Impartiality is one of the finest, and therefore one of the most unfrequent qualities of the mind. It is the surest indication of an able judgment. Men, in general, have no idea of impartiality. They overvalue or undervalue everything. Indeed there is little or no truth either in history or biography; almost everything having been written to suit the purposes of a party, or to gratify a feeling of enmity or affection.

Most men think of persons just as they are to them. They have no impartiality either in regard to friends or to enemies. If persons administer to their pleasures, hopes, or interests, they are everything that is excellent. That is, as long as they do so. But, from the moment they are believed to cease,- Oh! what a falling off is there, my countrymen!'

XXXIV.

WHO ARE KNOWN BY SLIGHT PASSAGES WRITTEN OF

THEM.

I KNOW little of Dr. Brown, author of 'Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind;' but I remember the pleasure I derived from reading, that, when a child, he was so susceptible of impression, that his mother frequently lulled him to sleep with his little eyes in tears of sym'pathy,' at the mournful melody of The Flowers of 'the Forest.'

Some authors are well known by slight passages written of them by others; and we may instance Lord Surrey, Hugh Kelly, and Frederic Schiller:-three writers as opposite to each other as it is possible to select. 'It is delightful,' says Collins, 'to contemplate the cha

racter of Lord Surrey: excellent in arts and in arms; a man of learning and a hero; of a generous temper and a refined heart. He united all the gallantry and un'broken spirit of a rude age, with all the elegance and graces of a polished era.' Hugh Kelly, having been introduced to Johnson by Goldsmith, Goldsmith,' said the doctor when Kelly was gone, 6 never introduce an author to me again, who has written more than ' he has read.' 'Schiller,' says Madame de Staël, 'was the best of friends,-the best of fathers,-the best of husbands; no quality was wanting to complete that 'gentle and peaceful character, which was animated by 'the fire of genius alone. The love of liberty, respect 'for the female sex, enthusiastic admiration of the fine arts, inspired his mind; and in the analysis of his ' works it would be easy to point out to what particular 'virtue we owe the various productions of his masterly pen.' This panegyric, pre-eminent as it may appear, is so far from being a concealed satire, that I am told by one who knew Schiller well, that it is even beneath the idea that he had always entertained of his merits *.

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XXXV.

WHO NEVER ALTER THEIR OPINIONS.

PLATINA is the least fusible of metals; but it may be melted into ingots by being mixed with arsenic. Gold,

* How many writers, on the contrary, have we resembling the character Paul Cortese draws of Filelfo:-' Habebat a natura in'genium vagum, multiplex, volubile. Exstant ab eo scripta, et poe' mata, et orationes; sed ut vita, sic erat in toto genere varius. Erat vendibilis sane scriptor, et is, qui opes, quàm scribendi laudem consequi malebat.'

the most valuable of metals, is yet so tractable in the hands of art, that it assumes any form we wish it to acquire. These two metals are emblematic of obstinacy and pliability.

Hawks are trained to obedience by hunger, watching, and fatigue. If stubborn, by dipping their heads into water, and then covering them with a hood: when obedient, by giving them of that food they like best. Obstinacy constitutes but a small part of their character. The onacre, on the other hand, is as obstinate as a mule, and as intractable as a vicious horse. The lama of Peru will never eat in the night, even though it may have fasted during all the preceding day; and if the pacos of the same country lie down with their load, they will suffer themselves to be slain rather than rise. The panther, when in the power of man, is never tamed; he is only in part subdued; and the utmost degree to which a tiger-cat suffers itself to be ameliorated, is to be stroked on the back.

Monkeys are less intractable than baboons, and less sullen than apes; but the most obstinate of all animals is the mule. 'Yet in the march of my armies,' said the Duke de Vendôme, I often inquired into the quar' rels between the mules and the muleteers; when, to 'the disgrace of human nature, reason was almost always on the side of the mules.'

Some men are so determined in all cases, whether of injury or of sufferance, of reason or of folly, of right or of wrong:

"Whose dispositions all the world well knows,
Will not be robb'd or stopt;'

that we may compare them to the Cabal Duke of Lauderdale, not only in that, but in ambition, in insolence, in sullenness, and in obstinacy: men, too, whose minds, in all the mutations of opinion, undergo no change during the vicissitude of a multitude of years. I knew a person of this kind; and he long fancied himself to possess a robust intellect, a massive resolution, as it were, and an immoveable, irrevocable spirit; but a neighbour having one day called him a coxcomb,' he awakened from the delusion of many years, and acted as an agreeable neighbour ever after.

XXXVI.

WHO SUFFER MORE FROM THEIR FRIENDS THAN FROM THEIR ENEMIES.

COULD Loyola* rise from the grave, how he would exclaim against the men who have so often used his name to cover the most detestable of purposes! Many are they, indeed, who have suffered from their friends more than from their enemies.

Shall we turn to the dilemma of Louis XVI.? Dumourier asserts that he was decidedly for war in 1792; that he not only approved the memorial to the National Assembly on that subject, but made several corrections in it; and that he himself composed the discourse which he delivered to the Assembly on that occasion. Hence

* See 'Apologetici pro Vita Loyolæ per Petrum Ribadeneiram, contra Sim. Lithum,' 1599. Bouhours' Life; and Ribadeneira's Vita I. Loyolæ, qui Religionem Clericorum Societatis Jesu insti'tuit.' 1587.

Burke accused the king of pulling down the pillars of his throne wilfully; and of being governed by a desire of reducing his nobility, clergy, and corporate magistracy. Wherefore? Because he could not bear the in'conveniences attached to everything human; because ' he found himself cooped up and in durance by those ' limits which nature prescribes to desire and imagina'tion; and was taught to consider, as low and degrad'ing, that mutual dependence which Providence has or'dained that all men should have on one another.'

This passage occurs in Burke's Memorial on the Affairs of France;' and, perhaps, a more severe or unjust censure has never been passed upon Louis by any of his adversaries.

XXXVII.

WHOSE VIRTUES AND VICES CANNOT BE CLASSED.

,

SOME call virtue agreeable to external fitness consonant with right reason †, the truth of things, and conducive to general utility §. Some insist, that it depends upon opinion; some that it is the dictate of the moral sense ¶; some regard it as the impulse of a sensation** ; while others esteem it to be founded on the dictates of sympathy††.

'Virtue,' says Helvetius, is the habitude of direct'ing our actions to the public good; the love of virtue