people. What were they while they remained free and independent-when Greece resembled a collection of mirrors set in a single frame, each having its own focus of patriotism, yet all capable, as at Marathon and Platea, of converging to one point and of consuming a common foe? What were they then? The fountains of light and of civilization, of truth, and of beauty, to all mankind! they were the thinking head, the beating heart of the whole world! They lost their independence, and with their independence their patriotism; and became the cosmopolites of antiquity. It has been truly observed, that, after the first acts of severity, the Romans treated the Greeks not only more mildly than their other slaves and dependents; they behaved to them even affectionately, and with munificence. The victor nation felt reverentially the presence of the visible and invisible deities that gave sanctity to every grove, every fountain, and every forum. "Think" (writes Pliny to one of his friends) "that you are sent into the province of Achaia, that true and genuine Greece, where civilization, letters, even corn, are believed to have been discovered; that you are sent to administer the affairs of free states, that is, to men eminently free, who have retained their natural right by valour, by services, by friendship; lastly, by treaty and by religion. Revere the gods, their founders; the sacred influences represented in these gods; revere their ancient glory and their very old age, which in man is venerable, in cities sacred. Cherish in thyself a reverence of antiquity, a reverence for their great exploits, a reverence even for their fables. Detract nothing from the proud pretensions of any state; keep before thine eyes that this is the land which sent us our institutions, which gave us our laws, not after it was subjugated, but in compliance with our petition." And what came out of these men, who were eminently free without patriotism, because without national independence? While they were intense patriots, they were the benefactors of all mankind; legislators for the very nation that afterwards subdued and enslaved them.

When, therefore, they became pure cosmopolites, and no partial affections interrupted their philanthropy, and when they yet retained their country, their language, and their arts, what noble works, what mighty discoveries, may we not expect from them? If the applause of a little city (a first-rate town of a country not much larger than Yorkshire), and the encouragement of a Pericles, produced a Phidias, a Sophocles, and a constellation of other stars scarcely inferior in glory, what will not the applause of the world effect, and the boundless munificence of the world's imperial masters? Alas! no Sophocles appeared, no Phidias was born!individual genius fled with national independence, and the best products were cold and laborious copies of what their fathers had taught and invented in grandeur and majesty. At length nothing remained but dastardly and cunning slaves, who avenged their own ruin and degradation by assisting to degrade and ruin their conquerors; and the golden harp of their divine language remained only as the frame on which priests and monks spun their dirty cobwebs of sophistry and superstition! Coleridge.

OF REVENGE.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out. For as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law, but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. And Solomon, I am sure, saith, "It is the glory of a man to pass an offence." That which is past is gone and irrevocable, and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves that labour in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake; but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry

with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why? Yet it is but like the thorn or brier, which prick and scratch because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy: but then let a man take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish; else a man's enemy is still beforehand, and it is two for one; some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh: this is the more generous. For the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in making the party repent, but base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable. "You shall read," said he, "that we are commanded to forgive our enemies, but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends." But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune, "Shall we," saith he, "take good at God's hand, and not be content to take evil also?" And so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal, and do well. Public revenges are, for the most part, fortunate, as that for the death of Cæsar, for the death of Pertinax, for the death of Henry the Third of France, and many more, but in private revenges it is not so; nay, rather vindictive persons live the life of witches, who as they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate.

ON THE VALUE OF WORKS OF FICTION.

Bacon.

What do we look for in studying the history of a past age? Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the leading public men? is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has

it entire? What character of what great man is known to you? You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour-the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth, may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age-he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Walpole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret motive which, I believe, influenced the whole of Marlborough's career, which caused his turnings and windings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army at Paris gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side-the winning side; I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe's portrait or Swift's portrait is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance, prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, "O venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made since your lady

ship was a Muse! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are are not a whit more trustworthy than some of your lighter sisters on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers: Nonsense! He no more made it than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero: I doubt it, and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character: I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography: I doubt all autobiographies I ever read, except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no object in setting themselves right with the public or their own consciences; these have no motive for concealment or half-truths; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the Spectator,' and say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution than the volume which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life of the time; of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society-the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?"

Thackeray.

THE DISASTERS WHICH BEFELL JONES ON HIS DEPARTURE FOR COVENTRY, WITH THE SAGE REMARKS OF PARTRIDGE.

No road can be plainer than that from the place where they now were to Coventry; and though neither Jones, nor Partridge, nor the guide had ever travelled it before, it would have been almost impossible to have missed their way, had it not been for the two reasons mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter (viz., rain and darkness). These two circumstances, however,