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would recognise the distinctive strokes of the forger. Sir Joshua Reynolds states that a jeweller will be amazed when an inexperienced person is incapable of seeing the difference between a couple of diamonds of unequal brilliancy, not considering that there was a time when he himself could not have been able to pronounce which of the two was the more perfect.' A shepherd can tell every sheep in his flock by its countenance, which nevertheless seems strange to many who discriminate instantly in human beings between face and face. There is no other difficulty in the case than that they are not accustomed to observe sheep in the same degree as men. Sovereigns receive a multitude of persons at their courts who are flattered by being remembered and by any allusion to past conversations and circumstances. The impression left is that there must be a peculiar regard when the recollection has survived the public events which have intervened, and the unceasing excitement, pomp, and dignity which encompass a throne. The presumed exception is the rule. The importance attached to such complimentary notices causes princes to cultivate the power, and Gibbon had noticed that all the royal families in Europe were remarkable for the faculty of recognising individuals and of recalling proper names. The Marquis de Bouillé said it was like a sixth sense bestowed upon them by nature. Are you the relation of the Abbé de Montesquieu that I saw here in company with the Abbé d'Estrades?' inquired Victor II. of Montesquieu when he visited Piedmont. 'Your Majesty,' he answered, is like Cæsar, who never forgot any name.' Montesquieu himself records his reply, for he thought it was happy, and that he had delicately compared his Sardinian Majesty to Cæsar. He was not aware that all monarchs were Cæsars in this particular, and the possession of the same faculty in an unusual degree by an entire order of persons of different sexes, nations, and lineage, and of very unequal and often inferior capacities, is a plain proof of the skill which practice begets. Henderson, the actor, after a single reading of a newspaper repeated such an enormous portion of it as seemed utterly marvellous. If you had been obliged like me,' he said in reply to the surprise expressed by his auditors, 'to depend during many years for your daily bread on getting words by heart, you would not be so much astonished at habit having produced the facility.' Euler in consequence of his almost total blindness was obliged to work those calculations in his mind which others put upon paper, and to retain those formulæ in his

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* We are indebted for this remark to an interesting treatise on The Security and Manufacture of Bank Notes,' by Mr. Henry Bradbury. head

head for which others trust chiefly to books. The extent, the readiness, and accuracy of his mathematical memory grew by this means to be prodigious, and D'Alembert declared that it was barely credible to those who had not witnessed it. The instances in which there is a strong motive to attain an end shows the unsuspected triumphs of which the understanding is capable. The reason why they are so rare is, that men ordinarily relax their efforts when the imperative demands of life have been satisfied. There would hardly be any limit to improvement if the same pains which they were compelled to take to gain their resting-place were afterwards employed in rising to fresh heights.

The account which Lord Chesterfield gives of the method by which he acquired the reputation of being the most polished man in England, is a strong example in a comparatively trivial, but not unimportant matter, of the efficacy of practice. His appearance was much against him, and he had by nature none of the grace which afterwards distinguished him. I had a strong desire,' he says, 'to please, and was sensible that I had nothing but the desire. I therefore resolved, if possible, to acquire the means too. I studied attentively and minutely the dress, the air, the manner, the address, and the turn of conversation of all those whom I found to be the people in fashion, and most generally allowed to please. I imitated them as well as I could: if I heard that one man was reckoned remarkably genteel, I carefully watched his dress, motions, and attitudes, and formed my own. upon them. When I heard of another whose conversation was agreeable and engaging, I listened and attended to the turn of it. I addressed myself, though de très mauvaise grace, to all the most fashionable fine ladies; confessed and laughed with them at my own awkwardness and rawness, recommending myself as an object for them to try their skill in forming.' Lord Bacon says, that to attain good manners it almost sufficeth not to despise them, and that if a man labour too much to express them, he shall lose their grace, which is to be natural and unaffected.' To this we may add the observation of La Rochefoucauld, that in manners there are no good copies, for besides that the copy is almost always clumsy or exaggerated, the air which is suited to one person sits ill upon another. The greater must have been the perseverance of Lord Chesterfield to enable him to acquire the art by which art is concealed, and to assimilate borrowed graces to himself without their degenerating into the stiffness and incongruity of servile imitation. He was equally resolved to be an orator, and until he had attained his aim he neglected nothing which could conduce to it. He determined not to speak

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one word in conversation which was not the fittest he could recall, and he impressed upon his son that he should never deliver the commonest order to a servant, but in the best language he could find, and with the best utterance.' For many years he wrote down every brilliant passage he met with in his reading, and either translated it into French, or, if it was in a foreign language, into English. A certain eloquence became at last, he says, habitual to him, and it would have given him more trouble to express himself inelegantly than ever he had taken to avoid the defect. Lord Bolingbroke, who could talk all day just as perfectly as he wrote, told him that he owed the power to the same cause-an early and constant attention to his style. After Pope had undertaken to translate the Iliad he was terrified at the difficulty of the task, had his rest broken by dreams of long journeys, through unknown ways, and wished that somebody would hang him. The harassing occupation became so easy by practice, that he often dispatched forty or fifty lines in a morning before leaving his bed, and could at last compose more readily in verse than in prose. In short the instances are endless. The truth is not less clearly manifested in the inferiority of the greatest intellects, in the matters which they have neglected, to the average run of mankind. The want of power which Sir Isaac Newton exhibited on the ordinary topics which most engage the attention of the world, has often been noticed, and persons ignorant of inathematics and science can hardly credit, when they read his letters, that he was the prodigy of genius which his admirers pretend. Yet certain it is that he overtopped every mortal, ancient or modern, and the little talent which he displayed in lesser things is only an evidence that the sublimest understanding cannot dispense with the practice which makes perfect. Absorbed by his lofty and abstruse speculations, he was abstracted from the pursuits which engaged his fellow-men, and when he turned to new departments of knowledge his mind had become fixed by the exclusive addiction to his peculiar studies, and had lost its pliancy.

It is a comprehensive observation of Bacon upon this subject, which can never be too carefully treasured up, that we think according to our inclinations, speak according to the opinions we have been taught, and act according as we have been accustomed. Thus it is common for a man upon the same point to think one thing, say another, and do a third. The native disposition, and the infused precepts are overborne by his habits, and after theorising like a sage he may not improbably act like a knave or a fool. There is no more pre-eminent merit both in the text of Bacon, and the Notes of his commentator, than that their

reflections

reflections carry with them a practical sense and a force of conviction which is a powerful antidote to this usual error. They not only teach wisdom, but they instil the desire to be wise. There cannot be a stronger inducement to study them. In the few topics upon which we have treated, we are conscious that we have neither done justice to the great variety of the truths which Archbishop Whately has put forth, nor to his mode of enforcing them. The cogency of his arguments, as well as the larger part of the valuable lessons he inculcates, must be sought in his book. Nor will the benefit stop with the direct information which he delivers. He is one of those thoughtful writers who set others thinking, and it is impossible to accompany him to the end without desiring to push on further in that grand track of truth in which he is so original and distinguished a pioneer.

ART. II.-1. Icosium: Notice sur les Antiquités Romaines d'Alger. Par M. Berbrugger, Membre Ct. de l'Institut. Alger, 1845. 2. Inscriptions Romaines de l'Algérie. Par M. Léon Renier.

2 Parts. Paris, 1855.

3. Joannis Leonis Africani de totius Africa descriptione Libri IX. Tiguri, 1509.

4. Travels and Observations relating to several parts of Barbary and the Levant. By Thomas Shaw, D.D., F.R.S., &c. Third Edition. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1808.

5. A Narrative of the Expedition to Algiers in the Year 1816, under the Command of the Right Hon. Admiral Lord Viscount Exmouth. By Mr. A. Salamé, Interpreter in His Britannic Majesty's Service. London, 1819.

6. White Slavery in Algiers. By Charles Sumner. London, 1853.

7. Letters from the South. By Thomas Campbell, Esq., Author of The Pleasures of Hope.' 2 vols. London, 1837. 8. Algier und Paris im Jahre 1830. Von Ludwig Rellstab. Neue Auflage. 2 vols. Leipsig, 1846.

9. The French in Algiers.

Translated from the German and French by Lady Duff Gordon. (Murray's Home and Colonial Library.) London, 1846.

10. Etudes Africaines. Par M. Poujoulat. 2 vols. Paris,

1847.

11. Narrative of a Campaign against the Kabailes of Algeria, with the Mission of M. Suchet to the Emir Abd-el-Kader for an Exchange of Prisoners. By Dawson Borrer, F.R.G.S. London, 1848.

12. Exploration

12. Exploration Scientifique de l'Algérie pendant les Années 1840, 1841, 1842, publiée par l'Ordre du Gouvernement et avec le concours d'une Commission Académique. Paris, Imprimerie Royale (Impériale). 16 vols. 1844-1853.

13. Mœurs et Coutumes de l'Algérie-Tell-Kabylie-Sahara. Par le Général Daumas. Paris, 1853.

14. Souvenirs de la Vie Militaire en Afrique. Par le Comte P. de Castellane. Paris, 1854.

15. Itinéraire Historique et Descriptif de l'Algérie. Par J. Barbier. Paris, 1855.

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16. Adventures of Jules Gérard, the Lion-Killer.' Translated from the French. London, 1856.

N the Mediterranean there are certain meeting-places of the

beholds them, and leave an impression on his memory which is never effaced. By the East we do not mean precisely the geographical east, but we use the word conventionally for those regions which wear the characteristics of Mohamedanism or Greek Christianity; as by the West we denote those civilised countries of modern Europe where the costume, the architecture, and all the outward expressions of human life, though differing among themselves, are yet uniform when contrasted with the countries of the Koran or with Oriental Christendom. Thus while that which we call the West must be extended to the very eastern shore of the Baltic, and along the Danube to Belgrade, our East reaches continuously through the whole of Northern Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar.

Of these meeting - places few are more remarkable than Gibraltar itself. The measured tread of its red-coated sentinels, its shops for beer and porter, the coaling' of the English steam-vessels, the gathering of young officers for the Calpe Hunt,' make up one side of the picture; its African fruits and wares, the crouching slipshod Jew from Mogador, the turbaned Moor on the esplanade, where cannon-balls are piled among tufts of green palmetto, form the other side; while the Andalusian smuggler, and the muleteer with sombrero and cigarito, are intermediate links, which might be connected almost indifferently with the East or the West. Malta is another place where oriental characteristics are brought into startling juxtaposition with their opposites; Greek sailors, with red caps and blue petticoat-trowsers, are about the landing-places; the language spoken at the Nix Mangiare stairs is a corrupt Arabic; the roofs of the houses are flat; but the streets are thronged with a varied European population, our own countrymen being pre

dominant.

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