'Si vitiis mediocribus, et mea paucis

Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si

Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore nævos.'

Lib. i., sat. vi.

Juvenal had even a worse opinion of the age in which he lived, than Horace had of his. Mark what

'Rari quippe boni; numero vix sunt totidem, quot

The barum portæ vel divitis ostia Nili.'

We are informed by Belloni, that Rubens composed a manuscript, descriptive of the actions and passions of men, as exhibited by the poets and embodied by the painters. This work who would not desire to see? No intermediate gradations appear to exist between man and animals resembling man, as the monkey, the baboon, the ape, and the ourang outang. We must suppose the link, therefore, to be sustained by the lowest order of intellect in man, and the highest in Simia*; an image which, as it is most resembling man, is to him the most disgusting and deformed.

Man, too, seems thus, sometimes, even to himself. For so differently is he constructed in respect to the government of his reason and passions, that Erasmus declared he was either a god or a wolf; while some ancient theorist, whose name I do not remember, supposed Nature to have made him entirely out of wantonness. Thus, while one class endeavour to debase their species by showing the miseries of man; another endeavours to delude him by exaggerating his greatness.

*Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia nobis.'-Ennius.

This arises, in some degree, from our being unable to do by men what Alexander did for Aristotle, to enable him to write a history of animals; viz.-summon several thousand hunters, fowlers, and fishermen, to give information relative to the instincts, habits, manners, and capacities of quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects.

Some, in order to depreciate man the more, even assert of him, that he is the only animal that preys upon its kind. Yet no one, I think, will seriously assert this, who has traversed the forest, toiled through the desert, or sailed over the seas. Horace, however, gave into the absurdity.

'Neque hic lupis mos, nec fuit leonibus, &c.'

Indica tigris agit rabida cum tigride pacem
Perpetuam; sevis inter se convenit ursis.'
Sat. xv., 163.

And yet, where, in all the vast regions of the earth, was this picture ever exhibited; except among fabulists prose and verse?

in

To have a bad opinion, in regard to mankind in general, is a pestilence! I would scarcely think as Guicciardini thought for half the universe. Pope Clement 'was a good pope,' said he; but, by this I do not

' allude to goodness apostolical; for in the days I speak of, that pope was esteemed good, who did not, in ' wickedness, exceed the worst of men.'

The longer I live, the better opinion I have of mankind; and the wider I cast my vision, the more distinctly do I perceive, that those, who have a contempt for others, have the most exalted (need I say fallacious?) opinion of themselves.

IX.

WHO BEGIN IN DISTRUST, AND FINISH IN CONFIDENCE.

MACHIAVEL has a most detestable maxim;-slay your enemy, or caress him*. Such artifice† is, however, nothing more than the presumed strength of incapable men; for it is the surest way to be ourselves deceived ‡, to fancy ourselves more cunning than all the rest of the world.

Some men begin the world in distrust, and finish in confidence; others begin in confidence, and finish in distrust. These opposite results arise from the persons with whom the two parties have been fated to contend, to mingle with and to live with. The former has fallen among Samaritans, as it were; the latter among Jews. One day, Marie Antoinette told Madame Campan

* Strozza l' inimico, o accarezzato.

+ L'usage fréquent de finesses est toujours l'effet d'une grande incapacité, et la marque d'un petit esprit.

‡ Le vrai moyen d'être trompé, c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres.

that Dumourier had declared to her that he had drawn the bonnet rouge over his head; but that he neither was, nor could be, a Jacobin; and that, while speaking, he seized her hand, and saluted it with transport; exclaiming, 'Suffer yourself to be saved!' Her majesty trusted him when he would have made no point of deceiving her, and distrusted him at a time when, of all others in his life, perhaps, he was most to be trusted.

6

The error of Marie Antoinette, in respect to Dumourier, was precisely the one into which Necker fell in regard to Mirabeau. Mirabeau proposed that the Duke of Orleans should be lieutenant-general of France; but he abandoned the idea immediately upon being closely admitted to a knowledge of the duke's imbecility. Mirabeau said to M. Malouet, 'I wished to have some 'conversation with you; because, through all your moderation, I perceive that you are a friend to liberty. I am, perhaps, more afraid of the fermentation I see in 'men's minds than you are. I am not capable of basely 'selling myself to the cause of despotism; I wish for a 'free constitution, but of a monarchical form. I have no ' desire to shake the monarchy; but I perceive so many 'wrong-headed persons in our assembly, such inexpe'rience, such exultation, so acrimonious and inconsiderate an obstinacy, in the two first orders, that I dread C some horrible commotion as much as you can. You

6 are connected with Monsieur Necker and Monsieur de 'Montmorin; you ought to know what their intentions

are. If they have formed a plan; and if that plan is 'reasonable; I am willing to support it.'

In consequence of this conversation, an interview took

place between Necker and Mirabeau. Necker admired his genius and his eloquence, but he refused to have any thing to do with a man whose private character had ́ made him conspicuously notorious.

That the death of Mirabeau was a great national misfortune, notwithstanding the odium which attached to his name in private, can be questioned by no one duly informed of the then existing spirit of parties. In him the king might have enjoyed a servant; the violent aristocrats a balance; the democrats a muffle; the limited monarchists a shield, a sword, and a truncheon ; Marat would have died, perhaps, in exile; and Robespierre, Roland, and Louis XVI., calmly in their beds.

X.

WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE KNOWN BY EPITHETS APPLIED TO THEM.

'On each hand

Historic urns, and breathing statues rise,
And speaking busts.'-Ruins of Rome.

MANY of these speaking busts (if rigidly examined) would fall from their pedestals; and those of others, which lie unnoticed and unknown, rise in their stead. 'I remember,' says Lord Bolingbroke, to have seen ' a procession at Aix-la-Chapelle, wherein an image of Charlemagne is carried on the shoulders of a man, 'who is hid by the long robe of the imperial saint. Follow him into the vestry, you see the bearer slip from ' under the robe, and the gigantic figure dwindles into an 'image of the ordinary size, and is set amongst other