There are persons whom to attempt to convince by even the strongest reasons, and most cogent arguments, is like King Lear putting a letter before a man without eyes, and saying, "Mark but the penning of it!" to which he answers, "Were all the letters suns, I could not see one." But it may be well worth while sometimes to write to such a person much that is not likely to influence him at all, if you have an opportunity of showing it to others, as a proof that he ought to have been convinced by it. WHATELY: Annot. on Bacon's Essay, Of Negotiating.

ARISTOCRACY.

You, if you are what you ought to be, are in my eye the great oaks that shade a country, and perpetuate your benefits from generation to generation. The immediate power of a Duke of Richmond, or a Marquis of Rockingham, is not so much of moment; but if their conduct and example hand down their principles to their successors, then their houses become the public repositories and offices of record for the constitution; not like the Tower, or Roll-Chapel, where it is searched for, and sometimes in vain, in rotten parchments under dripping and perishing walls, but in full vigour, and acting with vital energy and power, in the character of the leading men and natural interests of the country. BURKE:

To the Duke of Richmond, Nov. 17, 1772. Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others.

BURKE:

Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition becomes low and base. Does not something like this now appear in France? BURKE: Reflections on the Revolution in France.

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Neither you, nor I, nor any fair man, can believe that a whole nation is free from honour and real principle; or that if these things exist in it, they are not to be found in the men the best born, and the best bred, and in those possessed of rank which raises them in their own esteem, and in the esteem of others, and possessed of hereditary settlement in the same place, which secures, with an hereditary wealth, an hereditary inspection. That these should be all scoundrels, and that the virtue, honour, and public spirit of a nation should be only found in its attorneys, pettifoggers, stewards of inanors, discarded officers of police, shop-boys, clerks of counting-houses, and rustics from the plough, is a paradox, not of false ingenuity, but of envy and malignity. It is an error, not of the head. but of the heart. BURKE:

To W. Weddell, Jan. 31, 1792.

I love nobility. I should be ashamed to say so if I did not know what it is that I love. He alone is noble that is so reputed by those who, by being free, are capable of forming an opinion. Such a people are alone competent to bestow a due estimation upon rank and titles. He is noble who has a priority amongst freemen; not he who has a sort of wild liberty among slaves. BURKE:

To the King of Poland, probably March, 1792.

Amongst the masses-even in revolutionsaristocracy must ever exist; destroy it in no. bility, and it becomes centred in the rich and powerful House of the Commons. Pull them down, and it still survives in the master and foreman of the workshop. GUIZOT.

ARISTOTLE.

Their

The celebrity of the great classical writers is confined within no limits except those which separate civilized from savage man. works are the common property of every polished nation; they have furnished subjects for the painter, and models for the poet. In the minds of the educated classes throughout Europe, their names are indissolubly associated with the endearing recollections of childhood, -the old school-room,-the dog-eared grammar,-the first prize, the tears so often shed and so quickly dried. So great is the veneration with which they are regarded, that even the editors and commentators who perform the low est menial offices to their memory are consid ered, like the equerries and chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled to a high rank in the table of literary precedence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.

The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance. When they particularize, they are commonly trivial: when they would generalize, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made in favour of Aristotle.

Both

in analysis and in combination, that great man was without a rival. No philosopher has ever possessed, in an equal degree, the talent either of separating established systems into their primary elements, or of connecting detached phenomena in harmonious systems. He was the great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he changed its darkness into light, and its discord into order. He brought to literary researches the same vigour and amplitude of mind to which both physical and metaphysical science are so greatly indebted. His fundamental principles of criticism are excellent. To cite,only a single instance the doctrine which he established, that poetry is an imitative art, when justly understood, is to the critic what the compass is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a science.

The general propositions of Aristotle are valuable. But the merit of the superstructure bears no proportion to that of the foundation. This is partly to be ascribed to the character of the philosopher, who, though qualified to do all that could be done by the resolving and combining powers of the understanding, seems not to have possessed much of sensibility or imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed to the deficiency of materials. The great works of genius which then existed were not either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to enable any man to form a perfect code of literature. To require that a critic should conceive classes of composition which had never existed, and then investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him his dream and then to interpret it.

When war becomes the trade of a separate class, the least dangerous course left to a government is to form that class into a standing army. It is scarcely possible that men can pass their lives in the service of one state, without feeling some interest in its greatness. Its victories are their victories. Its defeats are their defeats. The contract loses something of its mercantile character. The services of the soldier are considered as the effects of patriotic zeal, his pay as the tribute of national gratitude. To betray the power which employs him, to be even remiss in its service, are in his eyes the most atrocious and degrading of crimes.

When the princes and commonwealths of Italy began to use hired troops, their wisest course would have been to form separate military establishments. Unhappily, this was not done. The mercenary warriors of the Peninsula, instead of being attached to the service of different powers, were regarded as the common property of all. The connection between the state and its defenders was reduced to the most simple and naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, his weapons, his strength, and his experience, into the market. Whether the King of Naples or the Duke of Milan, the Pope, or the Signory of Florence, struck the bargain, was to him a matter of perfect indifference. He was for the highest wages and the longest term. When the campaign for which he had contracted was finished, there was neither law nor punctilio to prevent him from instantly turning his arms against his late masters. The soldier was altogether disjoined from the citizen and the subject.

The natural consequences followed. Left to the conduct of men who neither loved those whom they defended, nor hated those whom they opposed, who were often bound by stronger ties to the army against which they fought than to the state which they served, who lost by the termination of the conflict, and gained by its prolongation, war completely changed its character. Every man came into the field of battle impressed with the knowledge that, in a few days, he might be taking the pay of the power against which he was then employed, and fight

ARMIES.

Number itself importeth not much in armies, where the people are of weak courage: for, as Virgil says, it never troubles a wolf how many the sheep be. LORD BACON.

If a state run most to noblemen and gentlemen, and that the husbandmen be but as their work-folks and labourers, you may have a good cavalry, but never good stable foot. LORD BACON.

ciates. The strongest interests and the strongest feelings concurred to mitigate the hostility of those who had lately been brethren in arms, and who might soon be brethren in arms once more. Their common profession was a bond of union not to be forgotten even when they were en. gaged in the service of contending parties. Hence it was that operations, languid and indecisive beyond any recorded in history, marches and counter-marches, pillaging expeditions and blockades, bloodless capitulations and equally bloodless combats, make up the military history of Italy during the course of nearly two centuries. Mighty armies fight from sunrise to sun. A great victory is won. Thousands of prisoners are taken; and hardly a life is lost. A pitched battle seems to have been really less dangerous than an ordinary civil tumult. Cour age was now no longer necessary even to the

set.

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ASSOCIATION.

Yes, Man is the slave of association; and if there ever once has existed an argumentum ad hominem for or against a thing or a person, it is more than probable that, in exact accordance to the personal argument, we shall love or hate that thing or person forever after. An infantine surfeit of oysters may so extend its influence over a whole life as to make us forever regard with aversion that admirable mollusc; a whipping at school, while we were learning Greek or English history, may, according to the period it was inflicted in, impart to us doubts of the justice of Aristides, or absolute nausea respecting the patriotic virtue of Hampden. On the other hand, it may be questioned whether the eulogists of Saint Dunstan, of Bloody Queen Mary, and other execrated notabilities, may not have had holidays and sugar-plums, or a plumcake from home, just at the moment when they were successfully getting over the Dunstan or Mary period. Household Words.

ASTROLOGY.

This considered together with a strict account and critical examen of reason, will also distract the witty determinations of astrology.

SIR T. BROWNE.

Whenever the word influence occurs in our English poetry, down to comparatively a modern date, there is always more or less remote allusion to the skyey or planetary influences supposed to be exercised by the heavenly bodies upon men. R. C. TRENCH.

We speak of a person as jovial, or saturnine, or mercurial. Jovial, as being born under the planet Jupiter or Jove, which was the joyfullest star and the happiest augury of all. gloomy person was said to be saturnine, as be

A

SIR T. BROWNE: Vulgar Errors.

Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health, according to his nativity, which, casting it myself, I am sure is true, and all things hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted them. JOHN DRYDEN:

To his Sons, Sept. 3, 1697.

Astrology, however, against which so much of the satire [in Hudibras] is directed was not more the folly of Puritans than of others. It had in that time a very extensive dominion. Its predictions raised hopes and fears in minds which ought to have rejected it with contempt. In hazardous undertakings care was taken to begin under the influence of a propitious planet; and when the king was prisoner in Carisbrook Castle, an astrologer was consulted what hour would be found most favourable to an escape.

DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Butler. Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to foretell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no foresight in what concerns themselves.

L'ESTRANGE.

Do not Christians and Heathens, Jews and Gentiles, poets and philosophers, unite in allow ing the starry influences?

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

sidered to make those that owned his influence, and were born when he was in the ascendant, grave and stern as himself. Another we call mercurial, that is light-hearted, as those born under the planet Mercury were accounted to be. R. C. TRENCH

ASTRONOMY.

When a man spends his life among the stars and planets, or lays out a twelvemonth on the spots of the sun, however noble his speculations may be, they are very apt to fall into burlesque Addison.

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Let us pass to astronomy. This was one of the sciences which Plato exhorted his disciples to learn, but for reasons far removed from common habits of thinking. Shall we set down astronomy," says Socrates," among the subjects of study?" [Plato's Republic, Book VII.] "I think so," answers his young friend Glaucon : "to know something about the seasons, the months, and the years is of use for military purposes, as well as for agriculture and navigation.” "It amuses me," says Socrates, "to see how afraid you are lest the common herd of men should accuse you of recommending useless studies." He then proceeds, in that pure and magnificent diction which, as Cicero said, Jupiter would use if Jupiter spoke Greek, to explain that the use of astronomy is not to add to the vulgar comforts of life, but to assist in raising

the mind to the contemplation of things which are to be perceived by the pure intellect alone. The knowledge of the actual motions of the heavenly bodies Socrates considers as of little value. The appearances which make the sky beautiful at night are, he tells us, like the figures which a geometrician draws on the sand, mere examples, mere helps to feeble minds. We must get beyond them; we must neglect them; we must attain to an astronomy which is as independent of the actual stars as geometrical truth is independent of the lines of an ill-drawn diagram. This is, we imagine, very nearly, if not exactly, the astronomy which Bacon compared to the ox of Prometheus [De Augmentis, Lib. 3, cap. 4], a sleek, well-shaped hide, stuffed with rubbish, goodly to look at, but containing nothing to eat. He complained that astronomy had, to its great injury, been separated from natural philosophy, of which it was one of the noblest provinces, and annexed to the domain of mathematics. The world stood in need, he said, of a very different astronomy, of a living astronomy Astronomia viva], of an astronomy which should set forth the nature, the motion, and the influences of the heavenly bodies, as they really are. ["Que substantiam et motum et influxum cælestium, prout re vera sunt, proponat." Compare this language with Plato's, * Τα δ' έν τῷ οὐρανῷ εάδομεν.”]

LORD MACAULAY: Lord Bacon, July, 1837.

Against filling the heavens with fluid mediums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great objection arises from the regular and very lasting motions of the planets and comets in all manner of courses through the heavens.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

ATHEISM.

After having treated of these false zealots in religion, I cannot forbear mentioning a monstrous species of men, who one would not think had any existence in nature, were they not to be met with in ordinary conversation-I mean the zealots in atheism. One would fancy that these men, though they fall short, in every other respect, of those who make a profession of religion, would at least outshine them in this particular, and be exempt from that single fault which seems to grow out of the imprudent fervours of religion. But so it is, that infidelity is propagated with as much fierceness and contention, wrath and indignation, as if the safety of mankind depended on it.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 185. Atheism, by which I mean a disbelief of a Supreme Being, and consequently of a future state, under whatsoever titles it shelter itself, may likewise very reasonably deprive a man of this cheerfulness of temper. There is something so particularly gloomy and offensive to human nature in the prospect of non-existence,

that I cannot but wonder, with many excellent writers, how it is possible for a man to outlive the expectation of it. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 381.

A wise man, that lives up to the principles of reason and virtue, if one considers him in his solitude, as in taking in the system of the universe, observing the mutual dependence and harmony by which the whole frame of it hangs together, beating down his passions, or swelling his thoughts with magnificent ideas of Provi dence, makes a nobler figure in the eye of an intelligent being, than the greatest conqueror amidst all the pomps and solemnities of a triumph. On the contrary, there is not a more ridiculous animal than an atheist in his retireHis mind is incapable of rapture or elevation. He can only consider himself as an incignificant figure in a landscape, and wandering up and down in a field or a meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals about him, and as subject to as total a mortality as they; with this aggravation, that he is the only one amongst them who lies under the apprehension of it!

ment.

In distresses, he must be of all creatures the most helpless and forlorn; he feels the whole pressure of a present calamity, without being relieved by the memory of anything past, or the prospect of anything that is to come. Annihilation is the greatest blessing that he proposes to himself, and a halter or a pistol the only refuge he can fly to. But, if you would behold one of these gloomy miscreants in his poorest figure, you must consider him under the terrors or at the approach of death.

ADDISON and STEELE: Tatler, No. 111.

I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind: and therefore God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy philosophy bringeth men's minds about to reinclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in ligion: for while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest holdeth the chain of them confederate, and in them, and go no farther; but when it belinked together, it must needs fly to providence and Deity. LORD BACON :

Essay XVII.: Of Atheism.

They that deny a God destroy a man's nobility; for certainly man is of kin to the beasts by his body; and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature. It destroys, likewise, magnanimity, and the raising human nature. LORD BACON :

Essay XVII.: Of Atheism.

Not that we are so low and base as their atheism would depress us; not walking statues of clay, not the sons of brute earth, whose final inheritance is death and corruption.

BENTLEY.