us), would, without hesitation, and even with pleasantry, have broken any trust, or have been guilty of any treachery whatever, to satisfy even an ordinary passion or appetite. In fact, that to have been as eminent in the highest attempt of wickedness, as any man of his age, he wanted nothing but industry.

Some are strong, but without power to communicate their strength; having but a limited command of all the mechanism belonging to their capability. Others are not only strong, but enjoy the faculty of communicating their energy to every one that approaches them. Of the former, we may instance Fabius Maximus; of the latter, Cæsar, Cromwell, and Frederic of Prussia.

XLIV.

WHO KEEP THE BEST GUN TILL THE LAST.

PASSED over from Southampton to Cowes. On landing observed two women quarrelling about an old red cloak. At length one of them seized it from the person who held it, and ran away with it; on which the other exclaimed: Take it and keep it till the day you are 'hanged.'

This language was sufficiently coarse; but it served to remind me of the ragged cloth recovered*,' by Lorenzo Lippi, the friendly rival of Salvator Rosa, whose maxim it was to write poetry as he thought; and to paint those scenes only which he had himself seen.

Nothing more occurred this day worthy of recording,

* Malmantile Racquistato.

except an observation by the master of the boat:( Keep your best gun till the last, and then fire.'

Here we have the maxim so skilfully acted upon by the celebrated polemic, Sirmond. He never used his great argument till he had exhausted all his little ones. He was violent in warfare; the bishop of Avranches speaks of him as having been, nevertheless, distinguished by uncommon courtesy of disposition and elegance of

manners.

XLV.

WHO ARE ACTIVE IN DRIVING OTHERS OUT.

THERE are some men on the continent, who are constantly reminding the readers of Erasmus of a passage in one of that keen observer's letters to Ammonius of Lucca. 'Be ashamed of nothing,' said he; ‘thrust 'yourself into every one's business; give no quarter; 'elbow out whoever you can; supplant every one; mea

sure your love and your hatred with your profits; give nothing but to such as will return it with usury; 'be complaisant to every one, and in every thing; and 'have, always, two strings to your bow.'

As Erasmus knew the full value of his ironical advice, we might almost suppose the learned friend of the Lord Chancellor More to have passed a few years north of the Tweed and the Clyde. It is certain, however, that he never visited the Liffy, the Bandon, or the Shannon.

XLVI.

NOBLE ENEMIES.

NEITHER Darius nor Xerxes meditated attempts upon Greece till they had conquered Egypt. It was the opinion, therefore, of all the more eminent Greek statesmen, that Greece should, at all times, be alive to the danger of Persia's possessing Egypt. We cannot, in fact, be too watchful against enemies.

When Cæsar went into Spain he declared himself little at issue; for that he marched against an army that had no general; affecting to account Afranius and Petreius as mere nonentities. When he marched against Pompey, however, his tone differed: for he then declared that he was marching against a general without an army. Cæsar believed neither of these assertions; and if he did, he was mistaken; for he had some trouble in Spain; and the general, without an army, was the first to fly.

6

What a delightful thing it is, if we must have enemies, to have them of noble and considerate minds! The second William Pitt was so; and hence he is more to be admired out of office than in. I promise the ministers, by whom I am superseded, my uniform and 'best support on any occasion, where I can honestly and conscientiously assist them.' He acted as he promised.

Lamentable was the misfortune both to himself and to his country, that Pitt should have experienced the fatality of being educated in a college*; of entering into

* He was the first Greek scholar of his standing at Cambridge. This circumstance is, of itself, sufficient to show how much time

public life too soon*; and of falling, at last, into the hands of a party; when he possessed a genius sufficient to have commanded the admiration of all true men to the remotest period of time! As it is, he descends to posterity as a man idolized by a highly respectable party; but as having been essentially unequal to the critical period in which he lived. A Washington might have wept for him!

The lion, in Cowley's Davideis,' seeing a herd of kine, disdains to fall upon them :

He scorns so weak, so cheap a prey,

And grieves to see them trembling haste away.'

The finest antiquities of Spain are those left by the Moors; its invaders, its conquerors, its usurpers. The Spaniards detest the memory of the Moors; but they cherish the monuments they left. They hate the Moors as enemies to all that was dear to them in life, their country, their language, and their religion; yet they do not disdain to associate their own idleness with their glory.

Many men regard their friends as enemies, and their

he had been permitted to sacrifice. Taylor, the Platonist, told me this; adding, sarcastically- They should have made him Greek Professor !'

*He was made first minister at twenty-three !—not the first minister of a German duchy; but the first minister of an empire, having interests in every country on the globe. There never existed an empire so complicated in its relations as this; and no station, therefore, ever required such multifarious qualities, and such length, width, and depth of information and experience, as that of its first minister. At twenty-three a man, comparatively speaking, has scarcely learnt the practical use of a compass.

enemies as friends.

They esteem, as it were, Abram, Isaac, and Jacob, as devils; and worship Dathan, Caiphas, and Judas.

Some use their friends in a manner truly unwarrantable. The Duke of Newcastle acted so. We are even told that he caressed his enemies in order to enlist them against his friends. There was no service,' says Walpole; he would not do for either, till either was ' above being served by him. Then he thought they did ' not love him enough; for the moment they had every

6

reason to love him, he took every method to obtain

' their hate, by exerting all his power for their ruin.’

If this were true, the Duke of Newcastle must have been one of the most odious and detestable of mankind. But, really, Walpole seems to have been a wasp, so incessant in the application of his sting, that we sometimes know not what to think or what to believe.

XLVII.

HEROIC UNTRUTHS.

CAN any characteristic under heaven be more contemptible in a hero than that of Napoleon, as delineated by his secretary? and yet what a multitude of admirers has this man had, and still has, in every part of Europe!

'He never hesitated to pervert the truth, when the 'truth would have diminished his glory. He called it folly to do otherwise. And I here, once for all, state ' that the whole truth never entered into his dispatches, ' when veracity was in the least unfavourable. He 'knew how to disguise, or alter, or conceal it altogether, as suited his purposes. He often changed even such communications of others as he caused to be printed,