can suggest, one may judge of the success that fortune destines us, what proofs can we have of her favour superior to those that she has already given us? Yes, my friends, it is miraculous, it is a manifest prodigy, it is unheard of in history, that an enterprise of this nature should be discovered in part without being entirely ruined; yet ours has stood the shocks of five accidents, the least of which, according to all human appearance, must have overturned it.

"Who would not have thought that the loss of Spinoza, who laboured in the same design with us, would not have been the occasion of ours; that the disbanding of the troops of Lievenstein, who were all devoted to us, would not have divulged what we kept concealed; that the dispersion of the little fleet would not have destroyed all our measures, and proved a fertile source of new inconveniences; that the discovery of Creme, and that of Maran, would not necessarily have drawn after them the discovery of all the party? Yet nothing has resulted from all these occurrences; they have never pursued the chain of connection which led to us, nor profited by the intelligence they received. Never did a repose so profound succeed a trouble so great. The senate, we are faithfully assured of it; the senate sleeps in perfect security.

"Our good destiny has blinded the most clear-sighted of men, has inspired with confidence the most timid, confounded the most subtle, and lulled the suspicious to sleep. We yet live, my dear friends; we are more powerful than we were before these disasters, which has served to prove our constancy. We live, and our lives will soon prove mortal to the tyrants of these shores. "Such extraordinary fortune, so obstinate too, in our favour, can it be natural? Ought we not rather to presume it is the work of some superhuman power? And, indeed, my companions, what is there on earth that is worthy of the protection of heaven if our designs are not so? We shall destroy the most horrible of all governments; we shall restore their possessions to the poor subjects of this state, of which the nobles would eternally plunder them if it were not for us; we shall save the honour of all those women who shall be born with charms sufficient to excite their guilty passions; we shall recall to life an infinite number of unfortunate beings who are daily sacrificed for causes the most slight, and offences the most trivial; in one word, we shall punish the most culpable of men, who are equally blackened with vices which nature abhors, and those of which she cannot support the sight.

"Fear not, then, to take the sword in one hand, and the flambeau in the other, to exterminate these wretches. And when we see those palaces, where impiety is seated on the throne, burning with the fire of heaven rather than ours; those tribunals, so often

moistened with the tears and filled with the substance of the innocent, consumed by the devouring flames; the furious soldier withdrawing his reeking sword from the bosom of the wicked; death stalking everywhere, and all that night and military licence can contribute to render the spectacle dreadful; let us then recollect, my dear friends, that there is nothing pure amongst men; that the most praiseworthy actions are subject to the greatest inconveniences; and that, instead of the wide wasting scheme of desolation which ruins this unfortunate land, the disorders of tomorrow night are the only means of establishing the perpetual reign of peace, liberty and innocence."

"I do not know," says the Abbe St. Real, the learned historian of The Conspiracy against Venice, "whether my judgment has been biassed by the love of the subject I have undertaken to treat, but I must candidly confess that I think there was never more admirably displayed what prudence may effect in the affairs of this world, and what chance alone may operate in it; the vast extent of human conceptions and their various limits, the greatest elevations of the soul and its most secret weaknesses, the infinite considerations that enter into the science of government," &c.

Yet even this design, which only wanted a virtuous cause to render it the most splendid in the history of human conceptions, failed through the defection of one of its members, after it had withstood the repeated shocks that we have seen. Many would attribute this to chance, fortune, or providence: but, for my own part, I see nothing in it supernatural, nothing but the ordinary law of cause and effect following a natural course. Renault, while uttering the preceding speech, darted his penetrating eye around to survey the effect it produced on the conspirators. Every eye bespoke the most profound attention, and every cheek glowed with enthusiasm at his glowing picture, with the exception of Jaffier. Renault penetrated to his soul, and discovered it vacillating and uncertain; for Jaffier had humanity enough to shudder at the idea of the massacres necessary to accomplish their purpose. Renault mentioned his suspicions to the rest, who, being less penetrating than himself, over-ruled him: the consequence was the ruin of all their projects, and the subsequent sacrifice of their lives; and this simply arising from the free agency of man forming a constituent part of the system of action.

From hence we may naturally deduce this maxim, that general success is the daughter of superior genius, and misfortune the child of imprudence. These are the principles on which Buonaparte has acted and continues to act. Divide et impera is his favourite motto; and by taking every necessary precaution, and by commanding, as it were, the volition and consequent action of the various parts, he in succession overwhelmed Austria and

Prussia, and made Russia the tool of his future projects. Yet common minds fancied, that when he had reached the Vistula, Austria and Prussia, by rising in his rear, might cut off his possibility of return, and annihilate him completely; but they forgot to consider, that Buonaparte willingly encounters every danger but surprise, and against that he invariably takes care to secure himself.

[H.]

He that would wish for success must act in unison with the times. I HAVE frequently thought, that the cause of every man's success in life is owing to the temperature of his mind in conformity to the times in which he lives. We see people, on the one hand, acting with great impetuosity of disposition, and others, on the contrary, with more art and caution, and yet both may be in error for want of moderate compliance in observing their just bounds; but their misfortunes are least whose conduct best suits with the times. Every person in the least acquainted with history must recollect how Fabius Maximus led forward his army, with what steadiness and caution he proceeded, how differently he acted from the heat and boldness of the ancient Romans; and it so turned out that his deliberate way was most conformable to those times; for Hannibal, young and ardent, coming into Italy, and puffed up with his good fortune, in having twice overcome the Roman armies, that commonwealth having lost many of her best and most experienced soldiers, remained in panic and great confusion; nor could anything have occurred more seasonable to them than the command devolving on such a general as Fabius, who, by his extreme caution and moderation, kept the enemy at bay; nor could any occasion have been more happy for such a mode of procedure; and that it was his natural disposition so to act appeared afterwards, when Scipio, being anxious to lead his army into Africa, there to give a decisive and terminating stroke to the war, Fabius strongly opposed and ably argued against it; being unable to change his natural disposition, which was rather to adopt old measures under the difficulties he experienced, than to search out for new ones, of whose extent he had no knowledge; but if Fabius had been followed, Hannibal would have continued in Italy; and the reason is obvious: he did not consider the times were changed, and that the manner of warfare was to be changed with them; and had Fabius at that time been king of Rome, he must have been overthrown, as not knowing how to form his counsels according to the changes of the times. But in that commonwealth there were men of great bravery, and experienced

commanders of very different habits and humours; and so it happened, that, as Fabius was always ready in times pregnant with the greatest difficulty to impede the enemy, and continue the war, so, when affairs were in a different and less arduous position, Scipio was appointed to terminate it; and hence we infer that an aristocratical state continues longer, and in general is more fortunate, than a principality; for the former may be considered as more pliable, and better able to conform themselves to the alterations of the times. A prince being confined from custom to one method, it is extremely difficult to persuade him to deviate from it, even though the alterations of the times call for and imperiously demand it.

Pierro Soderini proceeded with great humanity and the utmost gentleness in all his acts; and both himself and his country were prosperous, whilst the moderation of the times demanded it; but, when they changed, and the necessity of adopting a different mode of conduct arrived, Pierro was at a loss, and himself and country were ruined.

Although Pope Julius II. during the period of filling the papal chair, acted with the greatest promptitude and violence, yet such conduct was agreeable to his times, and he prospered; but, had they changed, and consequently moderation been rendered necessary, he had certainly fallen a martyr to his principles, because he never would have complied. A twofold reason may be assigned why we cannot change our opinions and sentiments so frequently as the times vary; first, because we cannot easily oppose ourselves to what we have been accustomed to desire; secondly, that, having repeatedly been prosperous in one way, we cannot easily persuade ourselves that we shall be equally so in another. And this may be considered the true cause why a prince's condition is frequently so changeable, because fortune varies with the times, and he does not alter his conduct in conformity to such variations. And the same is correct in regard to a commonwealth; if alterations of times are unattended to, and their laws remain unchanged, many dangers may be apprehended, and the government be overturned, as we have before argued at length, &c.-Reflections on Livy, lib. iii.

c. 9.

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