ought to be persuaded that they are full as little entitled, and far less qualified, with safety to themselves to use any arbitrary power whatsoever; that therefore they are not, under a false show of liberty but in truth to exercise an unnatural inverted domination, tyrannically to exact from those who officiate in the state not an entire devotion to their interest, which is their right, but an abject submission to their occasional will; extinguishing thereby in all those who serve them all principle, all sense of dignity, all use of judgment, and all consistency of character, while by the very same process they give themselves up a proper, a suitable, but a most contemptible prey to the servile ambition of popular sycophants or courtly flatterers.

E. BURKE

175. CUSTOM-ITS TWOFOLD OPERATION. Custom has a twofold operation: the one to deaden the frequency and force of repeated impressions, the other to endear the familiar object to the affections. Commonly, where the mind is vigorous, and the power of sensation very perfect, it has rather the last operation than the first; with meaner minds the first takes place in the higher degree, so that they are commonly characterized by a desire for excitement, and the want of the loving, fixed, theoretic power. But both take place in some degree with all men, so that as life advances, impressions of all kinds become less rapturous owing to their repetition. It is, however, beneficially ordained that repulsiveness shall be diminished by custom in a far greater degree than the sensation of beauty. J. RUSKIN

Which how a peo

176. RENUNCIATION OF FREEDOM. ple and their leaders especially can do, who have fought so gloriously for liberty; how they can change their noble words and actions, heretofore so becoming the majesty of a free people, into the base necessity of court flatteries and prostrations, is not only strange and admirable but lamentable to think on. That a nation should be so valorous and courageous to win their liberty in the field, and when they have won it, should be so heartless and unwise in their counsels, as not to know how to use it, value it, what to do with it or with themselves; but after ten or twelve years' prosperous war and contestation with tyranny, basely and

besottedly to run their necks again into the yoke which they have broken, and prostrate all the fruits of their victory for nought at the feet of the vanquished, besides our loss of glory, and such an example as kings or tyrants never yet had the like to boast of, will be an ignominy if it befall us, that never yet befell any nation possessed of their liberty; worthy indeed themselves, whatsoever they be, to be for ever slaves, but that part of the nation which consents not with them, as I persuade me of a great number, far worthier than by their means to be brought into the same bondage.

J. MILTON

177. DEMOSTHENES, Suffice it here to observe, that his boast is, that throughout his political career he had kept one object steadily in view: to strengthen Athens within and without, and to preserve her independence, particularly against the power and the arts of Philip. He owned that he had failed; but it was after he had done all that one Iman in his situation-a citizen of a commonwealth-could do. He had failed in a cause in which defeat was more glorious than victory in any other, in a struggle not less worthy of Athens than those in which her heroic citizens in past ages had earned their fame. In a word, the whole oration breathes the spirit of that high philosophy which, whether learnt in the schools or from life, has consoled the noblest of our kind in prisons and on scaffolds and under every persecution of adverse fortune, but in the tone necessary to impress a mixed multitude with a like feeling and to elevate it for a while into a sphere above its own.

C. THIRLWALL

178. JOB IV. 13-17. There is a passage in the Book of Job amazingly sublime; and this sublimity is principally due to the terrible uncertainty of the thing described: In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up: it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice,— Shall mortal man be more just than God?-We are first prepared with the utmost solemnity for the vision; we are

first terrified, before we are let even into the obscure cause of our emotion: but when the grand cause of terror makes its appearance, what is it? is it not wrapt up in the shades of its own incomprehensible darkness, more awful, more striking, more terrible, than the liveliest description, than the clearest painting could possibly represent it?

E. BURKE

179. COVENANTS. No understanding man can be ignorant, that covenants are ever made according to the present state of persons and of things; and have ever the more general laws of nature and of reason included in them, though not expressed. If I make a voluntary covenant, as with a man to do him good, and he prove afterward a monster to me, I should conceive a disobligement. If I covenant not to hurt an enemy in favour of him and forbearance and hope of his amendment, and he after that shall do me tenfold injury and mischief to what he had done when I so covenanted, and still be plotting what may tend to my destruction, I question not but that his after-actions release me; nor know I covenant so sacred, that withholds me from demanding justice on him. J. MILTON

180. Solon. Let me put to you a few questions near to the point: you will answer them, I am confident, easily and affably.

Pisistratus, have you not felt yourself the happier, when, in the fulness of your heart, you have made a large offering to the gods?

Pisistratus. Solon, I am not impious: I have made many such offerings to them, and have always been the happier.

Sol. Did they need your sacrifice?

Pisis. They need nothing from us mortals; but I was happy in the performance of what I have been taught is my duty.

Sol. Piously, virtuously and reasonably said, my friend. The gods did not indeed want your sacrifice: they who give every thing can want nothing. The Athenians do want a sacrifice from you: they have an urgent necessity of something; the necessity of that very thing which you have taken from them, and which it can cost you nothing to replace.

You have always been happier, you confess, in giving to the gods what you could have yourself used in your own house: believe me, you will not be less so in giving back to your fellow-citizens what you have taken out of theirs, and what you very well know they will seize when they can, together with your property and life. W. S. LANDOR

181. ACTIONS UNDER AND APART FROM MORAL CONSIDERATIONS. In order to see this more clearly, we must distinguish between actions themselves, and that quality ascribed to them, which we call virtuous or vicious. The gratification itself of every natural passion must be attended with delight; and acquisitions of fortune, however made, are acquisitions of the means or materials of enjoyment. An action, then, by which any natural passion is gratified or fortune acquired, procures delight or advantage, abstracted from all consideration of the morality of such action. Consequently, the pleasure or advantage in this case is gained by the action itself, not by the morality, the virtuousness or viciousness of it, though it be perhaps virtuous or vicious. Thus, to say such an action or course of behaviour procured such pleasure or advantage or brought on such inconvenience and pain, is quite a different thing from saying that such good or bad effect was owing to the virtue or vice of such action or behaviour. In one case, an action, abstracted from all moral consideration, produced its effect; in the other case, for it will appear that there are such cases, the morality of the action, the action under a moral consideration, i. e. the virtuousness or viciousness of it, produced the effect.

182. LAW AGAINST THE ADMISSION OF STRANGERS. 'Amongst his other fundamental laws of this kingdom, he did ordain the interdicts and prohibitions, which we have, touching entrance of strangers, doubting novelties and commixture of manners. It is true the like law against the admission of strangers without license is an ancient law in the kingdom of China, and yet continued in use: but there it is a poor thing, and hath made them a curious, ignorant, fearful, foolish nation. But our law-giver made his law of another temper. For first he hath preserved all points of

humanity, in taking order and making provision for the relief of strangers distressed, whereof you have tasted.' At which speech, as reason was, we all rose up and bowed ourselves. He went on. 'That king also still desiring to join humanity and policy together; and thinking it against humanity to detain strangers here against their wills; and against policy that they should return and discover their knowledge of this estate, he took this course: he did ordain that of the strangers that should be permitted to land, as many at all times might depart, as would; but as many as would stay, should have very good conditions and means to live from the state. Wherein he saw so far, that now in so many ages since the prohibition, we have memory, not of one ship that ever returned, and but of thirteen persons only, at several times, that chose to return in our bottoms.'

183. ARISTOPHANES. It may not be improper to say a word of the excellencies and defects of Aristophanes: especially as some modern critics have thought proper not only to greet him with the title of a scurrilous and indecent buffoon, but to wonder how such monstrous farces could be endured by the chaste ears of an Attic audience. That many should have been greatly exasperated with Aristophanes for publicly exhibiting Socrates on the stage and making him speak and act in a manner most inconsistent with his known character, is not surprising; but as the accusation urged by some against the poet, of being instrumental to Socrates' death, has been substantially refuted by many critics; so one of them has very judiciously observed, with regard to the other part of the charge, that Socrates is not so much the object of ridicule in the Comedy of the Clouds, as the philosophers in general, who, of whatever benefit the lessons and example of Socrates himself might be to the state, were, from their idle lives, their minute ridiculous and sometimes impious disquisitions, highly prejudicial to their disciples and by consequence to the public. Of the indecency, which abounds in Aristophanes, unjustifiable as it certainly is, it may however be observed, that different ages differ extremely in their ideas of this offence. Among the ancients plain-speaking was the fashion; nor was that ceremonious delicacy introduced, which has taught men to abuse each other with the utmost politeness and express the most in