it were the property of the state or of individuals; all the rich and precious moveables; and all the slaves who could prove their title to the name of Barbarians. The ministers of the senate presumed to ask, in a modest and suppliant tone, 'If such, O king, are your demands, what do you intend to leave us?' 'YOUR LIVES,' replied the haughty conqueror: they trembled and retired.

E. GIBBON

345. QUALITIES REQUISITE FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT. For when civil society is once formed, government at the same time results of course, as necessary to preserve and to keep that society in order. Unless some superior be constituted, whose commands and decisions all the members are bound to obey, they would still remain as in a state of nature, without any judge upon earth to define their several rights, and redress their several wrongs. But, as all the members which compose this society were naturally equal, it may be asked, in whose hands are the reins of government to be entrusted? To this the general answer is easy; but the application of it to particular cases has occasioned one-half of those mischiefs, which are apt to proceed from misguided political zeal. In general all mankind will agree that government should be reposed in such persons, in whom those qualities are most likely to be found, the perfection of which is among the attributes of him who is emphatically styled the Supreme Being; the three grand requisites, I mean, of wisdom, of goodness, and of power: wisdom to discern the real interest of the community; goodness to endeavour always to pursue the real interest; and strength, or power, to carry this knowledge and intention into action. These are the natural foundations of sovereignty, and these are the requisites that ought to be found in every well-constituted frame of government.

E. BURKE

346. THE PROBABILITY OF THE RESURRECTION UPON NATURAL GROUNDS. Beside the principles of which we consist, and the actions which flow from us, the consideration of the things without us, and the natural course of variations in the creature, will render the resurrection yet more highly probable. Every space of twenty-four hours teacheth thus much, in which there is always a revolution amounting to a resurrection. The day dies into a night, and is buried in

silence and in darkness; in the next morning it appeareth again and reviveth, opening the grave of darkness, rising from the dead of night: this is a diurnal resurrection. As the day dies into night, so doth the summer into winter; the sap is said to descend into the root, and there it lies buried in the ground; the earth is covered with snow, or crusted with frost, and becomes a general sepulchre: when the spring appeareth, all begin to rise; the plants and flowers peep out of their graves, revive and grow and flourish this is the annual resurrection. The corn by which we live, and for want of which we perish with famine, is notwithstanding cast upon the earth, and buried in the ground, with a design that it may corrupt, and being corrupted may revive and multiply; our bodies are fed with this constant experiment, and we continue this present life by a succession of resurrections. Thus all things are repaired by corrupting, are preserved by perishing, and revive by dying; and can we think that man, the lord of all these things which thus die and revive for him, should be detained in death as never to live again? Is it imaginable that God should thus restore all things to man, and not restore man to himself?

J. PEARSON

347. A LETTER. All the rest of my age before and since that period I have taken no more notice of what passed upon the public scene, than an old man uses to do of what is acted on a theatre, where he gets as easy a seat as he can, entertains himself with what passes upon the stage, not caring who the actors are, or what the plot, nor whether he goes out before the play be done. Therefore you must expect nothing from me out of the compass of that time, nor any thing of that itself, with much application or care, further than of truth. You know how lazy I am in my temper, how uneasy in my health, how weak my eyes, and how much of my time passes in walking or riding, and thereby fencing all I can against two cruel diseases that have for some time pursued me: so that I doubt the satisfaction you expect will be chiefly owing to ill health, or ill weather, which yet are not likely to fail at my age, and in our climate.

SIR W. TEMPLE

348. A LETTER FROM ROBERT EARL OF ORFORD TO GENERAL CHURCHILL, A.D. 1743. This place affords no news -no subjects of amusement for such fine men as you.

Men

of pleasure and wit in town understand not the language, nor taste the charms, of the inanimate world. My flatterers here are all mutes. The oaks, the beeches and the chesnuts, contend which of them shall best please the lord of the manor. They cannot deceive, they will not lie. I in sincerity admire them and have as many beauties round me to fill up all my hours of dangling, and no disgrace attends me from sixtyseven years of age. Within doors we come a little nearer to real life, and admire upon the almost speaking canvas all the airs and graces which the proudest of the town ladies can boast with these I am satisfied, because they gratify me with all I want and all I wish and expect nothing in return, which I cannot give. If these, dear Charles, are any temptations, I heartily invite you to come and partake of them.

:

TRANSFORMATIONS OF LANGUAGE.

349. The language most likely to continue long without alteration, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life; either without books, or like some of the Mahometan countries, with very few; men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs. But no such constancy can be expected in people polished by arts and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labour of the other. Those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas; and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words or combinations of words. When the mind is unchained from fecessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions: as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice. S. JOHNSON

350. RELATION OF THE STATES OF THE LATIN NAME TO ROME. The states of the Latin name, whether cities of old Latium or Roman colonies, all enjoyed their own laws and municipal government, like the other allies; and all were, like the other allies, subject to the sovereign dominion of the

Romans. They were also so much regarded as foreigners, that they could not buy or inherit land from Roman citizens; nor had they generally the right of intermarriage with Romans: but they had two peculiar privileges, one, that any Latin who left behind him a son in his own city, to perpetuate his family there, might remove to Rome and acquire the Roman franchise; the other, that every person who had held any magistracy or distinguished office in a Latin State might become at once a Roman citizen. So that in this manner all the principal families in the Latin cities had a definite prospect assured to them of arriving in time at the rights of citizens of Rome. Yet it is remarkable that when twelve of the Latin colonies in the middle of the second Punic War renounced the sovereignty of Rome, the consuls in their remonstrance with them are represented as appealing not to their peculiar political privileges, but to their sense of duty and gratitude towards their mother-country. "They were originally Romans, settled on lands conquered by the Roman arms for the very purpose of rearing sons to do their country service; and whatever duties children owed to their parents, were owed by them to the commonwealth of Rome.' And as no age made a son, according to the Roman law, independent of his father, but entire obedience was ever due to him, without any respect to the greater or less benefits which the son might have received from his kindness, so the Romans thought that the allegiance of their colonies was not to depend on a sense of the advantages, which their connexion with Rome gave to them, but was a plain matter of duty.

T. ARNOLD

351. PROFESSIONS OF LATITUDINARIANISM. And, indeed, few can have failed to remark, that the latitudinarian of our day, at least—the man who prides himself upon his large and liberal views of Church matters, the fruit, as he flatters himself, of superior parts and wider experience of the world, is really in the condition he is, most likely through a mere lack of close acquaintance with his subject: a subject requiring far too much investigation and research to suit his temperament. Of this he might convince himself, if, instead of dealing with theology, he would deal with law in the same loose manner, throw about his random speculations upon that subject, and watch their effect upon a learned bar.

J. J. BLUNT

He

352. POMPEY THE GREAT HIS MISERABLE DEATH. saw all his mistakes at last, when it was out of his power to correct them; and, in his wretched flight from Pharsalia was forced to confess, that he had trusted too much to his hopes, and that Cicero had judged better, and seen further into things than he. The resolution of seeking refuge in Egypt finished the sad catastrophe of this great man. The father of the reigning prince had been highly obliged to him for his protection at Rome, and restoration to his kingdom; and the son had sent a considerable fleet to his assistance, in the present war: but, in this ruin of his fortunes, what gratitude was there to be expected from a court governed by eunuchs and mercenary Greeks? all whose politics turned, not on the honour of the king, but the establishment of their own power, which was likely to be eclipsed by the admission of Pompey. How happy had it been for him to have died in that sickness, when all Italy was putting up vows and prayers for his safety! or if he had fallen by the chance of war, on the plains of Pharsalia, in the defence of his country's liberty, he had died still glorious, though unfortunate: but as if he had been reserved for an example of the instability of human greatness, he who a few days before commanded kings and consuls, and all the noblest of Rome, was sentenced to die by a council of slaves; murdered by a base deserter; cast out naked and headless on the Egyptian strand; and, when the whole earth, as Velleius says, had scarce been sufficient for his victories, could not find a spot upon it at last for a grave. His body was burnt on the shore by one of his freedmen with the planks of an old fishing-boat: and his ashes being conveyed to Rome were deposited privately by his wife Cornelia in a vault of his Alban villa. The Egyptians, however, raised a monument to him on the place, and adorned it with figures of brass, which being defaced afterwards by time, and buried almost in sand and rubbish, was sought out and restored by the Emperor Hadrian.

C. MIDDLETON

353. TOO HIGH OPINIONS OF HUMAN NATURE-A PROOF OF IGNORANCE. Mankind have ever been prone to expatiate in the praise of human nature. The dignity of man is a subject that has always been the favourite theme of humanity: they have declaimed with that ostentation, which usually accompanies such as are sure of having a partial audience;