mature, nay, at the expense of pain to himself, revenges it, that he may appear great, would assuredly omit this, if he could be convinced it missed the intended effect: how, then, will he look upon himself, when, on a fair scrutiny, he finds all the eminent men in the world agreed in asserting, that true greatness of mind is shewn in despising an injury; and that there is no man so weak, but can revenge one? The Romans, one of the wisest as well as the greatest people in the world, abjured all barbarity of this kind: they gave cruelty its true origin, when they declared it always proceeded from fear; and revenge from poorness of spirit. Their actions countenanced their words: after fighting, at all disadvantages, the people who had rebelled against them, or had offered them the greatest indignities, they no sooner saw themselves conquerors than every hostile passion vanished, and they received, as children, those whom they, a moment before, had treated as parricides. They could not condescend to destroy a vanquished enemy, lest it should have been suspected that they feared him; and they were too proud to revenge an injury, while that act would convince the world they felt it.

The opinion of the great men, at all times, has countenanced the system of those truly no

ble people, by declaring all cruelty the genuine effects of cowardice, all revenge the legitimate child of fear. Tyrants and usurpers have ever been the most bloody in their reigns, because they have feared every body who had, or who was suspected to have, power to hurt them. Civil wars have always been more bloody than others, because fought by cowards; by people who had no notions of honour, and who were in continual fear of one another: and women, from the natural timorousness of their dispositions, are induced to murder whenever they are concerned in robberies.

It was gloriously answered of our Duke of Marlborough, when he was warned that an of ficer, whom he had broke for ill-behaviour, would take some opportunity to do him a mischief privately, "I am in no apprehension on that head, because I know him to be a man of courage." And I have been greatly struck with an opposite observation of the father of Philip, who, when he was told that Phocas had laid a design to murder him, replied, "I believe it: I know him to be a coward, and there is no doubt but he can be cruel and a murderer."

Revenge, which, indeed, is but cruelty under a certain form, is as constant an attendant on the same contemptible and abject disposition,

as that passion in its more general appearance! we always see the weakest minds the most malicious and revengeful; the great, who despise it, avoid a torment, which cheats those who em brace it under the name of a pleasure. It is one of those crimes which nature has made its own avenger; it never is harboured in any breast, but it gnaws the very heart that fosters it; nor is it ever exerted but it gives more pain to the person who employs, than to him who is the object of it. Many uneasy days, and many watchful nights, does he who meditates revenge suffer, while he against whom he is levelling it goes free; and, to add to the anguish, perhaps, sees the distress in which his enemy is involved, and makes it the subject of his mirth.

When the schème is laid, the execution is attended with more pain than the projecting it; always with guilt, and often with immediate danger; the blow seldom takes place exactly as intended; the over-charged mischief often retorts with fatal fury on the head that designed it; and, even if it succeed, the consequence is worse than that of the miscarriage: no law divine or human protects it; the eye of justice will view the act without entering into the consideration of its causes, and all that is gained by having, at the immediate hazard of life,

obtained the end that was desired, is, that the person who has succeeded, finds himself banished, by the action, from his country and his friends, and doomed to wander among strangers, attended only by a wounded conscience, a testimony written in his heart, that what he suffers is not a misfortune but the punishment of a crime.

When we are too violent in our pursuits, we over-run the goal: the cruelty which urges us to kill the person on whom we would revenge an injury, destroys the very possibility of the end at which it aims. What pride, which is the genuine source of this passion, dictates to us, is, to make the man who has wronged us stoop to us, and groan beneath the effects of our resentment; to give him pain that he cannot avoid, and increase the bitterness of it by telling him, from time to time, this you suffer for having injured me. Unjustifiable as all this is, it is the natural result of vengeance, and is the point at which the temper that employs it aims; but this is prevented, not accomplished, by murder. The person who has given the original offence is, by this means, set at rest, is plunged into a state in which all power of farther hurting him is over; and he who before thought himself so injured, that the pain of it was not to be supported, now

finds he has given his enemy rest, but has heaped on his own head more than all the distress and anguish he could have wished to inflict on that of the other.

As difficult and dangerous in the exe cution, and as painful in the consequence, as revenge in its nature is, so easy and safe, so peaceful and secure, is the opposite quality of forgiveness. If we would study true greatness of mind, this is the path by which we are to hope to arrive at it; nothing is so easy as to resent, nothing is so noble as to pardon. To be above the reach of an offence, bespeaks more greatness than the most effectual revenge; but to feel it, and afterwards to forgive it, is greater. The man who does but intend vengeance, confesses in that intention, that he feels himself hurt; he gives a certain triumph in this to the person who aimed the mischief against him, and it is fifty to one that himself never can attain so essential a triumph. juries levelled against a man who despises, or only will assume indifference enough to say he is not hurt by them, retort upon the very person who offered them; nor can there be a severer punishment, on him who makes the world a witness to his attempt of giving pain to another, than the