243. THE TRUE PATRIOT is a friend to no party: he inherits a laudable freedom of thought, which unshackles his mind from narrow prejudices and opens his eyes to the more extensive view of public good. His only aim is the honour, safety and interest of his country; on this mark he keeps his eye constantly fixed, nor can the allurements of interest or the power of flattery ever move him from his point. He finds his true reward in virtue, and is equally insensible to the promising smiles of the great that would tempt, and the meanness of the fiercest tyrants that would force him to forsake her. He derides the folly and pities the meanness of those who forfeit their honesty, to build their happiness on the unstable basis of false applause or the allurements of servile ambition. He fears not censure, when conscious of having performed his duty; nor regards the slander against which innocence itself is not armour proof: he is directed, influenced and biassed by none; and, whilst he is engaged in his country's service, he thinks the most glorious epithets the world can fix upon him are those of a rigid, inflexible, honest man.

244.

FORTUNE-ITS INFLUENCE ON CHARACTER. Thus we find, that the fortunes, the manners and the language of a people are all linked together and necessarily influence one another. Men take their sentiments from their fortunes; if they are low, it is their constant concern how to mend them; if they are easy, how to enjoy them; and according to this bent, they turn both their conduct and their conversation; and assume the language, air and garb, peculiar to the manner of their different characters.

245. LUCIAN ON THE WRITING OF HISTORY, He requires in an historian, as a foundation for the rest, a tolerable capacity for civil affairs and a faculty of expressing his thoughts; the first must be Nature's gift, the latter is to be attained i only by industry and by a zealous imitation of the ancients; "for," says he, "I do not set up for an alchemist and turn lead to gold; I cannot make a giant of a dwarf; it is not in the power of art to give a man a genius, but to improve that which he has already." The historian also must have some military knowledge; he must be versed in arms, machines, and in the order of war; not one who has sat at home all his

days and takes every thing on trust. But, above all, let his mind be entirely at liberty; let him fear nobody and hope nothing, lest he act like a corrupt judge, who acquits or condemns with a view to his own interest; he must dread no great man nor even a whole nation; since he must think that none but fools will ever attribute the ill success of affairs to him who merely relates them. If they were conquered in a sea-fight, it is not the historian who sunk their ships; if they fled, he did not give them chase. If it were possible for him, by relating facts contrary to those which happened indeed, to set all right, it would have been a mighty easy matter for Thucydides to have overturned the fortifications of Epipola with a dash of his pen, and to have sunk all Hermocrates' vessels; he might have made his countrymen sail all round Sicily and so conquer all Italy, just as Alcibiades designed it, but he can never persuade the fates to change what is past long since. It is his business to tell things as they really were.

T. GRAY

246. SEARCH AFTER TRUTH. But to speak my mind freely on the subject of consequences, I am not so scrupulous perhaps with regard to them, as many are apt to be. My nature is frank and open, and warmly disposed not only to seek but to speak what I take to be true. I persuade myself, that the life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, cannot be employed more rationally or laudably than in the search of knowledge; and especially of that sort which relates to our duty and conduces to our happiness. In my inquiries, therefore, wherever I perceive any glimmerings of truth before me, I steadily pursue and endeavour to trace it to its source. I look upon the discovery of anything which is true, as a valuable acquisition to society—which cannot possibly hurt or obstruct the good effect of any other truth whatsoever: for they all partake of one common essence and necessarily coincide with each other: and like the drops of rain which fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the stream and strengthen the general

current.

247.

MERCENARY INFORMERS. Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. In such a country as this, they are of all bad things the worst, worse by far than anywhere else; and

they derive a particular malignity even from the wisdom and soundness of the rest of our institutions. For very obvious reasons you cannot trust the crown with a dispensing power over any of your laws. However, a government, be it as bad as it may, will in the exercise of a discretionary power discriminate times and persons; and will not ordinarily pursue any man, when its own safety is not concerned. A mercenary informer knows no distinction. Under such a system, the obnoxious people are slaves not only to the government, but they live at the mercy of every individual; they are at once the slaves of the whole community and of every part of it; and the worst and most unmerciful men are those on whose goodness they most depend. In this situation men are obliged to fly from their very species. The seeds of destruction are sown in civil intercourse, in social habitudes. All the means given by Providence to make life safe and comfortable, are perverted into instruments of terror and torment.

E. BURKE

248. THE MORAL VIRTUES THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. Matter of fact also supports this observation; for history tells us of no age or country where men have not agreed to ascribe justice, goodness and truth to the Supreme Being. Now this shews that they always not only knew what goodness, justice and truth were, but also that they took them to be such excellent qualities as ought to be ascribed to the highest and best Being. How monstrous is it, therefore, to impute these fine moral virtues to the contrivance of politicians, when all ages of the world have agreed to ascribe them to God and number them amongst his glorious attributes! God is just; therefore there is such a thing as justice, independent of the will and contrivance of man, is a way of reasoning that cannot be refuted.

W. LAW

249. HE had a present wit, not slow to catch at opportunities but subtle. Then he had a rare way to ingratiate himself with any that came to speak to him; shewing himself neither sparing nor prodigal of his courtship, he so cunningly contrived his words, that you could not but think that he reserved far more for actions, which begat a greater opinion of his discretion and gave more credit to his pretensions. Besides, though he was of a proud and infinitely

ambitious spirit, yet he so carried it in the outward shew, that he seemed to command himself and not be sensible of injuries. But he was as subject to fear, as free from anger, insomuch as he doubted all things, thought everything unsafe but yet desisted not, because on the one part his brain fertile in plots, if the first took not, presently made new supplies; on the other part, his vast and immoderate ambition strangled all doubts and delays. No man was more hospitable, none gave nobler entertainments to foreign ambassadors, which hugely pleased the people, who delight to have the wealth and power of their country shewed to strangers. Nor was it distasteful to princes, with whom he redeemed all opinions of his pride by his humble and familiar invitations of their servants.

250. INVASION. Let not civil discords in a forreign kingdome encourage thee to make invasion. They that are factious among themselves, are jealous of one another, and more strongly prepared to encounter with a common enemy; those whom civill commotions set at variance, forreigne hostility reconciles. Men rather affect the possession of an inconvenient good, than the possibility of an uncertaine better. F. QUARLES

251. STRENGTH OF PARTS. If thy strength of parts hath raised thee to eminent place in the Commonwealth, take heed thou sit sure: if not, thy fall will be greater: as worth is fit matter for glory, so glory is a fair marke for envy By how much the more thy advancement was thought the reward of desert; by so much thy fall will administer matter for disdaine: it is the ill fortune of a strong braine, if not to be dignified as meritorious, to be deprest as dangerous.

F. QUARLES

252.

ENGLAND COMPARED TO A SHIP OF WAR. The re

Our pre

sources created by peace are means of war. In cherishing those resources we but accumulate those means. sent repose is no more a proof of our inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity, in which I have seen those mighty masses, that float in the waters above your town, is a proof that they are devoid of strength, and inca

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pable of being fitted out for action. You well know how soon one of those stupendous fabrics, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness, how soon, at any call of patriotism or necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion,-how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage,-how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such as is one of these magnificent machines, springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself. While apparently passive and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion. G. CANNING

253. KINGS DEBARRED FROM THE PRIVILEGE OF FOREIGN TRAVEL. Every country has its curiosities; which deserve to be visited and viewed by strangers. Now men in private stations can come and go to any part of the world without ceremony; and into whatever cities they please, for the sake of the public spectacles; and into those general assemblies of all Greece, where are collected together, whatever is thought worthy of the attention and curiosity of mankind. As for kings, they can rarely amuse themselves with spectacles of any kind. For neither would it be safe for them to go where they would not be superior to any force which could be exerted against them, nor are their affairs usually so firmly established at home that they could securely trust the administration of them to others; and go out of their kingdoms. They could not do it without the danger of being deprived of their sovereignty; and at the same time, of being unable to avenge themselves on those that had injured them.

254.

RELIQUES OF GOODNESS EXTANT IN THE SOUL OF MAN. There do remain dispersed in the soil of human nature divers seeds of goodness, of benignity, of ingenuity, which being cherished, excited and quickened by good culture do to common experience thrust out flowers very lovely, yield fruits very pleasant of virtue and goodness. We see that even the generality of men are prone to approve the laws and rules directing to justice, sincerity and beneficence; to commend actions suitable unto them, to honour persons practising