160. On the Ease with which the Healthy can prescribe for 161. Who make no Allowances for Temptation THE BOOK OF HUMAN CHARACTER. I. WHO ACQUIRE AN EARLY KNOWLEDGE OF MANKIND. 'Consider what I told you. You are young; One of such tenderness, so delicate, Should know so much?'-Beaumont and Fletcher. WHEN the guardians of ERASMUS desired him to be admitted as a regular in a convent-' No,' answered he, I will not. I neither know what the world is, what a monastery is, nor what I am myself. I think it, therefore, advisable to continue a few years more in 'the schools, that I may become better acquainted with myself.' Nothing was ever more shrewdly said by a young man of seventeen. I admire truth to break in upon me, little by little; as objects meet the eye in some of Rembrandt's best pictures, hung in a dark room. Confidence begets confidence; doubt begets doubt; but great confidence, when once abused, sometimes begets an extremity of suspicion and jealousy. Some men provoke others to overreach them by distrust;-the disgrace of being thought un B worthy of confidence, according to Seneca, justifying the previous deceit. No! distrust, on one side, is no justification for deceit on the other. On the contrary, the consequent deceit justifies the previous distrust. We have no right thus to take the law into our own hands. Distrust is odious enough; but experience teaches that distrust is not a proof of baseness, provided a man has reached the age of thirty-five. Young men are proud of being thought to know the world! Whom, however, do they resemble?-the traveller, who returned to his native village, full of knowledge in respect to the interior structure of Diana's temple at Ephesus: he had seen much; for he had entered the portico! In ninety instances out of a hundred, a prematurity of worldly knowledge is a dishonour. To know at forty is the business and duty of all; to know at twenty argues, impressively, bad examples, a vicious education, or a degenerate,—at least a dubious,-disposition. Let no one, therefore, seek to draw childhood from children, or virility from youth; since the practice is but too sure to entail upon them, in return, a sere adolescence, a sterile manhood; a yellow age. If an early knowledge of the world guard us from many serious difficulties, it plunges us, too often, into others still more irremediable. For if the errors of Petion, the celebrated mayor of Paris, were to be attributed to his having formed too favourable an opinion of human nature and of the French in particular, the early knowledge of Mirabeau brought him to a premature death, and that of the Duke of Orleans to a public scaffold. Knowing some things late is, for the most part, like coming out of a dark cave into the sunshine, and seeing before us a beautiful and extensive landscape. But knowing MEN late has not always this result; since prejudice is but too likely to have placed such a weight upon the lids, that they will open only to a very limited extent. While I confine myself to my own house, garden, library, and family circle, I seem as if I have the whole universe of nature and society, whether relating to the past or the present, at my command. But the moment I enter society, where all things are valued for their appearances, and their appearances almost entirely, the scene is altered, and I feel less than a bird. I return to my books and my circle, laugh at what I have witnessed, and, magnifying into a whale, feel inclined to exclaim, 'Let those who lagg'd now ambulate the more ; II. WHO KNOW MANKIND INTUITIVELY. Ar the "Rainbow." Julius there; one of those, who hide their heads, like the ostrich and the crocodile, and then think no one can see any part of their bodies. -Stat lumine clauso Ridendum revoluta caput; creditque la ere, Quæ non ipsa videt Claudian. This acquaintance of mine considers his own mind as a problem, which no one can solve; and yet as having the privilege of solving the characters of others in a manner, conformable with his own notions, vices, and virtues. A child, however, can detect him; and here we may not hesitate to remember that children have the power of detecting, with quickness and subtlety, many defects that escape the observation of men of experience. In respect to knowing mankind, some persons seem to have that art intuitively. They live in comparative solitude; and yet know all the springs of human action. More especially do they know 'Where fear, mistrust, malevolence abide, And impotent desire, and disappointed pride.' A person of this sort gave me, the other day, as the result of his experience, that the most general difficulties, his friends and neighbours had to contend with, were that of separating appearances from realities, and that of submitting to temporary inconveniences for the sake of an ulterior good. 'I do not say,' concluded he, that such is the case with all men; but I have ' found it to be the general case in my village. I have 'scarcely one single neighbour or friend, that has any 'true command or true knowledge of himself; and it is not improbable that you may say the same of me.' Massillon lived in retirement, and yet he entered deeply into subjects of real life. In fact, to know men, it is not necessary always to be acting on a public theatre; though it is certain, that most men must act before they can judge; few having resembled Massillon. Walpole lived in the world, partook of its government, and then retired into himself. Indeed, most of his works were written in retirement. 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