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433. WARREN HASTINGS-THE NATURE OF THE CRIMES LAID TO HIS CHARGE. The crimes which we charge in these articles are not lapses, defects, errors, of common human frailty, which, as we know and feel, we can allow for. We charge this offender with no crimes that have not arisen from passions which it is criminal to harbour: with no offences that have not their root in avarice, rapacity, pride, insolence, treachery, in short in nothing that does not argue a total extinction of all moral principle. If we do not plant his crimes in those vices which the breast of man is made to abhor and the spirit of all laws human and divine interdict, we desire no longer to be heard upon this occasion. Let every thing that can be pleaded on the ground of surprise or error, upon those grounds be pleaded with success: we give up the whole of those predicaments. We urge no crimes, that were not crimes of forethought. We charge him with nothing that he did not commit upon deliberation; that he did not commit against advice, against the direct command of lawful authority; that he did not commit after reproof and reprimand. His crimes are aggravated by being crimes of contumacy. They were crimes, not against forms, but against those eternal laws of justice which are our rule and our birthright.

E. BURKE

434.

PRESERVATION OF THE PURITY OF A LANGUAGEA GREAT BENEFIT TO SOCIETY. I hold him to deserve the highest praise who fixes the principles and forms the manners of a state, and makes the wisdom of his administration conspicuous both at home and abroad. But I assign the second place to him, who endeavours by precepts and by rules to perpetuate that style and idiom of speech and composition which have flourished in the purest periods of the language, and who, as it were, throws up such a trench around it, that people may be prevented from going beyond the boundary almost by the terrors of a Romulean prohibition. If we compare the benefits which each of these confer, we shall find that the former alone can render the intercourse of the citizens just and conscientious, but that the latter gives that gentility, that elegance, that refinement which are next to be desired. The one inspires lofty courage and intrepid ardour against the invasion of an enemy; the other exerts himself to annihilate that barbarism which commits more extensive ravages on the minds of men, which is the intestine enemy of

genius and literature, by the taste which he inspires, and the good authors which he causes to be read. Nor do I think it a matter of little moment whether the language of a people be vitiated or refined, whether the popular idiom be erroneous or correct. This consideration was more than once found salutary at Athens. It is the opinion of Plato, that changes in the dress and habits of the citizens portend great commotions and changes in the state; and I am inclined to believe, that when the language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin or their degradation. For what do terms used without skill or meaning, which are at once corrupt and misapplied, denote, but a people listless, supine and ripe for servitude? On the contrary, we have never heard of any people or state, which has not flourished in some degree of prosperity as long as their language has retained its elegance and purity. J. MILTON

435. A LETTER ON THE QUALIFICATIONS OF AN HISTORIAN. Of Sallust I will speak, as you desire, without any hesitation or reserve. I prefer him to any of the Latin historians; which was also the general opinion of the ancients. Your favourite Tacitus deserves his meed of praise; but his highest praise, in my opinion, consists in his having imitated Sallust with all his might. As he in the beginning of his Catilinarian war asserted that there was the greatest difficulty in historical composition, because the style should correspond with the nature of the narrative, you ask me how a writer of history may best attain that excellence. My opinion is that he who would describe actions and events in a way suited to their dignity and importance, ought to write with a mind endued with a spirit, and enlarged by an experience, as extensive as the actors in the scene, that he may have a capacity properly to comprehend and to estimate the most momentous affairs, and to relate them, when comprehended, with energy and distinctness, with purity and perspicuity of diction. The decorations of style I do not greatly heed: for I require an historian and not a rhetorician. I do not want frequent interspersions of sentiment, or prolix dissertations on transactions, which interrupt the series of events, and cause the historian to intrench on the office of the politician, who, if in explaining counsels and explaining facts, he follows truth rather than his own partialities and conjectures, excites

the disgust or aversion of his party. I will add a remark of Sallust, and which was one of the excellencies he himself commends in Cato, that he should be able to say much in a few words; a perfection which I think no one can attain without the most discriminating judgment and a peculiar degree of moderation. There are many in whom you have not to regret either elegance of diction or copiousness with brevity. And amongst these Sallust is, in my opinion, the chief of the Latin writers. Such are the virtues which I think every historian ought to possess who would proportion his style to the facts which he records. J. MILTON

436. PRONENESS TO LOOK INTO FUTURITY. Those who have maintained that men would be more miserable than beasts, were their hopes confined to this life only, among other considerations take notice that the latter are only afflicted with the anguish of the present evil, whereas the former are very often pained by the reflection on what is passed, and the fear of what is to come. This fear of any future difficulties or misfortunes is so natural to the mind, that were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him, than from those evils which had really befallen him. To this we may add, that among those evils which befall us, there are many that have been more painful to us in the prospect, than by their actual pressure. This natural impatience to look into futurity, and to know what accidents may happen to us hereafter, has given birth to many ridiculous arts and inventions. Can anything be more surprising than to consider Cicero, who made the greatest figure at the bar, and in the senate of the Roman commonwealth, and, at the same time, outshined all the philosophers of antiquity in his library and in his retirements, as busying himself in the college of augurs, and observing with a religious attention, after what manner the chickens pecked the several grains of corn which were thrown to them?

J. ADDISON

437. EXCELLENCIES COMMON TO THE GREEK AND ROMAN HISTORIANS. For this reason we praise Herodotus and Thucydides among the Greeks, for I will mention no more

of them; and upon this account we commend Sallust and Livy among the Romans. For though they all differ in their style, yet they all agree in these common excellencies. Herodotus displays a natural oratory in the beauty and clearness of a numerous and solemn diction; he flows with a sedate and majestic pace, with an easy current, and a pleasant stream. Thucydides does sometimes write in a style so close, that almost every word is a sentence, and every sentence almost acquaints us with something new; so that from the multitude of causes, and variety of matter crowded together, we should suspect him to be obscure: but yet so happy, so admirable a master is he in the art of expression, so proper and so full, that we cannot say whether his diction does more illustrate the things he speaks of, or whether his words themselves are not illustrated by his matter, so mutual a light do his expressions and subject reflect on each other. His diction, though it be pressed and close, is nevertheless great and magnificent, equal to the dignity and importance of his subject. He first, after Herodotus, ventured to adorn the historian's style, to make the narration more pleasing, by leaving the flatness and nakedness of former ages. This is most observable in his battles, where he does not only relate the mere fight, but writes with a martial spirit, as if he stood in the hottest of the engagement: and what is most excellent as well as remarkable in so close a style, is, that it is numerous and harmonious, that his words are not laboured nor forced, but fall into their places in a natural order, as into their most proper situation.

H. FELTON

438. DEFEAT AND DEATH OF VALENS AT THE BATTLE OF HADRIANOPLE, A. D. 378. In the midst of tumult, of slaughter, and of dismay, the emperor, deserted by his guards, and wounded, as it was supposed, with an arrow, sought protection among the Lancearii and the Mattiarii, who still maintained their ground with some appearance of order and firmness. His faithful generals, Trajan and Victor, who perceived his danger, loudly exclaimed, that all was lost, unless the person of the emperor could be saved. Some troops, animated by their exhortation, advanced to his relief; they found only a bloody spot, covered with a heap of broken arms and mangled bodies, without being able to discover their unfortunate prince, either among the living, or the dead.

Their search could not indeed be successful, if there is any truth in the circumstances with which some historians have related the death of the emperor. By the care of his attendants, Valens was removed from the field of battle to a neighbouring cottage, where they attempted to dress his wound, and to provide for his future safety. But this humble retreat was instantly surrounded by the enemy: they tried to force the door; they were provoked by a discharge of arrows from the roof, till at length, impatient of delay, they set fire to a pile of dry faggots, and consumed the cottage with the Roman emperor and his train. Valens perished in the flames; and a youth, who dropt from the window, alone escaped, to attest the melancholy tale, and to inform the Goths of the inestimable prize which they had lost by their own rashness. A great number of brave and distinguished officers perished in the battle of Hadrianople, which equalled, in the actual loss, and far surpassed, in the fatal consequences, the misfortune which Rome had formerly sustained in the fields of Cannæ.

E. GIBBON

439. THE SO-CALLED EMPIRE OF REASON. But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle, and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. E. BURKE

440. KING CHARLES I.-HIS ESCAPE FROM HAMPTON COURT, NOV. II, A.D. 1647. The king found himself in great perplexity, from what he discerned and observed himself, as well as what he heard from others; but what use to make of the one or the other, was very hard to resolve; he did really believe that their malice was at the height, and that they did design his murder, but knew not which was a probable way to prevent it. The making an escape, if it were not contrived

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