obliged to rise and assist in the execution of the laws. When any member of these thirty-seven families troubled the public peace, by assassinations or combats, a summary information was sufficient to induce the Gonfaloniere to attack them at the head of the militia, raze their houses to the ground and deliver their persons to the chief magistrate to be punished according to their crimes.

H. HALLAM

286. CHARACTER OF CHARLES THE SECOND. If we survey the character of Charles II. in the different lights which it will admit of, it will appear various, and give rise to different and even opposite sentiments. When considered as a companion, he appears the most amiable and engaging of men; and, indeed, in this view, his deportment must be allowed altogether unexceptionable. His love of raillery was so tempered with good breeding, that it was never offensive: his propensity to satire was so checked with discretion, that his friends never dreaded their becoming the object of it: his wit, to use the expression of one who knew him well, and who was himself a good judge, could not be said so much to be very refined or elevated, qualities apt to beget jealousy and apprehension in company, as to be a plain, gaining, wellbred, recommending kind of wit: and though perhaps he talked more than strict rules of behaviour might permit, men were so pleased with the affable, communicative deportment of the monarch, that they always went away contented both with him and with themselves. This indeed is the most shining part of the king's character; and he seems to have been sensible of it: for he was fond of dropping the formality of state, and of relapsing every moment into the companion. The voluntary friendships, however, which this prince contracted, nay, even his sense of gratitude, were feeble; and he never attached himself to any of his ministers or courtiers with a sincere affection. He believed them to have no motive in serving him but self-interest: and he was still ready, in his turn, to sacrifice them to present ease or convenience.

D. HUME

287. RICHES ARE UNABLE TO CONFER REAL HAPPINESS. Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty times our estates that would give the greatest part of it to be healthful and cheerful like us, who with the expence of a little money

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have eat and drank and laughed and angled and sung and slept securely; and rose next day and cast away care and sung and laughed and angled again; which are blessings rich men cannot possess with all their money. Let me tell you, scholar, I have a rich neighbour that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh, the whole business of his life is to get money and more money, that he may still get more and more money; he is still drudging on and says that Solomon says, The diligent hand maketh rich; and it is true indeed : but he considers not, that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy; for it was wisely said, by a man of great observation, That there be as many miseries beyond riches as on this side of them. And yet God deliver us from pinching poverty, and grant that having a competency, we may be content and thankful. Let us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riches; when, as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they clog him with weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep quietly. We see but the outside of the rich man's happiness; few consider him to be like the silkworm, that when she seems to play, is at the very same time spinning her own bowels and consuming herself.

288. NATURE AND SITUATION OF THE CASTLE OF DUMBARTON. From the confluence of the rivers Clyde and Leven, there is a plain champaign of about a mile, extended to the foot of the adjoining mountains; and in the very angle where the two rivers meet, stands a rock with two heads or summits. The highest, which is to the west, has on the very top of it a watch-tower, from whence opens a large prospect to all adjacent parts. The other, being lower, looks towards the east between these; that side that turns towards the north and the fields, hath stairs ascending obliquely up the rock, cut out by art, where hardly a single man can go up at once. For the rock is very hard, and scarce yields to any iron tool; but if any part of it be broken off by force, or falls down of itself, it emits a smell far and near like sulphur. In the upper part of the castle there is a vast piece of rock of the nature of a loadstone, but so closely cemented, and fastened to the main rock, that no manner of joining at all appears. Where the river Clyde runs by to the south, the rock (naturally

steep in other parts) is somewhat bending; and stretching out its arms on both sides, takes in some firm land, which is so inclosed, partly by the nature of the place, and partly by human industry, that, in the overthwart or transverse sides of it, it affords sufficient space for many houses; and in the river, a road for ships, very safe for the inhabitants, by playing from the castle brass ordnance, but unsafe for an enemy ; and small boats may come up almost to the very castle-gate. The middle part of the rock, by which you go up, being full of buildings, makes, as it were, another castle distinct and secluded from the higher one. Besides the natural fortification of the rock, the two rivers, Leven to the west, and Clyde to the south, make a kind of trench about it. On the east side, when the tide is in, the sea washes the foot of the rock; when it is out, that place is not sandy (as usually shores are) but muddy; the fat soil being dissolved into dirt. This strand is also intercepted, and cut by many torrents of water, which tumble down from the adjacent mountain.

G. BUCHANAN

289. AN AFRICAN'S SPEECH AGAINST THE PETITION OF THE SECT ERIKA OR PURISTS FOR THE ABOLITION OF

SLAVERY. Have these ERIKA considered the consequences of granting their petition? If we cease our cruises against the Christians, how shall we be furnished with the commodities their countries produce, and which are so necessary for us? If we forbear to make slaves of their people, who in this hot climate are to cultivate our lands? Who are to perform the common labours of our city, and in our families? Must we not then be our own slaves? And is there not more compassion and more favour due to us Mussulmen, than to these Christian dogs? We have now above fifty thousand slaves in and near Algiers. This number, if not kept up by fresh supplies, will soon diminish, and be gradually annihilated. If, then, we cease taking and plundering the infidel ships and making slaves of the seamen and passengers, our lands will become of no value for want of cultivation; the rents of houses in the city will sink one half; and the revenue of government arising from its share of prizes must be totally destroyed. And for what? To gratify the whim of a whimsical sect, who would have us not only forbear making more slaves, but even to manumit those we have. But who is to indemnify their masters for the loss? Will the state do it?

Is our treasury sufficient? Will the Erika do it? Can they do it? Or would they, to do what they think justice to the slaves, do a greater injustice to the owners? And if we set our slaves free, what is to be done with them? Few of them will return to their native countries; they know too well the greater hardships they must there be subject to: they will not embrace our holy religion: they will not adopt our manners: our people will not pollute themselves by intermarrying with them: must we maintain them as beggars in our streets? or suffer our properties to be the prey of their pillage? for men accustomed to slavery will not work for a livelihood when not compelled. And what is there so pitiable in their present condition? Were they not slaves in their own countries?

B. FRANKLIN

290. WARREN HASTINGS, BROUGHT TO THE BAR OF THE HOUSE. The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the inauguration of thirty kings: the hall which had witnessed the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. ****Theong galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together from all parts of a great, free and prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the representatives of every science and every art. There the ambassadors of great kings and commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other country in the world could present. There Siddons in the prime of her majestic beauty looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily against Verres, and when before a senate which still retained some show of freedom Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa.

LORD MACAULAY

291. VIRGIL HIS ÆNEID AND ITS DEFECTS. These wars are narrated by Virgil, who softens whatever is harsh in them, and alters and accelerates the succession of the events,

in the latter half of the Æneid. Its contents were certainly national: yet one can scarcely believe that even a Roman, if impartial, could receive any genuine enjoyment from his story. To us it is unfortunately but too plain, how little the poet has succeeded in raising the shadowy names, for which he was forced to invent characters, into living beings, like the heroes of Homer. Perhaps it is a problem which defies solution, to form an epic poem on an argument which has not lived for centuries in popular songs and tales, as the common property of a nation, so that the cycle of stories which comprises it, and the persons who act a part in it, are familiar to every one. Assuredly this problem was beyond the powers of Virgil, whose genius was barren in creating, great as was his talent for embellishing. That he himself was conscious of this, and was content to be great in the way suited to his endowments, is proved by his practice of imitating and borrowing, and by the touches he intersperses of his exquisite and extensive erudition, so much admired by the Romans, but now so little appreciated.

B. S. NIEBUHR

In the garden we

292 We envy you your sea-breezes. feel nothing but the reflection of the heat from the walls; and in the parlour, from the opposite houses. I fancy Virgil was so situated when he wrote those two beautiful lines:

Oh quis me gelidis in vallibus Haemi

sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!

The worst of it is, that though the sun-beams strike as forcibly upon my harp-strings as they did upon his, they elicit no such sounds, but rather produce such groans as they are said to have drawn from those of the statue of Memnon. As you have ventured to make the experiment, your own experience will be your best guide in the article of bathing. An inference will hardly follow, though one should pull at it with all one's might, from Smollett's case to yours. He was corpulent, muscular, and strong; whereas, if you were either stolen or strayed, such a description of you in an advertisement would hardly direct an enquirer with sufficient accuracy and exactness. But if bathing does not make your head ache, or prevent your sleeping at night, I should imagine it could not hurt you. I remember taking a walk upon the strand at Margate, where the cliff is high and perpendicular. At long intervals there are cart-ways, cut through the rock