Deffand, when ambassador to the Ottoman court, 'I enjoy a view which the greatest sovereigns might envy 'me. There I devote a great deal of time to reflection; 'but I always endeavour to seize the bright side of every thing; since I have always thought it the acme of 'wisdom to be happy in any place and in any situation.' We may, however, adopt too high a standard in respect to character, and of this Racine has set the example; and the remark may be applied to Metastasio in his characters of Cleonice and Annius, in his dramas of 'Demetrius' and 'La Clemenza di Tito.' Truly great minds, however, are perpetually forming high characters of things. They are little in nothing. With them great objects engender greater ideas. When Michael Angelo left Florence, in order to build the dome of St. Peter's, he turned his horse to take a last view of the beautiful church of Santa Maria, and exclaimed, 'Come te non voglio! meglio di te non posso.' He, nevertheless, built one much superior. Some characters have all their ideas enlarged to the utmost extent of exaggeration. All nature is in caricature: hence in their proportions we recognize neither dignity nor elegance nor propriety; like those painters who, by adopting sombre hues, derange the due balance and participation of light and shade; and this generalizers frequently do by endeavouring to bend every subject to a system, rather than making them subject to the faithful generalizations of truth. Franklin asserted that mind will, one day, become omnipotent over matter. This assertion has been twisted into all manner of meanings; but the saying was made only in reference to machines and co-operations of labour. Bacon and Condorcet imagined the possibility of a longer duration of life, arising from the increasing improvement of art. Starting from this point, a philosopher of the present day* anticipates a period, when men will reach an almost unlimited age, through the medium of an improved intellect; when there will be neither disease nor pain, melancholy nor resentment; when the whole of society will consist of real men and not of actual children; when men will cease to propagate; when the absence of crime will render government a matter of history; such being no longer necessary, and therefore none in existence in any part of the globe. A friend has made a fine remark,- every successful 'student in mental philosophy is only, as it were, one of a series of labourers in the vineyard of mind; all know'ledge is silently unfolding an universal science; no one can, therefore, declare the limits of the human mind.†' In this I agree. XIII. LOOKERS-ON. 'I HAVE no wife, nor children, good or bad, to pro'vide for; I am a spectator of other men's fortunes and ' adventures, and how they play their parts, which, methinks, are diversely presented unto me as from a common theatre or scene.' Thus writes Burton, the eccen *Godwin. Political Justice, vol. ii., p. 520, 528. + Clissold's Hints for the Development of the Mind, p. 57. tric author of the Anatomie of Melancholy;' as a Greek writer had written before him. This passage seems very fine; it even carries an air of philosophy with it: but the man who has never married, who has never had children, who is a mere spectator, who sits calmly and idly as if lounging at a theatre, may be very shrewd and very intelligent, as far as sights go; he may know a multitude of anecdotes, and be capable of making many curious observations ;but, unless he has been previously an actor in the scene, he can have little knowledge of the temptations with which men, who find themselves compelled to perform parts in the drama of life, are so fatally assailed. He stands like a dismantled fortress;-more to be admired in perspective than feared by enemies on a near approach, or depended upon by friends. We know nothing of the scent of a flower even from a fac-simile of Vanhuysen; and little or nothing of character even from the best sculpt of Michael Angelo. We may think much, yet we can know but little; unless we see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears, and suffer with our own nerves. We must frequently have hoped, and have been disappointed; frequently have trusted and been betrayed ;—for never to hope luxuriantly, and never to trust unwisely, are the fortunate privileges of none. Some French writer has said, that a knowledge of electricity has placed mankind upon an equality with the gods of antiquity; but Septimius Severus had arrived at a still higher height of observation, when he complained that he had seen all things, and found all things to be of little or no value. He had, probably, never read Solomon; but his own experience taught him that all was vanity! Chesterfield acknowledges the same result*. Cowper, too, 'I sum up half mankind, And add two-thirds to the remaining half, All is vanity; yet nothing exists in vain. This one truth, thoroughly engraven on the memory and the heart, is worth a thousand articles in the mere catalogue of human opinions. For my own part, I find the world to be right as often as I find it to be wrong; and almost as often wrong as I find it to be right. The cause of this seems to arise out of the circumstance, that men examine subjects only in parts. They will not stop till they are in possession of facts; nor will they wait till they have heard the whole of either a circumstance or an argument They fix their eyes upon the prominent parts of the picture, and cannot take them off. As they judge, therefore, from ex-parte statements, they must, of necessity, often be in the wrong; but when they are thoroughly acquainted with the whole, such is my respect for the common sense of mankind, that I believe their judgments to be right ninety-six times out of a hundred. We spend many years in acquiring the capacity of judging what is really beautiful and what is intrinsically I have been as wicked and as vain,' said he, though not so wise, as Solomon; but I am, at least, wise enough to feel that 'all is vanity and vexation of spirit. This truth is never sufficiently < discovered or felt by mere speculation; experience is necessary for 'conviction; though, perhaps, at the expense of some morality.' excellent. We live in our fathers' houses; but it is only after many trials that we recognise the ease, comfort, and freedom from danger and injury, we there enjoyed; free from impertinence, ignorance, impudence, and imbecility. We enter the world, and what, in the name of Heaven, do we see? But mere spectators can seldom see more than the outsides either of men or of things; their account is closed when they presume to judge interiors; they indulge their humour or their spleen, and dispense their praise and their censure as best accords. with their interests, wishes, passions, or capacities; forgetting that as every plant upon the earth serves as a region, as a house, and as food, for myriads of insects. invisible to the naked eye; so virtues and vices, services and disservices, honour and dishonour, power and weakness, wisdom and folly, belong to every one under the canopy of heaven; differing only in degree, and those differences arising perhaps from circumstances, partially unknown to the parties themselves, and still more remote from the reach or the vision of those, who presume to sit in judgment upon them. De Witt used to assert, that it should be a perpetual maxim with him, to let no one be master of his time or repose. This, however, is very different from the conduct of those lookers-on, who are fully sensible to their own desires and feelings, and yet calm and indifferent to the desires and agonies of others. Lookers-on, in times of great public disaster, ought to be the first to be compelled to leave a city: because, as they feel only for themselves, they cannot be trusted. by any; since they throw away the implements of honest |