pay of this sacred officer is still punctually deposited by the sovereigns, at the chapel royal, every year, in a purse of red velvet. Strange, that such gross ignorance should so long have pervaded a country, which, almost three centuries ago, gave birth to CAMOENS. I have just met with a curious instance of alliteration, which I copy here, to show to what lengths the ancients carried this poetical artifice. It cannot be disputed that the harmony of verse is much promoted by a skilful alliteration, but the great fault with many writers is, that they resort to its artful aid so often, and with so much apparent self-gratulation, that they betray a narrow mind, more intent on the balancing of a period, or harmony of a line, than the novelty of an idea, or the accuracy of a sentiment. The instance that induced me to take up my pen is this. My readers must not be displeased at the continual obtrusion of quotation, throughout this work, since my professed object is to introduce such passages as I may meet with in the course of my reading, which are distinguished either for their excellence or absurdity. Plaudite porcelli; porcorum pigra pro vated with singular success by Pope, and other eminent poets. In the rhymes of the Della Cruscans it, however, degenerates to absurdity. You may have there dewy drops from pearly peepers, and muddy moans in any measure. I recollect a very happy instance in some Lines on Smoking, in the Port Folio, which conclude And, sadly silent, seeks the sweets of sleep. This is truly what Churchill called apt alliteration's artful aid. In the ninth century, Hubaud, a learned monk, dedicated to the emperor Charles the Bald (Charles le Chauve), a poem in praise of bald men, every word of which commenced with the letter C. Cármina, clarisonce calvis cantate Ca menæ. Somewhat allied to this is another art in poetry, which I must illustrate by an example, as I cannot designate it by a name. An author has written a poem of 2956 verses of six feet, of which the last only is a spondee, the other five being dactyles. The second foot rhymes with the fourth, and the last word of each verse rhymes with that of the subsequent one. It com mences thus: a work on the pleasures of study, which was written, I believe, in the fifteenth century, by Ringelbergius, a German scholar. It is little known among men of letters, but its singular merits ought to rescue it from the oblivion into which it is falling. In the chapter I have mentioned, he exhorts us, though we should fall headlong a thousand times in our ascent, we must begin again every time more ardently, and fly to the summit with recruited vigour! Let no one be dejected if he be not conscious of any great advancement at first. The merchant thinks himself happy if, after a ten years' voyage, after a thousand dangers, he at last improves his fortune; and shall we, like poor-spirited creatures, give up all hopes after the first onset? QUODCUMQUE IMPERAVIT ANIMUS OBTINUIT*. Whatever the mind has commanded itself to do, it has obtained its purpose. Riches must have no charms, compared to the charms of literature. Poverty is favourable to the success of all literary pursuits. I mean not to throw contempt on money in general, but on that exorbitant wealth, which allures the mind from study. The student must be desirous of praise. It is a promising presage of success to be roused by praise, when one shall have done well, and to be grieved and incited to higher aims, on finding himself blamed or outdone by another. He who aspires at the summit must be passionately fond of glory. Thus have the first qualities, indispensably requisite in a youth devoted to study, been mentioned. He must aim at the highest points; he must love labour; he must never despair; he must despise money; The sentence which follows this quotation does not express the terseness and energy of the original: but its force is fully displayed in the language of an English writer: he must be greedy of praise. It remains that we prescribe the methods. There are then three gradations in the modes of study: hearing, teaching, writing. It is a good and easy method to hear, it is better and easier to teach, and the best and easiest of all to write. Lectures are dull, because it is tedious to confine the liberty of thought to the voice of the speaker. But when we teach or write, the very exercise itself precludes the tedium. I had intended to close the volume with this extract, but I cannot resist the temptation to make another; such is the enthusiasm of admiration, and the power of genius is so commanding. How mean, says he, how timid, how abject must be that spirit, which can sit down contented with mediocrity! As for myself, all that is within me is on fire. I had rather, he proceeds, in his nervous manner, be torn in a thousand pieces than relax my resolution of reaching the sublimest heights of virtue and knowledge. I am of opinion, that nothing is so arduous, nothing so admirable in human affairs, which may not be attained by the industry of man. We are descended from heaven: thither let us go, whence we derive our origin. Let nothing satisfy us, lower than the summit of all excellence. The summit then I point out as the proper Scope of the student. But labour must be loved, and the pleasures of luxury despised. Shall we submit to be extinguished for ever, without honour, without remembrance,avdades ouder dedeyuevos, without having done any thing like men? Such are the qualities required, such is the ambition recommended by this eloquent German, and, from my own short experience of the pleasures and pains of study, I hesi tate not to give my feeble applause to his exhortation. Let the student be animated by the laurels of fame, which never fade, and spring forward, alert and vigorous, to the Speak the commanding words I wILL, Olympic prize. Let not his indus and it is done. try be remitted by lassitude, or his ambition daunted by a temporary disappointment, but let him reflect on the reputation of Shakespeare and Johnson, over whose tombs perennial honours will ever bloom with unabated lustre. Let him consider that eloquence can force the reluctant wonder of the world, and make even monarchs tremble on the throne. This is the glorious triumph of knowledge, and the brilliant reward of industry. CENTO. For the Literary Magazine. IS A FREE OR DESPOTIC GOVERN has been filled with this single object, and grief and detestation has excluded or supplanted every other sentiment. It is true, that similar horrors and disasters have taken place in the Greek republics, and in the ancient and modern ones of Italy; but we are little affected by what is distant, and a summary narrative takes no hold of the imagination. Athens, Rome,, and Florence were the scenes of commotions and bloodshed quite as dreadful, and, in proportion to their population and territory, quite as extensive, as France has lately been. But the eulogists of civil liberty seldom allowed these parts of the picture to engage their attention. They MENT MOST FRIENDLY TO HU- fixed their thoughts upon individual MAN HAPPINESS? A FEW years ago, this would have been thought a most absurd, as well as impudent question. It would have been deemed an insult to the common understanding of every man born in Great Britain or America, to suppose this question susceptible of doubt or controversy. A revolution has certainly been effected in many minds, with regard to this question, within the last fifteen years. Many of those, who once considered the superiority of political freedom as a point altogether beyond dispute, and as supported, not only by intuitive, selfevident truth, but by the loud and uniform attestation of experience, have now gone over to the opposite opinion. Many have, at least, found their convictions shaken, and if they have not entirely abjured their ancient creed, begin, at least, to perceive that the truth of it is not quite as clear as they once imagined. The cause of this silent revolution in human opinions is well known to be the horrors and disasters of the French revolution. The scenes of this revolution having taken place under our own eyes, our sympathy has been irresistibly affected. The story being familiarly known to us, in all its circumstances and details, the imagination, if I may so speak, cases of military heroism, patriotic magnanimity, or intellectual vigour, and these being, as they conceived, the genial products of civil liberty, they admitted no side views or impertinent retrospects to damp their admiration. Now, however, it is not uncommon to perceive a resemblance between the history of the old and the new republics. The fruits of ancient liberty, in genius and heroism, begin to dwindle into nothing, in our eyes, while the tales of massacre, confiscation, and exile are listened to with new deference and new emotions. It would probably be difficult, at this time, to meet with a strenuous advocate of that kind of liberty, which is necessarily productive of, or attended with, foreign and intestine wars; and yet I was lately in company with such a one, with whose eloquence and ingenuity I was so much pleased, that I took the first opportunity of putting his declamation on paper. Men are destined, says he, to play in human life for manifold stakes of unequal importance. The merchant plays for profit, and hazards his property. The warrior plays for victory or conquest, and hazards his life. Every one who seeks fortune, preferment, or honour, hangs in suspence between the opposite events of success or dis appointment. What was staked among the ancients, in their nation al quarrels, was of greater importance than is risked at war, by the officer or soldier, in any modern nation. When captives were retained in servitude, or sent to the market for slaves, the soldier exposed not only his life but his personal freedom. This violation of human ity was enforced by the Romans in all their wars, and by the Greeks put in practice in their contests, not only with barbarous nations, but even with one another. During the Peloponnesian war, and for many years after it, the republics of Greece were, at home, almost always distracted by furious factions, and abroad involved in sanguinary wars, in which each sought not merely superiority of dominion, but either completely to extirpate all its enemies, or what was not less cruel, to reduce them into the vilest of all states, that of domestic slavery; and to sell them, man, woman, and child, like so many head of cattle to the highest bidder in the market. From this account of the Greeks, some are disposed to infer, they were a wretched people, but I question the truth of the inference. The fortunes of men do not always decide their feelings. Cervantes wrote his adventures of Don Quixote in a prison; and, from so vigorous an exercise of all his faculties in that situation, we have reason to conclude that a person may not be wretched though in prison. The human mind gave similar proofs of felicity no where more conspicuous than in Greece. And if human life be compared to a game, it was played among ancient nations, and the Greeks in particular, on a stake no less indeed than that of freedom as well as life. But their example should lead us to think that the spirits of men are not greatly damped by the risks which they are made to run in the service of their country. The first citizens in every Grecian state, with this prospect of contingent slavery before them, took their post with alacrity in the armies that were formed for VOL. III. NO. XVIII. the defence or advancement of their country: and in no quarter of the world was the military character held in higher esteem. Those nations, at the same time, in other respects, show marks of felicity superior to what has ever been displayed in any other quarter of the world or age of mankind. In their very language, there is evidence of genius or intellectual ability, superior to that of other nations. The order and form of their expression kept pace with the order and discrimination of subjects to be expressed, with all the possible varieties of relation, and with all the subtilties of thought and sentiment beyond what is exemplified in any other known instance. They led the way also in all the forms of literary composition or discourse, under which the human genius is displayed. Their poets, historians, orators, and moralists, preceded those of other nations, and remain unequalled by those that came after them. Their sculptors, painters, and architects, excelled those of every other nation; and the same genius which rose towards every object, in which excellence or beauty could be required or exhibited, gave also the most masterly examples of civil, political, or military virtues; and, in the whole, gave the most irrefragable evidence of minds no way sunk by the sense of oppression, or the gloomy prospect of hazard impending from the loss of liberty, or the fear of slavery, to which they were exposed. The ease and alacrity with which they moved on the highest steps of the political, the moral, and intellectual scale, abundantly showed how much they enjoyed that life and freedom of which they were so worthy, and which they so freely risked in the service of their country. And if the hazard of blessings which they staked in every public contest had at all any effect on their minds, their example may serve to prove that men are not unhappy in proportion to the stake for which they contend; or, perhaps, what is verified in the case of other players 3 as well as in theirs, that persons who are used to a high stake cannot condescend to play for a lower; or that he who is accustomed to contend for his freedom or his life can scarcely find scope for his genius in matters of less moment. A warden of the English marches, on a visit to the court of Scotland, before the accession of James to the throne of England, said he could not but wonder how any man could submit to so dull a life as that of a citizen or courtier: that, for his own part, no day ever past in which he did not pursue some one for his life, or in which he himself was not pursued for his own. It is the degradation of fear, the guilt of injustice or malice, to which the mind of man never can be reconciled; not the risks to which the liberal may be exposed in defending his country, or in withstanding iniquity. We are, for the most part, ill qualified to decide what is happy or miserable in the condition of other men at a distance. The inconveniences which we see, may be compensated in a way which we do not perceive. And there is in reality nothing but vileness and malice that cannot be compensated in some other way. Even those we call slaves are amused in the performance of their task, and, when it is over, are observed to be playsome and cheerful beyond other men. They are relieved of any anxiety for the future, and devolve every care on their master. We estimate the felicity of ages and nations by the seeming tranquillity and peace they enjoy; or believe them to be wretched under the agitations and troubles which sometimes attend the possession of liberty itself. The forms of legislature, which imply numerous assemblies, whether collective or representative, have been often censured as exposing men to all the inconveniences of faction or party division; but, if these inconveniences are to be dreaded, they nevertheless may be fairly hazarded, for the sake of the end to be obtained in free governments, the safety of the people, and the scope which is given to all the noble faculties of the human mind. If I mistake not the interests of human nature, they consist more in the exercise of freedom, and the indulgence of a liberal and beneficent temper, than in the possession of mere tranquillity, or what is termed exemption from trouble. The trials of ability which men mutually afford to one another in the collisions of free society, are the lessons of a school which Providence has opened for mankind, and are well known to forward instead of impeding their progress in any valuable art, whether commercial or elegant. In their social capacity, the most important objects of attention, and the most improving exercises of ability, are enjoyed by the members of a free state: forms of government may be estimated, not only by the actual wisdom or goodness of their administration, but likewise by the numbers who are made to participate in the service or government of their country, and by the diffusion of political deliberation and function to the greatest extent that is consistent with the wisdom of its administration. While those who would engross every power to themselves may gravely tell us, that the public good consists in having matters ordered in the manner they conceive to be right, we may venture to reply, that it consists still more in having proper numbers admitted to a share in the councils of their nation: that though the proverb, in some cases, should fail, and safety should be wanting in multitude of counsellors, yet the multitude of council is in itseif a greater public advantage than the talents of any single person, however great, can otherwise procure for his country. Single men may choose a measure or conduct a service better than might be obtain ed in any concourse of members; but numbers do more in a succession of ages than any single man could do; and human nature is more interested in having nations formed to |