the re- sult of simple and purely common-sense ex- amination of the general opinion of man- kind. If we interrogate history, properly so called, if we examine what is the nature of the great crises of civilization, of those facts which, by universal consent, have pro- pelled it onward, we shall constantly recog- nize one or other of the two elements I have just described. They are always crises of individual or social development, facts which have changed the internal man, his creed, his manners, or his external condition, his position in his relation with his fellows. Christianity, for example, not merely on its first appearance, but during the first stages of its existence, Christianity in no degree addressed itself to the social state ; it an- nounced aloud that it would not meddle with the social state; it ordered the slave to obey his master; it attacked none of the great evils, the great wrongs, of the society of that period. Yet who will deny that Christianity was a great crisis of civiliza- tion? Why was it so? Because it changed the internal man, creeds, sentiments; be- cause it regenerated the moral man, the intellectual man. We have seen a crisis of another nature, a crisis which addressed itself, not to the internal man, but to his external condition ; one which changed and regenerated society. This also was assuredly one of the decisive crises of civilization. Look through all his- tory,' you will find everywhere the same re- sult; you will meet with no important fact instrumental in the development of civiliza- tion, which has not exercised one or other of the two sorts of influence I have spoken of. Such, if I mistake not, is the natural and popular meaning of the term ; you have here the fact, I will not say defined, but de- scribed, verified almost completely, or, at all events, in its general features. We have here before us the two elements of civiliza- tion. Now comes the question, Would one of these two suffice to constitute it; would the development of the social state, the de- 392 GEORGE COMBE. velopment of the individual man, separately presented, be civilization? Would the hu- man race recognize it as such ? or have the two facts so intimate and necessary a rela- tion between them, that if they are not simultaneously produced, they are notwith- standing inseparable, and sooner or later one brings on the other? We might, as it appears to me, approach this question on three several sides. We might examine the nature itself of the two elements of civilization, and ask ourselves, whether by that alone, they are or are not closely united with, and necessary to each other. We might inquire of history whether they had manifested themselves isolately, apart the one from the other, or whether they had invariably produced the one the other. We may, lastly, consult upon this question the common opinion of mankind common sense. History of Civilization in Europe, trans- lated Inj William Hazlilt, edit. Bohn, 1856, i. 11-13. OLIVER CROMWELL. Cromwell died in the plenitude of his power and greatness. lie had succeeded be- yond all expectation, far more than any other of those men has succeeded, who, by their genius, have raised themselves, as he had done, to supreme authority ; for he had attempted and accomplished, with equal suc- cess, the most opposite designs. During eighteen years that he had been an ever- victorious actor on the world's stage, he had alternately sown disorder and established order, effected and punished revolution, overthrown and restored government, in his country. At every moment, under all cir- cumstances, he had distinguished with ad- mirable sagacity the dominant interests and passions of his time, so as to make them the instruments of his own rule, careless whether he belied his antecedent conduct, so long as he triumphed in concert with the popular instinct, and explaining the incon- sistencies of his conduct by the ascendant unity of his power. He is, perhaps, the only example which history affords of one man having governed the most opposite events, and proved sufficient for the most various destinies. And in the course of his violent and changeful career, incessantly ex- posed to all kinds of enemies and conspira- cies, Cromwell experienced this crowning favour of Fortune, that his life was never actually attacked : the sovereign against W 7 hom Killing had been declared to be No Murder, never found himself face to face with an assassin. The world has never known another example of success at once so constant and so various, or of fortune so invariably favourable, in the midst of such manifold conflicts and perils. Yet Cromwell's death-bed was clouded with gloom. He was unwilling, not only to die, but also, and most of all, to die without having attained his real and final object. However great his egotism may have been, his soul was too great to rest satisfied with the highest fortune, if it were merely per- sonal, and, like himself, of ephemeral, earthly duration. Weary of the ruin he had caused, it was his cherished wish to restore to his country a regular and stable government, the only government which was suited to its wants, a monarchy under the control of Parliament. And at the same time, with an ambition which extended be- yond the grave, under the influence of that thirst for permanence which is the stamp of true greatness, he aspired to leave his name and race in possession of the throne. He failed in both designs : his crimes had raised up obstacles against him, which neither his prudent genius nor his persevering will could surmount-, and though covered, as far as he was himself concerned, with power and glory, he died with his dearest hopes frus- trated, and leaving behind him, as his suc- cessors, the two enemies whom he had so ar- dently combated, anarchy and the Stuarts. God does not grant to those great men, who have laid the foundations of their great- ness amidst disorder and revolution, the power of regulating at their pleasure, and for succeeding ages, the government of nations. History of Oliver Cromwell and the English Commonwealth, etc., Vol. ii. Hook viii. GEORGE COMBE, a brother of Andrew Combe, M.D., infra, and born in 1788 in Edinburgh, where for twenty-five years he practised law, in 1816 became a hearer, and soon after a disciple, of Spurzheim, and advocated phrenology with great zeal in the United States (1838- 40) and elsewhere; died 1858. Essays on Phrenology, Edin., 1819, 8vo, 5th edit., A System of Phrenology, 1843, 2 vols. 8vo ; Outlines of Phrenology, 4th edit., Edin., 1859, 8vo ; The Constitution of Man con- sidered in Relation to External Objects, Edin., 1828, 12mo, 8th edit., 1848, post 8vo (also in French, German, and Swedish) ; Letters on the Prejudices of the Great in Science and Philosophy against Phrenology, Edin., 1829, 8vo ; Elements of Phrenology, 7th edit., Edin., 1849, 12mo; Lectures on Popular Education, Bost., 1834, 12mo, 3d GEORGE COMBE. 393 edit., 1848, p. 8vo ; On the Functions of the Cerebellum, from the French, Edin., 1838, 8vo ; Notes on the United States of North America, 1838-40, 1841, 3 vols. p. 8vo ; Lec- tures on Phrenology, etc., New York, 1839, 12mo, new edit., 1847, post 8vo ; Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 3d edit., 1846, p. 8vo ; llemarks on the Principles of Criminal Legis- lation, etc., Lond., 1854, 8vo; Phrenology Applied to Painting and Sculpture, Lond. and Edin., 8vo; Science and Religion, 1857, 8vo. lie also published a pamphlet on Cur- rency, etc. See Edin. Review, Sept. 1826, North Brit. Review, May, 1852 ; Fraser's Mag., Nov. 1840. DISTINCTION BETWEEN POWER AND ACTIVITY. There is a great distinction between power and activity of mind ; and it is important to keep this difference in view. Power, strictly speaking, is the capability of thinking, feel- ing, or perceiving, however small in amount that capability may be; and in this sense it i.s synonymous with faculty : action is the exercise of power ; while activity denotes the quickness, great or small, with which the action is performed, and also the degree of proneness to act. The distinction between power, action, and activity of the mental facilities is widely recognized by describers of human nature. Thus Cowper says of the more violent affective faculties of man : " His passions, like the watery stores that sleep Beneath the smiling surface of the deep, AVait but the lashes of a wintry storm, To frown, and roar, and shake his feeble form." Hope. Again : " In every heart Are sown the sparks that kindle fiery war; Occasion needs but fan them, and they blaze." The Tank, B. 5. Dr. Thomas Brown, in like manner, speaks of latent propensities ; that is to say, powers not in action. " Vice already formed," says lie, " is almost beyond our power: it is only in the state of latent propensity that we can with much reason expect to overcome it by the moral motives which we are capable of presenting:" and he alludes to the great ex- tent of knowledge of human nature requisite to enable us " to distinguish this propensity before it has expanded itself, and even be- fore it is known to the very mind in which it exists, and to tame those passions which are never to rage." In Crabbe's Tales of the Hall a character is thus described : " He seemed without a passion to proceed, Or one whose passions no correction need ; Yet some believed those passions only slept, And were in bounds by early habits kept.'' "Nature," says Lord Bacon, "will be buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion or temptation ; like as it was with .iEsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her." In short, it is plain that we may have the capability of feeling an emotion, as anger, fear, or pity, and that yet this power may be inactive, insomuch that, at any particular time these emotions may be totally absent from the mind ; and it is no less plain, that we may have the capability of seeing, tasting, calcu- lating, reasoning, and composing music, without actually performing these opera- tions. It is equally easy to distinguish activity from action and power. When power is ex- ercised, the action may be performed with very different degrees of rapidity. Two individuals may each be solving a problem in arithmetic, but one may do so with far greater quickness than the other ; in other words, his faculty of Number may be more easily brought into action. He who solves abstruse problems slowly, manifests much power with little activity ; while he who can quickly solve easy problems, and them alone, has much activity with little power. The man who calculates difficult problems with great speed, manifests in a high degree both power and activity of the faculty of Number. As commonly employed, the word power is synonymous with strength, or much power, instead of denoting mere capacity, whether much or little, to act ; while by activity is usually understood much quick- ness of action, and great proneness to act. As it is desirable, however, to avoid every chance of ambiguity, I shall employ the words power and activity in the sense first before explained ; and to high degrees of power I shall apply the terms energy, in- tensity, strength, or vigour : while to great activity I shall apply the terms vivacity, agility, rapidity, or quickness. In physics, strength is quite distinguish- able from quickness. The balance-wheel of a watch moves with much rapidity, but so slight is its impetus, that a hair would suf- fice to stop it ; the beam of a steam-engine progresses slowly and massively through space, but its energy is prodigiously great. In muscular action these qualities are recognized with equal facility as different. The greyhound bounds over hill and dale with animated agility; but a slight ob- stacle would counterbalance his momentum, and arrest his progress. The elephant, on the other hand, rolls slowly and heavily along; but the impetus of his motion would sweep away an impediment sufficient to re- 394 GEORGE COMBE. sist fifty greyhounds at the summit of their speed. In mental manifestations (considered apart from organization), the distinction between energy and vivacity is equally pal- pable. On the stage Mrs. Siddons and Mr. John Kemble were remarkable for the sol- emn deliberation of their manners, both in declamation and in action, and yet they were splendidly gifted with energy. They carried captive at once the sympathies and the un- derstandings of the audience, and made every man feel his faculties expanding, and his whole mind becoming greater under the in- fluence of their power. Other performers, again, are remarkable for agility of action and elocution, who, nevertheless, are felt to be feeble and ineffective in rousing an audience to emotion. Vivacity is their dis- tinguishing attribute, with an absence of vigour. At the bar, in the pulpit, and in the senate, the same distinction prevails. Many members of the learned professions display great fluency of elocution and felicity of illustration, surprising us with the quick- ness of their parts, who, nevertheless, are felt to be neither impressive nor profound. They exhibit acuteness without depth, and ingenuity without comprehensiveness of understanding. This also proceeds from vivacity with little energy. There are other public speakers, again, who open heavily in debate, their faculties acting slowly but deeply, like the first heave of a mountain wave. Their words fall like minute-guns upon the ear, and to the superficial they ap- pear about to terminate ere they have begun their efforts. But even their first accent is one of power ; it rouses and arrests atten- tion ; their very pauses are expressive, and indicate gathering energy to be embodied in the sentence that is to come. When fairly animated they are impetuous as the torrent, brilliant as the lightning's beam, and over- whelm and take possession of feebler minds, impressing them irresistibly with a feeling of gigantic power. The distinction between vivacity and en- ergy is well illustrated by Cowper in one of his letters : " The mind and body," says he, " have in this respect a striking resemblance of each other. In childhood they are both nimble, but not strong ; they can skip and frisk about with wonderful agility, but hard labour spoils them both. In maturer years they become less active but more vigorous, more capable of fixed application, and can make themselves sport with that which a little earlier would have affected them with intolerable fatigue." Dr. Cliarlton also, in bis Brief Discourse Concerning the Different Wits of Men, has admirably described two characters, in one of which strength is dis- played without vivacity, and in the other vivacity without strength : the latter he calls the man of "nimble wit,' 1 the former the man of "slow but sure wit." In this re- spect the French character may be con- trasted with the Scotch. As a general rule, the largest organs in each head have naturally the greatest, and the smallest the least, tendency to act, and to perform their functions with rapidity. The temperaments also indicate the amount of this tendency. The nervous is the most vivacious, next the sanguine, then the bilious, while the lymphatic is characterized by proneness to inaction. In a lymphatic brain, great size may be present and few manifestations occur through sluggishness ; but if a strong ex- ternal stimulus be presented, energy often appears. If the brain be very small, no de- gree of stimulus, either external or internal, will cause great power to be manifested. A certain combination of organs name- ly, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, Firmness, Acquisitiveness, and Love of Ap- probation, all large is favourable to general vivacity of mind ; and another combination namely, Combativeness, Destructiveness, Hope, Firmness, and Acquisitiveness, small or moderate, with Veneration and Benevo- lence large is frequently attended with sluggishness of the mental character; but the activity of the whole brain is constitu- tionally greater in some individuals than in others, as already explained. It may even happen that, in the same individual, one organ is naturally more active than another, without reference to size, just as the optic nerve is sometimes more irritable than the auditory ; but this is by no means a common occurrence. Exercise greatly increases ac- tivity as well as power, and hence arise the benefits of education. Dr. Spurzheiin thinks that >; long fibres produce more activity, and thick fibres more intensity." The doctrine that size is a measure of power, is not to be held as implying that much power is the only or even the most valuable quality which a mind in all circum- stances can possess. To drag artillery over a mountain, or a ponderous wagon through the streets of London, we would prefer an elephant or a horse of great size and muscu- lar power; while for graceful motion, ngility, and nimbleness, we would select an Arabian palfrey. In like manner, to lead men in gigantic and difficult enterprises, to com mand by native greatness, in perilous times, when law is trampled under foot, to call forth the energies of a people, and direct them against a tyrant at home, or an alliance of tyrants abroad, to stamp the impress of GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON. 395 a single mind upon a nation, to infuse strength into thoughts, and depth into feel- ings, which shall command the homage of enlightened men in evei-y age, in short, to be a Bruce, Bonaparte, Luther, Knox, De- mosthenes, Shakspeare, Milton, or Cromwell, a large brain is indispensably requisite. But to display skill, enterprise, and fidelity in the various professions of civil life, to cultivate with success the less arduous branches of philosophy, to excel in acute- ness, taste, and felicity of expression, to acquire extensive erudition and refined man- ners, a brain of a moderate size is perhaps more suitable than one that is very large : for wherever the energy is intense, it is rare that delicacy, refinement, and taste are present in an equal degree. Individuals possessing moderate-sized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their en- ergy. In ordinary circumstances they dis- tinguish themselves, but they sink when dif- ficulties accumulate around them. Persons with large brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain their appropriate place ; com- mon occurrences do not rouse or call them forth, and, while unknown, they are not trusted with great undertakings. Often, therefore, such men pine and die in ob- scurity. When, however, they attain their proper element, they are conscious of great- ness, and glory in the expansion of their powers. Their mental energies rise in pro- portion to the obstacles to be surmounted, and blaze forth in all the magnificence of self- sustaining energetic genius, on occasions when feebler minds would sink in despair. System of Phrenology. GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON, LORD BYRON, the only child of Captain John Byron, of the Guards, and Catherine Gordon, of Gight, Abenleenshire, was born in London, Jan. 22, 1788 ; succeeded to the title 1798 ; mar- ried Miss Annie Isabella Millbanke, Jan. 2, 1815, who left him Jan. 1816; left England, never to return in life, April 25, 1816; died at Missolonghi, Western Greece, April 19, 1824. As Byron appears in this volume only as a prose writer, we must refer for notices of his poetical works to Allibone's Every -Day Book of Poetry. ALBANIA. PREVISA, November 12, 1809. MY DEAR MOTHER, I have now been some time in Turkey: this place is on the coast, but I have traversed the interior of the prov- ince of Albania on a visit to the pacha. I left Malta in the Spider, a brig of war, on the 21st of September, and arrived in eight days at Previsa. I thence have been about 150 miles, as far as Tepaleen, his highness's country palace, where I staid three days. The name of the pacha is Ali, and he is con- sidered a man of the first abilities ; he gov- erns the w T hole of Albania (the ancient II- lyricum), Epirus, and part of Macedonia. His son, Velly Pacha, to whom he has given me letters, governs the More-a, and he has great influence in Egypt ; in short, he is one of the most powerful men in the Ottoman empire. W'hen I reached Yanina, the cap- ital, after a journey of three days over the mountains, through a country of the most 'picturesque beauty, I found that Ali Pacha was with his army in Illyricum, besieging Ibrahain Pacha in the castle of Berat. He had heard that an Englishman of rank was in his dominions, and had left orders in Yanina, with the commandant, to provide a horse, and supply me with every kind of necessary gratis; and, though I have been allowed to make presents to the slaves, etc., I have not been permitted to pay for a single article of household consumption. I rode out on the vizier's horses, and saw the pal- aces of himself and grandsons : they are splendid, but too much ornamented with silk and gold. I then went over the moun- tains through Zitza, a village with a Greek monastery (where I slept on my return), in the most beautiful situation (always except- ing Cintra, in Portugal) I ever beheld. In nine days I reached Tepaleen. Our journey was much prolonged by the torrents that had fallen from the mountains, and intersected the roads. I shall never forget the singular scene on entering Tepaleen at five in the af- ternoon, as the sun was going down : it brought to my mind (with some change of dress, however) Scott's description of Brank- some Castle in his Lay, and the feudal sys- tem. The Albanians in their dresses (the most magnificent in the world, consisting of a long white kilt, gold-worked cloak, crimson velvet gold-laced jacket and waistcoat, silver- mounted pistols and daggers), the Tartars with their high caps, the Turks in their vast pelisses and turbans, the soldiers and black slaves with the horses, the former in groups in an immense large open gallery in front of the palace, the latter placed in a kind of clois- ter below it, two hundred steeds ready ca- parisoned to move in a moment, couriers entering or passing out with despatches, the kettle-drums beating, boys calling the hour from the minaret of the mosque, altogether, with the singular appearance of the building itself, formed a new and delightful spectacle to a stranger. I was conducted to a very handsome apartment, and my health in- 396 GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON. quired after by the vizier's secretary, "a la mode Turque." The next day I was intro- duced to Ali Pacha. I was dressed in a full suit of staff uniform, with a very magnificent sabre, etc. The vizier received me in a large room paved with marble; a fountain was playing in the centre; the apartment was surrounded by scarlet ottomans, lie re- ceived me standing, a wonderful compli- ment from a Mussulman, and made me sit down on his right hand. I have a Greek in- terpreter for general use, but a physician of Ali's. named Temlario, who understands Latin, acted for me on this occasion. His first question was, why, at so early an age, I left my country (the Turks have no idea of travelling for amusement) ? lie then said, the English minister, Captain Leake, had told him I was of a/great family, and desired his respects to my mother: which I now, in the name of Ali Pacha, present to you. He said he was certain I was a man of birth, because I had small ears, curling hair, and little, white hands, and expressed himself pleased with my appearance and garb. lie told me to consider him as a father whilst I was in Turkey, and said he looked on me as his son. Indeed, he treated me like a child, sending me almonds and sugared sherbet, fruit and sweetmeats, twenty times a day, lie begged me to visit him often, and at night, when he was at leisure. I then, after coffee and pipes, retired for the first time. I saw him thrice afterwards. It is singular that the Tm-ks, who have no hereditary dig- nities, and few great families, except the sultans', pay so much respect to birth; for I found my pedigree more regarded than my title. His highness is sixty years old, very fat, and not tall, but with a fine face, light blue eyes, and a white beard. His manner is very kind, and, at the same time, he pos- sesses that dignity which I find universal among the Turks. He has the appearance of any thing but his real character: for he is a remorseless tyrant, guilty of the most horrible cruelties, very brave, and so good a general, that they call him the Mahometan Buonaparte. Napoleon has twice offered to make him king of Epirus ; but he prefers the English interest, and abhors the French, as he himself told me. He is of so much con- sequence, that he is much courted by both ; the Albanians beine; the most warlike sub- jects of the Sultan, though Ali is only nomi- nally dependent on the Porte. He has been a mighty warrior ; but is as barbarous as he is successful, roasting rebels, etc., etc. Buo- naparte sent him a snuff-box, with his pic- ture ; he said the snuff-box was very well, but the picture he could excuse, as he neither liked it nor the original. His ideas of judg- ing of a man's birth from ears, hands, etc., were curious enough. To me he was indeed a father, giving me letters, guards, and every possible accommodation. Our next conversa- tions were of war and travelling, politics and England. He called my Albanian soldier, who attends me, and told him to protect me at all hazard. His name is Viscillie, and, like all the Albanians, he is brave, rigidly honest, and faithful; but they are cruel, though not treacherous ; and have several vices, but no meannesses. They are, perhaps, the most beautiful race, in point of counte- nance, in the world ; their women are some- times handsome also, but they are treated like sLaves, beaten, and, in short, complete beasts of burthen : they plough, dig, and sow. I found them carrying wood, and actually repairing the highways. The men are all soldiers, and war and the chase their sole occupation. The women are the labourers, which, after all, is no great hardship in so delightful a climate. Yesterday, the llth of November, I bathed in the sea; to-day it is so hot that I am writing in a shady room of the English consul's, with three doors wide open, no fire, or even fireplace in the house, except for culinary purposes. To day I saw the remains of the town of Actium, near which Antony lost the world, in a small bay, where two frigates could hardly manoeuvre; a broken wall is the sole remnant. On another part of the gulf stand the ruins of Nicopolis, built by Au- gustus in honour of his victory. Last night I was at a Greek marriage ; but this, and a thousand things more, I have neither time nor space to describe. I am going to-morrow, with a guard of fifty men, to Patras in the Morea, and thence to Athens, where I shall winter. Two days ago, I was nearly lost in a Turkish ship of war, owing to the igno- rance of the captain and crew, though the storm was not violent. Fletcher yelled after his wife, the Greeks called on all the saints, the Mussuhnans on Alia, the captain burst into tears, and ran below deck, telling us to call on God ; the sails were split, the main yard shivered, the wind blowing fresh, the night setting in, and all our chance was to make Corfu, which is in possession of the French, or (as Fletcher pathetically termed it) "a watery gi-ave." I did what I could to console Fletcher ; but, finding him incorrigi- ble, wrapped myself up in my Albanian capote (an immense cloak) and lay down on deck to wait the worst. I have learnt to philosophize in my travels, and, if I had not, complaint was useless. Luckily, the wind abated, and only drove us on the coast of Suli, on the main land, where we landed, and proceeded, by the help of the natives, to Previsa again : but I shall not trust Turkish GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON. 397 sailors in future, though the pacha had or- dered one of his own galliots to take me to Patras. I am, therefore, going as fur as Missolonghi by land, and there have only to cross a small gulf to get to Patras. Fletch- ers next epistle will be full of marvels; we were one night lost for nine hours in the mountains in a thunder-storm, and since nearly wrecked. In both cases Fletcher was sorely bewildered, from apprehensions of famine and banditti in the first, and drown- ing in the second instance. His eyes were a little hurt by the lightning or crying (I don't know which), but are now recovered. When you write, address to me at Mr. Strane's, English consul, Patras, Morea. I could tell you I know not how many in- cidents, that I think would amuse you, but they crowd on my mind as much as they would swell my paper; and I can neither arrange them in the one, nor put them down in the other, except in the greatest confu- sion. I like the Albanians much : they are not all Turks: some tribes are Christians; but their religion makes little difference in their manner or conduct: they are esteemed the best troops in the Turkish service. I lived on my route, two days at once, and three days again, in a barrack at Salora, and never found soldiers so tolerable, though I have been in the garrisons of Gibraltar and Malta, and seen Spanish, French, Sicil- ian, and British troops in abundance. I have had nothing stolen ; and was always welcome to their provision and milk. Not a week ago an Albanian chief (every village has its chief, who is called primate), after helping us out of the Turkish galley in her distress, feeding us, and lodging my suite, consisting of Fletcher, a Greek, two Athe- nians, a Greek priest, and my companion Mr. llobhouse, refused any compensation but a written paper stating that I was well received ; and when I pressed him to accept a few sequins, " No," he replied, '' I wish you to love me, not to pay me." These are his words. It is astonishing how far money goes in this country. While I was in the capital I had nothing to pay. by the vizier's order; but since, though I have generally had sixteen horses, and generally six or seven men, the expense has not been half as much as staying only three weeks at Malta, though Sir A. Ball, the governor, gave me a house for nothing, and I had only one servant. By the by, I expect II. ... to re- mit regularly ; for I am not about to stay in this province for ever. Let him write to me at Mr. Strane's, English consul, Patras. The fact is, the fertility of the plains is won- derful, and specie is scarce, which makes this remarkable cheapness. I am going to Athens to study modern Greek, which dif- fers much from the ancient, though radi- cally similar. I have no desire to return to England, nor shall I, unless compelled by absolute want and II. ... 's neglect; but I shall not enter into Asia for a year or two, as I have much to see in Greece, and I may perhaps cross into Africa, at least the Egyp- tian part. Fletcher, like all Englishmen, is very much dissatisfied, though a little rec- onciled to the Turks by a present of eighty piastres from the vizier, which, if you con- sider every thing, and the value of specie here, is nearly worth ten guineas English. He has suffered nothing but from cold, heat, and vermin, which those who lie in cottages, and cross mountains in a cold country, must undergo, and of which I have equally par- taken with himself; but he is not valiant, and is afraid of robbers and tempests. I have no one to be remembered to in Eng- land, and wish to hear nothing from it, but that you are well, and a letter or two on business from II. . . . , whom you may tell to write. I will write you when I can, and beg you to believe me your affectionate son, BYRON. P.S. I have some very " magnifique" Al- banian dresses, the only expensive article in this country. They cost fifty guineas each, and have so much gold, they would cost in England two hundred. I have been intro- duced to Hussim Bey and Mahmout Pacha, both little boys, grandchildren of Ali, at Yanina. They are totally unlike our lads, have painted complexions, like rouged dow- agers, large black eyes, and features per- fectly regular. They are the prettiest little animals I ever saw, and are broken into the court ceremonies already. The Turkish sa- lute is a slight inclination of the head, with the hand on the breast. Intimates always kiss. Mahmout is ten years old, and hopes to see me again. We are friends without under- standing each other, like many other folks, though from a different cause. He has given me a letter to his father in the Morea, to whom I have also letters from Ali Pacha. LETTERS ON CHILDE HAROLD. FROM LETTERS TO R. C. DALLAS, ESQ. NEWSTEAD, August 21, 1811. I do not think I shall return to London immediately, and shall therefore accep* freely what is offered courteously, your mediation between me and Murray. I don't think my name will answer the purpose, and you must be aware that my plaguy Satire will bring the North and South Grub-streets down upon the " Pilgrimage" ; but, never- theless, if Murray makes a point of it, and you coincide with him, I will do it daringly ; so let it be entitled, " by the Author of Eng- 398 GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON. lish Bards and Scotch Reviewers." My re- marks on the Romaic, &c., once intended to accompany the " Hints from Horace," shall go along with the other, as being indeed more appropriate ; also the smaller poems now in my possession, with a few selected from those published in II. ... 's Miscel- lany. I have found, amongst my poor mother's papers, all my letters from the east, and one, in particular, of some length, from Albania. From this, if necessary, I can work up a note or two on that subject. As I kept no journal, the letters written on the spot are the best. But of this anon, when we have definitely arranged. Has Murray shown the work to anyone? He may ; but I will have no traps for applause. Of course there are little things I would wish you to alter, and perhaps the two stanzas of a buffooning cast on London's Sunday are as well left out. I much wish to avoid identifying Childe Harold's char- acter with mine, and that, in sooth, is my second objection to my name appearing in the title-page. When you have made ar- rangements as to time, size, type, &c., favour me with a reply. I am giving you a uni- verse of trouble which thanks cannot atone for. I made a kind of prose apology for my skepticism, at the head of the MS., which, on recollection, is so much more like an attack than a defence, that haply it might better be omitted. Perpend, pronounce. After all, I fear Murray will be in a scrape with the orthodox ; but I cannot help it, though I wish him well through it. As for me, " I have supped full of criticism," and I don't think that the "most dismal treatise" will stir and rouse my " fell of hair" till " Birnam wood do come to Dunsinane." I shall continue to write at intervals, and hope you will pay me in kind. NEWSTEAD ABBEY, Sept. 7, 1811. As Gifford has been ever my " Magnus Apollo," any approbation, such as you men- tion, would, of course, be more welcome than " all Bokara's vaunted gold, than all the gems of Samarkand." But I am sorry the MS. was shown to him in such a manner, and had written to Murray to say as much, before I was aware that it was too late. Your objection to the expression "central line," I can only meet by saying that, before Childe Harold left England, it was his full intention to traverse Persia, and return by India, which he could not have done with- out passing the equinoctial. The other errors you mention I must cor- rect in the progress through the press. I feel honoured by the wish of such men that the poem should be continued ; but, to do that, I must return to Greece and Asia ; I must have a warm sun and a blue sky. I cannot describe scenes so dear to me by a sea-coal fire. I had projected an additional canto when I was in the Troad and Con- stantinople, and if I saw them again it would go on ; but, under existing circum- stances and sensations, I have neither harp, " heart nor voice," to proceed. I feel that you are all right as to the metaphysical part, but I also feel that I am sincere, and that, if I am only to write " ad captandum vulgus," I might as well edite a magazine at once, or spin canzonettas for Vauxhall. . . . My work must make its way as well as it can. I know I have every thing against me, angry poets and prejudices ; but if the poem is a poem, it will surmount these obstacles, and if not, it deserves its fate. ... I am very sensible of your good wishes, and, in- deed, I have need of them. My whole life has been at variance with propriety, not to say decency ; my circumstances are becom- ing involved ; my friends are dead or es- tranged ; and my existence a dreary void. In M ... I have lost my " guide, philoso- pher, and friend;"' in Wingfield a friend only, but one whom I could wish to have preceded in his long journey. . . . NEWSTEAD ABBEY, Sept. 26, 1811. In a stanza towards the end of canto first there is, in the concluding line, " Some bitter bubbles up, and e'en on roses stings." I have altered it as follows : " Full from the heart of joy's delicious springs Some bitter o'er the flowers its bubbling venom flings." If you will point out the stanzas on Cin- tra which you wish recast, I will send you mine answer. . . . Pray do you think any alterations should be made in the stanzas on VATHEK ? I should bo sorry to make any improper allu- sion, as I merely wish to adduce an example of wasted wealth, and the reflection which arose in surveying the most desolate man- sion in the most beautiful spot I ever be- held. . . . I will have nothing to say to your meta- physics, and allegories of rocks and beaches : we shall all go to the bottom together ; so " let us eat and drink, for to-morrow," &c. I am as comfortable in my creed as others, inasmuch as it is better to sleep than to be awake. NEWSTEAD ABBEY, October 11, 1811. Your objections I have in part done away by alterations which I hope will suffice ; and I have sent two or three additional stanzas for both "Fyttes." I have been again CAPTAIN BASIL HALL. 399 shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times ; but " I have almost forgot the taste of grief," and "supped full of horrors" till I have become callous ; nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience, in my youth, the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can al- ways take refuge in their families: I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect, here or hereafter, ex- cept the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched, and you Avill excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility. . . . Instruct Mr. Murray not to allow his shopman to call the work " Child of liar- row's Pilgrimage" !!!!!! as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to inquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might. I have heard nothing of Murray, whom I scolded heartily. Must I write more notes ? CAPTAIN BASIL HALL, R.N., an author of great merit, son of Sir James Hall, fourth baronet of Dunglass, was born in Edinburgh in 1788, and died in confine- ment from insanity in 1844. Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo Choo Island in the Japan Sea, Lond., 1818, 4to ; Occasional Poems and Miscellanies, 12mo; Extracts from a Journal written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico, in the Years 1820, 1821, and 1822, Lond., 1824, 2 vols. p. 8vo, 4th edit, Edin., 1825, 2 vols. sm. 8vo, 5th edit., Lond., 1848, 8vo ; Travels in North America in 1827 and 1828, Edin., 1829, 3 vols. p. 8vo; Forty Etchings from Sketches made with the Camera Lucida in North America, in 1827-28, Lond., 1829, r. 4to ; Fragments of Voyages and Travels, three Series, Edin., 1831-33,9 vols. 12mo; new edits., each in 1 vol. roy. 8vo, 1840, 1846, 1850, 1856; Schloss Ilainfeld, or, A Winter in Lower Styria, Edin., 1836, p. 8vo ; Spain and the Seat of War in Spain, Lond., 1837, p. 8vo ; Narrative of a Voyage to Java, China, and the Great Loo Choo Island, Lond., 1840, 8vo : Voyages and Travels, 1840, r. 8vo (in conjunction with Ellis and Pringle) ; Patchwork, or Travels in Stories, etc., Lond., 1840, 3 vols. p. 8vo ; 2d edit., 1841, 3 vols. 18mo, and in 1 vol. 12mo; Travels in South America, 1841, r. 8vo. " Few writers lay themselves more open to quiz- zing : few can prose and bore more successfully than he now and then does ; but the Captain's merit is real and great. . . . Captain Basil Hall imparts a freshness to whatever spot he touches, and carries the reader with untiring good-humour cheerily along with him. Turn where we will we have posies of variegated flowers presented to us, and we are sure to find in every one of them, whether sombre or gny, a sprig of Basil." (London) Quar- terly Review. See also North Amer. Reniew, xlv. 11, by W. H. Prescott, and in his Miscellanies; LocJchart'i Life of Scott ; Captain Hall in America, Philadelphia, 1830, 8vo. SIR WALTER SCOTT. A hundred and fifty years hence, when his works have become old classical authorities, it may interest some fervent lover of his writings to know what this great genius was about on Saturday, the 10th of June, 1826, five months after the total ruin of his pe- cuniary fortunes, and twenty-six days after the death of his wife. In the days of his good luck he used to live at No. 39 North Castle Street, in a house befitting a rich baronet: but on reaching the door, I found the plate on it covered with rust (so soon is glory obscured), the window, shuttered up, dusty, and comfortless; and from the side of one projected a board, with this inscription, " To Sell ;" the stairs were unwashed, and not a foot-mark told of the ancient hospitality which reigned within. In all nations with which I am acquainted the fashionable world move westward, in imitation, perhaps, of the great tide of civil- ization ; and, vice versa, those persons who decline in fortune, which is mostly equiva- lent to declining in fashion, shape their course eastward. Accordingly, by an invol- untary impulse, I turned my head that way, and inquiring at the clubs in Prince's Street, learned that he now resided in David Street, No. 6. I was rather glad to recognize my old friend the Abbotsford butler, who answered the door, the saying about heroes and valets-de-chambre comes to one's recollec- tion on such occasions ; and nothing, we may be sure, is more likely to be satisfac- tory to a man whose fortune is reduced than the stanch adherence of a mere servant, whose wages must be altered for the worse. At the top of the stair we saw a small tray, with a single plate and glasses for one soli- tary person's dinner. Some few months ago Sir Walter was surrounded by his family, and wherever he moved, his head-quarters were the focus of fashion. Travellers from all nations crowded round, and, like the recorded honours of Lord Chatham, " thick- ened over him." Lady and Miss Scott were his constant companions ; the Lockharts were his neighbours both in town and in Roxburghshire; his eldest son was his fre- 400 SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM NERSCHEL. quent guest ; and, in short, what with his own family and the clouds of tourists, who. like so many hordes of Cossacks, pressed upon, there was riot, perhaps, out of a palace, any man so attended, I had almost said over- powered, by company. His wife is now dead, his son-in-law and favourite daughter gone to London, and his grandchild, 1 fear, just staggering, poor little fellow, on the edge of the grave, which, perhaps, is the securest refuge for him, his eldest son is married, and at a distance, and report speaks of no probability of the title descending ; in short, all are dispersed, and the tourists, those '' curiosos impertinentes," drive past Abbots- ford gate, and curse their folly in having de- layed for a year too late their long-projected jaunt to the north. Meanwhile, not to mince the matter, the great man had, somehow or other, managed to involve himself with printers, publishers, bankers, gasmakers, wool-staplers, and all the fraternity of specu- lators, accommodation-bill manufacturers, land-jobbers, and so on, till, at a season of distrust in money matters, the hour of reck- oning came, like a thief in the night; and as our friend, like the unthrifty virgins, had no oil in his lamp, all his affairs went to wreck and ruin, and landed him, after the gale was over, in the predicament of Robin- son Crusoe, with little more than a shirt to his back. But, like that able navigator, he is not cast away upon a barren rock. The tide has ebbed, indeed, and left him on the beach, but the hull of his fortune is above water still, and it will go hard indeed with him if he does not shape a raft that shall bring to shore much of the cargo that an ordinary mind would leave in despair, to be swept away by the next change of the moon. The distinction between man and the rest of the living creation, certainly, is in nothing more remarkable than in the power which he possesses over them, of turning to varied account the means with which the world is stocked. But it has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals; and it is from a famil- iarity with the practical operation of this marvellous difference that I venture to pre- dict that our Crusoe will cultivate his own island, and build himself a bark in which, in process of time, he will sail back to his friends and fortune in greater triumph than if he had never been driven amongst the breakers. Sir Walter Scott, then, was sitting at a writing-desk covered with papers, and on the top was a pile of bound volumes of the Moniteur, one, which he was leaning over as my brother and I entered, was open on a chair, and two others were lying on the floor. As he rose to receive us, he closed the vol- ume which he had been extracting from, and came forward to shake hands, lie was, of course, in deep mourning, with weepers ;md the other trappings of woe ; but his counte- nance, though certainly a little woe-be- gonish, was not cast into any very deep furrows. His tone and manner were as friendly as heretofore ; and when he saw that we had no intention of making any attempt at sympathy or moanification, but spoke to him as of old. he gradually con- tracted the length of his countenance, and allowed the corners of his mouth to curl almost imperceptibly upwards, and a re- newed lustre came into his eye, if not ex- actly indicative of cheerfulness, at all events of well-regulated, patient. Christian resig- nation. My meaning will be misunderstood if it be imagined from this picture that I suspected any hypocrisy, or an affectation of grief, in the first instance. I have no doubt, indeed, that he feels, and most acutely, the bereavements which have come upon him ; but we may very fairly suppose, that among the many visitors he must have, there may be some who cannot understand that it is proper, decent, or even possible, to hide those finer emotions deep in the heart. He immediately began conversing in his usual style, the chief topic being Captain Denham (whom I had recently seen in Lon- don) and his book of African Travels, which Sir Walter had evidently read with much attention. . . . After sitting a quarter of an hour we came away, well pleased to see our friend quite unbroken in spirit, and though bowed down a little by the blast, and here and there a branch the less, as sturdy in the trunk as ever, and very possibly all the bet- ter for the discipline, better, I mean, for the public, inasmuch as he has now a vast addi- tional stimulus for exertion, and one which all the world must admit to be thoroughly noble and generous. Captain HalVs Diary in Lockharfs Life of Scott. SIR JOHN FREDERICK "WIL- LIAM HERSCHEL, D.C.L., only son of Sir William Herschel, the distin- guished astronomer, born at Slough, near Windsor, 179U, and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, was made a baronet in 1838, D.C.L. of Oxford, 1839, and elected Lord-Rector of Marischal College, Aberdeen, 1842; Master of the Mint from 1850 until 1855, when he resigned on account of ill- health: died 1871. A Collection of Examples of the Applica- tion of the Calculus to Finite Differences, SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCHEL. 401 1813 : A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, Lond., 1830, 12mo (Lardner's Cab. Cyc.)," 1831, 1842, 1851; A Treatise on Astronomy, Lond., 1833, 12mo (Lardner's Cab. Cyc., 43), enlarged as Out- lines of Astronomy, 1849, 8vo ; Results of Astronomical Observations made during the Years 1834, '35, '36, '37, '38, at the Cape of Good Hope, being the Completion of a Tele- scopic Survey of the Whole Survey of the Visible Heavens, Commenced in 1825. Lond., 1S47, 4 to ; A Treatise on Physical Astron- omy, Lond., 1848, 4 to, 1849, 4 to (in Encyclo- paedia of Astronomy) ; edited and contributed to A Manual of Scientific Enquiry, Lond., 1849. p. 8vo, 2d edit., 1851, p. 8vo: Essays from the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, with Addresses and other Pieces, Lond., 1857, 8vo. He also contributed to Edin. Philos. Journal, Edin. Trans., Cambridge Trans.. Philos. Trans., Astronom. Trans., Encyc. Britannica and Encyc. Metropolitana. See also Bonn's Lowndes's Bibl. Manual, iii. (1869) 1295. " There are few philosophers of the present day who have attained to the same distinction. His mathematical acquirements and his discoveries in astronomy, optics, chemistry, and photography are of a very high order, and have secured for him a wide and, well-earned reputation, while his various popular writings have greatly contributed to the diffusion of scientific knowledge among his coun- trymen." Imperial Diet, of Univ. Biography, iv. (1866) 889. INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE. The difference of the degrees in which the individuals of a great community enjoy the good things of life has been a theme of declamation and discontent in all ages; and it is doubtless our paramount duty, in every state of society, to alleviate the pressure of the purely evil part of this distribution as much as possible, and, by all the means we can devise, secure the lower links in the chain of society from dragging in dishonour and wretchedness : but there is a point of view in which the picture is at least materi- ally altered in its expression. In comparing society on its present immense scale with its infant or less developed state, we must at least take care to enlarge every feature in the same proportion. If, on comparing the very lowest states in civilized and savage life, we admit a difficulty in deciding to which the preference is due, at least in every superior grade we cannot hesitate a moment ; and if we institute a similar comparison in every different stage of its progress, we can- not fail to be struck with the rapid rate of dilatation which eve7-y degree upward of the scale, so to speak, exhibits, and which, in an estimate of averages, gives an immense pre- ponderance to the present over every former condition of mankind, and, for aught we can see to the contrary, will place succeeding generations in the same degree of superior relation to the present that this holds to those passed away. Or we may put the same proposition in other words, and, admitting the existence of every inferior grade of ad- vantage in a higher state of civilization which subsisted in the preceding, we shall find, first, that, taking state for state, the pro- portional numbers of those who enjoy the higher degrees of advantage increases with a constantly-accelerated rapidity as society advances ; and, secondly, that the superior extremity of the scale is constantly enlarg- ing by the addition of new degrees. The condition of a European prince is now as far superior, in the command of real comforts and conveniences, to that of one in the mid- dle ages, as that to the condition of one of his own dependants. The advantages conferred by the augmen- tation of our physical resources through the medium of increased knowledge and im- proved art have this peculiar and remark- able property, that they are in their nature diffusive, and cannot be enjoyed in any ex- clusive manner by a few. An Eastern despot may extort the riches and monopolize the art of his subjects for his own personal use; he may spread around him an unnatural splendour and luxury, and stand in strango and preposterous contrast with the general penury of his people ; he may glitter in jewels of gold and raiment of needlework ; but the wonders of well contrived and ex- ecuted manufacture which we use daily, and the comforts which have been invented, tried, and improved upon by thousands, in every form of domestic convenience, and for every ordinary purpose of life, can never be en- joyed by him. To produce a state of things in which the physical advantages of civilized life can exist in a high degree, the stimulus of increasing comforts and constantly-ele- vated desires must have been felt- by mil- lions: since it is not in the power of a few individuals to create that wide demand for useful and ingenious applications, which alone can lead to great and rapid improve- ments, unless backed by that arising from the speedy diffusion of the same advantages among the mass of mankind. If this be true of physical advantages, it applies with still greater force to intellec- tual. Knowledge can neither be adequately cultivated nor adequately enjoyed by a few ; and although the conditions of our existence on earth may be such as to preclude an abundant supply of the physical necessities of all who may be born, there is no such law of nature in force against that of our 402 SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM HERSCIIEL. intellectual and moral wants. Knowledge is not, like food, destroyed by use, but rather augmented and perfected. It ac- quires not, perhaps, a greater certainty, but at least a confirmed authority and a prob- able duration, by universal assent; and there is no body of knowledge so complete but that it may acquire accession, or so free from error but that it may receive correction in passing through the minds of millions. Those who admire and love knowledge for its own sake, ought to wish to see its ele- ments made accessible to all, were it only that they may be the more thoroughly ex- amined into, and more effectually developed in their consequences, and receive that duc- tility and plastic quality which the pressure of minds of all descriptions, constantly moulding them to their purposes, can alone bestow. But to this end it is necessary that it should be divested, as far as possible, of artificial difficulties, and stripped of all such technicalities as tend to place it in the light of a craft and a mystery, inaccessible without a kind of apprenticeship. Science, of course, like everything else, has its own peculiar terms, and, so to speak, its idioms of language; and these it would be unwise, were it even possible, to relinquish : but everything that tends to clothe it in a strange and repulsive garb, and especially everything that, to keep up an appearance of superiority in its professors over the rest of mankind, assumes an unnecessary guise of profundity and obscurity, should be sac- rificed without mercy. Not to do this is deliberately to reject the light which the natural unencumbered good sense of man- kind is capable of throwing on every sub- ject, even in the elucidation of principles; but where principles are to be applied to practical uses, it becomes absolutely neces- sary ; as all mankind have then an interest in their being so familiarly understood that no mistakes shall arise in their application. A Prelim. Discourse on the Study of Nat- ural Philosophy. Ox THE ARTS. The same remark applies to arts. They cannot be perfected till their whole processes are laid open, and their language simplified and rendered universally intelligible. Art is the application of knowledge to a prac- tical end. If the knowledge be merely ac- cumulated experience, the art is empirical; but if it be experience reasoned upon and brought under general principles, it assumes a higher character, and becomes a scientific art. In the progress of mankind from bar- barism to civilized life, the arts necessarily precede science. The wants and cravings of our animal constitution must be satisfied ; the comforts and some of the luxuries of life must exist. Something must be given to the vanity of show, and more to the pride of power ; the round of baser pleas- ure must have been tried and found insuffi- cient before intellectual ones can gain a footing ; and when they have obtained it, the delights of poetry and its sister arts still take precedence of contemplative enjoy- ments, and the severer pursuits of thought ; and when these in time begin to charm from their novelty, and sciences begin to arise, they will at first be those of pure specula- tion. The mind delights to escape from the trammels which had bound it to earth, and luxuriates in its newly-found powers. Hence, the abstractions of geometry, the properties of numbers, the movements of the celestial spheres, whatever is abstruse, remote, and extra mundane, become the first objects of infant science. Applications come late: the arts continue slowly progressive, but their realm remains separated from that of sci- ence by a wide gulf which can only be passed by a powerful spring. They form their own language and their own conven- tions, which none but artists can under- stand. The whole tendency of empirical art is to bury itself in technicalities-, ami to place its pride in particular short cuts and mysteries known only to adepts; to surprise and astonish by results, but conceal pro- cesses. The character of science is the direct contrary. It delights to lay itself open to inquiry ; and is not satisfied with its conclusions till it can make the road to them broad and beaten : and in its applica- tions it preserves the same character ; its whole aim being to strip away all technical mystery, to illuminate every dark recess, with a view to improve them on rational principles. It would seem that a union of two qual- ities almost opposite to each other a going forth of the thoughts in two directions. ami a sudden transfer of ideas from a remote station in one to an equally distant one in the other is required to start the first idea of applying science. Among the Greeks this point was attained by Archimedes, but at- tained too late, on the eve of that great eclipse of science which was destined to continue for nearly eighteen centuries, till Galileo in Italy, and Bacon in England, at once dispelled the darkness : the one by his inventions and discoveries; the other by the irresistible force of his arguments and elo- quence. Finally, the improvement effected in the condition of mankind by advances in physi- cal science as applied to the useful purposes of life, is very far from being limited to their HENRY HART MILMAN. 403 direct consequences in the more abundant supply of their physical wants, and the in- crease of our comforts. Great as these ben- efits are, they are yet but steps to others of a still higher kind. The successful results of our experiments and reasonings in natural philosophy, and the incalculable advantages which experience, systematically consulted and dispassionately reasoned on, has con- ferred in matters purely physical, tend of necessity to impress something of the well- weighed and progressive character of science on the more complicated conduct of our social and moral relations. It is thus that legislation and politics become gradually re- garded as experimental sciences, and history, not, as formerly, the mere record of tyran- nies and slaughters, which, by immortalising the execrable actions of one age, perpetuates the ambition of committing them in every succeeding one, but as the archive of ex- periments, successful and unsuccessful, grad- ually accumulating towards the solution of the grand problem, how the advantages of government are to be secured with the least possible inconvenience to the governed. The celebrated apophthegm, that nations never profit by experience, becomes yearly more and more untrue. Political economy, at least, is found to have sound principles, founded in the moral .and physical nature of man, which, however lost sight of in par- ticular measures, however even tempora- rily controverted and borne down by clamour, have yet a stronger and stronger testimony borne to them in each succeeding generation, by which they must, sooner or later, prevail. The idea once conceived and verified, that great and noble ends are to be achieved, by which the condition of the whole human species shall be permanently bettered, by bringing into exercise a sufficient quantity of sober thoughts, and by a proper adapta- tion of means, is of itself sufficient to set us earnestly on reflecting what ends are truly great and noble, either in themselves, or as conducive to others of a still loftier charac- ter ; because we are not now, as heretofore, hopeless of attaining them. It is not now equally harmless and insignificant, whether we are right or wrong ; since we are no longer supinely and helplessly carried down the stream of events, but feel ourselves capa- ble of buffeting at least with its waves, and perhaps of riding triumphantly over them : for why should we despair that the reason which has enabled us to subdue all nature to our purposes, should (if permitted and assisted by the providence of God) achieve a far more difficult conquest? and ulti- mately find some means of enabling the col- lective wisdom of mankind to bear down those obstacles which individual short- sightedness, selfishness, and passion, oppose to all improvements, and by which the highest hopes are continually blighted, and the fairest prospects marred. A Prelim. Discourse on the Study of Natu- ral Philosophy. HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., youngest son of Sir Francis Milman, Bart., M.D., Physician to George III. and the Royal Household, was born in London, 1791, and became Fellow of Brazennose College, Ox- ford, 1815, Professor of Poetry in the Uni- versity of Oxford, 1821, Hector of St. Mar- garet's, Westminster, and Canon of West- minster, 1835, Dean of St. Paul's, 1849, died 1868. The Belvidere Apollo, a Prize Poem. Oxf., 1812, 8vo ; Alexander tumulum, Achilles in- visens, etc., Oxon., 1813. 8vo ; Fazio, a Tra- gedy, Oxf., 1815, 8vo, 2d edit., Oxf., 1816, 8vo ; In Historia scribenda quaenam prae- cipua inter Anctores Veteres et Noves sit Differentia? Oratio, etc., Oxon., 1816, Svo; A Comparative Estimate of Sculpture and Painting, etc., Oxf., 1816, Svo, Lond., 1818 ; Samor, Lord of the Bright City, an Heroic Poem, Lond., 1818, Svo, 2d edit., 1818; The Fall of Jerusalem, a Dramatic Poem, Lond., 1820, Svo, 1853, 12mo: Poems, Lond., 1821, Svo; The Martyr of Antioch, a Dra- matic Poem, Lond., 1*822, Svo; Belshazzar, a Dramatic Poem, Lond., 1822, Svo; Anne Boleyn, a Dramatic Poem, Lond., 1826, Svo ; The Office of the Christian Teacher Consid- ered, in a Visitation Sermon on 1 Cor. xiv. 3, Oxf., 1826, Svo; The Character and Conduct of the Apostles Considered as an Evidence of Christianity: Eight Sermons at the Bamp- ton Lecture for 1827, Lond., 1827, Svo : The History of the Jews, Lond., 1829, 3 vols. 18mo, 2d edit, 1830, 3 vols. ISmo, new edit., 1835, 3 vols. 18mo, New York, 1830-31, 3 vols. 12mo, 1841, 3 vols. ISmo; Nala and Damayanti, and other Poems, Translated from the Sanscrit, Oxf., 1834, Svo; History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em- pire, by Edward Gibbon, with the Notes of Guizot, Wenck, the editor, etc.. Lond., 1838- 39, 12 vols. Svo. 2d edit., 1846, 6 vols. Svo, 3d edit., by William Smith, LL.D., with ad- ditional Notes, 1854-55, 8 vols. Svo: Life of Edward Gibbon [his Autobiography], with Selections from his Correspondence, and Illustrations, Lond., 1839, Svo; Poetical and Dramatic Works, Lond., 1839-40, 3 vols. fp. Svo; The History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Pa- ganism in the Roman Empire, Lond., 1840, 3 vols. Svo, Paris. 1840, 2 vols. Svo, with 404 HENRY HART MILMAN. Notes by James Murdock, D.D., New York, 1841, 8vo; The Works of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Illustrated chiefly from the Remains of Ancient Art, with a Life. Lond., 1849, roy. 8vo, without the Life, 1852, crown 8vo, new edit., 1856, 2 vols. 8vo ; The History of Latin Christianity, including that of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicholas V., Loud., 1854-55, 6 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1857, C vols. 8vo. Dean Milman published some other sermons, articles in the (London) Quarterly Review, and contributed a Memoir of Lord Macaulay (also published separately, Lond., 1862, p. 8vo) to vol. v. (posthumous) of Macaulay's History of England. "We are always impressed with a conviction of his learning, his ability, and his cultivated taste, but are haunted at the same time with an unsatis- factory feeling that his poetry is rather a clever recasting of fine things already familiar to us than strikingly fresh and original." MOIR : Sketeket of the Poet. Lit. of the Paxt Ha/f-Celnry, 1851, ]'2mo. See also Edin. lleview (Oct. 1829), 47, by Lord Jeffrey. Mihnan's History of Latin Christianity is "One of the remarkable works of the present age, in which the author reviews, with curious erudition and in a profoundly religious spirit, the various changes that have taken place in the Ro- man hierarchy : and while he fully exposes the manifold errors and corruptions of the system, he shows, throughout, that enlightened charity which is the most precious of Christian graces, as un- hnppily the rarest." W. II. PKESCOTT : Philip the Second, 1856, ii. 500, n. 69. '' If it seems to you high praise, I believe no one who has carefully read the extraordinary work to which it refers will consider it higher than the book deserves." A\ r . II. PRESCOTT TO S. AUSTIN ALLIBOSE, Jan. 1, 1858. SAIN T T PAUL AT ATHENS. At Athens, at once the centre and capital of the Greek philosophy and heathen super- stition, takes place the first public and direct conflict between Christianity and Paganism. Up to this time there is no account of any one of the apostles taking his station in the public street or market-place, and addressing the general multitude. Their place of teach- ing had invariably been the synagogue of their nation, or, as at Philippi, the neigh- bourhood of their customary place of wor- ship. Here, however, Paul does not confine himself to the synagogue, or to the society of his countrymen and their proselytes. He takes his stand in the public market-place (probably not the Ceramicus, but the Eretriac Forum), which, in the reign of Augustus, had begun to be more frequented, and at the top of which was the famous portico from which the Stoics assumed their name. In Athens, the appearance of a new public teacher, instead of offending the popular feelings, was too familiar to excite astonish- ment, and was rather welcomed as promising some fresh intellectual excitement. In Ath- ens, hospitable to all religions and all opin- ions, the foreign and Asiatic appearance, and possibly the less polished tone and dialect of Paul, would only awaken the stronger curi- osity. Though they affect at first (probably the philosophic part of his hearers) to treat him as an idle " babbler," and others (the vulgar, alarmed for the honour of their dei- ties) supposed that he was about to introduce some new religious worship which might en- danger the supremacy of their own tutelar divinities, he is conveyed, not without re- spect, to a still more public and commodious place, from whence he may explain his doc- trines to a numerous assembly without dis- turbance. On the Areopagus the Christian leader takes his stand, surrounded on every side with whatever was noble, beautiful, and intellectual in the older world, temples, of which the materials were only surpassed by the architectural grace and majesty ; statues, in which the ideal anthropomorphism of the Greeks had almost elevated the popular no- tions of the Deity, by embodying it in hu- man forms of such exquisite perfection ; public edifices, where the civil interests of man had been discussed with the acuteness and versatility of the highest Grecian intel- lect, in all the purity of the inimitable Attic dialect, when oratory had obtained its high- est triumphs by "wielding at will the fierce democracy;" the walks of the philosophers, who unquestionably, by elevating the human mind to an appetite for new and nobler knowledge, had prepared the way for a loftier and purer religion. It was in the midst of these elevating associations, to which the student of Grecian literature in Tarsus, the reader of Menander and of the Greek philo- sophical poets, could scarcely be entirely dead or ignorant, that Paul stands forth to proclaim the lowly yetauthoritative religion of Jesusof Nazareth. His audience was chiefly formed from the two prevailing sects, the Stoics and Epicureans, with the populace, the worshippers of the established religion. In his discourse, the heads of which are related by St. Luke, Paul, with singular felicity, touches on the peculiar opinions of eiich class among his hearers ; he expands the popular religion into a higher philosophy, he imbues philosophy with a profound sen- timent of religion. It is impossible not to examine with the utmost interest the whole course of this (if we consider its remote consequences, and suppose it the first full and public argument of Christianity against the heathen religion and philosophy) perhaps the more exten- sively and permanently effective oration GEORGE TICKNOR. 405 ever uttered by man. We may contemplate Paul as the representative of Christianity, in the presence, as it were, of the concen- trated religion of Greece, and of the spirits, if we may so speak, of Socrates, and Plato, and Zeno. The opening of the apostle's speech is according to those most perfect rules of art which are but the expressions of the general sentiments of nature. It is calm, temperate, conciliatory. It is no fierce denunciation of idolatry, no contemptuous disdain of the prevalent philosophic opinions; it has nothing of the sternness of the ancient Jewish prophet, nor the taunting defiance of the later Christian polemic. *' Already the religious people of Athens had, unknow- ingly indeed, worshipped the universal De- ity, for they had an altar to the unknown God. The nature, the attributes of this sub- lime Being, hitherto adored in ignorant and unintelligent homage, he came to unfold. This God rose far above the popular notion ; He could not be confined in altar or temple, or represented by any visible image. He was the universal Father of mankind, even of the earth-born Athenians, who boasted that they were of an older race than the other families of man, and coeval with the world itself. He was the fountain of life, which pervaded and sustained the universe; He had assigned their separate dwellings to the separate families of man." Up to a certain point in this higher view of the Supreme Being, the philosopher of the Garden as well as of the Porch might listen with won- der and admiration. It soared, indeed, high above the vulgar religion : but in the lofty and serene Deity, who disdained to dwell in the earthly temple, and needed nothing from the hand of man, the Epicurean might al- most suppose that he heard the language of his own teacher. But the next sentence, which asserted the providence of God as the active creative energy, as the conservative, the ruling, the ordaining principle, anni- hilated at once the atomic theory and the government of blind chance, to whicli Epi- curus ascribed the origin and preservation of the universe. " This high and impressive Deity, who dwelt aloof in serene and ma- jestic superiority to all want, was percepti- ble in some mysterious manner by man ; His all-pervading providence comprehended the whole human race ; man was in constant union with the Deity, as an offspring with its parent." And still the Stoic might ap- plaud with complacent satisfaction the ar- dent words of the apostle ; he might approve the lofty condemnation of idolatry. " We, thus of divine descent, ought to think more nobly of our Universal Father, than to sup- pose that the godhead is like unto gold, or wilver, or stone, graven by art or man's de- vice." But this divine Providence was far different from the stern and all-controlling necessity, the inexorable fatalism, of the Stoic system. While the moral value of human action was recognized by the solemn retributive judgment to be passed on all mankind, the dignity of Stoic virtue was lowered by the general demand of repent- ance. The perfect man, the moral king, was deposed, as it were, and abased to the general level : he had to learn new lessons in the school of Christ, lessons of humility and conscious deficiency, the most directly opposed to the principles and the sentiments of his philosophy. The great Christian doctrine of the resurrection closed the speech of Paul. The History of Christianity. GEORGE TICKNOR, LL.D., born at Boston, Massachusetts. 1791, gradu- ated at Dartmouth College, 1807, admitted to the bar 1813; studied and travelled in Europe, 1815-1819, elected Smith Professor of French and Spanish Literature in Har- vard University, 1817, and discharged the duties of this office, 1820-35, and resided in Europe, 1837-40, one of the founders of the Boston Public Library, and, 1864-65, Presi- dent of the Board of Trustees, died at Bos- ton, January 26, 1871. Syllabus of a Course of Lectures on the History and Criticism of Spanish Literature, Camb., 1823, 8vo; Outlines of the Principal Events in the Life of General Lafayette (from N. Amer. Review, Jan. 1825), Bost., 1825, 8vo, Portland, 1825, 8vo, Lond., 1826, 8vo, in French. Paris, 1825, 8vo ; Remarks on Changes lately Proposed or Adopted in Harvard University. Camb., 1825, 8vo ; Re- port of the Board of Visitors on the United States Military Academy at West Point for 1826, 1826. 8vo; The Remains of Nathan Appleton Haven, with a Memoir of his Life, Camb., 1827, 8vo, 2d edit.. Bost., 1828, 8vo ; Remarks on the Life and Writings of Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, Phila., 1831, 8vo ; Lecture on the Best Methods of Teaching the Living Languages, etc., Bost., 1833, 8vo ; Review of Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Buck- minster and the Rev. Joseph Stevens Buck- minster (from Chris. Exam., Sept 1849), Camb., 1849. 8vo ; History of Spanish Liter- ature, New York, 1849, 3 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1849, 3 vols. 8vo, 2d Amer. edit, New York, 1854, 3 vols. 8vo, 3d Amer. edit., Corrected and Enlarged, Bost., 1863, 3 vols. 12mo. For notices of translations (into Spanish, Dutch, and French) and reviews of this great work, by far the best of the kind in 406 GEORGE TICKNOR. "any language. see Allibone's Critical Dic- tionary of English Literature, iii. 2416, 2417. " This work is, by general consent, the most complete history of Spanish Literature in any language; full, minute, and precise in informa- tion, and eminently fair aud candid in spirit. The author appears in his researches almost to have exhausted existing materials, whether bibliograph- ical or biographical, overlooking nothing and neglecting nothing." Kniyht's tiny. Uyc., Biay., vi., 1858, 52. Mr. Ticknor subsequently published Life of William Ilickling Prescott, Bost., 1864, 4to, 8vo, and 12mo, Lond., 1864, 8vo, and contributed notices of Prescott and Edward Everett to Proceedings Massachusetts His- torical Society, 1859, 8vo, 1865, 8vo. In early life he wrote papers for The Monthly Anthology and The American Quarterly Review ; nor would it become me to omit grateful acknowledgment of his contribu- tions to the articles BYRON, SIR WALTER SCOTT, and RASPE (Munchausen), in Alli- bone's Critical Dictionary of English Liter- ature. See Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor [partially edited by G. S. llillard], Bost., 1876, 2 vols. 8vo. THE DEATH OF PRESCOTT. From day to day, after New Year of 1859, he seemed more to miss his old occupations. On the 27th of January, he talked decidedly of beginning again in good earnest on the " History of Philip the Second," and specu- lated on the question whether, if he should h'nd his physical strength unequal to the needful exertion, he might venture to rein- force it by a freer diet. On the following morning the fatal day he talked of it again, as if his mind were made up to the experiment, and as if he were looking to his task as to the opening again of an old and sure mine of content. His sister, Mrs. Dexter, was happily in town making him a visit, and was sitting that forenoon with Mrs. Prescott in a dressing-room, not far from the study where his regular work was always done. He himself, in the early part of the day, was unoccupied, walking about his room for a little exercise; the weather being so bad that none ventured out who could well avoid it. Mr. Kirk, his ever- faithful secretary, was looking over Sala's lively book about Russia, "A Journey due North," for his own amusement, merely, but occasionally reading aloud to Mr. Prescott such portions as he thought peculiarly inter- esting or pleasant. On one passage, which referred to a former Minister of Russia at AVashington, he paused, because neither could recollect the name of the person alluded to; and Mr. Prescott, who did not like to find his memory at fault, went to his wife and sister to see if either of them could re- call it for him. After a moment's hesitation, Mrs. Prescott hit upon it ; a circumstance which amused him not a little, as she so rarely took an interest in anything con- nected with public affairs, that he had rather counted upon Mrs. Dexter for the information. He snapped his fingers at her, therefore, aa he turned away, and, with the merry laugh so characteristic of his nature, passed out of the room, saying, as he went, " How came you to remember?" They were the last words she ever heard from his loved lips. After reaching his study, he stepped into an adjoining apartment. While there, Mr. Kirk heard him groan, and, hurrying to him, found him struck with apoplexy and wholly unconscious. This was about half- past eleven o'clock in the forenoon. lie was instantly carried to his chamber. In the shortest possible space of time several med- ical attendants were at his bedside, and among them and the chief of them was his old friend and his father's friend, Dr. Jack- son. One of their number, Dr. Minot, brought me the sad intelligence, adding his own auguries, which were of the worst. I hastened to the house. What grief and dis- may I found there need not be told. All saw that the inevitable hour was come. Remedies availed nothing. He never spoke again, never recovered an instant of con- sciousness, and at half-past two o'clock life passed away without suffering. He would himself have preferred such a death, if choice had been permitted to him. He had often said so to me and to others ; and none will gainsay, that it was a great happiness thus to die, surrounded by all those nearest and dearest to him, except one much-loved son, who was at a distance, and .to die, too, with unimpaired faculties, and with affections not only as fresh and true as they had ever been, but which, in his own home and in the innermost circle of his friends, had seemed to grow stronger and more tender to the last. Four days afterwards he was buried ; two wishes, however, having first been fulfilled, as he had earnestly desired that they should be. They related wholly to himself, and were as simple and unpretending as he was. From accidental circumstances, he had always entertained a peculiar dread of being buried alive ; and he had, therefore, often required that measures should be taken to prevent all possibility of the horrors that might follow such an occurrence. His in- junctions were obeyed. Of his absolute death it was not, indeed, permitted to doubt. It had occurred under circumstances which HENRY CHARLES CAREY. 407 had been distinctly foreseen, and by a blow only too obvious, sure, and terrible. But still, as had been promised him. a principal vein was severed, so that, if life should again be wakened, it might ebb silently away without any possible return of con- sciousness. His other request was no less natural and characteristic. He desired that his remains, before they should be deposited in the house appointed for all living, might rest, for a time, in the cherished room where were gathered the intellectual treasures amidst which he had found so much of the happi- ness of his life. And this wish, too, was fulfilled. Silently, noiselessly, he was car- vied there. Few witnessed the solemn scene, but on those who did, it made an impression not to be forgotten. There he lay, in that rich, fair room, his manly form neither shrunk nor wasted by disease; the features that had expressed and inspired so much love still hardly touched by the effacing fingers of death, there he lay, in unmoved, inaccessible peace ; and the lettered dead of all ages and climes and countries collected there seemed to look down upon him in their earthly immortality, and claim that his name should hereafter be irnperishably associated with theirs. But this was only for a season. At the appointed hour his family and none else following he was borne to the church where he was wont to worship. No cere- monies had been arranged for the occasion. There had been no invitations. There was no show. But the church was full, was crowded. The Representatives of the Com- monwealth, then in session, had adjourned so as to be present; the members of the Historical Society, whose honoured wish to take official charge of the duties of the occa- sion had been declined, were there as mourn- ers. The whole community was moved ; the poor whom he had befriended ; the men of letters with whom he had been associated or whom he had aided ; the elevated by place or by fortune, whose distinctions and happi- ness he had increased by sharing them : they were all there. It was a sorrowful gathering, such as was never before wit- nessed in this land for the obsequies of any man of letters wholly unconnected, as he had been, with public affairs and the parties or passions of the time ; one who was known to the most of the crowd collected around his bier only by the silent teachings of his printed works. For, of the multitude as- sembled, few could have known him per- sonally ; many of them had never seen him. But all came to mourn. All felt tli.it an honour had been taken from the community and the country. They came because they felt the loss they had sustained, and only for that. And after the simple and solemn religious rites befitting the occasion had been per- formed [by Mr. Prescott's clergyman, the Rev. Rut'us Ellis, pastor of the First Con- gregational Church in Boston. Foot-note] , they still crowded round the funeral train and through the streets, following, with sad- ness and awe, the hearse that was bearing from their sight all that remained of one who had been watched not a week before as he trod the same streets in apparent happi- ness and health. It was a grand and touch- ing tribute to intellectual eminence and per- sonal worth. He was buried with his father and mother, and with the little daughter he had so ten- derly loved, in the family tomb under St. Paul's Church ; and, as he was laid down beside them, the audible sobs of the friends who filled that gloomy crypt bore witness to their love for his generous and sweet nature, even more than to their admiration for his literary distinctions, or to their sense of the honour he had conferred on his country. Life of William Hickling Prescott, 1864, 4to, 443-440. HENRY CHARLES CAREY, LL.D., a son of Matthew Carey, and born in Phila- delphia 1793, succeeded his father in the publishing business in 1817, and continued in it until 1838. lie has acquired great repu- tation as a writer on political economy, and still (1878), at an advanced age, takes a lively interest in " the growth of human power." Essay on the Rate of Human Wages, Phila., 1835, 12mo; Principles of Political Economy, Phila., 1837-40, 3 vols. 8vo (pub- lished in Italian at Turin and in Swedish at Upsal) ; The Credit System in France, Great Britain, and the United States, Phila., 1838, 8vo ; The Past, the Present, arid the Future, Phila., 1848, 8vo (in Swedish, at Stock- holm) ; The Prospect, etc., at the Opening of 1851, 8vo ; The Harmony of Interests, Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Com- mercial, New York, 1852, 8vo, 1856, 8vo : Letters on International Copyright, Phila., 1853, 8vo; The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign, Phila., 1853. 12mo, 1862, 12mo; Money: a Lecture, New York, 1857, 8vo, Phila., 1860. 8vo ; Letters to the President, on the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Union, etc., Phila., 1858, 8vo (published in Russian) ; Principles of Social Science, Phila., 1858-59, 3 vols. 8vo (published in German); The French and American Tariffs Compared, Phila., 1861, 8vo ; Financial 408 HENRY CHARLES CAREY. Crises: Their Causes and Effects, Phila., 1863, 8vo ; The Unity of Law; as Exhibited in the Relations of Physical, Social, Mental, and Moral Science, Phila., 1872, 8vo. Also pamphlets and papers in periodicals. " Mr. Carey, not only in his own country, but throughout Europe, where his writings have been extensively studied, both in their original lan- guage and in translations, is the acknowledged founder and head of a new school of Political Economy. We can only indicate the fundamental difference between his system and that in undis- puted supremacy when he began his contributions to social science. This, however, will suffice to show how eminently hopeful, progressive, and democratic are the doctrines which he proclaimed, and with what fulness of significance those who have accepted them are styled the American School." E. PESHINE SMITH : Allibuiie's Diction- ary of Eny. Lit., i. 339, q. v. Those who desire a convenient compen- dium of some of the most important of Dr. Carey's views are referred to Manual of Social Science, being a Condensation of the "Principles of Social Science" of II. C. Carey, LL.D., bv Kate McKean, Phila., 1867, 12mo. Dr. Carey died Oct. 12, 1879. OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHODS. \ 1. The first man, when he had day after day, even for a single week, witnessed the rising and setting of the sun, and had seen that the former had invariably been accom- panied by the presence of light, while the latter had as invariably been followed by its absence, had acquired the first rude elements of positive knowledge, or science. The cause the sun's rising being given, it would have been beyond his power to conceive that the effect should not follow. With further observation he learned to remark that at certain seasons of the year the lumi- nary appeared to traverse particular por- tions of the heavens, and that then it was always warm, and the trees put forth leaves to be followed by fruit ; whereas, at others, it appeared to occupy other portions of the heavens, and then the fruit disappeared and the leaves fell, as a prelude to the win- ter's cold. Here was a further addition to his stock of knowledge, and with it came foresight, and a fooling for the necessity for action. If he would live during the season of cold, he could do so only by preparing for it during the season of heat, a principle as thoroughly understood by the wandering Esquimaux of the shores of the Arctic Ocean, as by the most enlightened and emi- nent philosopher of Europe or America. Earliest among the ideas of such a man would be those of space, quantity, and form. The sun was obviously very remote, while of the trees some were distant and others were close at hand. The moon was single, while the stars were countless. The tree wa tall, while the shrub was short. The hills were high, and tending towards a point, while the plains were low and flat. We have here the most abstract, simple, and obvious of all conceptions. The idea of space is the same, whether we regard the distance be- tween the sun and the stars by which he is surrounded, or that between the mountains and ourselves. So, too, with number and form, which apply as readily to the sands of the sea-shore as to the gigantic trees of the forest, or to the various bodies seen to be moving through the heavens. Next in order would corne the desire, or the necessity, for comparing distances, num- bers, and magnitude, and the means for this would be at hand in machinery supplied by nature, and always at his command. His finger, or his arm, would supply a measure of magnitude, while his pace would do the same by distance, and the standard with which he would compare the weights would be found in some one among the most ordi- nary commodities by which he was sur- rounded. In numerous cases, however, dis- tances, velocities, or dimensions, are found to be beyond the reach of direct measure- ment, and thus is produced a necessity for devising means of comparing distant and unknown quantities w r ith those th.it being near can be ascertained, and hence arises mathematics, or The Science, so denomi- nated by the Greeks, because to its help was due nearly all the positive knowledge of which they were possessed. The multiplication table enables the ploughman to determine the number of days contained in a given number of weeks, and the merchant to calculate the number of pounds contained in his cargo of cotton. By help of his rule, the carpenter determines the distance between the two ends of the plank on which he works. The sounding- line enables the sailor to ascertain the depth of water around his ship, and by help of the barometer the traveller determines the height of the mountain on which he stands. All these are instruments for facilitating the ac- quisition of knowledge, and such, too, are the formulae of mathematics, by help of which the philosopher is enabled to deter- mine the magnitude and weight of bodies distant from him millions of millions of miles, and is thus enabled to solve innumer- able questions of the highest interest to man. They are the key of science, but are not to be confounded with science itself, although often included in the list of sci- ences, and even so recently as in M. Comte's well-known work. That such should ever have been the case has been due to the fact that so much of what is really physics is EDWARD EVERETT. 409 discussed under the head of mathematics ; as is the case with the great laws for whose discovery we are indebted to Kelper, Galileo, and Newton. That a hody impelled by a single force will move in a right line and with a velocity that is invariable, and that action and reaction are equal and opposite, are facts, at the knowledge of which we have arrived in consequence of pursuing a certain mode of investigation ; but when obtained, they are purely physical facts, ob- tained by help of the instrument to which we apply the term mathematics, and which is, to use the words of M. Cornte, simply " an immense extension of natural logic to a certain order of deductions." Positive Phi- losophy, Martineau's Translation, vol. i., 33. Logic is itself, however, but another of the instruments devised by man for enabling him to obtain a knowledge of nature's laws. To his eyes the earth appears to be a plane, arid yet he sees the sun rising daily in the east and setting as regularly in the west, from which he might infer that it would always continue so to do, but of this he can feel no certainty until he has satisfied himself why it is that it does so. At one time he sees the sun to be eclipsed, while at another the moon ceases to give light, and he desires to know why such things are, what is the law governing the movements of those bodies ; having obtained which he is enabled to predict when they will again cease to give light, and to determine when they must have done so in times that are past. At one moment ice or salt melts ; at another gas explodes ; and at a third, walls are shattered and cities are hurled to the ground ; and he seeks to know why these things are, what is the relation of cause and effect? In the effort to obtain answers to all these questions, he observes and re- cords facts, and these he arranges with a view to deduce from them the laws by virtue of which they occur, and he invents barom- eters, thermometers, and other instruments to aid him in his observation, but the ulti- mate object of all is that of obtaining an answer to the questions : Why are all these things? Why is it that dew falls on one day and not on another? Why is it that corn grows abundantly in this field and fails alto- gether in that one? Why is it that coal burns and granite will not? What, in a word, are the laws instituted by the Creator for the government of matter? The an- swers to these questions constitute science, and mathematics, logic, and all other of the machinery in use are but instruments used by him for the purpose of obtaining them. Principles of Social Science, Chap. i. : Of Science and its Methods. EDWARD EVERETT, D.C.L., an eminent orator and scholar, born at Dor- chester, Massachusetts, 1794 ; graduated at Harvard University, 181 1, and Tutor of Latin there, 1812; ordained a Unitarian minister, 1814, elected Professor of the Greek Lan- guage and Literature in Harvard University whilst absent in Europe, in 1815, and on his return, in 1819, entered upon his duties, which terminated in 1825; editor of the N. Amer. Review (to which he contributed in all one hundred and seventeen papers), Jan. 1820 to Oct. 1823; M. C., 1825-35 ; Governor of Massachusetts, 1836-40; Minister Pleni- potentiary to the Court of St. James, 1841-44; President of Harvard University, 1846-49; Secretary of State of the United States, Nov. 1852-March, 1853; United States Senator, 1853-55 ; candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States, 1860 ; died at Boston, Jan. 15, 1865. He collected, by means of orations, writings, etc., nearly one hundred thousand dollars for the purchase of Mount Vernon, that the American people might have the home of Washington for a perpet- ual possession. See A Memorial of Edward Everett from the City of Boston, 1865, rov. 8vo, pp. 315. A .Defence of Christianity against the Work of George B. English, Bost., 1814, 1 2mo ; Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions, 1825-36, Boston, 1836, 8vo ; Im- portance of Practical Education : A Selec- tion from his Orations and other Discourses [1836, 8vo, supra], New York, 1847, 12mo; Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions from 1826 to 1850, 2d edit., Bost., 1850, 2 vols. 8vo [includes all that were in the edit, of 1836, 8voJ, 3d edit., 1853, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. iii. (with Index to vols. i., ii., in., by S. Austin Allibone), 1859, 8vo, vol. iv., 1868, 8vo ; edited The Works of Daniel Webster, with a Prefatory Memoir and Notes, Bost., 1851, 6 vols. 8vo, large paper, r. 8vo. Also many single Speeches and Orations, collected as above ; The Life of General John Stark, Bost., 1834, 16mo (Sparks's Amer. Biog., 1st Series) ; Tribute to the Memory of Washing- ton Irving, New York, 1860, 12tno; Mount Vernon Papers, New York, 1861, 12mo ; Life of Washington, New York, 1860, 12mo. " It is true that he has composed no independent historical work, nor ever published any volume of biography more considerable than the excellent memoir of Washington, which he prepared at the suggestion of his friend Lord Maoiiulay, for the new [8th] edition of the Enc3 7 clopanlia Hritannica [also published separately. New York, IStiO, 12mo]. But there is no great epoch there is hardly a single event of our national or of our colonial history, which he has not carefully depicted and brilliantly illustrated in his occasional discourses. I have sometimes thought that no more attractive or more instructive history of our country could 410 EDWARD EVERETT. be presented to the youth of our land, than is found in the series of anniversary orations which he has delivered during the lost forty years. . . . I know not in what other volume the j'oung men, or even the old men, of our land, could find the history of the glorious past more accurately or more admirably portrayed. I know not where they could find the toils and struggles of our colonial or revolutionary fathers set forth with greater fulness of detail or greater felicity of illus- tration. As one reads these orations and discourses at this moment, they might almost be regarded as successive chapters of a continuous and compre- hensive work which had been composed and recited on our great national anniversaries, just as the chapters of Herodotus are said to have been recited at the Olympic festivals of ancient Greece." RoB- EUT C. WlNTHROP, LL.D. : Proceed, of Massnchu- setta Hintorical Society, Jan. 30, 1865, and in A Memorial of Edward Everett from the City of lion- ton, 1865, p. 131. See also Memoirs of the His- torical Society of Pennsylcania, 1865, relative to Edward Everett, by S. Austin Allibone. Much disappointment was felt that Mr. Everett failed to give to the world a great work " upon some broad question, with which the interests of humanity are suffi- ciently connected to insure the preservation of the fame and usefulness of the author, with the vitality of the subject." It is proper that Mr. Everett's own explanations upon this subject should be placed upon record : " It has certainly been my hope and desire to produce some continuous elaborate work, not unworthy to take a place in the perma- nent literature of the country. Whether this hope is to be realized will depend on the state of my health, which was deplorably shattered last year, but is now somewhat improved. " Should I die with this hope unfulfilled, I hope those who may take a kind interest in my memory, will see the traces of willing and conscientious effort in my occasional public addresses (some of which embody the results of no little research), in my contri- butions to the N. A. Keview, and in my various official speeches, despatches, and re- ports ; the aggregate of which, if it proves nothing else, will prove that I have not led an idle life. . . . Whether I am able to exe- cute the project, long meditated, and to some extent prepared for, of a work on the Law of Nations, will depend, not so much on the difficulty to which you allude of satisfying an ideal standard, as on the state of my health and other circumstances which pow- erfully influence the capacity for vigorous mental effort. I have for some years been so situated as to require nearly all the forti- tude and energy I can command to go through the routine of daily domestic life. I mention this with reluctance; but it is of importance to my good name hereafter, should I fall below the reasonable expecta- tions which may exist relative to the matter in question, that the true reason should be known." Letters to S. Austin Allibone, llth Sept., 1855, and 19th Dec., 1855. AMERICAN LITERATURE. This, then, is the theatre on which the in- tellect of America is to appear, and such the motives to its exertion ; such the mass to be influenced by its energies ; such the glory to crown its success. If I err in this happy vision of my country's fortunes, I thank Heaven for an error so animating. If this be false, may I never know the truth. Never may you, my friends, be under any other feeling, than that a great, a growing, an immeasurably expanding country is calling upon you for your best services. The name and character of our Alma Mater have already been carried by some of our breth ren hundreds of miles from her venerable walls ; and thousands of miles still farther westward, the communities of kindred men are fast gathering, whose minds and hearts will act in sympathy with yours. The most powerful motives call on us, as scholars, for those efforts which our common country demands of all her children. Most of us are of that class who owe whatever of knowledge has shone into our minds to the free and popular institutions of our na- tive land. There are few of us who may not be permitted to boast that we have been reared in an honest poverty, or a frugal com- petence, and owe every thing to those means of education which are equally open to all. We are summoned to new energy and zeal, by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in providence to make, and the grandeur of the theatre on which it is to be performed. At a moment of deep and gen- eral agitation in the Old World, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge of humanity. The attempt has begun, and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant pros- pects; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society ; to settle, and that forever, the momentous question, whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system of government. One might almost think, without extrava- gance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us; that they who lavished their treasures and their blood, of old, who spake and wrote, who labored, fought, and perished, in the one great cause of Freedom and Truth, are now hanging from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity. EDWARD EVERETT. 411 As I have wandered over the spots once the scene of their labours, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs of departed ages; from the sepulchres of the nations which died be- fore tlie sight. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust. They implore us by the long trials of struggling humanity ; by the blessed memory of the departed ; by the dear faith which has been plighted, by pure hands, to the holy cause of truth and man ; by the awful secrets of the prison houses, where the sons of freedom have been itiiinured ; by the noble heads which have been brought to the block ; by the wrecks of time, by the eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully. The Circumstances Favourable to the Pro- gress of Literature in America : An Ora- tion delivered at Cambridge before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, on the 26th of August, 1824- THE USES OF ASTRONOMY. There is much, in every way, in the city of Florence, to excite the curiosity, to kindle the imagination, and to gratify the taste. Sheltered on the north by the vine-clad hills of Fiesole, whose Cyclopean walls carry back the antiquary to ages before the Roman, be- fore the Etruscan, power, the flowery city (Fiorenza) covers the sunny banks of the Arno with its stately palaces. Dark and frowning piles of mediaeval structure, a ma- jestic dome the prototype of St. Peter's, basilicas which enshrine the ashes of some of the mightiest of the dead, the stone where Dante stood to gaze on the campanile, the house of Michael Angelo, still occupied by a descendant of his lineage and name, his hammer, his chisel, his dividers, his manu- script poems, all as if he had left them but yesterday; airy bridges, which seem not so much to rest on the earth as to hover over the waters they span ; the loveliest crea- tions of ancient art, rescued from the grave of ages again to " enchant the world ;" the breathing marbles of Michael Angelo, the glowing canvas of Raphael and Titian ; museums filled with medals and coins of every age from Cyrus the younger, and gems and amulets and vases from the sepulchres of Egyptian Pharaohs coeval with Joseph, and Etruscan Lucumons that swayed Italy before the Romans ; libraries stored with the choicest texts of ancient literature ; gardens of rose and orange and pomegranate and myrtle; the very air you breathe lan- guid with music and perfume, such is Flor- ence. But among all its fascinations ad- dressed to the sense, the memory, and the heart, there was none to which I more fre- quently gave a meditative hour during a year's residence, than to the spot where Gal- ileo Galilei sleeps beneath the marble floor of Santa Croce : no building on which I gazed with greater reverence, than I did upon the modest mansion at Arcetri, villa at once and prison, in which that venerable sage, by command of the Inquisition, passed the sad closing years of his life ; the beloved daughter on whom he had depended to smooth his passage to the grave laid there before him ; the eyes with which he had discovered worlds before unknown, quenched in blind- ness : " Ahime ! quegli occhi si non fatta oscuri, Che vider piu di tutti i tempi antiohi, E luce fur dei secoli futuri." That was the house " where," says Milton (another of those of whom the world was not worthy), "I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inqui- sition, for thinking on astronomy, otherwise than as the Dominican and Franciscan li- censers thought." Great heavens! what a tribunal, what a culprit, what a crime ! Let us thank God, my friends, that we live in the nineteenth century. Of all the wonders of ancient and modern art, statues and paintings, and jewels and manuscripts, the admiration and the delight of ages, there was nothing which I beheld with more affec- tionate awe, than that poor rough tube, a few feet in length, the work of his own hands, that very '' optic glass" through which the " Tuscan Artist" viewed the moon, "At evening from the Fe.ol6 Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe:" that poor little spy-glass (for it is scarcely- more) through which the human eye first distinctly beheld the surface of the moon, first discovered the phases of Venus, the sat- ellites of Jupiter, and the seeming handles of Saturn, first penetrated the dusky depths of the heavens, first pierced the clouds of visual error, which from the creation of the world involved the system of the uni- verse. There are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt enjoyment in a mo- ment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo, when first raising the newly-constructed tel- escope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the moon. . . . 412 EDWARD EVERETT. Yes, noble Galileo, thoti art right, E pttr si muove. " It does move." Bigots may make thee recant it; bin it moves nevertheless. Yes, the earth moves, and the planets move, and the mighty waters move, and the great sweeping tides of air move, and the empires of men move, and the world of thought moves, ever onward and upward to higher thoughts and bolder theories. The Inquisi- tion may seal thy lips, but they can no more stop the progress of the great truth pro- pounded by Copernicus and demonstrated by thee, than they can stop the revolving earth ! . . . . Much, however, as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present, even to the unaided sight, scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occa- sion, a few weeks since, to take the ecirly train from Providence to Boston ; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morn- ing. Every thing around was wrapt in dark- ness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, midsummer's night, the sky was without a cloud, the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day ; the Pleiades just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east; Lyra sparkled near the zenith; Andromeda veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in the south ; the steady pointers, far beneath the pole, looked meekly up from the depths of the north to their sovereign. Such was the glorious spectacle as I en- tered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twilight became more percepti- ble ; the intense blue of the sky began to soften ; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together; but the bright constellations of the west and north remained unchanged. Steadily the wondrous transfig- uration went on. Hands of angels, hidden from mortal eyes, shifted the scenery of the heavens; the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray ; the great watch- stars shut up their holy eyes ; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky ; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of ra- diance ; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds, the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, ar- rayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state. I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient Magians, who in the morning of the world went up to the hill-tops of Central Asia, and, ignorant of the true God, adored the most glorious work of his hands. But I am filled with amazement, when 1 am told, that, in this enlightened age and in the heart of the Christian world, there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation of tiie power and wisdom of the Creator, ami yet say in their hearts, " There is no God." A Discourse delivered at AWam/, on Occa- sion of the Inauguration of the Dudley Observatory, in that citi/, on the 28th of August, 1856. WASHINGTON ABROAD AND AT HOME. I feel, sir, more and more, as I advance in life, and watch with mingled confidence, so- licitude, and hope, the development of the momentous drama of our national existence, seeking to penetrate that future which His Excellency has so eloquently foreshadowed, that it is well worth our while that it is at once one of our highest social duties and important privileges to celebrate with ever-increasing solemnity, with annually augmented pomp and circumstance of festal commemoration, the anniversary of the na- tion's birth, were it only as affording a fitting occasion to bring the character and services of Washington, with ever fresh recognition, to the public attention, as the great cen- tral figure of that unparalleled group, that " noble army" of chieftains, sages, and patriots, by whom the Revolution was ac- complished. This is the occasion, and here is the spot, and this is the day. and we citizens of Bos- ton are the men, if any in the land, to throw wide open the portals of the temple of mem- ory and fame, and there gaze with the eyes of a reverent and grateful imagination on his benignant countenance and mnjestic form. This is the occasion and the day ; for who needs to be told how much the cause of independence owes to the services and char- acter of Washington; to the purity of that stainless purpose, to the firmness of that resolute soul ? This is the spot, this immor- tal hall, from which as from an altar went forth the burning coals that kindled into a consuming fire at Lexington and Concord, at Bunker Hill and Dorchester Heights. We citizens of Boston are the men ; for the first great success of Washington in the Revolu- tionary War was to restore to our fathers EDWARD EVERETT. 413 their ancient and beloved town. This is the time, the accepted time, when the voice of the Father of his Country cries aloud to us from the sods of Mount Vernon, and calls upon us, east and west, north and south, as the brethren of one great household, to be faithful to the dear-bought inheritance which he did so much to secure for us. But the fame of Washington is not con- fined to our own country. Bourdaloue, in his eulogy on the military saint of France, exclaims, '' The other saints have been given by the church to France, but France in re- turn has given St. Louis to the church." Born into the family of nations in these lat- ter days, receiving from foreign countries and inheriting from ancient times the bright and instructive example of all their honoured sons, it is the glory of America, in the very dawn of her national existence, to have given back to the world many names of which the lustre will never fade ; and especially one name of which the whole family of Christen- dom is willing to acknowledge the unenvied pre-eminence; a name of which neither Greece nor Rome, nor republican Italy, Switzerland, nor Holland, nor constitutional England can boast the rival. " A charac- ter of virtues so happily tempei-ed by one another" (I use the language of Charles James Fox), " and so wholly unalloyed by any vices, is hardly to be found on the pages of history." It is delightful to witness the generous recognition of Washington's merits, even in countries where, from political reasons, some backwardness in that respect might have been anticipated. Notwithstanding his lead- ing agency in wresting a colonial empire from Great Britain, England was not slow to appreciate the grandeur and beauty of his character. Mr. liufus King, our minister at that time to the court of St. James, writing to General Hamilton in 1797, says : " No one who has not been in England can have a just idea of the admiration expressed among all parties for General Washington. It is a common observation, that he is not only the most illustrious, but the most meritorious character which has yet appeared." Nor was France behind England in her admira- tion of Washington. Notwithstanding the uneasy relations of the two countries at the time of his decease, when the news of his death reached Paris, the youthful and fortu- nate soldier who had already reached the summit of power by paths which Washing- ton could never have trod, commanded the highest honours to be paid to his memory. "Washington," he immediately exclaimed, in the orders of the day, " is dead ! This great man fought against tyranny ; he con- solidated the liberty of his country. His memory -will be ever dear to the French people, as to all freemen in both hemi- spheres, and especially to the soldiers of France, who like him and the American soldiers are fighting for liberty and equality. In consequence, the First Consul orders that for ten days black crape shall be suspended from all the standards and banners of the republic." By order of Napoleon a solemn funeral service was performed in the 4< In- valides," in the presence of all that was most eminent in Paris. " A sorrowful cry," said Fontanes. the orator chosen for the occasion, " has reached us from America, which he liberated. It belongs to France to yield the first response to the lamentation which will be echoed by every great soul. These august arches have been well chosen for the apothe- osis of a hero." How often in those wild scenes of her revolution, when the best blood of France was shed by the remorseless and ephemeral tyrants who chased each other, dagger in hand, across that dismal stage of crime and woe, during the reign of terror, how often did the thoughts of Lafayette and his com- panions in arms, who had fought the battles of constitutional liberty in America, call up the image of the pure, the just, the humane, the unambitious Washington ! How differ- ent would have been the fate of France, if her victorious chieftain, when he had reached the giddy heights of power, had imitated the great example which he caused to be eulogized! He might have saved his coun- try from being crushed by the leagued hosts of Europe ; he might have prevented the names of Moscow and Waterloo from being written in letters of blood on the pages of history ; he might have escaped himself the sad significance of those memorable words of Fontanes, on the occasion to which I have alluded, when, in the presence of Na- poleon, he spoke of Washington as a man who, " by a destiny seldom shared by those who change the fate of empires, died in peace as a private citizen, in his native land, where he had held the first rank, and which he had himself made free!" How different would have been the fate of Spain, of Naples, of Greece, of Germany, of Mexico and the South American Repub- lics, had their recent revolutions been con- ducted by men like Washington and his pa- triotic associates, whose prudence, patriot- ism, probity, and disinterestedness conducted our Revolution to an auspicious and honour- able result ! But it is, of course, at home that we must look for an adeqimte appreciation of our Washington's services and worth. lie is the friend of the liberties of other coun- tries ; he is the father of his own. I own, 414 THOMAS CARLYLE. Mr. Mayor, that it has been to me a source of inexpressible satisfaction, to find, amidst all the bitter dissensions of the day, that this one grand sentiment, veneration for the name of Washington, is buried no, planted down in the very depths of the American heart. It has been my privilege, within the last two years, to hold it up to the reverent contemplation of my countrymen, from the banks of the Penobscot to the banks of the Savannah, from New York to St. Louis, from Chesapeake Bay to Lake Michigan ; and the same sentiments, expressed in the same words, have everywhere touched a sympathetic chord in the American heart. To that central attraction I have been de- lighted to find that the thoughts, the affec- tions, the memories of the people, in what- ever part of the country, from the ocean to the prairies of the West, from the land of granite and ice to the land of the palmetto and the magnolia, instinctively turn. They have their sectional loves and hatreds, but before the dear name of Washington they are all absorbed and forgotten. In whatever region of the country, the heart of patriotism warms to him ; as in the starry heavens, with the circling of the seasons, the point- ers go round the sphere, but their direction is ever toward the pole. They may point from the east, they may point from the west, but they will point to the northern star. It is not the brightest luminary in the heavens, as men account brightness, but it is always in its place. The meteor, kin- dled into momentary blaze from the rank vapors of the lower sky, is brighter. The comet is brighter that streams across the firmament, " And from his horrid hair Shakes pestilence and war." But the meteor explodes; the comet rushes back to the depths of the heavens ; while the load-star shines steady at the pole, alike in summer and in winter, in seed-time and in harvest, at the equinox and the solstice. It shone for Colurnbusat the discovery of Amer- ica; it shone for the pioneers of settlement, the pilgrims of faith and hope, at Jamestown and Plymouth ; it will shine for the mari- ner who shall enter your harbor to-night; it will shine for the navies which shall bear the sleeping thunders of your power, while the flag of the Union shall brave the battle and the breeze. So, too, the character, the counsels, the example of our Washington, of which you bid me speak : they guided our fathers through the storms of the Revo- lution ; they will guide us through the doubts and difficulties that beset us; they will guide our children and our children's children in the paths of prosperity and peace, while America shall hold her place in the family of nations. Speech at the Public Dinner in Faneuil Hall, on Monday, the 5th of July, 1858, his Honor F. W. Lincoln, Jr., in the Chair. THOMAS CARLYLE, " The Censor of the age," born at Eccle- fechan, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, 1795, en- tered the University of Edinburgh in 1800, and studied there for seven or eight years. distinguishing himself by proficiency in mathematics, of which he became a teacher after relinquishing his intention of studying for the Scottish ministry. For first and sub- sequent editions of his works, and criticisms thereon, see Imperial Dictionary of Uni- versal Biography, Glasgow, i. 904 (by John Nichol, of Balliol College, Oxford), Thomas'* Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biog- raphy and Mythology, Phila., i., 1870, 521, and Allibone's Critical Dictionary of Eng- lish Literature, Phila., i. 342. Editions of Carlyle's Works, Chapman & Hall, London : Library Edition, Complete, 34 vols. demy 8vo : vol. i.. Sartor Resartus (1834); ii., iii., iv., The French Revolution : A History (1837, 3 vols. cr. 8vo) ; v., Life of Frederick Schiller and Examination of his Works (1825), with Supplement of 1872; vi., vii., viii., ix., x., xi., Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (3d edit., 1847, and 4th edit., 1857, each in 4 vols. p. 8vo) ; xii., On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841, 12mo, 4th edit., 1852, 12mo) ; xiii., Past and Present (1843, p. 8vo) : xiv., xv., xvi., xvii., xviii., Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (3d edit., 1857, 3 vols. p. 8vo) ; xix., Latter- Day Pamphlets (Nos. 1,2, 3,4, 1850, post 8vo) ; xx., Life of John Sterling (1851, p. 8vo) ; xxi., xxii., xxiii., xxiv., xxv., xxvi., xxvii., xxviii., xxix., xxx., History of Fred- erick the Second (1858-64, 4 vols. 8vo) ; xxxi., xxxii., xxxiii., Translations from the German ; xxxiv., General Index. To which add Carlyle's new work, Early Kings of Nor- way, also an Essay on the Portraits of John Knox, cr. 8vo. Cheap and Uniform Edition, 23 vols. cr. 8vo : vols. i., ii., The French Revolution : A History; iii., iv., v., Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations, etc. ; vi., Lives of Schiller and John Sterling; vii., viii., ix., x., Critical and Miscellaneous Essays ; xi., Sartor Resartus and Lectures on Heroes : xii., Latter-Day Pamphlets; xiii., Chartism, and Past and Present; xiv., Translations from the German of Musaeus, Tieck, and Richter: xv., xvi., Wilhelm Meister, by Go'the, a Translation ; xvii., THOMAS CARLYLE. 415 xviii., xix,, xx., xxi., xxii., xxiii., History of Frederick the Second. Add : Early Kings of Norway, etc., 1 vol. People's Edition, 37 vols., sin. cr. 8vo : vol. i., Sartor Resartus ; ii., iii., iv., French Revolution ; v., Life of John Sterling; vi., vii., viii., ix., x., Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches : xi., On Heroes and Hero Worship ; xii., Past and Present ; xiii., xiv., xv., xvi., xvii., xviii., xix., Critical and Miscellaneous Essays ; xx., Latter- Day Pamphlets; xxi., Life of Schiller; xxii., xxiii., xxiv., xxv., xxvi., xxvii., xxviii., xxix., xxx., xxxi., History of Frederick the Second ; xxxii., xxxiii., xxxiv., Wilhelm Meister ; xxxv., xxxvi., Translations from Musaeus, Tieck, and Richter; xxxvii., Gen- eral Index. Add : Early Kings of Norway, etc., 1 vol., and Passages Selected from the Writings of Thomas Carlyle, by Thomas Ballantyne, Lond., 1855, p. 8vo ; Carlyle: His Life, His Books, His Theories, by A. II. Guernsey, New York, 1879. See also Selection from the Correspondence of the late Macvey Napier, Esq., Lond. 1879, Svo. "Carlyle as a historian is notably exact. What he himself calls a transcendent capacity of taking trouble, and a genius for accuracy, preserves him from being carried away from the strict confines of fact, lie has a keen eye for nature, and the reliance we come to have on their fidelity adds a new charm to his pictures. His descriptions of places and event?, even the most trivial, have a freshness which one hardly finds anywhere else out of Homer. . . . Much of the power of this writing is connected with the peculiar fascination of the author's later style. Questionable as a model for others, his own manner suits him, for it is emphatically part of his matter. His abruptness corresponds with the abruptness of his thought, which proceeds often by a series of electric shocks, as if to borrow a simile from a criticism on St. Paul it were breaking its bounds and breaking the sentence. It has a rugged energy which sug- gests a want of fluency in the writer, and gives the impression of his being compelled to write. He is at all hazards determined to convey his meaning : willing to borrow expressions from all lines of life and all languages, and even to invent new sounds and coin new words, for the expression of a new thought. He cares as little for rounded phrases as for logical arguments, and rather con- vinces and persuades by calling up a succession of feelings tlinn a train of reasoning." JoHxNiCHOL, of Balliol College, Oxford : Imperial Diet, of Univ. Bioy., i. 906. WORK. There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so be- nighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works ; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mam- monish, mean, is in communication with Nature ; the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth. The latest Gospel in this world is, Know thy work and do it. "Know thyself!" long enough has that poor "self" of thine tor- mented thee : thou wilt never get to know it, I believe ! Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an un- knowable individual ; know what thou canst work at, and work at it like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan. It has been written "an endless signifi- cance lies in work ;" as man perfects himself by writing, foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities ; and withal the man himself first ceases to be a jungle and foul unwholesome desert thereby. Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, De- spair itself, all these like hell-dogs lie be- leaguering the soul of the poor day-worker, as of every man ; but as he bends himself with free valour against his task, all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring afar oft' into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not a purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed fame? Destiny, on the whole, has no other way of cultivating us. A formless Chaos, once set it revolving, grows round and ever rounder ; ranges itself by mere force of gravity, into strata, spherical courses; is no longer a Chaos, but a round compacted World. What would become of the Earth, did she cease to revolve? In the poor old Earth, so long as she revolves, all inequali- ties, irregularities, disperse themselves; all irregularities are incessantly becoming reg- ular. Hast thou looked on the Potter's wheel, one of the venerablest objects ; old as the prophet Exekiel, and far older ? Rude lumps of clay; how they spin themselves up, by mere quick whirling, into beautiful circular dishes. And fancy the most as- siduous Potter, hut without his wheel, re- duced to make dishes, or other amorphous botches, by mere kneading and baking! Even such a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul that would rest and lie at ease, that would not work and spin ! Of an idle unrevolving man, the kindest Destiny, like the most assiduous Potter without wheel, can bake and knead nothing other than a botch ; let her spend on him what expensive colouring, what gilding and enamelling she will, he is but a botch. Not a dish ; no, a bulging, kneaded, crooked, shambling, 416 THOMAS CARLYLE. squint-cornered, amorphous botch, a mere enamelled vessel of dishonour ! Let the idle think of this. Blessed is he who has found his work : let him ask no other blessedness, lie has u work, a life-purpose: he has found it, and will follow it ! How, as the free flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's ex- istence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows ; draining off the sour fes- tering water gradually from the root of the remotest grass blade ; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! Labour is life: from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his God-given force, the sacred celestial life- essence, breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness, to all knowledge, '' self-knowl- edge" and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowledge ! the knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thou hast got by work- ing; the rest is yet all an hypothesis of knowledge: a thing to be argued of in schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic vortices, till we try it and fix it. " Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by Action alone." And, again, hast thou valued Patience, Courage, Perseverance, Openness to light; readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do better next time? All these, all virtues, in wrestling with the dim brute Powers of fiict, in ordering of thy fellows in such wrestle, there, and elsewhere not at all, thou wilt continually learn. Set down a brave Sir Christopher in the middle of black ruined stone heaps, of foolish unarchitectu- ral Bishops, red-tape Officials, idle Nell Cwyn Defenders of the Faith; and see whether he will ever raise a Paul's Cathe- dral out of all that, yea or no! Rough, rude, contradictory are all things and per- sons, from the mutinous masons and Irish hodmen, up to the idle Nell Gwyn Defend- ers, to blustering red-tape Officials, foolish unarchitectural Bishops. All these things and persons are there, not for Christopher's sake and his cathedrals ; they are there for their own sake mainly ! Christopher will have to conquer arid constrain all these, if he be able. All these are against him. Equitable Nature herself, who carries her mathematics and architectonics not on the face of her, but deep in the hidden heart of her, Nature herself is but part'ally for him ; will be wholly against him, if he con- strain her not ! His very money, where is it to come from ? The pious munificence of England lies far scattered, distant, unable to speak, and say, ' I am here ;" must be spoken to before it can speak. Pious mu- nificence, and all help, is so silent, invisible like the gods; impediment, contradictions manifold are so loud and near! O brave Sir Christopher, trust thou in those, not- withstanding, and front all these ; under- stand all these; by valiant patience, noble effort, insight, vanquish and compel all these, and, on the whole, strike down vic- toriously the last topstone of that Paul's edifice : thy monument for certain centuries, the stamp '' Great Man" impressed very legibly in Portland stone there ! Yes, all manner of work, and pious re- sponse from Men or Nature, is always what we call silent ; cannot speak or come to light till it be seen, till it be spoken to. Every noble work is at first " impossible." In very truth, for every noble work the possibilities will lie diffused through immensity, inartic- ulate, undiscoverable except to faith. Like Gideon, thou shalt spread out thy fleece at the door of thy tent; see whether, under the wide arch of Heaven, there be any boun- teous moisture or none. Thy heart and life- purpose shall be as a miraculous Gideon's fleece, spread out in silent appeal to Heaven ; and from the kind Immensities, what from the poor unkind Localities and town and country Parishes there never could, blessed dew- moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen ! Work is of a religious nature: work is of a brave nature ; which it is the aim of all religion to be. " All work of man is as the swimmer's:" a waste ocean threatens to devour him ; if he front it not bravely, it will keep its word. By incessant wise de- fiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, behold how it loyally supports him, bears him as its conqueror along. " It is so," saya Goethe, "with all things that man under- takes in this world." Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king, Co- lumbus, my hero, royalist Sea-king of all ! it is no friendly environment this of thine, in the waste deep waters ; around thee muti- nous discouraged souls, behind thee disgrace and ruin, before thee the impenetrated veil of night. Brother, these wild water-moun- tains, bounding from their deep bases (ten miles deep, I am told) are not entirely there on thy behalf! Meseems they have other work than floating thee forward : and the huge Winds that sweep from Ursa Ma- jor to the Tropics and Equators, dancing their giant waltz through the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they care little about filling rightly or filling wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails in this cockle skiff THOMAS CARLYLE. 41? of thine ! Thou art not among articulate speaking friends, my brother ; thou art among immeasurable dumb monsters, tum- bling, howling wide as the world here. Secret, far off, invisible, invisible to all hearts but thine, there lies a help in them : see how thou wilt get at that. Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad south-wester spend itself, saving thyself by dexterous science of defence the while; valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou strike in, when the favouring East, the Possible, springs up. Mutiny of men thou wilt sternly repress ; weakness, despondency, thou wilt cheerily encourage ; thou wilt swallow down com- plaint, unreason, weariness, weakness of thyself and others ; how much wilt thou swallow down ! There shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper than this Sea, which is but ten miles deep ; a Silence unsound- able ; known to God only. Thou shalt be a great Man. Yes, my World-Soldier, thou of the world Marine-Service, thou wilt have to be greater than this tumultuous unmeas- ured World here round thee is : thou, in thy strong soul, as with wrestler's arms, shalt embrace it, harness it down ; and make it bear thee on to new Americas, or whither God wills ! . . . Religion, I said ; for, properly speaking, all true Work is Religion ; and whatsoever Religion is not Work may go and dwell among the Brahmins, Antinomians, Spin- ning Dervishes, or where it will ; with me it shall have no harbour. Admirable was that of the old Monks, "Laborare est Orare, Work is Worship." Older than all preached Gospels was this unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, for ever-enduring Gospel : Work, and therein have well-being. Man, Son of Earth and of Heaven, lies there not, in the innermost heart of thee, a Spirit of active Method, a Force for Work ; and burns like a painfully smouldering fire, giving thee no rest till thou unfold it, till thou write it down in beneficent Facts around thee ! What is immethodic, waste, thou shalt make methodic, regulated, arable; obedient and productive to thee. Wheresoever thou findest Disorder, there is thy eternal enemy: attack him swiftly, sub- due him ; make Order of him, the subject, not of Chaos, but of Intelligence, Divinity, and Thee ! The thistle that grows in thy path, dig it out that a blade of useful grass, a drop of nourishing milk, may grow there instead. The waste cotton-shrub, gather its waste white down, spin it, weave it; that in place of idle litter, there may be folded webs, and the nuked skin of man be covered. But above all, where thou findest Igno- rance, Stupidity, Brute-mindedncss attack it, I say ; smite it wisely, unweariedly, and / rest not while thou livest and it lives ; but smite, smite in the name of God! The Highest God, as I understand it, does audi- bly so command thee: still audibly, if thou have ears to hear. He, even He, with His unspoken voice, fuller than any Sinai thun- ders, or syllabled speech of Whirlwinds ; for the SILENCE of deep Eternities, of Worlds from beyond the morning-stars, does it not speak to thee? The unborn Ages; the old Graves, with their long-mouldering dust, the very tears that wetted it, now all dry do not these speak to thee what ear hath not heard? The deep Death-kingdoms, the stars in their never-resting courses, all Space and all Time, proclaim it to thee in continual silent admonition. Thou, too, if ever man should, shalt work while it is called To-day. For the Night cometh wherein no man can work. All true Work is sacred ; in all true Work, were it but true hand-labour, there is some- thing of divineness. Labour, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. Sweat of the brow ; and up from that to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart; which includes all Kepler calculations, New r ton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken Epics, all acted He- roisms, Martyrdoms up to that " Agony of bloody sweat," which all men have called divine! brother, if this is not "worship," then, I say, the more pity for worship ; for this is the noblest thing yet discovered under God's sky ! Who art thou that corn- plainest of thy life of toil? Complain not. Look up, my wearied brother ; see thy fel- low-workmen there, in God's Eteraity ; sur- viving there, they alone surviving ; sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Body guard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak Human Memory they survive so long, as saints, as heroes, as gods ; they alone sur- viving ; peopling, they alone, the imineas- ured solitudes of Time ! To thee Heaven, though severe, is not unkind ; Heaven is kind as a noble Mother ; as that Spartan Mother, saying, while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or upon it!" Thou, too, shalt return home, in honour to thy far-distant Home, in honour ; doubt it not if in the battle thou keep thy shield ! Thou, in the Eternities and deepest Death- kingdoms, art not an alien ; thou everywhere art a denizen! Complain not; the very Spartans did not complain. Past and Present. TEUFELSDROCKH'S NIGHT VIEW OF THE CITV. I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee- hive, and witness their wax-laying and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace es- planade, where music plays while Serene 418 THOMAS CARLYLE. Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down the low lane, where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all ; for, ex- cept the Schlosskirche weather-cock no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron and his household ; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops painfully along, begging alms : a thou- sand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling in with Food, with young Rus- ticity, and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with Produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? From Eternity on- wards to Eternity ! These are apparitions : what else ? Are they not souls rendered visible : in bodies that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their solid Pave- ment is a Picture of the Sense ; they walk on the bosom of Nothing ; blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen yon- der, with spurs on its heels and feathers in its crown, is but of to-day, without a yester- day or a to-morrow -, and had not rather its Ancestor alive when Ilengstand Ilorsa over- ran thy Island ? Friend, thou seest here a living link, in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more. " Ach, mein lieber !" said Teufelsdrb'ckh once, at mid- night, when we had returned from the coffee- house in rather earnest talk, " it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient region of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting- dogs over the Zenith in their leash of si- dereal fire ? That stifled hum of midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bear- ing her to Halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are abroad: that hum, I say, like the ster- torous, unquiet slumber of sick life, is heard in Heaven ! Oh ! under that hideous cover- let of vapours, and putrefactions, and unim- aginable gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid ! The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men are dying there, men are being born ; men are praying, on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing: and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains ; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger- stricken into its lair of straw ; in obscure cellars, liouge-et-Nair languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting and playing their high chess-game whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready ; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders : the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his pick-locks and crow- bars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts ; but, in the condemned cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow : comes no hammering from the Rabenstein ! their gallows must even now be o' building. Upwards of five-hundred- thousand two-legged animals without feath- ers lie round us, in horizontal position ; their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the fool- ishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and stag- gers and swaggers in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten. All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry and masonry between them : crammed in, like salted fish in their barrels ; or welter- ing, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above the others ; such work goes on under that snake-counterpane? But I sit above it all; I am alone with the Stiirs !" Sartor llesartus, Chap. Hi. THE ATTACK UPON THE BASTILLE. All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere, " To the Bastille !" Re- peated "deputations of citizens" have been here, passionate for arms ; whom De Lau- nay has got dismissed by soft speeches through port-holes. Towards noon Elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains admittance ; finds De Launay indisposed for surrender ; nay, disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements: heaps of paving stones, old iron, and missiles lie piled : cannon all duly levelled ; in every embrasure a cannon only drawn back a little ! But outwards, behold, Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street; tocsin fu- riously pealing; all drums beating the THOMAS ARNOLD. 419 rale: the suburb Sainte-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly as one man ! Such vision (spectral, yet real) thou, Thuriot ! as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this mo- ment: prophetic of other phantasmagories, and loud-gibbering spectral realities which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt. " Que voulez-vous?" said De Launay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach, almost of menace. " Monsieur," said Thuriot, rising into the moral sublime, " what mean you? Consider if I could not precipitate both of us from this height/' say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch ! Where- upon De Launay fell silent. Wo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one firm de- cision, rule circumstances ! Soft speeches will not serve ; hard grape-shot is question- able ; but hovering between the two is nn- questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men ; their infinite hum waxing ever louder into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry, which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The outer drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the outer court : soft speeches producing no clearance of these, De Launay gives fire ; pulls up his drawbridge. A slight sputter; which has kindled the too combustible chaos ; made it a roaring fire chaos ! Bursts firth insurrection, at sight of its own blood (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration; and overhead from the fortress, let one great gun, with its grape- shot go booming, to show what we could do. The Bastille is besieged ! On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their bodies ! Hoar with all your throats of cartilage and metal, ye sons of liberty : stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it is the hour ! Smite thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old soldier of the Regiment Dauphine; smite at that outer drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail whistles round thee ! Never, over nave or felloe did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man ; down Avith it toOrcus: let the whole accursed edifice sink thither, and tyranny be swallowed up for ever ! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard- room, some on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall. Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him ; the chain yields, breaks ; the huge drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glorious! .and yet, alas ! it is still but the outworks. The eight grim towers with their Invalides' musketry, their paving- stones and cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact; ditch yawning impassable, stone- faced; the inner drawbridge with its back towards us: the Bastille is still to take! The French devolution : A History. Ox THE CHOICE OF BOOKS. I can truly say the labour you have gone into (which appears to be faithfully done, wherever I can judge of it), fills me witli astonishment; and is indeed of an amount almost frightful to think of. There seems to be no doubt the Book will be welcome to innumerable reading beings, and tell them much that they wish to know : to me the one fault was, that, like the Apostle Peter's sheet of Beasts, it [the Critical Dictionary of English Literature] took in " the clean and unclean," and thereby became of such unmanageable bulk, to say no more. Readers are not yet aware of the fact, but a fact it is of daily increasing magnitude, and already of terrible importance to readers, that their first grand necessity in reading is to be vigi- lantly conscientiously select; and to know everywhere that Books, like human souls, are actually divided into what we may call " sheep and goats," the latter put inexor- ably on the left hand of the Judge ; and tending, every goat of them, at all moments whither we know; and much to be avoided, and if possible, ignored, by all sane creatures ! Carli/le to S. Austin Allibone, Aberdour, Fife (for Chelsea, London), 18th July, 1859. " THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D., born at Cowes, Isle of Wight, 1795, entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1811, and took a First Class in Classics, 1814; in 1815 was elected Fellow of Oriel College, where he gained the Chancellor's Prizes for the two University Essays, Latin and English, for 1815 and 1817, received private pupils at Laleham, 1819-1828, Head Master of Rugby School from 1827, and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford from 1841 until his sudden death, June 12, 1842. The His- tory of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucy- dides, in Greek, the text according to Bekker, with some Alterations, with English Notes, chiefly Historical and Geographical, Oxford, 1830-32-35, 3 vols. 8vo; History of Rome, Lond., 1838-40-42, 3 vols. derny Svo ; His- tory of the Later Roman Commonwealth, Lond., 2 vols. demy Svo ; Introductory Lec- tures on Modern History, Lond., 1842, 8vo ; Sermons, 6 vols. 8vo, and 1 vol. fp. Svo ; Miscellaneous Works, Lond., Svo. " His sermons are remarkable as being, by their simple and natural language, one of the first prac- 420 THOMAS ARNOLD. tical protests raised in the nineteenth century against the technical and unreal phraseology gen- erally used in English preaching, and as uniting a high religious standard, a strong imagination, and a living spirit of devotion, with unaffected good sense, and moral energy and sincerity." ARTHUR P. STANLEY, D.D. See Stanley's Life and Corre- spondence of Thomas Arnold, U.I)., Lond., 1844, 2 vols. 8vo, 8th edit., 1858, 2 vols. cr. 8vo, and Life of Arnold by E. J. Worboise, Lond., 1852, sin. Svo ; Tom liroicn's School- Days at lint/In/, Lond., 1857, 12m<>: (London) Quar. Jiev., 74: 507 ; Edin. liev., .Ian. 1S43. EDUCATION OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES. Every man, from the highest to the lowest, has two businesses; the one his. own partic- ular profession or calling, be it what it will, whether that of soldier, seaman, farmer, law- yer, mechanic, labourer, etc., the other his general calling, which he has in common with all his neighbours, namely, the calling of a citizen and a man. The education which fits him for the first of these two busi- nesses, is called professional ; that which fits him for the second, is called liberal. But because every man must do this second busi- ness, whether he does it well or ill, so people are accustomed to think that it is learnt more easily. A man who lias learnt it in- differently seems, notwithstanding, to get through life with tolerable comfort; he may be thought not to be very wise or very agree- able, yet he manages to get married, and to bring up a family, and to mix in society with his friends and neighbours. Whereas a man who has learnt his other business indiffer- ently, I mean, his particular trade or calling, is in some danger of starving outright. People will not employ an indifferent work- man when good ones are to be had in plenty ; and, therefore, if he has learnt his particular business badly, it is likely that he will not be able to practise it at all. Thus it is that while ignorance of a man's special business is instantly detected, igno- rance of his great business as a man and a citizen is scarcely noticed, because there are so many who share it. Thus we see every one ready to give an opinion about politics, or about religion, or about morals, because it is said these are every man's business. And so they are, and if people would learn them as they do their own particular busi- ness, all would do well : but never was the proverb better fulfilled which says that every man's business is no man's. It is worse, indeed, than if it were no man's; for now it is every man's business to meddle in, but no man's to learn. And this general ig- norance does not make itself felt directly, if it did, it were more likely to be remedied : but the process is long and roundabout ; false notions are entertained and acted upon ; prejudices and passions multiply ; abuses become manifold; difficulty and distress at last press on the whole community ; whilst the same ignorance which produced the mis- chief now helps to confirm it or to aggravate it, because it hinders them from seeing where the root of the whole evil lay, and sets them upon some vain attempt to correct the consequences, while they never think of curing, because they do not suspect the cause. I believe it is generally the case, at least in the agricultural districts, that a boy is taken away from school at fourteen, lie is taken away, less than half educated, because his friends want him to enter upon his busi- ness in life without any longer delay. That is, the interests of his great business as n man are sacrificed to the interest of his par- ticular business as a farmer or a tradesman. And yet very likely the man who cares so little about political knowledge, is very earn- est about political power, and thinks that it is most unjust if he has no share in the elec- tion of members of the legislature. I do not blame any one for tnking his son from school at an early age when he is actually obliged to do so, but I fear that in too many instances there is no sense entertained of the value of education, beyond its fitting a boy for his own immediate business in life: and until this be altered for the better, I do not see that we are likely to grow much wiser, or that though political power may pass into different hands, that it will be exercised more purely or sensibly than it has been. " But the newspapers, they are cheap and ready instructors in political knowledge, from whom all may, and all are willing, to learn." A newspaper reader, addressing a newspaper editor, must not speak disre- spectfully of that with which they are them- selves concerned : but we know, sir, and every honest man connected with a news- paper would confess also, that our instruc- tion is often worse than useless to him who has never had any other. We suppose that our readers have some knowledge and some principles of their own ; and adapt our lan- guage to them accordingly. I am afraid that we in many cases suppose this untruly ; and the wicked amongst our fraternity make their profit out of their readers' ignorance, by telling them that they are wise. But instruction must be regular and systematic ; whereas a newspaper must give the facts of the day or the week, and if it were to over- load these with connected essays upon gen- eral principles, it would not be read. I fear that my own letters tax the patience of some of your readers to the utmost allow- able length : and that many, perhaps those who might find them most useful, never think of reading them at all. And yet my THOMAS ARNOLD. 421 letters, although the very least entertaining things that could be tolerated in a news- paper, cannot and do not pretend to give instructions to those who are wholly igno- rant. All my hope is to set my readers think- ing; and rny highest delight would be that any one should be induced by them to sus- pect his own ignorance, and to try to gain knowledge where it is to be gained. But assuredly he who does honestly want to gain knowledge will not go to a newspaper to look for it. No, sir, real knowledge, like everything else of the highest value, is not to be ob- tained so easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and more than all. it must be prayed fov. And that is edu- cation, which lays the foundation of such habits, and gives them, so far as a boy's early age will allow, their proper exercise. For doing this, the materials exist in the studies actually pursued in our commercial schools ; but it cannot be done effectually, if a boy's education is to be cut short at fourteen. His schooling indeed may be ended without mischief, if his parents are able to guide his education afterwards ; and the way to gain this hereafter, is to make the most of the schooling time of the rising generation, that finding how much may be done, even in their case, within the limited time allowed for their education, they may be anxious to give their children greater ad- vantages, that the fruit may be proportion- ally greater. It may be said that this is impracticable ; to which I have only to say that I will not believe it to be so till I am actually unable to hope otherwise; for if it be impracticable, my expectations of good from any political changes are faint indeed. These changes might still be necessary, might still be just, but they would not mend our condition : the growth of evil, moral and political, would be no less rapid than it is now. Miscellaneous Works: Education of the Middle Classes, Letter iL CLASSICAL EDUCATION. A reader unacquainted with the real nature of a classical education will be in danger of undervaluing it, when he sees that so large a portion of time at so important a period of human life is devoted to the study of a few ancient writers whose works seem to have no direct bearing on the studies and duties of our own generation. For instance, although some provision is undoubtedly made at Rugby for acquiring a knowledge of modern history, yet the history of Greece and Rome is more studied than that of France and England ; and Homer and Vir- gil are certainly much more attended to than Shakspere and Milton. This appears to many persons a great absurdity ; while others who are so far swayed by authority as to believe the system to be right, are yet unable to understand how it can be so. A Journal of Education may not be an unfit place for a few remarks on this subject. It may be freely confessed that the first origin of classical education affords in itself no reasons for its being continued now. When Latin and Greek were almost the only written languages of civilized men, it is manifest that they must have furnished the subjects of all liberal education. The question therefore is wholly changed since the growth of a complete literature in other languages ; since France, and Italy, and Germany, and England, have each produced their philosophers, their poets, and their historians, worthy to be placed on the same level with those of Greece and Rome. But although there is not the same reason now which existed three or four centuries ago for the study of Greek and Roman liter- ature, yet there is another no less substan- tial. Expel Greek and Latin from your schools, and you confine the views of the existing generation to themselves and their immediate predecessors; you will cut off so many centuries of the world's experience, and place us in the same state as if the hu- man race had first come into existence in the year 1500. For it is nothing to say that a few learned individuals might still study classical literature : the effect produced on the public mind would be no greater than that which has resulted from the labours of our Oriental scholars: it would not spread beyond themselves; and men in general, after a few generations, would know as lit- tle of Greece and Rome, as they do actually of China and Hindustan. But such an ig- norance would be incalculably more to be regretted. With the Asiatic uiind we have no nearer connexion and sympathy than is de- rived from our common humanity. But the mind of the Greek and of the Roman is in all the essential points of its constitution our own : and not only so, but it is our mind developed to an extraordinary degree of perfection. Wide as is the difference be- tween us with respect to those physical in- struments which minister to our uses or our pleasures ; although the Greeks and Romans had no steam-engines, no printing-presses, no mariner's compass, no telescopes, no mi- croscopes, no gunpowder ; yet in our moral and political views, in those matters which must determine human character, there is a perfect resemblance in these respects. Aris- totle, and Plato, and Thucydides, and Cicero, and Tacitus, are most untruly called ancient 422 WILLIAM HIGGLING PEES CO TT. writers: they are virtually our own coun- trymen and contemporaries, but have the advantage which is enjoyed by intelligent travellers, that their observation has been exercised in a field out of the reach of com- mon men ; and that having thus seen in a manner with our eyes what we cannot see for ourselves, their conclusions are such as bear upon our own circumstances, while their information has all the charm of nov- elty, and all the value of a mass of new and pertinent facts, illustrative of the great sci- ence of the nature of civilized man. Now when it is said that men in manhood so often throw their Greek and Latin aside, and that this very fact shows the useless- ness of their early studies, it is much more true to say that it shows how completely the literature of Greece and Home would be for- gotten, if our system of education did not keep up the knowledge of it. But it by no means shows that system to be useless, un- less it followed that when a man laid aside his Greek and Latin books, he forgot also all that he had ever gained from them. This, however, is so far from being the case, that even where the results of a classical educa- tion are least tangible, and least appreciated even by the individual himself, still the mind often retains much of the effect of its early studies in the general liberality of its tastes and comparative comprehensiveness of its views and notions. All this supposes, indeed, that classical instruction should be sensibly conducted; it requires that a classical teacher should be fully acquainted with modern history and modern literature, no less than with those of Greece and Rome. What is, or perhaps what used to be, called a mere scholar, can- not possibly communicate to his pupils the main advantages of a classical education. The knowledge of the past is valuable be- cause without it our knowledge of the pres- ent and of the future must be scanty: but if the knowledge of the past be confined wholly to itself, if, instead of being made to bear upon things around us, it be totally isolated from them, and so disguised by vagueness and misapprehension as to ap- pear incapable of illustrating them, then in- deed it becomes little better than laborious trifling, and they who declaim against it may be fully forgiven. Quarterly Journal of Education, 1834. WILLIAM HICKLING PRES- COTT, D.C.L., one of the most eminent of modern his- torians, son of Judge William Prescott, of Boston, and grandson of Colonel William Prescott, who commanded at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, was born at Salem, Massa- chusetts, May 4, 1796 ; graduated at Har- vard University, with distinguished honour, 1814; passed two years in Europe (visiting England, France, and Italy), 1815-17, and about three months (visiting England, Scot- land, Brussels, and Antwerp) in 1850; died suddenly of apoplexy, Jan. 28, 1859. (See article George Ticknor, LL.D., in this vol- ume.) " At a college-dinner in his Junior year, an undergraduate threw at random a large, hard piece of bread, which struck one of Prescott's eyes, and, for all useful purposes, closed it forever on the world. His other eye was soon sympathetically affected ; and the youthful student, to whom life had but yesterday seemed so bright and hope-inspir- ing, was now obliged to turn his back upon the sun and all that it gladdens, and, at a later period, for many weary months to submit to the imprisonment of a darkened room." Allibone's Grit. Dictionary of Eng. Literature, ii. 1663, which see for copious accounts of Prescott's life and works. See also Life of William HicTcling Prescott, by George Ticknor, Boston, 1864, 4to. Works: History of the lleign of Ferdi- nand and Isabella the Catholic, Bost., 1838, 3 vols.8vo, 12th London edit., 1859 ; History of the Conquest of Mexico, with a Prelimi- nary View of the Ancient Mexican Civiliza- tion, and the Life of the Conqueror, Iler- nando Cortez, New York, 1843, 3 vols. 8vo, 10th London edit., 1859; History of the Conquest of Peru, with a Preliminary View of the Civilization of the Incas, New York, 1847, 3 vols. 8vo, 8th London edit., 1859; History of the lleign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, vols. i. and ii., Boston, Dec. 1855, 4th London edit., 1855, vol. iii., Boston, Dec. 1858, Lond., 1858; The Life of Charles the Fifth after his Abdication, being a Sup- plement to a new edition of Robertson's Reign of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, Bost., 1857, 3 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1857; Bio- graphical and Critical Miscellanies, New York, 1845, 8vo, 2d London edit., 1850, 8vo, new edit., 1859, 8vo. " Mr. Prescott was by far the first Historinn of America, and he may justly be assigned a Place beside the very greatest of modern Europe. To the indispensable requisites of such an author industry, candour, and impartiality he united ornamental qualities of the highest grade: a mind stored with various and Elegant Learning, a poet- ical temperament, nnd great, it may almost be said unrivalled, pictorial Powers. These groat qualities appeared not less strongly in his last production, the History of the Reign of Philip the Second, than in the earlier works the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the History of WILLIAM IIICKLING FRESCO TT. 423 the Conquest of Mexico, and the History of the Conquest of Peru which won for him his world- wide fame. The death of such a man, in the prime of life, and in the Meridian of his Powers, is a loss not to his country alone, but to the whole human race, to whom his beautiful writings will always prove a source of instruction and enjoyment." SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON TO S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE, Glasgow, June 4, 1859. " I had as great regard for Mr. Preseott as for any man of whom I knew so little ; and I think very highly of his works." LORD MACAIILAY TO THE SAME, ilolly Lodge, Kensington, May 28, 1859. ISABELLA OF SPAIN AND ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND. It is in the amiable qualities of her sex that Isabella's superiority becomes most ap- parent over her illustrious namesake, Eliza- beth of England, whose history presents some features parallel to her own. Both were disciplined in early life by the teach- ings of that stern nurse of wisdom, adversity. Both were made to experience the deepest humiliation at the hands of their nearest relative, who should have cherished and pro- tected them. Both succeeded in establishing themselves on the throne after the most pre- carious vicissitudes. Each conducted her kingdom, through a long and triumphant reign, to a height of glory which it had never before reached. Both lived to see the vanity of all' earthly grandeur, and to fall the victims of an inconsolable melancholy; and both left behind an illustrious name, unrivalled in the subsequent annals of the country. But with these few circumstances of their history the resemblance ceases. Their char- acters afford scarcely a point of contact. Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry's temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse, and irascible ; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station with the most bland and courteous manners. Once resolved, she was constant in her purposes ; and her con- duct in public and private life was charac- terized by candour and integrity. Both may be said to have shown that magnanimity which is implied by the accomplishment of great objects in the face of great obstacles. But Elizabeth was desperately selfish ; she was incapable of forgiving, not merely a real injury, but the slightest affront to her vanity ; and she was merciless in exacting retribu- tion. Isabella, on the other hand, lived only for others, was ready at all times to sacri- fice self to considerations of public duty ; and, far from personal resentments, showed the greatest condescension and kindness to those who had most sensibly injured her; while her benevolent heart sought every means to mitigate the authorized severities of the law, even toward the guilty. Both possessed rare fortitude. Isabella, indeed, was placed in situations which de- manded more frequent and higher displays of it than her rival ; but no one will doulit a full measure of this quality in the (laugh- ter of Henry the Eighth. Elizabeth was better educated, and every way more highly , accomplished than Isabella. But the latter knew enough to maintain her tation with dignity ; and she encouraged learning by a mnnificentpatronage. The masculine powers and passions of Elizabeth seemed to divorce her in a great measure from the peculiar attributes of her sex ; at least from those which constitute its peculiar charm ; for she had abundance of its foibles, a coquetry and love of admiration which age could not chill; a levity most careless, if not criminal ; and a fondness for dress and tawdry magni- ficence of ornament, which was ridiculous, or disgusting, according to the different periods of life in which it was indulged. Isabella, on the other hand, distinguished through life for decorum of manners and purity beyond the breath of calumny, was content with the legitimate affection which she could inspire within the range of her domestic circle. Far from a frivolous affec- tation of ornament or dress, she was most simple in her own attire, and seemed to set no value on her jewels, but as they could serve the necessities of the state: when they could be no longer useful in this way, she gave them away to her friends. Both were uncommonly sagacious in the selection of their ministers; though Eliza- beth was drawn into some errors in this par- ticular by her levity, as was Isabella by her religious feeling. It was this, combined with her excessive humility, which led to the only grave errors in the administration of the latter. Her rival fell into no such errors; and she Avas a stranger to the amia- ble qualities which led to them. Her conduct was certainly not controlled by religious principle: and, though the bulwark of the Protestant faith, it might be difficult to say whether she were at heart most a Protestant or a Catholic. She viewed religion in its connection with the state, in other words, with herself; and she took measures for en- forcing conformity in her own views, not a whit less despotic, and scarcely less sangui- nary, than those countenanced for con- science' sake by her more bigoted rival. This feature of bigotry, which has thrown a shade over Isabella's otherwise beautiful character, might lead to a disparagement of her intellectual power compared with that of the English queen. To estimate this WILLIAM HICKLING PRE SCOTT. aright, we must contemplate the results of their respective reigns. Elizabeth found all the materials of prosperity at hand, and availed herself of them most ably to build up a solid fabric of national grandeur. Isa- bella created these materials. She saw the faculties of her people locked up in a death- like lethargy, and she breathed into them the breath of life for those great and heroic enterprises which terminated in such glo- rious consequences to the monarchy. It is when viewed from the depressed condition of her early days, that the achievements of her reign seem scarcely less than miraculous. The masculine genius of the English queen stands out relieved beyond its natural di- mensions by its separation from the softer qualities of her sex. While her rival's, like some vast but symmetrical edifice, loses in appearance somewhat of its actual grandeur from the perfect harmony of its proportions. The circumstances of their deaths, which were somewhat similar, displayed the great dissimilarity of their characters. Both pined amidst their royal state, a prey to incurable despondency rather than any marked bodily distemper. In Elizabeth it sprung from Avounded vanity, a sullen conviction that she had outlived the admiration on which she had so long fed, and even the solace of friend- ship and the attachment of her subjects. Nor did she seek consolation, where alone it was to be found in that sad hour. Isabella, on the other hand, sunk under a too acute sensibility to the sufferings of others. But, amidst the gloom which gathered around her, she looked with the eye of faith to the brighter prospects which unfolded of the future ; and when she resigned her last breath, it was amidst the tears and universal lamentations of her people. History of ike IMyn of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic. THE KING OF TEZCUCO. It would be incredible that a man of the enlarged mind and endowments of Ne'za- hunlcoyoti should acquiesce in the sordid superstitions of his countrymen, and still more in the sanguinary rites borrowed by them from the Aztecs. In truth, his hu- mane temper shrunk from these cruel cere- monies, and he strenuously endeavoured to recall his people to the more pure and simple worship of the ancient Toltecs. A circum- stance produced a temporary change in his conduct. lie had been married some years to the wife he had so unrighteously obtained, but was not blessed with issue. The priests represented that it was owing to his neglect of the gods of his country, and that his only remedy was to propitiate them by human sacrifice. The king reluctantly consented, and the altars once more smoked with the blood of slaughtered captives. But it was all in vain : and he indignantly exclaimed, " These idols of wood and stone can neither hear nor feel ; much less could they make the heavens, and-*'the earth, and man, the lord of it. These must be the work of the all-powerful, unknown God, Creator of the universe, on whom alone I must rely for consolation and support." He then withdrew to his rural palace of Tezcotzinco, where he remained forty days, fasting and praying at stated hours, and offering up no other sacrifice than the sweet incense of copal, and aromatic herbs and gums. At the expiration of this time, he is said to have been comforted by a vision as- suring him of the success of his petition. At all events, such proved to be the fact: and this was followed by the cheering in- telligence of the triumph of his arms in a quarter where he had lately experienced some humiliating reverses. Greatly strengthened in his former re- ligious convictions, he now openly professed his faith, and was more earnest to wean his subjects from their degrading superstitions, and to substitute nobler and more spiritual conceptions of the Deity. He built a temple in the usual pyramidal form, and on the summit a tower nine stories high, to repre- sent the nine heavens ; a tenth was sur- mounted by a roof painted black, and profusely gilded with stars on the outside, and incrusted with metal and precious stones within. He dedicated this to " the unknown God, the Cause of causes." It seems proba- ble, from the emblem on the tower, as well as from the complexion of his verses, as we shall see, that he mingled with his reverence for the Supreme the astral worship which existed among the Toltecs. Various musical instruments were placed on the top of the tower, and the sound of them, accompanied by the ringing of a sonorous metal struck by a mallet, summoned the worshippers to prayers at regular seasons. No image was allowed in the edifice as unsuited to tho " in- visible God ;" and the people were expressly prohibited from profaning the altars with blood, or any other sacrifices than that of the perfume of flowers and sweet-scented gums. The remainder of his days wns chiefly spent in his delicious solitude of Tezcot- zinco, where he devoted himself to astro- nomical and, probably, astrological studies, and to meditation on his immortal destiriv, giving utterance to his feelings in songs, or rather hymns, of much solemnity and pathos. An extract from one of these will WILLIAM HICKLING PRE SCOTT. 425 convey some idea of his religious specula- tions. The pensive tenderness of the verses quoted in a preceding page is deepened here and there into a mournful, and even gloomy, colouring ; while the wounded spirit, in- stead of seeking relief in the convivial sal- lies of a young and buoyant temperament, turns for consolation to the world beyond the grave. " All things on earth have their term, and, in the most joyous career of their vanity and splendour, their strength fails, and they sink into the dust. All the round world is but a sepulchre ; and there is nothing which lives on its surface that shall not be hidden and entombed beneath it. .Rivers, torrents, and streams move onward to their destination. Not one flows back to its pleasant source. They rush onward, hastening to bury themselves in the deep bosom of the ocean. The things of yester- day are no more to-day ; and things of to- day shall cease, perhaps, on the morrow. The cemetery is full of the loathsome dust of bodies once quickened by living souls, who occupied thrones, presided over assem- blies, marshalled armies, subdued provinces, arrogated to themselves worship, were puffed up with vain-glorious pomp, and power, and empire. ' But these glories have all passed away, like the fearful smoke that issues from the throat of Popocatepetl, with no other me- morial of their existence than the record on the page of the chronicler. " The great, the wise, the valiant, the beautiful, alas ! where are they now? They are all mingled with the clod ; and that which has befallen them shall happen to us, and to those that come after us. Yet let us take courage, illustrious nobles and chieftains, true friends and loyal subjects, let us aspire to that heaven, where all is eter- nal, and corruption cannot come. The hor- rors of the tomb are but the cradle of the Sun, and the dark shadows of death are brilliant lights for the Stars." The mystic import of the last sentence seems to point to that superstition respect- ing the mansions of the Sun, which forms so beautiful a contrast to the dark features of the Aztec mythology. At length, about the year 1470, Nezahual- coyoti, full of years and honours, felt him- self drawing near his end. Almost half a century had elapsed since he mounted the throne of Tezcuco. He had found his king- dom dismembered by faction, and bowed to the dust beneath the yoke of a foreign ty- rant. He had broken that yoke ; had breathed new life into the nation, renewed its ancient institutions, extended wide its domain ; had seen it flourishing in all the activity of trade and agriculture, gathering strength from its enlarged resources, and daily advancing higher and higher in the great inarch of civilization. All this he had seen, and might fairly attribute no small portion of it to his own wise and beneficent rule. His long and glorious day was now drawing to its close ; and he contemplated the event with the same serenity which he had shown under the clouds of its morning and in its meridian splendour. A short time before his death, he gathered around him those of his children in whom he most confided, his chief counsellors, the ambassadors of Mexico and Tlacopan, and his little son, the heir to the crown, his only offspring by the queen. He was not then eight years old; but had already given, as far as so tender a blossom might, the rich promise of future excellence. After tenderly embracing the child, the dying monarch threw over him the robes of sovereignty. He then gave audience to the ambassadors, and, when they had retired, made the boy repeat the substance of the conversation. He followed this by such counsels as were suited to his comprehen- sion, and which, when remembered through the long vista of after years, would serve as lights to guide him in his government of the kingdom. He besought him not to neg- lect the worship of "the unknown God," regretting that he himself had been un- worthy to know him, and intimating his con- viction that the time would come when he should be known and worshipped throughout the land. He next addressed himself to that one of his sons in whom he placed the greatest trust, and whom he had selected as guard- ian of the realm. " From this hour," said he to him, "you will fill the place that I have filled, of father to this child; you will teach him to live as he ought ; and by your counsels he will rule over the empire. Stand in his place, and be his guide till he shall be of age to govern for himself." Then, turning to his other children, he admon- ished them to live united with ene another, and to show all loyalty to their prince, who, though a child, already manifested a discre- tion far above his years. "Be true to him," he added, " and he will maintain you in your rights and dignities." Finding his end approaching, he exclaimed, " Do not bewail me with idle lamentations. But sing the song of gladness and show a courageous spirit, that the nations I have subdued may not believe you disheartened, but may feel that each one of you is strong enough to keep them in obedience !" The undaunted spirit of the monarch shone forth even in the agonies of death. That stout 426 WILLIAM HICKLING FRESCO TT. heart, however, melted as he took leave of his children and friends, weeping tenderly over them, while he bade each a last adieu. When they had withdrawn, he ordered the officers of the palace to allow no one to enter it again. Soon after he expired, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-third of his reign. History of the Conquest of Mexico. THE VALLEY AND CITY OF MEXICO. The troops, refreshed by a night's rest, succeeded early on the following day in gaining the crest of the sierra of Ahualco, which stretches like a curtain between the two great mountains on the north and south. Their progress was now comparatively easy, and they marched forward with a buoyant step as they felt they were treading the soil of Montezuma. They had not advanced far, when, turning an angle of the sierra, they suddenly came on a view which more than compensated the toils of the preceding day. It was that of the Valley of Mexico, or Tenochtitlan, as more commonly culled by the natives; which, with its picturesque assemblage of water, woodland, and cultivated plains, its shining cities and shadowy hills, was spread out like some gay and gorgeous panorama before them. In the highly rarefied atmosphere of these upper regions, even remote objects have a brilliancy of colouring and a dis- tinctness of outline which seems to annihi- late distance. Stretching far away at their feet were seen noble forests of oak, syca- more, and cedar, and beyond, yellow fields of maize and the towering maguey, inter- mingled with orchards and blooming gar- dens : for flowers, in such demand for their religious festivals, were even more abun- dant in this populous valley than in other parts of Anahuac. In the centre of the great basin were beheld the lakes, occupy- ing then a much larger portion of the sur- face than at present ; their borders thickly studded with towns and hamlets, and, in the midst, like some Indian empress with her coronal of pearls, the fair City of Mexico, with her white towers and pyramidal tem- ples, reposing, as it were, on the bosom of the waters. the far-famed u Venice of the Aztecs." High over all rose the royal hill of Chapoltepec, the residence of the Mex- ican monarchs, crowned with the same grove of gigantic cypresses which at this day fling their broad shadows over the land. In the distance beyond the blue waters of the lake, and nearly screened by intervening foliage, was seen a shining speck, the rival capital of Tezcuco, and, still farther on, 'the dark belt of porphyry, girdling the Valley around like a rich setting which Nature had devised for the fairest of her jewels. Such was the beautiful vision which broke on the eyes of the Conquerors. And even now, when so sad a chanue has come over the scene ; when the stately forests have been laid low, and tbe soil, unsheltered from the tierce radiance of a tropical sun, i.s in many places abandoned to sterility; when the waters have retired, leaving a broad and ghastly margin white with the incrustation of salts, while the cities and hamlets on their borders have moulded into ruins ; even now that desolation broods over the land- scape, so indestructible are the lines of beauty which Nature has traced on its fea- tures, that no traveller, however cold, can gaze on them with any other emotion than those of astonishment and rapture. What then must have been the emotions of the Spaniards, when, after working their toilsome way into the upper air, the cloudy tabernacle parted before their eyes, and they beheld these fair scenes in all their pristine magnificence and beauty ! It was like the spectacle which greeted the eyes of Moses from the summit of Pisgah, and, in the warm glow of their feelings, they cried out, "It is the promised land !" But these feelings of admiration were soon followed by others of a very different complexion ; as they saw in all this the evi- dences of a civilization and power far su- perior to anything they had yet encountered. The more timid, disheartened by the pros- pect, shrunk from a contest so unequal, and demanded, as they had done on some former occasions, to be led back again to Vera Cruz. Such was not the effect produced on the san- guine spirit of the general. His avarice was sharpened by the display of the dazzling spoil at his feet; and, if he felt a natural anxiety at the formidable odds, his confidence was renewed as he gazed on the lines of his veterans, whose weather-beaten visages and battered armour told of battles won and difficulties surmounted, while his bold bar- barians, with appetites whetted by the view of their enemies' country, seemed like eagles on the mountains, ready to pounce upon their prey. By argument, entreaty, and menace, lie endeavoured to restore the faltering cour- age of the soldiers, urging them not to think of retreat, now that they had reached the goal for which they had panted, and the golden gates were opened to receive them. In these efforts he was well seconded by the brave cavaliers, who held honour as dear to them as fortune ; until the dullest spirits caught somewhat of the enthusiasm of their leaders, and the general had the satisfaction to see his hesitating columns, with their usual buoyant step, once more WILLIAM IIICKLING PRESCOTT. 427 on their march down the slopes of the sierra. History of the Conquest of Mexico, Book Hi. Ch. 8. AUTHORSHIP. It is not very easy to see on what this low estimate of literature rested. As a profes- sion it has too little in common with more active ones to afford much ground for run- ning a parallel. The soldier has to do with externals ; and his contests and triumphs are over matter in its various forms, whether of man or material nature. The poet deals with the bodiless forms of air, of fancy lighter than air. His business is contem- plative, the other's is active, and depends for its success on strong moral energy and pres- ence of mind. He must, indeed, have genius of the highest order to effect his own combi- nations, anticipate the movements of his enemy, and dart with eagle eye on his vul- nerable point. But who shall say that this practical genius, if we may so term it. is to rank higher in the scale than the creative power of the poet, the spark from the mind of divinity itself? The orator might seem to afford better ground for comparison, since, though his theatre of action is abroad, he may be said to work with much the same tools as the writer. Yet how much of his success de- pends on qualities other than intellectual! "Action," said the father of eloquence, "ac- tion, action . are the three things most essen- tial to an orator/' How much depends on the look, the gesture, the magical tones of voice, modulated to the passions he has stirred ; and how much on the contagious sympathies of the audience itself which drown everything like criticism in the over- whelming tide of emotion ! If any one would know how much, let him, after pa- tiently standing "till his feet throb, And his head thumps, to feed upon the hreath Of patriots bursting with heroic rage," read the same speech in the columns of a morning newspaper, or in the well-concocted report of the orator himself. The produc- tions of the writer are subjected to a fiercer ordeal. lie has no excited sympathies of numbers to hurry his readers along over his blunders. He is scanned in the calm silence of the closet. Every flower of fancy seems here to wither under the rude breath of crit- icism ; every link in the chain of argument is subjected to the touch of prying scrutiny, and if there be the least flaw in it it is sure to be detected. There is no tribunal so stern as the secret tribunal of a man's own closet, far removed from all the sympathetic impulses of humanity. Surely there is no form in which intellect can be exhibited to the world so completely stripped of all adventitious aids as the form of written composition. But, says the practical man, let us estimate things by their utility. "You talk of the poems of Homer," said a mathematician, "but, after all, what do they prove?'' A question which involves an answer some- what too voluminous for the tail of an arti- cle. But if the poems of Homer were, as Heeren asserts, the principal bond which held the Grecian states together, and gave them a national feeling, they "prove" more than all the arithmeticians of Greece and there were many cunning ones in it ever proved. The results of military skill are indeed obvious. The soldier, by a single victory, enlarges the limits of an empire; he may do more, he may achieve the liberties of a nation, or roll back the tide of barbarism ready to overwhelm them. Wellington was placed in such a position and nobly did he do his work, or, rather, he was placed at the head of such a gigantic moral and physical apparatus as enabled him to do it. With his own unassisted strength, of course, he could have done nothing. But it is on his own solitary resources that the great writer has to rely. And yet who shall say that the triumphs of Wellington have been greater than those of Scott, whose works are familiar as household words to every fireside in his own land, from the castle to the cottage ; have crossed oceans and deserts, and, with healing on their wings, found their way to the remotest regions; have helped to form the character, until his own mind may be said to be incorporated into those of hundreds of thousands of his fellow-men? Who is there that has not, at some time or other, felt the heaviness of his heart lightened, his pains mitigated, and his bright moments of life made still brighter by the magical touches of his genius? And shall we speak of his victories as less real, less serviceable to humanity, less truly glorious, than those of the greatest captain of his day? The tri- umphs of the warrior are bounded by the narrow theatre of his own age ; but those of a Scott or a Shakspeare will be renewed with greater and greater lustre in ages yet unborn, when the victorious chieftain shall be for- gotten, or shall live only in the song of the minstrel and the page of the chronicler. Sir Walter Scott: North Amer. Review, April, 1838, and in his Biog. and Crit. Miscellanies. 428 JULIUS CHARLES HARE. JULIUS CHARLES HARE, born 1796, graduated at Cambridge, 1819, became Hector of Hurstmonceaux, 1832, Archdeacon of Lewes, 1840, Canon of 'Cinch- ester, 1851, Chaplain to the Queen, 1853, died 1855. Sermons Preached before the University of Cambridge, 1839 ; The Victory of Faith, and other Sermons, Camb., 1841), 8vo ; Sermons Preached at Hurstinoncoaux Church, vol. i., 1841, 8vo, vol. ii., 1849, 8vo ; The Mission of the Comforter, and other Sermons, with Notes, 1840, 2 vols. 8vo ; The Essavs and Tales of John Sterling, with n Memoir of his Life, 1848, 2 vols. 12mo. He also published single Sermons, Charges, Letters, etc.. was joint author with his brother, the Rev. Augustus William Hare, of Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, Lond., 1827, 2 vols. 12mo, 2d edit., 1838, 12mo, 3d edit., 1840, 12mo, Series Second, 2d edit., 1848, 12mo, new edit, 1855, 12mo, and was co-translator with Bishop Thirlwall of vols. i. and ii., 8vo, Lond., 1828-32, of Nie- buhr's History of Rome, new edit., 1855. See Lond. Gent. Mag., 1855, i. 424 (Obitu- ary). THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT. Walk as children of light. This is the simple and beautiful substance of your Christian duty. This is your bright privi- lege, which, if you use it according to the grace wherebv you have received it, will be a prelude and foretaste of the bliss and glory of heaven. It is to light that all na- tions and languages have had recourse when- ever they wanted a symbol for anything excellent in glory ; and if we were to search through the whole of inanimate nature for an emblem of i,ure unadulterated happiness, where could we find such an emblem except in light? traversing the illimitable regions of space with a speed surpassing that of thought, incapable of injury or stain, and whithersoever it goes, showering beauty and gladness. In order, however, that we may in due time inherit the whole fulness of this radiant beatitude, we must begin by training and fitting ourselves for it. Nothing good bursts forth all at once. The lightning may dart out of a black cloud ; but the day sends his bright heralds before him, to prepare the world for his coming. So should we endeavour to render our lives here on earth as it were the dawn of heaven's eternal day : we should endeavour to walk as children of light. Our thoughts and feelings should all be akin to light, and have something of the nature of light in them : and our actions should be like the action of light itself, and like the actions of all those powers and of all those beings which pertain to light, and maybe said to form the family of light; while we should carefully abstain and shrink from all such works as pertain to darkness, and are wrought by those who may be called the brood of darkness. Thus the children of light will walk as having the light of knowledge, steadfastly, firmly, right onward to the end that is set before them. When men are walking in the dark, through an unknown and roadless coun- try, they walk insecurely, doubtful ly. timidly. For they cannot see where they are trend- ing: they are fearful of stumbling against a stone, or falling into a pit ; they cannot even keep on for many steps certain of the course they are taking. But by day we perceive what is under us and about us. we have the end of our journey, or at least the quarter where it lies, full in view, and we are able to make for it by the safest and speediest way. The very same advantage have those Avho are light in the Lord, the children of spiritual light, over the children of spiritual darkness. They know whither they are going : to heaven. They know how they are to get there: by Him who has de- clared Himself to be the Way ; by keeping His words, by walking in His paths, by trusting in His atonement. If you then are children of light, if you know all this, walk according to your knowledge, without stum- bling or slipping, without swerving or stray- ing, without loitering or dallying by the way, onward and ever onward beneath the light of the Sun of Righteousness, on the road which leads to heaven. In the next place the children of light are upright, and honest, and straightforward, and open, and frank, in all their dealings. There is nothing like lurking or conceal- ment about them, nothing like dissimula- tion, nothing like fraud or deceit. These are the ministers and the spawn of darkness. It is darkness that hides its face, lest any should be appalled by so dismal a sight : light is the revealer and mani fester of all things. It lifts up its brow on high, that all may be- hold it: for it is conscious that it has nothing to dread, that the breath of shame cannot soil it. Whereas the wicked lie in wait, and rorfm through the dark, and screen them- selves therein from the sight of the sun ; as though the sun were the only eye wherewith God can behold their doings. It is under the cover of night that the reveller commits his foulest acts of intemperance and de- bauchery. It is under the cover of night that the thief and the murderer prowls about to bereave his brother of his sub- stance or his life. These children of dark- ness seek the shades of darkness to hide themselves thereby from the eyes of their fellow-creatures, from the eyes of Heaven, JULIUS CHARLES HARE. 429 nay, even from their own eyes, from the eye of conscience, which at such a season they find it easier to hoodwink and blind. They, on the other hand, who walk abroad and ply their tasks during the day, are those by whose labour their brethren are benefited and supported ; those who make the earth yield her increase, or who convert her prod- uce into food and clothing, or who minister to such wants as spring up in countless va- rieties beneath the march of civilized so- ciety. Nor is this confined to men ; the brute animals seem to be under a similar instinct. The beasts of prey lie in their lair during the daytime, and wait for sunset ere they sally out on their destructive wander- ings ; while the beneficent and household animals, those which are most useful and friendly to man, are like him in a certain sense children of light, and come forth and go to rest with the sun. They who are con- scious of no evil wish or purpose do not shun or shrink from the eyes of others ; though never forward in courting notice, they bid it welcome when it chooses to visit them. Our Saviour Himself tells us, that the condemnation of the world lies in this, that although light is come into the world, yet men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are eoil. Nothing but their having utterly depraved their nature could seduce them into loving what is so contrary and re- pugnant to it. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, nor cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. Bat he tliat doeth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be made manifest, that the;/ are ivrought in God. To the same effect lie commands His disciples to let their light so shine before men, that they may see their good works, not, however, for any vain, ostentatious, selfish purpose, this w r ould have been directly against the whole spirit of His teaching, but in order that men may be moved thereby to glorify God. For the children of light are also meek and lowly. Even the sun, although he stands up on high, and drives his chariot across the heavens, rather averts observation from himself than attracts it. His joy is to glorify his Maker, to display the beauty, and magnificence, and harmony, and order, of all the works of God. So far, however, as it is possible for him, he withdraws himself from the eyes of mankind ; not indeed in dark- ness, wherein the wicked hide their shame, but in excess of light, wherein God Himself veils His glory. And if we look at the other children of light, that host of white-robed pilgrims that travel across the vault of the nightly sky, the imagination is unable to conceive anything quieter, and calmer, and more unassuming. They are the exquisite and perfect emblems of meek loveliness and humility in high station. It is only the spurious lights of the fire whereby the earth would mimic the light of heaven, that glare and flare and challenge attention for them- selves ; while, instead of illuminating the darkness beyond their immediate neighbour- hood, they merely make it thicker and more palpable; as these lights alone vomit srnuke, as these alone ravage and consume. Again : the children of light are diligent, and orderly, and unweariable in the fulfil- ment of their duties. Here, also, they take a lesson from the sun, who pursues the path that God has marked out for him, and pours daylight on whatever is beneath him from his everlasting, inexhaustible fountains, and causes the wheel of the seasons to turn round, and summer and winter to perform their annual revolutions, and has never been behindhand in his task, and never slackens, nor faints, nor pauses; nor ever will pause, until the same hand which launched him on his way shall again stretch itself forth to arrest his course. All the children of light are careful to follow their Master's example, and to work his works while it is day: for they know that the night of the grave cometh, when no man can work, and that, unless they are working the works of light, when that night overtakes them, darkness must be their portion forever. The children of light are likewise pure. For light is not only the purest of all sen- suous things, so pure that nothing can de- file it, but whatever else is defiled, is brought to the light, and the light purifies it. And the childien of the light know that, although, whatever darkness may cover them will be no darkness to God. it may and will be darkness to themselves. They know that, although no impurity in which they can bury their souls will be able to hide them from the sight of God, yet it will utterly hide God from their sight. They know that it is only by striving to purify their own hearts even as God is pure, that they can at all fit them- selves for the beatific vision which Christ has promised to the pure of heart. Cheerfulness, too, is a never-failing char- acteristic of those who are truly children of light. For is not light at once the most joyous of all things, and the enlivener and gladdener of all nature, animate and inani- mate, the dispel ler of sickly cares, the calmer of restless disquietudes? Is it not as a bride- groom that the sun comes forth from his chamber ? and does he not rejoice as a giant to run his course? Does not all nature grow bright the moment he looks upon her, and welcome him with smiles? Do not all the birds greet him with their merriest notes? Do not even the sad tearful clouds deck 430 ANDREW COMBE. themselves out in the glowing hues of the rainbow, when he vouchsafes to shine upon them ? And shall not man smile with rap- ture beneath the light of the Sun of Right- eousness? Shall he not hail His rising with hymns of praise and psalms of thanksgiving? Shall he not be cheered amid his deepest affliction, when the rays of that Sun fall upon him, and paint the arch of promise on his soul ? It cannot be otherwise. Only while we are heinmod in with darkness are we harassed by terrors and misgivings. When we see clearly on every side, we feel bold and assured ; nothing can then daunt, no- thing can dismay us. Even that sorrow which with all others is the most utterly without hope, the sorrow for sin, is to the children of light the pledge of their future bliss. For with them it is the sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation ; and having the Son of God for their Saviour, what can they fear? Or, rather, when they know and feel in their hearts that God has given His only-begotten Son to suffer death for their sakes, how shall they not trust that He, who has given them Ilia Son, will also give them whatsoever is for their real, ever- lasting good ? Finally, the children of light will also be children of love. Indeed, it is only another name for the same thing. For light is the most immediate outward agent and minister of God's love, the most powerful and rapid diffuser of His blessings through the whole universe of His creation. It blesses the earth, and makes her bring forth herbs and plants. It blesses the herbs and plants, and makes them bring forth their grain and their fruit. It blesses every living creature, and enables all to support and enjoy their exist- ence. Above all, it blesses man, in his goings out and his comings in, in his body and in his soul, in his senses and in his imagination, and in his affections: in his social intercourse with his brother, and in his solitary communion with his Maker. Merely blot out light from the earth, and joy will pass away from it ; and health will pass away from it : and life will pass away from it; and it will sink back into a con- fused turmoiling chaos. In no way can the children of light so well prove that this is indeed their parentage as by becoming the instruments of God in shedding His bless- ings around them. Light illumines every- thing, the lowly valley as well as the lofty mountain ; it fructifies everything, the hum- blest herb as well as the lordliest tree ; and there is nothing hid from its heat. Nor does Christ the Original, of whom light is the image, make any distinction between the high and the low, between the humble and the lordly. lie comes to all, unless they drive Him from their doors. He calls to all, unless they obstinately close their ears against Him. lie blesses all. unless they cast away His blessing. Nay, although they cast it away, He still perseveres in blessing them, even unto seven times, even unto seventy times seven. Ye, then, who desire to be children of light, ye who would gladly enjoy the full glory and blessedness of that heavenly name, take heed to yourselves, that ye walk as children of light in this respect more especially. No part of your duty is easier; you may find daily and hourly opportunity of practising it. No part of your duty is more delightful ; the joy you kindle in the heart of another can- not fail of shedding back its brightness on your own. No part of your duty is more Godlike. They who attempted to become like God in knowledge, fell in the garden of Eden. They who strove to become like God in power, were confounded on the plain of Shinar. They who endeavour to become like God in love, will feel His approving smile and His helping arm ; every effort they make will bring them nearer to His presence; and they will find His renewed image grow more and more vivid within them, until the time comes whan they too shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The Victory of Faith, Sermon Seventh, 1828. ANDREW COMBE, M.D., born in Edinburgh, 1797, became a convert to phrenology, 1818, Consulting Physician to the King of the Belgians, 1836, died 1847. Observations on Mental Derange- ments, Edin., 1831, 12rno, Lond.. 1841, post 8vo ; The Principles of Physiology applied to the Preservation of Health, and to the Improvement of Physical and Mental Edu- cation, Edin., 1834, 'l2mo, 14th edit,, lsr>i>, p. 8vo, New York, 1834, 12ino, 1842, 18mo; The Physiology of Digestion considered with Relation to the Principles of Dietetics, 2d edit., Edin., 1836, 12mo, 9th edit., by J.Coxe, 1849, p. 8vo ; Management of Infancy, Physi- ological and Moral, Edin., 1840, 12ino, 9th edit., by Sir J. Clark, 1860, 12mo, by John Bell, M.D., Phila., 1840, 12mo. See Life of Andrew Combe, by George Combe (his brother), 1840; Chambers's Biog. Diet, of Eminent Scotsmen ; Smiles's Brief Biog- raphies, 1860; Westminster Review, July, 1850. EXERCISE. That exercise should always spring from, and be continued under, the influence of an ANDREW COMBE. 431 active and harmonious nervous and mental stimulus will scarcely require any addi- tional evidence; but as the principle is not sufficiently appreciated or acted upon, a few remarks seem still to be culled for to enforce its observance. The simple fact that the muscles are expressly constructed for the purpose of fulfilling the commands of the will, might of itself lead to the inference that a healthy mental stimulus ought to be considered an essential condition or accom- paniment of exercise ; and, accordingly, the muscular action becomes easy and pleasant under the influence of mental excitement, and a vigorous, nervous impulse is useful in sustaining and directing it. On the other hand, how difficult, wearisome, and ineffi- cient muscular contraction becomes when the mind, which directs it, is languid or ab- sorbed by other employments ! Hence the superiority, as exercises for the young, of social and inspiriting games, which, by their joyous and boisterous mirth, call forth the requisite nervous stimulus to put the mus- cles into vigorous and varied action; and hence the utter inefficiency of the dull and monotonous daily walk which sets all phys- iological conditions at defiance, and which, in so many schools, is made to supersede the exercise which it only counterfeits. Even the playful gambolling and varied move- ments which are so characteristic of the young of all animals, man not excepted, and which are at once so pleasing and at- tractive, might have taught us that activity of feeling and affection, and sprightliness of mind, are intended by nature to be the sources and accompaniments of healthful and invigorating muscular exercise ; and that the system of bodily confinement and mental cultivation now so much in vogue is calculated to inflict lasting injury on all Avho are subjected to its restraints. The buoyancy of spirit and comparative inde- pendence enjoyed by boys when out of school prevent them from suffering under it so much as girls do ; but the mischief done to both is the more unpardonable when it does occur, because it might so easily have been entirely avoided. Even in some infant schools, where properly conducted exercise ought to be considered as a necessary of life, the principle on which I am insisting is so little understood or valued, that no play- grounds have been provided, and the very best means of moral as well as physical training play with companions has, to the great injury of the poor children, been wholly omitted. Under judicious direction, the play-ground affords the most valuable and effective aid to the parent and teacher, not only in eliciting the highest degree of physical health, but in developing the gen- eral character by the practical inculcation of moral principle, kindness, and affection, in the daily and hourly conduct of the chil- dren committed to their charge. A double evil is thus incurred in its neglect or omis- sion. Facts, illustrative of the beneficial influ- ence of a mental stimulus as the only legit- imate source of muscular activity, abound everywhere, and must be familiar to every reflecting mind ; but as the practical influ- ences deducible from them have, to a great extent, escaped the notice of parents and teachers, I shall add a few remarks in their further elucidation. Everybody knows how wearisome and disagreeable it is to saunter along, without having some object to attain ; and how list- less and unprofitable a walk taken against the inclination, and merely for exercise, is, compared to the same exertion made in pur- suit of an object on which we are intent. The difference is simply, that in the former case the muscles are obliged to work with- out that full nervous impulse which nature has decreed to be essential to their healthy and energetic action ; and that, in the lat- ter, the nervous impulse is in full and har- monious operation. The great superiority of active sports, botanical and geological ex- cursions, gardening and turning, as means of exercise, over mere monotonous movements, is referable to the same principle. Every kind of youthful play and mechanical oper- ation interests and excites the mind, as well as occupies the body, and by thus placing the muscles in the best position for whole- some and beneficial exertion, enables them to act without fatigue, for a length of time which, if occupied in mere walking for ex- ercise, would utterly exhaust their powers. The elastic spring, the bright eye, the cheerful glow of beings thus excited, form a perfect contrast to the spiritless and in- animate aspect of many of our boarding- school processions ; and the results, in point of health and activity, are not less different. So influential, indeed, is the nervous stim- ulus, that examples have occurred of strong mental emotions having instantaneously given life and vigour to paralytic limbs. This has happened in cases of shipwrecks, fires, and sea-fights, and shows how indis- pensable it is to have the mind engaged and interested along with the muscles. Many a person who feels ready to drop from fa- tigue, after a merely mechanical walk, would have no difficulty in subsequently undergo- ing much continuous exertion in active play or in dancing; and it is absurd, therefore, to say that exercise is not beneficial, when, in reality, proper exercise had not been tried. 432 ANDREW COMBE. The amount of bodily exertion of which soldiers are capable, is well known to be prodigiously increased by the mental stim- ulus of pursuit, of fighting, or of victory. In the retreat of the French from Moscow, for example, when no enemy was near, the soldiers became depressed in courage, and enfeebled in body, and nearly sank to the earth through exhaustion and cold : but no sooner did the report of the Russian guns sound in their ears, or the gleam of hostile bayonets flash in their eyes, than new life seemed to pervade them, .and they wielded powerfully the arms which, a few moments before, they could scarcely drag along the ground. No sooner, however, was the enemy repulsed, and the nervous stimulus which animated their muscles withdrawn, than their feebleness returned. Dr. Sparrman, in like manner, after describing the fatigue and exhaustion which he and his party en- dured in their travels at the Cape, adds, "yet, what even now appears to me a mat- ter of wonder is, that as soon as we got a glimpse of the game all this languor left us in an instant." On the principle already mentioned, this result is perfectly natural, and in strict harmony with what we observe in sportsmen, cricketers, golfers, skaters, and others, who, moved by a mental aim, are able to undergo a much greater amount of bodily labour than men of stronger mus- cular frames actuated by no excitement of mind or vigorous nervous impulse. I have heard an intelligent engineer remark the astonishment often felt by country people, at finding him and his town companions, although more slightly made, withstand the fatigues and exposure of a day's surveying better than themselves , but, said he, they overlooked the fact, that our employment gives to the mind, as well as the body, a stimulus which they were entirely without, as their only object was to afford us bodily aid, when required, in dragging the chains, or carrying our instruments. The conversa- tion of a friend is, in the same way, a power- ful alleviator of the fatigue of walking. The same important principle was im- plied in the advice which The Spectator tells us was given by a physician to one of the Eastern kings, when he brought him a racket, and told him that the remedy was concealed in the handle, and could act upon him only by passing into the palms of his hands when engaged in playing with it, and that as soon as perspiration was induced, he might desist for the time, as that would be a proof of the medicine being received into the general system. The effect, we are told, was marvellous: and looking to the principle just stated, to the cheerful nervous stimulus arising from the confident expecta- tion of a cure, and to the consequent ad- vantages of exercise thus judiciously man- aged, we have no reason to doubt that the falile is in perfect accordance with nature. The story of an Englishman who con- ceived himself so ill as to be unable to stir, but who was prevailed upon by his medical adviser to go down from London to consult an eminent physician at Inverness who did not exist, may serve as another illustration. The stimulus of expecting the means of cure from the northern luminary was suffi- cient to enable the patient not only to bear, but to reap benefit from, the exertion of making the journey down ; and his wrath at finding no such person at Inverness, and perceiving that he had been tricked, sus- tained him in returning, so that on his arrival at home he was nearly cured. Hence also the superiority of battledore and shuttlecock, and similar games, which re- quire society and some mental stimulus, over listless exercise. It is, in fact, a posi- tive misnomer to call a solemn procession exercise. Nature will not be cheated; and the healthful results of complete cheerful exertion will never be obtained where the nervous impulse which animates the muscles is denied. It must not, however, be supposed, that a walk simply for the sake of exercise can never be beneficial. If a person be thor- oughly satisfied that exercise is requisite, and perfectly willing or rather desirous to obey the call which demands it, he is. from that very circumstance, in a fit state for de- riving benefit from it, because the desire thon becomes a sufficient nervous impulse, and one in perfect harmony with the muscular action. It is only where a person goes to walk, either from a sense of duty, or at the command of another, but against his own inclination, that exercise is comparatively useless. This constitution of nature, whereby a mental impulse is required to direct and ex- cite muscular action, points to the propriety of teaching the young to observe and exam- ine the qualities and arrangements of exter- nal objects. The most pleasing and healthful exercise may be thus secured, and every step be made to add to useful knowledge and to individual enjoyment. The botanist, the geologist, and the natural historian, expe- rience pleasures in their walks and rambles, of which, from disuse of their eyes and ob- serving powers, the multitude is deprived. This truth is acted upon by many teachers in Germany. In our own country, too, it is beginning to be felt, and one of the professed objects of infant education is to correct the omission. It must not, how ever, be supposed that any kind of mental activity will give tho SIR CHARLES LYELL. 433 necessary stimulus to muscular action, and that, in walking, it will do equally well to read a book, or carry on a train of abstract thinking, as to seek the necessary nervous stimulus in picking up plants, hammering rocks, or engaging in games. This were a great mistake ; for in such cases the nervous impulse is opposed rather than favourable to muscular action. Ready and pleasant men- tal activity, like that which accompanies easy conversation with a friend, is indeed beneficial, by diffusing a gentle stimulus over the nervous system ; and it may be laid down as a general rule that any agreeable em- ployment of an inspiriting and active kind, and which does not absorb the mind, adds to the advantages of muscular exercise; but wherever the mind is engaged in reading, or in abstract speculation, the muscles are drained, as it were, of their nervous energy, by reason of the great exhaustion of it by the brain : the active will to set them in mo- tion is proportionally weakened, and their action is reduced to that inanimate kind I have already condemned as almost useless. From this exposition, the reader will be able to appreciate the hurtfulness of the practice in many boarding-schools of sending out the girls to walk with a book in their hands, and even obliging them to learn by heart while in the act of walking. It would be difficult, indeed, to invent a method by which the ends in view could be more completely de- feated, as regards both mind and body. The very effort of fixing the mind on the printed page when in motion strains the attention, impedes the act of breathing, disturbs the nervous influence, and thus deprives the ex- ercise of all its advantages. For true and beneficial exercise there must, in cases where the mind is seriously occupied, be harmony of action between the mind which impels and the part which obeys and acts. The will and the muscles must be both directed to the same end, and at the same time, other- wise the effect will be imperfect. But in reading during exercise, this can never be the case. The force exerted by strong mus- cles, animated by strong nervous impulse or will, is prodigiously greater than when the impulse is weak or discordant; and as man was made not to do two things at once, but to direct his whole powers to one thing at a time, he has ever excelled most when he has followed this law of his nature. The Principles of Physiology, etc. SIR CHARLES LYELL, D.C.L., born at Kinnordy, Forfarshire, Scotland, 1797, graduated at Exeter College, Oxford, 1821, and subsequently studied law, which 28 ho soon abandoned for geology ; Professor of Geology in King's College, London, 1832, President of the Geological Society, 1836 and 1850, knighted, 1848, D.C.L. Oxon., 1855, died 1875. Principles of Geology, Lond., 1830-32-33, 3 vols. 8vo, 9th edit., 1853, 8vo, l()th edit., 1866-68, 8vo, llth edit., 1872, 8vo ; Elements of Geology, Lond., 1838, 12mo, 3d edit., Manual of Elementary Geology, 1851, 8vo, 4th edit., 1852, 8vo, 5th edit., 1855, 8vo (Supplement, 1857, 8vo), 6th edit., 1865, 8vo; Travels in North America [in 184 L -42], with Geological Observations, Lond., 1845, 2 vols. p. 8vo, 2d edit., 1855, 2 vols. cr. 8vo ; A Second Visit to the United States [in 1845-46], Lond., 1849, 2 vols. p. 8vo, 3d edit., 1855, 2 vols. cr. 8vo ; The Geological Evi- dences of the Antiquity of Man, etc., Lond., 1863, 8vo, 2d edit., 1863, 8vo, 3d edit., 1863, 8vo, 4th edit., 1873, 8vo. Also papers in Trans. Geolog. Soc., Edin. Jour., Quart. Re- view, etc. " Mr. Buckland, Professor Sedgwick, and Sir Charles Lyell are the most eminent of the new school of geology which has sprung up simulta- neously in France and England, and which, by a strict application of the Baconian method of philosophizing, has made earth reveal the secret of its formation anterior to the race of man, by the remains imbedded in its bosom. A more fascinat- ing inquiry never was presented to the investiga- tion of the philosopher; and it derives additional interest to the Christian believer from the con- firmation which it affords, at every step, of the Mosaic account of creation and the truth of Holy Writ." Sm ARCHIBALD ALISON: Hint. <>f Europe, 1815-1852, chap. v. See also EJin. Rev., July, 1839, July, 1863, (London) Quar. fie,'., July, 1849, Oct. 1851, N. Brit. Rev., Feb. 1851, N. Ame.r. Rev., Oct. 1845, and Ticknor'a Life of Prescott, 1864, 4to. CHANGES IN LANGUAGE. But another important question still re- mains to be considered, namely, whether the trifling changes which can alone be witnessed by a single generation, can possibly represent the working of that machinery which, in the course of many centuries, has given rise to such mighty revolutions in the forms of speech throughout the world. Every one may have noticed in his own lifetime the stealing in of some slight alterations of accent, pronunciation, or spelling, or the in- troduction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the import. He may also remember hearing for the first time some cant terms or slang phrases, which have since forced their way into common use, in spite of the efforts of the purist. But he may still contend that "within the range of his experience" his language has continued unchanged, and he may believe in its im- 434 WILLIAM CARLETON. mutability in spite of minor variations. The real question, however, at issue is, whether there are any limits to this variability. He will find, on further investigation, that new technical terms are coined almost daily in various arts, sciences, professions, and trades, that new names must be found for new in- ventions, that many of these acquire a meta- phorical sense, and then make their way into general circulation, as " stereotyped," for instance, which would have been as mean- ingless to the men of the seventeenth cen- tury as would the new terms and images derived from steamboat and railway travel- ling to the men of the eighteenth. If the numerous words, idioms, and phrases, many of them of ephemeral dura- tion, which are thus invented by the young and old in various classes of society, in the nursery, the school, the camp, the fleet, the courts of law, and the study of the man of science or literature, could all be collected together and put on record, their number in one or two centuries might compare Avith the entire permanent vocabulary of the lan- guage. It becomes, therefore, a curious sub- ject of inquiry. What are the laws which govern not only the invention, but also the ''selection." of some of these words or idioms, giving them currency in preference to others? for as the powers of the human memory are limited, a check must be found to the endless increase and multiplication of terms, and old words must be dropped nearly as fast as new ones are put into circulation. Sometimes the new word or phrase, or a modification of the old ones, will entirely supplant the more ancient expressions, or, instead of the latter being discarded, both may flourish together, the older one having a more restricted use. Although the speakers may be uncon- scious that any great fluctuation is going on in their language, although when we ob- serve the manner in which new words and phrases are thrown out, as if at random or in sport, while others get into vogue, we may think the process of change to be the result of mere chance, there are nevertheless fixed laws in action, by which, in the general struggle for existence, some terms and dia- lects gain the victory over others. The slightest .advantage attached to some new mode of pronouncing or spelling, from con- siderations of brevity or euphony, may turn the scale, or more powerful causes of selec- tion may decide which of two or more rivals shall triumph and which succumb. Among these are fashion, or the influence of an aristocracy, whether of birth or education, popular writers, orators, preachers, a cen- tralized government organizing its schools expressly to promote uniformity of diction, and to get the better of provincialisms and local dialects. Between these dialects, which may be regarded as so many " incipient lan- guages," the competition is always keenest when they are most nearly allied, and the extinction of any one of them destroys some of the links by which a dominant tongue may have been previously connected with some other widely distinct one. It is by the perpetual loss of such intermediate forms of speech that the great dissimilarity of the languages which survive is brought about. Thus, if Dutch should become a dead lan- guage, English and German would be sep- arated by a wider gap. Some languages which are spoken by millions, and spread over a wide area, will endure much longer than others which have never had a wide range, especially if the tendency to incessant change in one of these dominant tongues is arrested for a time by a standard literature. But even this source of stability is insecure, for popular writers themselves are great innovators, sometimes coining new words, and still oftener new ex- pressions and idioms, to embody their own original conceptions and sentiments, or some peculiar modes of thought and feeling char- acteristic of their age. Even when a lan- guage is regarded with superstitious venera- tion as the vehicle of divine truths and religious precepts, and which has prevailed for many generations, it will be incapable of permanently maintaining its ground. Hebrew had ceased to be a living language before the Christian era. Sanscrit, the sacred language of the Hindoos, shared the same fate, in spite of the veneration in which the Vedas are still held, and in spite of many a Sanscrit poem once popular and national. The Christians of Constantinople and the Morea still hear the New Testament and their liturgy read in ancient Greek, while they speak a dialect in which Paul might have preached in vain nt Athens. So in the Roman Catholic Church, the Italians pray in one tongue and talk another. Luther's translation of the Bible acted as a powerful cause of selection, giving at once to one of many competing dialects (that of Saxony) a prominent and dominant position in Ger- many; but the style of Luther has, like that of our English Bible, already become some- what antiquated. The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, Chap, xxiii. WILLIAM CARLETON, famous for his graphic portraitures of the Irish, the son of an Irish peasant, was born WILLIAM CARLETON. 435 fit Prillisk, in the parish of Clogher, County of Tyrone, Ireland, 1798, died 1869. Traits and Stones of the Irish Peasantry, Duhl., 1830, 2 vols. Svo (anon.), Second Series, 1832, 2 vols. Svo, both, 1836, 5 vols. small Svo, and also Lond., 1853, 5 vols. 16rno ; Father Butler, Phila., 1835, ISmo; Farda- roujih the Miser, 1839, new edit., Duhl., 1846, IGmo; The Fawn of Spring Vale, The Clarionet, and other Tales, Dub'l., 1841, 3 vols. p. Svo ; Art Mnguire, Dubl., 1841, 16mo ; Denis O'Shaughnessy Going to May- nooth, Lond., 1845, 16mo ; Valentine Mc- Clutchy, Dubl., 1848, 8vo, new edit., 1845, 3 vols. p. Svo; The Black Prophet, Dubl., 1847, 12mo ; The Squanders of Castle Squan- der, Lond., 1852, 2 vols. 12mo ; Willie Reilly, 1855, 3 vols. p. Svo. See (London) Quart. Review, Oct. 1841. " Never was that wild, imaginative people bet- ter described ; and amongst all the fun, frolic, and folly, there is no want of poetry, pathos, and pas- sion." PROFESSOR JOH.V WILSON. AN IRISH VILLAGE AND SCHOOL-HOUSE. The village of Findamore was situated at the foot of a long green hill, the outline of which formed a low arch, as it rose to the eye against the horizon. This hill was stud- ded with clumps of beeches, and sometimes enclosed as a meadow. In the month of July, when the grass on it was long, many an hour have I spent in solitary enjoyment, watching the wavy motion produced on its pliant surface by the sunny winds, or the flight of the cloud shadows, like gigantic phantoms, as they swept rapidly over it, whilst the murmur of the rocking trees, and the glaring of their bright leaves in the sun, produced a heartfelt pleasure, the very memory of which rises in my imagination like some fading recollection of a brighter world. At the foot of this hill ran a clear deep- hanked river, bounded on one side by a slip of rich level meadow, and on the other by a kind of common for the village geese, whose white feathers during the summer season lay scat- tered over its green surface. It was also the pi ay -ground for the hoys of the village school ; for there ran that part of the river which, with very correct judgment, the urchins had selected as their bathing-place. A little slope or watering ground in the bank brought them to the edge of the stream, whore the bottom fell away into the fearful depths of the whirlpool under the hanging oak on the other bank. Well do I remember the first time I ventured to swim across it, and even yet do I see in imagination the two bunches of water-flags on which the inexperienced swimmers trusted themselves in the water. About two hundred yards above this, the boreen [little road], which led from the vil- lage to the main road, crossed the river by one of those old narrow bridges whose arches rise like round ditches across the road, an almost impassable barrier to horse and car. On passing the bridge in a northern direc- tion, you found a, range of low-thatched houses on each side of the road ; and if one o'clock, the hour of dinner, drew near, you might observe columns of blue smoke curling up from a row of chimnies, some made of wicker creels plastered over with a rich coat of mud, some of old bottomless tubs, and others, with a greater appearance of taste, ornamented with thick circular robes of straw, sewed together like bees' skeps with the peel of a brier ; and many having nothing but the open vent above. But the smoke by no means escaped by its legitimate aperture, for you might observe little clouds of it bursting out of the doors and windows. The panes of the latter being mostly stopped at other times with old hats and rags, were now left entirely open for the purpose of giving it a free escape. Before the doors, on right and left, was a series of dunghills, each with its concomi- tant sink of green rotten Avater ; and if it happened that a stout-looking woman, with watery eyes, and a yellow cap hung loosely upon her matted locks, came with a chubby urchin on one hand, and a pot of dirty water in her hand, its unceremonious ejection in the aforesaid sink would be apt to send you up the village with your forefinger and thumb (for what purpose you would your- self perfectly understand) closely, but not knowingly, applied to your nostrils. But, independently of this, you would be apt to have other reasons for giving your horse, whose heels are by this time surrounded by a dozen of barking curs and the same num- ber of shouting urchins, a pretty sharp touch of the spurs, as well as for complaining bit- terly of the odour of the atmosphere. It is no landscape without figures : and you might notice if you are, as I suppose you to be, a man of observation in every sink as you pass along, "a slip of a pig" stretched in the mid- dle of the mud, the very bean-ideal of luxury, giving occasionally a long luxuriant grunt, highly expressive of his enjoyment; or, per- haps an old farrower, lying in indolent re- pose, with half a dozen young ones jostling each other for their draught, and punching her belly with their little snouts, reckless of the fumes they are creating: whilst the loud crow of the cock, as he confidently flaps his wings on his own dunghill, gives the warning note for the hour of dinner. As you advance, you will also perceive several faces thrust out of the doors, and 436 WILLIAM CARLE TON. rather than miss a sight of you, a grotesque visage peeping by a short cut through the paneless windows, or a tattered female fly- ing to snatch up her urchin, that has been tumbling itself heels up in the dirt of the road, lest " the gintlemun's horse might ride over it ;" and if you happen to look behind, you may observe a shaggy-headed youth in tattered frieze, with one hand thrust indo- lently in his breast standing at the door in conversation with the inmates, a broad grin of sarcastic ridicule on his face, in the act of breaking a joke or two on yourself or your horse; or perhaps your jaw may be saluted with a lump of clay, just hard enough not to fall asunder as it flies, cast by some ragged gossoon from behind a hedge, who squats himself in a ridge of corn to avoid detection. Seated upon a hob at the door, you may observe a toil-worn man, without coat or waistcoat, his red, muscular, sun-burnt shoulder peeping through the remnant of a shirt, mending his shoes with a piece of twisted flax, called a lingel, or perhaps sew- ing two footless stockings, or martyeens to his coat, as a substitute for sleeves. In the gardens, which are usually fringed with nettles, you will see a solitary labourer, working with that carelessness and apathy that characterize an Irishman when he la- bours for himself, leaning upon his spade to look after you, and glad of any excuse to be idle. The houses, however, are not all such as I have described, far from it. You see here and there, between the more humble cabins, a stout comfortable-looking farm- house, with ornamental thatching and well- glazed windows; adjoining to which is a hay-yard, with five or six large stacks of corn, well trimmed and roped, and a fine, yellow weather-beaten old hay-rick, half-cut, not taking into account twelve or thirteen circular strata of stones that mark out the foundations on which others had been raised. Neither is the rich smell of oaten or wheaten bread, which the good wife is baking on the griddle, unpleasant to your nostrils; nor would the bubbling of a large pot, in which you might see, should you chance to enter, a prodigious square of fat, yellow, and almost transparent bacon tumbling about, be an unpleasant object: truly, as it hangs over a large fire, with well-swept hearth- stone, it is in good keeping with the white settle and chairs, and the dresser with nog- gins, wooden trenchers, and pewter dishes, perfectly clean, and as well polished as a French courtier. As you leave the village, you have to the left, a view of the hill which I have already described : and to the right, a level expanse of fertile country, bounded by a good view of respectable mountains, peering directly into the sky ; and in a line that forms an acute angle from the pointof the road where you ride, is a delightful valley, in the bot- tom of which shines a pretty lake; and a little beyond, on the slope of a green hill, rises a splendid house, surrounded by a park well- wooded and stocked with deer. You have now topped the little hill above the village, and a straight line of level road, a mile long, goes forward to a country town which lies immediately behind that white church, with its spire cutting into the sky before you. You descend on the other side, and, having advanced a few perches, look to the left, where you see a long thatched chapel, only distinguished from a dwell- ing-house by its want of chimneys, and a small stone cross that stands on the top of the eastern gable; behind it is a grave-yard, and beside it a snug public-house, well white washed ; then, to the right, you ob- serve a door, apparently in the side of a clay bank, which rises considerably above the pavement of the road. What ! you ask yourself, can this be a human habitation? But ere you have time to answer the ques- tion, a confused buzz of voices from within reaches your ear, and the appearance of a little cossoon, with a red close-cropped head and Milesian face, having in his hand a short white stick, or the thigh-bone of a horse, which you at once recognize as u the pass" of a village school, gives you the full information. He has an ink-horn, covered with leather, dangling at the button-hole (for he has long since played away the but- tons) of his frieze jacket, his mouth is cir- cumscribed with a streak of ink, his pen is stuck knowingly behind his ear. his shins are dotted over with fire-blisters, black, red, and blue, on each heel a kibe, his ' leather crackers," videlicet, breeches, shrunk up upon him, and only reaching as far down as the caps of his knees. Having spied you, he places his hand over his brows, to throw back the dazzling light of the sun. and peers at you from under it, till he breaks out into a laugh, exclaiming, half to himself, half to you, '' You a gintleman ! no, nor one of your breed never was, you procthorin' thief, you !" You are now immediately opposite the door of the seminary, when half a dozen of those seated next it notice you. 'Oh, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse! masther, sir, here's a gintleman on a horse, wid boots and spurs on him, that's looking in at us." "Silence!" exclaims the master; e the offspring of no sudden and undefinable impression or inspiration. It will be faith well grounded and settled, an anchor to the soul. It will have the witness within that we love and strive to serve God ; and it will have the witness 452 HUGH MILLER. without that they who do Christ's will shall know of his doctrine, that the Holy Spirit will guide the meek in judgment and in- struct them in God's way, and that he who conieth with a faithful and penitent heart in Christ's name, shall in no wise be cast out. While here, in this state of warfare, the Christian must expect to be assailed through his understanding as well as through his heart. lie may never hope therefore to be exalted, while in the flesh, above all neces- sity for seeking more truth, nor above the duty of guarding against the beguilements of his own frail heart. The divisions which rend Christendom, and the fierceness of con- tending sects, are not to be ascribed to the insufficiency of Scripture. They are to be ascribed to the insufficiency of man's fallen, but self-confident mind, its insufficiency to discuss without passion, and to decide with- out prejudice. When men rise superior to selfish pride and interest, when they bring to the study of Scripture a devout and teach- able spirit; when they gladly avail them- selves of all proper help, and look with becoming deference to the judgments of the wisest and best of all ages and lands; when they seek truth, first of all as a guide in ac- tion, and not as a weapon for controversy ; when they apply to its contemplation both their intellectual and their moral powers, their reason, their conscience, their affec- tions, and an obedient will, they shall not be left, in such case, greatly to err. Says Pas- cal, " God, willing to be revealed to those who seek him with their whole heart, and hidden from those who as cordially fly from him, has so regulated the means of knowing him as to give indications of himself which are plain to those who seek him, and shrouded to those who seek him not. There is light enougli for those whose main wish is to see ; and darkness enough to confound those of an opposite disposition." [Thoughts, ch. xvii.] I have thus indicated some of the reasons which should determine us as ministers of Christ to more earnest and devoted study of Holy Scripture. The more we read and meditate upon it, the more will its spirit and influence transpire in our preaching and deportment, and the more will our people be taught to reverence and love it. It will be more attentively listened to in public. It will be more thoughtfully and systematically perused in private. The congregations will demand of the clergy, and the clergy will gladly furnish to the congregations, more full and copious expositions of the inspired word. Its authority shall rise as that of mere human teachers declines, and we shall come to learn, not that there may, on this side the grave, be unity in all things, but that in all things there may be charity, and that in many things now held to be as of the essence of the faith, there may be rightfully and safely more of toleration. We shall have fewer pretended articles of faith. W T e shall have more allowed diversity of opinion. We shall be more anxious to know of a brother, whether he have the Spirit of Christ, than whether he speak precisely according to our Shibboleth ; and we shall not recoil from a day when we must own as among the faith- ful and the accepted, those who on earth have walked not, in all things, according to our will. Discourses, Addresses, Charges, etc., etc., 127-183. HUGH MILLER, an eminent geologist and excellent author, born at Cromarty, Scotland, 18U2, learned the trade of a stone-mason, and in 1819 be- came a quarrier; was employed at Edin- burgh as a stone-cutter, 1825-26; in 1834 entered a bank in Cromarty as an account- ant; and from 1840 until his suicide in a fit of insanity on the night of Dec. 23, 1856, was editor of The Witness, an organ of The Free Church or Non-Intrusionists, published in Edinburgh semi-weekly. The first published volume was anony- mous, Poems written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman Stone-Mason, 1829. Uni- form edition of his works (Catalogue of W. P. Nimmo, Lond. and Edin., 1875), 13 vols. cr. 8vo, viz. : vol. i., My Schools and School- masters (1854). 24th edit.; ii., The Testi- mony of the Rocks (1857), 42d 1000; iii., The Cruise of the Betsey, llth edit.; iv., Sketch-Book of Popular Geology, 7th edit. ; v., First Impressions of England and its People (1847), 14th edit. : vi., Scenes and Legends of the North of 'Scotland (1835), 13th edit.; vii., The Old lied Sandstone (1841), 20th edit,; viii., The Headship of Christ and the Rights of the Christian Peo- ple, 8th edit. ; ix., Footprints of the Creator, or. The Asterolepis of Stromness (1849), with Preface and Notes by Mrs. Miller, and a Biographical Sketch by Professor Agassi/., 17th edit. ; x., Tales and Sketches, Edited, with a Preface, by Mrs. Miller, 7th edit. ; xi., Essays, Historical and Biographical, Political and Social, Literary and Scientific, I7th edit. ; xii., Edinburgh and its Neigh- bourhood, Geological and Historical, with the Geology of the Bass Rock (1848), 6th edit. ; xiii., Leading Articles on Various Subjects, Edited by his Son-in-law, the Rev. John Davidson, etc., 5th edit. See The Life and Letters of Hugh Miller, by Peter Bayne, Lond., 2 vols. 8vo : Lon. Gent. Mag., 1857, i. 244 (Obituary) ; Edin. HUGH MILLER. 453 Review. July, 1858; N. Amer. Review, Oct. 1851 ; N. Brit. Review, Aug. 1854. " On his style it is not easy to confer too high praise. Dr. Buckland did not scruple to inform the world that he ' would give his left hand to pos- sess such powers of description [illustration] as Hugh Miller.' Recollecting the staid and prosaic habits of professors, we cannot but feel that Dr. Buuklaml must have been very much struck in- deed. The style in question is one of very rare excellence. Easy, fluent, and expressive, it adapts itself, like a silken shawl, to every swell and mo- tion and curve of a subject. It is graphic yet not extravagant, strong without vociferation, measured without formality, classically chaste yet pleasingly adorned." PETKU BAYNE: Esxays in Biuyniphy and Criticism : Hiujh Miller, 338, 339. FOSSILS OF THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. The different degrees of entireness in which the geologist finds his organic re- mains, depends much less on their age than on the nature of the rock in which they oc- cur ; and as the arenaceous matrices of the Upper and Middle Old Red Sandstones have been less favourable to the preservation of their peculiar fossils than the calcareous and aluminous matrices of the Lower, we fre- quently find the older organisms of the sys- tem fresh and unbroken, and the more mod- ern existing as mere fragments. A fish thrown into a heap of salt would be found entire after the lapse of many years ; a fish thrown into a heap of sand would disappear in a mass of putrefaction in a few weeks ; and only the less destructible parts, such as the teeth, the harder bones, and perhaps a few of the scales, would survive. Now, limestone, if I may so speak, is the preserv- ing salt of the geological world; and the conservative qualities of the shales and stratified clays of the Lower Old Red Sand- stone are not much inferior to those of lime itself; while, in the Upper Old Red, we have merely beds of consolidated sand, and these, in most instances, rendered less con- servative of organic remains than even the common sand of our shores, by a mixture of the red oxide of iron. The older fossils, therefore, like the mummies of Egypt, can be described well nigh as minutely as the existences of the present creation ; the newer, like the comparatively modern re- mains of our churchyards, exist, except in a few cases, as mere fragments, and demand powers such as those of Agassiz, to restore them to their original combination. But cases, though few and rare, do occur in which, through some favourable accident connected with the death or sepulture of some individual existence of the period, its remains have been preserved almost entire ; and one such specimen serves to throw light on whole heaps of the broken remains of its contemporaries. The single elephant, pre- served in an iceberg beside the Arctic Ocean, illustrated the peculiarities of the numerous extinct family to which it belonged, and whose bones and huge tusks whiten the wastes of Siberia. The human body found in an Irish bog, with the ancient sandals of the country still attached to its feet by thongs, and clothed in a garment of coarse hair, gave evidence that bore generally on the degree of civilization attained by the in- habitants of an entire district in a remote age. In all such instances the character and appearance of the individual bear on those of the tribe. In attempting to describe the organisms of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, where the fossils lie as thickly in some lo- calities as herrings on our coasts in the fish- ing season, I felt as if I had whole tribes be- fore me. In describing the fossils of the Upper Old Red Sandstone I shall have to draw mostly from single specimens. But the evidence may be equally sound so far as it goes. The difference between the superior and inferior groupes of the system which first strikes an observer, is a difference in the size of the fossils of which these groupes are composed. The characteristic organisms of the Upper Old Red Sandstone are of much greater bulk than those of the Lower, which seem to have been characterized by a medi- ocrity of size throughout the entire extent of the formation. The largest ichthyolites of the group do not seem to have much ex- ceeded two feet or two feet and a half in length ; its smaller average from an inch to three inches. A jaw in the possession of Dr. Traill that of an Orkney species of Platygnathus, and by much the largest in his collection does not exceed in bulk the jaw of a full-grown coal-fish or cod ; his largest Coccosteiis must have been a con- siderably smaller fish than an ordinary-sized turbot; the largest ichthyolite found by the writer was a Diplopterus, of, however, smaller dimensions than the ichthyolite to which the jaw in the possession of Dr. Traill must have belonged ; the remains of another Diplopterus from Gainrie, the most massy yet discovered in that locality, seem to havo composed the upper parts of an individual about two feet and a half in length. The fish, in short, of the lower ocean of the Old Red Sandstone, and I can speak of it throughout an area which comprises Ork- ney and Inverness, Cromarty and Gamrie, and which must have included about ten thousand square miles, ranged in size be- tween the stickleback and the cod ; whereas some of the fish of its upper ocean were covered by scales as large as oyster-shells, and armed with teeth that rivalled in bulk 454 HARRIET MAR TINE AU. those of the crocodile. They must have been tish on an immensely larger scale than those with which the system began. There have been scales of the Holopiychius found in Clashbennie, which measure three inches in length by two and a half in breadth, and a full eighth of an inch in thickness. There occur occipital plates of fishes in the same formation in Moray, a full foot in length by half a foot in breadth. The fragment of a tooth still attached to a piece of the jaw, found in the sandstone cliffs that overhang the Findhorn, measures an inch in diameter at the base. A second tooth of the same formation, of a larger size, disinterred by Mr. Patrick Duff from out the conglomer- ates of the Scat-Craig, near Elgin, and now in his possession, measures two inches in length by rather more than an inch in di- ameter. There occasionally turn up in the sandstones of Perthshire ichthyodorulites that in bulk and appearance resemble the teeth of a harrow rounded at the edges by a few months' wear, and which must have been attached to fins not inferior in general bulk to the dorsal fin of an ordinary-sized porpoise. In short, the remains of a Patci- gonian burying-ground Avould scarcely con- trust more strongly with the remains of that battle-field described by Addison, in which the pigmies were annihilated by the cranes, than the organisms of the upper formation of the Old Red Sandstone contrast with those of the lower. The Old Kcd Sandstone; or, New Walks in an Old Field, Chap. ix. HARRIET MARTINEAU, born at Norwich. England, 1802, died 1876, was the author of many works on many sub- jects, of which it will be sufficient to chron- icle the following: Devotional Exercises for the Young, 1823, 12rno; Original Hymns, 1826 ; The Rioters, 1826, 18mo, 1842. 18mo ; Tracts on Questions relating to the AVorking Classes, 1828; Traditions of Palestine, 1830, 2d edit,. 1843, fp. 8vo: Five Years of Youth, 1831, 12mo; Illustrations of Political Econ- omy, 1832-34, new edit., 1849, 8 vols. 18mo ; Poor-Law and Paupers, 1833, 2 vols. 12mo; Illustrations of Taxation, 1834, 5 vols. 18mo : The Tendency of Strikes to Produce Low Wages, 1834, 12mo; Addresses, Prayers, and Hymns, 2d edit., 1838, 12mo; Society in America, 1837, 3 vols. post 8vo (from per- sonal observations in 1835); Retrospect of Western Travel, 1838, 3 vols. p. 8vo ; How to Observe. 1838, p. 8vo; Deerbrook, a Novel, 1839, 3 vols. p. 8vo ; Forest and Game Laws, 1840 (also '45 and ! 49), 3 vols. 18mo ; The Hour and the Man, 1840, 3 vols. post8vo, 1843, 12mo, 1855, 12mo; The Play- fellow, 1841, 4 vols. 18mo. 3d edit., 1856, 4 vols. 18mo; Life in the Sick-Room, 1843, p. 8vo, 1844. p. 8vo, 1849, 12mo; Dawn Island, a Poem, 1845, 12mo ; Letters on Mesmerism, 1845, fp. 8vo; The Billow and the Rock. 1846, 18mo, 1848, 18mo ; Eastern Life, Past and Present, 1848, 3 vols. p. 8vo, 1850, cr. 8vo ; Household Education. 1849, fp. 8vo, 1852, fp. 8vo ; History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace, 1849-50, 2 vols. r. 8vo ; Introduction to the History of Eng- land during the Thirty Years' Peace, 1851, r. 8vo; Haifa Century of the British Empire, in Pts., 8vo, 1851, etc. ; Letters between Miss Martineau and Mr. II. G. Atkinson on the Laws of Man's Social Nature and Develop- ment, 1851, p. 8vo; Letters from Ireland, 1852, p. 8vo; The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, freely Translated and Con- densed, 1853, 2 vols. 8vo ; Complete Guide to the English Lakes, 1855, 12mo, 1856, 12mo, and in 4to ; History of the American Compromises, 1856; Sketches of Life, 1856, 12mo; Corporation, Tradition, and National Rights, 1857; British Rule in India, 1857: England and her Soldiers, 1859 ; Endowed Schools in Ireland, 1859; Health, Hus- bandry, and Handicraft, 1861 ; Biograph- ical Sketches, 1872 ; Autobiography, 1876. FAITH IN PROVIDENCE. The world rolls on, let what will be hap- pening to the individuals who occupy it. The sun rises and sets, seed-time and har- vest come and go, generations arise and pass away, law and authority hold on their course, while hundreds of millions of human hearts have stirring within them struggles and emotions eternally new ; and experience so diversified as that no two days appear alike to any one, and to no two does any one day appear the same. There is something so striking in this perpetual contrast between the external uniformity and internal variety of the procedure of existence, that it is no wonder that multitudes have formed a con- ception of Fate, of a mighty unchanging power, blind to the differences of spirits, and deaf to the appeals of human delight and misery; a huge insensible force, beneath which all that is spiritual is sooner or later wounded, and is ever liable to be crushed. This conception of fate is grand, is natural, and fully warranted to minds too lofty to be satisfied with the details of human life, but which have not risen to the far higher con- ception of a Providence to whom this uni- formity and variety are but means to a higher end than they apparently involve. There is infinite blessinc in having reached HARRIET MAR TINE AU. 455 the nobler conception ; the feeling of help- lessness is relieved ; the craving for sympa- thy from the ruling power is satisfied ; there is a hold for veneration ; there is room for hope ; there is, above all, the stimulus and support of an end perceived or anticipated ; a purpose which steeps in sanctity all human experience. Yet even where this blessing is the most fully felt and recognized, the spirit can but be at times overwhelmed by the vast regularity of aggregate existence, thrown back upon its faith for support when it re- flects how all things go on as they did before it became conscious of existence, and how all would go on as now if it were to die to- day. On it rolls, not only the great globe itself, but the life which stirs and hums on its surface, enveloping it like an atmosphere ; on it rolls; and the vastest tumult that may take place among its inhabitants can no more make itself seen and heard above the general stir and hum of life, than Chimbo- razo or the loftiest Himalaya can lift its peak into space above the atmosphere. On, on it rolls ; and the strong arm of the united race could not turn from its course one planetary mote of the myriads that swim in space ; no shriek of passion, nor shrill song of joy, sent up from a group of nations or a continent, could attain the ear of the eternal silence, as she sits throned among the stars. Death is less dreary than life in this view, a view which at times, perhaps, presents itself to every mind, but which speedily vanishes before the faith of those who, with the heart, believe that they are not the acci- dents of fate, but the children of a Father. In the house of every wise parent may then be seen an epitome of life, a sight whose consolation is needed at times, perhaps, by all. Which of the little children of a vir- tuous household can conceive of his entering into his parent's pursuits, or interfering with them? How sacred are the study and the office, the apparatus of a knowledge and a power which he can only venerate ! Which of these little ones dreams of disturbing the course of his parent's thought or achieve- ment? Which of them conceives of the daily routine of the household its going forth and coining in, its rising and its rest having been different before his birth, or that it would be altered by his absence? It is even a matter of surprise to him when it now and then occurs to him that there is anything set apart for him, that he has clothes and couch, and that his mother thinks and cares for him. If he lags behind in a walk, or finds himself alone among the trees, he does not dream of being missed ; but home rises up before him as he has always seen it, his father thoughtful, his mother occupied, and the rest gay, with the one difference of his not being there. This he believes, and has no other trust than in his shriek of terror, for being even remem- bered more. Yet all the while, from day to day, from year to year, without one mo- ment's intermission, is the providence of his parent around him. brooding over the work- ings of his infant spirit, chastening his passions, nourishing his affections, now troubling it with salutary pain, now ani- mating it with even more wholesome de- light. All the while is the order of house- hold affairs regulated for the comfort and profit of these lovely little ones, though they regard it reverently, because they cannot comprehend it. They may not know all this, how their guardian bends over their pil- low nightly, and lets no word of their care- less talk drop unheeded, and records every sob of infant grief, hails every brightening gleam of reason and every chirp of childish glee. they may not know this because they could not understand it aright, and each little heart would be inflated with pride, each little mind would lose the grace and purity of its unconsciousness; but the guar- dianship is not the less real, constant, and tender, for its being unrecognized by its ob- jects. As the spirit expands, and perceives that it is one of an innumerable family, it would be in danger of sinking into the de- spair of loneliness if it were not capable of " Belief In meroy carried infinite degrees Beyond the tenderness of human hearts," while the very circumstance of multitude obviates the danger of undue exaltation. But though it is good to be lowly, it be- hooves every one to be sensible of the guar- dianship of which so many evidences are around all who breathe. While the world and life roll on and on, the feeble reason of the child of Providence may be at times over- powered by the vastness of the system amidst which he lives; but his faith will smile upon his fear, rebuke him for averting his eyes, and inspire him with the thought, " Nothing can crush me, for I am made for eternity. I will do, suffer, and enjoy as my Father wills; and let the world and life roll on!" Such is the faith which supports, which alone can support, the many who, having been whirled into the eddying stream of social affairs, are withdrawn, by one cause or another, to abide in some still little creek, the passage of the mighty tide. The broken- down statesman, who knows himself to be spoken of as politically dead, and sees hia successors at work, building on his founda- tions, without more than a passing thought on him who had laboured before them, has 456 DOUGLAS J ERR OLD. need of this faith. The aged, who find affairs proceeding at the will of the young and hardy, whatever the gray-haired may think and say, have need of this faith. So have the sick, when they find none but themselves disposed to look on life in the light which comes from beyond the grave. So have the persecuted, when, with or with- out cause, they see themselves pointed at in the street; and the despised, who find them- selves neglected whichever wr.y they turn. So have the prosperous, during those mo- ments which must occur to all, when sym- patliy fails, and means to much desired ends are wanting, or when satiety makes the spirit roam abroad in search of something better than it has found. This universal, eternal, filial relation is the only universal and eternal refuge. It is the solace of roy- alty weeping in the inner chambers of its palaces, and of poverty drooping beside its cold hearth. It is the glad tidings preached to the poor, and in which all must be poor in spirit to have part. If they be poor in spirit, it matters little what is their external state, or whether the world, which rolls on beside or over them, be the world of a solar system, or of a conquering empire, or of a small-sou led village. Deerbrook, a Novel. DOUGLAS JERROLD, well known as the author of Black-Eyed Susan, The Ilent Day, and many other dramas, Mrs. Caudle's Curtain-Lectures, etc., in Punch, and other productions, was born in London in 1S03, served for some time in the Royal Navy, and also as a printer, and died in 1857. Men of Character, 1838, 3 vols. p. 8vo ; Bubbles of the Day, a Comedy, 1842 ; Cakes and Ale, 1842, 2 vols. fp. 8vo ; Prisoner of War, 1842, 8vo ; Punch's Letters to his Son, 1843, fp. 8vo; Punch's Complete Letter- Writer; Story of a Feather, 1844, fp. 8vo ; Mrs. Caudle's Curtain-Lectures, new edit., 1846, fp. 8vo ; Chronicles of Clovernook, 1846, fp. 8vo; A Man Made of Money, 1849. p. 8vo ; The Catspaw, a Comedy, 1850, 8vo; Retired from Business, a Comedy, 1851. 12mo; St. Giles and St. James, 185'l, 12mo; Time Works Wonders, 1854, fp. 8vo ; A Heart of Gold, a Drama, 1854, 12mo ; Come- dies and Dramas. 1854, 12mo, new edit., 2 vols. 8vo. To these may be added Nell Gwynne, Cupid, etc., and many papers in The Heads of the People, The Illuminated Magazine, The Shilling Magazine, and Lloyd's Weekly, all of which he edited. After his death appeared The Barber's Chain, and The Hedgehog Letters, cr. 8vo, Brownrigg's Papers and other Stories, new edit., I860, p. 8vo, Life and Remains of Douglas Jerrold, 1859. 8vo, The Wit and Opinions of Douglas Jerrold, 1859, 12mo, all edited by his son William Blanchard Jerrold, author of The Life of Napoleon III., 4 vols. 8vo, etc. There are collective editions of Jerrold's Works, Lond., 1851-54. 8 vols. IvJmo. and 1863-G5, 5 vols. p. 8vo. "Jerrold was truly a man of a large heart, ns well as of a great original genius. He never lost an opportunity of labouring in any act of benevo- lence that his sense of duty set before him ; and his last words were those of affection towards all with whom he had been associated in friendship, to him a sacred relation." Lond. Gent. May., July, 1857, 94, q. v. See also Jerrold, Tennyson, Mitcau- ly, and oilier Critical Essays, by J. II. Stirling, LL.D., 1868, fp. 8vo: New Spirit of the Aye, by R. H. Home, 1844, 2 vols. p. 8vo; JV. Brit. Rev., May, 1859. CLOVERXOOK AXD ITS INN. We have yet no truthful map of England. No offence to the publishers ; but the verity must be uttered. We have pored and pon- dered, and gone to our sheets with weak, winking eyes, having vainly searched, we cannot trust ourselves to say how many hundred maps of our beloved land, for the exact whereabout of Clovernook. We can- not find it. More: we doubt so imperfect are all the maps if any man can drop his finger on the spot, can point to the blessed locality of that most blissful village. He could as easily show to us the hundred of Utopia : the glittering weathercocks of the New Atlantis. And shall we be more communicative than the publishers ? No ; the secret shall be buried with us ; we will hug it under our shroud. We have heard of shrewd, short- speeched men who were the living caskets of some healing jewel ; some restorative recipe to draw the burning fangs from gout; some anodyne to touch away sciatica into the lithesomeness of a kid ; and these men have died, and have, to their own satisfac- tion at least, carried the secret into their coffins, as though the mystery would com- fort them as they rotted. There have been such men ; and the black, begrimed father of all uncharitableness sits cross-legged upon their tombstones, and sniggers over them. Nevertheless, we will not tell to the care- less and irreverent world a world noisy with the ringing of shillings the where- about of Clovernook. We might, would we condescend, give an all-sufficient reason for our closeness: we will do no such thing. No : the village is our own, consecrated to our own delicious leisure, when time runs by like a summer brook, dimpling and RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 457 sweetly murmuring as it runs. We have the most potent right of freehold in the soil; nay, it is our lordship. We have there droits du seigneur ; and in the very despot- ism of our ownership might, if we would, turn oaks into gibbets. Let this knowledge suffice to the reader; for we will not vouch- safe to him another pippin's-worth. Thus much, however, we will say of the history of Clovernook : there is about it a very proper mist and haziness; it twinkles far, far away through the darkness of time, like a taper through a midnight casement. The spirit of fable that dallies with the vexed heart of man, and incarnates his dreams in living presences, for mightiest of the mighty is oft the muscle of fiction. fable says that Clovernook was the work of some sprite of Fancy, that in an idle and extravagant mood made it a choice country- seat, a green .and flowery place, peopled with happy faces. And it was created, says fable, after this fashion : The sprite took certain pieces of old, fine linen, which were torn and torn, and re- duced to a very pulp, and then made into a substance, thin and spotless. And then the sprite flew away to distant woods, and gath- ered certain things, from which was ex- pressed a liquid of darkest dye. And then, after the old time-honoured way, a living thing was sacrificed; a bird much praised by men at Michaelmas, fell with bleeding throat ; and the sprite, plucking a feather from the poor dead thing, waved and waved it, and the village of Clovernook grew and grew ; and cottages, silently as trees, rose from the earth ; and men and women came there by twos and fours ; and in good time smoke rose from chimneys, and cradles were rocked. And this, so saith fable, was the beginning of Clovernook. Although we will not let the rabble of the world know the whereabout of our village, and by the rabble, be it understood, we do not mean the wretches who are guilty of daily hunger, and are condemned in the court of poverty of the high misdemeanour of patches and rags, but we mean the mere money-changers, the folks who carry their sullen souls in the corners of their pockets, and think the site of Eden is covered with the Mint; although we will not have Clover- nook startled from its sweet, dreamy seren- ity and we have sometimes known the very weasels in mid-day to doze there, given up to the delicious influence of the place by the chariot-wheels of that stony-hearted old dowager, Lady Mammon, with her false locks and ruddled cheeks, we invite all others to our little village ; where they may loll in the sun or shade as suits them ; lie along on the green turfy sward, and kick their heels at fortune: where they may jig an evening dance in the meadows, and after retire to the inn. the one inn of Clover- nook, glorified under the sign of ''Gratis!" Match us that sign if you can. What are your Georges and Dragons, your Kinds' Heads and Queens' Arms ; your Lions, Red, White, and Black ; your Mermaids and your Dolphins, to that large, embracing benev- olence, Gratis? Doth not the word seem to throw its arm about you with a hugging welcome? Gratis! It is the voice of Na- ture, speaking from the fulness of her large heart. The word is written all over the blue heaven. The health-giving air whis- pers it about us. It rides the sunbeam (save when statesmen put a pane 'twixtus and it). The lark trills it high up in its skyey dome ; the little wayside flower breathes gratis from its pinky mouth; the bright brook murmurs it; it is written in the harvest moon. Look and move where we will, de- lights all "gratis," all breathing and beaming beauty are about us ; and yet how rarely do we seize the happiness, be- cause, forsooth, it is a joy gratis? But let us back to Clovernook. We offer it as a country tarrying-place for all who will accept its hospitality. We will show every green lane about it ; every clump of trees; every bit of woodland, mead, and dell. The villagers, too, may be found, upon acquaintance, not altogether boors. There are some strange folk among them. Men who have wrestled in the world, and have had their victories and their trippings- up ; and now they have nothing to do but keep their little bits of garden-ground pranked with the earliest flowers ; their only enemies, weeds, slugs, and snails. Odd people, we say it, are amongst them. Men whose minds have been strangely carved and fash- ioned by the world ; cut like odd fancies in walnut-tree ; but though curious and gro- tesque, the minds are sound, with not a worm-hole in them. And these men meet in summer under the broad mulberry-tree before the "Gratis," and tell their stories, thoughts, humours; yea, their dreams. They have nothing to do but to consider that curious bit of clock-work the mind within them; and droll it sometimes is, to mark how they will try to take it to pieces, and then again to adjust its little wheels, its levers, and springs. The Chronicles of Clovernook,- with some Account of the Hermit of Bdlyfulle. RALPH WALDO EMERSON, the son of a Unitarian minister, was born in Boston in 1803, graduated at Harvard Col- 458 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. lege, 1821, and officiated for some time as minister of the Second Unitarian Church of Boston. He has for many years been living in retirement at Concord, Massachusetts. Works : vol. i., Essays, Bost., 1841, 12mo, with Preface by Thomas Carlyle, Lond., 1853, 12mo ; ii., Essays, Second Series, Bost., 1844, 12mo, 2d edit., 1855, 12mo ; iii., Poems, Bost., 1847, 12mo ; iv., Representative Men, Seven Lectures, Bost., 1850, 12mo ; v., Mis- cellanies: embracing Nature [1839J, Ad- dresses, and Lectures, Bost, 1849, 12mo; vi., English Traits, Bost., 1856, 12mo; vii., Conduct of Life, Bost., I860, 12mo; viii., May Day and other Pieces, Bost., 16mo; ix., Society and Solitude, Bost., 1869, 16mo ; x., Poetry and Criticism, Bost., 1875, 12mo ; xi., Fortune of the llepublic, Bost., 1878, 16mo. In 1851 appeared Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Henry Channing, and James Free- man Clarke, Bost., 2 vols. 12mo, Lond., 1852, 3 vols. p. Svo. Mr. Emerson edited The Dial, Bost., 1840-44, and has contributed to the North American Review, vols. 44 : 1 (Mi- chael Angelo), 47: 56 (Milton), 102: 356 (Character), 106 : 543 (Quotation and Origi- nality), 124: 179 (Demonology), 125: 271 (Perpetual Forces), and The Christian Ex- aminer. BEAUTY. The presence of a higher, namely, of the spiritual element is essential to its perfec- tion. The high and divine beauty which can be loved without effeminacy is that which is found in combination with the human will, and never separate. Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by great actions that the universe is the prop- erty of every individual in it. Every ra- tional creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do ; but he is entitled to the world by his constitution. In proportion to the en- ergy of his thought and will, he takes up the world into himself. " All those things for which men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue," said an ancient historian. "The winds and waves," said Gibbon, "are al- ways on the side of the ablest navigators." So are the sun and moon and all the stars of heaven. When a noble act is done, perchance in a scene of great natural beauty ; when Leonidas and his three hundred war- riors consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae ; when Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps under the shadow of the avalanche, gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades: are not these heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed? When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America, before it, the beach lined with savasres fleeing out of all their huts of cane ; the sea be- hind ; and the purple mountains of the In- dian Archipelago around, can we separate the man from the living picture? Does not the New World clothe his form with her palm-groves and savannahs as fit drapery? Ever does natural beauty steal in like air, and envelop great actions. When Sir Harry Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill, sitting on a sled, to suffer death, as the champion of the English laws, one of the multitude cried out to him, " You never sate on BO glorious a seat." Charles II., to intimidate the citizens of London, caused the patriot Lord Russell to be drawn in an open coach, through the principal streets of the city, on his way to the scaffold. "But," to use the simple narrative of his biographer, " the multitude imagined they saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side." In private places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man, only let his thoughts be of equal greatness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace to the dec- oration of her darling child. Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, and makes the cen- tral figure of the visible sphere. Nature. THE POWER OF LOVE. Be our experience in particulars what it may, no man ever forgot the visitations of that power to his heart and brain, which created all things new ; which was the dawn in him of music, poetry, and art ; which made the face of nature radiant with purple light, the morning and the night varied en- chantments ; when a single tone of one voice could make the heart beat, and the most trivial circumstances associated with one form is put in the amber of memory : when we became all eye when one was pres- ent, and all memory when one was gone ; when the youth becomes a watcher of win- dows, and studious of a glove, a veil, a rib- bon, or the wheels of a carriage ; when no place is too solitary, and none too silent for him who has richer company, and sweeter RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 459 conversation in his new thoughts, than any old friends, though best and purest, can give him : for the figures, the motions, the words, of the beloved object are not like other im- ages written in water, but as Plutarch said, " enamelled in fire," and made the study of midnight. " Thou art not gone being gone, where'er thou art, Thou leav'st in him thy watchful eyes, in him thy loving heart." In the noon and afternoon of life, we still throb at the recollection of days when hap- piness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter who said of love, "All other pleasures are not worth its pains:" and when the day was not long enough, but the night too must be consumed in keen recollections ; when the head boiled all night on the pillow with the generous deed it re- solved on ; when the moonlight was a pleas- ing fever, and the stars were letters, and the ilo\vers ciphers, and the air was coined into song; when all business seemed an imperti- nence, and all the men and women running to and fro in the streets mere pictures. The passion remakes the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and sig- nificant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. Almost the notes are articulate. The clouds have faces, as he looks on them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass, and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent ; and almost he fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a dearer home than with men : " Fountain-heads and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves, Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are safely housed, save bats and owls, A midnight bell, a passing groan : These are the sounds we feed upon." Behold there in the wood the fine mad- man ! He is a palace of sweet sounds and sights ; he dilates ; he is twice a man ; he walks with arms akimbo; he soliloquizes; he accosts the grass and the trees ; he feels the blood of the violet, the clover, and the lily in his veins ; and he talks with the brook that wets his foot. The causes that have sharpened his per- ceptions of natural beauty have made him love music and verse. It is a fact often ob- served, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under any other circumstances. The like force has passion over all his nature. It expands the sentiment ; it makes the clown gentle, and gives the coward heart. Into the most pitiful and abject it will infuse a heart and courage to defy the world, so only it have the countenance of the beloved object. In giving him to another, it still more gives him to himself. He is a new man, with new perceptions, new and keener purposes, and a religious solemnity of char- acter and aims. He does not longer apper- tain to his family and society. He is some- what. He is a person, lie is a soul. Essay on Love. STATELINESS AND COURTESY. I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king. I prefer a tendency to state! i ness, to an excess of fellowship. Let the incommunicable objects of nature and the metaphysical isolation of man teach us independence. Let us not be too much ac- quainted. I would have a man enter his house through a hall filled with heroic and sacred sculptures, that he might not want the hint of tranquillity and self-poise. We should meet each moi-ning, as from foreign countries, and spending the day together, should depart at night, as into foreign coun- tries. In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion. This is myrrh and rosemary to keep the other sweet. Lovers should guard their strangeness. If they forgive too much, all slides into confu- sion and meanness. It is easy to push this defence to a Chinese etiquette ; but coolness and absence of heat and haste indicate fine qualities. A gentleman makes no noise ; a lady is serene. Proportionate is our disgust at those invaders who fill a studious house with blast and running to secure some pal- try convenience. Not less I dislike a low sympathy of each with his neighbour's needs. Must we have a good understanding with one another's palates ? as foolish people, who have lived long together, know when each wants salt or sugar. I pray my companion, if he wishes for bread, to ask me for bread, and if he wishes for sassafras or arsenic, to ask me for them, and not to hold out hia plate as if I knew already. Every natural function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy. Let us leave hurry to shaves. The compliments and ceremonies of our breeding should signify, however remotely, the recol- lection of the grandeur of our destiny. The flower of courtesy does not very well bide handling, but if we dare to open another leaf, and explore what parts go to its con- 460 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. formation, we shall find also an intellectual quality. To the leaders of men, the brain as well as the flesh and the heart must fur- nish a proportion. Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions. Men are too coarsely made for the delicacy of beautiful carriage and customs. It is not quite sufficient to good-breeding, a union of kindness and independence. We impera- tively require a perception of, and a homage to. beauty in our companions. Other virtues are in request in the field and work-yard, but a certain degree of taste is not to be spared in those we sit with. I could better eat with one who did not respect the trutli or the laws, than with a sloven and unpre- sentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but ut short distances the senses are despotic. The same discrimination of fit and fair runs out, if with less rigour, into all parts of life. The average spirit of the ener- getic class is good sense, acting under cer- tain limitations and to certain ends. It en- tertains every natural gift. Social in its nature, it respects every thing which tends to unite men. It delights in measure. The love of beauty is mainly the love of measure or proportion. The person who screams, or uses the superlative degree, or converses with heat, puts whole drawing-rooms to flight. If you wish to be loved, love meas- ure. You must have genius, or a prodigious usefulness, if you will hide the want of measure. This perception comes in to polish and perfect the parts of the social instru- ment. Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coining together. That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship. For, fashion is not good sense absolute, but rela- tive ; not good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary and gloomy people ; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can consist with good fellowship. And be- sides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendour of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit. Essay on Manners, GENIUS. And what is genius but finer love, a love impersonal, a love of the flower and perfec- tion of things, and a desire to draw a new picture or copy of the same ? It looks to the cause and life : it proceeds from within outward, while talent goes from without in- ward. Talent finds its models and methods and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its moans and the style of its architecture from within, going abroad only for audience and specta- tor, as we adapt our voice and phrase to the distance and character of the ear we speak to. All your learning of all literatures would never enable you to anticipate one of its thoughts or expressions, and yet each is nat- ural and familiar as household words. Here about us coils for ever. the ancient enigma, so old and so unutterable. Behold ! there is the sun, and the rain, and the rocks: the old sun, the old stones. How easy were it to describe all this fitly : yet no word can pass. Nature is a mute, and man, her articulate speaking brother, lo ! he .also is a mute. Yet when genius arrives, its speech is like a river, it has no straining to describe, more than there is straining m nature to exist. When thought is best, there is most of it. Genius sheds wisdom like perfume, and ad- vertises us that it flows out of a deeper source than the foregoing silence, that it knows so deeply and speaks so musically because it is itself a mutation of the thing it describes. It is sun and moon and wave and fire in music, as astronomy is thought and harmony in masses of matter. Method of Nature. THE COMPENSATIONS OF CALAMITT. The changes which break up at short in- tervals the prosperity of men are advertise- ments of a nature whose law is growth. Evermore it is the order of nature to grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity quitting its whole system of things, its friends, and home, and laws, and faith, as the shell-fish crawls out of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house. In proportion to the vigour of the individual these revolutions are frequent, until in some happier mind they are incessant, and all worldly relations hang very loosely about him, becoming, as it were, a transparent fluid membrane through which the form is always seen, and not as in most men an in- durated heterogeneous fabric of many dates, and of no settled character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then there can be en- largement, and the man of to-day scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such should be the outward biography of man in time, a putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our lapsed state, rest- ing not advancing, resisting not co-operating RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 461 with the divine expansion, this growth comes by shocks. We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, " Up and onward for ever- more !" We cannot stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the new ; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those monsters who look backwards. And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat Inter as- sumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a house- hold, or style of living, and allows the for- mation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or con- strains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years ; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden flower, with no room for its roots ami too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of its walls and the neglect of its gardener, is made the ban- ian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods of men. Essay on Compensation. TRAVELLING. It is for want of self-culture that the idol of travelling, the idol of Italy, of England, of Egypt, remains for all educated Ameri- cans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable to the imagination, did so not by rambling round creation as a moth round a lamp, but by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place, and that the merry-men of circumstance should follow as they may. The soul is no traveller: the wise man stays at home with the soul, and when his necessities, his du- ties, or any occasion call him from his IIOUM;, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and is not gadding abroad from himself, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance that he goes the mission- ary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet. I have no churlish objection to the cir- cumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art. of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad witli the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they, lie carries ruins to ruins. Travelling is a fool's paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Na- ples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to lie intoxicated with sights and sug- gestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go. But the rage of travelling is itself only a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate ; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean, and follow the past and the distant, as the eyes of a maid follow her mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an applica- tion of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, gran- deur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the pre- cise thing to he done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in 4G2 NA THANIEL HA WTHORNE. which all these will find themselves fitted, und taste and sentiment will be satisfied also. Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's culti- vation ; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous half pos- session. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washing- ton, or Bacon, or Newton ? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he per- forms a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shak- speare. Do that which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment, there is for me an utterance bare and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if I can hear what these patri- archs say, surely I can reply to them in the saine pitch of voice : for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Dwell up there in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt re- produce the Foreworld again. Essay on Self- Reliance. NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, born at Salem, Massachusetts, 1804, gradu- ated at Bowdoin College, 1825, was Ameri- can Consul at Liverpool, 1853-57, died 1864. Works, collective edition, Boston, J. R. Osgood & Co., 21 vols. IGmo : vols. i., ii., Twice-Told Talcs, 1837, Second Series, 1842; iii., iv., Mosses from an Old Mnnse, 1846; v., The Scarlet Letter : vi., The House of the Seven Gablos, 1851 ; vii., True Stories from History and Biography, 1851 ; viii., The Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, 1851 ; ix., The Snow-Image and other Twice-Told Tales, 1852; x., The Blithedale Romance, 1852 ; xi., Tanglewood Tales for Boys and Girls; a Sec- ond Wonder-Book, 1853 ; xii., xiii., The Mar- ble Faun, 1860, 2 vols. ; London, Trans- formation, or, The Romance of Monte Beni, 1860, 3 vols. p. 8vo; xiv., Our Old Home, 1863 ; xv., Septimius Felton, or, The Elixir of Life ; xvi., xvii., American Note-Books, 1868; xviii., xix., English Note-Books, 1870; xx., xxi., French and Italian Note-Books, 1871. Illustrated Library Edition, Boston, J. R. Osgood & Co., 9 vols. 12mo: vol. i., Twice-Told Tales ; ii., Mosses from an Old Manse ; iii., The Scarlet Letter, and The Blithedale Romance: iv., The House of the Seven Gables, and The Snow-Image ; v., The Marble Faun; vi., English Note-Books: vii., American Note-Books ; viii., French and Italian Note-Books ; ix., Our Old Home, and Septimius Felton. There are also a new Il- lustrated Library Edition in 12 vols. 12mo, a collective edition in 23 vols. 16mo, and the Little Classic Edition, in 23 vols. 18mo. Hawthorne edited Journal of an African Cruiser, etc., from the MSS. of Horatio Bridge, U.S.N., New York, 1853, 12mo, and published a Life of Franklin Pierce, Bost., 1852. 16rno. lie contributed many articles to The Token and to The Democratic Review. "The characteristics of Hawthorne which first arrest the attention nre imagination and reflection : and these are exhibited in remarkable power and activity in tales and essays of which the style is distinguished for great simplicity, purity, and tran- quillity. . . . His style is studded with the most poetical imagery, and marked in every part with the happiest graces of expression, while it is calm, chaste, and flowing, and transparent as water." RUFUS W. GRISWOLD, D.D. : Prose Writers of Amer- ica, 4th edit., Phila., 1852. " Another characteristic of this writer is the ex- ceeding beauty of his style. It is clear as running waters are. Indeed, he uses words merely as step- ping-stones, upon which, with a free and you'tht'ul bound, his spirit crosses and re-crosses the bright and rushing stream of thought." II. W. LONGFEL- LOW: N. Amer. Reriew (July, 1837, 63). See also Atlantic Monthly, May, 1860 (by E. P. Whipple) ; Tnckernian's Mental 1'ortraits ; Homes of Americnn Author* (sketch by G. W. Curtis); and especially Yeftterflayv with A iitliors, an excellent book by our friend James T. Fields, Boston, 1872, 12mo '(who induced Hawthorne to give to the world The Scarlet Letter), and A Study of Hawthorne, by G. P. La- throp, Boston, ISmo. A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. SCENE. The corner of two principal streets. The TOWN PUMP talking through its nose. Noon by the north clock I Noon by the east! High noon, too, by these hot sun- beams, which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almost make the water bubble and smoke in the trough under my 7ioso. Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it! And, among all the town offi- cers, chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains, for a single year, the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed in perpetuity, upon the Town Pump? The title of " Town Treasurer" is rightfully NA THANIEL HA WTHORNE. 463 mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The Overseers of the Poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper, without expense to him that pays taxes. I am at the head of the Fire Department, and one of the Physicians to the Board of Health. As a keeper of the peace all water-drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the Town Clerk, by promulgating public notices, when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the mu- nicipality, and exhibit, moreover, an ad- mirable pattern to my brother officers, by the cool, steady, upright, downright, and impartial discharge of my business, and the constancy with which I stand to my post. Summer or winter, nobody seeks me in vain ; for, all day long, I am seen at the busiest corner, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike ; and at night I hold a lantern over my head, both to show where I am, and keep people out of the gutters. At this sultry noontide I am cup-bearer to the parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist. Like a dram-seller on the mall, at muster-day, I cry aloud to all and sundry, in my plain- est accents, and at the very tiptop of my voice : Here it is, gentlemen ! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up, gentlemen, walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff! Here is the unadulterated ale of Father Adam, better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, strong beer, or wine of any price ; here it is by the hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to pay ! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help your- selves! It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they come. A hot day, gentlemen ! Quaff, and away again, so as to keep yourselves in a nice, cool sweat. You, my friend, will need another cup-full to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as it is on your cow-hide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score of miles to-day; and, like a wise man, have passed by the ttiverns, and stopped at the running brooks and well-curbs. Otherwise, betwixt heat without and fire within, you would have been burnt to a cinder, or melted down to nothing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink, and make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid to quench the fiery fever of last night's potations, which he drained from no cup of mine. Welcome, most rubicund sir ! You and I have been great strangers, hitherto ; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closer intimacy, till the fumes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man ! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite to steam, in the miniature tophet which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram-shop, spend the price of your children's food for a swig half so delicious? Now, for the first time of these ten years, you know the flavour of cold water. Good-by ; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at the old stand. Who next? Oh, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it. pure as the cur- rent of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the paving-stones that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What! he limps by without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine- cellars. Well, well, sir, no harm done, I hope ! Go, draw the cork, tip the decanter ; but, when your great toe shall set you a-roar- ing, it will be no affair of mine. If gentle- men love the pleasant titillation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs, and laps eagerly out of the trough. See, how lightly he capers away again ! Jowler, did your worship ever have the gout? Are you all satisfied? Then wipe your mouths, my good friends ; and, while my spout has a moment's leisure, I will delight the town with a few historical reminiscences. In far antiquity, beneath a darksome shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strown earth in the very spot where you now behold me, on the sunny pavement. The water was as bright and clear, and deemed as precious, as liquid dia- monds. The Indian sagamores drank of it, from time immemorial, till the fatal deluge of the fire-water burst upon the red men, and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his followers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dipping their long beards in the spring. The richest goblet then was of birch bark. Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here, out of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet 464 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. his palm, and laid it on the hrow of the first town-horn child. For many years it was the watering-place, and, us it were, the wash-bowl, of the vicinity, whither all de- cent folks resorted to purify their visages, and gaze at them afterwards, at least the pretty maidens did, in the mirror which it made. On Sabbath-days, whenever a bahe was to be baptized, the sexton filled his basin here, and placed it on the communion- table of the humble meeting-house which partly covered the site of yonder stately brick one. Thus one generation after an- other was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mortal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally, the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides, and cart-loads of gravel flung from its source, whence oozed a turbid stream, forming a mud-puddle at the corner of two streets. In the hot months, when its re- freshment was most needed, the dust flew in clouds over the forgotten birth-place of the waters, now their grave. But in the course of time a Town Pump was sunk into the source of the ancient spring ; and when the first decayed, another took its place, and then another, and still another, till here, stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my iron goblet. Drink and be re- freshed ! The water is pure and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red sagamore, beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow falls but from the brick buildings. And be it the moral of my story that, as this wasted and long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues of cold water, too little valued since your fathers' days, be recognized by all. Your pardon, good people ! I must inter- rupt my stream of eloquence, and spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere along that way. No part of my business is pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look ! how rapidly they lower the water- mark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford to breathe it in, with sighs of cairn enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking-vessels. An ox is your true toper. But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are impatient for the remainder of my dis- course. Impute it, I beseech you, to no de- fect of modesty if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own multifarious merits. It is altogether for your good. The better you think of me the better men and women will you find yourselves. I shall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing days; though, on that account alone, I might cafl myself the household god of a hundred families. Far be it from me also, to hint, my respectable friends, at the show of dirty faces which you would present, without my pains to keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight bolls make you tremble for your combustible town, you have fled to the Town Pump, and found me always at my post, firm amid the confusion, and ready to drain my vital cur- rent in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma, as the physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all the nauseous lore which has found men sick or left them so, since the days of Hippoc- rates. Let us take a broader view of iny beneficial influence on mankind. No; these are trifles compared with the merits which wise men concede to me if not in my single self, yet as the representa- tive of a class of being the grand reformer of the age. From my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise the cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water ! The'Towx PUMP and the Cow ! Such is the glorious copartnership that shall tear down the distilleries and brew- houses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider-presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and finally monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consumma- tion ! Then Poverty shall pass away from the land, finding no hovel so wretched where her squalid form may shelter itself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart, and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now, the phrensy of hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son, and rekindled, in every genera- tion, by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that in ward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war the drunkenness of nations per- haps will cease. At least, there will be no war of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy, a calm bliss of temperate affections, shall pass hand in hand through life, and lie down, not reluc- tantly at its protracted close. To them the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of the drunkard. Their EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON. 465 dead faces shall express what their spirits were, and are to be, by a lingering smile of memory and hope. Ahem ! Dry work, this speechifying ; es- pecially to an unpractised orator. I never conceived till now what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake. Hereafter, they shall have the business to themselves. Do, some kind Christian, pump a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, Sir! My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated by my instrumen- tality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor casks into one great pile, and make a bonfire in honour of the Town Pump. And when I shall have decayed, like my predecessors, then, if you revere my mem- ory, let a marble fountain, richly sculptured, take my place upon the spot. Such monu- ments should be erected everywhere, and inscribed with the names of the distin- guished champions of my cause. Now lis- ten ; for something very important is to come next. There are two or three honest friends of mine and true friends I know they are who, nevertheless, by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf, do put me in fearful hazard of a broken nose, or even a total overthrow upon the pavement, and the loss of the treas- ure which I guard. I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get tipsy with zeal for tem- perance, and take up the honourable cause of the Town Pump in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy bottle? Or can the excellent qualities of cold water be no other- wise exemplified than by plunging, slap- dash, into hot water, and wofully scalding yourselves and other people? Trust me, they may. In the moral warfare which you are to wage, and, indeed, in the whole con- duct of your lives, you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have never permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbulent and manifold disquietudes of the world around me, to reach that deep, calm well of purity, which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul, it is to cool earth's fever, or cleanse its stains. One o'clock! Nay, then, if the dinner- bell begins to speak, I may as well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband, while drawing her water, as Rachel did of old. Hold out your vessel, my dear ! There it is, full to the brim : so now run home, peeping at your sweet image in the pitcher, as you go ; and forget not, in a glass of my own liquor, to drink " SUCCESS to the TOWN PUMP!" Ticice-Told Tales. 30 EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON, LORD LYTTON, was born at Heydon Hall, Norfolk, Eng- land, 1805, graduated at Trinity Hall, Cam- bridge, 1826, made a baronet, 1838, Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1856, Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1858, raised to the peeraire as Baron Lytton, 1866, died 1873. Novels and Romances : London, Saunders & Otley, 1840-45, 14 vols. p. 8vo: Chapman & Hall, 1848-53. 20 vols. cr. 8vo ; Edin- burgh, 1859-60, 43 vols. 12mo; author's last revised library edition, London, 48 vols. cr. 8vo : contents : Rienzi, Paul Clifford, Pelharn, Eugene Aram, Last of the Barons, Last Days of Pompeii, Godolphin, Pilgrims of the Rhine, Night and Morning, Ernest Mai travers, Alice, Disowned, Devereux, Za- noni, Leila, Calderon the Courtier, Harold, the Last of the Saxon Kings, Lucretia, The Caxtons, My Novel, What will He do with It? Strange Story, Kenelm Chillingly, The Parisians, The Coming Race; new edition, Lond., 27 vols. cr. 8vo : contents: same as the 48 vols. edition, excepting Calderon the Courtier, which is omitted. There is an il- lustrated edition, Avith 16 engravings, of Leila and Calderon, Lond., 1838, r. 8vo, and another of The Pilgrims of the Rhine, with a portrait and 27 engravings, Lond., 1866, cr. 8vo. Miscellaneous Prose Works, Lond., 1868, 3 vols. 8vo ; England and the English, Lond., 1833, 2 vols. 12mo; The Student, Lond., 1835, 2 vols. 8vo (papers from The New Monthly Magazine) ; Athens, its Rise and Fall, Lond., 1837, 2 vols. 8vo ; The Lost Tales of Miletus, Lond., 1867, p. 8vo : Speeches, with Memoir by his Son, Lord Robert Lytton, Lond., 1874 ; Pausanius the Spartan, edited with a Preface by Lord Robert Lytton, Lond., 1876, p. 8vo. Poetical and Dramatic Works, Lond., 1852-53-54, 5 vols. p. 8vo: contents: vol. i., Beacon; Constance, or, The Portrait; Eva ; Fairy Bride : Lay of the Minstrel's Heart; Milton; Narrative Lyrics, or, The Parcse ; New Tirnon. Vol. ii., King Ar- thur. Vol. iii., King Arthur; Corn Flow- ers ; Earlier Poems. Vol. iv., Duchess de la Valliere; Lady of Lyons; Richelieu. Vol. v., Money ; Not so Bad as We Seem. Poetical Works, complete, Lond., 1860, cr. 8vo, new edit., 1865. Dramatic Works, complete, 1863, 12mo ; The Rightful Heir, a Play, 1868 ; Walpole, 1869. Other publications : Ismael, an Oriental Tale, 1820, 12mo, was published when he was fifteen. In 1831 he succeeded Campbell as editor 466 EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON. of The New Monthly Magazine, and held this post until 1833. " Edward Lytton Bulwer has vigorous and va- ried powers: in all that he has touched on he has shown great mastery; his sense of the noble, the beautiful, or the ludicrous, is strong; he can move at will into the solemn or the sarcastic ; he is equally excellent in describing a court or a cot- tage, and is familiar with gold spurs and with clouted shoon. . . . Bulwer is devoted to the cause of literature: all his speeches allude to it; his motions in Parliament refer to it; and in private as well as public life he is its warm and eloquent advocate." ALLAN CUNNINGHAM : Bloij.nnd Urit. Hist, of the Lit. of the Last Fifty Years, 1833. See also liayite's Essays on Biography and Criti- cism ; Essays, by George Brimley ; Essays on Fic- tion, by N. W, Senior; Essays, by \V. C. Roscoe; Sir A. Alison's Essays, 1850, iii. 113, and his His- tory of Europe, 1815-1852, chap. v. ; Edin. Rev., July, 1837; Eraser's Man., Jan. 1850; Blackw. May., Feb. 1855, and March, 1873; (Lond.) Qitar. Kev., Jan. 1 8(55. Selections from the Correspondence of the Late Macvey Napier, Esq., Lond., 1879, 8vo. THE CANDID MAN. One bright laughing day I threw down my book an hour sooner than usual, and sallied out with a lightness of foot and ex- hilaration of spirit to which I had long been a stranger. I had just sprung over a stile that led into one of those green shady lanes which make us feel that the old poets who loved and lived for nature were right in calling our island " the merry Englfind," when I was startled by a short, quick bark on one side of the hedge. I turned sharply round ; and, seated upon the sward was a man, apparently of the pedlar profession ; a great deal box was lying open before him : a few articles of linen and female dress were scattered round, and the man himself ap- peared earnestly occupied in examining the deeper recesses of his itinerant warehouse. A small black terrier flew towards me with no friendly growl. "Down !" said I: "All strangers are not foes, though the English generally think so." The man hastily looked up ; perhaps he was struck with the quaintness of my re- monstrance to his canine companion; for, touching his hat civilly, he said, " The dog, sir, is very quiet; he only means to give me the alarm by giving it to you; for dogs seem to have no despicable insight into human nature, and know well that the best of us may be taken by surprise." '' You are a moralist," said I, not a little astonished in my turn by such an address from such a person. " I could not have ex- pected to stumble upon a philosopher so easily. Have you any wares in your box likely to suit me? If so, I should like to purchase of so moralising a vender." "No, sir," said the seeming pedlar, smiling, and yet at the same time hurrying his goods into his box, and carefully turning the key "No, sir; I am only a bearer of other men's goods ; my morals are all that I can call my own, and those I will sell you at your own price." " You are candid, my friend," said I, " and your frankness, alone, would be ines- timable in this age of deceit, and country of hypocrisy." " Ah, sir !" said my new acquaintance, " I see already that you are one of those per- sons who look to the dark side of things : for my part, I think the present age the best that ever existed, and our country the most virtuous in Europe." " I congratulate you, Mr. Optimist, on your opinions," quoth I ; " but your ob- servation leads me to suppose that you are both an historian and a traveller : am 1 right?" " Why," answered the box-bearer, " I have dabbled a little in books, and wandered not a little among men. I am just returned from Germany, and am now going to my friends in London. I am charged with this box of goods : God send me the luck to de- liver it safe." "Amen," said I, "and with that prayer and this trifle I wish you a good morn- ing." " Thank you a thousand times, sir, for both," replied the man, "but do add to your favours by informing me of the right road to the town of " " I am going in that direction myself: if you choose to accompany me part of the way I can insure you not missing the rest." " Your honour is too good !" returned he of the box, rising, and slinging his fardel across him, " it is but seldom that a gentle- man of your rank will condescend to walk three paces with one of mine. You smile, sir, perhaps you think I should not class myself among gentlemen ; and yet I have as good a right to the name as most of the set. I belong to no trade, I follow no calling: I rove where I list, and rest where I please : in short, I know no occupation but my indolence, and no law but my will. Now, sir, may I not call myself a gentle- man ?" " Of a surety !" quoth I. " You seem to me to hold a middle rank between a half- pay captain and the king of the gipsies." " You have it, sir," rejoined my companion, with a slight laugh. He was now by my side, and, as we walked on, I had leisure more minutely to examine him. lie was a middle-sized and rather athletic man ; appar- ently about the age of thirty-eight. He was attired in a dark blue frock coat, which was EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON. 467 neither shabby nor new, but ill-made, and much too large and long for its present pos- sessor ; beneath this was a faded velvet waist- coat, that had formerly, like the Persian ambassador's tunic, " blushed with crimson, and blazed with gold ;" but which might now have been advantageously exchanged in Monmouth Street for the lawful sum of two shillings and ninepence ; under this was an inner vest of the Cashmere shawl pattern, which seemed much too new for the rest of the dress. Though his shirt was of a very unwashed hue, I remarked with some sus- picion, that it was of a very respectable fine- ness ; and a pin, which might be paste, or could be diamond, peeped below a tattered and dingy black kid stock, like a gipsy's eye between her hair. His trousers were of a light gray, and the justice of Providence, or of the tailor, avenged itself upon them for the prodigal length bestowed upon their ill-assorted com- panion the coat ; for they were much too tight for the muscular limbs they concealed, and, rising far above the ankle, exhibited the whole of a thick Wellington boot, which was the very picture of Italy upon the map. The face of the man was commonplace and ordinary : one sees a hundred such every day in Fleet Street, or on the 'Change: the feat- ures were small, irregular, and somewhat flat; yet, when you looked twice upon the countenance, there was something marked and singular in the expression, which fully atoned for the commonness of the features. The right eye turned away from the left in that watchful squint which seems con- structed on the same considerate plan as those Irish guns made for shooting round a corner ; his eyebrows were large and shaggy, and greatly resembled bramble bushes, in Avhich his fox-like eyes had taken refuge. Hound these vulpine retreats was a laby- rinthean maze of those wrinkles vulgarly called crows' feet: deep, intricate, and in- tersected, they seemed for all the world like the web of a Chancery suit. Singularly enough, the rest of the countenance was perfectly smooth, and unindented ; even the lines from the nostril to the corners of the mouth, usually so deeply traced in men of his age, were scarcely more apparent than in a boy of eighteen. His smile was frank, his voice clear and hearty, his address open, and much supe- rior to his apparent rank of life, claiming somewhat of equality, yet conceding a great deal of respect ; but, notwithstanding all these certainly favourable points, there was a sly and cunning expression in his perverse and vigilant eye and all the wrinkled de- mesnes in its vicinity, that made me distrust even while I liked my companion : perhaps, indeed, he was too frank, too familiar, too de- gage to be quite natural. Your honest men soon buy reserve by experience, llogues are communicative, because confidence and open- ness cost them nothing. To finish the de- scription of my new acquaintance, I should observe that there was something in his countenance which struck me as not wholly unfamiliar ; it was one of those which we have not, in all human probability, seen be- fore, and yet which ( perl laps from their very commonness) we imagine we have encoun- tered a hundred times. We walked on briskly, notwithstanding the warmth of the day ; in fact, the air was so pure, the grass so green, the laughing noonday so full of the hum, the motion, and the life of creation, that the feeling produced was rather that of freshness and invigora- tion than of languor and heat. li We have a beautiful country, sir," said my hero of the box. " It is like walking through a garden, after the more sterile and sullen features of the continent. A pure mind, sir, loves the country ; for my part, I am always disposed to burst out in thanks- giving to Providence when I behold its works, and, like the valleys in the psalm, I am ready to laugh and sing." '' An enthusiast," said I, " as wellas a phi- losopher! perhaps (and I believed it likely) I have the honour of addressing a poet also." "Why, sir," replied the man, "I have made verses in my life ; in short, there is little I have not done, for I was always a lover of variety ; but, perhaps, your honour will let me return the suspicion. Are you not a favourite of the muse?" " I cannot say that I am," said I. " I value myself only on my common sense, the very antipodes to genius, you know, ac- cording to the orthodox belief." ' Common sense !" repeated my com- panion, with a singular and meaning smile, and a twinkle with his left eye. " Common sense ! Ah, that is not my forte, sir. You, I dare say, are one of those gentlemen whom it is very difficult to take in, either passively or actively, by appearance, or in act? For my part, I have been a dupe all my life, a child might cheat me! I am the most un- suspicious person in the world." " Too candid by half," thought I. " This man is certainly a rascal; but what is that to me ? I shall never see him again ;" and true to my love of never losing an oppor- tunity of ascertaining individual character, I observed that I thought such an iicquaint- ance very valuable, especially if he were in trade ; it was n pity, therefore, for my sake, that my companion had informed me that he followed no calling. 468 EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON. \ "Why, sir,' 1 said he, "I am occasionally in employment; my nominal profession is that of a broker. I buy shawls and hand- kerchiefs of poor countesses, and retail them to rich plebeians. I fit up new married couples with linen at a more moderate rate than the shops, and procure the bridegroom his present of jewels at forty per cent, less than the jewellers ; nay, I am as friendly to an intrigue as a marriage ; and when I can- not sell my jewels, I will my good offices. A gentleman so handsome as your honour may have an affair upon your hands; if so, you may rely upon my secrecy and zeal. In short, I am an innocent good-natured fellow, who does harm to no one or nothing, and good to every one for something." " I admire your code," quoth I, " and, whenever I want a mediator between Venus and myself, will employ you. Have you always followed your present idle profession, or were you brought up to any other?" "I was intended for a silversmith," an- swered my friend : " but Providence willed it otherwise : they taught me from childhood to repeat the Lord's prayer: Heaven heard me, and delivered me from temptation, there is, indeed, something terribly seducing in the face of a silver spoon." "Well," said I, "you are the honestest knave that ever I met, and one would trust you with one's purse for the ingenuousness with which you own you would steal it. Pray, think you, is it probable that 1 have ever had the happiness of meeting you before? I cannot help fancying so, as yet I have never been in the watch-house or the Old Bailey, my reason tells me that I must be mistaken." " Not at all, sir," returned my worthy : " I remember you well, for I never saw a face like yours that I did not remember. I had the honour of sipping some British liquors in the same room with yourself one evening : you were then in company with my friend Mr. Gordon." " Ha !" said I, " I thank you for the hint. I now remember well, by the same token that he told me you were the most ingenious gentleman in England, and that you had a happy propensity of mistaking other people's possessions for your own : I congratulate my- self upon so desirable an acquaintance." My friend smiled with his usual bland- ness, and made me a low bow of acknowl- edgment before he resumed : " No doubt, sir, Mr. Gordon informed you right. I flat- ter myself few gentlemen understand better than myself the art of appropriation, though I say it who should not say it. I deserve the reputation I have acquired, sir; I have always had ill-fortune to struggle against, and always have remedied it by two virtues, perseverance and ingenuity. To give you an idea of my ill-fortune, know that I have been taken up twenty-three times on sus- picion ; of my perseverance, know that twenty-three times I have been taken justly ; and of my ingenuity, know that I have been twenty-three times let off, because there was not a tittle of legal evidence against me!" " I venerate your talents, Mr. Jonson," I replied, " if by the name of Jonson it pleaseth you to be called, although, like the heathen deities, I presume that you have many titles, whereof some are more grateful to your ears than others." " Nay," answered the man of two virtues, " I am never ashamed of my name ; indeed, I have never done anything to disgrace me. I have never indulged in low company, nor profligate debauchery : whatever I have ex- ecuted by way of profession has been done in a superior and artist-like manner; not in the rude, bungling fashion of other ad- venturers. Moreover, I have always had a taste for polite literature, and went once as an apprentice to a publishing bookseller, for the sole purpose of reading the new works before they came out. In fine, I have never neglected any opportunity of improving my mind ; and the worst that can be said against me is, that I have remembered my catechism, and taken all possible pains to learn and labour truly to get my living, and to do my duty in that state of life to which it has pleased Providence to call me!" " 1 have often heard," answered I, " that there is honour among thieves ; I nm happy to learn from you that there is also religion : your baptismal sponsors must be proud of so diligent a godson." " They ought to be, sir," replied Mr. Jon- son, " for I gave them the first specimens of my address: the story is long, lint, if you ever give me an opportunity, I will re- late it." " Thank you," said I : " meanwhile I must wish you good morning: your way now lies to the right. I return you my best thanks for your condescension in accom- panying so undistinguished an individual as myself." "Oh, never mention it, your honour," rejoined Mr. Jonson. " I am always too happy to walk with a gentleman of your com- mon sense. Farewell, sir; may we meet again !" So saying, Mr. Jonson struck into his new road, and we parted. I went home, musing on my adventure, and delighted with my adventurer. When I was about three paces from the door of my home, I was accosted in a most pitiful tone by a poor old beggar, apparently in the last extreme of misery and disease. Notwithstanding my political economy, I EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER LYTTON. 4G9 was moved into alms-giving by a spectacle so wretched. I put my hand into my pocket, my purse was gone; and on searching the other, lo, my handkerchief, my pocket-book. and a gold locket which had l>elonge.d to Madame D'Anville, had vanished too. One does not keep company with men of two virtues, and receive compliments upon one's common sense for nothing! The beg- gar still continued to importune me. ''Give him some food and half-a-crown," said I to my landlady. Two hours after- wards she came up to me, " sir ! my silver tea-pot that villain the beggar .'" A light flashed upon me, " Ah, Mr. Job Jonson ! Mr. Job Jonson !" cried I, in an in- describable rage ; '' out of my sight, woman ! out of my sight!" I stopped short; my speech failed me. Never tell me that shame is the companion of guilt, the sinful knave is never so ashamed of himself as is the innocent fool who suffers by him. I'elham, or. The Adventures of a Gentleman. RlCCABOCCA ON REVOLUTION. Out of the Tinker's bag Leonard Fail-field had drawn a translation of Condorcet's ' Progress of Man," and another of Rous- seau's " Social Contract." AVorks so eloquent had induced him to select from the tracts in the Tinker's miscellany those which abounded most in professions of philanthropy, and predictions of some coming Golden Age, to which old Saturn's was a joke, tracts so mild and mother-like in their language, that it required a much more practical experi- ence than Lenny's to perceive that you would have to pass a river of blood before you had the slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery banks on which they invited you to repose, tracts which rouged poor Christianity on the cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head, and set her to dancing a pas de zephyr in the pas- toral ballet in which St. Simon pipes to the flock he shears ; or having first laid it down as a preliminary axiom that " The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve," substituted in place thereof Monsieur Fou- rier's symmetrical phalanstere, or Mr. Owen's architectural parallelogram. It was with some such tract that Lenny was seasoning his crusts and his radishes, when Ricca- bocca, bending his long dark face over the student's shoulder, said abruptly. "Diavolo, my friend ! what on earth have you got there ? Just let me look at it. will you?" Leonard rose respectfully, and coloured deeply as he surrendered the tract to Ricca- bocca. The wise man read the first page atten- tively, the second more cursorily, and ohly ran his eye over the rest. He had gone through too vast a range of problems polit- ical, not to have passed over that venerable Pans Asinorum of Socialism, on which Fou- riers and St. Simons sit straddling, and cry aloud that they have arrived at the last boundary of knowledge! " All this is as old as the hills." quoth Riccabocca, irreverently; "but the hills stand still, and this there it goes !" and the sage pointed to a cloud emitted from his page. " Did you ever read Sir David Brew- ster on Optical Delusions? No! Well, I'll lend it to you. You will find therein a story of a lady who always saw a black cat on her hearth-rug. The black cat existed only in her fancy, but the hallucination was natural and reasonable eh what do you think ?" " Why, sir," said Leonard, not catching the Italian's meaning, " I don't exactly see that it was natural and reasonable." " Foolish boy, yes ! because black cats are things possible and known. But who ever saw upon earth a community of men such as sit on the hearth-rugs of Messrs. Owen and Fourier? If the lady's hallucination was not reasonable, what is his who believes in such visions as these?" Leonard bit his lips. " My dear boy," cried Riccabocca kindly, " the only thing sure and tangible to which these writers would lead you, lies at the first step, and that is what is commonly called a Revolution. Now, I know what that is. I have gone, not indeed through a Revolution, but an attempt at one." Leonard raised his eyes towards his mas- ter with a look of profound respect, and great curiosity. " Yes," added Riccabocca, and the face on which the boy gazed exchanged its usual gro- tesque and sardonic expression for one ani- mated, noble, and heroic, " Yes, not a revo- lution for chimeras, but for that cause which the coldest allow to be good, and which, when successful, all time approves as divine, the redemption of our native soil from the rule of the foreigner ! I have shared in such an attempt. And," continued the Italian mournfully, " recalling now all the evil pas- sions it arouses, all the ties it dissolves, all the blood that it commands to flow, all the health- ful industry it arrests, all the madmen that it arms, all the victims that it dupes, I ques- tion whether one man really honest, pure, and humane, who has once gone through such an ordeal, would ever hazard it again, 470 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. unless he was assured that the victory was certain, ay, and the object for which he fights not to be wrested from his hands amidst the uproar of the elements that the battle has released." The Italian paused, shaded his brow with his hand, and remained long silent. Then, gradually resuming his ordinary tone, he continued, " Revolutions that have no definite objects made clear by the positive experience of his- tory ; revolutions, in a word, that aim less at substituting one law or one dynasty for another, than at changing the whole scheme of society, have been little attempted by real statesmen. Even Lycurgus is proved to be a myth who never existed. Such organic changes are but in the day-dreams of philoso- phers who lived apart from the actual world, and whose opinions (though generally they were very benevolent good sort of men, and wrote in an elegant poetical style) one would no more take on a plain matter of life, than one would look upon Virgil's ' Ec- logues' as a faithful picture of the ordinary pains and pleasures of the peasants who tend our sheep. Read them as you would read poets, and they are delightful. But attempt to shape the world according to the poetry, and fit yourself for a madhouse. The farther off the age is from the realization of such projects, the more these poor philosophers have indulged them. Thus, it was amidst the saddest corruption of court manners that it became the fashion in Paris to sit for one's picture with a crook in one's hand, as Alexis or Daphne. Just as liberty was fast dying out of Greece, and the successors of Alexan- der were founding their monarchies, and Rome was growing up to crush in its iron grasp all states save its own, Plato with- draws his eyes from the world, to open them in his dreamy Atlantis. Just in the grim- mest period of English history, with the axe hanging over his head. Sir Thomas More gives you his Utopia. Just when the world is to be the theatre of a new Sesostris, the sages of France tell you that the age is too enlightened for war, that man is henceforth to be governed by pure reason and live in a paradise. Very pretty reading all this to a man like me, Lenny, who can admire and smile at it. But to you, to the man who has to work for his living, to the man who thinks it would be so much more pleasant to live at his ease in a phalanstere than to work eight or ten hours a day ; to the man of talent, and action, and industry, whose future is invested in that tranquillity and order of a state in which talent and action, and industry are a certain capital; why, Messrs. Coutts, the great bankers, had bet- ter encourage a theory to upset the system of banking ! Whatever disturbs society, yea, even by a causeless panic, much more by an actual struggle, falls first upon the market of labour, and thence affects prejudicially every department of intelligence. In such times the arts are arrested, literature is neg- lected, people are too busy to read anything save appeals to their passions. And capital, shaken in its sense of security, no longer ventures boldly through the land, calling forth all the energies of toil and enterprise, and extending to every workman his reward. Now, Lenny, take this piece of advice. You are young, clever, and aspiring: men rarely succeed in changing the world ; but a man seldom fails of success if he lets the world alone, and resolves to make the best of it. You are in the midst of the great crisis of your life : it is the struggle between the new desires knowledge excites, and that sense of poverty which those desires convert either into hope and emulation, or into envy and despair. I grant that it is an up-hill work that lies before you ; but don't you think it is always easier to climb a mountain than it is to level it? These books call on you to level the mountain ; and that mountain is the property of other people, subdivided amongst a great many proprietors, and pro- tected by law. At the first stroke of the pickaxe it is ten to one but what you are taken up for a trespass. But the path up the mountain is a right of way uncontested. You may be safe at the summit before (even if the owners are fools enough to let you) you could have levelled a yard. Cospctto .'" quoth the Doctor, "it is more than two thou- sand years ago since poor Plato began to level it, and the mountain is as high as ever !" Thus saying, Riccabocca came to the end of his pipe, and stalking thoughtfully away, he left Leonard Fail-field trying to extract light from the smoke. My Novel ; or, Varieties in English Life, Vol. i., Book iv., Chap. 8. born at Portland, Maine, 1807, graduated at Bowdoin College, 1825, was soon afterwards appointed Professor of Modern Languages and Literature in the same, and, after spend- ing three years and a half in Europe, as- sumed the duties of his office ; in 1835 suc- ceeded George Ticknor in the professorship of Modern Languages and Belles-Lettres, and after a second visit to Europe, 1835 to 1838, in the latter year entered upon the labours connected with this chair, which he held until 1854, when he was succeeded by HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 471 James Russell Lowell. Here he is to be con- sidered only as a prose writer : for notices and specimens of his poems we refer to Alli- bone's Every-Day Book of Poetry and Alli- bone's Critical Dictionary of English Litera- ture and British and American Authors. Outre-Mer: a Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, New York, 1835, 2 vo'ls., 4th edit., 1850, 16mo ; Hyperion, a Ho in an ce, New York, 1839, 2 vols. 12mo, 13th edit., Bost., 1853, 12ino ; Kavanagh, a Tale, Bost., 1849, 16mo. Prose Works, Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1857, 2 vols. 32mo : vol. i., Outre-Mer ; Drift- Wood : a Collection of Essays ; vol. ii., Hy- perion ; Kavanagh. To the North American Review Longfel- low has contributed the following articles: Origin and Progress of the French Lan- guage, vol. 32 : 227 ; Defence of Poetry, 34 : 56 ; History of the Italian Language and Dialects, 35: 283; Spanish Language and Literature, 36: 316; Old English Romances, 37: 374; The Great Metropolis, 44 : 461; Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, 49 : 59 ; Tegner's Frithiofs Saga, 45: 149; Anglo- Saxon Literature, 47 : 90 ; The French Lan- guage in England, 51: 285; Clark's Liter- ary Remains, 59 : 239. " He [Dom Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil] made some remarks on Irving, Cooper, and Prescott, showing an intimate acquaintance with each. His eye falling upon the name of Longfellow, he asked me, in great haste and eagerness, 'Monsieur Fletcher, avez vouz les poe'mes de M. Longfellow?' It was the first time that I ever saw. in Dom Pedro II. an enthusiasm which in its earnestness and simplicity resembled the warmth of childhood when about to possess itcelf of some long-cherished object. I replied, 'I believe not, your Mnjesty.' 'Oh,' said he, ' I am exceedingly sorry, for I have sought in every book-store of Rio de Janeiro for Longfellow, and I cannot find him. I have a num- ber of beautiful morceaiix from him ; but I wish the whole work. I admire him so much.' Mr. Fletcher afterwards presented him with the Poets and Poetry of America, informing the emperor that it con- tained some choice selections from the American poet whom he so much admired, and whom he called ' My Longfellow.' Afterward, at the palace of S. Christopher, when Mr. F. took leave of the emperor, the latter said to him, ' When you return to your country have the kindness to say to Mr. Longfellow how much pleasure he has given me, and be pleased to tell him combien je I'eatime, cnm- bienje I'uiine.' " Brazil and the Brazilian*, in His- torical and Descriptive Sketches, by Rev. D. P. Kidder and Rer. J. C. Fletcher, Phila., 1857, 8vo. RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN. There is something patriarchal still linger- ing about rural life in Sweden, which renders it a fit theme for song. Almost primeval simplicity reigns over that northern land. almost primeval solitude and stillness. You pass out from the gate of the city, and as if by magic, the scene changes to a wild wood- land landscape. Around you are forests of fir. Overhead hang the long fan-like branches, trailing with moss, and heavy with red and blue cones. Underfoot is a carpet of yellow leaves; and the air is warm and balmy. On a wooden bridge you cross a little silver stream ; and anon come forth into a pleaScint and sunny land of farms. Wooden fences divide the adjoining fields. Across the road are gates, which are opened by troops of children. The peasants take off their hats as you pass ; you sneeze, and they cry, " God bless you !" The houses in the villages and smaller towns are all built of hewn timber, and for the most part painted red. The floors of the taverns are strewed with the fragrant tips of fir-boughs. In many villages there are no taverns, and the peasants take turns in receiving travel- lers. The thrifty housewife shows you into the best chamber, the walls of which are hung round with rude pictures from the Bible; and brings you her heavy silver spoons an heirloom to dip the curdled milk from the pan. You have oaten cakes baked some months before, or bread with aniseseed and coriander in it, or perhaps a little pine bark. Meanwhile the sturdy husband has brought his horses from the plough, and harnessed them to your carriage. Solitary travellers come and go in uncouth one-horse chaises. Most of them have pipes in their mouths, and hanging around their necks in front a leather wallet, in which they carry tobacco, and the great bank-notes of the country, as large as your two hands. You meet also groups of Dalekarlian peasant women, trav- elling homeward, or townward in pursuit of work. They walk barefoot, carrying in their hands their shoes, which have high heels under the hollow of the foot, and soles of birch bark. Frequent, too, are the village churches standing by the road-sides, esich in its own little garden of Gethsemane. In the parish register great events are doubtless recorded. Some old king was christened or buried in that church ; and a little sexton, with a rusty key, shows you the baptismal font or the coffin. In the church-yard are a few flowers, and much green grass ; and daily the shadow of the church spire, with its long tapering finger, counts the tombs, representing a dial- plate of human life, on which the hours and minutes are the graves of men. The stones are flat, and large, and low, and perhaps sunken, like the roofs of old houses. On some are armorial bearings; on others only the initials of the poor tenants, with a date, as on the roofs of Dutch cottages. They all sleep with their heads to the westward. Each held a lighted taper in his hand when 47: HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. he died ; and in his coffin were placed his little heart-treasures, and a piece of money for his last journey. Babes that came life- less into the world were carried in the arms of gray-haired old men to the only cradle they ever slept in ; and in the shroud of the dead mother were laid the little garments of the child that lived and died in her bosom. And over this scene the village pastor looks from the window in the stillness of midnight, and says in his heart, " How quietly they rest, all the departed !" Near the church-yard gate stands a poor- box, fastened to a post by iron bands, and secured by a padlock, with a sloping wooden roof to keep off the rain. If it be Sunday, the peasants sit on the church steps and con their psalm-books. Others are coming down the road with their beloved pastor, who talks to them of holy things from beneath his broad-brimmed hat. He speaks of fields and harvests, and of the parable of the sower that went forth to sow. lie leads them to the Good Shepherd, and to the pleasant pas- tures of the Spirit-land. He is their patri- arch, and like Melchizedek, both priest and king, though he has no other throne than the church pulpit. The women carry psalm- books in their hands, wrapped in silk hand- kerchiefs, and listen devoutly to the good man's words ; but the young men, like Gal- lic, care for none of these things. They are busy counting the plaits in the kirtlesof the peasant girls, their number being an indica- tion of the wearer's wealth. It may end in a wedding. I will endeavour to describe a village wedding in Sweden. It shall be in summer- time, that there may be flowers, and in a northern province, that the bride may be fair. The early song of the lark and chanti- cleer are mingling in the clear morning air, and the sun, the heavenly bridegroom with golden locks, arises in the east, just as our earthly bridegroom, with yellow hair, arises in the south. In the yard there is a sound of voices and trampling of hoofs, and horses are led forth and saddled. The steed that is to bear the bridegroom has a bunch of flowers upon his forehead, and a garland of corn-flowers around his neck. Friends from the neighbouring farms come riding in, their blue cloaks streaming to the wind; and finally the happy bridegroom, with a whip in his hand, and a monstrous nosegay in the breast of his black jacket, comes forth from his chamber ; and then to horse and away towards the village, where the bride already sits and waits. Foremost rides the spokesman, followed by some half-dozen village musicians. Next comes the bridegroom between his two groomsmen, and then forty or fifty friends and wedding guests, half of them perhaps with pistols and guns in their hands. A kind of baggage-wagon brings up the rear, laden with food and drink for these merry pilgrims. At the entrance of every village stands a triumphal arch, adorned with flow- ers, and ribands, and evergreens ; and as they pass beneath it, the wedding guests fire a salute, and the whole procession stops : and straight from every pocket flies a black- jack, filled with punch or brandy. It is passed from hand to hand among the crowd : provisions are brought from the wagon, and, after eating and drinking and hurrah- ing, the procession moves forward again, and at length draws near the house of the bride. Four heralds ride forward to an- nounce that a knight and his attendants are in the neighbouring forest, and pray for hospitality. " How many are you ?" asks the bride's father. " At least three hundred/' is the answer ; and to this the last replies, "Yes; were you seven times as many you should all be welcome ; and in token thereof receive this cup." Whereupon each herald receives a cup of ale ; and soon after the whole jovial company comes storming into the farmer's yard, and riding round the May-pole, which stands in the centre, alight amid a grand salute and flourish of music. In the hall sits the bride, with a crown upon her head and a tear in her eye, like the Virgin Mary in old Church paintings. She is dressed in a red bodice and kirtle, with loose linen sleeves. There is a gilded belt around her waist ; and around her neck strings of golden beads, and a golden chain. On the crown rests a wreath of wild roses, and below it an- other of cypress. Loose over her shoulders falls her flaxen hair; and her blue innocent eyes are fixed upon the ground. Oh, thou good soul ! thou hast hard hands, but a soft heart. Thou art poor. The very ornaments thou wearest are not thine. They have been hired for this great day. Yet thou art rich, rich in health, rich in hope, rich in thy first, young, fervent love. The blessing of Heaven be upon thee ! So thinks the parish priest, as he joins together the hands of bride and bridegroom, saying in deep solemn tones, " I give thee in marriage this damsel, to be thy wedded wife in all honour, and to share the half of thy bed, thy lock and key, and every third penny which you two may possess, or may inherit, and all the rights which Upland's laws provide, and the holy King Erik gave." The dinner is now served, and the bride sits between the bridegroom and the priest. The spokesman delivers an oration after the ancient custom of his fathers. He interlards it well with quotations from the Bible, and invites the Saviour to be present at this marriage-feast, as He was at the marriage- RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. 473 feast of Cana of Galilee. The table is not sparingly set forth. Each makes a long arm, and the feast goes cheerily on. Punch and brandy pass round between the courses, and here and there a pipe is smoked, while waiting for the next dish. They sit long at table ; but, as all tilings must have an end, so must a Swedish dinner. Then the dance begins. It is led off by the bride and the priost, who perform a solemn minuet to- gether. Not till after midnight comes the last dance. The girls form a ring around the bride, to keep her from the hands of the married women, who endeavour to break through the magic circle, and seize their new sister. After long struggling, they suc- ceed ; and the crown is taken from her head and the jewels from her neck, and her bodice is unlaced, and her kirtle taken off, and, like a vestal virgin, clad all in white, she goes, but it is to her marriage-chamber, not to the grave ; .and the wedding guests follow her with lighted candles in their hands. And this is a village-bridal. Nor must I forget the suddenly changing seasons of the northern clime. There is no long and lingering spring, unfolding leaf and blossom one by one ; no long and lin- gering autumn, pompous with many-coloured leaves and the glow of Indian summers. But winter and summer are wonderful, and pass into each other. The quail has hardly ceased piping in the corn, when winter, from the folds of trailing clouds, sows broadcast over the land snow, icicles, and rattling hail. The days wane apace. Ere long the sun hardly rises above the horizon, or does not rise at all. The moon and the stars shine through the day ; only, at noon, they are pale and wan, and in the southern sky a red fiery glow, as of sunset, burns along the horizon, and then goes out. And pleasantly under the silver moon, and under the silent, solemn stars, ring the steel shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices, and the sound of bells. And now the northern lights begin to burn, faintly at first, like sunbeams playing on the waters of the blue sea. Then a soft crimson glow tinges the heavens. There is a blush on the cheek of night. The colours come and go, and change from crimson to gold, from gold to crimson. The snow is stained with rosy light. Twofold from the zenith, east and west, flames a fiery sword ; and a broad band passes athwart the heavens like a summer sunset. Soft purple clouds come sailing over the sky, and through their vapoury folds the wink- ing stars shine white as silver. With such pomp as this is merry Christmas ushered in, though only a single star heralded the first Christmas. And in memory of that day the Swedish peasants dance on straw, and the peasant girls throw straws at the timbered roof of the hall, and for every one that sticks in a crack shall a groomsman come to their wedding. Merry Christmas, indeed ! For pious souls there shall be church-songs and sermons, but for Swedish peasants brandy and nut-brown ale in wooden bowls : and the great Yule-cake, crowned with a cheese, and garlanded with apples, and upholding a three-armed candlestick over the Christmas feast. They may tell tales, too, of Jons Lundsbraka, and Lunkenfus, and the great Kiddar-Finke of Pingsdada. And now the glad leafy midsummer, full of blossoms and the song of nightingales, is come ! Saint John has taken the flowers and festival of heathen Balder ; and in every village there is a May-pole fifty feet high, with wreaths and roses, and ribands stream- ing in the wind, and a noisy weathercock on the top, to tell the village whence the wind cometh and whither it goeth. The sun does not set till ten o'clock at night, and the children are at play in the streets an hour later. The windows and doors are all open, and you may sit and read till midnight without a candle. Oh, how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but a sunless yet unclouded day, descending upon earth with dews, and shadows, and refresh- ing coolness ! How beautiful the long mild twilight, which, like a silver clasp, unites to-day with yesterday ! How beautiful the silent hour, when morning and evening thus sit together, hand in hand, beneath the star- less sky of midnight ! From the church tower in the public square the bells toll the hour with a soft musical chime ; and the watchman whose watch-tower is the belfry, blows a blast on his horn for each stroke of the hammer, and four times, to the four cor- ners of the heavens, in a sonorous voice he chants : " Ho ! watchman, ho ! Twelve is the clock ! God keep our town From fire and brand, And hostile hand! Twelve is the clock !" From his swallow's-nest in the belfry he can see the sun all night long; and farther north the priest stands at his door in the warm midnight, and lights his pipe with a common burning-glass. Preface to Longfellow's translation of The Children of the Lord's Supper. RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D., born 1807, Archbishop of Dublin, 1864, is the author of many valuable works, Bibli- 474 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. cal, theological, poetical, and philological, of which the best known is entitled On the Study of Words, Lond., 1851, 12mo, fre- quently republished in England and Amer- ica. " Teachers of all grades will find it an invalua- ble aid both to their own private improvement and the instruction of their scholars. . . . Nobody can think the study of, words, as pursued by this writer, is dry or barren." Loud. Alhen., 1852, 378. See also 1855, 290 ; 1859, ii. 255. " It is a book which ought to be introduced into all normal schools." Lou. Lit. Gaz., 1852, 278. THE ADVANTAGES TO BE DERIVED FROM A STUDY OF WORDS. There are few who would not readily ac- knowledge that mainly in worthy books are preserved and hoarded the treasures of wis- dom and knowledge which the world has accumulated ; and that chiefly by aid of these they are handed down from one gen- eration to another. I shall urge on you in these lectures something different from this ; namely, that not in books only, which all acknowledge, nor yet in connected oral dis- course, but often also in words contemplated singly, there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination, laid up, that from these lessons of infinite worth may be derived, if only our attention is roused to their exist- ence. I shall urge on you (though with teaching such as you enjoy, the subject will not be new) how well it will repay you to study the words which you are in the habit of using or of meeting, be they such as re- late to highest spiritual things, or our com- mon words of the shop and the market, and of all the familiar intercourse of life. It will indeed repay you far better than you can easily believe. I am sure, at least, that for many a young man his first discovery of the fact, that words are living powers, are the vesture, yea even the body, which thoughts weave for themselves, has been like the dropping of scales from his eyes, like the acquisition of another sense, or the intro- duction into a new world ; he is never able to cease wondering at the moral marvels that surround him on every side, and ever reveal themselves more and more to his gaze. ... A great writer not very long de- parted from us has borne witness at once to the pleasantness and profit of this study. " In a language," he says, "like ours, where so many words are derived from other lan- guages, there are few modes of instruction more useful or more amusing than that of accustoming young people to seek for the etymology or primary meaning of the words they use. There are cases in which more knowledge of more value may be conveyed by the history of a word than by the history of a campaign." Impressing the same truth, Emerson has somewhere characterized language as " fos- sil poetry." He evidently means that just as in some fossil, curious and beautiful shapes of vegetable or animal life, the grace- ful fern or the finely vertebrated lizard, .such as now, it may be, have been extinct for thousands of years, are permanently bound up with the stone, and rescued from that perishing which would otherwise have been theirs, so in words are beautiful thoughts and images, the imagination and the feeling of past ages, of men long since in their graves, of men whose very names have per- ished, these, which would so easily have per- ished too, preserved and made safe forever. The phrase is a striking one ; the only fault which one might be tempted to find with it is, that it is too narrow. Language may be, and indeed is, this " fossil poetry ;" but it may be affirmed of it with exactly the same truth that it is fossil ethics or fossil his- tory. Words quite as often and as effectu- ally embody facts of history, or convictions of the moral common sense, as of the im- agination or passion of men : even as, so far as that moral sense may be perverted, they will bear witness and keep a record of that perversion. On the Study of Words. ON THE MORALITY IN WORDS. But has man fallen, and deeply fallen, from the heights of his original creation ? We need no more than his language to prove it. Like everything else about him, it bears at once the stamp of his greatness and of his degradation, of his glory and of his shame. What dark and sombre threads he must have woven into the tissue of his life, before we could trace those threads of darkness which run through the tissue of his language ! What facts of wickedness and woe must have ex- isted in the one, ere such words could exist to designate these as are found in the other ! There have never wanted those who would make light of the hurts which man has in- flicted on himself, of the sickness with which he is sick ; who would persuade themselves and others that moralists and divines, if they have not quite invented, have yet enor- mously exaggerated, these. But are state- ments of the depths of his fall, the malignity of the disease with which he is sick, found only in Scripture and in sermons? Are those who bring forward these, libellers of human nature? Or are not mournful cor- roborations of the truth of these imprinted deeply upon every promise of man's natural and spiritual life, and on none more deeply GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD: 475 than on his language ? It needs but to open a dictionary, and to cast our eye thoughtfully down a few columns, and we shall find abundant confirmation of this sadder and sterner estimate of man's moral and spiritual condition. How else shall we explain this long catalogue of words having all to do with sin or with sorrow, or with both? How came they there? We may be quite sure that they were not invented with- out being needed, and they have each a cor- relative in the world of realities. I open the first letter of the alphabet ; what means this "Ah," this "Alas," these deep and long- drawn sighs of humanity, which at once encounter me there ? And then presently there meet me such words as these : " Afflic- tion," "Agony," "Anguish," "Assassin," "Atheist," " Avarice," and a hundred more, words, you will observe, not laid up in the recesses of the language, to be drawn forth on rare occasions, but many of them such as must be continually on the lips of men. And indeed, in the matter of abundance, it is sad to note how much richer our vocabularies are in words that set forth sins, than in those that set forth graces. When St. Paul (Gal. v. 19-23) would put these against those, " the works of the flesh" against "the fruit of the Spirit," those are seventeen, these only nine; and where do we find in Scrip- ture such lists of graces as we do at 2 Tim. iii. 2, Rom. i. 29-31, of their contraries ? Nor can I help noting, in the oversight and muster from this point of view of the words which constitute a language, the manner in which its utmost resources have been taxed to express the infinite varieties, now of human suffering, now of human sin. Thus, what a fearful thing is it that any language should possess a word to express the pleasure which men feel at the calami- ties of others ; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing. And yet such in more languages than one may be found. Nor are there wanting, I suppose, in any language, words which are the mournful record of the strange wickednesses which the genius of man, so fertile in evil, has invented. What whole process of cruelty are sometimes wrapped up in a, single word ! On the Study of Words. GEORGE STILLMAN HIL- LARD, born at Machias, Maine, 1808, graduated at Harvard University, 1828, and was admitted to the Suffolk County (Boston) bar, 1833; died 1879. lie was a member of the Com- mon Council of Boston (of which he was fur six months the president), of the Massa- chusetts State Legislature, and of its Senate, and was one of the best writers that the United States, have produced. The Life and Adventures of Captain John Smith, Bost., 1834, 16mo (Sparks's Amer. Biog., Ser. 1, vol. ii.) ; Fourth of July Ora- tion before the City Authorities of Boston, Bost., 1835; The Relation of the Poet to His Age, a Discourse, Bost., 1843, 8vo; Connec- tion between Geography and History, Bost., 1846, 12mo; Address before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston, Bost., 1850; Address before the New York Pilgrim So- ciety, 1851 ; Discourse before the New Eng- land Society, New York, 1852, 8vo ; Eulogy on Daniel Webster, 1852 (in A Memorial of Daniel Webster from the City of Boston, Bost., 1853, 8vo, edited by G. S. Ilillard) ; Oration before the Inhabitants of Boston, July 4, 1853, Bost., 1853, 8vo ; Six Months in Italy, Bost., 1853, 2 vols. 12mo, Lond., 1853, 2 vols. 12ino, and later edits, (a stan- dard work of great excellence) ; Dangers and Duties of the Mercantile Profession, Bost., 1854, 8vo ; A Memoir of James Brown, Bost., 1856, 8vo ; First, Second, Third, and Fourth Class Readers, Bost., 1856-57, etc., 4 vols. ; Address before the Norfolk Agri- cultural Society, 1860, 8vo ; The Life and Campaigns of George B. McClellan, 1865. He edited, with success, the Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Bost., 1839, 5 vols. 12mo; and also a Selection from the Writ- ings of Henry Cleveland, Bost., 1844, 12mo, privately printed, and published a transla- tion of Guizot's Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington, Bost., 1840, 16mo, and Selections from the Writings of W. S. Landor, Bost., 1856, 12mo. He was co-editor of The American Jurist, The Christian Register, and The Boston Courier, and contributed to The Christian Examiner, The New England Magazine, The North American Review (23 articles), and Appleton's New American Cyclopaedia (articles Choate, Everett). He was urged by the present writer to publish a collective edition of his works, but was too modest to accede. " George S. Ilillard is one of the most polished writers of New England. His taste is fastidious, and he is a fine rhetorician. He excels in arrange- ment and condensation, and has an imaginative expression. Of his numerous articles in the North American Review, one of the most hrilliant is on Prescott's Conquest of Mexico [58 : 157, Jan. 1844], but I think the happiest of his essays is that on the Mission of the Poet, read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society [of Harvard University, Aug. 24, 1843]." R. W. GRISWOLD, D.D. : The Intellectual Hilton/, Condition, and Prospects of the Country, prefixed to his Prose Writers of America. 476 GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD. THE CHARACTER OP EDWARD EVERETT. The Psalmist says, " The days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by rea- son of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow." The latter part of this sentence is not altogether true ; at least, it is not without exceptions as numerous as the rule. To say nothing of the living, we who have witnessed the serene and beautiful old age of Quincy, pro- tracted more than twenty years after three- score years and ten, will not admit that all of life beyond that limit is of necessity li labour and sorrow." But in these words there is so much of truth as this, that he who has lived to be threescore and ten years old should feel that he has had his fair share of life, and if any more years are dropped into his lap he must receive them as a gift not promised at his birth. And tints no man who dies after the age of seventy can be said to have died unseasonably or prem- aturely. But the shock with which the news of Mr. Everett's death fell upon the community was due to its unexpectedness as well as its suddenness. We knew that he was an old man, but we did not feel that lie was such. There was nothing either in his aspect or his life that warned us of de- parture or reminded us of decay. His powers were so vigorous, his industry was so great, his sympathies were so active, his elocution so admirable, that he appeared before us as a man in the very prime of life, and when he died it was as if the sun had gone down at noon. The impression made by his death was the highest tribute that could be paid to the worth of his life. In 1819, after an absence of nearly five years, Mr. Everett returned from Europe at the age of twenty-five, the most finished and accomplished man that had been seen in New England, and it will be generally ad- mitted that he maintained this superiority to the last. From that year down to the hour of his death he was constantly before the public eye, and never without a marked and peculiar influence upon the community, especially upon students and scholars. You and I, Mr. President, are old enough to have come under the spell of the magician at that early period of his life when he presented the most attractive combination of graceful and blooming youth with mature intellec- tual power. The young man of to-day, familiar with that expression of gravity, almost of sadness, which his countenance has habitually worn of late, can hardly im- agine what he then was, when his " bosom's lord" sat " lightly in his throne," when the winds of hope filled his sails, and his looks and movements were informed with a spirit of morning freshness and vernal promise. In the forty-five years which passed between his return home and his death, Mr. Everett's industry was untiring, and the amount of work he accomplished was immense. What he published would alone entitle him to the praise of a very industrious man, but this forms but a part of his labours. Of what has been called the master-vice of sloth he knew nothing. He was inde- pendent of the amusements and relaxations which most hard-working men interpose between their hours of toil, lie was always in harness. Some persons have regretted that he gave so much time to merely occasional produc- tions, instead of devoting himself to sonic one great work ; but without speculating upon the comparative value of what we have and what we might have had, it is enough to say that with his genius and temperament on the one hand, and our institutions and form of society on the other, it was a sort of necessity that his mind should have taken the direction that it did. For he was the child of his time, and was .always in harmony with the spirit of the age and country in which his lot was cast. He was pre-emi- nently rich in the fruits of European culture; Greece, Rome, England, France, Italy, and Germany all helped by liberal contributions to swell his stores of intellectual wealth, but yet no man was ever more national in feel ing, more patriotic in motive and impulse, more thoroughly American in grain and fibre. Loving books as he did, he would yet have pined and languished if he had been doomed to live in the unsympathetic air of a great library. The presence, the com- prehension, the sympathy of his kind were as necessary to him as his daily bread. " Two words," says Macaulay, " form the key of the Baconian doctrine, Utility and Progress." I think these two words also go far to reveal and interpret Mr. Everett's mo- tives and character. Not that he did not seek honourable distinction, not that he did not take pleasure in the applause which he had fairly earned ; but stronger even than these propelling impulses was his desire to be of service to his fellow-men, to do good in his day and generation. He loved his country with a fervid love, and he loved his race with a generous and comprehensive philanthropy. He was always ready to work cheerfully in any direction when he thought he could do any good, though the labour might not be particularly congenial to his tastes, and would not add anything to his literary reputation. The themes which he handled, during his long life of intellectual action, were very various, they were treated GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD. 477 with great affluence of learning, singular beauty of illustration, and elaborate and ex- quisite harmony of style, but always in such away as to bear practical fruit, and contribute to the advancement of society and the eleva- tion of humanity. So, too, Mr. Everett was a sincere and consistent friend of progress. He was, it is true, conservative in his instincts and convic- tions ; I mean in a large and liberal, and not in a narrow and technical sense. But that he was an extreme conservative, or that he valued an institution simply because it Avas old, is not only not true, but, I think, the reverse of truth. He had a distaste to ex- treme views of any kind, and, by the consti- tution of his mind, was disposed to take that middle ground which partisan zeal is prone to identify with timidity or indifference. But he was a man of generous impulses and large sympathies. No one was more quick to recognize true progress, and greet it with a more hospitable welcome. No man of his age would have more readily and heartily acknowledged the many points in which the world has advanced since he was young. It would not be seasonable here to dwell upon Mr. Everett's public or political career, but I may be permitted to add that I think he had genuine faith in the institutions of his country, which d*id not grow fainter as he grew older, lie believed in man's capacity for self-government, and had confidence in popular instincts. He was fastidious in his social tastes, but not aristocratic: that is, if he preferred one man to another it was for essential and not adventitious qualities, for what they were, and not for what they had. lie was uniformly kind to the young, and always prompt to recognize and encourage merit in a young person. Mr. Everett, if not the founder of the school of American deliberative eloquence, was its most brilliant representative. In his orations and occasional discourses will be found his best title to remembrance, and by them his name will surely be transmitted to future generations. In judging of them, we must bear in mind that the aim of the delib- erative orator is to treat a subject in such a way as to secure and fix the attention of a popular audience, and this aim Mr. Everett never lost sight of. If it be said that his discourses are not marked by originality of construction or philosophical depth of thought, it may be replied that had they been so, they would have been less attractive to his hearers. They are remarkable for a combination of qualities rarely, if ever be- fore, so happily blended, and especially for the grace, skill, and tact with which the re- sources of the widest cultivation are so used as to instruct the common mind and touch the common heart. For whatever were the subject, Mr. Everett always took his audience along with him from first to last. He never soared or wandered out of their sight. I need notdwell upon the singular beauty and finish of his elocution. Those who have heard him speak will need no descrip- tion of the peculiar charm and grace of his manner, and no description will give any adequate impression of it to those who never heard him. It was a manner easily carica- tured, but not easily imitated. His power over an audience remained unimpaired to the last. At the age of seventy he spoke with all the animation of youth, and easily filled the largest hall with that rich and flexible voice, the tones of which time had hardly touched. His organization was deli- cate and refined, his temperament sensitive and sympathetic. The opinion of those whom he loved and esteemed was weighty with him. Praise was ever cordial to him, and more necessary than to most men who had achieved such high and assui'ed distinc- tion. Doubtful as the statement may seem to those who knew him but slightly, or only saw him on the platform with his " robes and singing garlands" about him, he was to the last a modest and self-distrustful man. He never appeared in public without a slight flutter of apprehension lest he should fall short of that standard which he had created for himself. His want of self-confidence, and, in later years, his want of animal spirits, sometimes produced a coldness of manner, which, by superficial observers, was set down to coldness of heart, but most unjustly. His nature was courteous, gentle, and sweet. Few men were ever more worthy than he to wear " the grand old name of gentleman." His manners were graceful, more scholarly than is usual with men who had been so much in public life as he, and sometimes covered with a delicate veil of reserve. Conflict and contest were distaste- ful to him, and it was his disposition to fol- low the things that make for peace. He had a true respect for the intellectual rights of others, and it was no fault of his if he ever lost a friend through difference of opinion. Permit me to turn for a moment to Mr. Everett's public life for an illustration of his character. In forensic contests, sarcasm and invective are formidable and frequent weapons. The House of Commons quailed before the younger Pitt's terrible powers of sarcasm. An eminent living statesman and orator of Great Britain is remarkable for both these qualities. But neither invective nor sarcasm is to be found in Mr. Everett's speeches. I think this absence is to be 478 GEORGE STJLLMAN HILLARD. ascribed not to an intellectual want but to a moral grace. Great men, public men, have also their inner and private life, and sometimes this must be thrown by the honest painter into shadow. But in Mr. Everett's case there was no need of this, for his private life was spotless. In conduct and conversation he always conformed to the highest standard which public opinion exacts of the members of that profession to which he originally belonged. As a brother, husband, father, and friend, there was no duty that he did not discharge, no call that he did not obey. He was generous in giving, and equally generous in sacrificing. Where he was mo.st known he was best loved. He was wholly free from that exacting temper in small things which men, eminent and otherwise estimable, sometimes fall into. His daily life was made beautiful by a pervading spirit of thoughtful consideration for those who stood nearest to him. His household man- ners were delightful, and his household dis- course was brightened by a lambent play of wit and humour; qualities which he pos- sessed in no common measure, though they were rarely displayed before the public. Could the innermost circle of Mr. Everett's life be revealed to the general eye, it could not fail to deepen the sense of bereavement which his death has awakened, and to in- crease the reverence with which his memory is and will be cherished. No man ever bore his faculties and his eminence more meekly than he. He never declined the lowly and commonplace duties of life. He was always approachable and accessible. The constant and various interruptions to which he was exposed by the innumerable calls made upon his time and thoughts were borne by him with singular patience and sweetness. His industry was as methodical as it was uniform. However busy he might be, he could always find time for any service which a friend required at his hands. He was scrupulously faithful and exact in small things. He never broke an appointment or a promise. His splendid powers worked with all the regularity and precision of the most nicely adjusted machinery. If he had undertaken to have a discourse, a report, an article, ready at a certain time, it might be depended upon as surely as the rising of the sun. I feel that I have hardly touched upon the remarkable qualities of Mr. Everett's mind and character, and yet I have occupied as much of your time as is becoming. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in A Memorial of Edward Everett from the City of Boston, Bost., 1865, 8vo, 138-142. BOOKS. We cannot linger in the beautiful crea- tions of inventive genius, or pursue the splendid discoveries of modern science, with- out a new sense of the capacities and dignity of human nature, which naturally leads to a sterner self-respect, to manlier resolves, and higher aspirations. We cannot read the ways of God to man as revealed in the his- tory of nations, of sublime virtues as exem- plified in the lives of great and good men, without falling into that mood of thoughtful admiration, which, though it be but a tran- sient glow, is a purifying and elevating in- fluence while it lasts. The study of history is especially valuable as an antidote to self- exaggeration. It teaches lessons of humility, patience, and submission. When we read of realms smitten with the scourge of famine or pestilence, or strewn with the bloody ashes of war ; of grass growing in the streets of great cities ; of ships rotting at the wharves ; of fathers burying their sons ; of strong men begging their bread ; of fields untilled, and silent workshops, and despairing coun- tenances, we hear a voice of rebuke to our own clamorous sorrows and peevish com- plaints. We learn that pain and suffering and disappointment are a part of God's providence, and that no contract was ever yet made with man by which virtue should secure to him temporal happiness. In books, be it remembered, we have the best products of the best minds. We should any of us esteem it a great privilege to pass an evening with Shakespeare or Bacon, were such a thing possible. But were we admitted to the presence of one of these il- lustrious men, we might find him touched with infirmity, or oppressed with weariness, or darkened with the shadow of a recent trouble, or absorbed by intrusive and tyran- nous thoughts. To us the oracle might be dumb, and the light eclipsed. But when we take down one of their volumes, we run no such risk. Here we have their best thoughts embalmed in their best words : immortal flowers of poetry, wet with Castalinn dews, and the golden fruit of wisdom that had long ripened on the bough before it was gathered. Here we find the growth of the choicest seasons of the mind, when mortal cares were forgotten, and mortal weaknesses were subdued ; and the soul, stripped of its vanities, and its passions, lay bare to the finest effluences of truth and beauty. We may be sure that Shakespeare never out- talked his Hamlet, nor Bacon his Essays. Great writers are indeed best known through their books. How little, for instance, do we know of the life of Shakespeare ; but how much do we know of him ! . . . ROBERT CHARLES WINTER OP. 479 For the knowledge that comes from books, I would claim no more than it is fairly en- titled to. I am well aware that there is no inevitable connection between intellectual cultivation, on the one hand, and individual virtue or social well-being, on the other. " The tree of knowledge is not the tree of life." I admit that genius and learning are sometimes found in combination with gross vices, and not unfrequently with contemptible weaknesses ; and that a community at once cultivated and corrupt is no impossible mon- ster. But it is no over-statement to say that, other things being equal, the man who has the greatest amount of intellectual resources is in the least danger from inferior tempta- tions, if for no other reason, because he has fewer idle moments. The ruin of most men dates from some vacant hour. Occu- pation is the armour of the soul ; and the train of Idleness is borne up by all the vices. I remember a satirical poem, in which the Devil is represented as fishing for men, and adapting his baits to the taste and tempera- ment of his prey ; but the idler, he said, pleased him most, because he bit the naked hook. To a young man away from home, friendless and forlorn in a great city, the hours of peril are those between sunset and bedtime ; for the moon and stars see more of evil in a single hour than the sun in his Avhole day's circuit. The poet's visions of evening are all compact of tender and soothing images. It brings the wanderer to his home, the child to his mother's arms, the ox to his stall, and the weary labourer to his rest. But to the gentle-hearted youth who is thrown upon the rocks of a pitiless city, and stands '* homeless amid a thousand homes," the approach of evening brings with it an aching sense of loneliness and desola- tion, which comes down upon the spirit like darkness upon the earth. In this mood his best impulses become a snare to him ; and he is led astray because he is social, affec- tionate, sympathetic, and warm-hearted. If there be a young man thus circumstanced within the sound of my voice, let me say to him, that books are the friends of the friend- less, and that a library is the home of the homeless. A taste for reading will always carry you into the best possible company, and enable you to converse with men who will instruct you by their wisdom, and charm you by their wit ; who will soothe you when fretted, refresh you when weary, counsel you when perplexed, and sympathize with you at all times. Evil spirits in the Middle Ages were exorcised and driven away by bell, book, and candle : you want but two of these agents, the book and the candle. Address before the Mercantile Library As- sociation. ROBERT CHARLES WIN- THROP, LL.D., a descendant in the sixth generation of John Winthrop (1587-1649), Governor of Massa- chusetts, a grandson of Sir John Temple, and great-grandson of Governor James Bow- doin, was born in Boston, 1809, graduated at Harvard University, 1828, studied law with Daniel Webster, 1828-31, United States Senator, 1850-51. He is a man of high mark in every respect. Addresses and Speeches on various occa- sions, Bost., 3 vols. r. 8vo: vol. i., 1853, ii., 1867, iii., 1878; Life and Letters of John Winthrop, 1630-1649, Bost., 1867, 8vo. For his minor publications, see Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature, iii. 2797. " In his occasional addresses he displays not only that fulness of knowledge and learning belonging to his immediate theme, which places him on the platform with the best-instructed orators of the day, but all those nameless graces of speech, that versatility and playfulness of fancy, that prompt and felicitous appropriation of any casual topic or incident of the moment, that current and catching sympathy with his audience, so that he seems rather to be speaking with them and for them in- stead of to them, which are the characteristics of the higher order of speech in England, but which are so rare in this country that I can hardly recall the name of any living orator who can hold a comparison with him." HUGH BLAIR G-RIGSBY, LL.D., TO S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE, May 11, 1866 (&' supra). CHRISTIANITY THE GREAT REMEDY. The ancient metropolis of Syria has se- cured for itself a manifold celebrity on the pages of history. It has been celebrated as the splendid residence of the Syrian kings, and afterwards as the luxurious capital of the Asiatic Provinces of the Roman Empire. It has been celebrated for its men of letters, and its cultivation of learning. It has been celebrated for the magnificence of the edi- fices within its walls, and for the romantic beauty of its suburban groves and fountains. The circling sun shone nowhere upon more majestic productions of human art, than when it gilded, with its rising or its setting beams, the sumptuous symbols of its own de- luded worshippers, in the gorgeous temple of Daphne and the gigantic statue of Apollo, which were the pride and boast of that far- famed capital ; while it was from one of the humble hermitages which were embosomed in its exquisite environs, that the sainted Chrysostom poured forth some of those po- etical and passionate raptures on the beau- ties and sublimities of nature, which would alone have won for him the title of " The golden-mouthed." At one time, we are told, 480 ROBERT CHARLES WINTER OP. it ranked third on the list of the great cities of the world, next only after Rome and Alexandria, and hardly inferior to the latter of the two, at least, in size and splendour. It acquired a severer and sadder renown in more recent, though still remote history, as having been doomed to undergo vicissitudes and catastrophies of the most disastrous and deplorable character : now sacked and pil- laged by the Persians, now captured by the Saracens, and now besieged by the Cru- saders ; a prey, at one moment, to the rav- ages of fire, at another to the devastations of an earthquake, which is said to have de- stroyed no less than two hundred and fifty thousand lives in a single hour. Its name has thus become associated with so many historical lights and shadows, with so much of alternate grandeur and gloom, that there is, perhaps, but little likelihood of its ever being wholly lost sight of by any student of antiquity. Yet it is not too much to say, that one little fact, for which the Bible is the sole and all-sufficient authority, will fix that name in the memory, nnd rivet it in the affectionate regard of mankind, when all else associated with it is forgotten. Yes: when its palaces and its temples, its fountains and its groves, its works of art and its men of learning, when Persian and Saracen and Crusader, who successively spoiled it, and the flames and the earthquake which de- voured and desolated it, shall have utterly faded from all human recollection or record, the little fact the great fact, let me rather say will still be remembered, and remem- bered with an interest and a vividness which no time can ever efface or diminish, that " the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch ;" that there the name of Christ given at the outset, perhaps, as a nickname and a by-word, but gladly and fearlessly ac- cepted and adopted, in the face of mockery, in the face of martyrdom, by delicate youth and maiden tenderness, as well as by mature or veteran manhood first became the dis- tinctive designation of the faithful followers of the Messiah. That record must, of course, stand alone, for ever, on the historic page. Christianity will never begin again. Christ has lived and died once for all, and will come no more upon these earthly scenes, until he comes .again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead. But should the numerous Associations and Unions which have recently sprung into existence as from a common impulse in both hemi- spheres, bearingacommonname, composed of congenial elements, and organized for the same great and glorious ends with that now before me, should they go on zealously and successfully in the noble work which they have undertaken, should they even fulfil but one-half the high hopes and fond expec- tations which their progress thus far has authorized and encouraged, it may be, it may be, that the city from which they all took their first example and origin, if it can then be identified, whether it be London or New York, Liverpool, Edinburgh, or Boston, Berlin, Geneva, or Richmond, will have no prouder or loftier title to the gratitude of man or to the blessing of God, than that there was set on foot the first Young Men's Christian Association, that there the young men of the nineteenth cen- tury, by a concerted movement, and in so considerable companies, first professed and called themselves Christians. . . . Reflect, my friends, for an instant, what a spectacle almost any great city would pre- sent, at almost .any single moment of its ex- istence, to a person who had the power to penetrate within its recesses and privacies, and to behold at a glance all that was going on by day or by night within its limits ! Nay, reflect, if you have the courage to do so, what a spectacle such a city actually does present to that all-seeing Eye, before which every scene of immorality and crime is daguerreotyped with unfailing accuracy and minuteness, just as it occurs, just aa it occurs, no matter how close may be the veil of mystery in which it is involved to human sight, or how secret the chambers of iniquity within which it is transacted ! What a panorama must be ever moving before that Eye ! Oh, if there could be a more prevail- ing and pervading sense, that although no human agency or visible machinery be at work, the picture of our individual lives is at every instant in process of being por- trayed and copied, every word, act, thought, motive, indelibly delineated, with a fulness and a fidelity of which even the marvellous exactness of photograph or stereoscope af- fords but a faint illustration; if the great ideas of Omniscience and Omnipresence, which are suffered to play so loosely about the region of our imaginations, and of which these modern inventions the daguerreo- type, with the instantaneous action and un- erring accuracy of its viewless pencil, the Electric Ocean Telegraph, with its single flash, bounding unquenched through a thou- sand leagues of fathomless floods have done so much to quicken our feeble conceptions ; if, I say, these great ideas of Omniscience and Omnipresence could now and then be brought to a focus, and flashed in, with the full force of their searching and scorching rays, upon the inmost soul of some great city, like Paris or London, to come no nearer home, and of those who dwell in it, what swarms of sins, what troops of FORBES WINS LOW. 481 sinners, would be seen soared and scamper- ing from their holes and hiding-places: just as even now the inmates of some single abode of iniquity or infamy are sometimes seen flying from the sudden irruption of an earthly police, or from the startling terrors of some self-constituted vigilance committee ! Christianity, neither Sectarian nor Sec- tional, the Great Remedy for Social and Political Evils : An Address delivered before the Young Men's Christian As- sociation, Boston, April 7. 1859. Re- peated before the Young Men's Chris- tian Association of Richmond, Virginia, May 5, 1859. Republished in Addresses and Speeches, Boston, 1867, r. 8vo, J^OS- 450. FORBES WINSLOW, M.D., D.C.L. OXON., born 1810, died 1874, was author of a number of valuable medical works upon in- sanity and other subjects, of which the most important is On Obscure Diseases of the Brain, and Disorders of the Mind, Lond., 1860, 8vo ; Phila., I860, 8vo; 4th ed., Lond., 1868, p. 8vo. "The future British text-book on mental and cerebral pathology. . . . What an amount of bodily suffering and hopeless mental imbecility might be prevented if the practical and scientific views propounded in Dr. Winslow's book were generally diffused." Lond. Lrnicet. " The master effort of a great philosopher." Dub. Quar. Med. Jour., I860. NEGLECT OP INCIPIENT SVMPTOMS OF IN- SANITY. Upon investigating the history of the dis- eases of the brain, how frequently does the medical man discover that positive and un- equivocal cerebral symptoms have existed, and perhaps, during the early stage, even been observed for months, and in some cases for years, without exciting any apprehen- sion on the part of the patient, his family, or friends ! In many of such instances, clearly mani- fested head symptoms were entirely over- looked. If noticed, no right estimation was made of their value. My attention has been called to cases in which serious mischief to the delicate structure of the brain and its investing membranes has thus been per- mitted by the patient's friends to proceed uninterruptedly for years, no treatment being adopted to arrest the progress of the fatal disorganization ! The brain, that most important, and ex- quisitely organized, of all the structures of 31 the human body, the physical instrument of intelligence, centre of sensation, and source of volition, is permitted, in many cases, to be in a state of undoubted disorder, with- out exciting any attention until some fright- fully urgent, alarming, and dangerous symp- toms have been manifested, and then, and not till then, has the actual extent of the mischief been appreciated, the condition of the patient recognized, and advice obtained for his relief! Other deviations from organic conditions of health do not, as a general rule, meet with similar systematic neglect. In affec- tions of the stomach, liver, bowels, lungs, and skin,&c., the first symptoms of approaching disease are immediately observed, and the patient, without loss of time, seeks the aid of his physician. But when the brain is affected, and the patient troubled with per- sistent headache, associated with some slight derangement of the intelligence, disorder of the sensibility, illusions of the senses, de- pression of spirits, loss of mental power, or modification of motility, his condition is, in many cases, entirely overlooked, or studi- ously ignored, as if such abnormal symp- toms were signs of robust health, instead of being, as they undoubtedly are, indications of cerebral disorder requiring the most grave and serious attention, prompt, energetic, and skilful treatment! One reason of the neglect to which the brain is subjected when under the influence of disease, is a notion, too generally enter- tained, that many of the more fatal forms of cerebral diseases are suddenly developed affections, presenting no evidence of any antecedent encephalic organic change, and unaccompanied by a premonitory stage, or incipient symptoms. It is indeed natural that such an idea should be entertained, even by an educated professional man whose attention has not been specially directed to a study of this class of disease, or whose opportunities of watching the progress of such affections have been limited and circumscribed. A man apparently in vigorous health, mix- ing daily with his family, going to his count- ing-house, engaging in the active pursuits of commerce, or occupying his attention in professional or literary duties, whilst step- ping into his carriage, or when entertaining his friends at the festive board, falls down either at his door in a state of unconscious- ness, or quietly bows his head on his plate at the dinner-table and dies, surrounded by his family, in a fit of cerebral hemorrhage ! . . . A gentleman during dinner complains sud- denly of giddiness and sickness. He retires to another room, where he is found a minute afterwards supporting by a bed-post, con- 482 FORBES WINSLOW. fused and pale. Being put to bed he soon be- comes comatose and dies. . . . Fully recog- nizing the obscurity in which this subject is involved, I would ask, whether the affections of the brain, in the majority of cases, are not preceded by a well-marked, clearly-defined, but often undetected and unobserved precur- sory stage? Is it possible for a person to be suddenly laid prostrate in the arms of death by an attack of apoplexy, cerebritis, menin- gitis, paralysis, acute softening, or mania, evidencing after death long-existing chronic alteration in the cerebral structure, without having existed, for some time previously, faint and transitory they may be, but never- theless decidedly characteristic symptoms, pointing unmistakably to the brain as the fons et origo mali ? On Obscure Diseases of the Brain. THE MEMORY. I should regret if, in the preceding obser- vations, I were to convey the impression that I estimated lightly the benefit to be de- rived from a steady and persevering cultiva- tion of the memory in early life. It is, in every point of view, most essential that this faculty should be carefully developed, dis- ciplined, and invigorated during the scho- lastic training which most boys intended for the universities, and subsequently for politi- cal and professional life, have to undergo. The knowledge then acquired is seldom if ever obliterated from the mind, except by disease. How much of the pure, refined, and elevated mental enjoyment in which men of education luxuriously revel in after- years is to be traced to that period when they were compelled to commit to memory, often as a task, but more frequently as a part of the regular curriculum of the schools, long and brilliant passages from illustrious clas- sical authors? Do we ever regret, when our bark is being tossed upon the noisy and tem- pestuous ocean of life, having had to go through such an intellectual ordeal ? Is not the mind thus stored with an imperishable knowledge of passages from the poets, ora- tors, and historians of antiquity full of ele- vated thoughts, profound wisdom, exquisite imagery, noble and magnanimous senti- ments? It would be absurd to undervalue a system of educational discipline productive of such obvious advantages. My animadversions are directed against the too exclusive culti- vation and undue straining of the memory. We are disposed to forget that there are higher and more exalted mental faculties that require to be carefully expanded and fortified before the mind is fitted to enter into the great arena of life, and qualified to con- tend successfully in its many battles, strug- gles, and trials. Before concluding this subject, I would briefly address myself to the consideration of two important questions intimately con- nected with the interesting facts previously discussed, viz. : 1. At what particular period of life does 1h e intellect begin to decline, and when, as a gcn- eral rule, is first observed the commencement of aninsenescence of theintellectual principle? 2. Is great strength of memory often associ- ated with limited powers of judgment and reasoning, and conjoined with a low order of intelligence? " In old persons," says Cabanis, " the feebleness of the brain, and of those func- tions which originate therein, give to their determination the same mobility, the same characteristic uncertainty, which they pos- sess during childhood ; in fact, the two con- ditions closely resemble each other." The Professor of Physiology at the University of Montpellier, Dr. I.ordat, denies the truth of this aphorism, and terms it a " popular de- lusion." This able physiologist and philoso- pher maintains that it is the vital, not the intellectual, principle that is seen to wane as old age throws its autumnal tinge over the green foliage of life. " It is not true," he says, " that the intellect becomes weaker after the vital force has passed its culmi- nating point. The understanding acquires more strength during the first half of that period which is designated as old age. It is impossible," he says, " to assign any period of existence at which the reasoning powers suffer deterioration." Numerous illustra- tions are adduced to establish that senescence of the intelligence is not isochronous with that of the vital force. The conversation of the celebrated com- poser, Cherubini, at the age of eighty, is said to have been as brilliant as during the meridian of his existence. Gossec com posed a Te Deum when at the age of seventy-eight. Corneille, when seventy years of age, ex- hibited no decay of intellect, judging from his poetic address to the king. M. des Quen- sounnieres, the accomplished poet, at the advanced age of one hundred and sixteen, was full of vivacity, and fully capable of sustaining a lively and intelligent conversa- tion. M. Leroy, of Rambouillet, at the age of one hundred, composed a remarkably beautiful and spirited poem. Abbe Taublet, when speaking of the intellect of Fontenelle when far advanced in life, says, " His intel- lectual faculties, with the exception of a slight defect of memory, had preserved their integrity in spite of corporeal debility. His thoughts were elevated, his expressions fin- ished, his answers quick and to the point GEORGE SHARSWOOD. 483 his reasoning powers accurate and pro- found." Cardinal de Fleury was Prime Minister of France from the age of seventy to ninety. At the age of eighty Fontenelle asked permission, on the ground of physical infirmity, to retire from the post of per- petual secretary of the Academy of Sciences. The prime minister refused the request. Three years subsequently Fontenelle again expressed a wish to resign office. " You are an indolent, lazy fellow," writes the Car- dinal ; " but I suppose we must occasionally indulge such characters." Voltaire, when at the age of eighty-four, came to Paris, agreeably to his own language, "to seek a triumph and to find a tomb" liichelieu died at the age of ninety-three, full of mental vigour. A few minutes before his death, his daughter-in-law, wishing to encourage him, said, " You are not so ill as you would wish us to believe ; your countenance is charming." " What!" said he, with the ut- most vivacity, and full of wit and humour, " has my face been converted into a mirror?'' 1 On Obscure Diseases of the Brain, GEORGE SHARSWOOD, LL.D., born in Philadelphia, 1810, graduated at the University of Pennsylvania, 1828, admitted to the Philadelphia bar, 1831, Judge of the District Court of Penna., 1845, and Presi- dent Judge from 1851 until Dec. 1867, when he took his seat as an Associate Justice in the Supreme Court of the State ; Professor of Law in the University of Penna., 1850 et seq.; for three years a member of the Penna. Legislature. Professional Ethics, Phila., 1854, 8vo, 3d edit, 1869. 12mo; Pop- ular Lectures on Common Law, 1856, 12mo. Edited: Blackstone's Commentaries, Byles on Bills of Exchange, Coote on Mortgages, English Common Law Reports, Laws of the United States, vols. iv. and v. (in continua- tion of Story), Leigh's Nisi Prius, Roscoe on Criminal Evidence, Russell on Crimes, Smith (J. W.) on Contracts, Starkie on Evidence, Stephens' s Nisi Prius. LAW STUDIES. It is proposed to present a few considera- tions upon the proper mode of training for the practice of the profession of the law in this country. They will be altogether of a practical character. The bar in the United States is open to .all who wish to enter it. It is mostly under the regulation of the various courts, and their rules have been framed upon the most liberal principles. Generally a certain period of study has been prescribed, never, it is be- lieved, exceeding three years. In some States, however, even this restriction is not found. The applicant for admission is ex- amined, as to his knowledge and qualifica- tions, either by the courts or by a committee of members of the bar. The profession is the avenue to political honours and influence. Those who attain eminence in it are largely rewarded, and, with ordinary prudence, cannot fail to accu- mulate a handsome competence. Hence the young and ambitious are found crowding into it. There is a great perhaps an overdue haste in American youth to enter upon the active and stirring scenes of life. Hence it is undoubtedly true that many men are to be found in the ranks of the profession with- out adequate preparation. Very often the difficulties presented by the want of a suit- able education are overcome by native en- ergy, application, and perseverance; but more commonly they prevent permanent success, and confine the unlettered advocate to the lower walks of the profession, which promise neither profit nor honour. Unless in cases of extraordinary enthusiasm and where there are evident marks of bright, natural talents, a young man without the advantages of education should be discouraged from corrnnencing the study of the law. Not that a collegiate or classical course of train- ing should be insisted on as essential, although it is doubtless of the highest im- portance. Classical studies are especially calculated to exercise the mental faculties in habits of close investigation and searching analysis, as well as to form the taste upon models of the purest eloquence. The ora- tors and historians of Greece and of Rome are a school in which exalted patriotism, high-toned moral feeling, and a generous enthusiasm can be most successfully culti- vated. With a good English education, how- ever, many a man has made a respectable figure at the bar. Lord Campbell has said that "he who is not a good lawyer before he comes to the liar will never be a good one after it." It is, no doubt, highly necessary that the years of preparation should be years of earnest, diligent study ; but it is entirely too much to say, with us, that a course of three years' reading, at so early a stage, will make a good lawyer. In truth, the most important part of every lawyer's education begins with his admission to practice. He that ceases then to follow a close and systematical course of reading, although he may succeed in acquir- ing a considerable amount of practical knowl- edge, from the necessity he will be under of investigating different questions, yet it will 484 GEORGE SHARSWOOD. not be of that deep-laid character necessary to sustain him in every emergency. It may be safe, then, to divide the period of a law- yer's preparation into first, a course of two or three years' reading before his admission, and, second, one of five or seven years' close and continued application after that event. At the commencement of his studies in the office of his legal preceptor, the cardinal maxim by which he should be governed in his reading should be non multa, sed multum. Indeed, it was an observation of Lord Mans- field, that the quantity of professional read- ing absolutely necessary, or even useful, to a lawyer, was not so great as was usually imagined. The Commentaries of Black- stone and of Chancellor Kent should be read, and read again and again. The elementary principles so well and elegantly presented and illustrated in these two justly-celebrated works should be rendered familiar. They form, too, a general plan or outline of the science, by which the student will be able to arrange and systematize all his subsequent acquisitions. To these may be added a few books of a more practical cast; such as Tidd's Practice, Stephen on Pleading, GreenleaPs Evidence, Stephens's or Leigh's Nisi Prius, Mitford's or Story's Equity Pleading, which, with such reading of the local law of the State in which he purposes to settle as may be necessary to make up the best part of office-reading. It will be better to have well mastered thus much than to have run over three times as many books hastily and super- ficially. Let the student often stop and ex- amine himself upon what he has read. It would be an excellent mode of proceeding for him, after having read a lecture or chap- ter, to lay aside the book and endeavour to commit the substance of it to writing, trust- ing entirely to his memory for the matter, and using his own language. After having done this, let him reperuse the section, by which he will not only discern what parts have escaped his memory, but the whole will be more certainly impressed upon his mind, and become incorporated with it as if it had been originally his own work. Let him cul- tivate intercourse with others pursuing the same studies, and converse frequently upon the subject of their reading. The biographer of Lord Keeper North has recorded of him that "he fell into the way of putting cases (as they call it), which much improved him, and he was most sensible of the benefit of discourse: for I have observed him often say that (after his day's reading) at his night's congress with his professional friends, what- ever the subject was, he made it the subject of discourse in the company; for, said he, I read many things which I am sensible I for- get ; but I found, withal, that if I had once talked over what I had read, I never forgot that." Much, of course, will depend upon what may be termed the mental temperament of the student himself, which no one can so well observe as his immediate preceptor; and he will be governed accordingly in the selection of the works to be placed in his hands and his general course of training. No lawyer does his duty who does not fre- quently examine his student, not merely as an important means of exciting him to atten- tion and application, but in order to acquire such an acquaintance with the character of his pupil's mind its quickness or slowness, its concentrativeness or discursiveness as to be able to form a judgment as to whether he requires the curb or the spur. It is an inestimable advantage to a young man to have a judicious and experienced friend watching anxiously his progress, and com- petent to direct him when, if he is left to himself, he will most probably wander in darkness and danger. In regard to the more thorough and ex- tended course of reading which may and ought to be prosecuted after admission to the bar, the remarks of one of the most distin- guished men who have ever graced the American bar, whose own example has en- forced and illustrated their value, may be commended to the serious consideration of the student. " There are two very different methods of acquiring a knowledge of the laws of England," says Horace Binney (art. Edward Tilghman, Encyclopedia Americana, vol. xiv.), "and by each of them men have succeeded in public estimation to an almost equal extent. One of them, which may be called the old way, is a methodical study of the general system of law, and of its grounds and reasons, beginning with the fundamental law of estates and tenures, and pursuing the derivative branches in logical succession, and the collateral subjects in due order, by which the student acquires a knowledge of princi- ples that rule in all departments of the science, and learns to feel, as much as to know, what is in harmony with the system and what riot. The other is to get an out- line of the system by the aid of commenta- ries, and to fill it up by desultory reading of treatises and reports, according to the bent of the student, without much shape or certainty in the knowledge so acquired, until it is given by investigation in the courts of practice. A good deal of law may be put together by a facile or flexible man in the second of these modes, and the public are often satisfied ; but the profession itself knows the first, by its fruits, to be the most effectual way of making a great lawyer." GEORGE SHARSWOOD. 485 Under this view, the following course of reading may be pursued. The whole sub- ject is divided into heads, and the order of proceeding is suggested. All the books named may not be within the student's reach : some may be omitted, or others may be substituted. It may, however, be some- what irksome to pursue any one branch for too long a period unvaried. When that is found to be the case, the last five heads may be adopted as collateral studies, and pursued simultaneously with the first three. I. REAL ESTATE AND EQUITY. Hale's His- tory of the Common Law. Reeves' s History of the English Law. Robertson's Charles V. Hallntu'a Middle Ages. Dalrymple on Feudal Property. Wright on Tenures. Finch's Law. Doctor and Student. Little- ton's Tenures. Coke upon Littleton. Pres- ton on Estates. Fearne on Contingent Re- mainders. Sheppard's Touchstone. Pres- ton on Abstracts. Preston on Conveyancing. Jeremy on Equity. Story's Equity Juris- prudence. Powell on Mortgages. Bacon on Uses. Sanders on Uses and Trusts. Sugden on Powers. Sugden on Vendors and Pur- chasers. Powell on Devises. Jarman on Wills. II. PRACTICE, PLEADING, AND EVIDENCE. Sellon's Practice. Tidd's Practice. Ste- phen on Pleading. Williams's Saunders. Greenleaf on Evidence. Mitford's Equity Pleading. Barton's Suit in Equity. New- land's Chancery. Gresley on Equity Evi- dence. III. CRIMES AXD FORFEITURES. Ilale's Pleas of the Crown. Foster's Crown Law. Yorke on Forfeiture. Coke's Institutes, Part III. Russell on Crimes and Misde- meanors. Roscoe on Criminal Evidence. Chitty on Criminal Law. IV. NATURAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAW. Burlamaqui's Natural and Political Law. Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis. Rutherforth's Institutes. Vattel's Law of Nations. Byn- kershoeck's Questiones Publici Juris. Wic- quefort's Ambassador. Bynkershoeck de Foro Legatorum. Mackintosh's Discourse. Wheaton's History of International Law. Robinson's Admiralty Reports. Cases in the Supreme Court U. S. Dunlap's Admi- ralty Practice. V. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW. Coke's Insti- tutes, Part II. Hallam's Constitutional History. Wynne's Eunomus. De Lolme, with Stephens's Introduction. The Federal- ist. Rawle on the Constitution. Story on the Constitution. Baldwin's Constitutional Views. Upshur's Brief Enquiry. Calhoun's Works, vol. i. All the Cases on the Subject in the S. C. U. S. VI. CIVIL LAW. Butler's Ilorae Juridicae. Gibbon's History of the Rise and Fall, chap. 44. Justinian's Institutes. Taylor's Ele- ments. Mackeldy's Compendium. Col- quhoun's Summary. Domat's Civil Law. Savigny's Histoire du Droit Romain. Sa- vigny's Traite du Droit Romain. VII. PERSONS AND PERSONAL PROPERTY. Reeves on Domestic Relations. Bingham on Infancy and Coverture. Roper on Hus- band and Wife. Angell and Ames on Cor- porations. Pothier's Works. Smith on Contracts. Jones on Bailments. Story on Bailments. Story on Partnerships. Byles on Bills. Abbot on Shipping. Duer on In- surance. Emerigon Traite des Assurances. Boulay-Paty Cours de Droit Commercial. Story on the Conflict of Laws. VIII. EXECUTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS. Roper on Legacies. Toller on Executors. Williams on Executors. Lovelass's Law Disposal. Very few Report books are set down in this list as to be read in course. In his reg- ular reading, the student should constantly, where it is in his power, resort to and ex- amine the leading cases referred to and com- mented upon by his authors. In this way he will read them more intelligently, and they will be better impressed upon his memory. It is believed that the course thus sketched, if steadily and laboriously pursued, will make a very thorough lawyer. There is certainly nothing in the plan beyond the reach of any young man with industry and application, in a period of from five to seven years, with a considerable allowance for the interruptions of business and relaxation. He must have, however, certain fixed and regular hours for his law-studies, and he must not suffer the charms of a light litera- ture to allure him aside. The fruits of study cannot be gathered without its toil. In the law, a young man must be the archi- tect of his own character, as well as of his fortune. " The profession of the law," says Mr. Ritso, " is that, of all others, which im- poses the most extensive obligations upon those who have had the confidence to make choice of it; and, indeed, there is no other path of life in which the unassumed supe- riority of individual merit is more conspicu- ously distinguished according to the respec- tive abilities of the parties. The laurels that grow within these precincts are to be gathered with no vulgar hands : they resist the unhallowed grasp, like the golden branch with which the hero of the ^Eneid threw open the adamantine gates that led to Ely- sium.'' Sharswood's edition of Blackstone 1 s Com- mentaries, Vol. i., Inirod., Sect. /., On the Study of the Law, p. 37, Phila., 1859. 486 ELIHU BURRITT. ELIHU BURRITT, best known as " The Learned Blacksmith," born in New Britain, Connecticut, 1811, and apprenticed to a blacksmith about 1827, varied the labours of the forge by learning languages; in 1846 went to England, where he formed "The League of Universal Broth- erhood," whose object was " to employ all legitimate means for the abolition of war throughout the world," and was proprietor and editor of The Peace Advocate ; laboured zealously for the promotion of temperance, cheap ocean-postage, the abolition of Amer- ican slavery, and in peace congresses, re- turning to America, after serving for some years as United States Consul at Birming- ham, in 1853; died 1879. Mr. Burritt studied, with more or less thor- oughness, the following languages, inter alia: Amharic, Arabic, Basque, Bohemian, Breton-Celto, Chaldaic, Cornish, Danish, Dutch, Ethiopic, Flemish, French, Gaelic, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindustani, Hun- garian, Icelandic, Irish, Latin, Manx, Per- sian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Samar- itan, Sanskrit, Spanish, Swedish, Syriac, Turkish, Welsh. Periodicals and books published by Elihu Burritt : The Literary Geminae, monthly, English and French, Worcester, Mass., 1841 ; The Christian Citizen, weekly, AVorcester, Mass., 1841-51 ; Bond of Brotherhood, monthly, England, 1846-68; Sparks from the Anvil, England, 1847, new edit., Lond., 1864, 12mo; Voice from the Forge, 1848; Miscel- laneous Works, Lond., 1848, J6mo; Citizen of the World, Phila., 1850 ; Year Book of Nations, England, 1851 et seq. ; North and South, weekly, New Britain, Conn., 1855; Thoughts and Things at Home and Abroad, Bost., 1854; Compensated Emancipation, 1856, pamphlet ; Walk from London to John O'Groat's, Lond., 1864, 8vo, 1864, 12mo; Walk from London to Land's End and Back, 1865; Walks in the Black Country and its Green Border-land, 1866; Old Burchell's Pocket for the Children, 1866; Lectures and Speeches, 1866 ; The Mission of Great Sufferings, 1867; Jacob and Joseph, 1867; Information for English Emigrants to Amer- ica, 1868 ; Fireside Words, monthly, Eng- land, 1868 ; Prayers and Devotional Medi- tations from the Psalms, New York, 1869, 12mo; Voice from the Bnck Pews to the Pulpit and Front Seats, 1872 (anon.) ; Chil- dren of the Bible, 1873; Ten Minute Talks with Autobiography, Bost.. 1873, 12mo; Bible Subject Readings, 1873 (in MS.) ; In- troduction to An English Woman's Work among Workingmen, by Ellicft Hopkins, Phila., Amer. S. School Union, 1874, 12mo ; Sanskrit Hand-Book for the Fireside, Hart- ford, 1874; Hindustani Hand-Book, 1875 (in MS.); Persian Hand-Book, 1876 (in MS.) ; Turkish Hand-Book, 1876 (in MS.) ; Arabic Hand-Book, 1877 (in MS.) : Hebrew Hand-Book, 1877 (in MS.) ; History of the Farmington Family of Towns, 1877 (in MS.) ; Chips from Many Blocks, Toronto, 1878. Also The Proposition of a Universal Ocean Penny Postage, n. d., 8vo, pp. 4, Papers for the People, contributions to American Eclectic Review, etc. Such phi- lanthropists are worthy of all honour. ONE NICHE THE HIGHEST. The scene opens with a view of the great Natural Bridge in Virginia. There are three or four lads standing in the channel below, looking up with awe to that vast arch of unhewn rocks, which the Almighty bridged over those everlasting butments, "when the morning stars sang together." The little piece of sky spanning those meas- ureless piers is full of stars, although it is mid-day. It is almost five hundred feet from where they stand, up those perpendicular bulwarks of limestone to the key of that vast arch, which appears to them only the size of a man's hand. The silence of death is rendered more impressive by the little stream that falls from rock to rock down the channel. The sun is darkened, and the boys have uncovered their heads, as if standing in the presence chamber of the Majesty of the whole earth. At last this feeling begins to wear away; they look around them, and find that others have been there before them. They see the names of hundreds cut in the limestone butments. A new feeling comes over their young hearts, and their knives are in their hands in an instant. "What man has done, man can do," is their watch- word, while they draw themselves up, and carve their names a foot above those of a hundred full-grown men who have been there before them. They are all satisfied with this feat of physical exertion, except one, whose exam- ple illustrates perfectly the forgotten truth, that "there is no royal road to learning." This ambitious youth sees a name just above his reach, a name which will be green in the memory of the world when those of Alexander, Caesar, and Bonaparte shall rot in oblivion. It was the name of Washing- ton. Before he inarched with Braddock to that fatal field he had been there and left his name a foot above any of his predeces- sors. It was a glorious thought to write hia name side by side with that great father of his country. He grasps his knife with a firmer hand, and clinging to a little jutting ELIHU BURRITT. 487 crag he cuts agsiin into the limestone, about a foot above where he stands ; he then reaches up and cuts another for his hands. 'Tis a dangerous adventure ; but as he puts his feet and hands into those gains, and draws himself up carefully to his full length, he finds himself a foot above every name chronicled in that mighty wall. While his companions are regarding him with concern and admiration, he cuts his name in wide capitals, large and deep, in that flinty album. His knife is still in his hand, and strength in his sinews, and a now created aspiration in his heart. Again he cuts another niche, and again he carves his name in large cap- itals. This is not enough : heedless of the entreaties of his companions, he cuts and climbs again. The gradations of his ascend- ing scale grow wider apart. He measures his length at every gain he cuts. The voices of his friends wax weaker and weaker, till their words are finally lost on his ear. He now for the first time casts a look beneath him. Had that glance lasted a moment, that moment would have been his last. He clings with a convulsive shudder to his lit- tle niche in the rock. An awful abyss awaits his almost certain fall. He is faint with severe exertion, and trembling from the sudden view of the dreadful destruction to which he is exposed. His knife is worn half-way to the haft. lie can hear the voices, but not the words of his terror-stricken com- panions below! What a moment! what a meagre chance to escape destruction ! There is no retracing his steps. It is impossible to put his hands into the same niche with his feet, and retain his slender hold a mo- ment. His companions instantly perceive this new and fearful dilemma, and await his fall with emotions that " freeze their young blood." He is too high to ask for bis father and mother, his brothers and sis- ters, to come and witness or avert his de- struction. But one of his companions an- ticipates his desire. Swift as the wind he bounds down the channel, and the situation of the fated boy is told upon his father's hearthstone. Minutes of almost eternal length roll on, and there are hundreds standing in that rocky channel, and hundreds on the bridge above, all holding their breath, and await- ing the fearful catastrophe. The poor boy hears the hum of new and numerous voices both above and below. He can just distin- guish the tones of his father, who is shout- ing with all the energy of despair, "Wil- liam! William! Don't look down ! Your mother, and Henry, and Harriet, are all here praying for you ! Don't look down ! Keep your eyes towards the top !" The boy didn't look down. His eye is fixed like a flint towards heaven, and his young heart on him who reigns there. He grasps again his knife. He cuts another niche, and another foot is added to the hundreds that remove him from the reach of human help from below ! How carefully he uses his wasting blade ! How anxiously he selects the softest places in that vast pier ! How he avoids every flinty grain ! How he econ- omizes his physical powers, resting a mo- ment at each gain he cuts ! How every motion is watched from below ! There stand his father, mother, brother, and sister, on the very spot where, if he falls, he will not fall alone. The sun is half-way down in the west. The lad has made fifty additional niches in that mighty wall, and now finds himself directly under the middle of that vast arch of rock, earth, and trees. He must cut his way in a new direction, to get from this overhanging mountain. The inspiration of hope is in his bosom; its vital heat is fed by the increasing shout of hundreds perched upon cliffs, trees, and others who stand with ropes in their hands upon the bridge above, or with ladders below. Fifty more gains must be cut before the longest rope can reach him. His wasting blade strikes again into the limestone. The boy is emerging painfully foot by foot from under that lofty arch. Spliced ropes are in the hands oif those who are leaning over the outer edge of the bridge. Two minutes more, and all will be over. That blade is worn to the last half inch. The boy's head reels ; his eyes are starting from their sockets. His last hope is dying in his heart, his life must hang upon the next gain he cuts. That niche is his last. At the last flint gash he makes, his knife his faithful knife falls from his little nerveless hand and, ringing along the precipice, falls at his mother's feet. An involuntary groan of despair runs like a death-knell through the channel be- low, and all is still as the grave. At the height of nearly three hundred feet, the de- voted boy lifts his devoted heart and closing eyes to commend his soul to God. 'Tis but a moment there ! one foot swings off! ho is reeling, trembling toppling over into eternity ! Hark ! a shout falls on his ears from above I The man who is lying with half his length over the bridge has caught a glimpse of the boy's head and shoulders. Quick as thought, the noosed rope is within reach of the sinking youth. No one breathes. With a faint convulsive effort the swooning boy drops his arm into the noose. Darkness comes over him, and with the words " God !" and "mother!" whispered on his lips just loud enough to be heard in heaven, the tightening rope lifts him out of his last shal- 488 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. low niche. Not a lip moves while he is dangling over that fearful abyss ; but when a sturdy Virginian reaches down and draws up the lad, and holds him up in his arms before the tearful, breathless multitude such shouting! and such leaping and weep- ing for joy, never greeted a human being so recovered from the yawning gulf of eter- nity. Sparks from the Anvil. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, an eminent English novelist and essayist, was born at Calcutta in 1811 ; came in boy- hood to England, and was educated at the Charter-House School and at the University of Cambridge ; studied law at the Middle Temple (called to the bar 1848), and art at Home and other schools on the Continent ; found dead in his bed December 24, 1863. Works: Library Edition, London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1808-09, also 1874, 22 vols. r. cr. 8vo: vol. i., ii., Vanity Fair; iii., iv.. The History of Pendennis ; v., vi., The New- comes ; vii., The History of Henry Esmond ; viii., ix., The Virginians ; x., xi., The Ad- ventures of Philip; xii., The Paris Sketeh- Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh, and the Me- moirs of Mr. C. J. Yellowplush ; xiii., The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq., Written by Himself, with The History of Samuel Tit- marsh and the Great Iloggarty Diamond ; xiv., The Irish Sketch-Book, and Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo; xv., The Book of Snobs, Sketches and Travels in London, and Character Sketches; xvi., Burlesques: Novels by Eminent Hands, Adventures of Major Gahagan, Jeames's Diary, A Legend of the Rhine, Rebecca and Rowena, The History of the Next French Revolution. Cox's Diary ; xvii., Christmas Books of M. A. Titmarsh : Mrs. Perkins's Ball. Dr. Birch, Our Street, The Kickle- Luryson the Rhine. The Rose and the Ring; xviii., Ballads and Tales; xix., The Four Georges, The English Humourists of the Eighteenth Century ; xx., Roundabout Pa- pers, The Second Funeral of Napoleon ; xxi., Denis Duval, Lovel the Widower, and other Stories; xxii., Catherine, a Story, Little Travels, and The Fitzboodle Papers. Also Popular Edition, Smith, Elder & Co., 12 vols. cr. 8vo. Works, New York, Harper Brothers, 1809, 6 vols. 8vo. Works, New York, D. Appleton & Co , 1809-70, 12 vols. Works, Household Edition, Boston, Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869, vols. IGmo, and Mis- cellanies, 1869-70, 5 vols. 16mo. He edited The Cornhill Magazine from its commence- ment, Jan. 1800 until April, 1802. "In his subtle, spiritual ana'ysis of men and women, as we see them and live with them; in his power of detecting the enduring passions and desires, the strengths, the weaknesses, and the deceits of the race, from under the mask of ordi- nary worldly and town life, milking a d;indy or a dancing girl as real, as ' moving, delicate, and full of life,' as the most heroic incarnations of good and evil ; in his vitality and yet lightness of handling, doing it once and forever, and never a touch too little or too much, in these respects he stood and stands alone and matchless." DR. JOHN BROWN, author of " Rab and his Friends," etc. " Mr. Thackeray takes the satirical, the merely worldly, view of life and society; he can take no other. His characters are compounded of many vices and few if any virtues; or, if the virtues predominate, the result is a fool. He has never drawn a true and dignified woman, nor a gentle- man of the highest type. He has no conception of that simplicity in which nobleness of nature most largely consists." PRESIDENT C. C. FELTON, of Harvard University: N. Amer. Itevicw, Oct. I860, 580 (Everett's Lite of Washington). See also J. T. Fielda' yesterdays with Authors, Bost., 1862, Svo, and Tlinekeraynna, Lond., 1875, cr. 8vo. ; Se- lections from the Correspondence of the Late Mac- vey Napier, nq., Lond., 1879, Svo. THE BEST ENGLISH PEOPLE. Before long. Becky received not only " the best" foreigners (as the phrase is in our noble and admirable society slang), but some of the best English people too. I don't mean the most virtuous, or indeed the least virtuous, or the cleverest, or the stupidest, or the richest, or the best born, but ''the best," in a word, people about whom there is no question, such as the great Lady Fitz-Willis, that patron saint of Almack's, the great Lady Slowbore, the great Lady Grizzel Macbeth (she was Lady G.Glowry, daughter of Lord Grey ofGlowry), and the like. When the Countess of Fitz- Willis (her ladyship is of the King Street family, see Debrett and Burke) takes up a person, he or she is safe. There is no ques- tion about them any more. Not that my Lady Fitz-Willis is any better than anybody ehe~, being, on the contrary, a faded person, fifty-seven years of age, and neither hand- some, nor wealthy, nor entertaining ; but it is agreed on all sides that she is of the " best people." Those who go to her are of the best; and from an old grudge, probably to Lady Steyne (for whose coronet her lady- ship, then tlio youthful Georgiana Frederica, daughter of the Prince of Wales's favourite, the Earl of Portanslierry, had once tried), this great and famous leader of the fashion chose to acknowledge Mrs. Rawdon Craw- ley : made her a most marked curtsey at the assembly over which she presided, and not only encouraged her son, St. Kitts (his lordship got his place through Lord Steyne'a interest), to frequent Mr. Crawley's house, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 489 but asked her to her own mansion, and spoke to her twice in the most public and condescending manner during dinner. The important fact was known all over London that night. People who had been crying fie about Mrs. Cniwley were silent. Wen- ham, the wit and lawyer, Lord Steyne's right-hand man, went about everywhere praising her : some who had hesitated, came forward at once and welcomed her. Little Tom Toady, who had warned Southdown about visiting such an abandoned woman, now besought to be introduced to her. In a word, she was admitted to be among the " best" people. Ah, my beloved readers and brethren, do not envy poor Becky prema- turely glory like. This is said to be fugi- tive. It is currently reported that even in the very inmost circles they are no happier than the poor wanderers outside the zone ; and Becky, who penetrated into the very centre of fashion, and saw the great George IV. face to face, has owned since that there too was vanity. We must be brief in descanting upon this part of her career. As I cannot describe the mysteries of freemasonry, although I have a shrewd idea that it is a humbug ; so an uninitiated man cannot take it upon him- self to portray the great world accurately, and had best keep his opinions to himself, whatever they are. Becky has often spoken in subsequent years of this season of her life, when she moved among the very greatest circles of the London fashion. Her success excited, elated, and then bored her. At first no occupation was more pleasant than to invent and pro- cure (the latter a work of no small trouble and ingenuity, by the way, in a person of Mrs. llawdon Crawlev's very narrow means), to procure, we say, the prettiest new dresses and ornaments ; to drive to fine dinner par- tics, where she was welcomed by great peo- ple ; and from the tine dinner parties to fine assemblies, whither the same people came with whom she had been dining, whom she had met the night before, and would see on the morrow, the young men faultlessly ap- pointed, handsomely cravatted, with the neatest glossy boots and white gloves, the elders portly, brass-buttoned, noble-looking, polite, and prosy, the young ladies blonde, timid, and in pink, the mothers grand, beautiful, sumptuous, solemn, and in dia- monds. They talked in English, not in bad French, as they do in the novels. They talked about each other's houses, and char- acters, and families, just as the Joneses do about the Smiths. Becky's former ac- quaintances hated and envied her: the poor Avoman herself was yawning in spirit. " I wish I were out of it," she said to herself. " I Avould rather be a parson's wife, and teach a Sunday-school, than this 5 or a ser- geant's lady, and ride in the regimental waggon ; or, oh, how much gayer it would be to wear spangles and trousers, and dance before a booth at a fair." ''You Avould do it very well," said Lord Steyne, laughing. She used to tell the great man her ennuis and perplexities in her art- less way, they amused him. " Rawdon would make averygoodEcuyer, master of the ceremonies, what do you call him, the man in the large boots and the uniform, Avho goes round the ring crack- ing the whip ? lie is large, heavy, and of a military figure. I recollect," Becky con- tinued pensively, " my father took me to see a show at Brook Green Fair, when I was a child, and when we came home I made my- self a pair of stilts, and danced in the stu- dio to the wonder of all the pupils." " I should have liked to see it," said Lord Steyne. "I should like to do it now," Becky con- tinued. " How Lady Blinkey would open her eyes, and Lady Grizzel Macbeth would stare ! Hush, silence! There is Pasta beginning to sing." Becky always made a point of being conspicuously polite to the profes- sional ladies and gentlemen who attended at these aristocratic parties, of following them into the corners, where they sat in si- lence, and shaking hands Avith them, and smiling in the view of all persons. She was an artist herself, as she said very truly. There was a frankness and humility in the manner in Avhich she acknowledged her ori- gin, which provoked, or disarmed, or amused lookers-on, as the case might be. "How cool that woman is," said one ; u what airs of independence she assumes, where she ought to sit still, and be thankful if any- body speaks to her." " What an honest and good-natured soul she is," said another. " What an artful little minx," said a third. They were all right, very likely ; but Becky went her own way, and so fascinated the professional personages, that they would leave off their sore throats in order to sing at her parties, and give her lessons for nothing. Yes, she gave parties in the little house in Curzon Street. Many scores of carriages, Avith blazing lamps, blocked up the street, to the disgust of No. 100, who could not rest for the thunder of the knocking, and of 102, who could not sleep for envy. The gigantic footmen who accompanied the vehicles Avere too big to be contained in Becky's little hall, and Avere billeted off in the neighbour- ing public-houses, Avhence, when they Avere Avanted, call-boys summoned them from their beer. Some of the great dandies of London squeezed and trod on each other on the little 490 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. stairs, laughing to find themselves there ; and many spotless and severe ladies of ton were seated in a little drawing-room, listening to the professional singers, who were sing- ing according to their wont, and as if they wished to blow the windows down. And the day after there appeared, among the fashion- able reunions in the "Morning Post," a paragraph to the following effect : " Yester- day, Colonel and Mrs. Crawley entertained a select party at dinner at their house in May Fair. Their Excellencies the Prince and Princess of Peterwasachin, II. E. Papoosh Pasha, the Turkish Ambassador (attended by Kibob Bey. dragoman of the mission), the Marquess of Steyne, Eurl of Southdown, Mr. Pitt and Lady Jane Crawley, Mr. Wag, etc. After dinner Mrs. Crawley had an as- sembly, which was attended by the Duchess (Downger) of Stilton, Due de la Gruyere, Marchioness of Cheshire, Marchese AleV sandro Strachino, Comte de Brie, Baron Schapzugar, Chevalier Tasti, Countess of Slingstone, and Lady F. Macadam, Major- General and Lady G. Macbeth, and (2) Misses Macbeth, Viscount Paddington, Sir Horace Fogey, Hon. Sands Bedwin, Bob- bachy Bahawder," and an etc., which the reader may fill at his pleasure through a dozen close lines of small type. . . . How the Crawleys got the money which was spent upon the entertainments with which they treated the polite world was a mystery which gave rise to some conversa- tion at the time, and probably added zest to these little festivities. Some persons averred that Sir Pitt Crawley gave his brother a handsome allowance ; if he did, Becky's power over the baronet must have been ex- traordinary indeed, and his character greatly changed in his advanced age. Other parties hinted that it was Becky's habit to levy contributions on all her husband's friends: going to this one in tears with an account that there was an execution in the house : falling on her knees to that one, and declar- ing that the whole family must go to gaol, or commit suicide, unless such and such a bill could bs paid. Lord Southdown, it was said, had been induced to give many hun- dreds through these pathetic representations. Young Feltham, of the th Dragoons (and son of the firm of Tiler and Feltham, hatters and army accoutrement makers), and whom the Crawleys introduced into fashionable life, was also cited as one of Becky's victims in the pecuniary way. People declared that she got money from various simply disposed persons, under pretence of getting them con- fidential appointments under Government. Who knows what stories were or were not told of our dear and innocent friend? Cer- tain it is, that if she had had all the money which she was said to have begged or bor- rowed, or stolen, she might have capitalized, and been honest for life, whereas but this is advancing matters. The truth is, that by economy and good management by a sparing use of ready money, and by paying scarcely anybody people can manage, for a time at least, to make a great show with very little means: and it is our belief that Becky's much- talked-of parties, which were not, after all was said, very numerous, cost this lady very little more than the candles which lighted the walls. Stillbrook and Queen's Crawley supplied her with game and fruit in abun- dance. Lord Steyne's cellars were at her disposal, and that excellent nobleman's famous cook presided over her little kitchen, or sent by my lord's order the rarest delica- cies from their own. I protest it is quite shameful in the world to abuse a simple creature, as people of her time abuse Becky, and I warn the public against believing one- tenth of the stories against her. If every person is to be banished from society who runs into debt and cannot pay, if we are to be peering into everybody's private life, speculating upon their income, and cutting them if we don't approve of their expendi- ture, why, what a howling wilderness and intolerable dwelling Vanity Fair would bo. Every man's hand would be against his neighbour in this case, my dear sir, and the benefits of civilization would be done away with. We should be quarrelling, abusing, avoiding one another. Our houses would become caverns : and we should go in rags because we cared for nobody. Rents would go down. Parties wouldn't be given any more. All the tradesmen of the town would be bankrupt. Wine, wax-lights, comesti- bles, rouge, crinoline petticoats, diamonds, wigs, Louis-quatorze gimcracks, and old china, park hacks, and splendid high-step- ping carriage horses, all the delights of life, I say, would go to the deuce, if people did but act upon their silly principles, and avoid those whom they dislike and abuse. Whereas, by a little charity and mutual forbearance, things are made to go on pleasantly enough : we may abuse a man as much as we like, and call him the greatest rascal unhung, but do we wish to hang him therefore? No; we shake hands when we meet. If his cook is good, we forgive him, and go and dine with him ; and we expect he will do the same by us. Thus trade flour- ishes civilization advances; peace is kept; new dresses are wanted for new assemblies every week ; and the last year's vintage of Lafitte will remunerate the honest proprietor who reared it. Vanity Fair. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 491 THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE. Colleges, schools, and inns of court still have some respect for antiquity, and main- tain a great number of the customs and in- stitutions, of our ancestors, with which those persons who do not particularly regard their forefathers, or perhaps are not very well acquainted with them, have long since done away. A well-ordained workhouse or prison is much better provided with the appliances of health, comfort, and cleanliness, than a respectable Foundation School, a venerable College, or a learned Inn. In the latter place of residence men are contented to sleep in dingy closets, and to pay for the sit- ting-room and the cupboard, which is their dormitory, the price of a good villa and garden in the suburbs, or of a roomy house in the neglected squares of the town. The poorest mechanic in Spitalfields has a cis- tern and an unbounded supply of water at his command ; but the gentlemen of the inns of court, and the gentlemen of the universi- ties, have their supply of this cosmetic fetched in jugs by laundresses and bed- makers, and live in abodes which were erected long before the custom of cleanli- ness and decency obtained among us. There are individuals still alive who sneer at the people and speak of them with epithets of scorn. Gentlemen, there can be but little doubt that your ancestors were the Great Unwashed : and in the Temple especially, it is pretty certain, that, only under the great- est difficulties and restrictions, the virtue which has been pronounced to be next to godliness could have been practised at all. Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more than thirty years in the chambers under those occupied by Warring- ton and Pendennis, and who used to be awakened by the roaring of the shower-baths which those gentlemen had erected in their apartments, a part of the contents of which occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump's room, declared that the prac- tice was absurd, new-fangled, dandyfied folly, and daily cursed the laundress who slopped the staircase by which he had to pass. Grump, now much more than half a century old, had indeed never used the luxury in question. He had done without water very well, and so had our fathers before him. Of all those knights and baronets, lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are painted upon the walls of the famous hall of the Upper Temple, was thei'e no philanthropist good-natured enough to de- vise a set of Hiimmums for the benefit of the lawyers, his fellows and successors. The Temple historian makes no mention of such a scheme. There is Pump Court and Fountain Court, with their hydraulic appa- ratus, but one never heard of a bencher dis- porting in the fountain ; and can't but think how many a counsel learned in the law of old days might have benefited by the pump. Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have the Lamb and Flag and the Winged Horse for their ensigns, have attractions for persons who inhabit them, and a share of rough comforts and freedom, which men al- ways remember with pleasure. I don't know whether the student of law permits himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or indulges in poetical reminiscences as lie passes by historical chambers, and says, " Yonder Eldon lived, upon this site Coke mused upon Lyttleton, here Chitty toiled, here Barnwell and Alderson joined in their famous labours, here Byles composed his great work upon bills, and Smith com- piled his immortal leading cases, here Gus- tavus still toils, with Solomon to aid him :" but the man of letters can't but love the place which has been inhabited by so many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations as real to us at this day as the authors whose children they Avere, and Sir Roger do Cov- erly walking in the Temple Garden, and dis- coursing with Mr. Spectator about the beau- ties in hoops and patches who are sauntering over the grass, is just as lively a figure to me as old Samuel Johnson rolling through the fog with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on their way to Dr. Goldsmith's chambers in Brick Court; or Harry Fielding, with inked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dash- ing off articles at midnight for the Covent Garden Journal, while the printer's boy is asleep in the passage. If we could but get the history of a single day as it passed in any one of those four- storied houses in the dingy court where our friends Pen and AVarrington dwelt, some Temple Asmodeus might furnish us with a queer volume. There may be a great par- liamentary counsel on the ground floor, who drives up to Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too, becomes a gentleman, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless in some garret of the Inn ; lived by stealthy literature ; hoped, and waited, and sickened, and no clients came; exhausted his own means and his friends' kindness ; had to remonstrate humbly with duns, and to implore the kind- ness of poor creditors. Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face, when, behold, a turn of the wheel of fortune, and the lucky wretch in possession of one of those prodigious prizes which are sometimes drawn in the great lottery of the Bar. Many a better lawyer than himself does not make a fifth 492 CHARLES DICKENS. part of the income of his clerk, who a few months since could scarcely get credit for blacking for his master's unpaid boots. On the first floor, perhaps, you will have a ven- erable man whose name is famous, who has lived for half a century in the Inn, whose brains are full of books, and whose shelves nre stored with classical and legal lore. lie has lived alone all these fifty years, alone and for himself, amassing learning, and com- piling a fortune. He comes home now at night only from the club, where he has been dining freely, to the lonely chambers where he lives a godless old recluse. When he dies, his Inn will erect a tablet to his honour, and his heirs burn a part of his library. Would you like to have such a prospect for your old age, to store up learning and money and end PO? But we must not linger too long by Mr. Doomsday's door. Worthy Mr. Grump lives over him, who is also an ancient inhab- itant of the Inn, and who when Doomsday comes home to read Catullus, is sitting down with three steady seniors of his stand- ing, to a steady rubber at whist, after a dinner at which they have consumed their three steady bottles of Port. You may see the old boys asleep at the Temple Church of a Sunday. Attorneys seldom trouble them, and they have small fortunes of their own. On the other side of the third land- ing, where Pen and Warrington live, till long after midnight sits Mr. Paley, who took the highest honours, and who is a fel- low of his college, who will sit and read and note cases until two o'clock in the morning; who will rise at seven and be at the pleader's chambers as soon as they are open, where he will work until an hour before dinner- time; who will come home from Hall and read and note cases again until dawn next day, when perhaps Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his friend Mr. Warrington are returning from some of their wild expeditions. How differently employed Mr. Paley has been! lie has not been throwing himself away : he has only been bringing a great intellect la- boriously down to the comprehension of a mean subject, and in his fierce grasp of that, resolutely excluding from his mind all higher thoughts, all better things, all the wisdom of philosophers and historians, all the thoughts of poets ; all wit, fancy, reflexion, art, love, truth altogether, so that he may master that enormous legend of the law, which he proposes to gain his livelihood by expound- ing. Warrington and Paley had been com- petitors for university honours in former days, and had run each other hard ; and everybody said now that the former was wasting his time and energies, whilst all people praised Paley for his industry. There may be doubts, however, as to which was using his time best. The one could aff>rd time to think, and the other never could. The one could have sympathies, and do kindnesses : and the other must needs be always selfish. He could not cultivate a friendship or do a charity, or admire a work of genius, or kindle at the sight of beauty or the song of a sweet bird, he had no time, and no eyes for anything but his law-books. All was dark outside his reading-lamp. Love, and Nature, and Art (which is the expression of our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God) were shut out from him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night, he never thought but that he had spent the day profitably, and went to sleep alike thankless and remorseless. But he shuddered when he met his old companion Warrington on the stairs, and shunned him as one that was doomed to perdition. Pendennis, Chap. xxix. born at Landport, Portsmouth, England, 1812, after a short experience as an attor- ney's clerk, became a reporter for the daily press of London, and commenced his literary career by his Sketches of Life and Charac- ter, which first appeared in The Morning Chronicle, and were published collectively as Sketches by Boz, London, 1836, 2 vols. After a literary career of great prosperity (visiting the United States in 1841 and in 1867), he died suddenly in 1870. Works: Library edition, London, Chap- man & Hall, 1873, 30 vols. p. 8vo, with 546, the original, illustrations : vols. i., ii., Pick- wick Papers ; iii., iv., Nicholas Nickleby ; v., vi., Martin Chuzzlewit; vii., viii., Old Curiosity Shop, and Reprinted Pieces ; ix., x., Barnaby Rudge, and Hard Times; xi., xii., Bleak House; xiii., xiv., Little Dorrit; xv., xvi , Dombey and Son ; xvii., xviii., David Copperfield; xix., xx., Our Mutual Friend ; xxi., Sketches by Boz ; xxii., Oliver Twist; xxiii., Christmas Books; xxiv., A Tale of Two Cities ; xxv., Great Expecta- tions ; xxvi., Pictures from Italy, and Amer- ican Notes ; xx vii., Uncommercial Traveller; xxviii., Child's History of England ; xxix., Edwin Drood, and Miscellanies ; xxx., Christ- mas Stories, from " Household Words," etc. Chapman & Hall also issue an Illustrated Library edition in 30 vols. demy 8vo, 1874- 76, and a Household edition, in cr. 4 to vol- umes. There is also a " Charles Dickens" edition, London, 21 vols. in 16, p. 8vo. Houghton, Osgood & Co., Boston, publish an Illustrated Library edition, with Intro- ductions, Biographical and Historical, by CHARLES DICKEXS. 493 E. P. W hippie, 29 vols. cr. 8vo ; a now Household edition, illustrated, 56 vols. 16mo; a Riverside edition, 28 vols. cr. 8vo ; a Globe edition, 15 vols. 12mo; and a Large Paper edition (edition de luxe), 100 sets only, 55 vols. 8vo, 8275. D. Appleton & Co., New York, published a Household edition (com- pleted in 1878), 19 vols. bound in 8 vols. square 8vo ; Harper & Brothers, New York. Household edition in 16 vols. 8vo ; and Peterson & Brothers, of Philadelphia, sev- eral editions. To either of these editions should be ad- ded, Dickens Dictionary : A Key to the Characters and Principal Incidents in the Works of Charles Dickens, etc., Boston, Houghton, Osgood & Co., 12mo, pp. 590, and A Cyclopaedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens, Compiled and Alphabet- ically Arranged by F. G. De Fontaine, New York, E. J. Hale & Son, 1873, r. 8vo, pp. 564. See also Dickens's Life and Speeches, Lond.. r. 16mo. Dickens was the first edi- tor of The Daily News, established by him Jan. 1, 1846, and originated and edited Household Words, 1850-59, and All the Year Round, from April, 1859, until his death. " Dickens as a novelist and prose poet is to be classed in the front rank of the noble company to which he belongs. lie has revived the novel of genuine practical life, as it existed in the works of Fielding, Smollett, and Goldsmith; but at the same time has given to his materials an individual col- ouring and expression peculiarly his own. His characters, like those of his great exemplars, con- stitute a world of their own, whose truth to nature every reader instinctively recognizes in connection with their truth to Dickens. . . . Dickens's eye for the forms of things is as accurate as Fielding's, and his range of vision more extended; but he does not probe so profoundly into the heart of what he sees, and he is more led away from the simplicity of truth by a tricksy spirit of fantastic exaggeration. Mentally he is indisputably below Fielding; but in tenderness, in pathos, in that comprehensive- ness of sympathy which springs from a sense of brotherhood with mankind, he is indisputably above him." E. P.WHIPPLE : N.Amer. liev., Ixix. 392-393, Oct. 1849. " In the next place, the good characters of Mr. Dickens's novels do not seem to have a wholesome moral tendency. The reason is, that many of them all the author's favourites exhibit an excel- lence flowing from constitution and temperament, and not from the influence of moral or religious motive. They act from impulse, not from prin- ciple. They present no struggle of contending passions; they are instinctively incapable of evil; they are, therefore, not constituted like other hu- man beings ; and do not feel the force of tempta- tion as it assails our less perfect breasts. It is this that makes them unreal, ' Faultless monsters, that the world ne'er saw.' This is the true meaning of the ' simple heart,' which Mr. Dickens so perpetually eulogizes. In- deed they often degenerate into simpletons, some- times into mere idiots. . . . Another error is the undue prominence given to good temper and kind- ness, which are constantly made substitutes for all other virtues, and an atonement for the want of them ; while a defect in these good qualities is the signal for instant condemnation and the charge of hypocrisy. It is unfortunate, also, that Mr. Dick- ens so frequently represents persons with preten- sions to virtue as mere rogues and hypocrites, and never depicts any whose station as clergymen, or reputation for piety, is consistently adorned and verified." North, liritish Her:., vol. iv. See also his Life by John Forster, Lond., 1872-74, 3 vols. 8vo, 15th edit., 1875, and 1875, 2 vois. demy 8vo, and Forster' s Life of W. S. Landor ; Life by R. S. Mackenzie, D.C.L., 1870 ; Story of his Life, by Theodore Taylor ; Sketch of Dickens, by G. A. Sala ; George Briinley's Essays; JeaSTreson's Novels and Novelists ; Masson's Novelists and their Styles ; Buchanan's Master Spirits ; Home's New Spirit of the Age ; Fields's Yesterdays with Authors (an excellent book); Selections from the Correspondence of the Late Macvev Napier, Esq., Lond., 1879, 8vo; (London) Quart, Rev., Oct. 1837 : Edin. Rev., Oct. 1838, June, 1839, and March, 1843 ; Blackw. Mag., April, 1855; Brit. Quart. Rev., July, 1862; Westminster Rev., July and Oct. 1864, and April, 1865; Atlantic Mon., May, 1867; Contemp. Rev., Feb. 1869 (by George Stott). MR. PECKSNIFF. Mr. Pecksniff had clearly not expected them for hours to come ; for he was sur- rounded by open books, and was glancing from volume to volume, with a black-lead pencil in his mouth, and a pair of compasses in his hand, at a vast number of mathemat- ical diagrams, of such extraordinary shapes that they looked like designs for fireworks. Neither had Miss Charity expected them, for she was busied, with a capacious wicker basket before her, in making impracticable nightcaps for the poor. Neither had Miss Mercy expected them, for she was sitting upon her stool, tying on the oh, good gra- cious ! the petticoat of a large doll that she was dressing for a neighbour's child : really, quite a grown-up doll, which made it more confusing: and had its little bonnet dang- ling by the ribbon from one of Jier fair curls, to which she had fastened it, lest it should be lost or sat upon. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to conceive a family so thoroughly taken by surprise as the Peck- sniffs were on this occasion. " Bless my life !" said Mr. Pecksniff, look ing up, and gradually exchanging his ab- stracted face for one of joyful recognition. " Here already ! Martin, my dear boy, I am delighted to welcome you to my poor house !" 494 CHARLES DICKENS. With tliis kind greeting, Mr. Pecksniff fairly took him to his arms, and patted him several times upon the back with his right hand the while, as if to express that his feel- ings during the embrace were too much for utterance. " But here," he said, recovering, " are my daughters, Martin: my two only children, whom (if you ever saw them) you have not beheld ah, these sad family divisions ! since you were infants together. Nay, my dears, why blush at being detected in your every-day pursuits? We had prepared to give you the reception of a visitor, Martin, in our little room of state," said Mr. Peck- sniff, smiling, " but I like this better, 1 like this better!" Oh, blessed star of Innocence, wherever you may be, how did you glitter in your home of ether, when the two Miss Pecksniffs put forth each her lily hand, and gave the same, with mantling cheeks, to Martin ! How did you twinkle, as if fluttering with sympathy, when Mercy, reminded of the bonnet in her hair, hid her fair face .and turned her head aside: the while her gentle sister plucked it out, and smote her, with a sister's soft reproof, upon her buxom shoul- der ! "And how," said Mr. Pecksniff, turning round after the contemplation of these pas- sages, and taking Mr. Pinch in a friendly manner by the elbow, " how has our friend here used you, Martin?" " Very well, indeed, sir. We are on the best terms, I assure you." "Old Tom Pinch!" said Mr. Pecksniff, looking on him with affectionate sadness. " Ah ! It seems but yesterday that Thomas was a boy, fresh from a scholastic course. Yet years have passed, I think, since Thomas Pinch and I first walked the world to- gether !" Mr. Pinch could say nothing. He was too much moved. But he pressed his master's hand, and tried to thank him. " And Thomas Pinch and I," said Mr. Pecksniff, in a deeper voice, "will walk it yet, in mutual faithfulness and friendship. And if it comes to pass that either of us be run over, in any of those busy crossings which divide the streets of life, the other will convey him to the hospital in Hope, and sit beside his bed in Bounty ! Well, well, well!" he added in a happier tone, as he shook Mr. Pinch's elbow, hard. " No more of this! Martin, my dear friend, that you may be at home within these walls, let me show you how we live, and where. Come!" With that he took up a lighted candle, and, attended by his young relative, prepared to leave the room. At the door he stopped. " You'll bear us company, Tom Pinch ?'' Ah, cheerfully, though it had been to death, would Tom have followed him : glad to lay down his life for such a man ! " This," said Mr. Pecksniff, opening the door of an opposite parlour, "is the little room of state I mentioned to you. My girls have pride in it, Martin ! This," opening another door, " is the little chamber in which my works (slight things at best) have been concocted. Portrait of myself, by Spiller. Bust by Spoker. The latter is con- sidered a good likeness. I seem to recog- nize something about the left-hand corner of the nose, myself." Martin thought it was very like, but scarcely intellectual enough. Mr. Peck- sniff observed that the same fault had been found with it before. It was remarkable it should have struck his young relation too. He was glad to see he had an eye for art. " Various books, you observe," said Mr. Pecksniff, waving his hand towards the wall, "connected with our pursuit. I have scribbled myself, but have not yet published. Be careful how you come up-stairs. This," opening another door, " is my chamber. I read here when the family suppose I have retired to rest. Sometimes 1 injure my health, rather more than I can quite justify to myself by doing so ; but art is long, and time is short. Every facility you see for jotting down crude notions, even here." These latter words were explained by his pointing to a small round table, on which were a lamp, divers sheets of paper, a piece of India rubber, and a case of instruments: all put ready, in case an architectural idea should come into Mr. Pecksniff's head in the night; in which event he would in- stantly leap out of bed, and fix it for ever. Mr. Pecksniff opened another door on the same floor, and shut it again, all at once, as if it were a Blue Chamber. But before he had well done so, he looked smilingly around, and said, "Why not?" Martin couldn't say why not, because he didn't know anything at all about it. So Mr. Pecksniff answered himself, by throw- ing open the door, and saying : " My daughters' room. A poor first-floor to us, but a bower to them. Very neat. Very airy. Plants you observe; hyacinths ; books again ; birds." These birds, by the bye, comprise in all one staggering old spar- row without a tail, which had been borrowed expressly from the kitchen. " Such trifles as girls love are here. Nothing more. Those who seek heartless splendour, would seek here in vain." With that he led them to the floor above. " This," said Mr. Pecksniff, throwing wide the door of the memorable two-pair CHARLES DICKENS. 495 front, " is a room in which nn idea for a steeple occurred that I may one day give to the world. We work here, my dear Martin. Some architects have been bred in this room : a few, I think, Mr. Pinch?' 1 Tom fully assented ; and, what is more, fully believed it. " You see," said Mr. Pecksniff, passing the candle rapidly from roll to roll of paper, " some traces of our doings here. Salisbury Cathedral from the north. From the south. From the east. From the west. From the south-east. From the nor'-west. A bridge. An almshouse. A jail. A church. A powder-magazine. A wine- cellar. A portico. A summer-house. An ice-house. Plans, elevations, sections, every kind of thing. And this," he added, having by this time reached another large chamber on the same story, with four little beds in it, ''this is your room, of which Mr. Pinch here is the quiet sharer. A southern aspect; a charming prospect; Mr. Pinch's little library, you perceive ; everything agreeable and appropriate. If there is any additional comfort you would desire to have here at any time, pray mention it. Even to strangers far less to you, my dear Martin there is no restriction on that point." It was undoubtedly true, and may be stated in corroboration of Mr. Pecksniff, that any pupil had the most liberal permis- sion to mention anything in this way that suggested itself to his fancy. Some young gentlemen had gone on mentioning the very Kime thing for five years without ever being stopped. ' The domestic assistants," said Mr. Peck- sniff, " sleep above ; and that is all." After which, and listening complacently as he went to the encomiums passed by his young friend on the arrangements generally, he led the way to the parlour again. Martin Chuzzlewit, Chap. v. SCROOGE'S CHRISTMAS. " I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge ; " I don't know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a babv. Hallo! Whoop! Hallo here!" He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer ; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding ; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious! liunning to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold ; cold, piping for the blood to dance to ; golden sunlight ; heavenly sky ; sweet fresh air ; merry bells. Oh, glorious ! glorious ! "What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. "Eh?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. "What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge. " To-day," replied the boy. " Why, CHRIST- MAS-DAY." "It's Christmas-Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow !" " Hallo!" returned the boy. " Do you know the Poulterer's in the next street but one, at the corner?" Scrooge in- quired. " I should hope I did," replied the lad. "An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy ! Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there ? Not the little prize Turkey : the big one?" " What, the one as big as me ?" returned the boy. " What a delightful boy !" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk tohiin. Yes, my buck!" " It's hanging there now," replied the boy. "Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it." " WALK-ER !" exclaimed the boy. " No, no," said Scrooge, " I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here, that I may give them the directions where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes, and I'll give half- a-crown !" The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast. " I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. " He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be!" The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one ; but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street door, ready for the coming of the poul- terer's man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye. " I shall love it as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his hand. " I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face! It's a wonderful knocker! Here's the Turkey! Hallo! Whoop ! How are you? Merry Christmas !" It was a turkey! lie never could have 496 CHARLES DICKENS. stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax. " Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge. " You must have a cab." The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the Tur- key, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be ex- ceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried. Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much ; and shaving requires attention even when you don't dance while you are at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied. He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his hands be- hind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good- humoured fellows said "Good-morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you !" And Scrooge said often afterward, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears. . . . He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into kitchens of houses, and up to the win- dows ; and found that everything could give him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk that anything could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps toward his nephew's house. lie passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it. "Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge. "Nice girl! Very." " Yes, sir." "Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge. " He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll show you up-stairs, if you please." " Thank'ee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. " I'll go in here, my dear." He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array) ; for these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right. " Fred !" says Scrooge. Dear heart alive, how his niece by mar- riage started. Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have done it, on any account. " Why, bless my soul !" cried Fred. "Who's that?" " It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?" Let him in ! It's a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when Aecame. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful una- nimity, wonderful happiness. But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late. That was the thing he had set his heart upon. And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might sec him come into the Tank. His hat was off before he opened the door ; his comforter too. lie was on his stool in a jiffy, driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o'clock. " Hallo !'' growled Scrooge, in his accus- tomed voice as near as he could feign it. " What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?" " I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. " I am behind my time." " You are !" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please." " It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. " It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry, yes- terday, sir." " Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge, " I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he stag- gered back into the Tank again : " and there- fore I am about to raise your salary !" Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait waistcoat. ' A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mis- taken, as he clapped him on the back. " A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year ! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist CHARLES DICKENS. 497 your struggling family, and Ave will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a Christ- inas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob ! Make up the fires and buy another coal-scuttle be- fore you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!" Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them ; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind any way, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed : and that was quite enough for him. lie had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle ever afterward ; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowl- edge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us ! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God blcs* Us, Every One ! Christmas Carol, Stave 5. MATRIMONY. While the old gentleman was thus en- gaged, a very buxom-looking cook, dressed in mourning, who had been bustling about in the bar, glided into the room, and bestow- ing many smirks of recognition upon Sam, silently stationed herself at the back of his father's chair, and announced her presence by a slight cough : the which, being disre- garded, was followed by a louder one. " Hallo!'' said the elder Mr. Weller, drop- ping the poker as he looked round, and hastily drew his chair away. u Wot's the matter now?" " Have a cup of tea, there's a good soul," replied the buxom female, coaxingly. "I von't," replied Mr. Weller, in a some- what boisterous manner. 'Til see you '' Mr. Weller hastily checked himself, and added in a low tone, " furder fust.' 1 " Oh, dear, dear ! How adversity does change people !" said the lady, looking up- wards. '' It's the only thing 'twixt this and the doctor as shall change my condition," mut- tered Mr. Weller. " I really never saw a man so cross," said the buxom female. 32 " Never mind. It's all for my own good ; vich is the reflection vith wich the penitent school-boy comforted his feelin's ven they flogged him," rejoined the old gentleman. The buxom female shook her head with a compassionate and sympathizing air ; and, appealing to Sam, inquired whether his father really ought not to make an effort to keep up, and not to give way to that lowness of spirits? . . . "As I don't rekvire any o' your conversa- tion just now, mum, vill you have the good- ness to re-tire?" inquired Mr. Weller, in a grave and steady voice. " Well. Mr. Weller," said the buxom fe- male, " I'm sure I only spoke to you out of kindness." " Wery likely, mum," replied Mr. Weller. " Samivel, show the lady out, and shut the door arter her." This hint was not lost upon the buxom female ; for she at once left the room, and slammed the door behind her, upon which Mr. Weller, senior, falling back in his chair in a violent perspiration, said : " Sammy, if I wos to stop here alone vtm veek only vun veek, my boy that ere 'ooman 'ud marry me by force and wiolence afore it was over." 'Wot! Is she so wery fond on you?" inquired Sam. 'Fond!" replied his father, "I can't keep her avay from me. If I was locked up in a fire-proof chest, vith a patent Brahmin, she'd find means to get at me, Sammy." " Wot a thing it is, to be so sought arter !" observed Sam, smiling. "I don't take no pride out on it, Sammy," replied Mr. Weller, poking the fire vehe- mently: '' it's a horrid sitiwation. I'm ac- tiwally drove out o' house and home by it. The breath was scarcely out o' your poor mother-in-law's body ven vun old 'ooman sends me a pot o' jam, and another a pot o' jelly, and another brews a blessed large jug o' camomile-tea, vich she brings in vith her own hands." Mr. Weller paused with an aspect of intense disgust, and, looking round, added in a whisper : " They wos all widders, Sammy, all on 'em, 'cept the camomile-tea one, as wos a single young lady o' fifty-three." Sam gave a comical look in reply, and the old gentleman having broken an obstinate lump of coal, with a countenance expressive of as much earnestness and malice as if it had been the head of one of the widows last mentioned, said : " In short, Sammy, I feel that I ain't safe anyveres but on the box." " How are you safer there than anyveres else?" interrupted Sam. " 'Cos a coachman's a privileged indiwid- ual," replied Mr. Weller, looking fixedly at 498 HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. his son. "'Cos n coachman may do vithout suspicion wot other men may not; 'cos a coachman may be on the wery amicablest terms with eighty mile o' females, and yet nobody think that he ever means to marry any vun among 'em. And vot other man can say the same, Sammy?" "Veil, there's somethin' in that," said Sam. " If your gov'ner had been a coachman," reasoned Mr. Weller, "do you suppose as that 'ere jury 'ud ever ha' conwicted him, s'posin' it possible as the matter could ha' gone to that extremity? They durstn't ha' done it." " Wy not?" said Sam, rather despairingly. "Wy not?" rejoined Mr. Weller; "'cos it 'ud ha' gone agin their consciences. A reg'- Jar coachman's a sort o' con-nectin' link be- twixt singleness and matrimony, and every practicable man knows it." " Wot! You mean they're gen'ral fav'rites, and nobody takes advantage on 'em, p'raps?" said Sam. His father nodded. " How it ever come to that 'ere pass," re- sumed the parent Weller, " I can't say. Wy it is that long-stage coachmen possess such insiniwations, and is always looked up to, a-dored I may say, by every young 'ooman in every town he vurks through, I don't know. I only know that so it is. It's a reg'lation of natur, a dispensary, as your poor mother-in-law used to say." "A dispensation," said Sam, correcting the old gentleman. "Wery good, Samivel, a dispensation if you like it better," returned Mr. Weller: "/ call it a dispensary, and it's always writ up so at the places vere they gives you physic for nothin' in your own bottles; that's all." With these words, Mr. Weller re-filled and re-lighted his pipe, and once more sum- moning up a meditative expression of coun- tenance, continued as follows: " Therefore, my boy, as I do not see the adwisability o' stoppin' here to be marri'd vether I vant to or not, and as at the same time I do not vish to separate myself from them interestin' members o' society alto- gether, I have come to the determination o' drivin' the Safety, and puttin' up vunce more at the Bell Savage, vich is my natural born element, Sammy." Pickwick, Chap. 52. HENRY THEODORE TUCK- ERMAN, a poet, essayist, critic, and biographer, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, 1813, visited Europe in 1833-34, and again, 1837-38, and 1852, removed to the city of New York in 1845, and died there December 17, 1871. The Italian Sketch-Book, by an American, Phila., 1835, 12mo, 3d edit,, New York, 1849, 12mo; Isabel, or Sicily, a Pilgrimage, Phila., 1839, 12mo, Lond., 1846, 12mo, New York, 1852, 12mo; llambles and Reveries, 1841, 12mo; Thoughts on the Poets, New York, 1846, 12mo, Lond., 1849, fp. 8vo, New York, 1851, 12mo, in German, Marburg, 1856, 12mo; Artist Life, or, Sketches of [23] American Painters, New York, 1847, 12mo; Characteristics of Literature Illus- trated by the Genius of [22J Distinguished Men, Phila., 1849, 12mo: Second Series. 1851, 12mo; The Optimist, a Series of Es- says, New York, 1850, 12rno; The Life of Silas Talbot, New York, 1850, 18mo ; Poems, Boston, 1851, 16mo; A Memorial of Horatio Greenough, New York, 1853, 12mo ; Mental Portraits, or, Studies of Character, Lond.. 1853, 12mo ; Leaves from the Diary of a Dreamer, Lond.. 1853, 12mo (anon.) ; A Month in England, New York, 1853, 12mo : Essays, Biographical and Critical, or Studies of Character, Bost., 1857, 8vo (includes all of the Mental Portraits save Irving and Hawthorne, with other Papers) ; The Char- acter and Portraits of Washington, Illus- trated with all the Prominent Portraits, New York, 1859, 4to ; The Rebellion : its Latent Causes and True Significance, New York, 1861, sq. 16rno, pp. 48; A Sheaf of Verse Bound for the Fair, New York, 1864. p. 8vo, pp. 48 ; America and her Commenta- tors, with a Critical Sketch of Travel in the United States, New York, 1864, cr. 8vo ; The Criterion, New York, 1866, 16mo, Lond.; The Collector, 1868, cr. 8vo ; Maga Papers about Paris, New York, 1867, 16mo ; Book of the Artists: American Artist Life, New York, 1868, r. 12mo, large paper, 150 copies, r. 8vo, largest paper, with photographs, 25 copies, 4to, and 30 Photographic Portraits for illustration, r. 8vo ; Memoir of John Pendleton Kennedy, 1871, 2 vols. 8vo. Also minor publications, for which, and notices of preceding, see Allibone's Critical Diction- ary of English Literature, iii. 2466-67. " No more interesting and instructive books cnn be found in our literature thnn Tuckennan's Thoughts on the Poets, The Optimist, Character- istics of Literature, and Essays, Biographical and Critical. The two latter would be excellent books for the higher clas;-es in schools; and the four should be in every district library in the land." C. D. CLEVELAND : Compend. of Amer. Lit., 1859, 675, n. " He is an agreeable Essayist and a pleasing poet. The tendencies of his mind are strongly opposed to the false and chilling philosophy which sees nothing good but in material things which have a market value." CHARLES KNIGHT: Ifa/f- Jluurs with the Best Aitthurs, Third Quarter, Thirty HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. 499 Fourth IFreZ-, ]STo. 232 : A Defence of Enthusiasm (by II. T. Tuckerman). A DEFENCE OF ENTHUSIASM. Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm ; and, whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest senti- ment. For what is the human mind, how- ever enriched with acquisitions or strength- ened by exercise, unaccompanied by an ardent and sensitive heart? Its light may illumine, but it cannot inspire. It may shed a cold and moonlight radiance upon the path of life, but it warms no flower into bloom ; it sets free no ice-bound fountains. Dr. John- son used to say, that an obstinate rationality prevented him from being a Papist. Does not the same cause prevent many of us from unburdening our hearts and breathing our devotions at the shrines of Nature? There are influences which environ human- ity too subtle for the dissecting-knife of reason. In our better moments we are clearly conscious of their presence, and if there is any barrier to their blessed agency it is a formalized intellect. Enthusiasm, too. is the very life of gifted spirits. Ponder the lives of the glorious in art or literature through all ages. What are they but rec- ords of toil and sacrifices supported by the earnest hearts of their votaries? Dante composed his immortal poem amid exile and suffering, prompted by the noble ambition of vindicating himself to posterity: and the sweetest angel of his paradise is the object of his early love. The best countenances the old painters have bequeathed to us are those of cherished objects intimately associ- ated with their fame. The face of Raphael's mother blends with the angelic beauty of all his Madonnas. Titian's daughter and the wife of Corregio again and again meet in their works. Well does Foscolo call the fine arts the children of love. The deep interest with which the Italians hail gifted men inspires them to the mightiest efforts. Na- tional enthusiasm is the great nursery of genius. When Cellini's statue of Perseus was first exhibited on the Piazzi at Florence it was surrounded for days by an admiring throng, and hundreds of tributary sonnets were placed upon its pedestal. Petrarch was crowned with laurel at Rome for his poetical labours, and crowds of the unlet- tered may still be seen on the Mole at Na- ples, listening to a reader of Tasso. Reason is not the only interpreter of life. The fountain of action is in the feelings. Relig- ion itself is but a state of the affection. I once met a beautiful peasant woman in the valley of the Arno, and asked the number of her children. "I have three here, and two in Paradise," she calmly replied, with a tone and manner of touching and grave simplicity. Her faith was of the heart. Constituted as human nature is, it is in the highest degree natural that rare powers should be excited by voluntary and sponta- neous appreciation. Who would not feel urged to high achievement if he knew that every beauty his canvas displayed, or every perfect note he breathed, or every true in- spiration of his lyre, would find an instant response in a thousand breasts? Lord Brougham calls the word " impossible" the mother-tongue of little souls. What, I ask. can counteract self-distrust, and sustain the higher efforts of our nature, but enthusiasm ? More of this element would call forth the genius and gladden the life of New England. While the mere intellectual man speculates, and the mere man of acquisition cites .au- thority, the man of feeling acts, realizes, puts forth his complete energies. His earnest and strong heart will not let his mind rest : he is urged by an inward impulse to embody his thoughts. He must have sympathy ; he must have results. And nature yields to the magician, acknowledging him as her child. The noble statue comes forth from the mar- ble, the speaking figure stands out from the canvas, the electric chain is struck in the bosoms of his fellows. They receive his ideas, respond to his appeal, and reciprocate his love. Constant supplies of knowledge to the in- tellect, and the exclusive culture of reason, may, indeed, make a pedant and logician ; but the probability is, these benefits, if such they are, will be gained at the expense of the soul. Sentiment, in its broadest accep- tation, is as essential to the true enjoyment and grace of life as mind. Technical infor- mation, and that quickness of apprehension which New Englanders call smartness, are not so valuable to a human being as sensi- bility to the beautiful, and a spontaneous appreciation of the divine influences which fill the realms of vision, of sound, and the world of action and feeling. The tastes, affections, and sentiments are mov> abso- lutely the man than his talents or acquire- ments. And yet it is by and through the latter that we are apt to estimate the charac- ter, of which they are, at best, fragmentary evidences. It is remarkable that, in the New Testament, allusions to the intellect are so rare, while the "heart" and the "spirit we are of" are ever appealed to. Sympathy is the " golden key" which unlocks the treas- ures of wisdom f and this depends upon vividness and warmth of feeling. It is there- fore that Tranio advises, " in brief, sir, study what you most effect." A code of 503 HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. etiquette may refine the manners, but the ' heart of courtesy" which, through the world, stamps the natural gentleman, can never be attained but through instinct ; and, in the same manner, those enriching and noble sentiments which are the most beauti- ful and endearing of human qualities, no process of mental training will create. To what end is society, popular education, churches, and all the machinery of culture, if no living truth is elicited which fertilizes as well as enlightens? Shakspere undoubt- edly owed his marvellous insight into the human soul to his profound sympathy with man. lie might have conned whole libra- ries on the philosophy of the passions; he might have coldly observed facts for years, and never have conceived of jealousy like Othello's, the remorse of Macbeth, or love like that of Juliet. When the native senti- ments are once interested, new facts spring to light. It was under the excitement of wonder and love that Byron, tossed on the lake of Geneva, thought that "Jura an- swered from her misty shroud,'' responsive to the thunder of the Alps. With no eye of mere curiosity did Bryant follow the lonely flight of the water-fowl. Veneration prompted the inquiry, " Whither 'midst falling dew While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way ?" Sometimes, in musing upon genius in its simpler manifestations, it seems as if the great act of human culture consisted chiefly in preserving the glow and freshness of the heart. It is certain that, in proportion as its merely mental strength and attainment take the place of natural sentiment, in proportion as we acquire the habit of receiving all im- pressions through the reason, the teachings of nature grow indistinct and cold, however it may be with those of books. That this is the tendency of the New England philoso- phy of life and education, I think can scarcely be disputed. I have remarked that some of our most intelligent men speak of mastering a subject, or comprehending a book, of settling a question, as if those pro- cesses involved the whole idea of human cul- tivation. The reverse of all this is chiefly desirable. It is when we are overcome, and the pride of intellect vanquished before the truth of nature, when, instead of coming to a logical decision, we are led to bow in pro- found reverence before the mysteries of life, when we are led back to childhood, or up to God, by some powerful revelation of the sage or minstrel, it is then our natures grow. To this end is all art. Exquisite vocalisin, beautiful statuary and painting, and all true literature, have not for their great object to employ the ingenuity of prying critics, or furnish the world with a set of new ideas, but to move the whole nature by the perfec- tion and truthfulness of their appeal. There is a certain atmosphere exhaled from the in- spired page of genius which gives vitality to the sentiments and through these quickens the mental powers. And this is the chief good of books. Were it otherwise, those of us who have bad memories might despair of advancement. I have heard educated New Englanders boast of the quantity of poetry they have read in a given time, as if rich fancies and elevated thoughts are to be de- spatched as are beefsteaks on board our steamboats. Newspapers are estimated by their number of square feet, as if this had any- thing to do with the quality of their contents. Journeys of pleasure are frequently deemed delightful in proportion to their rapidity, without reference to the new scenery or society they bring into view. Social gather- ings are not seldom accounted brilliant in the same degree that they are crowded. Such would not be the case, if what the phrenologists call the effective powers were enough considered ; if the whole soul, in- stead of the "meddling intellect" alone, was freely developed ; if we realized the truth thus expressed by a powerful writer: "Within the entire circle of our intellectual constitution, we value nothing but emotion ; it is not the powers, but the fruit of those powers, in so much feeling of a lofty kind as they will yield." One of the most obvious consequences of these traits appears in social intercourse. Foreigners have ridiculed certain external habits of Americans, but these were always confined to the few. and where most preva- lent have yielded readily to censure. There are incongruities of manners still more ol>- jectionable, because the direct exponents of character, and resulting from the philosophy of life. Delicacy and self-respect are the fruits not so much of intellect as of sensi- bility. We are considerate towards others in proportion as our own consciousness gives us insight. The sympathies are the best teachers of politeness ; and these are ever blunted by an exclusive reliance on percep- tion. Nothing is more common than to find educated New Englanders unconsciously in- vading the privacy of others, to indulge their idle curiosity, or giving a personal turn to conversation, in a way that outrages all moral refinement. This is observable in so- ciety professedly intellectual. It is scarcely deemed rude to allude to one's personal ap- pearance, health, dress, circumstances, or even most sacred feelings, although neither intimacy nor confidence lends the slightest HENRY THEODORE TUCKERMAN. 501 authority to the proceeding. Such violation of what is due to others is move frequently met with among the cultivated of this than any other country. It is comparatively rare here to encounter a natural gentleman. A New England philosopher, in a recent work [Emerson's Essays, Second Series], betrays no little fear of excess of fellowship. In the region he inhabits there is ground for the apprehension. No standard of manners will correct the evil. The peasantry of Southern Europe, and the most ignorant Irishwoman, often excel educated New Eng- landers in genuine courtesy. Their richer feelings teacli them how to deal with others. Reverence and tenderness (not self-posses- sion and intelligence) are the hallowed ave- nues through which alone true souls come together. The cool satisfaction with which character is analyzed and defined in New England is an evidence of the superficial test which observation alone affords. A Yankee dreams not of the world which is revealed only through sentiment. Men, and especially women, shrink from unfolding the depths of their natures to the cold and pry- ing gaze which aims to explore them only as an intellectual diversion. It is the most pre- sumptuous tiling in the world for an unadul- terated New Englander, however 'cute and studious, to pretend to know another human being, if nobly endowed ; for he is the last person to elicit latent and cherished emo- tions, lie may read mental capacities and detect moral tendencies, but no familiarity will unveil the inner temple ; only in the vestibule will his prying step be endured. Another effect of this exaggerated esti- mate of intellect is, that talent and character are often regarded as identical. This is a fatal but very prevalent error. A gift of mind, let it ever be remembered, is not a grace of soul. Training, or native skill, will enable any one to excel in the machinery of expression. The phrase artistical. whether in reference to statuary, painting, literature, or manners, implies only aptitude and dex- terity. Who is not aware, for instance, of the vast difference between a merely scien- tific knowledge of music, and that enlist- ment of the sympathies in the heart which makes it the eloquent medium of passion, sentiment, and truth ? And in literature, how often do we find the most delicate per- ception of beauty in the writer, combined with a total want of genuine refinement in the man ! Art is essentially imitative ; and its value, as illustrative of character, de- pends not upon the mental endowments, but upon the moral integrity of the artist. The idea of talent is associated more or less with the idea of success: and on this account the lucrative creed of the New Englander recog- nizes it with indiscriminate admiration ; but there is a whole armory of weapons in the human bosorn of more celestial temper. It is a nobler and a happier thing to be capa- ble of self-devotion, loyalty, and generous sympathies, to cherish a quick sense of honour, and to find absolute comfort only in being lost in another, than to have an eve for colour, whereby the rainbow can be transferred to canvas, or a felicity of dic- tion that can embalm the truest pictures in immortal numbers. Not only or chiefly in what he does resides the significance of a human being. His field of action find the availability of his powers depend upon health, education, self-reliance, position, and a thousand other agencies ; what he is results from the instincts of his soul, and for these alone he is truly to be loved. It is observable among New Englanders, that an individual's qualities are less frequently re- ferred to as a test of character than his per- formances. It is very common for them to sacrifice social and private to public charac- ter, friendship to fame, sympathy to opinion, love to ambition, and sentiment to propriety. There is an obvious disposition .among them to appraise men and women at their market rather than their intrinsic value. A lucky speculation, a profitable invention, a salable book, an effective rhetorical effort, or a sa- gacious political ruse some fact, which proves at best only adroitness and good fortune is deemed the best escutcheon to lend dignity to life, or hang as a lasting me- morial upon the tomb. Those more inti- mate revelations and ministries which deal with the inmost gifts of mind and warmest emotions of the heart, and through which alone love and truth are realized, are but sel- dom dreamt of in their philosophy. There is yet another principle which seems to me but faintly recognized in the New England philosophy of life, however it may be occasionally cultivated as a department of literature; and yet it is one which we should deem essentially dear to man, a glori- ous endowment, a crowning grace of human- ity. It is that principle through which we commune with all that is lovely and grand in the universe, which mellows the pictures of memory into pensive beauty, and irradi- ates the visions of hope with unearthly brightness; which elevates our social ex- perience by the glow of fancy, and exhibits scenes of perfection to the soul that the senses can never realize. It is the poetical principle. If this precious gift could be wholly annihilated amid the commonplace and the actual, we should lose the interest of life. The dull routine of daily experi- ence, the tame reality of things, would weigh like a heavy and permanent cloud upon our 502 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. hearts. But the office of this divine spirit is to throw a redeeming grace around the objects and the scenes of being. It is the breeze that lifts the weeds on the highway of time, and brings to view the violets be- neath. It is the holy water which, sprinkled on the mosaic pavement of life, makes vivid its brilliant tints. It is the mystic harp upon whose strings the confused murmur of toil, gladness, and grief loses itself in music. But it performs a yet higher function than that of consolation. It is through the poet- ical principle that wo form images of excel- lence, a notion of progress that quickens every other faculty to rich endeavour. All great men are so, chiefly through unceasing effort to realize in action, or embody in art. sentiments of deep interest or ideas of beauty. As colours exist in rays of light, so does the ideal in the soul, and life is the mighty prism which refracts it. Shelley maintains that it is only through the imagi- nation that we can overleap the barriers of self, and become identified with the univer- sal and the distant, and, therefore, that this principle is the true fountain of benevolent affections and virtue. I know it is some- times said that the era of romance has passed : that with the pastoral, classic, and chival- rous periods of the world, the poetic element died out. But this is manifestly a great error. The forms of society have greatly changed, and the methods of poetical devel- opment are much modified, but the princi- ple itself is essential to humanity. No! mechanical as is the spirit of the age, and wide as is the empire of utility, as long as the stars appear nightly in the firmament, and golden clouds gather around the de- parting sun; as long as we can greet the innocent smile of infancy and the gentle eye of woman ; as long as this earth is vis- ited by visions of glory and dreams of love and hopes of heaven ; while life is encir- cled by mystery, brightened by affection, and solemnized by death, so long will the poetical spirit be abroad, with its fervent aspirations and deep spells of enchantment. Again, it is often urged that the poetical spirit belongs appropriately to a certain epoch of life, and that its influence natur- ally ceases with youth. But this can only be the case through self-apostasy. The poetical element was evidently intended to mingle with the Whole human experience; not only to glow in the breast of youth, but to dignify the thought of manhood, and make venerable the aspect of age. Its pur- pose clearly is to relieve the sternness of neces- sity, to lighten the burden of toil, and throw sacredness and hope even around suffering, as the old painters were wont to depict groups of cherubs above their martyrdoms. Nor can I believe that the agency of this principle is so confined and temporary as many suppose. It is true our contemplation of the beautiful is of short duration, our flights into the ideal world brief and occa- sional. We can but bend in passing at the altar of beauty, and pluck a flower hastily by the wayside ; but may there not be an instinct which eagerly appropriates even these transitory associations? May they not be unconsciously absorbed into the es- sence of our life, and gradually refine and exalt the spirit within us? I cannot think that such rich provision for the poetic sym- pathies is intended for any casual or indif- ferent end. llather let us believe there is a mystic language in the flowers, and a deep meaning in the stars, that the transparency of the winter air and the long sweetness of summer twilight pass, witli imperceptible power, over the soul : rather let us cherish the thought that the absorbing emotions of love, the sweet excitement of adventure, and the impassioned solemnity of grief, with a kind of spiritual chemistry, combine and purify the inward elements into nobler ac- tion and more perfect results. New England Philosophy : An Essay. HENRY WARD BEECHER, D.D., a son of the Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher, was born at Litchfield, Conn., 1813, graduated at Amherst College, 1834, was settled as a Presbyterian minister at Lawrenceburg. In- diana, 1837-39, and at Indianapolis, 1839 to 1847, when he became pastor of the Ply- mouth Church, in Brooklyn, New York, an organization of Orthodox Congregational believers, which post he still (1879) occu- pies. Among his publications are Lectures to Young Men, Bost., 1850; Industry and Idleness, Phila., 1850, 18mo; The Star Pa- pers, New York, 1855, 12mo, Second Series, 1858, 12mo, -new edit., 1873, 12mo; Nor- wood, or Village Life in New England, New York, 18C7, 12mo; Pleasant Talk about Fruits, Flowers, and Farming, New York, 12mo ; Eyes and Ears, 12mo ; Life of Jesus the Chris't, vol. i., New York, 4to and 8vo. Many volumes of his Sermons, Lectures, Prayers, etc., have been published by others : Life Thoughts, gathered from his Extempo- raneous Discourses, by Miss E. D. Proctor and A. Moore, have had a very large sale. Dr. Beecher edited The Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes ; was one of the origi- nators and a contributor to The Independent newspaper, and contributes to The Christian HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 503 Union, etc. See Men of Our Times, by Mrs. II. B. Stowe (Dr. Beeoher's sister), Hart- ford, 1868, 8vo ; Fowler's American Pulpit, New York, 1850, 8vo. BUYING BOOKS. How easily one may distinguish a genu- ine lover of books from the worldly man ! With what subdued and yet glowing enthu- siasm does he gaze upon the costly front of a thousand embattled volumes! How gently he draws them down, as if they were little children! how tenderly he handles them ! lie peers at the title-page, at the text, or the notes, with the nicety of a bird examining a flower. He studies the bind- ing: the leather, Russia, English calf, morocco ; the lettering, the gilding, the edging, the hinge of the cover ! He opens it, and shuts it, he holds it off, and brings it nigh. It suffuses his whole body with book- magnetism. He walks up and down, in amaze at the mysterious allotments of Prov- idence that gives so much money to men who spend it upon their appetites, and so little to men who would spend it in benevo- lence, or upon their refined tastes! It is astonishing, too, how one's necessities mul- tiply in the presence of the supply. One never knows how many things it is impossi- ble to do without till he goes to the house- furnishing stores. One is surprised to per- ceive, at some bazaar, or fancy and variety store, how many conveniences he needs. lie is satisfied that his life must have been ut- terly inconvenient aforetime. And thus, too, one is inwardly convicted at a book- store of having lived for years without books which he is now satisfied that one cannot live without! Then, too, the subtle process by which the man convinces himself that he can afford to buy ! No subtle manager or broker ever saw through a maze of financial embarrass- ments half so quick as a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what he must have. He pi-omises with himself marvels of retrenchment; he will eat less, or less costly viands, that he may buy more food for the mind. He will take an extra patch, and go on with his raiment another year, and buy books instead of coats. Yea, he will write books, that he may buy books. He will lecture, teach, trade, he will do any honest thing for money to buy books! The appetite is insatiable. Feeding does not satisfy it. It rages by the fuel which is put upon it. As a hungry man eats first and pays afterward, so the book-buyer pur- chases, and then works at the debt after- ward. This paying is rather medicinal. It cures for a time. But a relapse takes place. The same longing, the same promises of self-denial. lie promises himself to put spurs on both heels of his industry ; and then, besides all this, he will somehow get along when the time for payment comes! Ah ! this SOMEHOW ! That word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed with all the vagaries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred upon Hope. And yet, is there not some comfort in buying books to be paid for? We have heard of a sot who wished his neck as long as the worm of a still, that he might so much the longer enjoy the flavour of the draught! Thus, it is a prolonged excitement of pur- chase, if you feel for six months in a slight doubt whether the book is honestly your own or not. Had you paid down, that would have been the end of it. There would have been no affectionate and be- seeching look of your books at you, every time you saw them, saying, as plain as a book's eyes can say, " Do not let me be taken from you.'" Moreover, buying books before you can pay for them promotes caution. You do not feel at liberty to take them home. You are married. Your wife keeps an account- book. She knows to a penny what you can and what you cannot afford. She has no "speculation" in her eyes. Plain figures make desperate work with airy " somehows." It is a matter of no small skill and expe- rience to get your books home, and into their proper places, undiscovered. Perhaps the blundering Express brings them to the door just at evening. " What is it, my dear?" she says to you. "Oh ! nothing, a few books that I cannot do without." That smile ! A true housewife that loves her husband can smile a whole arithmetic at him in one look ! Of course she insists, in the kindest way, in sympathizing with you in your literary acquisition. She cuts the string of the bundle (and of your heart), and out comes the whole story. You have bought a complete set of costly English books, full bound in calf, extra gilt. You are caught, and feel very much tis if bound in calf yourself, and admirably lettered. Now, this must not happen frequently. The books must be smuggled home. Let them be sent to some near place. Then, when your wife has a headache, or is out making a call, or has lain down, run the books across the frontier and threshold, hastily undo them, stop only for one loving glance as you put them away in the closet, or behind other books on the shelf, or on the topmost shelf. Clear away the twine and wrapping-paper, and every suspicious cir- cumstance. Be very careful not to be too kind. That often brings on detection. Only 504 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY. the other day we heard it said, somewhere, " Why, how good you have been, lately ! I nm really afraid that you have been carrying on mischief secretly." Our heart smote us. It was a fact. That very day we had bought a few books which " we could not do with- out." After a while, you can bring out one volume, accidentally, and leave it on the table. "Why, my dear, what a beautiful Look! Where did you borrow it?" You glance over the newspaper, with the quietest tone you can command: " That ! oh! that is mine. Have you not seen it before? It has been in the house these two months ;" and you rush on with anecdote and incident, avnd point out the binding, and that peculiar trick of gilding, and everything else you can think of: but it all will not do ; you can- )iot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People may talk about the equality of the sexes ! They are not equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman will vanquish ten men. Of course you repent, and in time form a habit of repenting. Another method, which will be found peculiarly effective, is to make a present of some fine work to your wife. Of course, whether she or you have the name of buy- ing it, it will go into your collection and be yours to all intents and purposes. But it stops remark in the presentation. A wife could not reprove you for so kindly thinking of her. No matter what she suspects, she will say nothing. And then if there are three or four more works which have come home with the gift-book, they will pass, through the favour of the other. These are pleasures denied to wealth and old bachelors. Indeed, one cannot imagine the peculiar pleasure of buying books, if one is rich and stupid. There must be some pleasure, or so many would not do it. But the full flavour, the whole relish of delight, only comes to those who are so poor that they must engineer for every book. They sit down before them, and besiege them. They are captured. Each book has a secret history of ways and means. It reminds you of subtle devices by which you insured and made it yours, in spite of poverty ! Star Papers. FAULTS. A man has a large emerald, but it is " feathered," and he knows an expert would say, "What a pity that it has such a feather!" it will not bring a quarter as much as it otherwise would ; and he cannot take any satisfaction in it. A man has a diamond ; but there is a flaw in it, and it is not the diamond that he wants. A man has an opal, but it is imperfect; and he is dis- satisfied with it. An opal is covered with little seams, but they must be the right kind of seams. If it has a crack running clear across, it is marred, no matter how large it is, and no matter how wonderful its reflec- tions are. And this man is worried all the time because he knows his opal is imper- fect; and it would worry even him if he knew that nobody else noticed it. So it is in respect to dispositions, and in respect to character at large. Little cracks, little flaws, little featherings in them, take away their exquisitiveness and beauty, and take away that fine finish which makes moral art. How many noble men there are who are diminished, who are almost wasted, in their moral influence ! How many men are like the red maple ! It is one of the most gorgeous trees, both in spring, bios soming, and in autumn, with its crimson foliage. But it stands knee-deep in swamp- water, usually. To get to it, you must wade, or leap from bog to bog, tearing your raiment, and soiling yourself. I see a great many noble men, but they stand in a swamp of faults. They bear fruit that you fain would pluck, but there are briers and thistles and thorns all about it ; and to get it you must make your way through all these hindrances. Plymouth Pulpit, Third Series. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, LL.D., D.C.L., born at Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1814, graduated at Harvard University, 1831, and subsequently studied about a year in the University of Gottingen ; Secretary of Lega- tion at St. Petersburg, 1840, Minister Pleni- potentiary to Austria, 1861-67, Ambassador to England, 1869 ; died 1877. Morton's Hope, or, The Memoirs of a Pro- vincial, 1839 ; Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony, Bosk, 1849, 2 vols. in 1, 12mo ; The Rise of the Dutch Republic, New York, 1856, 3 vols. 8vo, Lond., 1856, 3 vols. 8vo, Edin., 1859, 2 vols. 12mo, in French, precedee d'une introduction par M. Guizot, Paris, 1859-60, 4 vols. 8vo, also trans- lated into Dutch and German ; History of the United Netherlands, from the Death of William the Silent [1584] to the Twelve Years' Truce, 1609, with a Full View of the English-Dutch Struggle against Spain, and of the Origin and Destruction of the Span- ish Armada, Lond., 1860-67,4 vols. 8vo, New York, 1861-67, 4 vols. 8vo ; Causes of the Civil War in America, Lond., 1861, 8vo ; The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, with a View of the JOIIX LOTIIROP MOTLEY. 505 Primary Causes and Movements of The Thirty Years' War, London, 1874, 2 vols. Bvo, New York, 1874, 2 vols. 8vo. Mr. Mot- ley contributed three articles to the North American Review, viz. : 61 : 269 (Peter the Great), 65: 85 (The Novels of Balzac), 69: 47U (Polity of the Puritans). " Far from making his book [The Rise of the Dutch Republic] a mere register of events, he has penetrated deep below the surface and exposed the causes of these events. He has carefully studied the physiognomy of the times and given finished por- traits of the great men who conducted the march of the revolution. Every page is instinct with the love of freedom, and with that personal knowledge of the working of free institutions which could alone enable him to do justice to his subject. We may congratulate ourselves that it was reserved for one of our countrymen to tell the story better than it had yet been told of this memorable revolution, which in so many of its features bears a striking resemblance to our own.'' WM. H. PRKSCOTT TO S. AUSTIN ALLIBOXE, Lynn, June 28, 1858. " Mr. Motley's History of the Dutch Republic is, in my judgment, a work of the highest merit. Unwearying research for years in the libraries of Europe, patience and judgment in arranging and digesting his materials, a fine hi.-torical tact, much skill in characterization, the perspective of narra- tion, as it may be called, and a vigorous stj'le, unite to make it a very capital work, and place the name of Motley by the side of those of our great American historical trio, Bancroft, Irving, and Prescott. I name them alphabetically, for I know not how to arrange them on any other prin- ciple." EDWARD EVERETT TO S. AUSTIN ALH- BONE, Boston, 7th June, 1858. See also Edin. Jtev., Jan. 1857, and Jan. 1861 ; Ulavkto. May., Dec. 1859, and May, 1861 ; lint. Qua,-, liev., Jan. 1861, and April, 1861 ; TV. Brit. Jiei'., May, 1861; Loud. Qna>: Rev., Oct. 1869; N. An,e>: Her,., 68 : 203 (by F. Bowen), 83 : 182, and 107: 267 (both by F. W. Palfrey), 119: 459 (by J. L. Dinian). See John Lot/imp Motley, a Memoir, by 0. W. Holmes, M.D., Bost., 1879, 16uio, and Memorial edition, 8vo. THE IMAGE BREAKERS OF THE NETHERLANDS. A very paltry old Avoman excited the image-breaking of Antwerp. She had for years been accustomed to sit before the door of the cathedral with wax-tapers and wafers, earning a scanty subsistence from the profits of her meagre trade, and by the small coins which she sometimes received in charity. Some of the rabble began to chaffer with this ancient hucksteress. They scoffed at her consecrated wares; they bandied with her ribald jests, of which her public position bad furnished her with a supply; they as- sured her that the hour had come when her idolatrous traffic was to be forever termi- nated, when she and her patroness Mary were to be given over to destruction together. The old woman, enraged, answered threat with threat, and gibe with gibe. Passing from words to deeds, she began to catch from the ground every offensive missile or weapon which she could find, and to lay about her in all directions. Her tormentors defended themselves us they could. Having destroyed her whole stock-in-trade, they pro- voked others to appear in her defence. The passers-by thronged to the scene ; the cathe- dral was soon filled to overflowing; a furi- ous tumult was already in progress. Many persons fled in alarm to the Town House, carrying information of this out- break to the magistrates. John Van Im- merzeel, Margrave of Antwerp, was then holding communication with the senate, and awaiting the arrival of the ward-masters, whom it had at last been thought expedient to summon. Upon intelligence of this riot, which the militia, if previously mustered, might have prevented, the senate determined to proceed to the cathedral in a body, with the hope of quelling the mob by the dignity of their presence. The margrave marched down to the cathedral accordingly, attended by the two burgo-masters and .all the sen- ators. At first their authority, solicitations, and personal influence produced a good effect. Some of those outside consented to retire, and the tumult partially subsided within. As night, however, was fast ap- proaching, many of the mob insisted upon remaining for evening service. They were informed that there would be none that night, and that for once the people could certainly dispense with their vespers. Several persons now manifesting an inten- tion of leaving the cathedral, it was sug- gested to the senators that if they should lead the way, the population would follow in their train, and so disperse to their homes. The excellent magistrates took the advice, not caring perhaps to fulfil any longer the dangerous but not dignified functions of po- lice-officers. Before departing, they adopted the precaution of closing all the doors of the church, leaving a single one open, that the rabble still remaining might have an oppor- tunity to depart. It seemed not to occur to the senators that the same gate would as conveniently afford an entrance for those without as an egress for those within. That unlooked-for event happened, however. No sooner had the magistrates retired than the rabble burst through the single door which had been left open, overpowered the mar- grave, who, with a few attendants, had re- mained behind, vainly endeavouring by threats and exhortations to appease the tu- mult, drove him ignominiously froiii the church, and threw all the other portals wide open. Then the populace flowed in like an angry sea. The whole of the cathedral was at the mercy of the rioters, who were evi- dently bent on mischief. The wardens and 506 JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY. treasurers of the church, after a vain attempt to secure a few of its most precious posses- sions, retired. They carried the news to the senators, who, accompanied by a few halberdmen, again ventured to approach the spot. It was but for a moment, however, for appalled by the furious sounds which came from within the church, as if invisible forces were preparing a catastrophe which no human power could withstand, the mag- istrates fled precipitately from the scene. Fearing that the next attack would be upon the Town House, they hastened to concen- trate at that point their available strength, and left the stately cathedral to its fate. And now, as the shadows of night were deepening the perpetual twilight of the church, the work of destruction commenced. Instead of vespers rose the fierce music of a psalm, yelled by a thousand angry voices. It seemed the preconcerted signal for a gen- eral attack. A band of marauders flew upon the image of the Virgin, dragged it forth from its receptacle, plunged daggers into its inanimate body, tore off its jewelled and embroidered garments, broke the whole figure into a thousand pieces, and scattered the fragments along the floor. A wild shout succeeded, and then the work, which seemed delegated to a comparatively small number of the assembled crowd, went on with in- credible celerity. Some were armed with axes, some with bludgeons, some with sledge- hammers; others brought ladders, pulleys, ropes, and levers. Every statue was hurled from its niche, every picture torn from the wall, every painted window shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured decoration, however inac- cessible in appearance, hurled to the ground. Indefatigably, audaciously endowed, as it seemed, with preternatural strength and nimbleness, these furious iconoclasts clam- bered up the dizzy heights, shrieking and chattering like malignant apes, as they tore off in triumph the slowly-matured fruit of centuries. In a space of time wonderfully brief, they had accomplished their task. A colossal and magnificent group of the Saviour crucified between two thieves adorned the principal altar. The statue of Christ was wrenched from its place with ropes and pul- leys, while the malefactors, with bitter and blasphemous irony, were left on high, the only representatives of the marble crowd which had been destroyed. A very beau- tiful piece of architecture decorated the choir, the " repository," as it was called, in which the body of Christ was figuratively enshrined. This much-admired work rested upon a single column, but rose, arch upon arch, pillar upon pillar, to the height of three hundred feet, till quite lost in the vault above. It was now shattered into a million pieces. The statues, images, pictures, orna- ments, as they lay upon the ground, were broken with sledge-hammers, hewn with axes, trampled, torn, and beaten into shreds. A troop of harlots, snatching waxen tapers from the altars, stood around the destroyers, and lighted them at their work. Nothing escaped their omnivorous rage. They dese- crated seventy chapels, forced open all the chests of treasure, covered their own squalid attire with the gorgeous robes of the eccle- siastics, broke the sacred bread, poured out the sacramental wine into golden chalices, quaffing huge draughts to the beggars' health ; burned all the splendid missals and manuscripts, and smeared their shoes with the sacred oil with which kings and prelates had been anointed. It seemed that each of these malicious creatures must have been endowed with the strength of a hundred giants. How else, in the few brief hours of a midsummer night, could such a mon- strous desecration have been accomplished by a troop, which, according to all accounts, was not more than one hundred in number? There was a multitude of spectators, as upon all such occasions, but the actual spoilers were very few. The noblest and richest temple of the Netherlands was a wreck, but the fury of the spoilers was excited, not appeased. Each seizing a burning torch, the whole herd rushed from the cathedral, and swept howl- ing through the streets. " Long live the beg- gars!" resounded through the sultry midnight air, as the ravenous pack flew to and fro, smiting every image of the Virgin, every cru- cifix, every sculptured saint, every Catholic symbol, which they met with upon their path. All night long they roamed from one sacred edifice to another, thoroughly destroying aa they went. Before morning they had sacked thirty churches within the city walls. They entered the monasteries, burned their in- valuable libraries, destroyed their altars, statues, pictures, and, descending into the cellars, broached every cask winch they found there, pouring out in one great flood all the ancient wine and ale with which these holy men had been wont to solace their retirement from generation to genera- tion. They invaded the nunneries, whence the occupants, panic-stricken, fled for refuge to the houses of their friends and kindred. The streets were filled with monks and nuns, running this way and that, shrieking and fluttering, to escape the claws of these fiend- ish Calvinists. The terror was imaginary, for not the least remarkable feature in these transactions was, that neither insult nor in- jury was offered to man or woman, and that not a farthing's value of the immense amount of property destroyed was appropriated. It SAMUEL SMILES. 507 was a war, not against the living, but against graven images, nor was the sentiment winch prompted the onslaught in the least com- mingled with a desire of plunder. The principal citizens of Antwerp, expecting every instant that the storm would be di- verted from the ecclesiastical edifices to pri- vate dwellings, and that robbery, rape, and murder would follow sacrilege, remained all night expecting the attack, and prepared to defend their hearths, even if the altars were profaned. This precaution was needless. It was asserted by the Catholics that the confederates, and other opulent Protestants, had organized this company of profligates for the meagre pittance of ten stivers a day. On the other hand, it was believed by many that the Catholics had themselves plotted the whole outrage in order to bring odium upon the Reformers. Both statements were equally unfounded. The task was most thoroughly performed, but it was prompted by a furious fanaticism, not by baser motives. Two days and two nights longer the havoc raged unchecked through all the churches of Antwerp and the neighbouring villages. Hardly a statue or picture escaped destruc- tion. Yet the rage was directed exclusively against stocks. Not a man was wounded nor a woman outraged. Prisoners, indeed, who had been languishing hopelessly in dungeons were liberated. A monk who had been in the prison of the Barefoot monastery for twelve years, recovered his freedom. Art was trampled in the dust, but humanity de- plored no victims. The Rise of the Dutch Republic. SAMUEL SMILES, M.D., born at Iladdington, Scotland, 1816, after practising as a surgeon at Leeds, succeeded Robert Nicol as editor of The Leeds Times; in 1845 became Secretary of the Leeds and Thirsk Railway, and about 1852 Secretary of the South-Eastern Railway, which post he held for many years, lie is one of the most popular, and certainly one of the most useful, writers of the day. Physical Education, Edin., 1837, p. 8vo ; History of Ireland and the Irish People, under the Government of England, 1844, 8vo ; The Life of George Stephenson, Lond., 1857, 8vo; Self-Help, Lond., 1859, p. 8vo; Brief [35] Biographies, Bost., Oct. 1860, 16mo ; Workmen's Earnings, Strikes, and Savings, Lond., 1861, fp. 8vo ; Livesiof the Engineers, Lond., 1861-62, 3 vols. 8vo, new edit., 5 vols. cr. 8vo ; James Brindley and the Early Engineers, Abridged from The Lives of the Engineers, Lond., 1864, p. 8vo ; Industrial Biography : Iron-Workers and Tool-Makers, Lond., 1863, p. 8vo ; Lives of Boulton and Watt, Lond., Dec. 1865, r. 8vo ; The Huguenots : their Settlements, Churches, etc., in England and Ireland, Lond., 1867, new edit., 1871, p. 8vo : Character : its In- fluence, etc., 1871, p. 8vo ; Huguenots in France, 1873, p. 8vo ; A Boy's Voyage Round the World, p. 8vo ; Thrift, 1875, p. 8vo ; Life of a Scotch Naturalist (Thomas Edward), 1876; Robert Dick, Baker of Thurso, Geologist and Botanist, 1879. " No more interesting books have been published of late years than thosu of Mr. Smiles, his ' Lives of the Engineers,' his ' Life of George Stephenson,' nnd his a linirable little book on ' fcielf-Help.' " SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE. OLD INVENTIONS REVIVED. Steam-locomotion, by sea and land, had long been dreamt of and attempted. Blasco de Garay made his experiment in the har- bour of Barcelona as early as 1543; Denis Papin made a similar attempt at Cassel in 1707 ; but it was not until Watt had solved the problem of the steam-engine that the idea of the steamboat could be developed in practice, which was done by Miller, of Dal- swinton, in 1788. Sages and poets have fre- quently foreshadowed inventions of great social moment. Thus Dr. Darwin's anticipa- tion of the locomotive, in his Botanic Gar- den, published in 1791, before any locomotive had been invented, might almost be regarded as prophetic : Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam ! afar Drag the slow barge, and drive the rapid car. Denis Papin first threw up the idea of atmospheric locomotion ; and Gauthey, an- other Frenchman, in 1782, projected a method of conveying parcels and merchan- dise by subterranean tubes, after the method recently patented and brought into opera- tion by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company. The balloon was an ancient Ital- ian invention, revived by Mongolfier long after the original had been forgotten. Even the reaping-machine is an old invention re- vived. Thus Barnabe Googe, the translator of a book from the German, entitled " The whole Arte and Trade of llusbandrie," pub- lished in 1577, in the reign of Elizabeth, speaks of the reaping-machine as a worn- out invention, a thing " which was woont to be used in France. The device was a lowe kinde of carre with a couple of wheeles, and the front armed with sharp syckles, whiche forced by the beaste through the corne, did cut down al before it. This tricke," says Googe, " might be used in levell and champion countreys; but with us it wolde make but ill-favoured woorke." 508 SAMUEL SMILES. The Thames Tunnel was thought an entirely new manifestation of engineering genius; but the tunnel under the Euphrates at an- cient Babylon, and that under the wide mouth of the harbour at Marseilles (a much more difficult work), show that the ancients were beforehand with us in the art of tun- nelling. Macadamized roads are as old as the Roman empire; and suspension-bridges, though comparatively new in Europe, have been known in China for centuries. There is every reason to believe indeed it seems clear that the Romans knew of gunpowder, though they only used it for purposes of fireworks; while the secret of the destructive Greek fire has been lost al- together. When gunpowder came to be used for purposes of war, invention busied itself upon instruments of destruction. When recently examining the Museum of the Ar- senal at Venice, we were surprised to find numerous weapons of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries embodying the most recent English improvements in arms, such as re- volving pistols, rifled muskets, and breech- loading cannon. The latter, embodying Sir William Armstrong's modern idea, though in a rude form, had been fished up from the bottom of the Adriatic, where the ship armed with them had been sunk hundreds, of years ago. Even Perkins's steam-gun was an old invention revived by Leonardo da Vinci, and by him attributed to Archime- des. The Congreve rocket is said to have an Eastern origin, Sir William Congreve having observed its destructive effects when employed by the forces under Tippoo Saib in the Mahratta war, on which he adopted and improved the missile, and brought out the invention as his own. Coal gas was regularly used by the Chi- nese for lighting purposes long before it was known amongst us. Hydropathy was generally practised by the Romans, who established baths wherever they went. Even chloroform is no new thing. The use of ether as an anaesthetic was known to Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century; and in his works he gives a recipe for its preparation. In 1681 Denis Papin published his Traite'des Optra- tions sans Douleur, showing that he had dis- covered methods of deadening pain. I Jut the use of anaesthetics is much older than Albertus Magnus or Papin ; for the ancients had their nepenthe and mandragora; the Chinese their mayo, and the Egyptians their hachish (both preparations of Cannabis Indica), the effects of which in a great meas- ure resemble those of chloroform. What is perhaps still more surprising is the circum- stance that one of the most elegant of recent inventions, that of sun-painting by the da- guerreotype, was in the fifteenth century known to Leonardo da Vinci, whose skill as an architect and engraver, and whose ac- complishments as a chemist and natural philosopher, have been almost entirely over- shadowed by his genius as a painter. The idea, thus early born, lay in oblivion until 1760, when the daguerreotype was again clearly indicated in a book published in Paris, written by a certain Tiphanie de la Roche, under the anagrammatic title of Giphantie. Still later, at the beginning of the present century, we find Josiah AVrdg- wood, Sir Humphry Davy, and James Watt making experiments on the action of light upon nitrate of silver; and only within the last few months a silvered copperplate has been found amongst the old household lum- ber of Matthew Boulton (Watt's partner), having on it a representation of the old premises at Soho, apparently taken by some such process. In like manner the invention of the elec- tric telegraph, supposed to be exclusively modern, was clearly indicated by Scher- wenter in his Delassement's Physico-Mnthe- matiques, published in 1636; and he there pointed out how two individuals could com- municate with each other by means of the magnetic needle. A century later, in 1746, Le Monnier exhibited a series of experiments in the Royal Gardens at Paris, showing how electricity could be transmitted through iron wire 950 fathoms in length ; and in 1753 we find one Charles Marshall publishing a remarkable description of the electric tele- graph in the Scots Magazine, under the title of" An expeditious Method of Conveying In- telligence/' Again, in 1760, we find George Louis Lesage, professor of mathematics at Geneva, promulgating his invention of an electric telegraph, which he eventually com- pleted and set to work in 1774. This instru- ment was composed of twenty-four metallic wires, separate from each other, and enclosed in a non-conducting substance. Each wire ended in a stalk mounted with a little ball of elder-wood suspended by a silk thread. When a stream of electricity, no matter how slight, was sent through the bar, the elder- ball at the opposite end was repelled, such movement designating some letter of the alphabet. A few years later we find Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, describing a similar machine invented by a M. Lomond, of Paris, the action of which he also de- scribes. In these and similar cases, though the idea was born and the model of the in- vention was actually made, it still waited the advent of the scientific mechanical in- ventor who should bring it to perfection, and embody it in a practical working form. Industrial Biography, Chap. x. CHARLES JOHN VAUGIIAN. 509 CHARLES JOHN VAUGHAN, D.D., horn about 1817, was for some years a Fel- low of Trinity College, Cambridge] held the living of St. Martin's, Leicester ; Ilead- Master of Harrow School, 1844-59; re- fused a bishopric, I860, and in the same year became Vicar of Doncaster ; Master of the Temple, 1869. Among his publications are the following : Thirty Sermons in the Chapel of liar- row School, Lond., 1847, 8vo, 2d Series, 1853, 8vo ; Nine Sermons Preached at Har- row, 1849, 12mo; Personality of the Temp- ter, and other Sermons, 1851, 8vo ; Notes for Lectures on Confirmation, Camb., 1859, 8vo, 6th edit,, 1864, fp. Bvo ; St. Paul's Epistle to the. Romans [in Greek], with [English] Notes, 1859, 8vo, 3d edit,, 1870, cr. 8vo; Memorials of Harrow Sundaj's: Sermons, 1859, cr. 8vo, 4th edit., 1864, "cr. 8vo ; Epiphany, Lent, and Easter Sermons, 1860, cr. 8vo, 3d edit., 1868, cr. 8vo; Les- sons of Life and Godliness: Sermons at Doncaster, 1862, fp. 8vo ; Words from the Gospel: Second Series of Sermons at Don- caster, 1863, fp. 8vo ; The Book and the Life : Four Sermons at Cambridge. 1862, fp. 8vo ; Expository Lectures on Philip- plans, 1862, cr. 8vo; Lectures on the Rev- elation of St. John, 1863, 2 vols. cr. 8vo; Epistles of St. Paul for English Readers, r. 8vo, Part I., 1864; The Church of the First Days: Lectures on the Acts, Series I., II., III., 1864-65, 3 vols. fp. 8vo : Characteristics of Christ's Teachings, 1866, fp. 8vo : Twelve Discourses on Subjects Connected with the Church of England, 1867, fp. 8vo; Earnest Words for Earnest Men. 1869, fp. 8vo ; Last Words in the Parish Church of Doncaster, 1870, cr. 8vo; Half-Hours in the Temple Church. 1871; The Solidity of True Reli- gion, 1874; Heroes of Faith, 1876. He pub- lished A Few Words on the Crystal Palace Questions, answered by John Perowne, in Observance of the Sabbath, 1853, 8vo, and contributed to Good Words, etc. See Lon- don Reader, 1863, ii. 663. LONELINESS. Loneliness. It has many senses, inward and outward. 1. There is, first, what I may call the lone- liness of simple solitude. We who lead a very busy life, who know not what it is from early morning till late evening to have (as it is sometimes expressed) a moment that we can call our own, a moment in which we can feel that the load is really removed and that we are free to enjoy ourselves for enjoy- ment's sake, can scarcely perhaps enter into the thought of the oppressiveness of soli- tude. To us it is a luxury to be alone: si- lence, much more repose, is health to us and revival ; and these things are associated in our mind with solitude. So different is it to look upon solitude from a life of business and intermixture with the world, and to look upon it from within the four walls of a sick-room or a prison. Solitude which we fly to as a rest, and can exchange at will for society which we love, is a widely different thing from that solitude which is either the consequence of bereavement or the punish- ment of crime; that solitude from which we cannot escape, and which perhaps is associated with bitter or remorseful recol- lections. From such solitude a merciful Providence has as yet kept you. And yet even you may have known something of a compulsory solitude. Now and then an ill- ness severer than usual has confined you in these days of youth to a sick-room, where you have been almost as much cut off from the companions of school as from the ten- derer solaces of a loving home. At such times have you not felt a heavy demand made upon your cheerfulness and content- ment? Have you not found disagreeable reflections and painful (even if imaginary) forebodings more powerful with you than visions of hope, than thoughts of thankful- ness? At all events, a little later in life, you will know these things well. When, for example, a young man finds himself es- tablished as the master of a dwelling which is all his own ; his lodgings, it may be, his chambers or even his college-rooms; amidst some feelings of agreeable independence, and of freedom from intrusion or disturb- ance, there are times Avhen he cannot sup- press a sense of isolation and desolateness, and would give the world to be again as he once was, the object of care, of thought, and affection to others around and above him. How strong in after-years is the memory of such marked feelings of loneliness! How do we continue to associate them as freshly as at the moment of their occurrence, with the sounds and images of the time and place ; the hour of the day or evening, the ringing of a bell or the monotonous movement of a clock, the aspect of an opposite house, or the dull rainy weather which seemed to be more than outward! And if. according to the frequent chances of life in this genera- tion, any one of you should ever be called upon to exchange his very country for a dis- tant home; if in the pursuit of fortune, or at the call of professional duty, he should be required to leave home and friends be- hind him, and go he knows not whither, to return he knows not when ; what a sense will he have of the meaning of the word 510 SIR ARTHUR HELPS. now uttered, loneliness; the loneliness, if not strictly of solitude, yet of separation, of severance, of isolation ! How will he find that there may be such a thing as solitude even amongst numbers; a solitude made even more complete by the very presence of an unsympathizing crowd ! What a life- long recollection will he retain of that try- ing moment when the last words have been spoken and the last farewell exchanged, when the removal of the gangway has finally separated between the going and the staying, the deck crowded with the one and the shore with the other, and the ship itself has gathered up its wings for flight ! What an impression will he have then of the re- ligious trial of solitude ! how it reveals to us, as in a moment, what manner of spirit we are of, whether we have any root, any vitality, in ourselves, or are only the crea- tures of society and of circumstance, found out at once and convicted by the application of the individual touchstone ! 2. Again, there is the loneliness of sorrow. Is not loneliness the prominent feeling in all deep sorrow? Is it not the feeling of lone- liness which gives its sting to bereavement. to the loss of friends? Not, of course, in those minor losses which, though we may feel them at the time, yet do not perma- nently affect our lives ; but in bereavements which deserve the name, the loss (and more especially the early loss) of a sister or mother, in later life the loss of a wife or husband, is not the loneliness of heart con- sequent upon it the heaviest and bitterest part of the sorrow ; is it not this which de- prives all after-joy of its chief zest, and reduces life itself to a colourless and level landscape ? 3. Again, there is the loneliness of a sense of sin. Whatever duties may lie upon us towards other men, in our innermost rela- tion to God we are and must be alone. And we may say what we will against the self- ishness of some men's religion ; against the habit, too much fostered doubtless by some, of scrutinizing every affection and feeling with a minuteness and an anxiety which at last becomes morbid and dangerous ; but after all the foundations of every really Christian life are laid deep in the individual consciousness: a Christian hope is the result of transactions essentially secret between the soul and God ; and the first of these is that awakening of a sense of sin which is the first office, as we believe, of the Holy Spirit in His mission to the individual as in His mission to the world. When the sense of sin is heavy upon us, how incapable is it of anything but solitude ! A man trying to get rid of it rushes into society: many do thus get rid of it, but is it well with them ? One who knows what it is will not desire to get rid of it. Even in its first anxieties and miseries he recognizes, however remotely and indistinctly, a prospect of good. Even then he would not part with it, cost him what it may, for all his former security and thoughtlessness. But he finds that, if he would not stifle the sense of sin, to his end- less ruin, he must be tolerant of this inward loneliness; he must be careful how he talks of it to his best friend : in the very telling of his fears and self-reproaches lies a risk of dissipating the one and blunting the other : a mistaken kindness makes his friend pal- liate them, makes him try to heal the hurt slightly even while speaking of the true Physician : and besides, in the very telling there is a risk of evil, of conveying wrong impressions, of parading humility, of saying things for the sake of having them denied, of substituting the sympathy of man for the confidence of God. No times are more truly miserable than those which follow upon such attempts to get rid of the lone- liness within. God is our proper refuge at such times; but then He must be our one refuge : we must be content with Him : every hour, every few moments, really spent before Him under the pressure of the burden of our own sins, is a season of true and solid relief: it enables us to bear on, sometimes it makes us of a cheerful countenance, tell- ing, without mistake and without peril, of the work within. And if such be the loneliness of repent- ance, what must be the loneliness of re- morse, Avhich is repentance without God, without Christ, and therefore without hope ; the sense of sin unconfessed and unfor- saken, only felt as a weight, a burden, and a danger ! If repentance is loneliness, re- morse is desolation. Kepentance makes us lonely towards man ; remorse makes us des- olate towards God. That is indeed to be alone, when (to use the inspired figure) not only earth is iron, but also heaven brass. From such loneliness may God in His mercy save us all through His Son Jesus Christ. Memorials of Harrow Sundays : Sermon XVII., Isaiah 63 : 8. SIR ARTHUR HELPS, born 1817, graduated at Cambridge Uni versity, 1835, was for many years an officer in the Civil Service, and about 1860 became Clerk of the Privy Council ; died 1875. Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd, Lond., 1835, 12mo; Essays Written in the Intervals of Business, 1841, 8vo, 7th edit., 1853, 12mo; Catherine Douglas, a Tragedy SIR ARTHUR HELPS. 511 (in verse), 1843, sm. 8vo ; King Henry II. : An Historical Drama, 1843, sin. 8vo, 2d edit., 1845, fp. Svo; The Claims of Labour, 1844; Friends in Council : A Series of Readings and Discourses thereon. 1847, cr. Svo, Sec- ond Series, 1849, 6th edit., 1854, 2 vols. fp. Svo; Companions of my Solitude, 1851, 12mo, 4th edit., 1854, fp. .Svo ; The Conquer- ors of the New World and their Bondsmen, 1848-52, 2 vols. Svo; History of the Span- ish Conquest of America, and its Relations to the History of Slavery and to the Gov- ernment of Colonies, 1855-57, 3 vols. Svo ; Oulita, the Serf, 1858; Realmah, a Tale, 1869 ; Life of Columbus, 1869 ; Casimir Marcinma, 1870 ; Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms, 1870 ; Conversations on War and General Culture, 1871 ; Thoughts upon Government, 1871; Social Pressure, 1874. " A true thinker, who has practical purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as Plato, or Carlyle, or Helps, beoomes in some sort a seer, and must be always of infinite use in his generation." RUSKIX : Mod. Painters, 13 : 268, Lond., 1856. " There are things which I hope are said more clearly than before, owing to the influence of the beautiful quiet English of Helps.'' RUSKI.V. See also Raskin's Stones of Venice ; lilackw. Mag., Oct. 1851; Fraser's Mag., Sept. 1857; Wtstm. Rev., 43 ; Dull. Univ. Mag., 25 : 45-57 ; Eclec. Jiee., 4th Ser., 30 : 284. DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC OCEAN: Vasco Nunez resolved, therefore, to be the discoverer of that sea, and of those rich lands to which Comogre's son had pointed, when, after rebuking the Spaniards for their " brabbling" [quarrelling] about the division of the gold, he turned his face towards the south. In the peril which so closely im- pended over Vasco Nunez, there was no use in waiting for reinforcements from Spain : when those reinforcements should come, his dismissal would come too. Accordingly, early in September, 1513, he set out on his renowned expedition for finding "the other sea," accompanied by a hundred and ninety men well armed, and by dogs, which were of more avail than men, and by Indian slaves to carry the burthens. Following Poncha's guide, Vasco Nunez and his men commenced the ascent of the mountains, until he entered the country of an Indian chief called Quarequa, whom they found fully prepared to resist them. The brave Indian advanced at the head of his troops, intending to make a vigorous attack ; but they could not withstand the discharge of the fire-arms. Indeed, they believed the Spaniards to have thunder and lightning in their hands, not an unreasonable fancy, and, flying in the utmost terror from the place of battle, a total rout ensued. The rout was a bloody one, and is described by an author who gained his information from those who were present at it, as a scene to remind one of the shambles. The king and his principal men were slain to the number of six hundred. Speaking of these people, Peter Martyr makes mention of the sweet- ness of their language, saying that all the words in it might be written in Latin let- ters, as was also to be remarked in that of the inhabitants of Hispaniola. This writer also mentions, and there is reason for think- ing he was correctly informed, that there was a region, not two days' journey from Quarequa's territory, in which Vasco Nunez found a race of black men, who were con- jectured to have come from Africa, and to have been shipwrecked on this coast. Leav- ing several of his men who were ill, or over- weary, in Quarequa's chief town, and taking with him guides from this country, the Span- ish commander pursued his way up the most lofty sierras there, until, on the 25th of September, 1513, he came near to the top of a mountain, from whence the South Sea was visible. The distance from Poncha's chief town to this point was forty leagues, reckoned then six days' journey, but Vasco Nunez and his men took twenty-five days to accomplish it, as they suffered much from the roughness of the ways and from the want of provisions. A little before Vasco Nunez reached the height, Quarequa's Indians informed him of his near approach to the sea. It was a sight in beholding which for the first time any man would wish to be alone. Vasco Nunez bade his men sit down while he ascended, and then, in solitude, looked down upon the vast Pacific, the first man of the Old World, so far as we know, who had done so. Falling on his knees, he gave thanks to God for the favour shown to him in his being permitted to discover the sea of the South. Then with his hand he beckoned to his men to come up. When they had come, both he and they knelt down, and poured forth their thanks to God. lie then addressed them in these words : " You see here, gentlemen and children mine, how our desires are being ac- complished, and the end of our labours. Of that we ought to be certain : for, as it has turned out true, what King Comogre's son told of this sea to us, who never thought to see it, so I hold for certain that what he told us of there being incomparable treas- ures in it will be fulfilled. God and his blessed mother, who have assisted us, so that we should arrive here and behold this sea, will favour us, that we may enjoy all that there is in it." Afterwards, they all devoutly sang the "Te Deum Laudamus ;" and a list was 512 AUSTEN HENRY LA YARD. drawn up by a notary of those who were present nt this discovery, which was made upon St. Martin's day. Every great and original action has a prospective greatness not alone from the thought of the man who achieves it, but from the various aspects and high thoughts which the same action will continue to pre- sent and call up in the minds of others to the end, it may be, of all time. And so a remarkable event may go on acquiring more and more signilicance. In this case, our knowledge that the Pacific, which Vasco Nunez then beheld, occupies more than one- half of the earth's surface, is an element of thought which in our minds lightens up and gives an awe to this first gaze of his upon those mighty waters. To him the scene might not at that moment have suggested much more than it would have done to a mere conqueror ; indeed Peter Martyr likens Vasco Nunez to Hannibal showing Italy to his soldiers. Having thus addressed his men, Vasco Nunez proceeded to take formal possession, on behalf of the kings of Castille, of the sea, and of all that was in it; and, in order to make memorials of the event, he cut down trees, formed crosses, and heaped up stones. He also inscribed the names of the mon- archs of Castille upon great trees in the vicinity. The Spanish Conquest of America, Vol. i. Book vi. Ch. i. AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD, D.C.L., M.P., grandson of the Rev. Dr. Layard, Dean of Bristol, was born in Paris, 1817; visited Asia Minor. Persia, etc., about 1840, and a few years later discovered the ruins of Nin- eveh, near Mosul ; subsequently, under the auspices of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and in conjunction with M. Botta, made " exca- vations at Nimroud, where lie found monu- ments marked with cuneiform inscriptions, and colossal emblematic figures in the form of winged bulls and lions" (now deposited in the British Museum), "memorials of a civilization which existed before the com- mencement of profane history ;" Attache to the Embassy at Constantinople, 1849; Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Af- fairs, 1852, and again August, 1861, to June, 1866: M.P., 1852-57," and 1860 et seq. ; Lord Rector of Aberdeen University, 1855-56 ; Trustee of the British Museum, 18G6 ; Commissioner of Public Works, 1868 ; Ambassador to Spain, 1869. Nineveh and its Remains : Researches and Discoveries in Ancient Assyria, with the Narrative of a Residence in that Country, and Excursions to the Valleys of the Nes- torian Christians, etc., Lond., 1848, 2 vols. 8vo, 6th edit., 1850, 2 vols. 8vo (discoveries in 1845-46); The Monuments of Nineveh ; illustrated from numerous drawings mado on the spot, Lond., 1850, imp. fol., 10 Parts, 100 plates, 10 lO.s-. ; A Popular Ac- count of Layard's Expedition to Nineveh, abridged by the author, Lond., 1851, cr. 8vo ; Fresh Discoveries at Nineveh, and Re- searches at Babylon : being the Results of the Second Expedition to Assyria [1849-51] : also A Journey to the Khabour, The Desert, Lake Van. Ancient Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Borders of the Euphrates, Lond., 1853, 2 vols. 8vo. See (London) Quart. Rev., Dec. 1848 ; Fraser's Mag., April, 1849 ; N. Brit. Rev., May, 1853. EXCAVATIONS AT NIMROUD. I had slept little during the night. The hovel in which we had taken shelter, and its inmates, did not invite slumber ; but such scenes and companions were not new to me : they could have been forgotten had my brain been less excited. Hopes, long cherished, were now to be realized, or were to end in disappointment. Visions of palaces under ground, of gigantic monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions, floated before me. After forming plan after plan for removing the earth, and extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of cham- bers from which I could find no outlet. Then again, all was re-buried, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound. Ex- hausted, I was at length sinking into sleep, when hearing the voice of Awad, I rose from my carpet, and joined him outside the hovel. The day already dawned ; he had returned with six Arabs, who agreed for a small sum to work under my direction. The lofty cone and broad mound of Nim- roud broke like a distant mountain on the morning sky. But how changed was the scene since my former visit! The ruins were no longer clothed with verdure and many-coloured flowers; no signs of habita- tion, not even the black tent of the Aral), was seen upon the plain. The eye wan- dered over a parched and barren waste, across which occasionally swept the whirl- wind dragging with it a cloud of sand. About a mile from us was the small village of Nimroud. like Naifa, a heap of ruins. Twenty minutes' walk brought us to the principal mound. The absence of all vege- tation enabled me to examine the remains with which it was covered. Broken pot- JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 513 tery and fragments of bricks, both inscribed with the cuneiform character, were strewed on all sides. The Arabs watched my mo- tions as I wandered to and fro, and observed with surprise the objects I had collected. They joined, however, in the search, and brought me handf'uls of rubbish, amongst which I found with joy the fragment of a bas-relief. The material on which it was carved had been exposed to fire, and re- sembled, in every aspect, the burnt gypsum of Khorsabad. Convinced from this dis- covery that sculptured remains must still exist in some part of the mound, I sought for a place where excavations might be com- menced with a prospect of success. A wad led me to a piece of alabaster Avhich ap- peared above the soil. We could not re- move it. and on digging downward, it proved to be the upper part of a large slab. I or- dered all the men to work round it, and they shortly uncovered a second slab to which it had been united. Continuing in the same line, we came upon a third ; and in the course of the morning laid bare ten more, the whole forming a square, with one stone missing at the N. \V. corner. It was evident that the top of a chamber had been discovered, and that the gap was its entrance. I now dug down the face of the stones, and an inscrip- tion in the cuneiform character was soon ex- posed to view. Similar inscriptions occupied the centre of all the slabs, which were in the best preservation ; but plain, with the exception of the writing. Leaving half the workmen to uncover as much of the cham- ber as possible, I led the rest to the S. W. corner of the mound, where I had observed many fragments of calcined alabaster. I dug at once into the side of the mound, which was here very steep, and thus avoided the necessity of removing much earth. We came almost immediately to a wall, bearing inscriptions in the same character as those already described ; but the slabs had evi- dently been exposed to intense heat, were cracked in every part, and, reduced to lime, threatened to fall into pieces as soon as un- covered. Night interrupted our labours. I returned to the village well satisfied with their result. It was now evident that buildings of consid- erable extent existed in the mound ; and that although some had been destroyed by fire, others had escaped the conflagration. As there were inscriptions, and as a fragment of a bas-relief had been found, it was natural to conclude that sculptures were still buried under the soil. I determined to follow the search at the N. W. corner, and to empty the chamber partly uncovered during the day. Nineveh and its Remains. Vul. i. Ch. ii. 83 CONFIRMATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. Doubtless, if I had undertaken these ex- cavations with no other end than that of gratifying an idle curiosity or an ordinary spirit of enterprise, I should be utterly un- worthy of the honour you have shown me. I trust they were embarked in from a higher motive. Archaeology, if pursued in a liberal spirit, becomes of the utmost importance, as illustrating the history of mankind. [Great applause.] I confess that, sanguine as I was as to the results of my researches amongst the ruins on the Tigris and Euphrates, I could not, nor, indeed, probably could any human being, have anticipated the results which they produced. I do not say this in. self-praise. I consider myself but an hum- ble agent, whose good fortune it has been to labour successfully in bringing about those results. I could not doubt that every spade- ful of earth which was removed from those vast remains would tend to confirm the truth of prophecy and to illustrate the meaning of Scripture. But who could have believed that records themselves should have been found which, as to the minuteness of their details, and the wonderful accuracy of their statements, should confirm almost word for word the very text of Scripture ? And re- member that these were no fabrications of a later date in monuments centuries after the deeds which they professed to relate had taken place, but records engraved by those who had actually taken part in them. Speech on ihe Occasion of the Presentation to Dr. Layard of the Freedom of the City of London, Feb. 9, 185/f. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE, born at Totness, Devonshire, 1818, was edu- cated at Westminster and the University of Oxford, where he obtained the Chancellor's Prize for the English Essay in 1842, and the same year was elected Fellow of Exeter College. Shadow of the Clouds, Lond., 1847, Svo (a novel) ; The Nemesis of Faith, Lond., 1848, 2d edit.. 1849, p. 8vo (a theologico-philosophical novel); The Book of Job, Lond., 1854, p. 8vo ; History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, Lond., 1856-70, 12 vols. 8vo, and cr. 8vo, New York, 1870-72, 12 vols. cr. Svo; Short Studies on Great Subjects, 1868-71, 2 vols. Svo, and cr. Svo; The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 1872-74, 3 vols. Svo ; Thomas a Becket, 1878 ; Julius Caesar, a Sketch, 1879. He contributed to the Lives of the English Saints, and was for a short time, in 1871, editor of Fraser's Magazine. 614 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. " The peculiar merit of Mr. Froude's work [His- tory of England] is its wealth of unpublished man- uscripts; and the reign of Elizabeth is remarkably illustrated by the correspondence of the Spanish ambassadors and other agents of the court of Spain, which have been preserved in the Archives at Si- mancas. The extraordinary interest of such illus- trations is apparent in every page of these vol- umes : they give novelty to the narrative and variety to the well-known incidents of the time; and they bring in aid of historical evidence the contemporary opinions of society upon current events. Edin. Rev., Sept. 1866. See also Fritter'* Mag., May, 1849, July, 1856, July and Sept. 1858, July, 1860; N. lint. Rev., Nov. 1856; Edin. Jtev., July, 1858, Jan. 1864: London Qiiar. Rev., Oct. 1863; Brit. Quar. Rev., Jan. and April, 1864; HnKnck's Defence of Mary, Queen < if Scots ; Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century. EARLY CHARACTER OF HENRY VIII. If Henry VIII. had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country ; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black Prince or the conqueror of Agineourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character un- formed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty- six years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an up- right and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In per- son he is said to have resembled his grand- father, Edward IV.. who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely ; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk : he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard ; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigour by a temperate habit and by constant exercise. Of his intellectual ability we are not left to judge from the suspicious pane- gyrics of his contemporaries. His state papers and letters may be placed by the side of those of Wolsey or of Cromwell, and they lose nothing in the comparison. Though they are broadly different, the perception is equally clear, the expression equally powerful, and they breathe through- out an irresistible vigour of purpose. In addition to this he had a fine musical taste, carefully cultivated ; he spoke and wrote in four languages ; and his knowledge of a multitude of other subjects, with which his versatile ability made him conversant, would have formed the reputation of any ordinary man. He was among the best physicians of his age; he was his own engineer, invent- ing improvements in artillery, and new con- structions in ship-building; and this not with the condescending incapacity of a roval amateur, but with thorough workmanlike understanding. His reading was vast, es- pecially in theology, which has been ridicu- lously ascribed by Lord Herbert to his father's intention of educating him for the Archbishopric of Canterbury: as if the sci- entific mastery of such a subject could have been acquired by a boy of twelve years of age, for he was no more when he became Prince of Wales. He must have studied theology with the full maturity of his intel- lect; and he had a fixed and perhaps unfor- tunate interest in the subject itself. In all directions of human activity Henry displayed natural . powers of the highest order, at the highest stretch of industrious culture. He was " attentive," as it is called, "to his religious duties," being present at the services in chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of reli- gious obligation in the energy and purity of his life. In private he was good humoured and good-natured. His letters to his secre- taries, though never undignified, are simple, easy, and unrestrained ; and the letters written by them to him are similarly plain and business-like, as if the writers knew that the person whom they were address- ing disliked compliments, and chose to be treated as a man. Again, from their cor- respondence with one another, when they describe interviews with him. we gather the same pleasant impression. He seems to have been always kind, always considerate ; inquiring into their private concerns with genuine interest, and winning, as a conse- quence, their warm and unaffected attach- ment. As a ruler he had been eminently popular. All his wars had been successful. He had the splendid tastes in which the English people most delighted, and he had substan- tially acted out his own theory of his duty which was expressed in the following words : " Scripture taketh princes to be, as it were, fathers and nurses to their subjects, and by Scripture it appeareth that it appertaineth unto the office of princes to see that right religion and true doctrine be maintained and taught, and that their subjects may be well ruled and governed by good and just laws; and to provide and care for them that all things necessary for them may be plenteous; and that the people and commonweal may increase ; and to defend them from oppression and invasion, as well within the realm as without; and to see that justice be adminis- JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. 515 tered unto them indifferently; and to hear benignly their complaints ; and to show to- wards them, although they offend, fatherly pity. And, finally, so to correct them that be evil, that they had yet rather save them than lose them if it were not for respect of justice, and maintenance of peace and good order in the commonweal." [Exposition of the Commandments, set forth by Royal Au- thority, 1536. This treatise was drawn up by the bishops, and submitted to, and revised by. the king. Foot-note.} These principles do really appear to have determined Henry's conduct in his earlier years. His social ad- ministration we have partially seen in the previous chapter [Ch. I.]. He had more than once been tried with insurrection, which he had soothed down without blood- shed, and extinguished in forgiveness ; and London long recollected the great scene which followed " evil May-day," 1517, when the apprentices were brought down to West- minster Hall to receive their pardons. There had been a dangerous riot in the streets, which might have provoked a mild govern- ment to severity; but the king contented himself with punishing the five ringleaders, and four hundred other prisoners, after being paraded down the streets in white shirts with halters round their necks, were dis- missed with an admonition, AVolsey weeping as he pronounced it. It is certain that if, as I have said, he had died before the divorce was mooted, Henry VIII.. like that Roman Emperor said by Tacitus to have been consensu omnium dignus imperil nisi imperasset, would have been considered by posterity as formed by Provi- dence for the conduct of the Reformation, and his loss would have been deplored as a perpetual calamity. \Ve must allow him, therefore, the benefit of his past career, and be careful to remember it, when interpreting his later actions. Not many men would have borne themselves through the same trials with the same integrity; but the cir- cumstances of those trials had not tested the true defects in his moral constitution. Like all princes of the Plantagenet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction ; and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to contend. Education had done much for him, but his nature required more correction than his position had permitted, whilst unbroken prosperity and early inde- pendence of control had been his most serious misfortune. He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the great- est of men. With all his faults about him, he was still perhaps the greatest of his con- temporaries ; and the man best able of all living Englishmen to govern England, had been set to do it by the conditions of his birth. History of England, Vol. i. Chap. ii. EXECUTION OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. Her last night was a busy one. As she said herself, there was much to be done and the time was short. A few lines to the King of France were dated two hours after midnight. They were to insist for the last time that she was innocent of the con- spiracy, that she was dying for religion, and for having asserted her right to the crown ; and to beg that out of the sum which he owed her, her servant's wages might be paid, and masses provided for her soul. After this she slept for three or four hours, and then rose and with the most elaborate care prepared to encounter the end. At eight in the morning the Provost-mar- shal knocked at the outer door which com- municated with her suite of apartments. It was locked and no one answered, and he went back in some trepidation lest the fears might prove true which had been entertained the preceding evening. On his returning with the Sheriff, however, a few minutes later, the door was open, and they were confronted with the tall, majestic figure of Mary Stuart standing before them in splen- dour. The plain grey dress had been ex- changed for a robe of black satin ; her jacket was of black satin also, looped and slashed and trimmed with velv-et. Her false hair was arranged studiously with a coif, and over her head and falling down over her back was a white veil of delicate lawn. A crucifix of gold hung from her neck. In her hand she held a crucifix of ivory, and a number of jewelled Pater-nosters was at- tached to her girdle. Led by two of Pan- let's gentlemen, the Sheriff walking before her, she passed to the chamber of presence in which she had been tried, where Shrews- bury, Kent, Paulet, Drury, and others, were waiting to receive her. Andrew Melville, Sir Robert's brother, who had been master of her household, was kneeling in tears. 'Melville," she said, "you should rather rejoice than weep that the end of my troubles is come. Tell my friends I die a true Cath- olic. Commend me to my son. Tell him I have done nothing to prejudice his kingdom of Scotland, and so, good Melville, farewell." She kissed him, and turning asked for her chaplain, Du Preau. He was not present. There had been a fear of some religious melodrama which it was thought well to 516 JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. avoid. Her ladies, who had attempted to follow her, had been kept back also. She could not afford to leave the account of her death to be reported by enemies and Puri- tans, and she required assistance for the scene which she meditated. Missing them, she asked the reason of their absence, and said she wished them to see her die. Kent said he feared they might scream or faint, or attempt perhaps to dip their handker- chiefs in her blood. She undertook that they should be quiet and obedient. " The Queen, )r she said, " would never deny her so slight a request;" and when Kent still hesitated, she added with tears, " You know I am cousin to your Queen, of the blood of Henry the Seventh, a married Queen of France, and anointed Queen of Scotland." It was impossible to refuse. She was al- lowed to take six of her own people with her, and select them herself. She chose her physician Burgoyne, Andrew Melville, the apothecary Gorion, and her surgeon, with two ladies, Elizabeth Kennedy and Curie's young wife, Barbara Movvbray, whose child she had baptized. "Allons done," she then said. " Let us go," and passing out attended by the Earls, and leaning on the arm of an officer of the guard, she descended the great staircase to the hall. The news had spread far through the country. Thousands of people were col- lected outside the walls. About three hun- dred knights and gentlemen of the county had been admitted to see the execution. The tables and forms had been removed, and a great wood fire was blazing in the chimney. At the upper end of the hall, above the fire-place, but near it, stood the scaffold, twelve feet square and two feet and a half high. It was covered with black cloth ; a low rail ran round it covered with black cloth also, and the Sheriff's guard of halberdiers were ranged on the floor below on the four sides to keep off the crowd. On the scaffold was the block, black 1 ke the rest; a square, black cushion was p'nced behind it, .and behind the cushion a black chair; on the right were two other chairs for the Earls. The axe leant against the rail, and two masked figures stood like mutes on either side at the back. The Queen of Scots, as she swept in, seemed as if coming to take a part in some solemn pa- geant. Not a muscle of her face could be seen to quiver ; she ascended the scaffold with absolute composure, looked round her smiling, and sate down. Shrewsbury and Kent followed, and took their places, the Sheriff stood at her left hand, and Beale then mounted a platform and read the war- rant aloud. In all the assembly, Mary Stuart appeared the person least interested in the words which were consigning her to death. " Madam," said Lord Shrewsbury to her, when the rending was ended, "you hear what we are commanded to do." " You will do your duty," she answered, and rose as if to kneel and pray. The Dean of Peterborough, Dr. Fletcher, approached the rail. " Madam," he began, with a low obeisance, " the Queen's most excellent Majesty ;" " Madam, the Queen r s most excellent Majesty," thrice he com- menced his sentence, wanting words to pur- sue it. When he repeated the words a fourth time, she cut him short, "Mr. Dean," she said, " I am a Catholic, and must die a Catholic. It is useless to at- tempt to move me, and your prayers will avail me but little." " Change your opinion, Madam," he cried, his tongue being loosed at last ; " repent of your sins, settle your faith in Christ, by him to be saved." " Trouble not yourself further, Mr. Dean," she answered ; " I am settled in my own faith, for which I mean to shed my blood." " I am sorry, Madam," said Shrewsbury, " to see you so addicted to Popery." "That image of Christ you hold there," said Kent, " will not profit you if he be not engraved in your heart." She did not reply, and turning her back on Fletcher, knelt for her own devotions. lie had evidently been instructed to im- pair the Catholic complexion of the scene, and the Queen of Scots was determined that he should not succeed. When she knelt he commenced an extempore prayer, in which the assembly joined. As his voice sounded out in the hall she raised her own, reciting with powerful deep-chested tones the peni- tential Psalms in Latin, introducing English sentences at intervals, that the audience might know what she was saying, and pray- ing with especial distinctness for her holy father the Pope. From time to time, with conspicuous vehe- mence, she struck the crucifix against her bosom, and then, as the Dean gave up the struggle, leaving her Latin, she prayed in English wholly, still clear and loud. She prayed for the Church which she hnd been ready to betray, for her son whom she had disinherited, for the Queen whom she had endeavoured to murder. She prayed God to avert his wrath from England, that England which she had sent a last message to Philip to beseech him to invade. She forgave her enemies, whom she had invited Philip not to forget, and then, praying to the saints to intercede for her with Christ, and kissing the crucifix, and crossing her own breast, "Even as thy arms, Jesus," she cried, "were CHARLES KINGSLEY. 517 spread upon the cross, so receive me into thy mercy and forgive my sins !" With these words she rose ; the black mutes stepped forward, and in the usual form begged her forgiveness. " I forgive you," she said, " for now I hope you shall end all my troubles." They offered their help in arranging her dress. "Truly, my lords," she said, with a smile, to the Earls, " I never had such grooms waiting on me before." Her ladies were allowed to come up upon the scaffold to assist her ; for the work to be done was con- siderable, and had been prepared with no common thought. She laid her crucifix on her chair. The chief executioner took it as a perquisite, but was ordered instantly to lay it down. The lawn veil was lifted carefully off, not to disturb the hair, and was hung upon the rail. The black robe was next removed. Below it was a petticoat of crimson velvet. The black jacket followed, and under the jacket was a body of crimson satin. One of her ladies handed her a pair of crimson sleeves, with which she hastily covered her arms : and thus she stood on the black scaf- fold with the black figures all around her, blood-red from head to foot. Her reasons for adopting so extraoi'dinary a costume must be left to conjecture. It is only certain that it must have been care- fully studied, and the pictorial effect must have been appalling. The women, whose firmness had hitherto borne the trial, began now to give way, spasmodic sobs bursting from them which they could not check. " Ne criez vous," she said, "j'ay promis pour vous." Strug- gling bravely, they crossed their breasts again and again, she crossing them in turn and bidding them pray for her. Then she knelt on the cushion. Barbara Mowbray bound her eyes with a handkerchief. "Adieu," she said, smiling for the last time and waving her hand to them, "Adieu, au revoir." They stepped back from off the scaffold and left her alone. On her knees she repeated the Psalm, In te, Dom- ino, confido, "In thee. Lord, have I put my trust." Her shoulders being exposed, two scars became visible, one on either side, and the Earls being now a little behind her, Kent pointed to them with his white wand and looked enquiringly at his companion. Shrewsbury whispered that they were the remains of two abscesses from which she had suffered while living with him at Shef- field. When the Psalm was finished she felt for the block, and laying down her head, mut- tered : " In manus, Domine tuas, commendo animam meam." The hard wood seemed to hurt her, for she placed her hands under her neck. The executioners gently removed them, lest they should deaden the blow, and then one of them holding her slightly, the other raised the axe and struck. The scene had been too trying for even the practised headsman of the Tower. His arm wandered. The blow fell on the knot of the handker- chief, and scarcely broke the skin. She neither spoke nor moved. lie struck again, this time effectively. The head hung by a shred of skin, which he divided without withdrawing the axe; and at once a meta- morphosis was witnessed, strange as was ever wrought by wand of fubled enchanter. The coif fell off and the false plaits. The laboured illusion vanished. The lady who had knelt before the block was in the ma- turity of grace and loveliness. The execu- tioner, when he raised the head, as usual, to show it to the crowd, exposed the with- ered features of a grizzled, wrinkled old woman. " So perish all the enemies of the Queen !" said the Dean of Peterborough. A loud Amen rose over the hall. " Such end," said the Earl of Kent, rising and standing over the body, " to the Queen's and the gos- pel's enemies !" History of England, Vol. xii. Ch. xxxiv. REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY, born at Ilolne Vicarage, Devonshire, LSI 9, was educated at Magdalene College, Cam- bridge, and became Rector of Eversley, Hampshire, 1844 ; died 1875. Among his works are : The Saint's Trag- edy, a Story of Elizabeth of Hungary, a Drama in Verse, Lond., 1848, 12mo: Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet, a Novel, 1850, 2 vols. p. 8vo; Yeast, a Problem, 1851, p. 8vo; Phaetheon, or, Loose Thoughts for Loose Thinkers, 1852, 12mo; Ilypatia, or, New Foes with an Old Face, 1853, 2 vols. p. 8vo; Alexandria and her Schools, 1854, p. 8vo; Westward Ho ! or, The Voyages and Adven- tures of Sir Ainyas Leigh, 1855, 3 vols. cr. 8vo ; Glaucus, or, The Wonders of the Shore, 1855, 12rno, 3d edit, 1856, 12tno; Poems, now first collected, 1856, 16mo : The Heroes, or, Greek Fairy Tales for my Children, 1856, 8vo ; Two Years Ago, a Novel, 1857, 3 vols. p. 8vo; Miscellanies, 1859; The Water- Babies, 1863, cr. 8vo; The Roman and the Teuton ; Lectures, 1864, p. 8vo ; What Then Does Doctor Newman Mean? 1864; Here- ward, the Wake, 1866, cr. 8vo; On the Ancien Regime, 1867. cr. 8vo ; The Hermits, 1868 ; Madam Now 'and Lady Why, 187U ; The Limits of Exact Science as Applied to 518 CHARLES KINGSLEY. History; At Last, 1871, cr. 8vo ; Prose Idylls, 1873, cr. 8vo; Plays and Puritans, 1873; Health and Education, 1874; Lec- tures Delivered in America in 1874, p. 8vo ; Selections from his Writings, cr. 8vo ; Poems, including Andromeda, Saint's Trag- edy, Songs, Ballads, etc., fp. 8vo ; Favourite Poems [The Three Fishers, The Sands of Dee, etc.], by Charles Kingsley, Bost., 32mo. He also published Westminster Sermons, cr. 8vo, other volumes of Sermons, Pamph- lets, and Articles in the 8th edition of Ency- clopaedia Britannica, North British Review, Eraser's Magazine, etc. See his Life by Mrs. Kingsle'y, 1878 ; Eraser's Mag., March, 1848, and June, 1858; Blackwood's Mag., Nov. 1850, June, 1855, Aug. 1858; London Quart. Kev., Sept. 1851 ; N. Brit, llev., Aug. 1852. CAUSES OP THE DEFECTS IN MODERN POETRY. It is impossible to give outward form to that which is in its very nature formless, like doubt and discontent. For on such subjects thought itself is not defined : it has no limit, no self-coherence, not even method or organic law. And in a poem, as in all else, the body must be formed according to the law of the inner life ; the utterance must be the expression, the outward and visible autotype of the spirit which animates it. But where the thought is defined by no limits, it cannot express itself in form, for form is that which has limits. Where it has no inward unity it cannot have any outward one. If the spirit be impatient of all moral rule, its utterance will be equally impatient of all artistic rule ; and thus, as we are now beginning to discover from experience, the poetry of doubt will find itself unable to use those forms of verse which have been always held to be the highest : tragedy, epic, the ballad, and lastly, even the subjective lyrical ode. For they, too, to judge by every great lyric which remains to us, require a ground- work of consistent, self-coherent belief; and they require also an appreciation of melody even more delicate, and a verbal polish even more complete, than any other form of poetic utterance. But where there is no melody within, there will be no melody without. It is in vain to attempt the setting of spiritual discords to physical music. The mere prac- tical patience and self-restraint requisite to work out rhythm when fixed on, will be wanting; nay, the fitting rhythm will never be found, the subject itself being rhythmic: and thus we shall have, or rather, alas ! do have, a wider and wider divorce of sound and sense, a greater and greater carelessness for polish, and for the charm of musical utter- ance, and watch the clear and spirit-stirring melodies of the older poets swept away by a deluge of half-metrical prose-run-mad, diffuse, unfinished, unmusical, to which any other metre than that in which it happens to have been written would have been equally appropriate, because all are equally inap- propriate ; and where men have nothing to sing, it is not of the slightest consequence how they sing it. While poets persist in thinking and writ- ing thus, it is vain for them to talk loud about the poet's divine mission, as the prophet of mankind, the swayer of the universe, and so forth. Not that we believe the poet simply by virtue of being a singer to have any such power. While young gentlemen are talking about governing heaven and earth by verse, Wellingtons and Peels, Ark wrights and Stephensons, Frys and Chis holms, are doing it by plain practical prose ; and even of those who have moved and led the hearts of men by verse, every one, as far as we know, has produced his magical effects by poetry of the very opposite form to that which is now in fashion. What poet ever had more influence than Homer ? What poet is more utterly antipodal to our modern schools? There are certain Hebrew Psalms, too, which will be confessed, even by those who differ most from them, to have exercised some slight influence on human thought and action, and to be likely to exercise the same for some time to come. Are they any more like our modern poetic forms than they are like our modern poetic matter? Ay, even in our own time what has been the form, what the temper, of all poetry, from Korner and Heine, what has made the German heart leap up, but simplicity, manhood, clearness, finished melody, the very opposite, in ft word, of our new school? And to look at our home, what is the modern poetry which lives on the lips and in the hearts of English'' men, Scotchmen. Irishmen? It is not only simple in form and language, but much of it fitted, by a severe exercise of artistic pa- tience, to tunes already existing. Who does not remember how the " Marseillaise" was born, or how Burns's " Scots wha ha wi' Wallace bled," or the story of Moore's taking the old "lied Fox March," and giving it a new immortality as "Let Erin remember the days of old," while poor Einmett sprang up and cried, "Oh, that I had twenty thou- sand Irishmen marching to that tune!" So it is, even to this day, and let those who hanker after poetic fame take note of it : not a poem which is now really living but has gained its immortality by virtue of simplicity and positive faith. Miscellanies, Vol. i. pp. 398-301. JOHN RUSKIN. 519 JOHN RUSKIN, the son of a wine-merchant, from whom he inherited an ample fortune, was horn in London, 1819; educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained the Newdi irate Prize in 1839 for an English poem entitled Salsetto and Elephanta, and graduated in 1842. He was instructed in drawing and painting by Copley, Fielding, and J. D. Harding, and became an enthusiastic ad- mirer of Turner, to defend whom he wrote the first volume of his Modern Painters. He is a zealous Christian philanthropist, and has erected a number of model houses for the poor in London. Modern Painters, their Superiority in the Art of Landscape Painting to all the Ancient Masters, by a Graduate of Oxford, Lond., ] 843-60, 5 vols. imp. 8vo ; The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1 849, imp. 8vo,2d edit., 1855, imp. 8vo ; The Stones of Venice, 1851-53, 3 vols. imp. 8vo ; Examples of the Architect- ure of Venice, imp. fol., Pts. i., ii., iii., 1851 (incomplete) : Notes on the Construction of Sheep-folds, 1851, 8vo ; Pre-llaphaclitism, 1851, 8vo, 2d edit., 1862, demy 8vo; The King of the Golden River. 1851, 16mo ; The Opening of the Crystal Palace, 1854, 8vo ; Lectures on Architecture and Painting, 1854, p. 8vo ; Giotto and his Works in Padua, 1854- 55, 2 Pts., r. 8vo ; The Political Economy of Art, 1857, 8vo; The Elements of Drawing, 1857, p. 8vo, 6th 1000, 1860; The Elements of Perspective, 1859, cr. 8vo ; The Two Paths : being Lectures on Art and its Appli- cation to Decoration and Manufacture, 1859, p. 8vo ; " Unto this Last:" Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy, 1862, p. 8vo ; Sesame and Lilies : Two Lec- tures, 1865, fp. 8vo, 3d edit., 1866; An En- quiry into some of the Conditions at Present affecting the Study of Architecture in our Schools : a Lecture, 1865, 8vo ; The Ethics of tlie Dust : Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallization, 1865, cr. 8vo ; The Crown of Wild Olives : Three Lec- tures on Work, Traffic, and War, 1866 : Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne : Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work, 1867, 12mo; The Queen of the Air : being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm, 'i860, cr. 8vo ; Lectures ou Art, 1870 ; Aratra Pente- lici : The Elements of Sculpture, 1872. lie also published Notes on Pictures at the Royal Academy, 1855-59, Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, 1857, Fors Clavigera, contributions to books, papers in the Quarterly and other Reviews, Magazines, etc. Messrs. John Wiley's Sons, New York, publish uniform editions of Ruskin's Works, the last, Library edi- tion, with aBibliography of his Works, by R. II. Shepherd (recently prepared for private distribution in alimited edition, Lond., 1878), 1879. See also Selections from the Writings of John Ruskin, M. A., London, Smith, Elder, & Co., 1861, p. 8vo ; Precious Thoughts, Moral and Religious, Gathered from the Works of John Ruskin, A.M., by Mrs. L. C. Tuthill, New York, J. Wiley's Sons, 1865, 12mo ; Pearls for Young Ladies, from the Later Works of John Ruskin, by Mrs. L. C. Tuthill, New York, J. Wiley's Sons, 1879, 12mo; Ruskin: His Life, His Books, His The- ories, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1879. " Mr. Ruskin seems to me one of the few genu- ine writers, as distinguished from b3ok-makers, of this age. His earnestness even auiuses me in cer- tain passages [in The Stones of Venice] ; for I cannot help laughing to think how Utilitarians will fume and fret over his deep, serious, and (as they will think) fanatical reverence for Art. That pure and severe mind you ascribed to him speaks in every line. He writes like the consecrated Priest of the Abstract and Ideal." CIIAUI.OTTB BUO.VTE to GEORGE H. LEWES: Mrs. Guxkell's Life of Charlotte Ui-onle. " Mr. Ruskin has been before the world for some years as the most voluminous, the most confident, and the most dogmatic of art-critics. He has as- tonished his readers no less by his platitudes than by his paradoxes. . . . There is nothing more painful in Mr. Rut-kin's writings than the tot-.il want of reverence for things human and divinj that pervades them. The treasures of ancient art, from which successive ages have drunk dei'p draughts of inspiration, are to him nothing but stumbling-blocks in a deep valley of ruin [Lec- tures, p. 219]. . . . Mystery and unintelligibility have iti all ages been the grand resource of thosa who have wished to impose upon the gullibility of the world and to pass for being wiser than their neighbours. Quacks religious, quacks moral, quacks political, and quacks literary, have re- sorted to them, no less than quacks legal ; and nowhere will they be found in greater abundance than in the ponderous tomes with which, year after year, Mr. Ruskin burdens our groaning tables." Blackwood'g Mag., Jan. 1860. " We value a writer not in proportion to his freedom from faults, but in proportion to his posi- tive excellencies, to the variety of thought he contributes anil suggests, to the amount of gladden- ing and energizing emotions he excites. Of what comparative importance is it that Mr. Ruskin un- dervalues this painter or overvalues the other, that he sometimes glides from a just argument into fallacious one, that ho is a little absurd here and not a little arrogant there, if, with all these col- lateral mistakes, he teaches truth of infinite value, and so teaches it that men will listen ? The truth of infinite value th it he teaches is realism, the doctrine that all truth and beauty are to be attained by a humble and faithful study of nature, and not by substituting vague forms, bred by imagination on the mists of feeling, in place of definite, sub- stantial reality. The thorough acceptance of this doctrine would remould our life ; and he who teaches its application to any one department of human activity with such power as Mr. Ruskin's ia 520 JOHN R US KIN. a prophet for his generation." Weatm. Review, April, 1856. See also Blackw. Mag., Oct. 1843, Sept. 1851, Nov. 1856; Brit. Quar. Rev., May, 1847, Oct. 1860; N. Amer. Rev., Jan. 1848, April, 1857? Edin. Rev., Oct.. 1851, April, 1856; Eraser's Mag., April, 1854; Lond. Quar. Rev., April, 1856 ; Westin. Rev., April, 1856, April, 1857, Oct. 1863 ; N. Brit. Rev., Feb. 1862, and many other references in Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature, ii. 1894. VENICE. And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your gondola ; come with me. on an autumnal morning, through the dark gates of Padua, and let us take the broad road leading towards the east. It lies level, for a league or two, between its elms and vine festoons full laden, their thin leaves veined into scarlet hectic, and their clusters deepened into gloomy blue ; then mounts an embankment above the Brenta, and runs between the river and the broad plain, which stretches to the north in endless lines of mulberry and maize. The Brenta flows strongly, but slowly; a muddy volume of yellowish-grey water, that neither hastens nor slackens, but glides heavily between its monotonous banks, with here and there a short, babbling eddy twisted for an instant into its opaque surface, and vanishing, as if something had been dragged into it and gone down. Dusty and shadeless, the road fares along the dyke on its northern side; and the tall white tower of Dolo is seen trembling in the heat mist far away, and never seems nearer than it did at first. Presently, you pass one of the much-vaunted "villas on the Brenta:" a glaring, spectral shell of brick and stucco, its windows with painted architraves like picture-frames, and a court-yard paved with pebbles in front of it, all burning in the thick glow of the fever- ish sunshine, but fenced from the high road, for magnificence' sake, with goodly posts and chains ; then another, of Kew Gothic, with Chinese variations, painted red and green ; a third, composed for the greater part of dead wall, with fictitious windows painted upon it, each with a pea-^reen blind, and a classical architrave in bad per- spective ; and a fourth, with stucco figures set on the top of its garden-wall : some an- tique, like the kind to be seen at the corner of the New Road, and some of clumsy gro- tesque dwarfs, with fat bodies and large boots. This is the architecture to which her studies of the Renaissance have conducted modern Italy. The sun climbs steadily, and warms into intense white the walls of the little piazza of Dolo, where we change horses. Another dreary stage among the now divided branches of the Brenta, form- ing irregular and half-stagnant canals; with one or two more villas on the other side of them, but these of the old Venetian type, which we may have recognized before at Padua, and sinking fast into utter ruin, black, and rent, and lonely, set close to the edge of the dull water, with what were once small gardens beside them, kneaded into mud, and with blighted fragments of gnarled hedges and broken stakes for their fencing; and here and there a few fragments of mar- ble steps, which have once given them grace- ful access from the water's edge, now settling into the mud in broken joints, all aslope, and slippery with green wood. At last the road runs sharply to the nortii, and there is an open space, covered with bent grass, on the right of it : but do not look that way. Five minutes more, and we are in the upper room of the little inn at Mestre, glad of a moment's rest in shade. The table is (al- ways I think) covered with a cloth of nom- inal white and perennial grey, with plates and glasses at due intervals, and small loaves of a peculiar white bread made with oil, and more like knots of flour than brad. The view from its balcony is not cheerful : a narrow street, with a solitary brick church and barren campanile on the other side of it; and some conventual buildings, with a few crimson remnants of fresco about their windows ; and between them and the street, a ditch with some slow current in it, and one or two small houses beside it, one with an arbour of roses at its door, as in an Eng- lish tea-garden, the air, however, about ua having in it nothing of roses, but a close smell of garlic and crabs, warmed by the smoke of various stands of hot chestnuts. There is much vociferation also going on beneath the window respecting certain wheelbarrows which are in rivalry for our baggage: we appease their rivalry with our best patience, and follow them down the narrow street. We have but walked some two hundred yards when we come to a low wharf or quay, at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation: another glance undeceives us, it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not. than with any definite purpose, and glide away ; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy. It is something clearer than any water we have seen lately, and of a pale green ; the banks ELISIIA KEXT KANE. 521 only two or three feet above it, of mud and rank grass, with here and there a stunted tree ; gliding swiftly past the small case- ment of the gondola, as if they were dragged by upon a painted scene. Stroke by stroke, \ve count the plunges of the oar, each heav- ing up the side of the boat slightly as her silver beak shoots forward. We lose pa- tience, and extricate ourselves from the cushions: the sea air blows keenly by as we stand leaning on the roof of the floating cell. In front, nothing to be seen but long canal and level bank ; to the west, the tower of Mestre is lowering fast, and behind it there have risen purple shapes, of the colour of dead rose-leaves, all round the horizon, feebly defined against the afternoon sky. the Alps of Bassano. Forward still : the endless canal bends at last, and then breaks into intricate angles about some low bas- tions, now torn to pieces and staggering in ugly rents towards the water, the bastions of the fort of Malghera. Another turn, and another perspective of canal ; but not interminable. The silver beak cleaves it fast, it widens : the rank grass of the banks sinks lower, and at last dies in tawny knots along an expanse of weedy shore. Over it, on the right, but a few years back, we might have seen the lagoon stretching to the horizon, and the warm southern sky bending over Malamoceo to the sea. Now we can see nothing but what seems a low and monotonous dock-yard wall, with flat arches to let the tide through it; this is the railroad bridge, conspicuous above all things. But at the end of those dismal arches there rises, out of the wide water, a straggling line of low and confused brick buildings, which, but for the many towers which are mingled among them, might be the suburbs of an English manufacturing town. Four or five domes, pale, and ap- parently at ci greater distance, rise over the centre of the line ; but the object which first catches the eye is a sullen cloud of black smoke brooding over the northern half of it, and which issues from the belfry of a church. It is Venice. The Stones of Venice, Vol. i. ON BOOKS AND BOOK-BUYERS. I say we have despised literature: what do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as com- pared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad, a bibliomaniac. But you never call one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining them- selves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, us compared with the contents of its wine cellars? What posi- tion would its expenditure on literature take as compared with its expenditure on. luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for the body : now, a good book contains such food inexhaustibly : it is provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men's dinners are. We are few of us put to such a trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if pub- lic libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading as well as in munching and sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wiser people for- get that if a book is worth reading it is worth buying. Sesame and Lilies, or King's Treasuries. ELISHA KENT KANE, M.D., born in Philadelphia, 1820, educated at the University of Virginia, and in the Medical Department of the University of Pennsylva- nia, was appointed Physician to the Chinese Embassy, 1843; in 1850 sailed as Senior Medical Officer and Naturalist to the first Grinnell Expedition, of which he published an account in The United States Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin : A Personal Narrative, New York, 1853, 8vo, new edition, Phila., 1857, 8vo ; and in 1856 gave to the world, Arctic Explorations : The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin during the Years 1853, '54, '55, Phila., Childs & Peterson, 2 vols. 8vo. Of this expedition Dr. Kane was the commander, and well has he told its story. Sixty-five thousand copies were sold in one year. " With a less energetic lender the whole party would hare perished." SIR JOHN RICHARDSON. " It is one of the most remnrkable records I have ever met with of difficulties and sufferings, and of the power of a brave spirit to overcome them." Wr. H. PRESCOTT. "His constant self-po.'session during his long trials, his quickness of judgment, his unshrinking 522 HERBERT SPENCER. courage in dunger, his fertility in resources in the hours of greatest difficulty, give him a very high place in the very first rank of Polar Navigators, as a leader, and commander, and man ; and no one of them all has told the story of their adven- tures so charmingly as he has done." GEORGE BANCROFT. THE SEAL! THE SEAL! Things grew worse and worse with us : the old difficulty of breathing came back again, and our feet swelled to such an ex- tent that we were obliged to cut open our canvas boots. But the symptom which gave me the most uneasiness was our inability to sleep. A form of low fever which hung by us when at work had been kept down by the thoroughness of our daily rest: all my hopes of escape were in the refreshing influ- ences of the halt. It must be remembered that we were now in the open bay, in the full line of the great ice-drift to the Atlantic, and in boats so frail and unseaworthy as to require constant bailing to keep them afloat. It was at this crisis of our fortunes that we saw a large seal floating as is the custom of these animals on a small patch of ice, and seemingly asleep. It was an ussuk, and so large that I at first mistook it for a walrus. Signal was made for the Hope to follow astern, and, trembling with anxiety, we pre- pared to crawl down upon him. Petersen, with the long English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and stockings were drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal our excitement became so intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. I had a set of signals for such occa- sions, which spared us the noise of the voice ; and when about three hundred yards off, the oars were taken in, and we moved on in deep silence with a single scull astern. He was not asleep, for he reared his head when we were almost within rifle-shot; and to this day I can remember the hard, care- worn, almost despairing expression of the men's thin faces as they saw him move ; their lives depended on his capture. I depressed my hand nervously, as a signal for Petersen to fire. McGary hung upon his oar, and the bo.it, slowly but noiselessly sagging ahead, seemed to me Avithin certain range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the poor fellow was paralyzed by his anxiety, trying vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against the cutwater of the boat. The seal rose on his fore-flippers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity, and coiled himself for a plunge. At that instant, simul- taneously with the crack of our rifle, he re- laxed his long length on the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell help- less to one side. I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled the men. With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged both boats upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the seal and bore him up to safer ice. The men seemed half-crazy: I had not realized how much we were reduced by absolute famine. They ran over the floe, crying and laughing and brandishing their knives. It was not five minutes before every man was sucking his bloody fingers or mouthing long strips of raw blubber. Not an ounce of this seal was lost. The intestines found their way into the soup- kettles without any observance of the pre- liminary home-processes. The cartilaginous parts of the fore-flippers were cut off in the mle, and passed round to be chewed upon ; and even the liver, warm and raw as it was, bade fair to be eaten before it had seen the pot. That night, on the large halting-floe, to which, in contempt of the dangers of drifting, we happy men had hauled our boats, two entire planks of the Red Eric were devoted to a grand cooking-fire, and we enjoyed a rare and savage feast. Arctic Explorations : The Second Grinnell Expedition, ii., Chap. xxix. HERBERT SPENCER, a philosophical writer of wide reputation, born in Derby, England, 1820, was for some years a civil engineer. The Proper Sphere of Government, Lond., 1842; Social Statics, 1851, 8vo; Over Legis- lation, 1854. p. 8vo ; The Principles of Psy- chology, 1855, 8vo, vols. i. ii., 1872-73, 8vo; Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 1858-74, 3 vols. 8vo ; Education : Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, 1861, demy 8vo ; First Principles, 1862. 8vo ; Essays: Moral, Polit- ical, and ^Esthetic, 1863, 8vo; The Princi- ples of Biology, 1863, etc., 2 vols. 8vo ; Classification of the Sciences, 1864, 12mo; Spontaneous Generation, 1870; Recent Dis- cussions in Science. Philosophy, and Morals, 1871, 8vo ; Principles of Sociology, 8vo; The Study of Sociology, 1872, 8vo ; Descrip- tive Sociology, with Tables, 5 vols. roy. 4to : No. 1, English, No. 2, Ancient American, No. 3, Negritto and Malayo-Polynesian Races, No. 4, African Races, No. 5, Asiatic Races: Illustrations of Universal Progress, 8vo ; Sins of Trade and Commerce, 1875 ; The Data of Ethics, 1879, 8vo. Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., New York, publish uniform editions of Spencer's works, HERBERT SPENCER. 523 which are remarkable for perspicuity of style, fulness of information, and in many cases sophistical and inconclusive reason- ings. Nothing can be more absurd or un- worthy of a true philosopher than his futile efforts to escape the evidences of design in the works of the Creator. EDUCATIONS We come now to the third great division of human activities, a division for which no preparation whatever is made. If by some strange chance not a vestige of us de- scended to the remote future save a pile of our school-books or some college examina- tion paper, we may imagine how puzzled an antiquary of the period would be on finding in them no indication that the learners were ever likely to be parents. " This must have been the curriculum for their celibates," we may fancy him concluding. "I perceive here an elaborate preparation for many things : especially for reading the books of extinct nations and of co-existing nations (from which indeed it seems clear that these people had very little worth reading in their own tongue) ; but I find no reference what- ever to the bringing up of children. They could not have been so absurd as to omit all training for this gravest of responsibilities. Evidently, then, this was the school-course of one of their monastic orders." Seriously, is it not an astonishing fact, that though on the treatment of offspring depend their lives or deaths, and their moral wel- fare or ruin, yet not one word of instruction on the treatment of offspring is ever given to those who will hereafter be parents? Is it not monstrous that the fate of a new generation should be left to the chances of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy, joined with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prejudiced counsel of grandmothers? If a merchant commenced business without any knowledge of arithmetic and book- keeping, we should exclaim at his folly, and look for disastrous consequences. Or, if, before studying anatomy, a man set up as a surgical operator, we should wonder at his audacity and pity his patients. But that parents should begin the difficult task of rearing children without ever having given a thought to the principles physical, moral, or intellectual which ought to guide them, excites neither surprise at the actors nor pity for their victims. To tens of thousands that are killed, add hundreds of thousands that survive with feeble constitutions, and millions that grow up with constitutions not so strong as they should be ; and you will have some idea of the curse inflicted on their offspring by pa- rents ignorant of the laws of life. Do but consider for a moment that the regimen to which children are subject is hourly telling upon them to their life-long injury or bene- fit ; and that there are twenty ways of going wrong to one way of going right; and you will get some idea of the enormous mischief that is almost everywhere inflicted by the thoughtless haphazard system in common use. Is it decided that a boy shall be clothed in some flimsy short dress, and be allowed to go playing about with limbs reddened by cold? The decision will tell on his whole future existence, either in illnesses; or in stunted growth ; or in deficient energy ; or in a maturity less vigorous than it ought to have been, and consequent hindrances to success and happiness. Are children doomed to a monotonous dietary, or a dietary that is deficient in nutritiveness ? Their ultimate physical power and their efficiency, as men and women, will inevitably be more or less diminished by it. Are they forbidden vocif- erous play, or (being too ill-clothed to bear exposure) are they kept in-doors in cold weather? They are certain to fall below that measure of health and strength to which they would else have attained. When sons and daughters grow up sickly and fee- ble, parents commonly regard the event as a misfortune, as a visitation of Providence. Thinking after the prevalent chaotic fashion, they assume that these evils come without causes, or that the causes are supernatural. Nothing of the kind. In some cases the causes are doubtless inherited ; but in most cases foolish regulations are the causes. Very generally parents themselves are re- sponsible for all this pain, this debility, this depression, this misery. They have under- taken to control the lives of their offspring from hour to hour; with cruel carelessness they have neglected to learn anything about these vital processes which they are unceas- ingly affecting by their commands and pro- hibitions ; in utter ignorance of the simplest physiological laws, they have been year by year undermining the constitutions of their children ; and have so inflicted disease and premature death, not only on them but on their descendants. Equally great are the ignorance and the consequent injury when we turn from phys- ical training to moral training. Consider the young mother and her nur- sery legislation. But a few years ago she was at school, where her memory was crammed with words, and names, and dates, and her reflective facul- ties scarcely in the slightest degree exercised, where not one idea was given her respect- ing the methods of dealing with the opening mind of childhood ; and where her discipline 524 HERBERT SPENCER. did not in the least fit her for thinking out methods of her own. The intervening years have been passed in practising music, in fancy-work, in novel-reading, and in party- giving: no thought having yet been given to the grave responsibilities of maternity ; and scarcely any of that solid intellectual culture obtained which would be some prep- aration for such responsibilities. And now see her with an unfolding human char- acter committed to her charge, see her pro- foundly ignorant of the phenomena with which she has to deal, undertaking to do that which can be done but imperfectly even with the aid of the profoundest knowledge. She knows nothing about the nature of the emotions, their order of evolution, their functions, or where use ends and abuse begins. She is under the impression that some of the feelings are wholly bad, which is not true of any one of them. And then, ignorant as she is of that with which she has to deal, she is equally ignorant of the effects that will be produced on it by this or that treatment. What can be more inevitable than the disasters we see hourly arising? Education : Intellectual, Moral, and Phys- ical. ON LANGUAGES. One advantage claimed for that devotion to language-learning which forms so promi- nent a feature in the ordinary curriculum is, that the memory is thereby strengthened. And it is apparently assumed that this is an advantage peculiar to the study of words. But the truth is, that the sciences afford far wider fields for the exercise of memory. It is no slight task to remember all the facts ascertained respecting our solar system ; much more to remember all that is known concerning the structure of our galaxy. The new compounds which chemistry daily accumulates are so numerous that few, save professors, know the names of them all ; and to recollect the atomic constitutions and affinities of all these compounds, is scarcely possible without making chemistry the oc- cupation of life. . . . So vast is the accumu- lation of facts which men of science have before them, that only by dividing and sub- dividing their labours can they deal with it. To a complete knowledge of his own division, each adds but a general knowledge of the rest. Surely then, science, cultivated even to a very moderate extent, affords adequate ex- ercise for memory. To say the very least, it involves quite as good a training for this faculty as language does. But now mark, that while for the train- ing of mere memory, science is as good as, if not better than, language, it has an im- mense superiority in the kind of memory it cultivates. In the acquirement of a lan- guage, the connexions of ideas to be estab- lished in the mind correspond to facts that are in great measure accidental ; whereas. in the acquirement of science, the connexions of ideas to be established in the mind cor- respond to facts that are mostly necessary. It is true that the relations of words to their meaning is in one sense natural, and that the genesis of these relations may be traced back a certain distance ; though very rarely to the beginning (to which let us add the remark that the laws of this genesis form a branch of mental science. the science of philology). But since it will not be con- tended that in the acquisition of languages, as ordinarily carried on, these natural rela- tions between words and their meanings are habitually traced, and the laws regu- lating them explained, it must be admitted that they are commonly learned as fortuitous relations. On the other hand, the relations which science presents are causal relations ; and when properly taught, are understood as such. Instead of being practically acci- dental, they are necessary; and as such, give exercise to the reasoning faculties. While language familiarizes with non-rational re- lations, science familiarizes with rational relations. While the one exercises memory only, the other exercises both memory and understanding. Observe next that a great superiority of science over language as a means of disci- pline is, that it cultivates the judgment. As in a lecture on mental education delivered at the Royal Institution, Professor Faraday well remarks, the most common intellectual fault is deficiency of judgment. lie con- tends that " society, speaking generally, is not only ignorant as respects education of the judgment, but it is also ignorant of its ignorance." And the cause to which he as- cribes this state is want of scientific culture. The truth of his conclusion is obvious. Cor- rect judgment with regard to all surrounding things, events, and consequences, becomes possible only through knowledge of the way in which surrounding phenomena depend on each other. No extent of acquaintance with the meaning of words can give the power of forming correct inferences respecting causes and effects. The constant habit of drawing conclusions from data, and then of verifying those conclusions by observation and experiment, can alone give the power of judging. And that it necessitates this habit is one of the immense advantages of science. Not only, however, for intellectual disci- pline is science the best, but also for moral discipline. The learning of languages tends, if anything, further to increase the already GOLD WIN SMITH 525 undue respect for authority. Such and such are the meanings of these words, says the teacher or the dictionary. So and so is the rule in this case, says the grammar. By the pupil these dicta are received as unquestion- able. His constant attitude of mind is that of submission to dogmatic authority. And a necessary result is a tendency to accept with- out inquiry whatever is established. Quite opposite is the attitude of mind generated by the cultivation of science. By science, con- stant appeal is made to individual reason. Its truths are not accepted upon authority alone ; but all are at liberty to test them, nay, in many cases, the pupil is required to think out his own conclusions. Every step in a scientific conclusion is submitted to his judgment. He is not asked to admit it without seeing it to be true. And the trust in his own powers thus produced is further increased by the constancy with which Na- ture justifies his conclusions when they are correctly drawn. From all which there flows that independence which is a most valuable element in character. Nor is this the only moral benefit bequeathed by scien- tific culture. When carried on, as it should always be, as much as possible under the form of independent research, it exercises perseverance and sincerity. .Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Phys- ical. GOLDWIN SMITH, LL.D., born 1823, at Reading, England, where his father was a physician, was educated at Eton, and entered at Christ Church, Oxford, but was shortly afterwards elected to a demyship at Magdalene College; took his degree of B.A. in 1845, having obtained the Ireland and Hertford Scholarship and the Chancellor's Prize for Latin verse, and was subsequently elected Fellow of University College, of which he became Tutor ; called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1850, but did not practise ; acted as Assistant Secretary to the first Oxford Commission (that of In- quiry), and as Secretary to the second ; and was a member of the Education Commission of 1859 , Regius Professor of Modern His- tory in the University of Oxford, 1858 to July, 1866, and since his resignation has delivered many lectures in advocacy of po- litical Reform, of which he is one of the most influential champions; Professor of English and General Constitutional History in Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, 1868. An Inaugural Lecture delivered at Ox- ford, Oxf. and Lond., 1859, Svo; On the Foundation of the American Colonies, 1861, Svo; On the Study of History, 1861, Svo; On some Supposed Consequences of the Doctrine of Historical Progress, Oxf. and Lond., 1861, Svo; Lectures on Modern His- tory, delivered at Oxford, 1859-61, 1861, Svo ; Rational Religion and the Rational- istic Objections of the Bampton Lectures for 1858, Oxf., 1861, Svo; Irish History and Irish Character, Oxf. and Lond., 1861, Svo; An Oxford Professor on Church Endow- ments, Lond., 1862 ; The Empire, Oxf., 1863, p. Svo ; Does the Bible sanction American Slavery ? 1S63, p. Svo ; A Letter to a Whig Member of the Southern Independence As- sociation, 2d edit., Lond. and Camb., 1864, cr. Svo (in favour, as are others of his pub- lications, of the Federal Government of the United States) ; A Plea for the Abolition of Tests in the University of Oxford, Oxf., 1864, cr. Svo ; England and America, Bost., 1865, Svo ; Speeches and Letters, from Jan. 1863 to Jan. 1865, on the Rebellion, New York, 1865, 2 vols. Svo; The Civil War in Amer- ica, Lond., 1S66, Svo ; Three English States- men (Pym, Cromwell, and Pitt), Lond., 1867, Svo and p. Svo: The Reorganization of the University of Oxford, Oxf., 1868, p. Svo ; A Short History of England, down to the Reformation, Oxf., in preparation, 1868. Contributed to the Anthologia Oxoniensis, Oxford Essays (Oxford Univ. Reform). En- cyc. Brit., 8th edit. (Sir Robert Peel), Mac- millan's Mag., (London) Daily News, etc. " I am a great advocate of culture of every kind, and I say, when I find a man like Professor Gold- win Smith, or Professor Rogers, who, in addition to profound classical learning, have a vast knowl- edge of modern affairs, and who, as well as schol- ars, are profound thinkers; these are men whom I know to have a vast superiority over me, and I bow to them with reverence." RICHARD COBDEN : Speech at Kochdale, Nov. 23, 1864. MARCUS CATO. Marcus Cato was the one man whom, living and dead, Caesar evidently dreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memory in a brace of pamphlets entitled '' Anti-Cato," of the quality of which we have one or two specimens in Plutarch, from which we should infer that they were scurrilous and slanderous to the last degree ; a proof even that Caesar could feel fear, and that in Caesar, too, fear was mean. Dr. Mommsen throws himself heartily into Caesars antipathy, and can scarcely speak of Cato without some- thing like a loss of temper. The least un- civil thing which he says of him, is that he was a Don Quixote, with Favonius for his Sancho. The phrase is not a happy one, since Sancho is not the caricature but the counterfoil of Don Quixote; Quixote being spirit without sense, and Sancho sense with- 526 GOLD WIN SMITH. out spirit. Imperialism, if it could see itself, is in fact a world of Sanchos, and it would not be the less so if every Sancho of the number were master of the whole of physi- cal science and used it to cook his food. Of the two court-poets of Caesar's successor, one makes Cato preside over the spirits of the good in the Elysian fields, while the other speaks with respect, at all events, of the soul which remained unconquered in A con- quered world, " Et cuncta terrarum sub- acta prseter atrocem animum Catonis." Paterculus, an officer of Tiberius and a thorough Caesarian, calls Cato a man of ideal virtue ("homo virtuti simillimus"), who did right not for appearance sake, but because it was not in his nature to do wrong. When the victor is thus overawed by the shade of the vanquished, the van- quished could hardly have been a " fool." Contemporaries may be mistaken as to the merits of a character, but they cannot well be mistaken as to the space which it occu- pied in their own eyes. Sallust, the parti- san of Marius and Cassar, who had so much reason to hate the senatorial party, speaks of Coasar and Cato as the two mightiest op- posites of his time, and in an elaborate par- allel ascribes to Caesar the qualities which secure the success of the adventurer ; to Cato those which make up the character of the patriot. It is a mistake to regard Cato the younger as merely an unseasonable repetition of Cato the elder. His inspiration came not from a Roman form, but from a Greek school of philosophy, and from that school which, with all its errors and absurd- ities, and in spite of the hypocrisy of many of its professors, really aimed highest in the formation of character; and the practical teachings and aspirations of which, embod- ied in the reflections of Marcus Aurelins, it is impossible to study without profound re- spect for the force of moral conception and the depth of moral insight which they some- times display. Cato went to Greece to sit at the feet of a Greek teacher in a spirit very different from the national pride of his ancestor. It is this which makes his char- acter interesting, that it was an attempt at all events to grasp and hold fast by the high rule of life, in an age when the whole moral world was sinking into a vortex of scoun- drelism, and faith in morality, public or private, had been lost. Of course the char- acter is formal, and in some respects even grotesque. But you may trace formalism, if you look close enough, in every life led by a rule; in everything between the purest spiritual impulse on the one side, and aban- doned sensuality on the other. Attempts to revive old Roman simplicity of dress and habit in the age of Lucullus were no doubt futile enough: but after all, this is but the symbolical garb of the Hebrew prophet. We are in ancient Rome, not in the smoking- room of the House of Commons. We are among the countrymen, too, of Savonarola. The character, as painted by Plutarch, who seems to have drawn from the writings of contemporaries, is hard of course, but not cynical. Cato was devoted to his brother Caepio, and when Caepio died, forgot all his Stoicism in the passionate indulgence of his grief, and all his frugality in lavishing gold and perfumes on the funeral. Caesar in Anti-Cato accused him of sifting the ashes for the gold, which, says Plutarch, is like charging Hercules with cowardice. Where the sensual appetites are repressed, what- ever may be the theory of life, the affections are pretty sure to be strong, unless they are nipped by some such process as is under- gone by a monk. Cato's resignation of his fruitful wife to a childless friend, revolting as it is to our sense, betokens less any bru- tality in him than the coarseness of the con- jugal relations at Rome. Evidently the man had the power of touching the hearts of others. His soldiers, though he gave them no largesses and indulged them in no license, when he leaves them, strew their garments under his feet. His friends at Utica linger, at the peril of their lives, to give him a sumptuous funeral. He affected conviviality, like Socrates. He seems to have been able to enjoy a joke, too, at his own expense. He can laugh when Cicero ridicules his Stoicism in a speech ; and when in a province he meets the inhabitants of a town turning out, and thinks at first that it is in his own honour, but soon finds that it is in honour of a much greater man, the confidential servant of Pompey, at first his dignity is outraged, but his anger soon gives place to amusement. That his public character was perfectly pure, no one seems to have doubted; and there is a kindliness in his dealings with the dependents of Rome, which shows that had he been an emperor he would have been such an em- peror as Trajan, a man whom he probably resembled, both in the goodness of his in- tentions and in the limited powers of his mind. Impracticable, of course, in a certain sense he was ; but his part was that of a re- former, and to compromise with the corrup- tion against which he was contending, would have been to lose the only means of influ- ence, which, having no military force and no party, he possessed, that of the perfect integrity of his character. He is said by Dr. Mommsen to have been incapable even of conceiving a policy. By policy I suspect is meant one of those brilliant schemes of ambition with which some literary men are JOHN RICHARD GREEN. 527 fond of identifying themselves, fancying, it seems, that thereby they themselves, after their measure, play the Caesar. The policy which Cato conceived was simply that of purifying and preserving the Republic. So far, at all events, he had an insight into the situation, that he knew that the real malady of the state was want of public spirit, which he did his best to supply. And the fact is, that lie did more than once succeed in a re- markable way in stemming the tide of cor- ruption. Though every instinct bade him struggle to the last, he had sense enough to see the state of the case, and to advise that, to avert anarchy, supreme power should be put into the hands of Pompey, whose politi- cal superstition, if not his loyalty, there was good reason to trust. When at last civil war broke out, Cato went into it like Falk- land, crying " Peace!" he set his face stead- ily against the excesses and cruelties of his party; and when he saw the field of Dyr- rhacium covered with his slain enemies, he covered his face and wept. He wept, a Ro- man over Romans, but humanity will not refuse the tribute of his tears. After Phar- salus he cherished no illusion, as Dr. Momm- sen himself admits; and though he deter- mined himself to fall fighting, he urged no one else to resistance ; he felt that the duty of an ordinary citizen was done. His terri- ble march over the African desert showed high powers of command, as we shall see by comparing it with the desert march of Na- poleon. Dr. Mommsen ridicules his ped- antry in refusing, on grounds of loyalty, to take the commandership-in-chief over the head of a superior in rank. Cato was fight- ing for legality, and the spirit of legality was the soul of his cause. But besides this, he had never himself crossed his sword with an enemy ; and by declining the nominal command he retained the whole control, lie remained master to the last of the burn- ing vessel. Our morality will not approve of his voluntary death : but our morality would give him a sufficient sanction for living, even if he was to be bound to the car of the conqueror. Looking to Roman opinion, he probably did what honour dic- tated ; and those who prefer honour to life are not so numerous that we can afford to speak of them with scorn. Macmillan's Mayazine, April, 1S6S. REV. JOHN RICHARD GREEN is the author of Stray Studies from Eng- land and Italy, and A Short History of the English People, Lond., 1875, sin. 8vo, en- larged into History of the English People, London, vols. i., ii., 1878, New York, vols. i., ii., 1878 ; Readings from English History. 10 ri i .* ' " 18 1 9, 12mo. SIIAKSPERE'S LATER YEARS. With this great series of historical and social dramas, Shakspere had passed far beyond his fellows, whether as a tragedian or as a writer of comedy. "The Muso." said Meres, in 1598, "would speak with Shakspere's finely-filed phraze, if they would speak English." His personal popularity was now at its height. His pleasant temper and the vivacity of his wit had drawn him early into contact with the young Earl of Southampton, to whom his "Adonis" and " Lucrcce" are dedicated ; and the different tone of the two dedications shows how rap- idly acquaintance ripened into an ardent friendship. Shakspere's wealth and influ- ence too were growing fast. He had prop- erty both in Stratford and London, and his fellow-townsmen made him their suitor to Lord Burleigh for favours to be bestowed on Stratford. He was rich enough to aid his father, and to buy the house at Stratford which afterwards became his home. The tradition that Elizabeth was so pleased with Falstaff in " Henry the Fourth" that she ordered the poet to show her Falstaff in love, an order which produced the " Merry Wives of Windsor," whether true or false, proves his repute as a playwright. As the group of earlier poets passed away, they found successors in Marston, Dekker, Mid- dleton, Heywood, and Chapman, and above all in Ben Jonson. But none of these could dispute the supremacy of Shakspere. The verdict of Meres that " Shakspere among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage," represented the gen- eral feeling of his contemporaries. He was at last fully master of the resources of his art. The " Merchant of Venice" marks the perfection of his development as a dramatist in the completeness of its stage effect, the ingenuity of its incidents, the ease of its movement, the beauty of its higher passages, the reserve and self-control with which its poetry is used, the conception and unfolding of character, and above .all the mastery with winch character and event is grouped round the figure of Shylock. Master as he is of his art, the poet's temper is still young: the " Merry Wives of Windsor" is a burst of gay laughter ; and laughter more tempered, yet full of a sweeter fascination, rings round us in " As You Like It." But in the melancholy and meditative Jaques of the last drama we feel the touch of a new and graver mood. Youth, so full and buoyant in the poet until now, seems 528 JOHN RICHARD GREEN. to have passed almost suddenly away. Though Shakspere had hardly reached forty, in one of his Sonnets which cannot have been written at a much later time than this, there are indications that he already fjlt the advance of premature age. And at this moment the outer world suddenly dark- ened around him. The brilliant circle of young nobles whose friendship he had shared was broken up in 1601 by the political storm which burst in a mad struggle of the Earl of Essex for power. Essex himself fell on the scaffold ; his friend and Shakspere's idol, Southampton, passed a prisoner into the Tower ; Herbert, Lord Pembroke, younger patron of the poet, was banished from the Court. AVhile friends were thus falling and hopes fading without, Shak- spere's own mind seems to have been going through a phase of bitter suffering and un- rest. In spite of the ingenuity of commen- tators, it is difficult and even impossible to derive any knowledge of Shakspere's inner history from the Sonnets ; " the strange imagery of passion which passes over the magic mirror," it has been finely said, "has no tangible evidence before or behind it." But its mere passing is itself an evidence of the restlessness and agony within. The change in the character of his dramas gives a surer indication of his change of mood. The fresh joyousness, the keen delight in life and in man, which breathes through Shakspere's early work disappears in com- edies such as " Troilus" and '* Measure for Measure." Disappointment, disillusion, a new sense of the evil and foulness that un- derlies so much of human life, a loss of the old frank trust in its beauty and goodness, threw their gloom over these comedies. Failure seems everywhere. In " Julius Caesai-" the virtue of Brutus is foiled by its ignorance of and isolation from mankind ; in Hamlet even penetrating intellect proves helpless for want of the capacity of action ; the poison of lago taints the love of Desde- mona and the grandeur of Othello ; Lear's mighty passion battles helplessly against the wind and the rain ; a woman's weakness of frame dashes the cup of her triumph from the hand of Lady Macbeth ; lust and self-indulgence blast the heroism of Antony ; pride ruins the nobleness of Coriolanus. But the very struggle and self-introspec- tion that these dramas betray were to give a depth and grandeur to Shakspere's work such as it had never known before. The age was one in which man's temper and powers took a new range and energy. Sid- ney or Raleigh lived not one but a dozen lives at once ; the daring of the adventurer, the philosophy of the scholar, the passion of the lover, the fanaticism of the saint, towered into almost superhuman grandeur. Man became conscious of the immense re- sources that lay within him, conscious of boundless powers that seemed to mock the narrow world in which they moved. All through the age of the Renascence one feels the impress of the gigantic, this giant-like activity, this immense ambition and desire. The very bombast and extravagance of the times reveal cravings and impulses before which common speech breaks down. It is this grandeur of humanity that finds its poetic expression in the later work of Shak- spere. As the poet penetrated deeper and deeper into the recesses of the soul, he saw how great and wondrous a thing was man. " What a piece of work is a man !" cries Ham- let; "how noble in reason; how infinite in faculties; in form, and moving, how express and admirable ! in action, how like an ang<-l ! in apprehension, how like a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of animals!" It is the wonder of man that spreads before us as the poet pictures the wide speculation of Hamlet, the awful convulsion of a great na- ture in Othello, the terrible storm in the soul of Lear which blends with the very storm of the heavens themselves, the awful ambition that nerved a woman's hand to dabble itself with the blood of a murdered king, the reck- less lust that " flung away a world for love." Amid the terror and awe of these great dramas we learn something of the vast forces of the age from which they sprang. The passion of Mary Stuart, the ruthless- ness of Alva, the daring of Drake, the chiv- alry of Sidney, the range of thought and action in Raleigh or Elizabeth, come better home to us as we follow the mighty series of tragedies which began in "Hamlet" and ended in "Coriolanus." Shakspere's last dramas, the three ex- quisite works in which he shows a soul at rest with itself, and with the world, " Cym- beline," " The Tempest," " Winter's Tale," were written in the midst of ease and com- petence, in a house at Stratford to which he withdrew a few years after the death of Elizabeth. In them we lose all relation with the world or the time and pass into a region of pure poetry. It is in this peaceful and gracious close that the life of Shakspere contrasts most vividly with that of his great- est contemporary. If the imaginative re- sources of the new England were seen in the creators of Hamlet and the Faerie Queen, its purely intellectual capacity, its vast com- mand over the stores of human knowledge, the amazing sense of its own powers with which it dealt with them, were seen in the work of Francis Bacon. History of 1he English People, Vol. ii. Book vl, 1858. WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY. 529 WILLIAM EDWARD HART- POLE LECKY, born 1838, is the author of three works of great learning, entitled The History of Ra- tionalism in Europe, Lond., 1865, 2 vols. 8vo ; History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, Lond., 1869, 2 vols. 8vo, and A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Lond., 1878, 2 vols. 8vo. CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF CHRIST. But if Christianity was remarkable for its appeals to the selfish or interested side of our nature, it was far more remarkable for the empire it attained over disinterested enthusiasm. The Platonists exhorted men to imitate God, the Stoic, to follow reason, the Christian, to the love of Christ. The later Stoics had often united their notions of excellence in an ideal sage, and Epictetus had even urged his disciples to set before them some man of surpassing excellence, and to imagine him continually near them ; but the utmost the Stoic ideal could become was a model for imitation, and the admira- tion it inspired could never deepen into affec- tion. It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, tem- peraments, and conditions, has been not only the highest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice, .and has exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the ex- hortations of moralists. This has indeed been the well-spring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life. Amid all the sins and failings, amid all the priestcraft and persecution and fanaticism that have defaced the Church, it has preserved in the character of its Founder an enduring principle of re- generation. Perfect love knows no rights. It creates a boundless, uncalculating self- abnegation that transforms the character, and is the parent of every virtue. Side by side with the terrorism and superstition of dogmatism there have ever existed in Chris- tianity those who would echo the wish of St. Theresa, that she could blot out both heaven and hell, to serve God for Himself alone ; and the power of the love of Christ has been displayed alike in the most heroic pages of Christian martyrdom, in the most pathetic pages of Christian resignation, and in the tenderest pages of Christian charity. It was shown by the martyrs who sank be- 34 neath the fangs of wild beasts, extending to the last moment their arms in the form of the cross they loved ; who ordered their chains to be buried with them as the insig- nia of their warfare ; who looked with joy upon their ghastly wounds because they had been received for Christ ; who welcomed death as the bridegroom welcomes the bride, because it would bring them nearer to Him. History of European Morals. ON SUICIDE. Two or three English suicides left behind them elaborate defences, as did also a Swede named llobeck, who drowned himself in 1735, and whose treatise published in the following year, acquired considerable celeb- rity. But the most influential writings about suicides were those of the French philosophers and revolutionists. Montaigne, without discussing its abstract lawfulness, recounts with much admiration many of the instances in antiquity. Montesquieu, in a youthful work, defended it with ardent en- thusiasm. Rousseau devoted to the subject two letters of a burning and passionate elo- quence, in the first of which he presented with matchless power the arguments in its favour, while in the second he denounced those arguments as sophistical, dilated upon the impiety of abandoning the post of duty, and upon the cowardice of despair, and with a deep knowledge of the human heart re- vealed the selfishness that lies at the root of most suicide, exhorting all those who felt impelled to it to set about some work for the good of others, in which they would as- suredly find relief. Voltaire, in the best- known couplet he ever wrote, defends the act on occasions of extreme necessity. Among the atheistical party it was warmly eulogized, and Holbach and Deslandes were prominent as its defenders. The rapid decomposition of religious opinions weakened the popular sense of its enormity, and at the same time the humanity of the age, and also a clearer sense of the true limits of legislation, pro- duced a reaction against the horrible laws on the subject. Grotius had defended them. Montesquieu at first denounced them with unqualified energy, but in his later years in some degree modified his opinions. Bec- caria, who was, more than any other writer, the representative of the opinions of the French school on such matters, condemned them partly as unjust to the innocent sur- vivors, partly as incapable of deterring any man who was resolved upon the act. . . . The common sentiment of Christendom has, however, ratified the judgment which the Christian teachers pronounced upon the act, though it has somewhat modified the severity 530 GEORGE ELIOT. of the old censure, and has abandoned some of the old arguments. It was reserved for Madame de Stae'l, who, in a youthful work upon the Passions, had commended suicide, to reconstruct this department of ethics, which had been somewhat disturbed at the Revolution, and she did so in a little treatise which is a model of calm, candid, and philo- sophic piety. Frankly abandoning the old theological notions that the deed was of the nature of murder, that it was the worst of crimes, and that it was always, or even gen- erally, the offspring of cowardice ; aban- doning, too, all attempts to scare men by religious terrorism, she proceeded, not so much to meet in detail the isolated argu- ments of its defenders, as to sketch the ideal of a truly virtuous man, and to show how such a character would secure men against all temptation to suicide. . . . Sentiments of this kind have, through the influence of Christianity, thoroughly pervaded European society, and suicide, in modern times, is almost always found to have sprung either from absolute insanity, from diseases which, though not amounting to insanity, are yet sufficient to discolour our judgments, or from that last excess of sorrow, when resig- nation and hope are both extinct. Con- sidering it in this light, I know few things more fitted to quality the optimism we so often hear, than the fact that statistics show it to be rapidly increasing, and to be pe- culiarly characteristic of those nations which rank most high in intellectual development and in general civilization. In one or tAvo countries, strong religious feeling has coun- teracted the tendency, but the comparison of town and country, of different countries, of different provinces of the same country, and of different periods of history, proves conclusively its reality. History of European Morals, Vol. ii. Chap. iv. GEORGE ELIOT, is the nom de plume of Miss Marian C. Evans, and Mrs. Lewes, the widow of George Henry Lewes, born in the north of England about 1820. As a novelist she stands in the first rank. Scenes of Clerical Life, Lond., ]858; Adam Bede, 1859; The Mill on the Floss, I860; Silas Marner, 1861; Komola, 1863; Felix Holt, Radical. 1866; The Spanish Gipsy, a Poem, in Five Books, 1868, new edit., 1875, 12mo: Middlemarch, 1871-72; The Legend of Jubal, and other Poems, 1875, 12mo; Daniel Deronda, 1876; Novels, new editions, 1870, 7 vols. in G, p. 8vo ; Se- lect Passages from George Eliot, Edin. and Lond., 1879; Theophrastus Such, 1879. She translated Strauss's Life of Jesus, 1846, and Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, 1853, and has contributed to the West- minster Review, etc. "Komola is a marvellously able story of the revival of the taste and beauty and freedom of Hellenic manners and letters under Lorenzo di Medici and the scholars of his Court, side by side with the revival of Koinan virtue, and more than the ancient austerity and piety, under the great Dominican, Savonarola. The period of history is one which of all others may well have engrossing in- terest for George Eliot." (Lond.) Quart, liev., Oct. 1860. See also Westm. Rev., April, 1859, Blackw. May., April, 1859, May, I860; Edin. Rev., July, 1859; lint. Quart. Rev., Oct. 1863, Oct. 1868; At- lantic Mon., Oct. 1866 ; Essays, by R. H. Hutton. MRS. POYSER AND THE SQUIRE. "Ah, now this I like," said Mr. Donni- thorne, looking round at the damp temple of cleanliness (Mrs. Poyser's dairy) but keeping near the door. " I'm sure I should like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfor- tunately, my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp ; I'll sit down in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful dairy, the best manager in the parish, is she not?' 1 Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt- sleeves and open waistcoat, with a face a shade redder than usual from the exertion of " pitching." As he stood red, rotund, and radiant before the small wiry, cool old gentleman he looked like a prize-apple by the side of a withered crab. " Will you please to take this chair, sir ?" he said, lifting his father's arm-chair for- ward a little; "you'll find it easy." " No, thank you, I never sit in easy- chairs," said the old gentleman, seating himself on a small chair near the door. " Do you know, Mrs. Poyser, sit down, pray, both of you, I've been far from con- tented for some time with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a good method, as you have." "Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hard voice, rolling and unrolling her knitting, and looking icily out of the window, as she continued to stand opposite the Squire. Poyser might sit down if he liked, she thought: she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair. " And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, GEORGE ELIOT. 531 I am intending to let the Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my own hands, nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A satisfactory bailiff is hard to find ; and I think you and I, Poyser, and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrange- ment in consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage." " Ah," said Mr. Poyser, with a good- natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrangement. "If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness, ''you know better than me ; but I don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us, we've cumber enough w' our own farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on i' that character." " You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an ex- cellent neighbour, I assure you. Such a one as you will feel glad to have accommo- dated by the little plan I'm going to men- tion, especially as I hope you will find it as much to your advantage as his." "Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our ad- vantage, it'll be the first offer o' the sort I've beared on. It's them as take advantage that get advantage i' this world, / think ; folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em." " The fact is, Poyser," said the Squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser's theory of worldly prosperity, " there is too much dairy land, and too little plough land, on the Chase Farm, to suit Thurle's purpose. indeed, he will only take the farm on condition of some change in it; his wife, it appears, is not a clever dairy-woman like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of is to effect a little ex- change. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your wife's management: and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges, which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you. There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land." Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head on one side and his mouth screwed up, apparently .ab- sorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accu- racy the ribs of a ship. lie was much too acute a man not to set through the whole business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel any day ; and after all it mattered more to his wife than to him. So after a few mo- ments' silence he looked up to her, and said mildly, " What dost say?" Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity during his si- lence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands. "Say? Why I say you may do as you like about giving up any o' your corn land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands either for love or money, and there's nayther love nor money here, as I can see, on'y other folks's love o' themselves, and the money as is to go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own the land, and them as is born t' sweat on't," here Mrs. Poyser paused to gasp a little, "and I know it's christened folks's duty to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it ; but I'll not make a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in it, for no landlord in Eng- land, not if he was King George himself." " No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not," said the Squire, still confident in his own powers of persuasion; "you must not overwork yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way ? There is so much milk re- quired at the Abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter-making from the addition to your dairy ; and I be- lieve selling the milk is the most profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?" "Ay, that's true," said Mr. Poyser, un- able to repress an opinion on a question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case a purely abstract question. " I dare say," said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half way towards her hus- band, and looking at the vacant arm-chair, " I dare say it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as every- thing's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' every- thing else. If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. How do I know whether the milk '11 be wanted constant? What's to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty gallons o' milk on my mind, and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let alone paying for it ; and we must fat pigs 532 GEORGE ELIOT. till we're obliged to beg the butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles. And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work for a man an' hoss, thafs to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water." " That difficulty about the fetching and carrying you will not have, Mrs. Poyser," said the Squire, who thought that this en- trance into particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs. Poyser's part, "Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony." " Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to both the gells at once, and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna' be wi' having our back kitchen turned into a public." "Well, Poyser," said the Squire, shifting his tactics, and looking as if he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and left the room, "you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily make another arrangement about sup- plying my house. And I shall not forget your readiness to accommodate your land- lord as well as a neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three years when the present one expires, otherwise I dare say Thurle, who is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old tenant like you." To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to complete Mrs. Poyser's exasperation, even without the final threat. Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old place where he had been bred and born, for he believed the old Squire had small spite enough for anything, was be- ginning a mild remonstrance explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and sell more stock, with " Well, sir, I think as it's rether hard" .... when Mrs. Poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit, and the only shelter were the work- house. "Then, sir, if I may speak, as for all I'm a woman, and there's folks as thinks a woman's a fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the rent, and save the other quarter, I say, if Mr. Thurle's so ready to take farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if lie likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't, wi' the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by dozens, and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect 'em to eat us up alive, as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long ago. I should like to see if there's an- other tenant besides Poyser as 'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles down, and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying, and having to pay half, and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground beforehand. See if you'll get si stranger to lead such a life here as that; a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon. You may run away from my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following the old Squire beyond the door, for after the first moments of stunned surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile, had walked out towards hia pony. But it was impossible for him to get away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard, and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned. " You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin 1 underhand ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Harry to your friend, though nobody else is ; but 1 tell you for once as we're not dumb creatures to be. abused and made money on !>y them as ha' got the lash i' their hands, for want of knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th' only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty of the same way o' thinkin i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a brimstone mutch in everybody's nose. if it isna two or three old folks as you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all your scrapin'." There are occasions on which two servant- girls and a wagoner may be a formidable audience, and as the Squire rode away on his black pony even the gift of short-sight- edness did not prevent him from being aware that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him, which was also the fact. Mean- while the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's heels, carried GEORGE ELIOT. 533 out the idea of Mrs. Peyser's solo in an im- pressive quartette. Mrs. Poyser, however, had no sooner seen the puny move off than she turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them into the hack kitchen, and un- speuring her knitting began to knit again with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house. '' Thee'st done it now," said Mr. Poyser, a little alarmed and uneasy, but not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak. " Yis, I know I've done it," said Mrs. Poy- ser, " but I've had my say out, and I shall be tli' easier fort all my life. There's no pleas- ure i' living if you're to be corked up for iver, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent saying what I think if I live to be as old as the old Squire, and there's little likelihoods, for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only folks as aren't wanted i' tii' other world." " But thee wotna like moving from th' old place this Michaelmas twelvemonth," said Mr. Poyser, " and going into a strange par- ish, where thee know'st nobody. It'll be hard upon us both, and upo' father too." ' ; Eh, it's no use worreting ; there's plenty o' things may happen between this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The Cap- tain may be master afore then, for what we know," said Mrs. Poyser, inclined to take an unusually hopeful view of an embarrass- ment which had been brought about by her own merit, and not by other people's fault. " Pm none for worreting," said Mr. Poyser, rising from his three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door : " but I should be loth to leave th' old place, and the parish where I was bred and born, and father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and niver thrive again." Adam Bede. THE BURNING OF VANITIES. This was the preparation for a new sort of bonfire the Burning of Vanities. Hid- den in the interior of the pyramid was a plentiful store of dry fuel and gunpowder ; and on this last day of the festival, at even- ing, the pile of vanities was to be set ablaze to the sound of trumpets, and the ugly old Carnival was to tumble into the flames amidst the songs of reforming triumph. This crowning act of the new festivities could hardly have been prepared but for a peculiar organization which had been started by Savonarola two years before. The mass of the Florentine boyhood and youth was no longer left to its own genial promptings towards street mischief and crude dissolute- ness. Under the training of Fra Domenico, a sort of lieutenant to Savonarola, lads and striplings, the hope of Florence, were to have none but pure words on their lips, were to have a zeal for unseen good that should put to shame the lukewarmness of their elders, and were to know no pleasures save of an angelic sort, singing divine praises and walking in white robes. . . . As for the collections from street passen- gers, they were to be greater than ever, not for gross and superfluous suppers, but for the benefit of the hungry and needy ; and besides there was the collecting of the Anathema, or the Vanities to be laid on the great pyramidal bonfire. . . . When Romola said that some one else ex- pected her, she meant her cousin Brigida, but she was far from suspecting how much that good kinswoman was in need of her. Returning together towards the Piazza, they had descried the company of youths coming to a stand before Tessa, and when Romola, having approached near enough to see the simple little contadina's distress, said, " Wait for me a moment, cousin," Monna Brigida said, hastily, " Ah, I will not go on : come for me to Boni's shop; I shall go back there." The truth was, Monna Brigida had a con- sciousness on the one hand of certain " van- ities" carried on her person, and on the other of a growing alarm lest the Piagnoni should be right in holding that rouge, and false hair, and pearl embroidery endamagod the soul. Their serious view of things filled the air like an odour-, nothing seemed to have exactly the same flavour as it used to have ; and there was the dear child Romola, in her youth and beauty, leading a life that was uncomfortably suggestive of rigorous de- mands on woman. A widow at fifty-five whose satisfaction has been largely drawn from what she thinks of her own person, and what she believes others think of it, re- quires a great fund of imagination to keep her spirits buoyant. And Monna Brigida had begun to have frequent struggles at her toilette. If her soul would prosper better without them, was it really worth while to put on the rouge and the braids? But when she lifted up the hand-mirror and saw a sal- low face with baggy cheeks, and crow's-feet that were not to be dissimulated by any sim- pering of the lips, when she parted her gray hair, and let it lie in simple Piagnone fashion round her face, her courage failed. Monna Berta would certainly burst out laughing at her, and call her an old hag, and as Monna Berta was really only fifty two, she had a superiority which would make the observation cutting. Every woman 534 GEORGE ELIOT. who was not a Piagnone would give a shrug at the sight of her, and the men would ac- cost her as if she were their grandmother. Whereas, at fifty-five a woman was not so very old, she only required making up a little. So the rouge and the braids and the embroidered berretta went on again, and Monna Brigida was satisfied with the ac- customed eftect: as for her neck, if she cov- ered it up people might suppose it was too old to show, and on the contrary, with the necklaces round it, it looked better than Monna Berta's. This very day, when she was preparing for the Piagnone Carnival, such a struggle had occurred, and the con- flicting fears and longings which caused the struggle caused her to turn back and seek refuge in the druggist's shop rather than encounter the collectors of the Anathema when ilomola was not by her side. But Monna Brigida was not quite rapid enough in her retreat. She had been de- scried even before she turned away, by the white-robed boys in the rear of those who wheeled round towards Tessa, and the will- ingness with which Tessa was given up was, perhaps, slightly due to the fact that part of the troop had already accosted a personage carrying more markedly upon her the dan- gerous weight of the Anathema. It hap- pened that several of this troop were at the youngest age taken into peculiar training; and a small fellow of ten, his olive wreath resting above cherubic cheeks and wide brown eyes, his imagination really pos- sessed with a hovering awe at existence as something in which great consequences im- pended on being good or bad, his longings nevertheless running in the direction of mastery and mischief, was the first to reach Monna Brigida and place himself across her path. She felt angry, and looked for an open door, but there was not one at hand, and by attempting to escape now she would only make matters worse. But it was not the cherubic-faced young one who first ad- dressed her; it was a youth of fifteen who held one handle of a wide basket. " Venerable mother !'' he began, " the blessed Jesus commands you to give up the Anathema which you carry upon you. That cap embroidered with pearls, those jewels that fasten up your false hair, let them be given up and sold for the poor ; and cast the hair itself away from you, as a lie that is only fit for burning. Doubtless, too, you have other jewels under your silk mantle." "Yes, lady," said the youth at the other handle, who had many of Fra Girolamo's phrases by heart, " they are too heavy for you : they are heavier than a millstone, and are weighting you for perdition. Will you adorn yourself with the hunger of the poor, and be proud to carry God's curse upon your head ?" " In truth you are old, buona madre," said the cherubic boy, in a sweet soprano. " You look very ugly with the red on your checks and that black glistening hair, and those fine things. It is only Satan who can like to see you. Your Angel is sorry. He wants you to rub away the red." The little fellow snatched a soft silk scarf from the basket, and held it towards Monna Brigida, that she might use it as her guardian angel desired. Her anger and mortification were fast giving way to spiritual alarm. Monna Berta, and that cloud of witnesses, highly-dressed society in general, were not looking at her, and she was surrounded by young monitors, whose white robes, and wreaths, and red crosses, and dreadful can- dour, h.nd something awful in their unusual- ness. Her Franciscan confessor, Fra Cris- toforo, of Santa Croce, was not at hand to reinforce her distrust of Dominican teaching, and she was helplessly possessed and shaken by a vague sense that a supreme warning was come to her. Unvisited by the least suggestion of any other course that was open to her, she took the scarf that was held out, and rubbed her cheeks with trembling submissiveness. " It is well, madonna," said the second youth. " It is a holy beginning. And when you have taken those vanities from your head, the dew of heavenly grace will descend on it." The infusion of mischief was getting stronger, and putting his hand to one of the jewelled pins that fastened her braids to the berretta, he drew it out. The heavy black plait fell down over Monna Brigida's face, and dragged the rest of the head-gear forward. It was a new reason for not hesitating : she put up her hands hastily, undid the other fastenings, and flung down into the basket of doom her beloved crim- son velvet berretta, with all its unsurpassed embroidery of seed-pearls, and stood an nn- rouged woman, with gray hair pushed back- ward from a face where certain deep lines of age had triumphed over embonpoint. But the berretta was not allowed to lie in the basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted it up, and held it pitilessly with the false hair dangling. " See, venerable mother," said the taller youth, " what ugly lies you have delivered yourself from ! And now you look like the blessed Saint Anna, the mother of the Holy Virgin." Thoughts of going into a convent forth- with, and never showing herself in the world again, were rushing through Monna Brigida's mind. There was nothing possi- ble for her but to take care of her soul. Of GEORGE ELIOT. 535 course, there were spectators laughing : she had no need to look round to assure herself of that. Well ! it would, perhaps, be better to be forced to think more of Paradise. But at the thought that the dear accustomed world was no longer in her choice, there gathered some of those hard tears which just moisten elderly eyes, and she could see but dimly a large rough hand holding a red cross, which was suddenly thrust before her over the shoulders of the boys, while a strong guttural voice said, "Only four quattrini, madonna, blessing and all ! Buy it. You'll find a comfort in it now your wig's gone. Deh ! what are we sinners doing all our lives ? Making soup in a basket, and getting nothing but the scum for our stomachs. Better buy a blessing, madonna ! Only four quattrini ; the profit is not so much as the smell of a danaro, and it goes to the poor." Monna Brigida, in dim-eyed confusion, was proceeding to the further submission of reaching money from her embroidered scar- sella, at present hidden by her silk mantle; when the group around her, which she had not yet entertained the idea of escaping, opened before a figure as welcome as an angel loosing prison bolts. " Romola, look at me !" said Monna Bri- gida, in a piteous tone, putting cut both her hands. The white troop was already moving away, with a slight consciousness that its zeal about the head-gear had been super- abundant enough to afford a dispensation from any further demand for penitential offerings. "Dear cousin, don't be distressed," said Romola, smitten with pity, yet hardly able to help smiling at the sudden apparition of her kinswoman in a genuine, natural guise, strangely contrasted with all her memories of her. She took the black drapery from her own head, and threw it over Monna Brigida's. " There," she went on, sooth- ingly, " no one will remark you now. We will turn down the Via del Palagio and go straight to our house." They hastened away, Monna Brigida grasping Ilomola's hand tightly as if to get a stronger assurance of her being actually there. "Ah, my Romola, my dear child," said the short fat woman, hurrying witli frequent steps to keep pace with the majestic young figure beside her. " What an old scarecrow I am ! I must be good, I mean to be good !" " Yes, yes ; buy a cross !" said the guttu- ral voice, while the rough hand was thrust once more before Monna Brigida ; for Bratti was not to be abashed by Ilomola's presence into renouncing a probable customer, and had quietly followed up their retreat. " Only four quattrini, blessing and all, and if there was any profit, it would all go to the poor." '\ Monna Brigida would have been com- pelled to pause, even if she had been in a less submissive mood. She put up one hand deprecatingly to arrest Romola's re- monstrance, and with the other reached a grosso, worth many white quattrini, saying, in an entreating tone, " Take it, good man, and begone." " You're in the right, madonna," said Bratti, taking the coin quickly, and thrusting the cross into her hand. " I'll not offer you change, for I might as well rob you of a mass. What ! we must all be scorched a little, but you'll come off the easier; better fall from the window than the roof. A good Easter and a good year to you !" " Well, Romola," cried Monna Brigida, pathetically, as Bratti left them, " if I'm to be a Piagnone it's no matter how I look." " Dear cousin," said Romola, looking at her affectionately, "you don't know how much better you look than you ever did before. I see now how good-natured your face is, like yourself. That red and finery seemed to thrust themselves forward and hide expression. Ask our Piero or any other painter if he would not rather paint your portrait now than before. I think all lines of the human face have something either touching or grand, unless they seem, to come from low passions. How fine old men are, like my godfather! Why should not old women look grand and simple ?" " Yes, when one gets to be sixty, my Romola," said Brigida, relapsing a little ; "but I'm only fifty-five, and Monna Berta and every body, but it's no use : I will bo good like you. Your mother, if she'd been, alive, would have been as old as I am, we were cousins together. One must either die or get old. But it doesn't matter about being old, if one's a Piagnone." Romola, Chap, xlix., li. GENERAL INDEX. A. Abbot on Shipping, 485. Abbotsford, Irving at, 369. Ab.lallah, 257. Abernethy on Sterne, 175. ABOLITION OF CHRISTIANITY, 126. Abstracts, Preston on, 485. Academy of Compliments, The, 349. Achilles, Hawkeswortb. on, 196. Pope on, 157. Actions, 187, 396, 512. ACTIVITY AND POWER, 393. Adams, John, 364, 439. ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY, 289. ADDISO.V, JOSEPH, 133. Addison, Joseph : Cowper on, 244. Goldsmith on. 231, 232, 233. Hazlitt on, 129. Jeffrey on, 314, 317. Johnson on, 133. Macaulay on, 133, 448, 450. Mel moth on, 188. Pope on, 133. Adelung, Dictionary of, 182. ADMINISTRATORS AND EXECUTORS, 485. Admiralty Reports, 485. Adventurer, The, 195, 197, 198, 218. ADVICE TO UNMARRIED LADIES, 158. ^Elian on Zoilus, 154. JKmilius, library of, 247. ./Eneas, Pope on, 157. voyage of, 238. JEneid, Ritso on, 485. JEschylus, Macaulay on, 449. ./Esop, Bacon on, 393. Brougham on, 341. Affections, 12, 1(54, 174, 187, 209, 297, 344, 524. Africa, 344. Age of the species, 340. Age, old, 482. Agincourt, 514. Akenside, Jeffrey on, 317. ALBANIA, 395. Albanians, Byron on, 396, 397. Alchemy, 240. Alexander the Great, 291, 293, 319, 470, 486. Alexandrian Library, 248. Alfred, Hume on, 190. AH Pacha, 395, 396. Alison, Sir A., on Hallam, 335. on Macaulay, 440. on Prescott, 422. Alison, Sir A., to S. Austin Alli- bone, 422. Allibone, S. Austin : Alison to, 422. Carlyle to, 419. Be Quincey, E., to, 381. Evarts to, 357. Everett to, 357, 505. Everett's Index and, 409. Lieber to, 362. Macaulay to, 423. Prescott to, 404, 505. Sunnier to, 357. Critical Dictionary of, 366, 372,387,406,408,422,440, 471, 479, 498, 520. Poetical Selections of, 471. reflections on war by, 319. Almanacks, 225. Alps, 500, 521. Alva, Duke of, 528. Amadis de Gaul, 338. Ambassador, Wiquefort's, 485. Ambition, 225, 526. Ambrosianse, Noctes, 376. AMERICA, 234. America, 102, 234, 312, 348, 350, 353, 363, 368, 410, 417, 437, 483, 500. AMERICA, WAR WITH, 177. American language, 54. AMERICAN LITERATURE, 353, 410. AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 250. AMUSEMENTS, SUNDAY, 273. Amy Robsart, 310. Anacharsis. 256. Anncreon, 138. Anarchy, 286. " Ancestors, wisdom of our," 340. ANCESTRY, PRIDE OF, 362. Andrewes, Bishop, 328. Angell and Ames, 485. Angelo, Michael, 411. Angels, 298. Anger, Penn on, 120. Angler, Complete, 54. Anguillara's Ovid, 185. ANIMALS, CRUELTY TO, 356. ANIMALS, INFERIOR, CRUELTY TO, 172. Anne, Queen, authors of the age of, 231, 232, 233, 316. Antiooh, Winthrop on, 479. Antiquities, 265. Antiquity of man, 434. Antithesis, 217. Antoninus, 256. Antony, 396, 528. Anxiety, folly of, 110. Apocrypha, 54. Apollonius Tyaneus, 247. Apology by Barclay, 121. Apothecary, 301. Arabia, 257. Arabian Nights, 196. Arabic language, 257. ARBUTHNOT, JOHN, M.D., 233. Goldsmith on, 140. Arcadia, the, 239. Archaeology, 513. Archelaus, 138. Archimedes, 402, 508. Architecture, 180, 383, 494, 508, 520. Arectri, 411. Aretine, 348. Ariosto, 240, 336, 348, 373, 374. Aristides, 166, 379. Aristocracy, 15. Aristophanes, 180. Aristotle, 146, 181, 218, 421. Arkwright, Sir R., 518. Arlington, Lord, 232. Armstrong cannon, 508. Arno, the, 411, 499. Arnold, Fred., 440. ARNOLD, THOMAS, D.D., 419. Arsenal at Venice, 508. Art, 196, 501. Artaxerxes, 180. Arthur, King, 240. ARTS, 402. As You Like It, 527. Ascension of Christ, 70. ASCHAM, ROGER, 28. Ascham, Roger, 238, 332. ASCHAM'S SCHOOLMASTER, 28. Ashburton, Lord, 251. Asia, 203, 344, 384, 421. Assisi, Francis of, 20. Assurances, Emerigon on, 485. Assyria, 303. Astrology, 127, 210, 421. Astronomy, 128, 341, 356, 424. ASTRONOMY, USES OF, 411. Atheism, 73, 127, 306, 412. Athenaeum, 168, 350, 474. Athens, authors of, 63, 180, 203. books at, 247. conquered, 138. government of, 10. Locke on, 102. Paul at, 404, 434. philosophy at, 404. schools of, 102. ATHENS, ST. PAUL AT, 404. Atlantic Monthly, 493. Atonement, the, 355, 428. 637 538 GENERAL INDEX. ATTACK UPON THE BASTILE, 418. Atterbury, F., Goldsmith on, 232. Macaula.v on, 440. ATTERBUUY, POPE TO, 158. Attic us, Cicero to, 264. Attributes of God, 136, 142. AUGUSTAN AGE OP ENGLAND, 230. Augustus, age of, 139, 168, 169, 248, 348. 391. Austin on Blackstone, 221. Authors, English, 184, 203, 224, 230-233, 313, 345, 348. French, 203, 224, 230. Greek, 16, 63, 137, 183, 203, 218, 224, 237, 238, 404. Italian, 183, 185, 218, 224, 230, 239, 240, 348, 421, 499. Latin, 16, 124,137,224,237, 238, 264. Oriental, 203, 224. study of, 140. AUTHOHSHIP, 427. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SUNDAY, 206. Avellanda, 336. Aventine Mount, 248. B. Babylon, tunnel at, 508. Babylonia, 303. BACON, FRANCIS, 39. BACON, LORD, 306. Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, Brougham on, 340. Combe on, 393. Emerson on, 462. Hazlitt on, 345. Herschel on, 402. Ilillard on, 476, 478. Hunt on, 375. Jeffrey on, 315, 317. Johnson on, 182. Macaulay on, 443. On Uses, 485. prayer of, 40. Bailments, Jones on, 485. Baldwin's Constitutional Views, 485. BANCROFT, GEORGE, 437. Bancroft, George, 244, 521. Bandello, 240. Barber, Frank, 441. Barcelona, 507. BARCLAY, ROBERT, 121. Barillon, 445. Barnwall and Alderson, 491. BARROW, ISAAC, D.D., 93. Barrow, Isaac, 232, 315. Barton's Suit in Equity, 485. Baskerville, 168. Bassano, Alps of, 521. BASTILK, ATTACK UPON THE, 418. Bath, Earl of, 446. Bathurst, Lord, 234. BATTLE OF THE NILE, 319. BATTLB OF PRINCETON, 245. BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR, 322. BATTLE OF TRKNTON, 244. BAXTER, RICHARD, 74. Baxter, Richard, 67, 74. Bayer, E. P., 264. Baylor, Colonel, 245. Bayne, Peter, 452, 453. Beaconsfield, Earl of, 287. BEARDS, 154. BEATTIE, JAMES, LL.D., 252. Beattie, James, LL.D., 327. Beaumont and Fletcher, 98, 270, 327, 329, 345, 449. Beaumont, Sir John, 168. BEAUTIES OF THE PSALMS, 241. BEAUTY, 458. BEAUTY, ESSAY ON, 39. BEAUTY, PERSONAL, 208. BEAUTY AND LOVE, 132. Beccaria, 529. BECKFORD, WILLIAM, 278. BEECHER, HENRY WARD, D.D., 502. Benares, 443. BENEVOLENCE AND FRIENDSHIP, 153. Beni, 183, 218. BENTHAM, JEREMY, 270. Bentham, Jeremy, 302. Bentley on Pope's Homer, 185. BERKELEY, GEORGE, D.D., 150. Bertrand, General, 290. BEST ENGLISH PEOPLE, 488. BEVERIDGE, WILLIAM, D.D., 112. Bible, the, 128, 274, 346, 434. BIBLE AS A STUDY, 451. Bibliomaniac, 521. Bickersteth on Erskine, 155. Billington, Mrs., 443. Bills, Byles on, 485,491. Bingham on Infancy and Cover- ture, 485. . BINNEY, HORACE, 357. Binney, Horace, 484. Biographie Universelle, 223. Biography, 196, 225. Biography, Industrial, 507. Bion, 181. BIRDS, Music OF, 156. BIRTH, NOBLE, PRIDE OF, 119. Black Prince, 514. BLACKSTONE, SIR WILLIAM, 220. Blackstone, Sir William, 483,484. BLACKWALL, ANTHONY, 137. Blackwall, Anthony, 137. Blackwood's Magazine, 237,387, 493, 505, 511, 517, 518, 519, 530. Blades on Caxton, 20. BLAIR, HUGH, D.D., 202. Blair, Hugh, 148, 161. Blakey, History of Philosophy, 250. Blenheim, 441. Boadicea, 290. Bo-bo, 325. Boccace, 240. Boetius on books, 17. Bogue, Dr., 293. Bohn's Lowndes, 122, 124, 157. Boiardo, 240. BOIS-GUILBERT AND REBECCA, 309. Boleyn, Anne, 239. BOLINGBROKE, LORD, 145. Bolingbroke, Lord, 232,233. Bonhours, 216. Book-binding. 327. Book Buyers and Books, 521. Book-maniac, 521. Book-stall reading, 329. BOOKS, 478. Books, 16, 17, 61, 64, 127, 145, 174, 237-241, 247, 313, 314, 333, 341, 345, 347, 352, 387, 441, 500. BOOKS, BUYING OF, 503. BOOKS, CHOICE OF, 419. BOOKS, MEDITATION AMONG THE, 224. BOOKS AND BOOK-BUYERS, 521. BOOKS AND READING, LAMB ON, 327. BOOKS AND READING, WATTS ON. 140. Bopp, 182. Bossu, 218. Boston, Address nt, 313. Boswell's Johnson, 44, 91, 126, 142, 148, 178, 190, 199, 202, 224, 226, 273. Botanic Garden, 507. Botany, 432. Botta, M., 512. Boulay-Paty, Droit Commercial, 485. Boulton, M., 508. Bourdaloue, 413. Bouterwek, 336, 337. BOYLE, ROBERT, 88. Boyle Lectures, 88. Bracebridgc Hall, 368. Braddock's Expedition, 438, 486. Brahant, Louis, 304. Brain, 394, 481. Braybrooke, Lord, 101. Brazil, Pedro II. of, 471. BREAKERS, IMAGE, 505. BREEDING, GOOD, 166. Brenta, 520. Bridge, Natural, 486. Bridges, Suspension, 508. Brief Inquiry by Upshur, 485. Bright, Mynors, 101. Britain, Harrison on, 52. BRITAIN, LANGUAGES OF, 52. Britain, Romans in, 53. BRITISH NATION, INDUSTRY or THE, 361. British Quarterly Review, 302, 493, 505, 514, 520, 530. Brodie on Clarendon, 65. on Hume, 190. Bronte, Charlotte, 519. Brooke, Lord, and Sir P. Sidney, 331. Brother Jonathan, 351. BROUGHAM, LORD, 338. Brougham, Lord, 83, 102, 106, 177, 181, 220, 259, 293. Brown, John, M.D., 488. BROWN, THOMAS, M.D., 343. Brown, Thomas, M.D., 393. BROWNE, SIR THOMAS, 58. Bruce, Robert, 394. Brueys, Admiral, 320. Brumoy, 218. Brunswick, House of, 234. Brute-mindedness, 417. Brutus, 256, 290, 528. Bryant, W. C., 366, 500. Brydges, Sir S. E., 366, 379. Buckland, Dr. W., 433, 453. GENERAL INDEX. 539 Buckle on Burke, 233. BUDGELL, EUSTACE, 153. BULL, SQUIRE, AND HIS SON, 350. BULWER : see LYTTON, LOKD. BUNYAN, JOHN, 90. Bunyan, John, 440. BUONAPARTE, NAPOLEON, 387. Buonaparte, Napoleon, 286, 290, 319, 395, 413, 486. BUKKB, EDMUND, 233. Burke, Edmund, 12, 251, 317, 443, 449. Burlarnaqui's Natural and Politi- cal Law, 485. Burnet, Bishop, 24, 72, 109, 115. Burney, Frances, 450. BURNING OF VANITIES, 533. Burns, Robert, 346, 518. BURRITT, ELIHIT, 486. BURTON, ROBERT, 44. Burton, Robert, 270, 328. BURY, RICHARD DE, 16. Business, 147, 171. BUSY-BODY, ON THE, 43. Butler, Charles, llorce Juridicae of, 485. BUTLER, BISHOP JOSEPH, 163. Butler, Bishop Joseph, 283. BUTLER, SAMUEL, 69. Butler, Samuel, 154, 373. BUYING BOOKS, 503. Byles on Bills, 485, 491. Bynkershoeck, De Foro Legato- rum of, 485. Questiones of, 485. BYRON, LORD, 395. Byron, Lord : on Beckford, 278. on Disraeli, 288. on Rousseau, 192. on Southey, 319. Tuckeruian on, 500. C. Cabanis, 482. Cad walla ler, General, 245. Csepio, 526. Csesar, Julius, 124, 138, 187, 188, 247, 291, 293, 319, 496, 526. Caesars, the, 257. Caius Mariu?, 14. CALAMITY, COMPENSATIONS OF, 460. Calhoun, John C., 485. Caliban. 348. Calvinists, 238. CAXTON, AVILLIAM, 20. Campbell, Lord John, 483. Campbell, Thomas, 216. CANDID MAN, 466. Candidates, 14. Cannabis Indica, 508. Cannon, Armstrong, 508. Cannon, old, 508. Cant terms, 433. Capitoline Library, 248. CAPTURE OF MAMBKINO'S HEL- MET, 33. CAREY, HENRY CHARLES, LL.D., 407. CARLETON, WILLIAM, 434. CARLYLE, THOMAS, 414. Carlyle, Thos., on Johnson, 181. to S. A. Allibone, 419. Caro, Hannibal, 99, 100. CARTER, ELIZABETH, 199. Cases in Supreme Court U. S., 485. Casimir of Poland, 201. Casscl, 507. Castel Melhor, 446. Castelvetro, 218. Castiglion, 348. Castile, 512. Castile, Isabella of, 290. CASTLE-BUILDING, 130. CASTLE OF UDOLPHO, 283. Catherine of Braganza, 446. Catherine of Russia, 290. Catholicism, Roman, 239, 240, 284, 286, 290, 434, 445, 446, 499, 515, 516. Catiline, 348. CATO, MARCUS, 525. CAVENDISH, GEORGE, 25. Caxton, Dibdin on, 20. Cellini, 499. Celsus, 247. Censor, The, 448. CENSORSHIP OF THE PRESS, 64. CERVANTES, 32. Cervantes, 195, 217, 336. Chalmers, A., Dictionary of, 16, 20. CHALMERS, THOMAS, D.D., 354. Chalmers, Thomas, D.D., 76, 163. Chainloe, Sir R., 29. Champion, The, 448. Chancery, 338. Chancery, Rowland's, 485. CHANGES IN LANGUAGE, 433. CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY, D.D., 352. Chapman, George, 348, 527. CHAPONE, ESTHER, 226. CHARACTER, DECISION OF, 297. CHARACTER OF CHARLES I., 66. CHARACTER OF CHARLES V.. 211. CHARACTER OF EDWARD EVER- ETT, 476. CHARACTER OF HAMLET, 348. CHARACTER OF MARTIN LUTHER, 211. CHARACTER OF NEW ENGLAND, 112. Characteristics, 131. Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, 349. Charity, 153, 347. Charlemagne, 293. CHARLES I. : Clarendon on, 66. De Quincey on, 383. Charles IL, ago of, 129, 230, 231, 316, 442, 458. CHARLES II., DEATH OF, 444. CHARLES V., CHARACTER OF, 211. Charles V., 190. CHARLETON, WALTER, M.D., 80. Charleton, Walter, M.D., 394. Charlotte, Princess, death of, 282. CHARNOCK, STEPHEN, D.D., 86. CHATHAM, EARL OF, 176. Chaucer, 373. Cheerfulness, 429, 431, 432. Chemistry, 508. CHENKVIX, RICHARD, 361. Cherubini, 482. CHESTERFIELD, EARL OF, 166. Chesterfield, Earl of, 288. Chiffinch, 446. CHILDE HAROLD, 397. Childe Harold, 398, 500. CHILDREN, PENN'S ADVICE TO HIS, 119. Children and Parents, 12, 164, 174, 187, 297, 344, 523. Children of darkness, 428. CHILDREN OF LIGHT, 428. Children of the Lord's Supper, 473. China, 421. Chinese, 324, 325, 340, 383, 421, 508. CHINESE, CONDITION OF THE, 310. Chitty on Criminal Law, 485, 491. Chivalry, romances of, 337. Chloroform, 508. CHOICE OF BOOKS, 418. Christ, 58, 1 1 2, 148, 1 89, 226, 247, 249, 250, 265, 290, 347, 355, 360, 365, 417, 428, 429, 430, 451, 506, 510, 516, 529. CHRIST, ASCENSION OF, 70. CHRIST, INCARNATION OF, 76. " Christian Philosopher,'' 302. Christianity, 112, 217, 241, 274, 283, 290, 347, 365, 404, 409, 451 . CHRISTIANITY, ABOLITION OF, 126. CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL RE- LIGION, 255. CHRISTIANITY AND STOICISM, 199. CHRISTIANITY THE GREAT REM- EDY, 479. Christianity, Latin, 404. CHRISTIAN'S DEPENDENCE UPOS His REDEEMER, 359. CHRISTMAS, SCROOGE'S, 495. Chronology, 147. Church of England, 27, 126, 143, 236, 274,351. Chuzzlewit, Martin, 493. CICERO, 12. Cicero, Arnold on, 421. Atticus and, 264. Burke on, 12. Cato on, 526. Goldsmith on, 232. Hazlitt on, 348. Jeffrey on, 314. Jones, Sir W., on, 364. Macaulay on, 443, 448. Melmoth on, 187. on eloquence, 188. on immortality, 257. on praise, 189. poetrv of, 150. Rollin on, 124. Smith, Sydney, on, 302. Speroni on, 101. translations by, 185. Tusculan Questions of, 18. CICERO AGAINST VERRES, 12. CITY, NIGHT VIEW OF THE, 417. CIVIL LAW, 485. Civil Law, Domat's, 485. CIVILIZATION, 389. Civilization, 362. CLARENDON, EARL OF, fi5. Clarendon, Earl of: Brougham on, 340. 540 GENERAL INDEX. Clarendon, Earl of: Dryden on, 100. Jeffrey on, 317. on Charles I., 66. on Cromwell, 66. Claret, 269. Clarissa, 329. Clarke, Adam, D.D. : on Dod- dridge, 170. on Pliny, 187. CLARKE, SAMUKL, D.D., 142. Clarke, Samuel, D.D., 163, 232, 283. CLASSICAL EDUCATION, 421. Classical Studies, 139, 149, 238, 299, 421, 483. Clergy, Addison on the, 133. duties of, 23. Cleveland, C. D., 498. Clive, Lord, 319. CLOVERNOOK AND ITS INN, 456. Coal gas, 508. Cobden, Richard, 525. Cockburn, Lord, 313. Coins, ancient, 353. Coke, Lord, 315, 345. 491. Institutes of, 485. Littleton and, 485,491. Coleridge, Sir John T. : on Horace Binney, 357. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor: De Quineey on, 383. Hazlitt on, 319. on Baxter. 74. on Fuller, 61. on poetry, 374. Colleges, 491. Collingwood, Admiral, 323. Colours, Latin names of, 272. Colquhoun's Summary of Civil Law, 485. COLUMBUS, FIRST VOYAGE OP, 368. Columbus, voyages of, 369, 414, 416. COMBE, ANDREW, 430. COMBE, GKORGB, 392. Comedy, 184, 185. Comic dramatists of the Restora- tion, 316. COMMANDMENT, THE NEW, 249. Commerce, 220, 361. Commercial Cours de Droit, 485. Comrnodus, 248. Compendium, Mackeldy's, 485. COMPENSATIONS OP CALAMITY, 460. COMPLAINT OF THE SHORTNESS OP HUMAN LIFE, 146. Complete Angler, 54. Complexion, 208, 209. Composition, Literary, 16, 40, 379. Comte, M., 408. Comus, 270. CONDITION OF THE CHINESE, 340. Condorcet, 169. CONDUCT OF LIFF,, 59. Confessional, 284. CONFESSIONS OP A DRUNKARD, 329. CONFIRMATION OP SCRIPTURES, 513. Conflict of Laws, 485. Confucius, 341, 391. Congrcve, Goldsmith on, 231. Macaulay on, 450. on Dryden, 97. Congreve, Sir W., rocket of, 508. CONSCIENCE, 164. Conscience, office of, 105, 108, 429. CONSCIOUSNESS OF IMMORTALITY, 342. Consolations in Travel, 343. Constantine, 248. Constitution, English, 177, 182, 302, 485. Constitution, United States: Baldwin's Views, 485. Rnwle on, 485. Story on, 485. Constitutional History, Hallam's, 335. 485. May's, 335. CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, 485. CONTEMPLATION AND MELAN- CHOLY, Burton on, 44. CONTENTMENT, Walton on, 54. Contingent Remainders, 485. Contracts, Smith on, 485. Controversy, 148, 225, 279, 346. CONTROVERSY, Baxter on, 74. CONTROVERSY, VALUE OF, Hall on, 282. Conversation, 67, 94, 128, 138, 166, 171, 174, 186, 208, 243, 268, 276, 352, 433, 449, 478. CONVERSATION, Fuller on, 61. CONVERSATION, Usher on, 209. CONVERSATIONS, IMAGINARY, LANDOR'S, 331, 332. Conveyancing, Preston on, 485. COOPER, ANTHONY ASHLEY, 131. Copernicus, 411, 412. COPYRIGHT, Macaulay on, 441. Coriolanus, 348, 528. Corneille, 218, 482. Cornelia, 290. Cornu, banker, 304. Cornwall, language of, 54. Corporations, Angell and Ames on, 485. Corregio, 499. Cortes, F., 426. Cosmogony, Jenkinson on, 229. Cosmogony, Mosaic, 433. Country life, 162. Courage, 416. COURSE OF STUDY, 16. Court, inns of, 491. Courtesy and Stateliness, Emer- son on, 459. Courtship, 161. Covent Garden Journal, 491. Coverley, de, Sir Roger, 154, 155, 491. Coverture and Infancy, 485. COWLEY, ABRAHAM, M.D., 78. Cowley, Abraham: Goldsmith on, 232. Jeffrey on, 315, 317. Macaulay on, 442, 449. COWPER, WILLIAM, 242. Cowper, William : Combe on, 393, 394. Cowper, William : Jeffrey on, 317. on Addison. 244. on Beattie, 252. on Pope, 157. Crnbbe's Tales of the Hall, 393. Crawley, Pitt, 490. Creation, the, 153, 433, 523. CREATOR AND His WORKS, 135. Creed, Pearson on the, 70. Cricket, 432. CRIMES AND FORFEITURES, 485. Crimes and Misdemeanors, Rus- sell on, 485. Criminal Evidence, Chitty on, 485. Criminal Law, Chitty on, 485. Crispus, 140. Critics, 127, 140, 180, 183, 184, 185, 216, 317. CROMWELL, OLIVER, 392. CROMWELL, OLIVER, Clarendon on, 65. Cromwell, Oliver, 231, 394, 514. Cross, 119. Crown, 119. Crown Law, Foster's, 485. Crown, Pleas of the, Hale's, 485. CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, 356. CRUELTY TO INFERIOR ANIMALS, 172. CUDWORTH, RALPH, 77. CULTIVATION OF TASTE, 202. CUMBERLAND, RICHARD, 246. Cunningham, Allan, 287, 373, 376, 466. Curiosity, 500. Cuvier on Sir H. Davy, 342. Cymbeline, 528. Cymric language, 52. Cyrus, 180. D. D'Anoi?, Countess, 196. D'Arblay, Madame, 204. Da Vinci, L., 508. Dacier, Madame, 253. Daguerreotype, 508. Dallas, Chief Justice, 443. Dallas, R. C., 397. DALRYMPLE, DAVID, 224. Dalrymple's, Sir John, Feudal Property, 485. Danaeus, daughters of, 304. Dante, 218, 348, 373, 374, 411, 461, 498. Darkness, children of, 428. Darwin, Dr. E., 507. Daughter, death of a, 91. Davcnant, Dr., 232. David, Psalms of, 135, 241, 317. DAVY, SIR HUMPHRY, 342. Davy, Sir Humphry, 172/508. DAY OF JUDGMENT, 226. Day of Judgment, 310, 382. Daybreak, Everett on, 412. De Fleury, Cardinal, 483. DE FOE, DANIEL, 124. De Garay, Blasco, 507. De Jure Belli et Pacis, 485. De rHopital, Madame, 201. De La Roche, T., 508. GENERAL IXDEX. 541 De La Rochefoucaalt, 217. De Launay, 418. De Lorine on the Constitution, 485. De Mulesherbes, 194. De Quiucey, Emily, to S. Austin Allibone, 381. DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, 380. De Quincey, T., 324, 331. De Stae'l, Madame, 388, 530. Deadening pain, 508. Death, hope in, 343. DEATH, IGNORANCE OF THE TIME OF, 116. DEATH OF A DAUGHTER, 91. DKATII OF CHARLES II., 444. DKATII OF NELSON, 322. DEATH OF PRESCOTT. 406. DKATH-BED REPENTANCE, 72. DECISION OF CHARACTER, 297. DECKER, THOMAS, 113. Decker, Thomas, 44'J, 527. DEFECTS i.v MODERN POETRY, 518. Deists, 283. Delassement's Physico - Mathe- matiques, 508. Delight of the Eyes, 279. Demosthenes, 78, 101, 181, 218, 362, 3din on Cuxton, 20. DICK, THOMAS, LL.D., 302. DICKENS, CHARLES, 492. Dinner, 268, 269. Dioclesian, 248. Discourse on the Law of Nations, 485. DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC, 511. Disorder, 417. Disorders of the Mind, 481. DISRAELI, ISAAC, 287. D.SSEKTATION UPON ROAST PIG, 324. DIVINE BENEVOLENCE, 261. DIVINE GOVERNMENT, 110. Divine Legation, 167. DIVINE REVELATION, 128. Divines, duty of, 23. Divinity, 225. DIVINITY, LAW, AND PHYSIC, 133. Division of Labour, 220. Dobson, Mrs. S., Life of Petrarch by, 19. Doctor and Student, 485. Doctors, Addison on, 134. Harris on, 180. Doctors, Sydney Smith on, 301. DODDRIDGE, PHILIP, D.D., 170. Doddridge, Philip, D.D., 110, 112, 115, 139, 142. DODSLEY, ROBERT, 171. Domat's Civil Law, 485. Domestic Relations, by Reeves, 485. Domitian, 248. Don Gabriel, 264. Don Querido, 154. DON QUIXOTE, 32. Dos QUIXOTE, 336. Don Quixote, 195, 217, 525. Donne, John, D.D., 374. Dart, Synod of, 143. Douce on Johnson, 181. Drake, Nathan, M.D., 129, 144, 154, 195, 247, 345, 528. Drnma, the, 138, 183, 196, 218, 225, 231, 239, 240, 317, 329, 348, 373. Dramatists of the Restoration, 129. Drayton, M., 270, 328. Dreams, 383, 385. Druinmond, 328. DRUNKARD, CONFESSIONS OF A, 329. Drunkenness, 184, 464. DRYDEN, JOHN, 97. Dryden, John : Congreve on, 98. dreams of, 383. Goldsmith on, 231. Jeffrey on, 316. Johnson on, 97. Macaulay on, 449. on Beaumont and Fletcher, 98. on Jonson, 98. on Milton, 99. on Shakspeare, 98. on Spenser, 98. on Virgil, 185, 253. Steele quotes, 130. Walpole quotes, 201. Du Bartas, 348. Du Cange, 182. Dublin Quarterly Medical Jour- nal, 481. Dublin University Magazine, 511. Dudley Observatory, 412. Duer on Insurance, 485. Dunce, a Wag always a, 127. Dunciad, Pope's, 148. Dunlap's Admiralty Practice, 485. Dunning, 251. Duras, Lewis, 446. Dutch language, 53, 434. Dutch Republic, 505. Duty, 332, 429. Dvvight, Timothy, 312. E. EARLY CHARACTER OF HENRY VIII., 514. EARLY MARRIAGES, 173. EARTH, INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE, 355. EARTHQUAKES, LONDON, 201. East, the, 180. East Jersey, 121. Easy, Robert, 269. EC hard, History of, 163. Eclectic Review, 511. ECONOMICAL WIFE, 266. Economy, 119, 301. Edinburgh Review, 21, 35, 61, 101, 106,125, 158, 173, 190,200, 259, 288, 30 1,302, 345, 365, 386, 389, 433, 440, 452, 493, 505, 514, 520, 530. Education, 102, 202, 314, 341, 432, 482. EDUCATION, Milton on, 63. EDUCATION, Spencer on, 523. EDUCATION, CLASSICAL, 421. EDUCATION, FEMALE, Lady Mon- tagu on, 162. EDUCATION, FEMALE, Sydney Smith on, 300. EDUCATION OF MIDDLE CLASSES, 420. Edward IV., 514. Effects of opium, 381. Egyptians, 302, 508. Eikon Basilike, 359. Eldon, Lord, 491. Electric telegraph, 508. ELEGANCE, THOUGHTS ON, 207. Elia, Essays of, 326, 327. ELIOT, GEORGE, 530. ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND, 423. ELIZABETH, CHARACTER OF, 122. ELIZABETH, LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF, 345. ELIZABETH, POETRY OF THE AGE OF, 237. ELIZABETH, SIDNEY TO, 39. ELIZABETH, QUEEN, 191. Elizabeth, Queen, 230, 240, 347, 527, 528. ELIZABETH, AMY ROBSART, AND LEICESTER, 310. Ellenborough, Lord, 443. Elliott, George, 443. Ellis, George, 65. Ellis, Rev. Rufus, 407. Ellwood, Mrs., 206. ELL WOOD, THOMAS, 114. Elocution, 183. ELOQUENCE, 364. Eloquence, 180, 181, 183, 338. 443. 477. Elwin, Rev. M., 157. ELYOT, SIR THOMAS, 51. Elysian fields, 304, 485, 526. Emerigon des Assurances, 485. EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, 457. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 331, 501. Emmett, 518. EMPLOYING OUR TIME, 72. EMPLOYMENT OF INDIANS, 177. Encyclopaedia Americana, 484. Encyclopaedia Anglicana, 327. Encyclopaedia Britnnnica, 102, 151, 163, 189, 220, 261, 271, 327, 343, 450, 518, 525. Energy, 297. Enfield on H. More, 73. England, Augustan age of, 230. factions in. ."7. history of, 123,421. 542 GENERAL INDEX. England, printing in, 20. English authors, 230, 241. English language, 52. 53, 62, 63, 101, 180, 182, 183, 185, 203, 231, 232, 233, 239, 269, 315, 352, 434, 449, 474, 527. ENGLISH LITERATURE, PROGRESS OF, 313. ENGLISH PEOPLE. BEST, 488. English People, History of, 528. English Poetry, by Warton, 56. Engraving. 508. ENTHUSIASM, DEFENCE OF, 499. Epaphroditus, 248. Ephesus, 365. Epic poetry, 196, 373. Epictetus, 199, 200, 256, 529. Epicureans, 404. Epicurus, 200, 225. Episcopacy, 127. Epistles of Pliny, 15. Equity, Barton's Suit in, 485. Evidence, Gresley's, 485. Jeremy on, 485. Pleading, 484. Pleading, Mitford's, 485. and Real Estate, 485. Ernesti, 300. Erskineon Fox, 272. ERSKINE, RALPH, 155. Essay on Human Understanding, 102. Essex, Countess of, 91. Essex, Earl of, 91, 191, 528. Estates, Probate on, 485. Eternal Banquet, 279. Eternal life, 148, 303, 332, 342, 365. Eternal punishments, 303. Eternal rewards, 303. Eternity, 85, 148, 164, 418. ETERNITY AND TIME, Hall on, 281. ETKRNITY AND TIME, Heber on, 365. Eunomus, Wynne's, 485. Euphrates tunnel, 508. Euripides, 138, 183, 449. European morals, 529. Eutyches, 216. Evans, Marian C., 530. Evarts, W. M., on Binney, 357. EVELYN, JOHN, 81. Everett, Alexander II., 367. EVERETT, EDWARD, 409. EVERETT, EDWARD, Hillard on, 476. Everett, Edward, on Binney, 357. on Motley, 505. on Washington, 481. on Webster, 362. to S. Austin Allibone, 357, 505. EVIDENCE, 485. Evidence, Greenleaf on, 485. Evidence, Criminal, Roscoe on, 485. EVIDENCES OF DIVINE REVELA- TION, 128, 451. EVIL SPEAKING, 50. Evretnond, Saint, 217. Ewing, General, 245. EXCAVATIONS AT NIMROUD, 512. EXCELLENCY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, 93. EXECUTION OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, 515. Executors, Toller on, 485. Executors', Williams on, 485. EXECUTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS, 485. EXERCISE, 430. EXERCISE, DIFFERENT KINDS OF, 52. Existence of God, 73. Ezekiel, 347, 415. F. Fabius, policy of, 22. Faerie Queen, 240, 528. Fairfax, Edward, 348. Fairfax, Lord T., 437. Faith, 360, 437, 454, 455. Falkland, Lord, 527. Fal staff, 239, 527. Fame, 188,231,233,342. FAME, LOVE OF, 188. FAME OF WASHINGTON, 174. FAMILY OF WAKEFIELD, 227. FAMILY OF WAKEFIELD IN AF- FLICTION, 228. FAMILY OF WAKEFIELD IN PROS- PERITY, 229. Fanaticism, 529. Fanshawe, Sir R., 232. Faraday, M., 524. Farmer on Milton, 62. Farquhar. G., 327. Fashion, London, 489. FAULTS, 504. Fearne on Contingent Remain- ders, 485. FEAST IN THE MANNER OF THE ANCIENTS, 213. Federalist, The, 485. Feeling, 373 : see AFFECTIONS. FELLTHAM, OWEN, 60. Felton, Cornelius C., 488. FELTON, HENRY, D.D., 149. Felton, Henry, D.D., 110, 112, 216. FEMALE EDUCATION, Lady Mon- tagu on, 162. FEMALE EDUCATION, Sydney Smith on, 300. Females, learned, 238. Fenelon, 218. Ferdinand of Wales, 201. Feversham, Earl of, 446. FIELDING, HENRY, 174. Fielding, Henry, 327, 328, 329, 338, 491. Fields, James T., 462, 488. Fiesole, 411. Finch's Law, 485. Fingal, Warburton on, 168. Fire in London of 1666, 81, 508. FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS, 368. FISHER, JOHN, 20. Fletcher, Giles, 270. Fletcher, John, 120, 270, 329, 373, 449. Florence, 411, 499, 533. Flowers, language of, 502. Fontenelle. 483. Foot and Webster, 364. FORBES, LADY, BEATTIE TO, 252. Ford, John, 449. Forfeitures, Yorke on, 485. Forfeitures, Criminal, 485. FORMATION OF A RIGHT TASTE. 149. Foro Legatorum, 485. Forster, John, 493. FORTUNE, REMEDIES OF, 18. Fortunes of Nigel, 113. Foscolo, Ugo, 499. FOSSILS OF THE OLD RED SAND- STONE, 453. FOSTER, JOHN, 295. Footer, Sir M., Crown Law of, 485. Fox, CHARLES JAMES, 272. Fox, Charles James, 221, 302, 338, 413, 443, 444. France : authors of, 230, 348, 421. Critics of, 183, 216. Franklin in, 260. Moralists of, 216. Philosophy in, 306. Revolution in, of 1789, 236. Voyage to, 56. Young in, 508. Francis of Assisi, 20. Francis I., 190. Francis, Sir Philip, 293. FRANKLIN, A, 48. FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, LL.D., 172. FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, LL.D., Jefferson on, 260. FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, LL.D., Priestley on, 250. Franklin, Benjamin, LL.D., 341, 352, 461. Fraser's Magazine, 511, 512, 518, 520. Frederick the Great, 319. Freeholder, The, 133. Freethinker, The, 448. FRENCH, CHARACTER OF THE, 57. French, 101, 185, 394. authors, 223, 230. language, 53, 57, 183, 185. philosophers, 529. Revolution of 1789, 285, 317, 418, 529. school of literature, 316. style of the, 230. Friendship, 119, 165, 171. FRIENDSHIP AND BENEVOLENCE, 153. FRIENDSHIP IN HKAVEN, 386. FROUDE, JAMES ANTHONY, 513. Froude on Sir T. More, 23. FULLER, THOMAS, 61. Fuller, Thomas, 329. Fuseli, dreams of, 383. FUTURE STATE OF THE HEATHEN, 242. FUTURE STATE PROVED, 151. G. Galileo, 280, 402, 412. Games, 138, 431. Garcilasso, 264. GENERAL INDEX. 543 Gardiner, Bishop, 154. Garrick, David, 175, 176, 442. Gas coal, 503. Gauthey, 507. Gay, John, 450. Geilius Aulus, 272. Generalizing. 105. Geneva, Lake of, 500. GENIUS, 460. Genius, 499. Gentleman's Magazine, 277, 441, 456. Geography, 163. Geology, 432, 433, 434, 452, 453. Geometry, Chinese, 341. George I., age of, 316. George II., age of, 316. George III., age of, 178. (Jeorge IV., age of, 443. Gerinanieus, 185. Germany, authors of, 421. criticism in, 336. exercise in, 432. philosophy in, 306. poetry of, 518. Galen, 140. GIBBON, EDWARD, 256. Gibbon, Edward, Decline and Fall of, 128, 256, 485. Emerson quotes, 458. Lamb on, 327. Macaulay on, 443. Mackintosh on, 210. on Hume, 189. on Robertson, 190. on AVarburton, 167. on White, 265. Sharswood cites, 485. Gibson, preaching of, 148. Gideon's fleece, 416. GILPIN, WILLIAM, 223. Giotto, 434. Giphantie, 508. Glass, Chinese, 341. Glory, desire of, 342. God, attributes of, 86. 136, 142. EXISTENCE OP, 73. existence of, 127, 303. goodness of, 135, 153, 164, 261, 345, 356, 378. Honour to, 95. INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF, 77. incomprehensibility of, 193, 194. JUDGMENTS OF, 58. KNOWLEDGE OF, 86. love of, 306, 342, 430. mercy of, 137, 155. nature of, 147. omnipresence of, 136, 480. omniscience of, 136, 480. POWER OF, 87. power of, 135, 152, 405, 417, 424, 439, 461. ways of, 197. WISDOM OF, 87. wisdom of, 146, 223, 344, 345. works of, 135, 141, 254, 342. worship of, 425. Goddard, Dr., 102. Godolphin, Sir W., 232. GODWIN, WILLIAM, 277. GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, 227. Goldsmith, Oliver, 156, 317,329, 440, 491. Gondola, 520. Good, John M., 293. GOOD BREEDING, Chesterfield on, 166. GOOD BREEDING, Warton on, 218. Good Samaritan, 347. Good Sense, 232. Good Taste, 123. GOOD WORKS, 173. Goodness, 331. Googe, Barnaby, 507. Gordian, Emperor, 248. Gossec, F. J., 482. Gothe on Goldsmith, 227. Gothic romance, 239, 240. Goths and Vandals, 134. Government, 10, 121, 180, 191, 235, 271, 286, 302, 340, 353, 387, 392, 514, 525. Government, Discourses on, 84. GOVERNMENT, DIVINE, 110. GOVERNMENT AND LIBERTY, 83. Gower, Lord, 251. Gracchi, the, 290. Grafton, Duke of, 446. Granger, Biographical History by, 144. GRANT, SIR WILLIAM, 338. Granville, John, 446. Gravitation, 153. Gray, Thomas, 140, 253, 317, 374. Great actions, 512. Great Britain, genius of, 346. Great Teacher, the, 319. GREATNESS, INCONVENIENCE OF, 30. Greece, history of, 421. Greek authors, 16, 63, 137, 184, 203, 218, 319, 348, 404, 421, 422. drama, 138, 218, 373. fire, 508. language, 53, 63, 135, 147, 149, 151, 157, 163, 180, 181, 182, 185, 237, 299, 353,421,434. librarians, 248. New Testament, 137, 434. orators, 483. philosophers, 257, 303, 404, 526. tragedy, 218, 373. Greek and Latin, Milton on, 63. Sydney Smith on, 299. Greeks, the, 180,347,408. GHEEN, Jonx RICHARD, 527. Green, T., on Jenyns, 172. Greene, General, 290. Greenleaf on Evidence, 484, 485. Gregory, 0., on R. Hall, 280. Gresley on Equity Evidence, 485. Grey, Charles, Earl, 444. GREY, LADY JANE, 332. Grey, Lady Jane, 29. Grimm, J. and W. K., 182. Griswold, R. AV., 462, 475. Grotius, do Jure Belli et Pacis, 485. de Vcritate, 107. Grotius: on suicide, 529. on the law of nature, 256. Guardian, The, 129, 133, 144, 151,152,153, 156,247. GUIZOT, F. P., 389. Guizot, F. P.,434. Gull's Horne-Booke, 113. Gunpowder, 421, 508. Gwynn, Eleanor, 445, 446. H. HABIT AND PRACTICE, 103. Hachish, 508. Hadrian, Emperor, 248. HAILES, LORD, 224. Haklvytvs Posthumos, 46. HALE, SIR MATTHEW, 67. Common Law, 485. Pleas of the Crown, 485. HALES, JOHN, 48. Hales, John, on Shakespeare, 98. Half-Hours, Knight's, 22, 359, 498. HALL, CAPTAIN BASIL, 399. HALL, JOSEPH, D.D., 42. HALL, ROBERT, 280. Hall, Robert : Cowper on, 242. on Burke, 234. on Stewart, 276. HALLAM, HENRY, 335. Hallam, Constitutional History of, 485. Literary History of, 109, 237. Middle Ages of, 485. on Hoadley, 143. on Kurd, 204. on Pascal, 84. on Sidney, 83. on Taylor, 72. Hamilton, Binney on, 358. Hamilton, Lady, 323. Hamlet, 175, 176, 184, 188, 348, 449, 478, 528. Hannibal, 22, 291, 447. Hanover, House of, 234, 294. Happiness, 108, 148, 162, 217, 226. 231, 261, 299, 331, 359, 428, 429. HAPPINESS, DESIRE OF, 343. HAPPINESS, Leighton on, 69. HAPPINESS AND MISERY, 197. HAPPINESS OF SOLITUDE, 193. Hardy, Captain, 321, 323. Hare, Pope on, 148. HARE, JULIUS CHARLES, 428. HARLEY, DEATH OF, 262. Harrington, Ariosto by, 348. HARRIS, JAMES, M.P., 179. HARRISON, WILLIAM, 52. Hastings. Warren : Burke on, 12, 236. government of, 319. HASTINGS, WARHEN, TRIAL OF, 442. II.VWKESWORTH, JOHN, LL.D., 195. HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL, 462. Haylcy, AV. : Macaulay on, 442. Seward on, 270. Haync and AVebster, 364. UAZLITT, AVILLIAM, 345 544 GENERAL INDEX. Hazlitt, W. : Jeffrey on, 317. on Addison, 129. on Hunt, 373. on Jeffrey, 313. on Pope, 157. on Shakespeare, 318. on Southey, 319. on Steele, 129. Health, 24, 267, 343, 432. HEATHEN, FUTURE STATE OP THE, 242. Heathfield, Lord, 443. Heaven, 18. HEAVEN, FRIENDSHIPS IN, 386. JlKiiKis, REGINALD, 364. Hebrew language, 53, 135, 434. Hebrew Psalms, 518. Heeren, A. H. L., 427. Heine, II., 518. Heliodorus, 239. Heliotype, 508. HELPS, SIR ARTHUR, 510. Henley, Orator, 148. Henry II., Lyttelton, 178. Henry IV., Shakspere's, 527. Henry VIII., 26, 47, 190, 286, 310, 423. HENRY VIII., EARLY CHAR- ACTER OF, 514. Henry, Philip, 112. HERBERT, LOKD EDWARD, 46. Herbert, Lord Edward, 514. Herbert, George, 289. Hercules, 248, 526. Hermes, by Harris, 180. Herodotus, 138. HERSCHEL, SIR JOHN FREDERICK WILLIAM, D.C.L., 400. Hesiod, 348. Hesperian gardens, 304, 348. HEYLIN, PETER, D.D., 56. Heywood, Thomas, 527. Ilickes, George, Thesaurus of, 182. Hiero, 138. Hierocles, 183. High Dutch, 53. Hill, lectures of, 76. HILLAKD, GEORGE STILLMAN, 475. Hindoos, 434. Hindostan, 421. Hippocrates, 140. Historians, 180, 264, 421. Historical Society of Pennsyl- vania, 410. History, 128, 139. 145, 147, 163, 189, 196, 312, 362,421. History of England, 190, 192, 286. English People, 528. English Poetry, 17, 20, 237, 241. Rome, 1C3. Scotland, 210. Study of, 16, 40. United States, 437. HISTORY, CREDIT DUE TO, 75. History, Natural, 432. Hive, Northern, 134. Ho-ti, 325. HOADLY, BENJAMIN, D.D., 143. HOBBES, THOMAS, 60. Hobbes, Thomas, 142, 240, 315, 445. Holbach on suicide, 529. Holy Spirit, 226. Home, 509. Homer : Arnold on, 421. Beattie on, 253. Bentley on, 186. BLACKWALL ON, 137. Chapman translates, 348. De Quincey on, 383. Dick on, 304. Dryden on, 101. Felton on, 149. Fox on, 272. Harris on, 181. Hazlitt on, 348. Hunt on, 373. Johnson on, 185. Kingsley on, 518. Nichol on, 415. -Plato on, 137. POPE ON, 157. Pope translates, 185, 186. Prescott on. 427. Rapin on, 218. Seward on, 270. Wakefield on, 272. Warton on, 218. Zoilus on, 137, 154. Honour, 342. HONOUR, TITLES OP, 121. Honour to God, 95. HOOKER, RICHARD, 35. Hooker. Richard : Hazlitt on, 345. Jeffrey on, 317. Johnson on, 182. Hope, 343, 362. HOPKINS, EZEKIEL, 105. Horace: Blackwall on, 139. Dryden on, 98, 99, 100. Felton on, 149. Jeffrey on, 314. Macaulay on, 447. Rollin on, 124. Spence on, 169. Horse Juridicise, Butler's, 485. HORNE, GKORGR. D.D., 241. Home, T. H., 112, 137, 169. HORRORS OP WAR, Hall on, 280. Horse-Mania, Ruskin on, 521. HORSLBY. SAMUEL, D.D., 248. Hospitality, 345. House of Common!', 338, 339. Housekeeping, 269. Howard, decision of, 298. Howe, Bishop M. A. De Wolfe, 450. Howe, General, 246. HOWEI.L, JAMES, 55. Howell, James, 289. Huddleston, Father, and Charles II., 446. Hudibras by Butler, 154. Hudson, Apocrypha by, 54. HUGHES, JOHN, 144. HUMAN LIFE, SHORTNF.SSOF, 146. Human Mind, Philosophy of the, 345. Human Nature, by Butler, 165. by Hobbes, 50. Human Understanding, by Locke, 102. HUME, DAVID, 189. Hume, David: Jeffrey on, 317. Lamb on, 327. on despotism, 286. on Milton, 62. on Rousseau, 193. on Temple, 91. Warburton on, 168. HUMILITY, Selden on, 50. HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH, 372. Hunt, James Henry Leigh, on Lady Montagu, 162. HURD, RICHARD, D.D., 204. KURD, WARBURTON TO, 167. Husband and Wife, 485. Husbandrie, Arte of, 507. Hutchinson, John, 256. Hutchinson, Thomas, 251. Huygcnius, C., 135. HYDE, EDWARD, EARL OF CLAR- ENDON, 65. Hydropathy, 508. Hyginus, C. J., 248. Hyperides, 444. Hypocrisy, 208, 258. I. Tago, 528. Idea of a Patriot King. 232. Ideas, association of, 139. Idleness, 479. Idler, The, 450. Idolatry, 199, 424. Ignorance, 147, 417, 420. IGNORANCE OF TIME OF DEATH, 116. II Penseroso, 264, 270. Iliad by Salvini, 185. IMAGE-BREAKERS OF THE NETH- ERLANDS, 505. IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS, LAN- DOR'S, 331, 332. Imagination, 127. 373. IMMODERATE SELF-LOVE, 108. Immortality, 84, 151, 226, 257, 281, 303, 342, 343. IMMORTALITY, UNIVERSAL BE- LIEF IN, 302. IMMORTALITY, CONSCIOUSNESS OF, 342. Immortality of the Soul, 144. Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, 9, 14, 23, 30, 401, 415, 526. IMPROVEMENT OF MEMORY, 139. Improvement of the Mind, 131. INCARNATION, MYSTERY OF THE, 76. Incentive to Pleasure, 279. Inchbald, Mrs., 270. INCOMPREHENSIBILITY OF GOD, 77. INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS, 30. India, 236, 303, 442, 444. INDIANS, EMPLOYMENT OF, 177. Indostan, 383. Industrial Biography, 508. Industry, Penn on, 119. INDUSTRY OF THE BRITISH NA- TION, 361. INEFFICACY OF MERE MORAL PREACHING, 354. GENERAL INDEX. 545 INFALLIBILITY, PROTESTANT, 143. Infancy and Coverture, 485. Infant education, 432. INFERIOR ANIMALS, CRUELTY TO, 172. Infidelity, Boyle on, 88. INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE, 401. Inglis, J. B., translates De Bury, 18. INGRATITUDE INCURABLE, 106. INJUDICIOUS HASTE IN STUDY, 104. Inns of Court, 491. Inquiry, Brief, Upshur's, 485. INQUIRY AND PRIVATE JUDG- MENT IN RELIGION, 48. Inquisition, 387, 411. Insanity, 337. INSANITY, SYMPTOMS OF, 481. Insignificance of Man, 135. INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE EARTH, 355. Institutes, Coke's, 485. Justinian's, 485. Rutherford's, 485. Insurance, Duer on, 485. Intellectual System, 77. Intemperance, 184, 329, 464. INTERNATIONAL LAW, 485. International Law, Wheaton's, 485. INVENTIONS REVIVED, 507. Irene, Johnson's, 448. IRISH VILLAGE AND SCHOOL- HOUSE, 434. IRVING, WASHINGTON, 3B6. Irving at Abbotsford, 369. IRVING'S LAST INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT, 371. ISABELLA OF SPAIN, 423. Isabella of Spain, 290. Isaiah, prophecies of, 347. Isocrates, 181. Italy, architecture of, 520. authors of, 183, 185, 218, 224, 230, 239, 240, 348, 421, 499. enthusiasm of, 499. language of, 183. music of, 156. Ixion, 304. J. JAMES VI. AND I., 41. James VI. and I., age of, 191, 230, 247, 315, 347. JEFFKRSON, THOMAS, 259. JEFFREY, LORD FRANCIS, 313. Jeffrey, Lord Francis : on Frank- lin, 172. on Mackintosh, 285. on Pepys, 101. on Richardson, 158. on Scott, 307. JENYNS, SOAME, 171. Jenyns. Soame, 328. Jews, 128, 129, 288,347. Job translated by Good, 136. Johnson, Arthur, translates Ten- nemann, 186. JOHNSON, SAMUEL, LL.D., 181. JOHNSON, SAMUEL, LL.D.: by Macaulay, 447. 35 Johnson, Samuel, LL.D. : Carlyle on, 181. Carter and, 199. Jeffrey on, 317. Knox imitates, 273. Lives of the Poets by, 144, 449. Macaulay on, 441, 447. on Addison, 133. on Arbuthnot, 141. on Blair, 202. on Chesterfield, 166. on Clarke, 142. on Dryden, 97, 98. on Fielding, 175. on Hailes, 224. on Hume, 190. on Richardson, 158. on Sherlock, 148. on Swift, 126. on Temple, 1)1. on Watts, 139. Thrale, Mrs., and, 226. Tuckerman and, 499. JONATHAN AND SQUIRE BULL, 350. Jonathan Wild, 327. JONES, SIR WILLIAM, 263. Jonson, Ben, 217, 348. Joseph and his brethren, 347. Josephus, 244, 327. JUDGMENT, DAY OF, 226. Judgment, Day of, 105, 303, 311. Judgment of Virgil, 157. JUDGMENTS OF GOD, 58. Judicial Establishments, 272. Juliet, 500. J UNI us, 293. Justice, 223. K. KANE, ELISHA KENT, M.D., 521. Kemble, John Philip, 393. Ken, Bishop, 445. Kenilworth, 240. Kennedy, Elizabeth, 516. Kent, Earl of, 515, 516, 517. Kent, James : Commentaries of, 484. on Blackstone, 221. Kiddle, Dr. P., 471. KING OF TEZCUCO, THE, 424. Kings, duties of, 35. Kings, Shakespeare's, 184. KINGSLEY, CHARLES, 517. Kirk, John Foster, 406. Knight, Charles : English Cyclo- paedia of, 406, 437. Half-Hours of, 22, 359, 498. KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE, 491. Knowledge, 104, 147, 238, 353, 401,416,420,428,430. KNOWLEDGE, GOD'S, 86. KNOWLEDGE, LOVE OF, 51. KNOWLEDGE OF THE MIND, 186. Knowles, Admiral, 201. Knox, John, 395. KNOX, VICESIMUS, 273. Knox, Vicesimus, on Clarke, 142. Kurner: Kingsley on, 518. L. La Bruydre, 217. Labour, 415, 41 tt. LABOUR, DIVISION OF, 220. LADIES, UNMARRIED, 158. Lselius, conversation of, 138. Laidlaw, W., 370. LAMB, CHARLES, 324. Lamb, Charles, on Walton, 54. Lammermoor, Bride of, 309. Lancet, The, 481. LANDOR, AVALTER SAVAGE, 330. Lnngton, B., 450. LANGUAGE, CHANGES is, 433. Language, law, 53. of flowers, 502. of the stars, 502. PROPHETIC, 118. Languages, 16, 52, 53, 54, 57, 62, 63, 101, 118, 135, 147, 149, 151, 157, 162, 163, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 187, 203, 231, 232, 237, 239, 248, 257, 264, 265, 268, 269, 272, 276, 299, 315, 336, 352, 353, 421, 433, 434, 449, 474, 475, 486, 524, 527. Languages, Burritt and, 486. Languages, Milton on, 63. LANGUAGES, Spencer on, 524. Languages, Sydney Smith on, 299. Lansdowne, Lord, 250, 340. Lardner, N., 329. LAST JUDGMENT, 105. Last trumpet, 310. Latham, R. G., 182. LATIMER, HUGH, 22. Latimer, Hugh, burnt, 26. Latin, 16, 52, 53, 62, 63, 101, 147, 149, 157, 163, 180, 187, 203, 237, 268, 272, 276, 299. LATIN AND GREEK, Too MUCH, 299. Latin Christianity, 404. Latin librarians, 248. LAUGHTER, Hobbes on, 51. Lausus, 101. Lavoisier, 300. Law, 271, 315, 328,393, 403, 434, 443. Law, Bacon on, 40. Law books, 225. Law, Chitty on Criminal, 485. LAW, CONSTITUTIONAL, 485. Law Disposal, Lovelass's, 485. Law language, 53. LAW, NATURAL AND INTERNA- TIONAL, 485. Law, Natural and Political, 485. Law of Nations, 410, 485. LAW OF NATURE, 36. Law of Nature, 223. Law Reports, 485. Law, Ritso on, 485. LAW STUDIES, 483. LAW, STUDY OF THE, 221. Law, Study of, 225. LAW, PHYSIC, AND DIVINITY, 133. Laws, 10, 166, 312,338, 353, 514, 529. Laws, conflict of, 485. 546 GENERAL INDEX. LAWS IN GENERAL, 223. Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 37. LAWS, SLEEPING, 271. Lawyers, 127,301,491. Addisonon, 133, 134. Martial on, 133. Lay Monastery, the, 448. LAYARD, AUSTEN HENRY, D.C.L., M.P., 512. L'Allegro, 263, 270. Le Fevre, 218. Le Monnier, 508. Le Sage, A. R., 338. Lear, 348, 528. Learning, 238, 340. Learning, Useless, 145. LECKY, WILLIAM EDWARD HART- POLE, 529. Lee, N. : Goldsmith on, 231. Legacies, Roper on, 485. Leicester, Lord, 310. Leigh's Nisi Prius, 484. LEIGHTON, ROBERT, D.D., 68. Leo X., age of, 230. Leonidas, 458. Leroy, M., 482. L'Estrange, Sir R., 231, 233, 244. Lesage, George L., 508. Letter by Sir M. Hale, 67. Letter-writers, women as, 109. Letters, party in, 231. Leviathan, by Hobbes, 50. Lewes, George II., 519. LEXICOGRAPHY, 182. Liberty, 180, 353, 389, 410, 458. LIBERTY AND GOVERNMENT, 83. Libraries, 247, 353, 506, 521. LIBRARIES, ROMAN, 247. LIBBER, P., to S. Austin Allibone, 362. Life, conduct of, 54. Life, eternal, 148, 342, 366. Life, happiness of, 54, 108, 115. LIFE NOT TOO SHORT, 115. LIFE, SHORTNESS OF, 146. LIGHT, CHILDREN OF, 428. LITERARY ASPIRATIONS OP MIL- TON, 62. Literary Gazette, 474. LITERATURE, AMERICAN, 410. Literature, foreign, 353. Liternture, National, 353. LITERATURE OP THE AGE OF ELIZABETH, 345. Literature, study of, 16, 300. Littleton, Coke upon, 485, 491. Littleton's Tenures, 485. Littre, M. P. E., 182. Lives of Philosophers, 220. Lives of Poets, 449. Livy : De Quincey on, 382. Rollin, 124. LOCKE, JOHN, 102. Locke, John : Gibbon on, 259. Goldsmith on, 232. Hall on, 283. on Voyages, 46. Lockhart, John G., 371, 399. Logic, Arbuthnot on, 141. Logic, Carey on, 409. Lomond, M., 508. London customs, 113. LONDON EARTHQUAKES, 201. London Fire of 1666, 81. London Plague of 1665, 101, 114, 125. London Plague, Ellwood on, 114. London society, 489. Loneliness, 509. Longevity, 115. LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADS- WORTH, 470. Longinus on St. Paul, 170. LORD'S SUPPER, 334. Lordat, Dr., 482. Louis XIV., age of, 219, 230. Napoleon on, 291. Lounger, The, 266, 269. LOVE, BACON ON, 39. Love : Brown on, 343. Kiehardson on, 161. Warton, 239. LOVE, POWER OF, 458. LOVE OF FAME, 188. LOVE OP KNOWLEDGE, 51. LOVE AND BEAUTY, 132. Lovelass's Law Disposal, 485. Lowndes's Bibliographer's Man- ual, 122, 124, 157. Lowth, Bishop, on Hermes, 180. Lucilius, Spence on, 169. Lucrece, Rape of, 373, 527. Lucretius, Dryden on, 100. Lucullus, 247. Lully, Raymond, 327. LUTHER, MARTIN, 211. LUTHER, 283, 395, 434. Lyall on Jeffrey, 313. Lycurgus, 255. LYELL, SIR CHARLES, LL.D., 433. Lygdamis expelled, 138. LYTTELTON, LORD GEORGE, 178. Lyttelton, Lord George, 204. LYTTON, LORD, 465. M. Macadamized roads, 508. MACAULAY, LORD, 440. Macaulay, Lord : Arnold on, 440. Milman on, 404, 440. on Addison, 133, 448. on Bacon, 443, 476. on Bentham, 271. on Bunyan, 90. on Cicero, 18, 443. on Comic Dramatists, 373. on Hunt, 373. on Johnson, 182, 447. on Junius, 293. on Lord Lyttelton, 178. on Macchiavelli, 21. on Mackintosh, 285. on Milton, 62. on Newton, 118. on Paley, 261. on Pascal, 84. on Petrarch, 18. on Prescott, 423. on Raleigh, 35. on Sydney Smith, 299. on Tickell, 156. on Tusculan Questions, 18. on Walpole, 200. Macaulay, Lord: on Whiston, 128. to S. Austin Allibone, 423. Macaulay, Zachary, 440. Macbeth, 129, 240, 349, 500, 528. MACCHIAVELLI, 21. Macchiavelli, 336, 348. MacCulloch, J. R., 189. MacKean, Kate, 408. Mackeldy's Compendium, 485. MACKENZIE, SIR GEORGE, 109. MACKENZIE, HENRY, 262. Mackenzie, R. S., 376. MACKINTOSH, SIR JAMES, 285. Mackintosh, Sir James: Dis- course of, 485. Macaulay on, 178. on Bentham, 271. on Berkeley, 151. on Brown, 343. on Butler, 343. on Clarke, 142. on Foster, 295. on Hume, 189. on Junius, 293. on Locke, 102. on Mackenzie, 109. on Phillips, 387. on Robertson, 210. on Shaftesbury, 131. on Smith, 102, 220. on Swift, 126. on Warburton, 167. Macmillan's Magazine, 527. Madonnas, 499. Maecenas : Blackwall on, 139. Spence on, 169. Magians, 303, 412. Magnus, Albertus, 508. MAHOMET, DESCRIPTION OP, 257. Mahomet, 180. Mahratta war, 508. Maintenon, Madame, 219. Mainwaring, 233. Malamocco, 521. Malay, De Quincey's, 384. Malebranche, 188. Malghera, 521. Malone, Edmond, 168, 449. Lamb on, 328. Shakespeare's bust and, 328. MAMBRINO'S HELMET, 33. Man, insignificance of, 135. progress of, 469. ruler of the earth, 356. MAN'S WRITING A MEMOIR OF HIMSELF, 295. Mandragora, 508. Mango Copac, 255. Manners, 166, 500, 501. of New England, 500, 501. Mansfield, Lord, 484. MANT, RICHARD, 333. Marcus Aurelius, 526. MARGARET, COUNTESS OP RICH- MOND, 20. Maria Theresa, 290. Mariner's compass, 341, 421. Marius, Sallust on, 526. Marlborough, Duke of, 441. Marlowe, Christopher, 328, 449. MARRIAGES, EARLY, 173. Marseillaise, 518. GENERAL INDEX. 547 Marseilles tunnel, 508. Mai shall, Charles, 508. Marshall, Chief Justice, 357. Marston, John, 527. Martial on lawyers, 133. MARTINEAU, HARRIET, 454. Mary, Queen of Scots, 123, 210, 528. MAHY, QUEEN OP SCOTS, EXECU- TION' OP, 515. Massinger, Philip, 449. Materialists, Sir H. Davy on, 342. MATHEMATICAL LEARNING, 141. Mathematics, 40, 163, 427, 508. Mathias on Melmoth, 187. MATRIMONIAL HAPPINESS, 162. MATRIMONY, 497. Matrimony, 266. Maturin, Rev. R., 30. Maundrull, Journey of, 45. Mayo, Chinese, 508. Measure for Measure, 528. Media, Magians in, 303. Medicine, 180. MEDITATION AMONG THE BOOKS, 22-1. Melancholy, 135, 262, 328. MELANCHOLY AND CONTEMPLA- TION, Burton on, 44. MELMOTH, WILLIAM, 187. Melody, Temple of, 278. Melville, Andrew, 515. Melville, Lord, 339, 443. MEMOIRS OP HIMSELF, 295. MEMORY, Stewart on,. 276. MEMORY, Wiuslow on, 482. Memory, Pliny on, 16. Spencer on, 524. Warton on, 238. MEMORY, IMPROVING THE, Fuller on, 61. MEMORY, IMPROVING THE, Watts on, 139. Men of Letters, time of George III., 181. Menage, Gilles, 218. MenanUer, 180, 185, 404. Menenius, 184. Mental stimulus, 431. Mercer, General, 246. Merchant of Venice, 527. Mercy of God, Addison on, 137. MERCY OP GOD, Erskine on, 155. Meres, Francis, 527. Merry Wives of Windsor, 527. Mestre, tower of, 520, 521. Mexico, Spaniards in, 426. MEXICO, VALLEY AND CITY OF, 426. Mezentius and Lausus, 101. Microscope, 421. MIDDLE CLASS EDUCATION, 420. Middleton, Thomas, 527. Mill, James, on Stewart, 276. Miller and the steamboat, 507. MILLER, HUGH, 452. MILMAN, HENRY HART, D.D., 403. Milman, Henry H., 440. MILTON, JOHN, 62. Milton, John : Arnold on, 421. Beattie on, 254. Milton, John : Channing on, 352. Combe on, 395. DllYDEN ON, 99. Ellwood on, 114. Everett on, 411. Farmer on, 62. Felton on, 149. Hazlitt on, 346. Hume on, 62. Hunt on, 373, 374. Jeffrey on, 315, 316. Jonson on, 182. Jones on, 263. Lamb on, 328. Macaulay on, 62, 442. on books. 64. ON CENSORSHIP OP THE PRESS, 64. ON EDUCATION, 63. sublimity of, 149. Warton, J., on, 218. Warton, T., on, 270. Mimnermus, 180. Mind, Disorders of the, 481. Mind in old age, 482. Mind, improvement of the, 131, 140. MIND, KNOWLEDGE OF THE, 186. Minds, use of, 104. Minos, 304. Minstrel, The, 252. Minstrelsy, 239. Mirabeau, 271. Miracles, 111, 128, 247, 366. Mirror, The, 266. Miser, a, 297. MISERY AND HAPPINESS, 197. Misfortune, 343. Mitford's Equity Pleading, 484, 485. MODERN POETRY, DEFECTS IN, 518. MODERN STATE OF ANCIENT COUNTRIES, 46. Moir's Poetical Literature, 404. Mommsen, Dr., 525, 526, 527. Monarchy, 180. Monmouth, Duke of, 446. MONTAGU, ELIZABETH, 203. MONTAGU, LADY MARY WORT- LEY, 161. Montague, Elizabeth, 443. MONTAIGNE, MicHEL DE, 30. Montaigne, Michel de, 217, 529. Montesquieu, 529. Monthly Review, 380. Moore, 'Thomas, 299, 319, 387, 518. MORAL CONDUCT, 198. MORAL PREACHING, 354. Morality, 312, 527, 529. MORALITY IN WORDS, 474. Morals, 142, 297, 354, 524, 525. Morals, European, 529. MORE, HUNRY, D.D., 73. More, Henry, D.D., 233. MORE, SIR THOMAS, 23. MORE, SIR THOMAS, Mackintosh on, 286. More, Sir Thomas, 470. MORK'S, SIR THOMAS, RESIGNA- TION OF THE GREAT SEAL, 46. MORELL, J. D., 186, 343. Morning, Everett on, 412. Mortgages, Powell on, 485. Mosaic cosmogony, 433. Moscow, 413. Moses, 249, 250. Mother and child, 344, 523. MOTLEY, JOHN LOTHROP, LL.D., D.C.L., 504. Mount Vernon, 413. Mowbray, Barbara, 517. MRS. POYSER AND THE SQU1RK, 530. Mummies, Browne on, 59. Muscles, 431. Muses, 527. Museum at Venice, 508. Music, 124. Music OF BIRDS, 156. Music of Italy, 156. Muskets, old, 508. Mustapha, 180. Mysteries of Udolpho, 283. MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION, 76. Mythology, 238, 239, 348. N. NAMES, Sterne on, 195. Napier, Macvey, 313, 343, 440, 466, 488, 493, 499. NARRATIVE, Hawkesworth on, 195. National character, 361. NATIONAL LITERATURE, 353. Nations, Law of, 485. NATIONS, WEALTH OF, 220. Natural Bridge of Virginia, 486. Natural History, 432. Natural Law, Burlamaqui's, 485. NATURAL AND ESSENTIAL Div- FERENCEOF RIGHT AND WRONG, 142. NATURAL AND FANTASTICAL PLEASURES, 152. NATURAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAW, 485. Natural and Political Law, 485. Natural Religion. 129. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, 88. Natural Philosophy, 306, 402, 508. Nature, 107, 135, 193, 226, 231, 253, 254, 261, 263, 264, 306, 318, 356. NATURE, LAW OF, 36. Nature, law of, 223. Nature, religion of, 188. Navigation, 341. NEAPOLITAN CHURCH, 284. NECESSITY AND BENEFITS OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, 334. Nectar of the Soul, 279. Needlework, 163. NEGLECT, Felltham on, 60. Negotiations of Wolsey, 26. Nelson, Life of, 319. Nelson, Lady, 321. NELSON, LOUD, DEATH OF, 322. Nepenthe, 508. NETHERLANDS, IMAGE-BREAKERS OF THE, 505. New Atlantis, 456. 548 GENERAL INDEX. NEW COMMANDMENT, 249. New England: .Burke on, 235. enterprise of, 235. intellect of, 499, 500, 501. manners of, 500, 501. philosophy of, 500, 501. Quincy on, 312. Tuckerman on, 499, 502. whale-fishery of, 234. NEW ENGLAND, CHARACTER OF, 312. New Monthly Magazine, 213, 465. New Testament, 137, 499. Newcastle, Duchess of, 328. Newland's Chancery, 485. Newspapers, 420. Newstead Abbey, 397. NEWTON, SIR ISAAC, 117. Newton, Sir Isaac, 136, 163, 248, 263, 461. Newton, Rev. John: Cowper to, 242. Nezahualcoyoti, 424. Nichol, John, 415. Nichols's Illustrations of Litera- ture, 269. Nicias, defeat of, 138. NIGHT VIEW OP THE CITY, 417. NILE, BATTLE OP THE, 319. NIMROUD, EXCAVATIONS AT, 512. Nineveh, Layard on, 512. Nitrate of silver, 508. No Cross, No Crown, 119. NOBLE BIRTH, PRIDE OF, 119. Noctes Ambrosianae, 376. NOODLE'S ORATION, 301. Norfolk, Duke of, 443. Norman Language, 53. North American Review, 308, 366, 367, 387, 399, 410, 427, 433, 453, 462, 471, 475, 488, 493, 505, 520. North British Review, 433, 456. 493, 505, 512, 514, 518, 520. "NORTH, CHRISTOPHER," 375. " North, Christopher," 387. North, Lord Francis, 484. North, Lord Frederick, 251, 444. North Sea, 343. North, Sir Thomas, 348. Northcote, Sir S., 507. Northern Hive, 134. Northumberland, Duke of, 446. Norway, 343. Nottingham, Countess of, 191. Novels, 196, 329, 523. Nuina and religion, 255. Numismatics, 353. Nunez, Vasco, 511. O. OBLIVION. Browne on, 59. Obscure Diseases of the Brain, 481. OBSCURITY, Cowley on, 78. Oetavian Library, 248. Odin, 255, 288. Old age, 127, 482. OLD INVENTIONS REVIVED, 507. Old Testament, 249, 346. OLIVER CROMWELL, 392. Olympic games, 138. Omnipresence of God, 136, 480. Omniscience of God, 13(5, 480. ON THE SEA, ]<;. ONE NICHE THE HIGHEST, 486. Operations sans Douleur, 508. Ophelia, 349. Opinions, 187. OPIUM, EFFECTS OF, 381. ORATION BY NOODLE, 301. Oration by Pericles, 9. Orators, 180, 183, 225. Oratory, 339, 364, 405, 427. Oriental dress, 384. languages, 180. learning, 147. scholars, 421. writers, 203. Orme's Bibliotheca Biblica: on Cudworth, 77. on Home, 241. on Leighton, 68. on Watson, 255. on West, 169. on Whiston, 128. Osborne, Sir T., 187. Ossian, Warburton on, 168. Othello, 500, 528. Otway, Goldsmith on, 231. Oude, ladies of, 443. OVERBURY, SIR THOMAS, 47. Ovid, Anguillara's, 185. Dick on, 304. Drydcn on, 100, 101. Felton on, 150. Golding's, 239, 348. Hazlitt on, 348. Italian version, 185. Sandys's, 45. Spence on, 168. Warton on, 238, 239. Watts on, 140. OWEN, JOHN, D.D.. 76. P. PACIFIC, DISCOVERY OP THE, 511. Padua, 520. Pageantries, 240. Pain, deadening, 508. Pain, self-caused, 164. Painting, 22, 123, 124, 142, 150, 180, 184. 380, 461, 508. Palace of Perfumes, 279. Palatine Library, 248. PALEY, WILLIAM, D.D., 260. Puley, William, D.D., Moral Philosophy of, 327. Paper-making, 341. Papin, Denis, 507, 508. Papists in England, 37. Paracelsus, 140, 327. Paradise, 356. Paradise Lost, 1 14, 374, 442. Paradise Regained, 114. Parents and children : see CHIL- DREN. Paris, 238. Parliament, 338, 339, 392, 443, 477, 526. Parr, Macaulay on, 443. Partnership, Story on, 485. PARTRIDGE AT THE PLAYHOUSE, 175. Party in letters, 231. PASCAL, BLAISE, EXPOSTULATION OF, 84. Pascal, Blaise: Hallam on, 84. JMacaulay on, 84. on eternity, 85. Passow, Greek lexicon of, 182 Patcrculus, 526. Patience, 416. Patricians, 15. Patriotism, 11, 364. Patronage, 231. Paul, Saint, at Athens, 434. Hurd on, 205. Longinus on, 170. Lyell on, 434. Paul's AValk, 113. PAULDING, JAMES KIRKE, 350. Paulet, W., 515. Paulus, library of, 247. PEARSON, JOHN, D.D., 70. Peasantry, Iris^h, 435. PECKSNIFF, 4'J3. Pedants, 353. Pedro II. of Brazil, 471. Peel, Sir Robert, 518. Pelham, 466. Peloponnesian war, 9. Pembroke, Lord, 528. Pendennis, Arthur, 491. Penitential Psalms, 516. PENN, WILLIAM, 119. Pennsylvania, 121. University of, 260. PEPYS, SAMUEL, 101. Perfumes, Palace of, 279. PERICLES, ORATION BY, 9. Perkins's steam gun, 508. Perseus, 499. Perseverance, 297, 416. Persia, 302, 303. PERSONAL BEAUTY, 208. PERSONS AND PERSONAL PROP- ERTY, 485. Peterborough. Dean of, 516, 517. PETRARCH, FRANCESCO. 18. Petrarch, Francesco : Hazlitt on, 348. Macaulny on, 18. on Dante, 218. Tuckerman on, 499. Petronius, 218. Petty, Lord Henry, 340. Phffidrus, style of, 124. Phidias, Emerson on, 462. Philemon, 180. Philip II., 516. PHILLIPS, CHARLES, 387. Philology, 182. Philosophers, 180, 303, 421. PHILOSOPHERS, ANCIENT, 257. Philosophy, 40, 102, 107, 109, 110, 147, 148, 158, 163, 186, 188, 199, 225, 232, 277, 306, 317, 337, 338, 343, 345, 347, 387, 402, 404, 433, 500, 501, 502, 508, 528, 529. PHILOSOPHY, STUDY OF, 88. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION, 88. Philosophy of a Future State, 303. GENERAL INDEX. 549 PHILOSOPHY OF PHOVERBS, 288. Philosophy of Religion, 393. Philostratus, 247. Phrenology, 392, 394, 430. PHVSIC, LAW, AND DIVINITY, 133. Physicians : Addison on, 134. Harris on, 180. Sydney Smith on, 301. Physico-Mathematiques, 508. Physiognomy, 208. Physiology, 431. Pickle, Peregrine. 213. Pickwick, Trial of, 498. Piety, 346. Pilgrim's Progress, 90. Pinch, Tom, 494. Pindar, Blackwell on, 138. Odes of, 169, Piranesi, 383. Pistols, old, 508. PITT, WILLIAM, EARL OP CHAT- HAM, 176. Pitt, William, 302, 440, 443, 477. Pity, Brown on, 344. PLAGUE IN LONDON, 101. Plague in London. 16, 114, 125. Plain Dealer, The, 448. Plantagenets, 515. Plato: yElian on, 154. Arnold on, 421. Black wall on, 137. Cooper on, 132. Dickon, 303. Harris on, 181. Lady Jane Grey and, 29. Lccky on, 529. Mil man on, 405. on Homer, 137. on Socrates, 303. Kapin on, 218. Warton on, 218. White on, 265, 266. Zoilus on, 154. Platonism, Cooper on, 132. Leeky on, 529. PLEADING, 485. Pleading, Stephen on, 484, 485. Mitford on, 484. Story on, 484. Pleading, Equity, 484, 485. Pleas of the Crown, Halo's, 485. Pleasure, 24, 147, 164, 189, 198, 278, 281. incentive to, 279. journeys of, 500. PLEASURE, UTOPIAN IDEA OP, 24. PLEASURE AND RELIGION, 106. PLEASURES, NATURAL AND FAN- TASTICAL, 152. PLEASURES OF SPRING, 156. Plebeians, 15. PLINY TUB YOUNGER, 15. Pliny the Younger : Lewis trans- lates, 16. Melinoth on, 187. ON A COURSE OP STUDY, 16. on poetry, 16. on reading, 16. on style, 16. Plomer, Vice-Chancellor, 443. Plutarch : Caesar in, 525. Hazlitt on, 348. North translates, 238. Plutarch : Warton on, 238. Pneuniiitic Despatch, 507. Poe, Edgar A., Literati of, 350. POET, SMALL, Butler on, 69. Poetry, 16,40, 130, 149, 150, 169, 180, 184, 185, 189, 196, 233, 238, 240, 252-4, 269, 304, 347, 352, 363, 373, 421, 427, 442, 482, 502, 518. POETRY op THE AGE OP ELIZA- BETH, 237. POETRY, WHAT is? 373. Poets, 169, 304, 345. Lives of, 449, 450. Pole, Cardinal, 154. POLITENESS, TUUE AND FALSE, 205. Political economy, 403, 408. POLITICAL AND NATURAL LAW, 485. Political philosophy, 341. Politics, 347, 403, 420, 469. POLITICS, WOMEN IN, 289. Pollio, Asinius, 248. Polonius, 449. Polycrates of Samos, 138. Pompey, 188, 526, 527. Poor, duty to, 67, 120. POOR RELATIONS, 326. POPE, ALEXANDER, 156. Pope, Alexander: Addison on, 156. Arbuthnot on, 140. Bentley on, 185. Bolingbroke on, 146. Budgell and, 153. Cowper on, 244. Goldsmith on, 231. Homer and, 185, 209, 219. Hunt on, 373. Jeffrey on, 314. Macaulay on, 449. on Addison, 133. on JEneas, 157. on Arbuthnot, 141. on Berkeley, 151. on Bolingbroke, 145. on Cowley, 442. on preachers, 148. on Shakespeare, 184. Seward on, 269, 270. Swift to, 144. Wakefield on, 269. Warburton on, 168. Warton on, 145, 187, 218. Works of, 157. Pope Clement XL, 143, 144. Pope Julius XI., 22. POPE TO BISHOP ATTERBURY, 158. POPE, TRANSLATION OP HOMER BY, 185. Porphyry, 247. Portia, 290. Portsmouth, Duchess of, 445. POSITIVE DUTIES OP RELIGION, 198. Pothier's Works, 485. POTTER, ALONZO, D.D., LL.D., 450. Potter's wheel, 415. Powell on Devises, 485. on Mortgages, 485. POWER, ACTIVITY AND, 393. POWER OP GOD, 87. POWER OP LOVE, 458. Powers, Sugden on, 485. Practice, Sellon's, 485. Tidd's, 485. PRACTICE AND HABIT, 103. PRACTICE, PLEADING, AND EVI- DENCE, 485. Pratt, Rev. Josiah, 105. Prayer, duty of, 198. Franklin on, 173. PREACHING, MORAL, 354. PRESCOTT, WILLIAM HICKLIXG, D.C.L.,422. Prescott, William Hickling, D.C.L. : Alison on, 422. DEATH OF, 405. Macaulay on, 423. on Gibbon, 256. on Irving, 366. on Kane, 521. on Miltnan, 404. on Robertson, 210. on Scott, 307. Ticknor on, 422. to S. Austin Allibone, 404, 505. PRESERVATION OP A MAN'S ES- TATE, 35. PRESERVATION OP THE UNION, 363. PRESS, CENSORSHIP OP THE, 64. Preston on Abstracts, 485. on Conveyancing, 485. on Estates, 485. PRIDE OP ANCESTRY, 362. PRIDE OP NOBLE BIRTH, 119. PRIESTLEY, JOSEPH, LL.D., 250. Prince on Hopkins, 105. PRINCE HENRY, RALEIGH TO, 35. PRINCETON, BATTLE OF, 245. Printing, 20, 168,341,421. Prior: Goldsmith on, 231, 233. Macaulay on, 450. PRIVATE JUDGMENT IN RELIGION, Hales on, 48. PRIVATE JUDGMENT IN RELIGION, Temple on. 92. PROCRASTINATION, Cowley on, 79. Proctor, Ednu, 502. Prodigal Son, 347. Profanity, Hale on, 67. PROGRESS OP ENGLISH LITERA- TURE, 313. Progress of Man, 469. Propertius, Blackwall on, 139. PROPERTY, PERSONAL, 4S5. Prophecy, til, 129. Prophetic Language, 118. Prospero, 348. PROTESTANT INFALLIBILITY, 347. Protestantism, 347. PROVERBS, PHILOSOPHY OF, 288. Providence, 105, 111, 127. UMI, 152, ISO, 202, 211, 256, 403, 405, 439, 454, 523. PRUDENCE, 171. Prudence, 164. PSALMS, BEAUTIES OF THE, 241. Psnlms, Hebrew, 518. I'salms of David, 135. Psalms, Penitential, 516. Ptolemy on Science, 17. 550 GENERAL INDEX. Public! Juris, 485. Puffendorff, 256. Punishment, eternal, 303. PUNISHMENTS AND REWARDS, 164. PURCHAS, SAMUEL, 46. Purchasers and Vendors, Sugden on, 485. Purgatory, 304. Pursuits of Literature, 187. Pythagoras, 247. Q. QUARREL OF SQUIRE BULL AND HIS SON JONATHAN, 350. Quarterly Journal of Education, 422. Quarterly Review, 101, 256, 357, 380, 399, 433, 493, 505, 512, 514, 518, 520, 530. Queen of Charles II., 446. Quensounmeres, M. dcs, 482. Quick, Rev. C. W., 105. QIIINCEY, THOMAS DE, 380. Quixcv, JOSIAH, LL.D., 311. Quintilian, 217. R. Rab and his Friends, 488. Racine, Warton on, 218. RADCLIFFE, ANNE, 283. Rahl, General, 245. RAINY SUNDAY AT AN INN, 367. RALEIGH, SIR WALTER, 34. Raleigh, Sir Walter: Green on, 528. Hazlitt on, 345. on Spenser, 374. RALEIGH, SIR WALTER, THREE RULES OF, 35. RALEIGH, SIR WALTER, TO PRINCE HENRY, 35. Rambler, The, 207, 448, 449, 450. Ramsay, David, 290. Rape of Lucrece, 373. Raphael, 411,499. Rapin, 216, 218. HAVEXSWOOD AND LUCY ASHTON, 308. Rawle on the Constitution, 485. Raynouard, 182. Reading, 16, 40, 145, 147, 314, 329, 333, 345, 347, 352, 420, 441, 478, 500. READING, Gibbon on, 258. READING AND BOOKS, Lamb on, 327. READING AND BOOKS, AVutts on, 140. REAL ESTATE AND EQUITY, 485. Reaping-machine, 507. Reason, 103, 124, 141, 217, 223, 239, 317, 338, 343, 525, 529. Reason of Church Government, 63. Rebellion, Clarendon's, 65. REBELLION, SCOTTISH, 200. Recreation, 171. REDEEMER, CHRISTIAN'S DE- PENDENCE UPON HIS, 359. Reeve on Domestic Relations, 485. Reeve's English Law, 485. Reflection, 186. REFLECTIONS ITPON STYLE, 187. Reformation, the, 239, 346. REID, THOMAS, D.D., 186. Relations, Domestic, 485. RELATIONS, POOR, 326. Religion, 111, 112, 121, 129, 149, 188, 238, 255, 258, 273, 290, 306, 312, 341, 343, 346, 359, 363, 377, 386, 404, 417, 420, 529, 530. RELIGION, EXCELLENCE OF, 93. RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY AND, 88. Religion, Philosophy of, 303, 304. RELIGION, POSITIVE DUTIES OF, 198. RELIGION, PRIVATE JUDGMENT IN, 92. RELIGION, Sherlock on, 148. RELIGION AND PLEASURE, 106. Remedies of Fortune, 18. Remorse, 510, 550. Renaissance, 520. Repentance, 173, 430, 510. REPENTANCE, DEATH-BED, 72. Heports, Admiralty, 485. Reports, Law, 485. Restoration, literature of the, 129, 231, 315, 316. Resurrection, 405. Retreat of Mirth, 279. REVELATION. DIVINE, 128. Revelation, Divine, 148, 189, 242. Revenge, 297. Review, North American : see NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW. Review, North British: see NORTH BRITISH REVIEW. REVOLUTION, FRENCH, 285. Revolution, French, 236, 317. REVOLUTION, RICCABOCCA ox, 469. Rewards, eternal, 303. REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS, 169. Reynolds, Macaulay on, 443. Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, 202, 203, 364. RICCABOCCA ON REVOLUTION, 469. Richard the Third, 349. Richardson, Sir John, on Kane, 521. Richardson, Jonathan, on Para- dise Lost, 374. RICHARDSON, SAMUEL, 158. Richelieu, 483. Richmond, Duke of, 446. RIDLEY, NICHOLAS, 26. RIELLY'S PITEOUS LAMENTATION, 27. RIGHT AND WRONG, 142. RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP, 462. Rise of the Dutch Republic, 505. Ritso on Law, 485. Roads, macadamized, 508. ROAST PIG, DISSERTATION ox, 324. Robeck on suicide, 529. ROBERTSOX, WILLIAM, D.D., 209. Robertson, Willinm, D.D.: Ali- son on, 335. Charles V., by, 422, 485. Gibbon on, 190. Lamb on, 327. Robinson's Admiralty Reports, 485. Robinson Crusoe, 124. Rochester, Jeffrey on, 316. Rocket, Congreve, 508. Rogers, Henry, on Fuller, 81. on Whntely, 386. ROLLIN, CHARLES, 123. Rollin, Charles : Ancient History of, 303. Warton on, 216. Romain, Histoire du Droit, 485. Roman Catholics: see CATHOLI- CISM, ROMAN. ROMAN LIBRARIES, 247. Romances, 196, 239, 240, 337. Roman?, the, 180, 184, 187, 347, 508, 526, 527. Romans in Britain, 53. Rome : armies of, 22. authors of, 137, 169, 184, 185, 244, 264, 319, 348, 411, 421, 422, 447. citizenship of, 14. Emerson on, 461. empire of, 508. Everett on, 411. Guizot on, 390. history of, 421, 485. Howard at, 298. LIBRARIES OF, 247. Macaulay on, 447. orators of, 411, 483. sages of, 257. ROME IN 1621, 56. Romilly, Sir Samuel, 340. Romola, 533, 535. Ronsard, P. de, 348. Roper on Husband and Wife, 485. on Legacies, 485. Roquefort, 182. Roscoe, H., on Criminal Evi- dence, 485. Roseoe, Thomas, 126. Roscommon, Lord, 101. ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES, 192. Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 469, 529. Rowe, Goldsmith on, 231. Shakespeare by, 329. Rugby School, 421. RURAL LIFE IN SWEDEN, 471. RUSKIN, JOHN, 519. Ruskin, John, on Helps, 511. RUSSELL, LADY RACHEL, 109. Russell, Lord William, 458. Russell, Sir William 0., on Crimes and Misdemeanors, 485. Russia, Sala's, 406. Rust, Dr., on Taylor, 71. Ruth and Boaz, 347. Rutherford's Institutes, 485. Rymer on Shakespeare, 184. S. Sacred Writers, 128. SACRED WRITERS, SIMPLICITY OF, 169. Sade, Abbg de, 19. Saint Albnns, Duke of, 446. Saint Cecilia, 443. Saint Gill, M., 305. SAINT JOHN, HENRY, 145. Saint John, J. A., 102, 161. GENERAL INDEX. 551 Saint Leonards, Lord : see SUG- DEN. Saint Paul, 170. Saint Paul at Athens, 404. Saint Peter's, Everett on, 411. Sala's Journey due North, 406. Sallust : Hazlitt on, 348. Jones on, 264. on Cato, 526. on Caesar, 526. ORATION- FROM, 14. style of, 124, 138. Salvation by Christ, 58, 430. Salvini, Iliad by, 185. San Salvador, 368. Saneho Panza, 525. Bancroft, Archbishop, 445. Sanders on Uses and Trusts, 485. SANDYS, GEORGE, 45. Sanscrit, 434. Santa Croce, 411, 534. Sappho, 181. Sartor Resartus, 418. Satire, 240. Saturn, planet, 411. S.iuuders, Williams's, 485. Savage, Goldsmith on, 233. Savigny, Historie du Droit Ro- main, 485. Savonarola, 533, 534. Saxon language, 52. Scaliger, 183. Scandinavia, 288. Scarron, 219. Scherwenter, 508. Schlosser on Hume, 189. Scholars, 147, 148, 353, 421, 422, 528. Scholarship, 410. SCHOOL, IRISH, 436. Schooling, 420, 421. Schoolmaster, by Ascham, 28. Schoolmen, 40, 346. Schoolmistress, 374. Science, 17, 248, 524. SCIENCE, INFLUENCE OF, 401. SCIENCE, ITS METHODS, 408. Seipio : conversation of, 138. policy of, 22. Scotch and French, 394. Scots Magazine, 508. Scots, Mary, Queen of, 123, 210. SCOTS, MARY, QUEEN OF, EXECU- TION, 515. Scott, Anne, 369, 372. SCOTT, Sm WALTER, 307. SCOTT, SIB WALTER : Hall on, 399: Fortunes of Nigel and, 113. Irving on, 369. IKVING'S LAST INTERVIEW WITH, 371. on Fielding, 175. on Goldsmith, 227. on Johnson, 182. on Mackenzie, 262. on Pepys, 101. on Robinson Crusoe, 125. on Seward, 269. on Sterne, 194. on Swift, 126. Prescott on, 427. Scottish Rebellion, 200. Scriptures, Holy: Chalmers on, 356. Channing on, 352. CONFIRMATION OF, 513. De Quincey on, 382. Henry VIII. on, 514. Jones on, 263. LAW OF NATURE AND, 36. NAPOLEON ON, 290. Newton on, 118. on Government, 514. on Heart of Man, 499. on Man, 474. on Princes, 514. poetry of, 149. STUDY OF, 451. sublimity of, 149. truth of, 128, 129, 200. SCRIPTURES, STYLE OF, 89. SCROOGE'S CHRISTMAS, 495. Scythian language, 53. Sedgwick, Adam, D.D., 433. Sejanus, 348. SELDEN, JOHN, 49. SELF-CULTURE, 352. SELF-DECEIT, 165. SELF-DENIAL, 112. SELF-LOVE, IMMODERATE, 108. Sellon's Practice, 485. Seneca, 146, 200, 248. Senescence, 482. Serenus Sanimonicus, library of, 248. Servants, 268. Sesame and Lilies, 521. Setebos, 348. Seven sleepers, 365. SEWARD, ANNA, 269. Shadwell and opium, 383. SHAFTESBURY, EARL OF, 131. Shaftesbury, Earl of: Goldsmith on, 232. Lamb on, 327. SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM : Arnold on, 421. Channing on, 352. Combe on, 394, 395. DRYDEN ON, 98. Emerson on, 462. Fielding on, 175. First Folio, 328. Goldsmith on, 231. Green on, 527. Hales on, 98. Hallam on, 336. Hazlitt on, 345, 348. Hillard on, 478. Hunt on, 373, 374. Jeffrey on, 315. JEFFREY ON, 317. JOHNSON ON, 183. Johnson's edition of, 448. Lamb on, 328. Macaulay on, 448, 449. Mackintosh on, 234. Mel moth quotes, 188. Seward on, 270. Steele on, 129, 130. Suckling on, 98. Tuckerman on. 500. Voltaire on, 184. Warton on, 239, 240. SHAKSPERE'S LATER YEARS, Green on, 527. Sharp, Becky, 488. SHARSWOOD, GEORGE, LL.D., 483. Sharswood, George, LL.D., on Blackstone, 221. Shelley, P. B., 375. Shenstone, Hunt on, 374. SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM, 23. Sheppard's Touchstone, 485. Sheridan, R. B., 444. Sheridan, Mrs. R. B., 444. SHERLOCK, THOMAS, D.D., 148. SHERLOCK, WILLIAM, 115. Shipping, Abbot on, 485. Shipwreck, 431. Shrewsbury, Earl of, 515, 516, 517. Shylock, 527. Sickness, 343. Siddons, Mrs., 393, 443. SIDNEY, ALGERNON, 83. SIDNEY, SIR PHILIP, 37. Sidney, Sir Philip, 239, 329, 331, 528. Silver, nitrate of, 508. SIMPLICITY OF THE SACRED WRITERS, 169. Sin, sense of, 510. SINCERITY AND TRUTH, 95. Singer, S. W., 168. Sismondi, 336. Sisyphus, 304. Skating, 432. Skinner, S., 448. Slang phrases, 433. SLEEPING LAWS, 271. SMILES, SAMUEL, M.D., 507. SMITH, ADAM, LL.D., 219. Smith, Adam : Jeffrey on, 317. Lamb on, 327. Mackintosh on, 102. Sydney Smith on, 300. Smith, E. Peshine, 408. SMITH, GOLDWIN, 525. Smith, John W., Contracts, 485. Leading Cases, 491. SMITH, REV. SYDNEY, 299. Smith, Rev. Sydney, on Mackin- tosh, 285. SMITH, WILLIAM, D.D., Jefferson to, 260. Smith, William, LL D., 256. SMOLLETT, TOBIAS, M.D., 213. Smollett, Tobias, M.D.: Lamb on, 328. SNOW-STORM, 376. Social Contract, 469. Social Failings, 153. Socialism, 469. Society, improvement of, 305. Society, London, 489. Socrates: Carter on, 199. Dick on, 303. Milman on, 405. Plato on, 265, 266, 303. Smith on, 526. White on, 265, 266. Xenophon on, 265, 266. Soderino, Piero, 22. Solar System, 135. Soldiers, 432. Solitude, 509. 552 GENERAL INDEX. SOLITUDE, HAPPINESS OF, 193. Solon, Blackwnll on, 138. Somner, Dictionary of, 182. Sonnets, Shakespeare's, 528. Sophocles : Blackwall on, 138. Harris on, 181. Macaulay on, 449. Warton on, 218. SoncERY, King James on, 41. Sorrow, loneliness of, oil). SOUL, IMMORTALITY OF THE, 144. Soul, immortality of the, 84, 151, 226, 257, 281, 303, 342, 343. South Carolina, History of, 290. SOUTH, ROBERT, D.D., 106. South Sea Islanders, 341. Southampton, Duke of, 446. Southampton, Earl of, 527, 528. SOUTHEY, ROBERT, LL.D., 318. Southey, Robert, LL.D., on White, 379. Spain, authors of, 348, 405. SPAIN, ISABELLA OF, 423. Spaniards in Mexico, 42B. Spanish language, 101, 264, 336. Spanish war, 168. Sparks, Jared, 172. Span-man at the Cape, 432. Spartan law, 142. Spectator, The, 129, 130, 131, 133, 1 34, 135, 1 36, 144, 145, 155, 247, 432,448,491. Speech, Reid on, 186. SPENCE, JOSEPH, 168. Spence, Joseph, Anecdotes by, 133,145. SPENCER, HERBERT, 522. . Spenser, Edmund, Beattie on, 254. DRYDEN ON, 99. Green on, 528. Hazlitt on, 345. Hunt on, 373, 374. Jeffrey on. 315. Seward on, 270. Warton on, 240. Speroni, Sperone, on Cicero and Virgil, 101. Sportsmen, 432. SPRAT, THOMAS, 110. Sprat, Thomas, Goldsmith on, 232. SPRING, PLEASURES OF, 156. Spurzheim, 344. SQUIRE BULL AND HIS SON, 350. Stagyrite, the, 146. 181. STANHOPE, PHILIP DORMER, 166. Stars, Addison on the, 135. Tuckerinan on the, 502. STATELINESS AND COURTESY, Em- erson on, 459. Statesmen, Greek, 180. Statesmen of the Time of George III., 177, 340. Statutes at Large, 327, 485. Stealing, Spartan, 142. Steam-engine, 375, 421. Steam gun, 508. Steam locomotion, 507. Steamboat, 507. STEELE, SIR RICHARD, 129. Steele, Sir Richard : Goldsmith on, 233. Steele, Sir R. : Lamb on, 327. Stephen, Henry J., Pleading, 484, 485. Stephens, A. J., De Lolme by, 485. Nisi Prius, 484. Stephens, Robert, Thesaurus of, 182. Stephenson, George, 518. Stephenson, Robert, 518. STERNE, LAURENCE, 194. Sterne, Laurence: Abernethy on, 175. Lamb on, 329. Warburton on, 168. STEWART, DUGALD, 275. Stewart, Dugald : Life of Smith by, 220. Mill on, 276. on Berkeley, 151. on Boyle, 88. on Hall, 280. on Locke, 102. Steyne, Lord, 489. STILLINGFLEET, EDWARD, D.D., 107. Stillingfleet, Edward, D.D., Gold- smith on, 232. Stobaeus, Gibbon on, 256. Stoicism, 404, 526, 529. STOICISM AND CHRISTIANITY, 199. Story, Joseph, LL.D. : Bailments, 485. Conflict of Laws, 485. Constitution , of United States, 485. Equity Jurisprudence, 485. Equity Pleading, 484. Partnership, 485. Quincy and, 312. Stowe, Mrs. H. B., 503. Strafford, eloquence of, 443. Straits of Magellan, 348. Strangers, hospitality to, 344. Strathtieldsaye, 441. Stuart, Mary : see MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. STUDIES, ESSAY ON, 40. STUDIES, LAW, 483. Study, 16, 61, 107, 124, 140, 146, 258. STUDY, INJUDICIOUS HASTE IN, 104. STUDY OF LAW, 221. STUDY OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, 88. Study of words, 474. Stupidit.v, 417. Style, Addison on, 188. STYLE, Blair on, 202. Style, Cervantes's, 338. Felton on, 149. Gibbon's, 256. Goldsmith on, 233. Hallam on, 338. Jeffrey on, 316, 317. Junius's, 293. Melmoth on, 188. Montagu on, 203. Pliny on, 16. Prescott on, 256. STYLE, REFLECTIONS UPON, 187. Style, Seward on, 269. Style, Webster on, 364. White on, 379. STYLE OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, 89. Style of the Holy Scriptures, 149. SUBLIME, ON THE, 249. Suckling on Jonson, 98. on Shakespeare, 98. Suffering, 344. Suffolk, Duke of, 514. Suffolk, Lord, 177. Sugden on Powers, 485. Vendors, 485. SUICIDE, Lecky on, 529. Suidas, lexii-on of, 182. Suit in Equity, 485. Sumner, Charles, on Binney, 357. Si-MNEK, JOHN BIRD, D.D., 359. Sun, Addison on the, 135. Everett on the, 412. Sun of Righteousness, 428, 429. SUNDAY AMUSEMENTS, 273. SUNDAY, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF, 206. SUNDAY, RAINY, AT AN INN, 367. Sun-painting, 508. SUNRISE IN THE WOODS, 224. Sunset, Addison on, 135. Superstition, 387, 404. Support of memory, 279. Supreme Court United States Cases, 485. Surveying, 432. Suspension bridges, 508. SWEDEN, RURAL LIFE IN, 471. SWIFT, JONATHAN, D.D., 125. Swift, Arbuthnot and, 140. Cowper on, 244. Goldsmith on, 232. Jeffrey on, 314, 317. Montagu on, 203. on Arbuthnot, 141. on Hughes. 144. Sylla, C., 247, 248. Sympathy, 344, 499. SYMPTOMS OF INSANITY, 481. Syriac language, 257, 479. T. Tacitus : Alison on, 440. Arnold on, 421. Blackwall on, 139. Cowper on, 244. Froude on, 515. Jonson uses, 348. Macaulay and, 440. Macaulay on, 443. TALBOT, CATHERINE, 206. Talfourd, Sir T. Noon, Copyright and, 441. Hazlitt and, 324. Lamb and, 345. Macaulay on, 441. on Smollett, 213. Tantalus, 304. Tarquin, 296. Tartarus, 303. Tasso : Dryden on, 101. Fairfax translates, 348. read in Naples, 499. Warton on, 240. Taste, 123, 314, 373. TASTE, CULTIVATION OF, 202. GENERAL INDEX. 553 TASTE, FORMATION OF A RIGHT, 149. Taller, The, 40, 129, 130, 133, 144, 448. Taublet, Abbe, 482. Taylor, Rev. James, 9. TAYLOH, JEREMY, D.D., 71. Taylor, Jeremy, D.D. : Jeffrey on, 315, 317. Lamb on, ;!28. Taylor, John, LL.D., Elements of the Civil Law by, 485. Teacher, Great, 319. TEARS, TREATISE ON, 129. Telegraph, electric, 508. ocean, 48U. Telescope, 421. Temperance, 120. Tempest, The, 348, 528. TEMPLE, KNIGHTS OF, 491. Temple of Melody, 278. TEMPLE, SIR WILLIAM, 91. Temple, Sir William : Addison on, 134. Goldsmith on, 232. Tenneuiann's Philosophy, 186. Tenures, 485. Terence: Blackwall on, 138. Johnson on, 185. Rollin on, 124. style of, 124. TEZCUCO, KING OF, 424. THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKE- PEACE, 488. Thackeray, William Makepeace, on Sterne, 194. Thames tunnel, 508. Thankfulness, Walton on, 54. The Seal! The Seal! 522. Themistocles, :J7'J. Theocritus: Dryden on, 100. Harris on, 181. Hunt on, 373. Theology, 279. Theophrastus : Bolingbroke on, 140. death of, 146. Satire of, 217. Win-ton on, 217. Thermopylae, Emerson on, 458. Thirty-nine Articles, 351. Thompson, R. D., M.D., on Priestley, 250. Thomson, James: Beattie on, 254. Lamb on, 328. Seward on, 270. Thor and Woden, 134. THOUGHTS AND APHORISMS, 127. THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READ- IXC, 327. THOUGHTS ON ELEGANCE, 207. TIIOYUAS, SIEUR DE, 122. Thrale, Mrs., Johnson to, 226. Thucydides : Arnold on, 421. Jilackwall on, 138. on knowledge, 163. Pericles and, 9. Rapin on, 218. Warton on, 218. Thuriot, Elector, 418. Thurlow, Lord, 243. Tiberius, Emperor, 248, 526. 'ibullus, 139. .'ICKELL, THOMAS, 155. JCK.NOU, GEORGE, LL.D., 405. .'icknor, George, LL.D., Life of Prescott by, 422, 433. Mdd's Practice, 484, 485. "ilghman, Edward, 484. 'illotson, Goldsmith on, 232. "IME, EMPLOYING THE, 72. ?ime, productive power of, 362. ?IME AND ETERNITY, Hall on, 281. ?IME AND ETERNITY, Heber on, 365. Tindal, N.. 122. PINKER, Overbury's, 47. 1'ippoo Saib, 508. Titian, 411, 499. TITLES OF HONOUR, 121. Tityus, 304. Todd, Henry John, 182. Toller on Executors, 485. Tom Jones, 329. [onsen's Milton, 442. Shakespeare, 328. Too Mucu LATIN AND GREEK, 299. Tooke, J. Home, 180. Total abstinence, 329, 497. Touchstone, Sheppard's, 485. Tournay, Louis, 419. TOWN PUMP, RILL FROM THE, 462. TRAFALGAR, BATTLE OF, 322. Tragedy, 184, 185. Trajan, Emperor, 248, 526. Tranio, 499. Translation, 182, 185, 213, 239, 264, 346, 348, 405. TRANSLATION. Dryden on, 100. Travel, 196, 343, 348. TRAVELLING, Emerson on, 461. TRENCH, RICHARD CHENEVIX, D.D., 473. Trenchard, Goldsmith on, 232. TRENTON, BATTLE OF, 244. Trevelyan's Macaulay, 440. TRIAL OF WAUREN HASTINGS, 442. Triumphs of Temper, 442. Troilus and Cressida, 528. Troy, destruction of, 238. TRUE AND FALSE POLITENESS, 205. TRUE WISDOM, 107. Truth, 147, 374. TRUTH AND SINCERITY, 95. TCCKKRMAN, HENRY THEODORE, 498. Tuckerman, Henry Theodore, on Hazlitt, 345. Tulloch, John, D.D., 23. Tunnel, Thames, 508. Turner, Sharon, 178. Tuscus, PLINY TO, 16. Typographical Antiquities, 20. TVTLBII, ALEXANDER FRASER 266. Tyranny, 271, 356, 387. U. UDOLPHO, CASTLE OF. 283. Ulpian Library, 248. Tlysses, 304. UNBELIEVERS, EXPOSTULATION WITH, 84. Jnconverted heart, 355. "NIIKHSTANDING, LOCKE ON THE, 102. Jnderstanding, Spencer on, 524. JNION, PRESERVATION OF THE. 363. United States, bar of the, 357, 483, 484. Constitution of, 485. History of, 437. Supreme Court of, 485. UNIVERSAL BELIEF IN IMMOR- TALITY, 303. Universe, Intellectual System of the, 37. Universe, vastness of, 135. Unwin, Rev. W., Cowper to, 157, 243. (Jpshur's Brief Inquiry, 485. USEFULNESS OF MATHEMATICAL LEARNING, 141. USELESS LEARNING, 145. Uses, Bacon on, 485. Utopia, 24, 302, 456, 470. UTOPIAN IDEA OF PLEASURE, 24. V. Vandals and Goths, 134. Vane, Sir Harry, 458. VANITIES, BURNING OF, 533. Vanity. 218, 219, 356. VANITY, Montagu on, 204. Vanity Fair, 488. Vanity of Human Wishes, 447, 449, 450. Varro collects books, 247, 248. VATHEK, CALIPH, 278. Vatican, 4I>1. Vattel's Law of Nations, 485. VATGHAN, CHARLES JOHN, D.D., 509. Vedas, the, 434. Vendors, Sugden on, 485. Venice, arsenal at, 508. VENICE, Ruskin on, 520. VENTRILOQUISM, 304. Venus, 239. Venus, star, 411. Venus and Adonis, 373. 527. Vergennes, Count de, 260. Verres, Cicero against, 12, 443. Vespasian, Emperor, 248. Via Sacra, 248. Vice, Arbuthnnt on, 141. VICE AND VIRTUE, Hawkes- worth on, 197. VICE AND VIRTUE, Tillotson on, 96. Views, Baldwin's Constitutional, 485. Virgil : Addison on, 133. Arnold on, 4'_'1. Hrattieon. 253. Blackwall on, 139. Dick on, 304. Dryden and. 98, 99, 100, 101, 185, 253. Felton on, 149. 554 GENERAL INDEX. Virgil : Fox on, 272. Harris on, 180. Hazlitt on, 348. Jeffrey on, 314. Lytton on, 470. Pope on, 157. Ritso on, 485. Rollin on, 124. Seward on, 270. Spence ou, 168, 169. Speroni on, 151. Steele quotes, 130. Stewart on, 276. AVarton and, 216. Watts on, 139. Virginia Natural Bridge, 486. Virtue, 151, 205, 217. VIRTUE AND VICE, Tillotson on, 96. VIRTUE MORE PLEASANT THAN VICE, 197. Vitruvius, 131. Voltaire, death of, 483. defends suicide, 529. on Shakespeare, 184. VON SCHLEGEL, FREDERICK CARL WlLHELM, 306. Von Schlegel, Frederick Carl AVilhelm, on Jones, 263. Voyage to France, Heylin, 56. Voyages, Hakluyt's, 46. Hawkesworth's, 195. Hazlitt on, 348. Locke on, 46. Voyages and Travels, Hawkes- worth on, 196. W. Wag always a dunce, 127. AVAKEFtELD, FAMILY OF, 227. WAKKFIELD FAMILY IN AFFLIC- TION, 228. WAKEFIELD FAMILY IN PROS- PERITY, 229. Wakefiekl, Gilbert: Fox to, 272. on Pope, 269. Wales, language of, 52, 53. Walking, 432, 433. Waller: Dryden on, 99. Lady Montagu on, 163. AVALPOLE, HORACE, 200. Walpole, Horace: Goldsmith on, 233. on letter-writers, 109. on Pope, 157. Walpole, Sir Robert: Boling- broke nnd, 145, 232. Goldsmith on, 232. WALTON, IZAAK, 54. WAR, HORRORS OF, 280. War, Harris on, 180. Hawthorne on, 464. Lytton on, 469. WAR WITH AMERICA, 177. WARBURTON, WILLIAM, D.D., 167. Warburton, William, D.D. : Bo- lingbroke on, 146. Jeffrey on, 317. on Beattie, 252. on Doddridge. 170. on Grotius, 107. Warburton, William, D.D. : on Hume, 168. on Shaftesbury, 131. on Stillingfleet, 107. WAHTON-, JOSEPH, D.D., 216. Warton, Joseph, D.D. : Jeffrey on, 317. on Bolinghroke, 145. on Melinoth, 187. on Pope, 168, 187. WARTON, THOMAS, 237. Warton, Thomas: History of Eng- lish Poetry by, 17, 20, 56. Jeffrey on*317. on Milton, 269. Seward on, 269. WASHINGTON, GEORGE, 244. Washington, George : Burritt on, 486. Emerson on, 462. Everett's Life of, 488. WASHINGTON ABROAD AND AT HOME, 412. WASHINGTON APPOINTED COM- MANDER-IN-CHIEF, 437. WASHINGTON, FAME OF, 174. WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL AD- DRESS, 358. Water, Hawthorne on, 462. Waterloo, Everett on, 413. WATSON, RICHARD, D.D., 255. Watt, James, 507, 508. WATTS, ISAAC, D.D., 139. Watts, Isaac, D.D., on Shaftes- bury, 131. Waverley Novels, 371. Wayland, Francis, D.D., Me- moirs of Chalmers by, 354. on Butler, 163. Wealth of Nations, 220. Weapons, old, 508. WEBSTER, DANIEL, 362. Webster, Daniel, on Jefferson, 259. Webster, John, 449. Webster, Noah, 182. Wedderburne and Franklin, 251. Wedding in Sweden, 472. Wedgwood, Smiles on, 50S. Weller, Samivel, 497. Wellington, Duke of, 319, 427, 441, 518. WEST, GILBERT, 169. WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 134. Westminster Hall, 134, 442. Westminster Review, 493, 511, 519, 520,530. Whale-fishery, Burke on, 234. WHAT is POETRY ? 373. WHATELY, RICHARD, D.D., 385. Wheaton's International Law, 485. Whig Examiner, The, 133. Whipple, E. P., on Dickens, 493. on Hawthorne, 462. WHISTON, WILLIAM, 128. WHITE, HENRY KIRKE, 379. WHITE, JOSEPH, 265. Whitefield, Rev. George : Foster on, 299. Franklin to, 173. Montagu on, 163. Whitehall, 446. WHO WAS THE AUTHOR OF WASH- INGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS? 358. Whole Duty of Man, 349. Wicquefort's Ambassador, 485. Wife, Economical, 266. Wife and Husband, 485. AVilberforce, William, 339. Wilhelin Meister, 449. Wilkie, Sir David, 370. WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR, 178. William Rufus, 443. Williams, E., Christian Preacher of, 155, 249,354. Williams, Sir E. V., Executors, 485. Williams. Sir E. V.. John Saun- ders's Statutes, 485. Wills, Jarman on, 485. WILSON, JOHN (" CHRISTOPHER NORTH"), 375. Wilson, John, on Carleton, 435. Windham, William, 444, 441). Wines, 268. Winkelried, A., 458. WIXSLOW, FORBES, M.D., 481. Winter's Tale, 528. Winthrop, Governor, 463. WINTHROP, CHAS., LL.D., 479. Winthrop, Robert Charles, LL.D., on Everett, 409. Wisdom of Confucius, 341. WISDOM OF GOD, 87. " Wisdom of our Ancestors,' 1 340. AVisdom, True, 107. AVit, 127, 138, 141, 150, 154, 217, 316, 318, 394. AViT, DEFINITION OP, 94. AViT, READY AND NIMBLE, 80. A\ r iT, SLOW BUT SURE, 80. AVlTCHCRAFT AND SORCERY, 41. AVives and books, 503. Woden and Thor, 134. AVollaston's Religion of Nature, 188. AVolsey, Cardinal : Cavendish's Life of, 25. Froude on, 514, 515. Henry VIII. and, 26,514. Johnson on, 447. Negotiations of, 25. AVomen : Adams on, 289. Chesterfield on, 167. duties of, 161. duties to, 167. education of, 163, 300. love of, 161. Montagu on, 163. Richardson on, 160. Steele on, 129. Sydney Smith on, 300. Tytler on, 267. AValpole on, 109. AVarton on, 241. AVoMEN IN POLITICS, 289. AVoodhouselee, Lord, 213. AVooos, SUNRISE IN THE, 224. AVoreester, Dictionary of, 182. Words: changes in, 433, 434. fluency of, 128. Lyell on, 433, 434. Spencer on, 524. study of, 474, 524. GENERAL INDEX. 555 Words : Swift on, 128. WORDS, MORALITY IN, 474. WORDS, STUDY OF, 474. Wordsworth: DeQuinceyon, 383. Hazlitt on, 319. WORK, Carlyle on, 415. WORKS, GOOD, 173. World, the, 355. Wren, Sir Christopher, 416. Wright on Tenures, 485. WRITING A MEMOIR OF HIMSELF, 295. WRONG AND EIGHT, 142. Wycherley, 316. Wynne's Eunomus, 485. X. Xenophon : Blackwall on, 138, 139. Harris on, 181. White on, 265, 266. Y. Yankees, Tuekerman on, 501. Yarrow and Scott, 370. York, Duke of, 445. Yorke on Forfeiture, 485. Young, Arthur, in France, 508. Young, Dr. E., on Richardson, 158. Young Men's Christian Associa- tions, 480. Youth, duty of, 117. exercise of, 431. plays of, 431. Youth of the species, 340. Zanga, revenge of, 297. Zoilus on Homer, 137, 154. Zoroaster, doctrines of, 303. THE END.