in him, and should find him the same man he had thought him that he would find some time, as soon as conveniently he might, to have more conference with him. In the mean time, that he should content himself with the ill accommodation he had, the amendment whereof would beget suspicion:" and so he called the guard instantly to carry him away, and to have a very strict eye upon him; and, turning to the company, and being conscious himself of the trouble and disorder in his countenance, told them, "that the Frenchman was a shrewd fellow, and understood more of the queen's counsels and designs than a man would suspect: that he had told him that which the parliament would be glad to know; to whom presently he would make a dispatch, though he had not yet so clear informations, as, he presumed, he should have after two or three days:" and so departed to his chamber.

LORD CLARENDON

115. PRAGMATICAL MEDDLING WITH OTHER MEN'S MATTERS. There are some, whose restless, insinuating, searching humour will never suffer them to be quiet, unless they dive into the concerns of all about them; they are always outward bound, but homeward never; they are perpetually looking about them, but never within them; they can hardly relish or digest what they eat at their own table, unless they know what and how much is served up to another man's; they cannot sleep quietly themselves, unless they know when their neighbour rises and goes to bed; they must know who visits him, and who is visited by him; what company he keeps; what revenues he has and what he spends; how much he owes and how much is owed to him. And this, in the judgment of some, is to be a man of business; that is, in other words, to be a plague and a spy, a treacherous supplanter and underminer of the peace of all families and societies. This being a maxim of an unfailing truth, that nobody ever pries into another man's concerns, but with a design to do or to be able to do him a mischief. A most detestable humour doubtless, and yet, as bad as it is, since there is nothing so base, barbarous, and dishonourable, but power joined with malice will sometimes make use of it, it may, and often does, raise a man a pitch higher in this world, though (it is to be feared) it may send him a large step lower in the next.

R. SOUTH

116. OLIVER

MATTHEW HALE.

CROMWELL-HIS DECLARATION TO SIR Cromwell told this great lawyer, that since he did not approve his title, all he required of him was to administer, in a manner agreeable to his pure sentiments and unspotted character, that justice without which human society cannot subsist; that it was not his particular government, but civil order itself, which as a judge he wished him to support. Cromwell knew how to separate the institutions expedient to his usurpation from the administration of the public justice of his country. For Cromwell was a man in whom ambition had not wholly suppressed, but only suspended, the sentiments of religion and the love (as far as it could consist with his designs) of fair and honourable reputation.

E. BURKE

117. TOLERATION OF CHRISTIANITY UNDER VALERIAN AND GALLIENUS. The administration of Valerian was distinguished by a levity and inconstancy, ill suited to the gravity of the Roman censor. In the first part of his reign, he surpassed in clemency those princes who had been suspected of an attachment to the Christian faith. In the last three years and a half, listening to the insinuations of a minister addicted to the superstitions of Egypt, he adopted the maxims, and imitated the severity, of his predecessor Decius. The accession of Gallienus, which increased the calamities of the empire, restored peace to the church; and the Christians obtained the free exercise of their religion by an edict addressed to the bishops, and conceived in such terms as seemed to acknowledge their office and public character. The ancient laws, without being formally repealed, were suffered to sink into oblivion; and (excepting only some hostile intentions which are attributed to the emperor Aurelian) the disciples of Christ passed above forty years in a state of prosperity, far more dangerous to their virtue than the severest trials of persecution.

E. GIBBON

118. POLITICAL HATRED. Plutarch says very finely, that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies, because, says he, if you indulge this passion in some occasions, it will rise of itself in others; if you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends or

those who are indifferent to you. I might here observe how admirably this precept of morality (which derives the malignity of hatred from the passion itself and not from its object) answers to that great rule which was dictated to the world about an hundred years before this philosopher wrote; but instead of that I shall only take notice, with a real grief of heart, that the minds of many good men among us appear soured with party-principles and alienated from one another in such a manner as seems to me altogether inconsistent with the dictates either of reason or religion. Zeal for a public cause is apt to breed passions in the hearts of virtuous persons, to which the regard of their own private interest would never have betrayed them.

J. ADDISON

119. THE EMPEROR MAJORIAN, HIS ZEAL IN PRESERVING THE ANCIENT EDIFICES OF ROME. The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. Specious petitions were continually addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of stones or bricks for some necessary service: the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry or pretended repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished with sacrilegious hands the labours of their ancestors. Majorian, who had often sighed over the desolation of the city, applied a severe remedy to the growing evil. He reserved to the prince and senate the sole cognisance of the extreme cases which might justify the destruction of an ancient edifice; imposed a fine of fifty pounds of gold (two thousand pounds sterling) on every magistrate who should presume to grant such illegal and scandalous licence, and threatened to chastise the criminal obedience of the subordinate officers by a severe whipping and the amputation of both their hands. In the last instance the legislator might seem to forget the proportion of guilt and punishment, but his zeal arose from a generous principle, and Majorian was anxious to protect the monuments of those ages, in which he would have desired and deserved to live.

E. GIBBON

120. ENGLISH AND FRENCH GARDENS. We have observed that there is generally in nature something more grand and august, than what we meet with in the curiosities of art.

When, therefore, we see this imitated in any measure, it gives us a nobler and more exalted kind of pleasure than what we receive from the nicer and more accurate productions of art. On this account our English gardens are not so entertaining to the fancy as those in France and Italy, where we see a large extent of ground covered over with an agreeable mixture of garden and forest, which represent every where an artificial rudeness, much more charming than that neatness and elegancy which we meet with in those of our own country. It might indeed be of ill consequence to the public, as well as unprofitable to private persons, to alienate so much ground from pasturage and the plough in many parts of a country that is so well peopled and cultivated to a far greater advantage. But why may not a whole estate be thrown into a kind of garden by frequent plantations, that may turn as much to the profit as the pleasure of the owner? A marsh overgrown with willows, or a mountain shaded with oaks, are not only more beautiful but more beneficial, than when they lie bare and unadorned. Fields of corn make a pleasant prospect, and if the walks were a little taken care of that lie between them, if the natural embroidery of the meadows were helped and improved by some small additions of art, and the several rows of hedges set off by trees and flowers that the soil was capable of receiving, a man might make a pretty landscape of his own possessions. J. ADDISON

121. GAYETY AND GOOD HUMOUR. Good humour may be defined a habit of being pleased; a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that which every man perceives in himself, when the first transports of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. Good humour is a state between gayety and unconcern; the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another. It is imagined by many, that whenever they aspire to please, they are required to be merry, and to shew the gladness of their souls by flights of pleasantry and bursts of laughter. But though these men may be for a time heard with applause and admiration, they seldom delight us long. We enjoy them a little, and then retire to easiness and good humour, as the eye gazes awhile on eminences glittering with the sun, but soon turns

aching away to verdure and to flowers. Gayety is to good humour as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance; the one overpowers weak spirits, and the other recreates and revives them. Gayety seldom fails to give some pain; the hearers either strain their faculties to accompany its towerings, or are left behind in envy and despair. Good humour boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.

S. JOHNSON

I22.

FELICITY SHEWS THE GROUND WHERE INDUSTRY

BUILDS A FORTUNE. Archimedes the great engineer (who in defending Syracusa against Marcellus shewed wonderful experiments of his extraordinary skill,) was bold to say, That he would remove the world out of his place, if he had elsewhere to set his foot. And truly I believe so far, that otherwise he could not do it: I am sure, so much is evident in the architecture of fortunes; in the raising of which the best art or endeavour is able to do nothing, if it have not where to lay the first stone; for it is possible with the like skill to raise a frame when we have matter; but not to create something out of nothing: the first being the ordinary effect of industry, this only of divine power. Indeed, many from very mean beginnings have aspired to very eminent place, and we usually ascribe it to their own worth, which no doubt in some is great; yet as in religion we are bound to believe, so in truth the best of them will confess, that the first advantage was reached out merely by a divine hand, which also no doubt, did always assist their after endeavours. Some have the felicity to be born heirs to good estates, others to be made so beyond their hopes. Marriage (besides the good which oftentimes it confers directly) collaterally sometimes helps to offices, sometimes to benefices, sometimes to dignities. Many rise by relation and dependance, it being a happy step to some, to have fallen on a fortunate master, to some on a foolish, to some (few) on a good. There are divers other means, of which, as of these, I am not so fit to speak, but truly considered, they are all out of our own power, which he that presumeth most cannot promise himself, and he that expects least sometimes attains.

SIR H. WOTTON