wisdom of the wise; it is both a shield and a sword; it borrows its security from the darkneos, and its confidence from the light. Defendit numerus,* is the maxim of the foolish; Deperdit numerus,'t of the wise. The fact is, that an honest man will continue to be so, though surrounded on all sides by rogues. The whole world is turned upside down once in twentyfour hours; yet no one thinks of standing upon his head, rather than on his heels. He that can be honest, only because every one else is honest, or good, only because all around him are good, might have continued an angel, if he had been born one, but being a man, he will only add to that number, numberless, who go to hell for the bad things they have done, and for the good things which they intended to do. The sun should not set upon our anger, neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. The drafts which true genius draws upon posterity, although they may not always be honoured so soon as they are due, are sure to be paid with compound interest, in the end. Milton's expressions. on his right to this remuneration, constitute some of the finest efforts of his mind. He never alludes to these high pretensions, but he appears to be animated by an eloquence, which is at once both the • There is safety in numbers.-PUB. plea and the proof of their justice; an eloquence, so much above all present and all perishable things, that, like the beam of the sun, it warms, while it enlightens, and as it descends from heaven to earth, raises our thoughts from earth to heaven. When the great Kepler had at length discovered the harmonic laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, he exclaimed, 'Whether my discoveries will be read by posterity, or by my contemporaries, is a matter that concerns them, more than me. I may well be contented to wait one century for a reader, when God himself, during so many thousand years, has waited for an observer like myself.' Ambition is to the mind, what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower, by reason of our blindness. But alas, when we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of reai misery. We are placed where time cannot improve, but must impair us; where chance and change cannot befriend, but may betray us; in short, by attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want, we have only reached a pinnacle, where we have nothing to hope, but every thing to fear. We should justly ridicule a general, who just before an action should suddenly disarm his men, and putting into the hands of all of them a bible, should order them to march against the enemy. Here, we plainly see the folly of calling in the Bible to support the sword: but is it not as great a folly to call in the sword to support the Bible? Our Saviour divided force from reason, and let no mau presume to join what God hath put asunder When we combat error with any other weapon than argument, we err more than those whom we attack. We follow the world in approving others, but we go before it in approving ourselves. None are so fond of secrets, as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets, as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation. That knowledge, which a man may acquire only by travelling is too dearly bought. The traveller indeed may be said to fetch the knowledge, as the merchant the wares, to be enjoyed and applied by those who stay at home. A man may sit by his own fireside, be conversant with many domestic arts and general sciences, and yet have very correct ideas of the manners and customs of other nations. While on the contrary, he that has spent his whole life in travelling, who, like Scriblerus, has made his legs his compasses, rather than his judgment, may live and die a thorough novice in all the most important concerns of life; like Anson, he may have been round the world, and over the world, without having been in the world, and die an ignoramus, even after having performed the seven journeys between the holy kills; swept the Kaaba with a silver besom; drank of the holy waters of the Zemzem; and traced the source of the Nile, and the end of the Niger. It is an observatior of the late Lord Bishop of In Landaff, that there are but two kinds of men who succeed as public characters, men of no principle, but of great talent, and men of no talent, but of one principle, that of obedience to their superios fact, there will never be a deficiency of this second class; persons, who, like Doddington, have no higher ambition than that of sailing in the wake of a man of first rate abilities. ' I told the duke of Newcastle,' says he, (in the account he gives of himself, in his Diary) that it must end one way or the other, and must not remain as it was; for I was determined to make some sort of figure in life. I earnestly wished it might be under his protection, but if that could not be, I must make some figure; what it would be I could not determine yet. I must look around me a little, and consult my friends, but some figure I was resolved to make.' Indeed, it is lamentable to think, what a gulf of impracticability must ever separate men of principle, whom offices want, from men of no principle, who want offices. It is easy to see that a Hampden, or a Marvel, could not be connected for one hour, with a Walpole,* or a Mazarin. Those who would conscientiously employ power for the good of others, deserve it, but do not desire it; and those who would employ it for the good of themselves, desire it, but do not deserve it. It is more easy to forgive the weak, who have injured us, than the powerful whom we have injured. * It is but justice to say of this great minister, who went such lengths in corrupting others, that there were some instances, in which he himself was incorruptible. He refused the sum of sixty thousand pounds which was offered him to save the life of the earl of Derwentwater. That conduct will be continued by our fears, which commenced in our resentment. He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth. The greater the power of him that is injured, the more inexpiable and persevering must be the efforts of those who have begun to injure him. Therefore a monarch who submits to a single insult, is half dethroned. When the conspirators were deliberating on the murder of Paul Petrowitz, emperor of Russia, a voice was heard in the antechamber, saying, 'You have broken the egg, you had better make the omelet.' That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome. In the heat and phrensy of the French revolution, the contentions for place and power never sustained the smallest diminution; appointments and offices were never pursued with more eagerness and intrigue, than when the heads of those who gained them, had they been held on merely by pieces of sticking plaster, could not have sat more loosely on their shoulders. Demagogues sprung up like mushrooms, and the crop seemed to be fecundated by blood; although it repeatedly happened that the guillotine had finished the favourite, before the plaster had finished the model, and that the original was dead, before the bust was dry. A man may arrive at such power, and be so successful in the application of it, as to be enabled to crush and to overwhelm all his enemies. But a safety, built upon successful vengeance, and estab lished not upon our love, but upon our fear, often |