it is a thousand chances to one, if the world will pardon him who has such foresight. Count Fransktein entered the best inn at the town of Basle, and joined in a con.. versation which took place at the table d'hôte; but he soon found how dangerous it is to act or even to think above the capacities of a company. He desisted; sat off for Berne the same day; praying that the king of Prussia might, ere long, descend to the tomb of the Capulets.

'Truths would you teach, or save a sinking land?

All fear, none aid you, and few understand.'*

An Armenian chief at Damascus seems to have understood this well. You should send your son to Eu' rope,' said M. La Martine, and give him that educa'tion you regret the want of yourself.' 'Alas!' answered the Armenian, 'what service should I render to 'my son if I were to raise him, by his knowledge, above 6 the age and the country in which he is destined to live? 'What would he do at Damascus on returning hither ' with the information, the manners and the taste for 'liberty, he has acquired in Europe? If one must be a 'slave, it is better never to have known anything but 'slavery.' Woe to the men,' says La Martine, who ' precede their times! Their times crush them.'

Dryden says

They who have best succeeded on the stage,

Have still conformed their genius to their age.'

Rochefoucault says, the height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and the *Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. iv. p. 265.

genius of the age we live in. To which his commentator adds, Most of the authors, immortalized by their contemporaries, have been indebted to this knowledge,

or else to the luck of living in an age with whose turn their abilities coincided.' To succeed largely in great attempts it is necessary to ground exertion on the impulse already given to society. To give the impulse, and to urge it into action, show the chief power.

XVIII.

WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO BE KNOWN BY THEIR PRAYERS, CASUAL SPEECHES, &c.

He

We may know men, occasionally, by their prayers; and we may instance Edwards the naturalist. prayed that he might, in after life, become an intelligent being, 'void of gross matter; endowed with a ' voluntary motive-power, either to pierce infinitely into 'boundless ethereal space, or into solid bodies; to see ' and know how the parts of the universe are connected * with each other; and by what amazing mechanism they are put and kept in regular and perpetual order.' This prayer was in strict conformity with the character of Mr. Edwards. I have never yet dared to pray for this; though, I confess, it is an immortality best suited to my wishes.

When we regret the defection of Pulteney and the pliability of Chesterfield, is it possible to forbear smiling at Pope's panegyric upon both ?

'How can I Pulteney, Chesterfield, forget;
While Roman spirit charms and Attic wit ?'

We may, however, sometimes judge of men by their conversation; for a great deal may be gathered not only from their sentiments, but from the manner in which they deliver them. This is applicable more to the middle-aged and the old, than to the young. The young have lived but a short time; they have erred, comparatively, only in trifles; have never, perhaps, been essentially wronged or materially deceived; and have, therefore, little knowledge of human affairs. They, but too often, however, fancy they know a great deal. For my own part, I confess that I thought I knew, at one-and-twenty, more than I find I know at fifty-five!

That men may sometimes be judged of by their casual speeches is very certain. A casual speech of the Prince de Conti, for instance, lets us entirely into his character. 'Oliver Cromwell,' said he, was a great man; but 'his son Richard is a wretch, who knew not how to ' enjoy the fruit of his father's crimes.' From this we learn, that, had the Prince de Conti's father usurped the government of France, he would himself have been. base enough to continue the usurpation.

XIX.

WHO LOVE JUSTICE, AND YET HAVE NO JUDGMENT. CLARENDON affords us an instance in the person of Robert, third Earl of Essex. 'He was a great lover of justice,' says he; and could not have been tempted to consent to the oppression of an innocent man; but, ' in discerning the several species of guilt, he had no faculties or measures of judging; nor was above the

'temptation of general prejudice: and it may be, of par'ticular obligations and resentments, which proceeded 'from the weakness of his judgment; 'not the malice of ' his nature.'

Lord Byron loves justice; but he has little judgment in respect to it. He is unjust even to himself, and, therefore, describes himself as bearing a similitude to the beings his imagination has created. Shall his prophecy in respect to Dante be realized in himself?

"Tis the doom

Of spirits of my order to be rack'd

In life, to wear their hearts out, and consume
Their days in endless strife, and die alone.
Then future thousands crowd around their tomb,
And pilgrims come from climes where they have known
The name of him-who now is but a name,
And wasting homage o'er the sullen stone.'

XX.

NOSCE TEIPSUM.

"Twould almost seem, so strange the view,
That truth itself can vary too;

For things that have been clearly proved,
By time are altered, changed, and moved;
And maxims, which the sage hath sought
To suffer for, are come to nought.
Yet one remains, the favourite one
Of fallen Athenæe's sapient son,
The truest e'er pronounced below,
That mortal man can nothing know*?

Delta. Thus Milton:

'The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only--that he nothing knew.'

Par. Reg. iv. 293. From Cicero, Acad. i. 4.

A diary should be kept of our affections and feelings, as well as of our hopes and disappointments, our actions and reactions. By this we might, after a time, become acquainted with our own natures.

There is a fragment of Menander, which most persons appear inclined to respect; by deriving all the benefit they can from its practice.

Away with that famed maxim, Know thyself!

'Tis not well put; Know others, to my thinking,

Is a more apt and profitable maxim.'

And yet it cannot be denied, that the most valuable part of the education of every man of superior sense is derived from himself; and this puts me in mind of Lucian's sale of the philosophers. Note, my friend, the prices at which they were sold. Pythagoras brought 32l. 5s. 10d.; Diogenes twopence! Aristotle sold for 64/. 11s. 8d.; and Chrysippus 387. 15s.; but Socrates for only 6l. 9s. 2d. As to Heraclitus, Aristippus, and Democritus, they were totally unsaleable. Nobody offered a farthing for them!

This sale reminds me of Conde-the great Conde! Having been observed to read Cardinal de Retz's Memoirs with great eagerness, one of his attendants presumed to express some surprise at his doing so; since the cardinal had not mentioned him very favourably: 'For that very reason,' returned the prince, I read 'him. De Retz acquaints me with many follies, of ' which none of my friends have thought proper to in'form me.' O si sic omnia!

'

All men see objects through mediums peculiar to