In political life, place and money are too much in request. The gift of office, when not fairly earned by public service, proves often the corruption of morals. It is the substitution of an inferior motive for a patriotic one; and wherever it prevails from considerations of personal favoritism, it degrades politics and debases character.

Andrew Marvell was a patriot of the old Roman build. He lived in troublous times. He was born at Hull at the beginning of the reign of Charles I. When a young man, he spent four years at Trinity College, Cambridge. He afterward traveled through Europe. In Italy he met Milton, and continued his friend through life. On his return to England the civil war was raging. It does not appear that he took any part in the struggle, though he was always a defender and promoter of liberty. In 1660 he was elected member of Parliament for his native town, and during his membership he wrote to the mayor and his constituents by almost every post, telling them of the course of affairs in Parliament.

Marvell did not sympathize with Milton's antimonarchical tendencies. His biographer styles him "the friend of England, Liberty, and Magna Charta." He had no objections to a properly restricted monarchy, and therefore favored the Restoration. The people longed for it, believing that the return of Charles II. would prove the restoration of peace and loyalty. They were much mistaken. Marvell was appointed to accompany Lord Carlisle on an embassy to Russia, showing that he was not reckoned an enemy to the court. During his absence much evil had been done. The restored king was constantly in want of money. He took every method, by selling places and instituting monopolies, to supply his perpetual need. In one of Marvell's letters to his constituents he said, "The court is at the highest pitch of want and luxury, and the people are full of discontent." In a trial of two Quakers, Pen and Mead, at the Old Bailey, the recorder. among the rest, commended the Spanish Inquisition, saying "it would never be well till we had something like it."

The king continued to raise money unscrupulously, by means of his courtiers and apostate patriots. He bought them up by bribes of thousands of pounds. But Marvell was not to be bought. His satires upon the court and its parasites were published. They were read by all classes, from the king to the tradesman. The king determined to win him over. He was

threatened, he was flattered, he was thwarted, he was caressed, he was beset with spies, he was waylaid by ruffians, and courted by beauties. But no Delilah could discover the secret of his strength. His integrity was proof alike against danger and against corruption. Against threats and bribes, pride is the ally of principle. In a court which held no man to be honest, and no woman chaste, this soft sorcery was cultivated to perfection; but Marvell, revering and respecting himself, was proof against its charms.

It has been said that Lord Treasurer Danby, thinking to buy over his old schoolfellow, called upon Marvell in his garret. At parting, the lord treasurer slipped into his hand an order on the treasury for £1,000, and then went to his chariot. Marvell, looking at the paper, calls after the treasurer, "My lord, I request another moment." They went up again to the garret, and Jack, the servant boy, was called. “Jack, child, what had I for dinner yesterday?" "Don't you remember, sir? you had the little shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring from a woman in the market." "Very right, child. What have I for dinner to-day?" "Don't you know, sir, that you bid me lay by the blade bone to broil? » 'Tis so, very right, child, go away." "My lord," said Marvell, turning to the treasurer, "do you hear that? Andrew Marvell's dinner is provided; there's your piece

of paper. I want it not. I knew the sort of kindness you intended. I live here to serve my constitutents: the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not one."

Marvell conducted himself nobly to the end. He remained unimpeachable in his character. He was the true representative of his constituents. Though not poor, his mode of living was simple and frugal. In July, 1678, he visited his constituents for the last time. Shortly after his return to London, without any previous illness or visible decay, he expired. Some say he died from poison. That may not be true. But certainly he died an honest man. He always preserved his purity. He ever defended the right. He was "beloved by good men; feared by bad; imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any." These are the words on his tombstone at Hull.

Ben Jonson, like Marvell, was sturdy and plain spoken. When Charles I. sent that brave poet a tardy and slight gratuity during his poverty and sickness, Ben sent back the money, with the message, "I suppose he sends me this because I live in an alley; tell him his soul lives in an alley."

Goldsmith also was a man who would not be bought.

He

had known the depths of poverty. He had wandered over Europe, paying his way with his flute. He had slept in barns and under the open sky. He tried acting, ushering, doctoring. He starved amid them all. Then he tried authorship, and became a gentleman. But he never quite escaped from the clutches of poverty. He described himself as "in a garret writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned for a milk score." One day Johnson received a message from Goldsmith, stating that he was in great distress. The doctor went to see him, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent. The only thing he had to dispose of was a packet of manuscript. Johnson took it up, and found it to be the "Vicar of Wakefield." Having ascertained its merit, Johnson took it to a bookseller and sold it for sixty pounds.

Poor though he was then, and poor though he was at the end of his life, for he died in debt,— Goldsmith could not be bought. He refused to do dirty political work. About £50,000 annually was then expended by Sir Robert Walpole in secret-service money. Daily scribblers were suborned to write up the acts of the administration, and to write down those of their opponents. In the time of Lord North "Junius" was in opposition. It was resolved to hire Goldsmith to baffle his terrible sarcasm. Dr. Scott, chaplain to Lord Sandwich, was deputed to negotiate with him. “I found him," says Dr. Scott, "in a miserable suite of chambers in the Temple. I told him my authority. I told how I was empowered to pay for his exertions; and, would you believe it? — he was so absurd as to say, 'I can earn as much as will supply my wants without writing for any party; the assistance you offer is therefore unnecessary to me'; and so I left him in his garret!"

Thus did poor and noble Goldsmith spurn the wages of unrighteousness! He preferred using his pen to write the famous tale of "Goody Two Shoes" for the amusement of children rather than become the hack pamphleteer of political prostitutes.

Pulteney, the leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, having in one of his speeches made a Latin quotation, was corrected by Sir Robert Walpole, who offered to wager a guinea on the inaccuracy of the lines. The bet was accepted, the classic was referred to, and Pulteney was found to be right. The minister threw a guinea across the table, and Pulteney, on taking it

up, called the house to witness that this was the first guinea of the public money he had ever put into his pocket! The very coin thus lost and won is preserved in the British Museum, as the "Pulteney Guinea."

From "Duty."

3449

ADAM SMITH

(1723-1790)

DAM SMITH, author of the "Wealth of Nations," and one of the most celebrated economists of modern times, was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, June 5th, 1723. After completing his own scholastic education at Glasgow and Oxford, he taught Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres at Edinburgh, Logic at Glasgow, and finally Moral Philosophy in the latter university. In 1778 he was appointed Commissioner of Customs at Edinburgh; in 1787 was chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. His "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations» appeared in 1776, and his "Theory of Moral Sentiments" in 1759. He died at Edinburgh, July 17th, 1790. He wrote industriously on what seems to have been a wide range of topics, but just before his death he selected a few essays from the mass of his manuscripts and directed that all the rest should be burned. This was accordingly done, perhaps to the advantage of his reputation, but certainly to the disadvantage of posterity, as even the worst and most unpolished writing of a man of his intellectual rank may be more valuable than the masterpieces of mediocrity.

WHE

JUDGING OTHERS BY OURSELVES

THEN the original passions of the person principally concerned are in perfect concord with the sympathetic emotions of the spectator, they necessarily appear to this last just and proper, and suitable to their objects; and, on the contrary, when, upon bringing the case home to himself, he finds that they do not coincide with what he feels, they necessarily appear to him unjust and improper, and unsuitable to the causes which excite them. To approve of the passions of another, therefore, as suitable to their objects, is the same thing as to observe that we entirely sympathize with them; and not to approve of them as such is the same thing as to observe that we do not entirely sympathize with them. The man who resents the injuries that have