229. DO AS YOU WOULD BE DONE TO. The saying, 'Do as you would be done to,' is often misunderstood, for it is not thus meant, that I, a private man, should do to you, a private man, as I would have you do to me; but do as we have agreed to do one to another by public agreement. If the prisoner should ask the judge, whether he would be contented to be hanged were he in his case, he would answer no. Then, says the prisoner, do as you would be done to! Neither of them must do as private men, but the judge must do by him as they have publicly agreed; that is, both judge and the prisoner have consented to a law, that if either of them steal, he shall be hanged.

J. SELDEN

230. SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S LAST CONFERENCE WITH TOPIOWARI KING OF AROMAIA. Within three hours after my messenger came to him he arrived also, and with him such a rabble of all sorts of people, and every one laden with somewhat, as if it had been a great market or fair in England; and our hungry companies clustered thick and threefold among their baskets, every one laying hand on what he liked. After he had rested awhile in my tent, I shut out all but ourselves and my interpreter, and told him, that I knew that both the Epuremei and the Spaniards were enemies to him, his country, and nation; that the one had conquered Guiana already, and that the other sought to regain the same from them both; and therefore I desired him to instruct me what he could, both of the passage into the golden parts of Guiana, and to the civil towns and apparelled people of Inca. He gave me an answer to this effect: First, That he did not perceive that I meant to go onwards towards the city of Manoa; for neither the time of the year served nor could he perceive any sufficient numbers for such an enterprise; and if I did, I was sure with all my company to be buried there; for that the emperor was of that strength, as that many times so many men more were too few. Besides, he gave me this good counsel, and advised me to hold it in mind, (as for himself he knew he could not live till my return,) that I should not offer by any means hereafter to invade the strong parts of Guiana without the help of all those nations which were also their enemies; for that it was impossible, without those, either to be conducted or to be victualled or to have aught carried with us; our people not being able to endure the march in so great heat and travel, unless the borderers

gave them help to carry with them both their meat and furniture.

SIR W. RALEIGH

231. OF OBSCURITY. Democritus relates, and in such manner as if he gloried in the good fortune of it, that when he came to Athens nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus; after whose death, making in one of his letters a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, he adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame but almost without being heard of; and yet, within a very few years afterwards, there were no two names of men more known or more generally celebrated. Now, as for being known much by sight and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord chief justice of a city. Every creature has it both of nature and art if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, This is that Bucephalus, or, This is that Incitatus, when they were led prancing through the streets, as, This is that Alexander, or, This is that Domitian; and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire.

A. COWLEY

232.

CHARACTER OF MARCUS PORCIUS CATO OF UTICA. He made no distinction of times or things; no allowance for the weakness of the republic, and the power of those who oppressed it: it was his maxim to combat all power not built upon the laws, or to defy it at least, if he could not control it: he knew no way to the end, but the direct; and whatever obstructions he met with, resolved still to rush on, and either to surmount them or perish in the attempt; taking it for a baseness and confession of being conquered, to decline a tittle from the true road. In an age, therefore, of the utmost libertinism, when the public discipline was lost and the government itself tottering, he struggled with the same zeal

against all corruption, and waged a perpetual war with a superior force, whilst the rigour of his principles tended rather to alienate friends, than reconcile enemies; and by provoking the power that he could not subdue, helped to hasten that ruin which he was striving to avert; so that after a perpetual course of disappointments and repulses, finding himself unable to pursue his old way any further, instead of taking a new one, he was driven by his philosophy to put an end to his life. C. MIDDLETON

CIVIL WAR IN SCOTLAND.

The civil war was now

233. widely kindled, and raged in every province; and the fatal distinction into king's men and queen's men divided even private families. The king's adherents held a parliament at Stirling. The queen's lords assumed the same title at Edinburgh, and these assemblies fulminated decrees of forfeiture against each other. Skirmishes were fought in every part of the kingdom; and as the parties threw on each other the imputation of rebellion, those taken in battle were only spared by the sword to perish by the gibbet; for each party in these desolating hostilities relentlessly executed their captives as traitors.

SIR W. SCOTT

234. THE DRUIDICAL WORSHIP, ITS PARTIAL REFINEMENT. The objects of the Druid worship were many. In this respect, they did not differ from other heathens: but it must be owned that in general their ideas of divine matters were more exalted than those of the Greeks and Romans; and that they did not fall into an idolatry so coarse and vulgar. That their gods should be represented under a human form they thought derogatory to beings uncreated and imperishable. To confine what can endure no limits within walls and roofs they judged absurd and impious. In these particulars there was something refined and suitable enough to a just idea of the Divinity. But the rest was not equal. Some notions they had, like the greatest part of mankind, of a Being eternal and infinite; but they also, like the greatest part of mankind, paid their worship to inferior objects, from the nature of ignorance and superstition always tending downwards. The first and chief objects of their worship were the Elements, and of the Elements, Fire, as the most pure, active, penetrating, and what gives life to all the

rest. Among Fires, the preference was given to the Sun, as the most glorious visible being and the fountain of all life. Next they venerated the Moon and the Planets.

E. BURKE

235. HUMANE CONDUCT OF HANNIBAL TO HIS ROMAN AND OTHER PRISONERS TAKEN IN THE BATTLE OF THRASY

MENUS. Then he turned to the Italian allies: they were not his enemies, he said; on the contrary, he had invaded Italy to aid them in casting off the yoke of Rome; he should still deal with them as he had treated his Italian prisoners taken at the Trebia; they were free from that moment, and without ransom. This being done, he halted for a short time to rest his army, and buried with great solemnity thirty of the most distinguished of those who had fallen on his own side in the battle. His whole loss had amounted only to 1500 men, of whom the greater part were Gauls. It is said also that he caused careful search, but in vain, to be made for the body of the consul Flaminius, being anxious to give him honourable burial. So he acted afterwards to L. Æmilius and to Marcellus; and these humanities are worthy of notice, as if he wished to show that, though his vow bound him to unrelenting enmity towards the Romans while living, it was a pleasure to him to feel that he might honour them when dead.

T. ARNOLD

236. DORISLAUS, A PUBLIC AGENT OF THE PARLIAMENT, KILLED AT THE HAGUE BY SOME SCOTTISH MEN, A. D. 1649. The king was exceedingly troubled and perplexed with this accident, which he could not foresee, and easily discerned that it would be applied to his prejudice; and that the States could not but highly resent it in many respects; that the man who was killed was in truth their own subject, and employed to them, as a public minister, by those with whom they had no mind to have any quarrel. It cannot be denied but that the States proceeded upon these disorders, to which they had not been accustomed, with great gravity, and more than ordinary respect to the king. They were highly offended with what was past, and sensible what expostulations and clamour for justice they must expect and sustain from England, and what reproaches they must

undergo for suffering all those who had been guilty of such a crime to escape the ministers of justice; which could not but be imputed to them as a great scandal to their government: yet they proceeded very slowly in their inquisition, and with such formalities as were usual, (and which could bring no prejudice to the offenders, who were either gone out of their dominions, or concealed themselves in other towns, where the same formalities were to be used if they were discovered,) and without so much reflection upon the king as if they believed the guilty persons to have any relation to his service; yet they took notice of the multitude of strangers which were in the town, and how impossible it would be for them to preserve the peace and good government thereof, if such resort were not restrained. They aggravated exceedingly the indignity that had been offered to the state itself, in the attempt that had been made upon a person under their protection, and for whose safety the public faith was upon the matter engaged; with insinuations enough, that it would be fit for the king to remove from thence. Of all which his majesty receiving advertisement, he thought it better himself to give them notice of his purpose to leave them, than to expect a plain injunction from them to do so. LORD CLARENDON

237. WILLIAM III, HIS EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION. Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler; and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. With strong natural sense, and rare force of will, he found himself, when first his mind began to open, a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party. The common people, fondly attached during a century to his house, indicated whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken, that they regarded him as their rightful head. The able and experienced ministers of the republic, mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay their feigned civilities to him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The first movements of ambition were carefully watched: every unguarded word uttered by him was noted down; nor had he near him any adviser on whose judgment reliance could be placed. He was scarcely fifteen years old when all the domestics who were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his confidence, were removed from