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individual, deserved whatever fate might chance to overtake them. He had no conception of the charm, that will ever be derived from bearing in remembrance the every nation's character as well as every

best part person's.

of

CLIX.
MOTIVES.

THE capacities of most men are more to be admired, I fear, than their motives.

In judging, we must, at one time, turn from actions to motives; at others from motives to actions. In some instances we must be silent, because we cannot but approve; in others because we cannot but condemn. Virtues are virtues only, when virtuously designed; and we are too often placed in situations, in which we are fated to remember and to apply the verses of Bellay, quoted in the memorials of Margaret de Valois;

'Thus Rome in Rome was sought for round;

But nought of Rome in Rome was found.'

For men do virtuous actions, in which there being no virtue in the motives, there is no virtue in rê.

Many bad men, also, do no bad actions; all their sins being those of omission. All surface, they are smooth as pillars of Parian marble; yet as inaccessible to pity and to charity as porphyry or granite.

Marivaux is said to have been a microscopic observer of the human heart, and to have made it so far his particular study, as to have been able to disclose all the minute shades of our determinations, and all the minute motives by which we are governed. I do not presume

to have arrived at this knowledge. For as the connexion of facts frequently leads to results, which appear absolutely inaccessible when we are ignorant of the principles on which they are founded, so do actions lose the entire complexion of their characters, when the motives, from which they sprung, are closely investigated and thereby clearly understood.

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Locke advised, that whenever we thought of any thing new, to throw it immediately upon paper. We may then judge of it better,' said he. Perhaps, if we did the same in respect to the conduct we witness in men, it might be equally advantageous. For when we examine strictly into things, we find, sometimes to our infinite astonishment, that Helvetius was not far from the truth when he asserted, that if memory and natural sensibility are the productive causes of all our ideas, so all our false judgments are the natural effects of our own passions and ignorance.

As some painters delineate features with precision, yet not the passions, by which those features may be animated, so writers are often more successful in correctly stating events, than in giving life to the characters that act in them. The cause of this we may, generally, trace to the difficulty of ascertaining the motives whence those actions emanated.

Some say, that the only method of judging men is to cast an eye upon their actions. No! The Reformation in England had never taken place, had Anna Boleyn been only half as ugly as Anne of Cleves. But we must stop; lest we resemble the critic who paused a long time over Velasquez's picture of Christ on the Cross' (now in the convent of St. Placido at Madrid),

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to discover whether the lances of the attendant soldiers were too long or too short!

It is by their motives only we can really know men; yet, as motives are secret and frequently undefinable, we can only judge by the best evidences we have, and those are actions. Actions are, nevertheless, imperfect criteria; because men want opportunities to be good or to be bad, so often, that they remain, perhaps, all their lives, halting, as it were, between earth and heaven, heaven and Tartarus. Many a farmer rests under a village heap, who would fain have been a Washington; and many a mitre disgraces the head of him who only wanted an opportunity of being a Petronius, an Esop, or a Barbarossa.

Why man has been made as he is, it is neither for me, nor for any one, to determine.-I speak merely what I believe to be true; and whether the multitude, or even the few, think otherwise, or not, will by no means settle the truth or the untruth. Flattery will not avail; and Censure will only prove more effectively delusive. • All the delicacies of the table,' says Johnson, may be traced to the shambles and the dunghill; all magnificence of building was hewn from the quarry; and all the pomp of ornaments dug from the damps and darkness of the mine.' Thus is it with human action. The deed is performed; but the motive is the gem, or the dust, which remains to be dug from the quarry. Our motives, in fact, are sometimes so disguised, or mingled, that we know them not. How much more

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difficult, then, is it to scrutinize, to precision, the motives of others; especially since we all know, that actions are but poor interpreters, and circumstances but too often the parents, not only of vices, but of virtues! If

These are the chiefest springs

To know the nature and the use of things;'

it is no less so to guard against our being inquisitive beyond occasion, and wise beyond our strength; since, even the greatest meanness is, occasionally, the companion of munificence; and since we all measure truth and error by the standard of our own capacities; and too seldom begin the study of mankind by first studying ourselves.

When men design bad deeds, they look around for glosses and excuses; and so pliable are faculties to desires, they find them, and are reconciled: they even seek the pleasures of vice, and hope from their enjoyment the rewards of virtue! That crimes should reap the rewards, which virtues ought to receive, is the greatest mystery of our state. The cause of attraction is not so difficult as this. The Genius said to the Hermit of Bassora- If you wish for the solution, be patient, ' and wait.'

CLX.

ON THE EASE WITH WHICH THE HEALTHY CAN PRESCRIBE FOR THE SICK.

BEING, one day, in earnest conversation with the poet Bloomfield, he told me, that some one had advised him to bear the pain he was fated to endure, with patience; for that it would be all the same a hundred years hence.' This diminutive of advice reminds one of three passages from three different countries :

'How readily do men at ease prescribe

To those who 're sick at heart!'

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This is from Terence *; Shakspeare has a thought analogous :

*Andrea; Colman.

'Tis all men's office to speak patience

To those, that wring beneath the load of sorrow;

But no man's virtue, nor sufficiency,

To be so moral, when he shall endure

The like himself."

Euripides has a similar thought; while a Welsh poet claims equality, if not superiority:—

'To speak of Snowdon's head sublime
Is far more easy than to climb;
So he, that's free from pain and care,
May bid the sick a smile to wear.'

Dives said unto Lazarus, "Thou shalt

sup to-morrow*.'

CLXI.

WHO MAKE NO ALLOWANCES FOR TEMPTATION.

SOME actors, during the French Revolution, seem to have been desirous of retrogradation, by endeavouring to assimilate civilized society with savage ones ;-and they did so; but when the Duke of Orleans, after the trial of Louis XVI., rose in the Assembly, and exclaimed,' I vote for death!' a murmur of horror echoed through the hall.

Lord Shaftesbury is not only right, but pre-eminently so, when he insists, that to have the natural affections is to have the chief means and power of self-enjoyment; the highest possession and happiness of life. Equally just are his observations when he proceeds to the assertion, that to have the private affections beyond their proper sphere of subordinacy is miserable; but to have affections, that tend neither to public nor to private good, is miserable in the highest degree.

* Legend.

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