: too little be left at laft. A prodigal fire is only capa ble of large remains and yours, my lord, ftill burns the clearer in declining. The blaze is not fo fierce as at the first, but the fmoke is wholly vanished; and your friends who stand about you are not only fenfible of a chearful warmth, but are kept at an awful diftance by its force. In my fmall obfervations of mankind, I have ever found, that fuch as are not rather too full of fpirit when they are young, degenerate to dulnefs in their age. Sobriety in our riper years is the effect of a well-concocted warmth; but where the principles are only phlegm, what can be expected from the waterish matter, but an infipid manhood, and a stupid old infancy; difcretion in leading-strings, and a confirmed ignorance on crutches? Virgil, in his Third Georgic, when he defcribes a colt, who promifes a courfer for the race, or for the field of battle, fhews him the first to pass the bridge, which trembles under him, and to ftem the torrent of the flood. His beginnings must be in rafhnefs; a noble fault: but time and experience will correct that error, and tame it into a deliberate and well-weighed courage; which knows both to be cautious and to dare, as occafion offers. Your lordship is a man of honour, not only fo unstained, but fo unquestioned, that you are the living standard of that heroic virtue; fo truly fuch, that if I would flatter you, I could not. It takes not from you, that you were born with principles of generofity and probity; but it adds to you, that you have cultivated nature, and made those principles the rule and measure G 2 measure of all your actions. The world knows this, without my telling; yet poets have a right of recording it to all posterity. "Dignum laude virum, Musa vetat mori.” Epaminondas, Lucullus, and the two firft Cæfars, were not esteemed the worse commanders, for having made philosophy and the liberal arts their ftudy. Cicero might have been their equal, but that he wanted courage. To have both thefe virtues, and to have improved them both, with a softness of manners, and a fweetness of converfation, few of our nobility can fill that character: one there is, and fo confpicuous by his own light, that he needs not "Digito monftrari, et dicier hic est.” To be nobly born, and of an ancient family, is in the extremes of fortune, either good or bad; for virtue and defcent are no inheritance. A long feries of ancestors fhews the native with great advantage at the firft; but if he any way degenerate from his line, the leaft fpot is vifible on ermine. But to preferve this whitenefs in its original purity, you, my lord, have, like that ermine, forfaken the common track of bufinefs, which is not always clean: you have chofen for yourself a private greatness, and will not be polluted with ambition. It has been obferved in former times, that none have been fo greedy of employments, and of managing the public, as they who have leaft deserved their stations. But fuch only merit to be called patriots, under whom we fee their country flourish. I have laughed : laughed sometimes (for who would always be an Heraclitus) when I have reflected on thofe men, who from time to time have fhot themfelves into the world. I have seen many fucceffions of them; fome bolting out upon the stage with vast applause, and others hissed off, and quitting it with difgrace. But while they were in action, I have conftantly obferved, that they feemed defirous to retreat from bufinefs: greatness they said was naufeous, and a crowd was troublesome; a quiet privacy was their ambition. Some few of them I believe faid this in earnest, and were making a provifion against future want, that they might enjoy their age with ease they faw the happiness of a private life, and promised to themselves a bleffing, which every day it was in their power to poffefs. But they deferred it, and lingered ftill at court, because they thought they had not yet enough to make them happy; they would have more, and laid in to make their folitude luxurious. A wretched philofophy, which Epicurus never taught them in his garden: they loved the prospect of this quiet in reversion, but were not willing to have it in poffeffion; they would first be old, and made as fure of health and life, as if both of them were at their difpofe. But put them to the neceffity of prefent choice, and they preferred continuance in power like the wretch who called Death to his affiftance, but refused him when he came. The great Scipio was not of their opinion, who indeed fought honours in his youth, and indured the fatigues with which he purchased them. He ferved his country when it was in need of his courage and conduct, until he thought it was time to ferve himfelf: but difmounted from the faddle when he found the beaft which bore him began to grow restiff and ungovernable. But your lordship has given us a better example of moderation. You faw betimes that ingratitude is not confined to commonwealths; and therefore though you were formed alike, for the greatest of civil employments, and military commands, yet you pushed not your fortune to rife in either; but contented yourfelf with being capable, as much as any whofoever, of defending your country with your fword, or affifting it with your counsel, when you were called. For the reft, the refpect and love which was paid you, not only in the province where you live, but generally by all who had the happiness to know you, was a wife exchange for the honours of the court: a place of forgetfulness, at the beft, for well-defervers. It is neceffary for the polishing of manners, to have breathed that air; but it is infectious even to the best morals to live always in it. It is a dangerous commerce, where an honeft man is sure at the first of being cheated; and he recovers not his loffes, but by learning to cheat others. The undermining fmile becomes at length habitual; and the drift of his plaufible converfation, is only to flatter one, that he may betray another. Yet it is good to have been a looker-on, without venturing to play; that a man may know falfe dice another time, though he never means to ufe them. I commend not him who never knew a court, but him who forfakes it because he knows it. A young man deferves no In fhort, however he fucceeds, it is covetousness that induced him first to play, and covetoufness is the undoubted fign of ill fenfe at bottom. The odds are |