lost days, and been obliged to take circuitous rounds, merely from the wish to save a few shillings! I look upon these littlenesses with resentment. The rule ought to be, save when you ought to save; and regard little things when they do not so far interfere with greater ones as to put them to hazard. I shall pursue this subject farther, when we come to the subject of 'Lovers of Minutiæ.'

CLXXI.

WHO ARE BLAMED UNJUSTLY.

-Call me a fool;

Trust not my reading; nor my observation,
Which with experimental seal doth warrant
The tenour of my book: trust not my age,
My reverence, calling, nor divinity,
If this sweet lady lie not guiltless here,
Under some biting error.'

Shakspeare; Much Ado about Nothing.

THE Goths, under Alaric, possessed Rome only five days; the Vandals, under Genseric, only fourteen ; and the hand of Totila was arrested by the energy and argument of Belisarius: what time, then, could those barbarians have had for dilapidation; especially when their whole appetite was directed to the acquirement of plunder?

Some attribute the abasement of the Roman language, and the origin of Gothic architecture, to the

Tiraboschi-Vetera Humiliatorum Monumenta, &c. For the origin of the Italian language, vide Muratori, Antiq. Medii Ævi. tom. ii. p. 989, fol. For the origin of Italian Poesy, tom. iii. p. 661.

Goths; but others, perhaps, with still more justice, ascribe both to the natives of Italy themselves.

Many a man's name has been consecrated by absence and persecution; while the fame and influence of a General rise and fall with the success or non-success of his arms. Are the wicked visited by afflictions? their afflictions are judgments! Are the good overwhelmed by misfortunes? they are trials. But success is the criterion by which most men judge both of wisdom and virtue.

When the clergyman of Stratford on Avon cut down Shakspeare's mulberry-tree, because it overshadowed his window, the populace were so indignant that he was obliged to leave the town: and the people declared, that no one of his name should ever afterwards be suffered to reside in Stratford. Yet when Garrick instituted a festival in honour of the same poet, the same persons looked upon him as a magician, and insisted that the continual rain, which fell during the jubilee, was no other than a judgment from Heaven.

Gibbon + attributes the loss, which Gratian sustained in the esteem of the Romans, to his virtues being the results of education, rather than the hardy ones arising from experience and adversity. In reference to Philagricus, who had been stigmatized by some historians, yet praised by Gregory Nazianzen, the same historian says, that, for the credit of human nature, he was always pleased to discover some good qualities in those whom party had represented as tyrants and monsters. Marquis de Maffei's Verona Illustra. III. 365.

† V. 2.

'The experienced merit* of a reigning monarch,' says he, is acknowledged by his subjects with reluctance, ' and frequently denied with partial and discontented murmurs; while from the opening virtues of his suc'cessor they fondly conceive the most unbounded hopes ' of private as well as public felicity.'

Such was the hope at the appointment of the late regency; and the Whigs attempted to throw great odium on the Prince, because he forsook them at that period. But could the Prince have carried on the government? I contend that he could not. Mr. Fox was dead and neither sufficient power, sufficient fame, nor sufficient talent, remained with those he left behind. Lloyd says that the people honour those most who employ most; princes those who have most. An insinuation of this kind was thrown out against the Prince; but it is more than probable, that, from long experience, he had acquired an ample knowledge of the strength, views, and complexion of the party, by which he has since been so unwarrantably libelled and condemned.

CLXXII.

DIFFICULT AND EASY VIRTUES.

'What, what is Virtue, but repose of mind,
A pure, ethereal calm that knows no storm;
Above the reach of wild Ambition's wind,
Above those passions, that this world deform,
And torture man ;-a proud, malignant worm!'

THUS sings the wizard; and those who love the dead + State Worthies.

* III. 107.

repose of virtue may celebrate the apparent beauty of the sentiment. But I cannot but confess, that I think a guilty man, labouring under punishment for a real crime, is more to be pitied than an innocent one, undergoing the same penalty for an imaginary one. For to the latter, the future is all hope: to the former, all despair.

Paley defines very erroneously, when he calls virtue the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of 'God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness.' There is, on the contrary, as it were,

'A smooth, short space of yellow sand,

Between it and the greener land *.'

There is this distinction between being good and being virtuous. He may be called good, who does humane actions without having had any temptations against which to combat; and he virtuous, who has contended successfully against temptations, and performed good actions in spite of them. I should call Newton, for instance, good; but I am not certain whether he ought to be dignified with the epithet virtuous; since neither his temperature, passions, nor fortune, laid him open to those allurements of pleasure and power, or those temptations of penury and want, by which the majority of mankind are so deluded, persecuted, and enthralled. He lived, for the most part, the life of a hermit:

'Above those cares and visionary joys,

That so perplex the fond, impassion❜d heart
Of ever-cheated, ever-trusting man.'

* Byron.

Virtues imply struggles; hence the propriety of a celebrated passage in Milton's 'Comus :'—

'Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free.
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,

Heaven itself would stoop to her.'

The strongest tea in China (the yu-tien) scarcely colours the water. It has been said, that a thing being in itself an evil, or a crime, does not prove that cases may not exist, in which it absolutely changes its nature. Assuredly, a virtue may be carried to excess, and a crime may be construed into a virtue; though it can never have the truth and actual basis of essential virtue. Who, then, may be esteemed virtuous? Those, whose general characteristics are justice and benevolence; fortitude, temperance, chastity, and prudence, as regarding themselves; piety, reverence, and resignation, as it respects the Author of their being.

We may compare some men's virtues to particular plants. Some resemble the truffle, which never appears above ground, requires little air for its nourishment, and no light. Some resemble the sugar maple, which affords the greater quantity of sirup the more often it is tapped. Some resemble the hassagay, which, though one of the largest of African trees, has very diminutive flowers. And some remind us of the prickly caper, which, though common in the hedge-rows of France, can only be made to flower in England in a stove, and even then only with very great care.