themselves. All mediums, therefore, require peculiar regulations of government. Plato's object, in the Erasta, is to convince us, that the study of philosophy leads to the knowledge of ourselves; with the design of making our acquirements operate on the minds of other persons. His first Alcibiades teaches the necessity of knowing oneself, without which all the sciences are useless. The second Alcibiades shows, that, till we do know ourselves, we are ill-qualified for a profitable intercourse with mankind; and that, till we have acquired so much of the knowledge of nature as to know the debt we owe, we are equally unqualified to address ourselves to the Creator. These works present no novelty, either of argument or of illustration, for the present age; but we ought never to forget, that they laid the ground-work of no inconsiderable part of what we know.

Know thyself! How can we know ourselves, if we know not our faults and vices? How can we know ourselves, if we are equally ignorant of our virtues? To feel the value of our virtues is to be half-converted from our faults and vices.

Know thyself! This is indeed a comprehensive sentence. For it is not only to know our relative situation in society, our manners, our wants, our superfluities, our desires, and our capacities; the force of our passions, our probable and real opportunities; but our duties in their separate parts; and what is, perhaps, still more difficult, our relative situation in the universe. The greatest volume, in fact, to every man, is the volume of himself.

XXI.

WHO DO NOT DO JUSTICE TO THEIR OWN POWERS.

SIR William Jones may strictly be ranked with illustrious men. 'I will only say,' said he, in a letter to Schultens, that if I had lived at Rome or Athens, I 'should have preferred the labours, studies, and dangers ' of their orators and illustrious citizens, connected as they were with banishment and even death, to the groves of the poets, or the gardens of the philosophers.' In spite of this, it can scarcely be denied, I think, that he was less qualified for the one than for the other. He had not sufficient pliancy of mind for the bar; nor had he sufficient energy of body for the arena of politics. He was superior to both;—he was even qualified to have been a legislator. Yet, if we except his attention to British and Hindoo law, it may be justly said, that he wasted his powers on inferior objects. mind was equal to an enlarged study of the universe; and yet he permitted it to be chained down, for the most part, by an attachment to mere words, remote antiquities, and detached portions of natural history. As a man, he was beyond all praise: his chief fault seems to have been, the not doing justice to his own powers.

His

XXII.

WHO CAN BE JUDGED OF ONLY IN REFERENCE TO THEIR

MISFORTUNES.

THE discoveries of Galileo were brilliant; those of Kepler profound, and the product of intense labour; yet he is more intimately known by his works than

Galileo. In fact, we know from them every secret of his heart. Montaigne is not more candid, nor Froissart more transparent. Well did I love to see,' says the latter, dances and carolling; well to hear the min'strelsy and tales of glee; well to attach myself to those 'who loved hounds and hawks; well to toy with my 'fair companions; and methought I had the art well ' to win their grace.' Kepler was of a more solid nature. In reading his works, we are surprised to be let into his weaknesses, errors, and secrets. He is always undressed as it were; he has no disguises; and he explains his mode of proceeding in respect to worldly cares, as he does in regard to the difficulty of his discoveries. His sagacity could only be equalled by his genius; and his genius can be estimated only by precise references to his misfortunes. He lives in the records of the firmament; and he lives, also, in the catalogue of those who, illustrious in their virtues and studies, have died of broken hearts!

XXIII.

WHOSE ONE BAD QUALITY NEUTRALIZES THEIR VIRTUES.

SOME men, and even some women, though neither ill-humoured nor quarrelsome, are exceedingly difficult to live with; they having one quality so irksome, that it counterbalances the advantages and beauties of all the rest. Were a woman a loud talker, for instance, it would, with me, be of little or no advantage, that she were as beautiful as Venus; as learned as Madame Dacier; as accomplished as Cleopatra; or even as fas

cinating as the houris in Mahomet's paradise. And this reminds me of the character of Victorinus, as described by Julius Aterianus*.

XXIV.

WHO ARE KNOWN BY THEIR MOTTOS.

SOME are agitated by a desire of inquiring into motives, causes, antecedents, and consequences; the qui, quo, and quomodo, as it were, of every fact, of every sentiment, and of every person. They do not even hesitate to judge men by their mottos; and we may certainly know something of Walsingham by this rule; since he is said to have seen every man, and none saw him- video et taceo.'

Men in general, however, cannot be judged in this manner; though from mottos we may often judge of what they wish to appear, wish to be, wish to have, and what they affect most to admire.

Mottos are much affected by persons of a particular cast. But, as a French writer† truly remarks, it is much easier to invent fine mottos than to perform great

* Victorino qui post Junium Posthumium Gallias rexit neminem existimo præferendum: non in virtute Trajanum; non Antoninum in clementia; non in gravitate Nervam; non in gubernando ' ærario Vespasianum; non in Censura totius vitæ ac severitate 'militari Pertinacem vel Severum. Sed omnia hæc libido, et cupi'ditas voluptatis mulierariæ sic perdidit, ut nemo audeat virtutes ' ejus in literas mittere quem constat omnium judicio meruisse 'puniri.'

† Mémoires de Marlborough, ii. 106.

actions; and much easier to paint inscriptions on banners than to defend the:n.

For devices we may refer to Paul Jovius*.

The Babylonians were greatly addicted to them; hence, upon the tops of their canes and walking-sticks, were eagles, pomegranates, roses, lilies, or some other figure. Herodotus assures ust that to have a stick without a device was not only unusual but even unlawful.

XXV.

WHO SET ANOTHER MAN'S One error agAINST THE
THOUSAND OF THEIR OWN.

'Do nothing equivocal in this matter,' said Julius to me, yesterday, after I had been stating what I would do, in reference to a subject in which a person had not acted as I thought he ought to have done; there is

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an order of men, who will set any unconscious error

on our parts, even if it involve the mistake of three farthings, against their wilful ones, of two hundred, two ' thousand, or two millions.'

Catiline, for instance, accused Cethegus of having one day walked into the women's apartment. How often he had done the same himself, he did not stop to confess; nor did he stay to hear how great was the multitude of his other inordinate crimes and vices.

*Vid. Dialogo delle Impresse militari e amorose.
+ Clio, cxcv.