from their being impatient under the sense of real evils, and in error as to remedies. The violent vicissitudes of the first French Revolution were not the result of a mad love of experiments; they were produced by the national bankruptcy of France, and the starving condition of the people of Paris. An ignorant man suffering under painful disease will try the prescription of every mountebank, and without waiting to see how one quack medicine operates, will have recourse to another. A fevered nation, like a feverish patient, turns from side to sidenot through love of change, but because, while the disease continues, any fixed posture must be painful. The physician who superintends his condition knows that this restlessness and impatience are symptoms of the disease: it would be well if those who superintend our political and ecclesiastical state, while they justly regard discontents and disturbances as evils in themselves, would also look upon them as certain signs that there is something wrong somewhere.' (Page 315-318.)

'Embrace and invite helps and advices touching the execution of thy office.'

"The dread of unworthy imputations of undue influence may often drive a worthy man into a perilous course. The fear of being deemed an imitator is scarcely less dangerous than that of being supposed to be led. We frequently see those who regard the course of a wise and good man with mingled affection and veneration, influenced by his example for the worse rather than for the better, by indulging their ruling passion for originality, and by their abhorrence of being regarded as followers and imitators. To avoid coincidences becomes the great labour of their lives, and they take every opportunity of ostentatiously declaring the originality and independence of their course. Nay, they will not only declare their originality, but they will seek to make or find opportunities of exhibiting it, though the course they adopt in consequence may be contrary to their own secret judgment. A man who yields to this weakness, which is far more rife than the world generally believes, is the slave of any one who chuses to work upon his foible. The only thing requisite to make him commit any conceivable folly, is to dare him to depart from his friend's counsel or example. Miss

Edgeworth, in her Juvenile Tales, has admirably illustrated the consequence of yielding to such fears; Tarlton in vain strove to persuade the weak Lovett to break bounds by appeals to his courage, but when he hinted that his refusal would be attributed to his dependence on the strong-minded Hardy, the poor boy sprang over the wall with nervous alacrity. This dread of imitation often leads to the neglect of valuable suggestions which might be derived from the tactics and example of adversaries. 'Fas est et ab hoste doceri,' is a maxim more frequently quoted than acted on, and yet its wisdom is confirmed by every day's experience. A casual remark made long ago to me by your Lordship contains the rationale of the whole matter' It is ignorance, and not knowledge, that rejects instruction; it is weakness, and not strength, that refuses co-operation.'' (Page 77.)

'In bestowing office, and in selecting instruments, a man anxious to do his duty must take into account both the kind and degree of fitness in the candidates. Of the degrees of intelligence the world is a very incompetent judge, and of the differences in kind, it knows little or nothing. With the vulgar everything is good, bad, or middling; and if three persons are worthy and intelligent men, you will find that the preference you show to any one of them is considered to be the result of mere caprice. For instance, you know that the clerical requisites for an agricultural parish are different from those necessary in a manufacturing district, and that both are dissimilar to the qualifications for a chaplaincy to a collegiate institution, or for a prebendal stall. Your choice will be guided by these considerations; but, beyond doubt, you will find very few who can appreciate or even understand such motives. Now, this want of discriminating power and knowledge in the spectators of your career, will by no means induce them to suspend the exercise of their fallacious judgment; on the contrary, opinions will be pronounced most positively by those who are most wanting in opportunity to discover, and in capacity to estimate, your motives. But the erroneous judgments of others must not lead you to be suspicious of your own; the value of the tree will be finally known by its fruits, it would be folly to neglect its training, or to grub it up, because people ignorant of the adaptations of soil to growth, tell you that another tree in the

same place would be more useful or more ornamental. You know both the soil and the plant-the vast majority of your censurers will know nothing of the one and marvellously little of the other.' (Page 174.)

'A servant or a favourite, if he be inward, and no other apparent cause of esteem, is commonly thought but a by-way to close corruption.'

'If the relations you form with your subordinates, particularly those whose position brings them into frequent and immediate contact with you, be founded on intellectual sympathies, and common views of great principles, efforts will be made to sow discord between you, by representing him as the juggler, and you as the puppet. In this case calumny disguises its imputation by flattery, and compliments your heart at the expense of your head. 'He is,' the maligners will say, 'a very worthy, well-meaning man, but he sees only with A. B.'s eyes, and acts only on A. B.'s suggestions; he is a very good and clever man, but he thinks by proxy.' If you are a student,—if you have acquired any reputation for scholarship or literature,—but, above all, if you have ever been an author, this imputation will be circulated and credited; for one of the most bitter pieces of revenge which readers take on writers, is to receive implicitly the aphorism of the blockheads, that studious habits produce an inaptitude for the business of active life. The imputation of being led is not very pleasant, but it may very safely be despised; in the long run men will learn to judge of your actions from their nature, and not from their supposed origin. But the nature of this calumny deserves to be more closely investigated, because there is nothing more injurious to public men than the jealousy of subordinate strength which it is designed to produce.

'The cases are, indeed, very rare, of an upright, sensible man being led either by a knave or a fool; but there are countless examples of a weak man being led by a weaker, or a low-principled man by a downright rogue. Now, in most of these cases, it will be found that the subjugation arose from trusting to the impossibility of being led by one of obviously inferior strength. Cunning is the wisdom of weakness, and those who chuse the weak for their instruments, expose themselves to its arts.' (Page 68-70.)

H

'As for facility, it is worse than bribery.'

'It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the necessity of caution in bestowing confidence; it is the highest favour in your power to confer, and deliberation enhances an act of kindness just as much as it aggravates an act of malice. Favours which seem to be dispensed upon an impulse, with an unthinking facility, are received like the liberalities of a spendthrift, and men thank God for them.' It is of more importance to observe that even a greater degree of caution is necessary in suspending or withdrawing confidence; gross indeed should be the treachery, and unquestionable the proofs, that would justify such a course. The world generally will blame your original choice; your discarded adherent will be lowered in his own esteem, and consequently will thus far have made a sad progress in moral degradation; and your own mind will not escape scatheless; for greater proneness to suspicion will of necessity develope itself in your character. Most of all is caution required in restoring confidence; constitutional changes are wrought in every moral principle during its period of suspended animation; though the falling-out of lovers be proverbially the renewal of love, it is questionable whether the suspended confidence of friends is ever wholly effaced in its influences. Had Cæsar recovered from the stab which Brutus gave him, he might, with his usual clemency, have pardoned the crime; but he would not have been the Cæsar I take him for, if he did not ever after adopt the precaution of wearing armour when he was in company with Brutus. The hatred of an enemy is bad enough, but no earthly passion equals in its intensity the hatred of a friend. (Page 72.)

'There are people who believe that the voice of censure should never be heard in an interview, and that you have no right to rebuke presumption, check interference, or make men conscious of their weakness. You are to affect a humility, by which you tacitly confess yourself destitute of moral judgment. But you must remember that, in interviews connected with your official station, you appear for the most part as an adjudicator; an appeal is made to you, as holding the balance of justice, and also as wielder of its sword. A righteous humility,' says the author of the Statesman, 'will teach a man never to pass a

sentence in a spirit of exultation: a righteous courage will teach him never to withhold it from fear of being disliked. Popularity is commonly obtained by a dereliction of the duties of censure, under a pretext of humility.' (Page 256.)

"There is great danger of praise from men in high place being identified with promise, and compliment tortured into grounds of hope,-not always hope of promotion, but hope of influencing promotion. Your approbation warmly expressed will be deemed to have a value beyond the mere expression of your opinion, and though you expressly guard against expectations, you will nevertheless raise them. A late chancellor, to whom more books were sent and dedicated than he could possibly read if his life was prolonged to antediluvian duration, by the complimentary answers he sent to the authors, gathered round him a host of expectants, and produced a mass of suffering which would scarcely be credited save by those who were personally acquainted with it. Kindness and cordiality of manner are scarcely less pleasing to the feelings than express compliment, and they are the more safe for both parties, since they afford no foundation for building up expectations; a species of architecture sufficiently notorious for the weakness of the foundations that support an enormous superstructure.' (Page 163.)

'Severity breedeth fear?'

'It may be doubted whether it is politic, where a man has wholly lost your esteem, and has no chance of regaining it, to let him know that his doom is fixed irrevocably. The hope of recovering his place in your estimation may be a serviceable check on his conduct; and if he supposes you to be merely angry with him (a mistake commonly made by vulgar minds), he may hope and try to pacify you by an altered course, trusting that in time you will forget all. In such a case you need not do or say anything deceitful; you have only to leave him in his error. On the other hand, if he finds that you have no resentment, but that your feeling is confirmed disesteem, and that the absence of all anger is the very consequence of such a feeling for you cannot be angry where you do not mean to trust again he may turn out a mischievous hater.

'On the whole, however, the frank, open-hearted course is