do with the formation of national character, than soils, suns, and climates, is sufficiently evident from the present state of Greece and Rome, compared with the ancient. Give these nations back their former governments, and all their national energies would return, and enable them to accommodate themselves to any conceivable change of climate; but no conceivable change of climate would enable them to recover their former energies. In fact, so powerful are all those causes that are connected with changes in their governments, that they have sometimes made whole nations alter as suddenly and as capriciously as individuals. The Romans laid down their liberties at the feet of Nero, who would not even lend them to Cæsar; and we have lately seen the whole French nation, rush as one man from the very extremes of loyalty, to behead the mildest monarch that ever ruled them, and conclude a sanguinary career of plunder, by pardoning and rewarding a tyrant, to whom their blood was but water, and their groans but wind; thus they sacrificed one that died a martyr, to his clemency, and they rewarded another, who lives to boast of his murders.

CCCXXXVI.

HE that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions, with a decided advantage over his opponents. He will be in argument what the ancient Romans were in the field; to them the day of battle was a day of comparative recreation, because they were ever accustomed to exercise with arms much heavier than they fought; and their reviews differed from a real battle in two respects, they encountered more fatigue, but the victory was bloodless.

CCCXXXVII.

A PEACE, for the making of which, the negociator has been the most liberally rewarded, is usually a bad He is rewarded on the score of having overreached

peace.

his enemy, and for having made a peace, the advantages of which are clearly on his own side. But such a peace will not be kept; and that is the best peace which is most likely to be the firmest. Now, a peace where the advantages are balanced, and which consuits the good of both parties, is the firmest, because both parties are interested in its preservation; for parchment bonds and seals of state will not restrain a discontented nation, that has arms in her hands, and knows how to use them.

CCCXXXVIII.

NO men despise physic so much as physicians, because no men so thoroughly understand how little it can perform. They have been tinkering the human constitution four thousand years, in order to cure about as many disorders. The result is, that mercury and brimstone are the only two specifics they have discovered. All the fatal maladies continue to be what they were in the days of Paracelsus, Hippocrates, and Galen, "opprobria medicorum." It is true that each disorder has a thousand prescriptions, but not a single remedy. They pour a variety of salts and acids into a marble mortar, and expect similar results when these ingredients are poured into the human stomach; but what can be so groundless as reasonings built on such analogies *. For the marble mortar admits the agency of the atmospherical air, which cannot be said of the human stomach; and,

*It is more safe to imitate the conduct of the late Doctor Heberden; he paid the strictest attention to symptoms, and to temperaments, and having ascertained these, to the best of his judgment, he prescribed such remedies as he had always observed to be beneficial to others under similar circumstances; and what was of still greater conscquence, he carefully avoided all that long experience had taught him would do harm; here he stopped, for he was not so presumptuous as to frame theories to explain the why and the wherefore this did harın, or that did good; he was too much occupied in things of greater importance, well knowing that the wisest of us know nothing of life, but by its effects, and that the consequences of every prescription are far more clear and apparent than the causes that produce them

again, the human stomach possesses life, and the gastrio juice, which cannot be said of the marble mortar.

CCCXXXIX.

THERE are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other in the camp,-gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both, may indeed attain the highest station, but he must know something more to keep it. It has been doubted whether Cromwell, with all his pretended sanctity, and all his real courage, could have maintained his power one short year longer, even if he had not died in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and on the anniversary of that very day, which he had always considered as the most fortunate of his life. For Cromwell had also his high destinies, and his lucky days.

CCCXL.

ANTITHESIS may be the blossom of wit, but it will never arrrive at maturity, unless sound sense be the trunk, and truth the root.

CCCXLI.

POSTHUMOUS charities are the very essence of selfishness, when bequeathed by those who, when alive, would part with nothing. In Catholic countries there is no mortmain act, and those who, when dying, impoverish their relations, by leaving their fortunes to be expended in masses for themselves, have been shrewdly said to leave their own souls their heirs.

CCCXLII.

THE science of the mathematics performs more than it

The gastric juice will not act upon a living stomach, although it will rapidly decompose a dead onc.

M

promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs. The study of the mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness, but ends in magnificence; but the study of metaphysics begins with a torrent of tropes, and a copious current of words, yet loses itself at last, in obscurity and conjecture, like the Niger in his barren deserts of sand.

CCCXLIII.

TO be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but, in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.

CCCXLIV.

THE mob is a monster with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus, strong to execute, but blind to perceive.

CCCXLV.

WHEN we apply to the conduct of the ancient Romans, the pure and unbending principles of Christianity, we try those noble delinquents unjustly, in as much as we condemn them by the severe sentence of an ex post facto"

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law.

CCCXLVI.

STRONG as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered, without being killed.

CCCXLVII.

GREAT men, like great cities, have many crooked arts, and dark alleys in their hearts, whereby he that knows them may save himself much time and trouble.

CCCXLVIII

THERE are some men who are fortune's favourites, and who, like cats, light for ever upon their legs; Wilkes was one of these didappers, whom, if you had stripped naked, and thrown over Westminster bridge, you might have met on the very next day, with a bag wig on his head, a sword by his side, a laced coat upon his back, and money in his pocket.

CCCXLIX.

WE may doubt of the existence of matter, if we please, and, like Berkeley, even deny it, without subjecting ourselves to the shame of a very conclusive confutation; but there is this remarkable difference between matter and mind; he that doubts the existence of mind, by doubting, proves it.

CCCL.

THE policy of drawing a public revenue from the private vices of drinking, and of gaming, is as purblind as it is pernicious; for temperate men drink the most, because they drink the longest; and a gamester contributes much less to the revenue than the industrious, because he is much sooner ruined. When Mandeville maintained that private vices were public benefits, he did not calculate the widely destructive influence of bad example. To affirm that a vicious man is only his own enemy, is about as wise as to affirm that a virtuous man is only his own friend.

CCCLI.

RUSSIA, like the elephant, is rather unwieldy in attacking others, but most formidable in defending herself. She proposes this dilemma to all invaders,-a dilemma that Napoleon discovered too late. The horns of it are short and simple, but strong. Come to me with few, and I will