'sition of new knowledge, as to unlearn the errors, to which he had been taught to give an implicit assent, 'before the dawn of reason and reflection.'

Happy will be the time when truths, moral, political, religious, and philosophic, are taught in our schools; and when the poor as well as the rich may walk, hand in hand, beneath the bowers of intelligence.

LXIV.

WHO ARE EVER READY TO THROW THE BLAME OFF THEIR OWN SHOULDERS.

ELIZABETH threw the blame of the execution of the Duke of Norfolk on Lord Burleigh; and that of Mary, Queen of Scots, on her secretary, Davison. Nothing indeed is so convenient to a tyrant, whether male or female, as a scape-goat!

When men fail in their attempts, every one is to blame rather than themselves. Fortune or heaven are the general scape-goats; and on these are our ignorances, vices, and crimes universally laid.

'I saw my shaft with aim unerring go,

And deemed it sent him to the shades below.
But still he lives. Some angry god withstands,
Whose malice thwaits these unavailing hands.'
Homer, Iliad. Wakefield.

Men often affect disdain when their only feeling is fear. Metellus ridiculed Sertorius, and called him 'fugitive' and 'outlaw.' Yet he offered for the head

of this fugitive and outlaw no less than one hundred talents * of silver and twenty thousand acres of land.

Some men are more courageous against tongues than they are against swords; others more so against swords than tongues. When Edward VI. was constrained, by the repeated importunities of his ministers, to consent to the martyrdom of Joan of Kent, for entertaining some point of doctrine not esteemed orthodox, the king said to Cranmer, I submit, my lord of Canterbury, to sign this warrant; but if there is any wrong, the 'blame must fall upon your grace's head;' and the tears rolled down his cheeks as he spoke. This was beautifully said, since Edward was a boy; but it would not have been beautifully said, had Edward been a man. He would then have laid commands upon the archbishop never to enter the council-chamber again.

When virtue flourishes and sails prosperously before the wind, most men are envious of it. The ship encounters a gale, which increases into a storm. It is blown from north to south, from east to west, at the caprice of the hurricane. It loses its pilot, and lastly its rudder; no one flies to its assistance. It is seen to sink, deeper and deeper, every minute. At last, the waters rise over the deck; a whirlpool is witnessed in the water; and a mast only remains, like a spire, to tell the tale of misfortune. All, then, bewail the severity of the storm, and blame their associates for not affording a hand to save the devoted vessel.

Men may expect justice and liberality in the con

*Patercul., ii., 30. Flor., iii., c. 21.

struction of an enemy, and they will find them; that is, in five persons out of fifty thousand. An evil occurs. It is caused by some one; or perhaps twenty persons have occasioned it. All these twenty will resemble each other in this; that they will endeavour, with the greatest industry, to throw the blame off their own shoulders; and, to get it off, they will hurl it upon any one, even on a man in no way concerned. 'Come, ' unfortunate women,' said Marie Antoinette, when at the monastery of the Feuillants; 'come, and see one still 'more miserable than yourselves; since she has been 'the cause of all your misfortunes. We are ruined; 'we have arrived at that point to which they have been leading us, for these three years, through all possible outrages. We shall fall in this dreadful revolution; and many others will perish after us. All have con'tributed to our downfall. The reformers have urged ' it like mad people; and others, through ambition, for 'their own interest; for the wildest Jacobin seeks 'wealth and distinction, and the mob is eager for plunder. There is not one lover of his country amongst 'this infamous horde; the emigrant party have their intrigues and schemes; foreigners seek to profit by 'the dissensions of France; every one has had a share in our misfortunes.'

This is all true; but not all that is true. Her majesty forgot the hand the king, and even herself, had in the fatal work, by being unfaithful to the constitution his majesty had sworn to respect. Had he regarded his oath, all, perhaps, had been well.

LXV.

WHO ARE ENAMOURED OF DEFORMITY.

WHEN We gaze on a drawing from Velasco of Pope Innocent X., we gaze on the ugliest man of his time; whose mistress was the most beautiful woman of her time; and by whose intrigues he was raised to the papacy. The original picture is in the Houghton collection, now at St. Petersburgh.

:

Some women have so exquisite a taste, that they fall in love not only with fools, but with vulgarity of mind, and deformity of body and this is the secret. of the allegory of Venus visiting the workmen of VulDarwin has a fine passage; and with this we may illuminate our subject.

can.

Descending, Venus sought the dark abode,
And soothed the labours of the grisly god.
With radiant eye she view'd the boiling ore,
Heard, undismay'd, the breathing bellows roar,
Admired their sinewy arms, and shoulders bare,
And ponderous hammers lifted high in air;
With smiles celestial bless'd their dazzled sight,
And beauty blazed amid infernal night.'

The poetry of Darwin is out of-fashion! I cannot, however, but think that, superior as he is to Aratus, Oppian, and Manilius, he is in many respects inferior to Lucretius only in point of antiquity. Has France, Germany, Italy, or Spain, any poet (in his line) to be placed in competition with him? Not one! He exhibits, indeed, some of the finest passages in human language.

VOL. I.

I

LXVI.

WHO BELIEVE ALL MISFORTUNES TO BE FAULTS.

SOME there are, whose pity is susceptible of so strong an excitement, that they feel, as if they were ready to fall into the very misfortune, they see others labour under*. Some, on the contrary, are so heartless, that they appear to have no conception, that any one can come to distress, but through the medium of their own indiscretion and desert. A very numerous description of men! many of the rich, for instance; and most of those, who are getting rich. And yet many of these are sorely disappointed, when a tale turns out to be not quite so bad, as that which was at first reported.

It is Montesquieu, I think, that observes that men, in excess of happiness, are ever inclinable to severity. Cruelty is, but too often, in fact, the associate of indolence and prosperity. Indeed, some of these persons remind us of the Oura ou asson of Brazil, which forms its nest of the bones of the animals it has killed. They exist; but they remain comparatively unknown, in the bosom of large societies: for the ambition of men, capable of great crimes, is so great, that it prevents them from wasting their strength, in committing small

It happeneth oftetymes, that wee take compassion of theyme, wee loue not: eyther for the malice wee beare theym, that offered the iniurye, or thoroughe beliefe, that the inured is condemned, 'rather by power of hys enemye, then his own offence.'-The thirde Booke of Cardanus Comforte, published by commaundement of the Rt. Hon. the Earle of Dolnford. 1573.