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serve themselves from his infusions, and discerned those opinions to be fixed in him, with which they could not comply, he always left the character of an ingenious and conscientious person. He was very temperate in diet, and a supreme governor over all his passions and affections, and had thereby a great power over other men's. He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out, or wearied by the most laborious; and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle or sharp; and of a personal courage equal to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished whereever he might have been made a friend; and as much to be apprehended where he was so as any man could deserve to be. And therefore his death was no less congratulated on the one party, than it was condoled on the other.

LORD CLARENDON

155. CHARACTER OF THE NORTHERN BARBARIANS. The character of the people with whom the Romans had to contend was, in all respects, the reverse of theirs. Those northern adventurers, or Barbarians, as they are called, breathed nothing but war; their martial spirit was yet in its vigour; they sought a milder climate and lands more fertile than their forests and mountains: the sword was their right; and they exercised it without remorse, as the right of nature. Barbarous they surely were, but they were superior to the people they invaded, in virtue as well as in valour. Simple and severe in their manners, they were unacquainted with the word luxury; anything was sufficient for their extreme frugality: hardened by exercise and toil, their bodies seemed inaccessible to disease or pain: war was their element; they sported with danger and met death with expressions of joy. Though free and independent, they were firmly attached to their leaders, because they followed them from choice, not from constraint, the most gallant being always dignified with the command. Nor were these their only virtues. They were remarkable for their regard to the sanctity of the marriage-bed; for their generous hospitality; for their detestation of treachery and falsehood: they possessed many maxims of civil wisdom, and wanted only the culture of reason to conduct them to the true principles of social life. E. GIBBON

FOL. CENT.

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156. SYLLA, APPARENT INCONSISTENCY IN HIS CHARACTER. Sylla had a general taste for literature; he was intimately acquainted with the writers of Greece; he delighted in the society of men of talent; and he was himself long and carefully engaged in recording the history of his own actions; yet no man was ever more stained with cruelty, nor was ever any more degraded by habitual and gross profligacy. Nor is this at all wonderful, if we consider that the intellectual faculties, like the sensual, are gratified by exercise; and that the pleasure derived from the employment of talent is quite distinct from the application of the lessons taught by the understanding to the government of the affections and the conduct. In all men whose mental powers are at all considerable, the indulgence of them is as much an object of mere natural appetite, as the gratification of hunger and thirst is to the mass of mankind; and it is only because it is less common that it is regarded as conferring on the character a much superior value.

T. ARNOLD

157. CICERO. He entertained very high notions of friendship, and of its excellent use and benefit to human life; which he has beautifully illustrated in his entertaining treatise on that subject, where he lays down no other rules than what he exemplified by his practice. For in all the variety of friendships, in which his eminent rank engaged him, he was never charged with deceiving, deserting or even slighting any one, whom he had once called his friend, or esteemed an honest man. It was his delight to advance their prosperity, to relieve their adversity; the same friend to both fortunes; but more zealous only in the bad, where his help was the most wanted, and his services the most disinterested; looking upon it not as a friendship, but a sordid traffic and merchandize of benefits, where good offices are to be weighed by a nice estimate of gain and loss. He calls gratitude the mother of virtues; reckons it the most capital of all duties; and uses the words, grateful and good, as terms synonymous, and inseparably united in the same character. His writings abound with sentiments of this sort, as his life did with the examples of them; so that one of his friends, in apologizing for the importunity of a request, observes to him with great truth, that the tenor of his life would be a sufficient excuse for it; since he had established such a custom, of doing every thing for his friends, that they

no longer requested, but claimed a right to command him... His manner of living was agreeable to the dignity of his character, splendid and noble: his house was open to all the learned strangers and philosophers of Greece and Asia; several of whom were constantly entertained in it as part of his family, and spent their whole lives with him. His levee was perpetually crowded with multitudes of all ranks; even Pompey himself not disdaining to frequent it. The greatest part came, not only to pay their compliments, but to attend him on days of business to the Senate or the Forum; where, upon any debate or transaction of moment, they constantly waited to conduct him home again: but on ordinary days, when these morning visits were over, as they usually were before ten, he retired to his books, and shut himself up in his library, without seeking any other diversion, but what his children afforded to the short intervals of his leisure. C. MIDDLETON

158. CERTAIN IMPUTATIONS AGAINST LEARNING. And as for the disgraces which learning receiveth from politiques, they be of this nature;, that learning doth soften men's minds, and makes them more unapt for the honour and exercise of arms; that it doth mar and pervert men's dispositions for matter of government and policy; or at least that it doth divert men's travails from action and business, and bringeth them to a love of leisure and privateness; and that it doth bring into states a relaxation of discipline, whilst every man is more ready to argue, than to obey and execute. Out of this conceit Cato surnamed the Censor, one of the wisest men indeed that ever lived, when Carneades the philosopher came in embassage to Rome, and that the young men of Rome began to flock about him, being allured with the sweetness and majesty of his eloquence and learning, gave counsel in open senate that they should give him his dispatch with all speed, lest he should infect and inchant the minds and affections of the youth, and at unawares bring in an alteration of the manners and customs of the state. Out of the same conceit or humour did Virgil, turning his pen to the advantage of his country and the disadvantage of his own profession, make a kind of separation between policy and government and between arts and sciences, in the verses so much renowned, attributing and challenging the one to the Romans, and leaving and yielding the other to the Grecians. So likewise we see that Anytus, the accuser of

Socrates, laid it as an article of charge and accusation against him, that he did with the variety and power of his discourses and disputations withdraw young men from due reverence to the laws and customs of their country; and that he did profess a dangerous and pernicious science, which was to make the worse matter seem the better, and to suppress truth by force of eloquence and speech.

LORD BACON

159. CARDINAL WOLSEY. This year also, those who managed any money for the king in the wars, or otherwise, were by the Cardinal's command called in question. Among whom some by bribery and some by cunning escaped; others being condemned in great sums: so that the Cardinal might be said to have in him so much of a good servant, as he willingly suffered none other to deceive his master. To accompany this severity also, he caused perjury to be rigorously punished, wherein I can never enough commend him: all other treacheries extending, for the most part, but to the depriving of life, possessions or good name; but this such a one, as without much labour may take away all together. Some courts also were erected in the favour of poor people, against the oppression of the great; which at the beginning were much frequented; but at last, the people receiving many delays and dissatisfactions in their suits, every one left them, and went to the common law; as fearing, under this pretence, an innovation. I must not deny unto the Cardinal, yet, the attribute of just in all affairs of public judicature; whereof (if we may believe authors) he was ever apparently studious. Therefore, where disorders were committed, he severely punished, unless the parties found means to make their private peace.

LORD HERBERT

160. THE ESTIMATE OF AN ENEMY AS WELL AS A FRIEND DESERVES ATTENTION, Let them consider well what are the characters which they bear among their enemies. Our friends often flatter us, as much as our own hearts. They either do not see our faults, or conceal them from us, or soften them by their representations, after such a manner that we think them too trivial to be taken notice of. An adversary, on the contrary, makes a stricter search into us, discovers every flaw and imperfection in our tempers; and though his malice may set them in too strong a light, it has generally some ground for what it advances. A friend exaggerates a man's virtues, an enemy inflames his crimes. A

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wise man should give a just attention to both of them so far as they may tend to the improvement of one, and the diminution of the other. J. ADDISON

161.

PROSPECT OF THE RUINS OF ROME IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

In the last days of pope Eugenius the Fourth, two of his servants, the learned Poggius and a friend, ascended the Capitoline Hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples; and viewed from that commanding spot the wide and various prospect of desolation. The place and the object gave ample scope for moralizing on the vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave; and it was agreed, that in proportion to her former greatness, the fall of Rome was the more awful and deplorable. Her primæval state, such as she might appear in a remote age, when Evander entertained the stranger of Troy, has been delineated by the fancy of Virgil. This Tarpeian rock was then a savage and solitary thicket; in the time of the poet, it was crowned with the golden roofs of a temple; the temple is overthrown, the gold has been pillaged, the wheel of fortune has accomplished her revolution, and the sacred ground is again disfigured with thorns and brambles.

E. GIBBON

162. NELSON. There was reason to suppose, from the appearances upon opening the body, that, in the course of nature, he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of the martyr; the most awful that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid that of the hero in the hour of victory; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory. He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example, which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England: a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength.

R. SOUTHEY

163. SERTORIUS. About this time Sertorius was much dispirited, because that deer of his could nowhere be found;

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