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CHARACTER OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE.

He had a thin and weak body, was brown-haired, and of a clear and delicate constitution. He had a Roman eagle nose, bright and sparkling eyes, a large front, and a countenance composed to gravity and authority. All his senses were critical and exquisite. He was always asthmatical; and the dregs of the smallpox falling on his lungs, he had a constant deep cough. His behaviour was solemn and serious, seldom cheerful, and but with a few. He spoke little, and very slowly, and most commonly with a disgusting dryness, which was his character at all times, except in a day of battle; for then he was all fire, though without passion. He was then everywhere, and looked to everything. He had no great advantage from his education. De Witt's discourses were of great use to him; and he, being apprehensive of the observation of those who were looking narrowly into everything he said or did, had brought himself under a habitual caution that he could never shake off, though, in another sense, it proved as hurtful as it was then necessary to his affairs. He spoke Dutch, French, English, and German equally well; and he understood the Latin, Spanish, and Italian; so that he was well fitted to command armies composed of several nations. He had a memory that amazed all about him, for it never failed him. He was an exact observer of men and things. His strength lay rather in a true discerning and sound judgment than in imagination or invention. His designs were always great and good; but it was thought he trusted too much to that, and not descend enough to the humours of his people to make himself and his notions more acceptable to them. This, in a government that has so much of freedom in it as ours, was more necessary than he was inclined to believe. His reservedness grew on him; so that it disgusted most of those who served him. But he had observed the errors of too much talking more than those of too cold a silence. He did not like contradiction, nor to

that he did

have his actions censured; but he loved to employ and favour those who had the arts of complaisance; yet he did not love flatterers. His genius lay chiefly in war, in which his courage was more admired than his conduct. Great errors were often committed by him; but his heroical courage set things right, as it inflamed those who were about him. He was too lavish of money on some occasions, both in his buildings and to his favourites; but too sparing in rewarding services, or in encouraging those who brought intelligence. He was apt to take ill impressions of people, and these stuck long with him; but he never carried them to indecent revenges. He gave too much way to his own humour almost in everything, not excepting that which related to his own health. He knew all foreign affairs well, and understood the state of every court in Europe very particularly. He instructed his own ministers himself; but he did not apply enough to affairs at home. He believed the truth of the Christian religion very firmly, and he expressed a horror of atheism and blasphemy; and though there was much of both in his court, yet it was always denied to him and kept out of his sight. He was most exemplarily decent and devout in the public exercises of the worship of God; only on week-days he came too seldom to them. He was an attentive hearer of sermons, and was constant in his private prayers and in reading the Scriptures; and when he spoke of religious matters, which he did not often, it was with a becoming gravity. His indifference as to the forms of church government, and his being zealous for toleration, together with his cold behaviour towards the clergy, gave them generally very ill impressions of him. In his deportment towards all about him, he seemed to make little distinction between the good and the bad, and those who served well or those who served him ill. He loved the Dutch, and and was much beloved among them; but the ill returns he met from the English nation, their jealousies of him, and their perverseness towards him, had too much soured his mind, and had in a great measure alienated

him from them, which he did not take care enough to conceal, though he saw the ill effects this had on his business. He grew, in his last years, too remiss and careless as to all affairs, till the treacheries of France awakened him, and the dreadful conjunction of the monarchies gave so loud an alarm to all Europe; for a watching over that court, and a bestirring himself against their practices, was the prevailing passion of his whole life. Few men had the art of concealing and governing passions more than he had; yet few men had stronger passions, which were seldom felt but by inferior servants, to whom he usually made such recompences for any sudden or indecent vents he might give his anger, that they were glad at every time that it broke upon them. He was too easy to the faults of those about him when they did not lie in his own way or cross any of his designs, and he was so apt to think that his ministers might grow insolent if they should find that they had much credit with him, that he seemed to have made it a maxim to let them often feel how little power they had, even in small matters. His favourites had a more entire power; but he accustomed them only to inform him of things, but to be sparing in offering advice, except when it was asked. I had occasion to know him well, having observed him very carefully in a course of sixteen years. I had a large measure of his favour, and a free access to him all the while, though not at all times to the same degree. The freedom that I used with him was not always acceptable; but he saw that I served him faithfully, so that, after some intervals of coldness, he always returned to a good measure of confidence in me. I was in many great instances much obliged by him; but that was not my chief bias towards him. I considered him as a person raised up by God to resist the power of France, and the progress of tyranny and persecution. After all the abatements that may be allowed for his errors and faults, he ought still to be reckoned among the greatest princes that our history, or indeed that of any other country, can afford.

Burnet.

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TURNING THE GRINDSTONE.

When I was a little boy, I remember one cold winter's
morning I was accosted by a smiling man with an axe
on his shoulder. "My pretty boy," said he, "has your
father a grindstone?" "Yes, sir," said I. "You are
a fine little fellow," said he, "will you let me grind
my axe on it?" Pleased with his compliment of "fine
little fellow," "Oh, yes, sir," I answered, "it is down
in the shop." "And will you, my man," said he, patting
me on the head, "get a little hot water?" How could
I refuse? I ran and soon brought a kettleful.
"How
old are you, and what's your name?" continued he,
without waiting for a reply. "I am sure you are one
of the finest lads that I have ever seen.
Will you

just turn a few minutes for me?" Tickled with the
flattery, like a fool I went to work, and bitterly did
I rue the day. It was a new
tugged till I was almost tired to
rang, and I could not get away;
and it was not half ground.

axe, and I toiled and death. The school-bell my hands were blistered, At length, however, the

axe was sharpened, and the man turned to me with, "Now, you little rascal, you've played the truant; scud to school or you'll rue it." Alas! thought I, it was hard enough to turn a grindstone this cold day, but now to be called a little rascal was too much. It sank deep in my mind, and often have I thought of it since. When I see a merchant over polite to his customers, begging them to take a little brandy, and throwing his goods on the counter-thinks I, that man has an axe to grind. When I see a man flattering the people, making great professions of attachment to liberty, who is in private life a tyrant-methinks, look out, good people; that fellow would set you turning grindstones. When I see a man hoisted into office by party spiritwithout a single qualification to render him either respectable or useful-alas! methinks, deluded people, you are doomed for a season to turn the grindstone for a booby.

Franklin.

DANTE AND MILTON.

The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness of thought; that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line of the Divine Comedy, we discern the asperity which is produced by pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance of time can be judged, the effect of external circumstances. It was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of the earth nor the hope of heaven, could dispel it. It turned every consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in the noble language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness, as darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness!" The gloom of his character discolours all the passions of men and all the face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of paradise and the glories of the Eternal Throne.

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived his health and his sight, the comforts of his home and the prosperity of his party. Of the great man by whom he had been distinguished on his entrance into life, some had been taken away from the evil to come; some had carried into foreign climates their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds. That hateful proscription-facetiously termed, "The act of indemnity and oblivion"-had set a mark on the poor, blind, deserted poet, and held him up by name to the hatred of a profligate court and an inconstant people. If ever despondency could be excused in any man, it might have been excused in Milton. But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness,

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