nate your manners, and shake your belief in every 'thing sacred among Christians.'

In some, the badness of their judgments corrupts their hearts; in others, the badness of their hearts corrupts their judgments. Richard II. and Charles I. were exemplars of the former; Richard III. and Philip II. of Spain examples of the latter.

Man is often the creature of involuntary circumstances; but, occasionally, his baseness seems almost to have a radicle, founded in something beyond the power of circumstances; it appears innate; and, as an example of this, I shall cite what the author of a book, entitled 'Bibliomania,' says of a person whom he stigmatizes by the title of Sycorax. 'Censure to him was sweeter than "praise; and the more elevated the rank and respectable ⚫ the character, the more dexterously he aimed his blows, ' and the more frequently he renewed his attacks.' This is said of one clergyman by another of the same cloth. The advice of Pietro da Cortona is worthy of being extensively considered. Go, go your ways,' said he to Pietro Testa, who thought to excel, and therefore criticised the works of his master: 'Go, go your ways; 'leave criticising to those who are grown old in the profession; who speak with a white beard, and a tongue well instructed by continual study and long experience. Spend that time, which criticising consumes, in working; and when you shall perceive that the more you understand the less you know, you will 'become sensible of your ostentation, your presumption, and your impertinence, and know the difference ' between criticism and painting.'

VOL. I.

L

It is wise to put the best constructions upon human conduct. No one,' said Flechier, Bishop of Nismes, ' reviles mankind, but through the desire of engaging the notice of mankind.' And here we may remember what occurred to Burckhardt. When he went from Europe to visit the country of the Bedouin Arabs, he drew an unfavourable picture of them, because he compared them with Europeans. After being seven years in the East, however, he qualified his opinions, because he then compared them with the Turks*. Our appreciations, assuredly, depend in a great measure on our associations; and slanderers, for the most part, may be compared to those insects † which lay their eggs in the flower-beds of the most beautiful plants.

LXXXII.

WHO ASSIGN WEAK MOTIVES IN PREFERENCE TO STRONG ONES.

WHEN there are two motives, the more prevalent often gives way, in point of publicity, to the lesser. There can be no doubt, for instance, that the Reformation received no small degree of accession from the princes and people of Germany from other causes than those of religion. The people were well pleased to be relieved from fasts, espionage, and confessions; and the princes were fully alive to the hope of appropriating the property of the church. But the published causes of

*See his Notes on the Bedouin Arabs, p. 203, 4to.

+ Brumota, vide Blumenbach, Elements, c. 212.

the Reformation were the interests of religion. This was the pretence; that, the wished-for, expected, and enjoyed reward.

LXXXIII.

WHO SEE CLEARLY, AND YET REPRESENT SUPERFICIALLY.

DENINA was an instance of this. He saw vividly; and yet Ugoni justly accuses him of not excelling in the art of colouring and shading the characters he has sketched in the history of western Italy, nor even in that of the Italian revolutions. And this reminds me of a passage in Mendelsohn's Phædon;' implying that the soul acquires a knowledge of kindred spirits by contemplating itself. Mendelsohn adopted his own rule. He studied himself, and thence became a light to lighten other men's darkness. His work is far superior to that of Plato: having more strength and power, therefore carrying more conviction. Some one has said, and most truly has he said, that in Plato's treatise we feel the soul may live; but in Mendelsohn's, that it must live.

LXXXIV.

WHO HAVE SUCCEEDED IN DETRACTING THEIR ENEMIES

FOR AGES.

Alas! how faint,

How slow, the dawn of beauty and of truth
Breaks the reluctant shades of Gothic night,
Which yet involve the nations !'-Akenside.

SOME men, and even some nations, have been curiously successful in their detractions: for they have

succeeded in ruining the characters of their adversaries, not only for years, but for ages. The Romans loudly exclaimed against what they were pleased to call Punica fides; but a more perfidious people, than themselves, never lived upon the earth! Their conduct in Spain alone is sufficient to testify, that, in public obligation, they were as far beneath the subsequent Goths and Vandals, as they were superior to them in the arts and military skill. In fact, a little minute inquiry, even into their own history, soon convinces us, that their own aggressions were, almost uniformly, the causes of the subsequent virulence of their historians.

Bearing all this in recollection, are we to doubt the punishment inflicted upon Regulus? Is the account to be doubted, because Polybius, who lived in the same age, is silent in respect to it? On what authority does it rest; since the Decade of Livy, commemorating the events of that period, has been lost? Voltaire ascribes the whole to the imagination of Frenshemius, a German of the seventeenth century. Indeed! Had Voltaire taken the trouble to consult the work of Frenshemius, instead of the superficial dictionary of Moreri, he would have discovered, that Frenshemius does not relate the cruelties, inflicted upon that nobly-minded man, on his own authority; but upon those of Dio †, Horace ‡, Appian §, Valerius Maximus ||, Cicero T, and St. Augus

* Livy, lib. xxxvi. 17. Thus Cicero, Carthaginienses fraudulenti et mendaces.'

+ Diodorus apud Fulvium Visuvium.

Carmen seculare.

§ Punico Epit. 18.

|| I. 1.

De Off. iii. 27.

tine*. The fact is, Frenshemius has only copied what he found in Dio apud Fulvium Visuvium.

Shall we regard, also, with implicit faith, the character of the Goths, as given by the Romans? Herodotus and most of the Greek writers speak of them, under the name of Scythians, with respect; and Augustine † says of those who took Rome, that they spared so many, that it seemed surprising they should have killed any. The Goths, however, appreciated the Romans after the same manner that the Romans appreciated them. When we would brand an enemy,' said they,' we call 'him a Roman; comprehending in that name whatever is base, and cowardly, covetous, false, and vicious ‡.' In fact, neither were to be trusted when they spoke of each other.

LXXXV.

WHO ARE KNOWN BY THEIR LITERARY PREFERENCES.

THE mental capacities of some may be partially estimated by their literary preferences. Thus Priolo thought little of Cicero, admired Seneca, and preferred Lucan to Virgil, and Catullus to Horace. Cardinal Chetroni preferred Quintus Curtius to thirty Tacituses; and after him, whom, of all, that is great and glorious, on the shelves of the Vatican? Annæus Florus !-Eminent authors, however, cannot always be known thus.— Milton's favourite was neither Homer, nor Virgil, nor Lucan, nor Tasso; but Ovid!

*De Civit. Dei, i. 15.

De Civitat. Dei, i. c. 1. 7.

Luitprandi.