530. TRUTH AND ERROR. But what! (it may be asked) Is the absence of unanimity an indispensable condition of true knowledge? Is it necessary that some part of mankind should persist in error, to enable any to realize the truth? Does a belief cease to be real and vital as soon as it is generally received-and is a proposition never thoroughly understood and felt unless some doubt of it remains? As soon as mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The highest aim and best result of improved intelligence, it has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgement of all important truths: and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?

531. THE LOWER ANIMALS VOID OF FELLOW-FEELING. Though the lower animals have feeling, they have no fellowfeeling. Have I not seen the horse enjoy his feed of corn, when his yoke-fellow lay dying in the neighbouring stall, and never turn an eye of pity on the sufferer? They have strong passions, but no sympathy. It is said that the wounded deer sheds tears; but it belongs to man only to 'weep with them that weep,' and by sympathy to divide each other's sorrows, and double each other's joys. When thunder, following the dazzling flash, has burst among our hills; when the horn of the Switzer has rung in his glorious valleys; when the boatman has shouted from the bosom of a rock-girt loch; wonderful were the echoes I have heard them make; but there is no echo so fine or wonderful as that which, in the sympathy of human hearts, repeats the cry of another's sorrow, and makes me feel his pain almost as if it were my own.

532. I CANNOT let this night close without offering a few lines of reply to your kind, though sad letter, just received. It truly grieves me that you write in so desponding a style of your health; but I trust that very great deduction must be made on the score of morbid feeling. I have known you, at other times, little less apprehensive of the same complaint. Any thoughts of your being a traveller at this season, I had, I may say, given up before; and in truth, when I found your complaint so obstinate, my wish was, that you should consult

your feelings and nurse yourself. I am unwilling, however, to give up the hope so long cherished, of seeing you here at some time. And in spring, so far as it is right and lawful to look forward, I trust we shall meet.

533. THE EMPEROR JULIAN-HIS GENEROUS TREATMENT OF THE CHAMAVIANS. An incident is related, interesting enough in itself, and by no means repugnant to the character of Julian, who ingeniously contrived both the plot and catastrophe of the tragedy. When the Chamavians sued for peace, he required the son of their king, as the only hostage in whom he could rely. A mournful silence, interrupted by tears and groans, declared the sad perplexity of the barbarians; and their aged chief lamented in pathetic language, that his private loss was now embittered by a sense of the public calamity. While the Chamavians lay prostrate at the foot of his throne, the royal captive, whom they believed to have been slain, unexpectedly appeared before their eyes; and as soon as the tumult of joy was hushed into attention, the Cæsar addressed the assembly in the following terms; 'Behold the son, the prince, whom you wept. You had lost him by your fault. God and the Romans have restored him to you. I shall still preserve and educate the youth, rather as a monument of my own virtue, than as a pledge of your sincerity. Should you presume to violate the faith which you have sworn, the arms of the Republic will avenge the perfidy, not on the innocent, but on the guilty.' The barbarians withdrew from his presence, impressed with the warmest sentiments of gratitude and admiration. E. GIBBON

534. OF OLD.

INTERCOURSE WITH THE GREATEST INTELLECTS

Such is the feeling which a man of liberal education naturally entertains towards the great minds of former ages. The debt which he owes to them is incalculable. They have guided him to truth. They have filled his mind with noble and graceful images. They have stood by him in all vicissitudes, comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, companions in solitude. These friendships are exposed to no danger from the occurrences by which other attachments are weakened or dissolved. Time glides on; fortune is inconstant; tempers are soured; bonds which seemed indis

soluble are daily sundered by interest, by emulation, or by caprice. But no such cause can affect the silent converse which we hold with the highest of human intellects. That placid intercourse is disturbed by no jealousies or resentments. These are the old friends who are never seen with new faces, who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity. With the dead there is no rivalry. In the dead there is no change.

LORD MACAULAY

535.

FORTUNE. Ill fortune never crusht that man, whom good fortune deceived not. I therefore have counselled my friends never to trust to her fairer side, though she seemed to make peace with them: but to place all things she gave them so, as she might ask them again without their trouble; she might take them from them, not pull them; to keep always a distance between her, and themselves. He knows not his own strength, that hath not met adversity. Heaven prepares good men with crosses; but no ill can happen to a good man. Contraries are not mixed. that which happens to any man, may to every man. it is in his reason what he accounts it and will make it.

Yet
But

B. JONSON

I know

536. NON NIMIUM CREDENDUM ANTIQUITATI. nothing can conduce more to letters, than to examine the writings of the ancients, and not to rest in their sole authority, or take all upon trust from them; provided the plagues of judging and pronouncing against them be away: such as are envy, bitterness, precipitation, impudence and scurrile scoffing. For to all the observations of the ancients we have our own experience; which if we will use and apply, we have better means to pronounce. It is true they opened the gates and made the way that went before us: but as guides, not commanders; Non domini nostri sed duces fuere. Truth lies open to all; it is no man's several. Patet omnibus veritas; nondum est occupata. Multum ex illa, etiam futuris relicta est. B. JONSON

537. THE DISEASE OF TALKING. Whom the disease of talking once possesseth, he can never hold his peace. Nay rather than he will not discourse, he will hire men to hear

him.

He is like Homer's Thersites, ‘speaking without judgment or measure.' Ulysses in Homer is made a long-thinking man before he speaks; and Epaminondas is celebrated by Pindar to be a man, that tho' he knew much, yet he spoke but little. Demacatus, when on the Bench, he was long silent and said nothing; one asking him, 'if it were folly in him or want of language:' he answered, 'a fool could never hold his peace:' for too much talking is ever the indice of a fool.

Dum tacet indoctus, poterit cordatus haberi,

is morbos animi namque tacendo tegit.

Nor is that worthy speech of Zeno the philosopher to be past over with the note of ignorance; who being invited to a feast in Athens, where a great prince's ambassadors were entertained and was the only person had said nothing at the table; one of them with courtesie asked him, 'What shall we return from thee, Zeno, to the prince our master, if he ask us of thee?' 'Nothing,' he replied, more, but that you found an old man in Athens, that knew to be silent amongst his cups.' It was near a miracle to see an old man silent, since talking is the disease of age; but amongst cups makes it fully a wonder. B. JONSON

538. BENEFICIA. Nothing is a courtesie, unless it be meant us; and that friendly and lovingly. We owe no thanks to rivers, that they carry our boats; or winds, that they be favouring and fill our sails; or meats, that they be nourishing. For these are what they are necessarily. Horses carry us, trees shade us, but they know it not. It is true, some men may receive a courtesie and not know it. Many men have been cured of diseases by accidents; but they were not remedies. I myself have known one helped of an ague by falling into a water, another whipped out of a fever: but no man would use these for medicines. It is the mind and not the event that distinguisheth the courtesie from wrong. My adversary may offend the judge from his pride, and impertinences, and I win my cause; but he meant it not me as a courtesie. I 'scaped pirates by being shipwrecked. Was the rack a benefit therefore? No: the doing of courtesies aright is the mixing of the respects for his own sake and not for mine. He that doth them merely for his own sake is like one that feeds his cattle to sell them: he hath his horse well-drest for Smithfield, B. JONSON

539. MEMORY. Memory of all the powers of the mind is the most delicate and frail: it is the first of our faculties that age invades. Seneca, the father, the Rhetorician, confesseth of himself, he had a miraculous one; not only to receive but to hold. I myself could in my youth have repeated all that I ever had made and so continued till I was past forty: since, it is much decayed in me. Yet I can repeat whole books that I have read, and poems of some selected friends, which I have liked to charge my memory with. It was wont to be faithful to me, but shaken with age now, and sloth, which weakens the strongest abilities; it may perform somewhat but cannot promise much. By exercise it is to be made better and serviceable. Whatsoever I pawned with it while I was young and a boy, it offers me readily and without stops: but what I trust to it now, it lays up more negligently, and oftentimes loses: so that I receive mine own, though frequently called for, as if it were new and borrowed. Nor do I always find presently from it what I do seek; but while I am doing another thing, that I laboured for will come: and what I sought with trouble will offer itself when I am quiet. Now in some men I have found it as happy as nature, who, whatsoever they read or pen, they can say without book presently; as if they did then write in their mind. And it is more a wonder in such as have a swift stile, for their memories are commonly slowest : such as torture their writings, and go into council for every word, must needs fix somewhat, and make it their own at last, though but through their own vexation.

B. JONSON