prosecution, and shall offer to your consideration some observations in point of law, under the judicial control of the Court, as to matter of law. I will strip my client's case from the extraneous matter that has been attempted to be fastened on it. I feel, gentlemen, the more warm when I speak to you in favour of my client's innocency, and to bring his innocency home to your judgments. I know the honesty and rectitude of your characters, and I know my client has nothing to fear from your understanding.—CURRAN.

CCXCVIII

There is an argument, which has been used by an ancient orator, the greatest orator that perhaps the world ever saw, which, in my opinion, is not inapplicable to the present situation of the country. Demosthenes uses this brilliant, and, in my opinion, no less solid than brilliant argument in the introduction to one of his noblest orations. When he observed the conduct and the fate of the Athenians, and compared their calamities with the mismanagement of their rulers, this mismanagement so far from being a cause of despair, he directly stated as a ground of hope. If,' said he, they had fallen into these misfortunes by the course of natural and irremediable causes, then, indeed, there would be reason for despair, if, on the contrary, they are the fruits of folly and misconduct, it may be possible, by wisdom and prudence, to repair the evil.' In the same manner I would argue on the present occasion. Had we not fallen into our present situation from plans ill formed and worse executed; if every minister had been wise, and every enterprise ably executed, then, indeed, our state would have been truly deplorable. But if our policy has been erroneous and our measures ill conducted, we may still entertain some hope, because our errors may be corrected, and the losses from our misconduct retrieved.-Fox.

DISSERTATION

CCXCIX

The benevolent regards and purposes of men in masses seldom can be supposed to extend beyond their own generation. They may look to posterity as an audience, may hope for its attention, and labour for its praise: they may trust to its recognition of unacknowledged merit, and demand its justice for contemporary wrong. But all this is mere selfishness, and does not involve the slightest regard to, or consideration of, the interest of those by whose numbers we would fain swell the circle of our flatterers, and by whose authority we would gladly support our presently disputed claims. The ideal of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of practising present economy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may live under their shade, or of raising cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recognised motives of exertion.-RUSKIN.

CCC

If you read any man partially bitter against others, as differing from him in opinion, or as cross to his greatness, interest, or designs, take heed how you believe any more than the historical evidence, distinct from his word, compelleth you to believe. The prodigious lies which have been published in this age in matters of fact, with unblushing confidence, even where thousands or multitudes of eye- and earwitnesses knew all to be false, doth call men to take heed what history they believe, especially where power and violence affordeth that privilege to the reporter, that no man dare answer him, or detect his frauds; or if they do, their writings

are all supprest. As long as men have liberty to examine and contradict one another, one may partly conjecture, by comparing their words, on which side the truth is like to lie. But when great men write history, or flatterers by their appointment, which no man dare contradict, believe it but as you are constrained.-BAXTER.

CCCI

The second fruit of friendship is healthful and sovereign for the understanding, as the first is for the affections; for friendship maketh, indeed, a fair day in the affections from storm and tempests, but it maketh daylight in the understanding, out of darkness and confusion of thoughts. Neither is this to be understood only of faithful counsel, which a man receiveth from his friend; but before you come to that, certain it is, that whosoever hath his mind fraught with many thoughts, his wits and understanding do clarify and break up, in the communicating and discoursing with another: he tosseth his thoughts more easily-he marshalleth them more orderly-he seeth how they look when they are turned into words-finally, he waxeth wiser than himself; and that, more by an hour's discourse than by a day's meditation. It was well said by Themistocles to the king of Persia, 'That speech was like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroadwhereby the imagery doth appear in figure, whereas in thought they lie but as in packs.'-SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

CCCII

Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because then there appeareth more probability that the same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may

happen to every man. But when we see a man suffer for great crimes, which we cannot easily think will fall upon ourselves, the pity is the less. And therefore men are apt to pity those whom they love; for whom they love they think worthy of good, and therefore not worthy of calamity. Thence it is also, that men pity the vices of some persons at the first sight only, out of love to their aspect. The contrary of pity is hardness of heart, proceeding either from slowness of imagination, or some extreme great opinion of their own exemption from the like calamity, or from hatred of all or most men. Indignation is that grief which consisteth in the conception of good success happening to them whom they think unworthy thereof. Seeing, therefore, men think all those unworthy whom they hate, they think them not only unworthy of the good fortune they have, but also of their own virtues. And of all the passions of the mind, these two, indignation and pity, are most raised and increased by eloquence, for the aggravation of the calamity, and extenuation of the fault augmenteth pity; and the extenuation of the worth of the person, together with the magnifying of his success, which are the parts of an orator, are able to turn these two passions into fury.-HOBBES.

CCCIII

This perverse judgment of fathers, as concerning the fitness and unfitness of their children, causeth the commonwealth have many unfit ministers; and seeing that ministers be, as a man would say, instruments wherewith the commonwealth doth work all her matters withal, I marvel how it chanceth that a poor shoemaker hath so much wit, that he will prepare no instrument for his science, neither knife nor awl, nor nothing else, which is not very fit for him. The commonwealth can be content to take at a fond father's hand the riff-raff of the world, to make those instruments of where

withal she should work the highest matters under heaven. And surely an awl of lead is not so unprofitable in a shoemaker's shop, as an unfit minister made of gross metal is unseemly in the commonwealth. Fathers in old time, among the noble Persians, might not do with their children as they thought good, but as the judgment of the commonwealth always thought best. This fault, and many such like, might be soon wiped away, if fathers would bestow their children always on that thing, whereunto nature hath ordained them most apt and fit. For if youth be grafted straight and not awry, the whole commonwealth will flourish thereafter.-ROGER ASCHAM.

CCCIV

They reckon up several sorts of these pleasures, which they call true ones; some belong to the body, and others to the mind. The pleasures of the mind lie in knowledge, and in the delight which the contemplation of truth carries with it; to which they add the joyful reflections on a well-spent life, and the assured hopes of a future happiness. They divide the pleasures of the body into two sorts; the one is that which gives our senses some real delight, and is performed, either by the recruiting of nature, and supplying those parts on which the internal heat of life feeds; and that is done by eating or drinking: or when nature is eased of any surcharge that oppresses it. There is another kind of this sort of pleasure, that neither gives us anything that our bodies. require, nor frees us from anything with which we are overcharged; and yet it excites our nerves by a secret unseen virtue, and by a generous impression it so tickles and affects them, that it turns inwardly upon themselves; and this is the pleasure begot by music.--MORE's Utopia.