of those that joined in the scramble, or won the hearts of the barbarian legions, by excelling in the barbarian virtue of mere physical force. There was too, quite recently, a Saxon elector, or rather a Polish king, who could break a horse shoe though he could not govern a kingdom, and was more successful in his debaucheries, than in acquiring the respect of men. Yet to whom shall we refer? the father or the son? August Frederic, the second of the name, or the third? The father sold his fine regiment of dragoons to his most dangerous neighbour, for twelve porcelain vases; the son pretended to be an amateur of the fine arts, when he really understood nothing but the chase. He left the government of Saxony to his minister, and yet believed he did every thing himself; he found the Poles troublesome to manage, and therefore left them to utter anarchy; the capital of his hereditary dominions was menaced by the Prussians; he fled, taking with him his pictures and his porcelain, but leaving to the conqueror the archives of the state. Every body knows the story of his father: his mortal enemy, the king of Sweden, in one of the strangest freaks, went unexpectedly and unattended to breakfast with him in Dresden; some hours after Charles had rejoined his army, Augustus held a council to consider what he ought to have done.

We must delay a little longer with this athletic temperament, though it is not a very amiable subject. In republics it has no chance it is only by divine right, or the favour of a female ruler, that it can hope to control the fortunes of states. The study of history leads us to cry out against the injustice of history. It is a mere chance, whether genuine worth finds a place there. Philip, the landgrave of Hesse, was a great friend of protestantism. He also begged Luther to give him leave to have two wives; not a second one: that would hardly seem strange in these degenerate days; but two wives at once. This was rather a strange request for a Christian prince to make to a reformer of religion. But Luther thought the request a reasonable one. Philip was always for prompt measures; he struck a bold blow, or none. Finding war too troublesome, he left the business to others, and gave himself up to slothful indulgence. Does his end seem inconsistent with his earlier years? the riddle is solved by a word; he was of the athletic temperament. Indeed the whole family of Hessian princes has had a decided tendency to that class. Frederic, the second of the line, was fond of splendour; and not famous for nice feeling. He sold his soldiers at a high rate. England paid him more than twenty-one millions of rixdollars for twelve thousand of them, for eight years. Why is it worse for an African prince to sell the captives whom he takes in war, to cultivate sugar and cotton in America, than for a Hessian prince to sell his own subjects, of whom he has the di

vine right to be the parent and the sovereign, to fight the battles of England, and be shot at for less than six pence a day? The son of the Landgrave just mentioned, the late elector, was one of the richest, and one of the meanest misers in Europe. He was the most tyrannical petty despot of his time. He invented a new right of primogeniture, which we believe has never been adopted by any other sovereign prince. He promulgated a law respecting those who were permitted to be educated, and allowed the clergy generally, and some public functionaries of a certain rank, to educate only their oldest son. Indeed, we can in this country hardly have an idea of the real nature of divine legitimacy. We connect with a prince, at least some ideas of external splendour, and liberality of disposition. But what shall we think of a niggardly autocrat, who fumbles in the pockets of the poor man, in quest of his last penny, and rakes the barren sands of an exhausted soil for a few more grains of gold?

But the most remarkable of all historical personages of the the athletic temperament, was undoubtedly Potemkin, for several years the unlimited favourite of Catharine. For a while men thought him possessed of a colossal genius; but he had nothing colossal but his body. He had no character, and soon made it evident. What mighty events spring from petty causes? An inferior officer saw the empress display herself in uniform before the guards; her sword was without tassels; he tore his own from the hilt, and offered them to the empress; she was charmed with his person, and in time made him her favourite; and he made himself her master. The chancellor of the empire outwitted him; and the armed neutrality was the result of a court intrigue. His mind was of the coarsest order; they even say, that he went so far as to beat the empress herself. "How many prostitutes are there in Petersburgh?" said she to him one day. "Forty thousand" replied he, "without the court." He was excessively grasping, and excessively prodigal. He was worth thirty-five millions of our dollars, and yet could not be induced to pay a tradesman's bill. Catharine lavished on him immense sums; he further would forge checks in her name on the public treasury, and accept bribes from foreign powers. The first division of Poland was to him but "child's play. "He subdued the Crimea, and when the Tartars hesitated to take the oath of allegiance to Catharine, he ordered them to be massacred; and in truth thirty thousand of them were slaughtered in a mass, men, women and children. The grand ribband of the order of St. George is given in Russia, only to a commander-in-chief, after a victory. To gain this, he quarrelled with the Porte in 1787, and in the next year, took Otchakow by storm, in spite of sickness and scarcity. He surpassed all men of his time in prodigality, in meanness, in sensual indulgence, and capricious vanity. He died at last, in con

sequence of his excesses, under a tree by the road-side; and when Paul came to the crown, the body of Potemkin was thrown into a ditch.

Such is the athletic temperament, Its excess of health and strength is by no means desirable. When the constitution once begins to fail, it is broken up suddenly and rapidly. And there is really less of life, the true vital principle, in this temperament, than in almost any other. Those who belong to it never acquire eminent intellectual distinction; and are ignorant of the refined sensations of a moral nature. No progress, no sacrifices, no exertions, not even nightly vigils, can open for them the sanctuary of the muse. Heaven has conferred on them a majestic frame, but doomed them to perpetual mediocrity. The athletic man can receive few rules for the regulation of his health. Indeed, Hippocrates pronounces his usual condition to be a state of malady. We can only exhort him to be temperate, and to use his strength with the best discretion he can. His life will probably not extend to old age, and will be exposed to many infirmities.

In history, this temperament has gained distinction in the troublesome times, when brutal force and fierce indifference gained the ascendant. In poetry, it is illustrated by the Ajax of Homer, and in English verse we have an accurate description of it in Chaucer.

"The Miller was a stout carl for the nones,

Ful bigge he was of braun, and eke of bones;
That proved wel; for over all ther he came,
As wrastling he wold bere away the ram.
He was short shuldered, brode, a thikke gnarre,
Ther n'as no dore, that he n'olde heve of barre,
Or breke it at a renning with his hede."

Some lines beside, which we omit to cite, illustrate the cha→ racter admirably, and show the old English bard to have been well versed in the secrets of human organization.

We turn to the consideration of a class of men, to whom the destinies of the world are, and have been generally committed; who rule in the cabinet and on the exchange; who control public business, and guide the deliberations of senates, and who, whether in exalted or private stations, unite in the highest degree sound judgment with persevering energy. They possess, like the sanguineous, quickness of perception and rapidity of thought; but they at the same time have the power of confining their attention to a single object. They have good practical judgment; they see things as they are, and are never deceived by contemplating objects in a false light; they have a clear eye to pierce the secrets of the human heart, to read the character and understand the motives of others. They are patient and inflexi ble in their purposes; and however remote may be the object of their desires, they labour with unwearied toil even for a remote

and apparently uncertain end. They are prone to anger, and yet can moderate or conceal their indignation. Their strongest passion is ambition; all the other emotions yield to it; even love vainly struggles against it; and if they sometimes give way to beauty, they in their pleasures resemble the Scythians of old, who at their feasts used to strike the cords of their bows, to remind themselves of danger. The men of whom we are speaking are urged by constant restlessness to constant action. An habitual sentiment of disquietude allows them no peace but in the tumult of business; the hours of crowded life are the only ones they value; the narrow road of emulation the only one in which they travel.

These moral characteristics are observed to be connected with a form more remarkable for firmness than for grace. The complexion is generally not light; and not unfrequently of a sallow hue; the hair is dark; the skin dry; the flesh not abundant, but firm; the muscular force great in proportion to the volume of the muscles; the eyes are vivid and sparkling. The appetite is great; voracious rather than delicate; the digestion is rapid. Of the internal organs, the liver is said to be proportionably the largest and the most active; and its copious secretions give a name to the class.

Such is the nature of those who belong to the bilious temperament. They are to be found, wherever hardiness of resolution, prompt decision, and permanence of enterprise are required. They unite in themselves in an eminent degree, the manly virtues, which lead to results in action, At their birth all the gods came to offer gifts; and the graces alone remained away. They stand high in the calendar of courts, and know how to win the hearts of the citizens of republics; but Cupid, indignant at their independence of him, degrades them in his calendar. They do not reign in the world of fashion, and the novel-writer can make of a Lord Oldborough but an imposing picture, not the hero of a tale.

Will you know by living examples, what is the nature of the bilious temperament? Go to the exchange, and ask who best un derstands the daring business of insurance? Look into the banks, and discover by whom those are managed which give the surest and largest dividends? Go to our new settlements in the west, and look to those who are early and late riding through the majestic forests of virgin nature, where the progress is impeded, it is true, by no underwood, but where every hardship must be endured, streams forded, nights be spent under the open sky, hunger be defied or partially satisfied, and a thousand dangers be braved by the keen speculator, who will take nothing on trust? Or look at the arena of public strife, and see who it is, that most skilfully, and yet most secretly, touches the springs of national

action, and controls the honours and emoluments in the very court of honour, and the chosen resort of fame and glory?

Or if you will not trust yourself with scrutinizing the hearts of the living, go to the Muse of History, and with her trumpet tongue, she will tell you of those who are the elect of her heart, those who fill the universe with their fame, and have swayed their times by their prowess and their mental power; from the mighty conquerors of earliest antiquity, whose names come to us floating among the wrecks of unknown empires, to the last wonderful man, who, in our own times, dealt with states as with play-things, and, by the force of his despotic will, shook the civilized world to its centre.

What need of many names? Ancient history furnishes perhaps no more exact illustration of this temperament, than in the character of Themistocles. In his boyhood he shunned boyish sports; but would compose declamations and harangues. He says of himself, that he had learnt neither to tune the harp nor handle the lyre, but that he knew how to make a small and inglorious city both powerful and illustrious. He could not sleep for the trophies of Miltiades. When his superior in the command raised a staff to reject disagreeable advice by a blow, he coolly said, "Strike but hear me." Having been a poor and disinherited child, he made his way to the highest honours in Athens, and for a season controlled the civilized world. He was the first of men, says Thucydides, for practical judgment. Of Romans we might name as of the bilious temperament, the elder Brutus, the glorious hypocrite, who hid the power of his genius till he could excite it for liberty. The greatest foreigner in the days of the Republic on the Roman soil was Hannibal, and he, not less than Julius Cæsar, was of the bilious class.

But were we to select an example among those, who at any time have been masters of the Seven Hills, we should undoubtedly name the wonderful Montalto, Pope Sextus V. In early life he exerted wonderful industry and talent, made himself the favourite preacher in the cities of Italy, and afterwards won the hearts of the Spaniards, till he was at last made Cardinal. Then of a sudden his character seemed changed; and for almost twenty years he played the part of a consummate deceiver, with unequalled skill. He lived at a retired house, kept few servants, was liberal in his expenses for charities, but parsimonious towards himself; contradicted no one; submitted even to insults* with perfect good humour; and, in short, acquired the reputa

* The words of Platina are Haveva dissimulato, e sopportato l'ingiurie, intanto, ch'essendo alcuna volta in Concistoro nominato da alcuni Cardinali per Asino della Marca, fingea di non udir, anzi mostrava di ricever il tutto per scherzo, &c. &c. The erafty Franciscan supressed his indignation from personal ambition; the patience of Themistocles is made sublime by his patriotism.