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123. M. PORCIUS CATO REPULSED FROM THE CONSULSHIP, B. C. 51 It is observed of this competition, that it was carried on without bribery or tumult. As the competitors were supposed to be all of the Senatorian party, the Senators thought their interest secure, whichever of the candidates should prevail. And as the Senatorian party divided upon the occasion, the influence of Cæsar and Pompey easily cast the balance on the side of Sulpicius and Marcellus. Cato, during the competition, continued in the same habits of friendship as usual with both; and when the choice was decided in their favour, instead of withdrawing from public view, as was common under such disappointments, he went to the field of Mars as usual from the assemblies of the people, stript and went to exercise, and continued from thence forward to frequent the Forum in his common undress. To those who condoled with him, or pressed him to continue his suit for another year, as he had done when first disappointed of the Prætorship, he made answer, 'That he thought it was the part of a good man to undertake the public service, whenever he was intrusted with it, and to make his willingness known, but not to court the public for employments as a favour to himself.' 'The people,' he said, ‘at the time that they refused me the Prætorship, were under actual violence: in this case, they have made a free choice, and it appears that I must either violate my own mind or renounce their good-will. My own mind is of more consequence to me than their favour; but, if I retain my character, I shall not be so unreasonable as to expect consideration from persons to whom it is not agreeable.'

124.

CHARACTER OF JUSTINIAN. The emperor was easy of access, patient of hearing, courteous and affable in discourse, and a master of the angry passions which rage with such destructive violence in the breast of a despot. Procopius praises his temper, to reproach him with calm and deliberative cruelty: but in the conspiracies which attacked his authority and person, a more candid judge will approve the justice or admire the clemency of Justinian. He excelled in the private virtues of chastity and temperance; and his abstemious diet was regulated not by the prudence of a philosopher but the superstition of a monk. His repasts were short and frugal: on solemn fasts he contented himself with water and vegetables; and such was his strength as

well as fervour, that he frequently passed two days and as many nights without tasting any food. The measure of his sleep was not less rigorous; after the repose of a single hour, the body was awakened by the soul, and, to the astonishment of his chamberlains, Justinian walked or studied till the morning light.

E. GIBBON

125. OF EPITAPHS. As honours are paid to the dead in order to incite others to the imitation of their excellencies, the principal intention of epitaphs is to perpetuate the examples of virtue, that the tomb of a good man may supply the want of his presence, and veneration for his memory produce the same effect as the observation of his life. Those epitaphs are, therefore, the most perfect, which set virtue in the strongest light, and are best adapted to exalt the reader's ideas and rouse his emulation. To this end it is not always necessary to recount the actions of a hero, or enumerate the writings of a philosopher; to imagine such information necessary is to detract from their characters, or to suppose their works mortal or their achievements in danger of being forgotten. The bare name of such men answers every purpose of a long inscription. Had only the name of Sir Isaac Newton been subjoined to the design upon his monument, instead of a long detail of his discoveries, which no philosopher can want and which none but a philosopher can understand, those by whose direction it was raised had done more honour both to him and to themselves. This indeed is a commendation which it requires no genius to bestow, but which can never become vulgar or contemptible, if bestowed with judgment; because no single age produces many men of merit superior to panegyric. None but the first names can stand unassisted against the attacks of time; and if men raised to reputation by accident or caprice have nothing but their names engraved on their tombs, there is danger lest in a few years the inscription require an interpreter.

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S. JOHNSON

126. UNIVERSAL HAPPINESS-PLAN FOR DEVISING IMPOSSIBLE. We are now to consider in what happiness does consist. In life, the great art is to know beforehand, what will please for a time and continue to please. But this foreknowledge is difficult of attainment. Some pleasures, alluring

at a distance, become when possessed insipid or short-lived; while others start up unthought of. The necessity of this fore-knowledge is the greater as the power to change is the less, after the experiment has been tried; and were it more practicable, it would be unadvisable, as such shifting is unfavourable to the happiness of any condition. Through the great variety of taste in man, arising from every different shade of original structure and accidental situation, it is impossible to devise a plan of universal happiness. All that can be attempted, is, to describe a mode of life, in which the majority will seem the happiest; for though the apparent is not the true measure of the real happiness, it is the best we can arrive at.

127.

TRUE STANDARD OF THE ARTS. Art can never give the rules that make an art. This is, I believe, the reason why artists in general, and poets principally, have been confined in so narrow a circle; they have been rather imitators of one another than of nature; and this with so faithful an uniformity and to so remote an antiquity, that it is hard to say who gave the first model. Critics follow them, and therefore can do little as guides. I can judge but poorly of any thing, whilst I measure it by no other standard than itself. The true standard of the arts is in every man's power; and an easy observation of the most common, sometimes of the meanest things in nature, will give the truest lights, where the greatest sagacity and industry, that slights such observation, must leave us in the dark, or, what is worse, amuse and mislead us by false lights. In an inquiry it is almost everything to be once in a right road. I am satisfied I have done but little by these observations considered in themselves; and I never should have taken the pains to digest them, much less should I have ever ventured to publish them, if I was not convinced that nothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stag

nate.

E. BURKE

128. YOUR two letters, my dear John, were very acceptable, and it gives me great pleasure to find your situation so agreeable, with a prospect also of its being so advantageous with respect to your improvement. I miss you exceedingly, but the reflection and the hope that you will profit by it

reconciles me to the separation; and you may be assured I am much more happy with such prospects in view, than I should be if you were with me, and without them. But, my dear John, mental advantages are not all that are to be considered; you should also have regard to your health, for without health there can be no enjoyment. Do not neglect to pay proper attention to that, and spare nothing that will contribute to preserve it; and if any thing should at any time ail you, do not neglect to attend to it in time. It certainly would be my wish to have you with me, if your improvement would be promoted by it; but when that cannot be, I must and do endeavour to reconcile myself to the separation with cheerfulness, and I am the better enabled to do this, when I remember that you have, in addition to the other advantages of your situation, the (I may say) maternal care and kindness of the worthy Mrs Knox: indeed I feel great regard for her on account of her attention to you, and wish with you that her situation was more suited to her merits.

129. MARIE ANTOINETTE. It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning-star, full of life and splendour and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream when she added titles of veneration to these of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, œconomists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself,

the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

E. BURKE

130. WARREN HASTINGS-HIS APPEARANCE ON HIS TRIAL. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, and made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual self-possession and selfrespect, a high and intellectual forehead, a brow pensive but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta, Mens aequa in arduis; such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.

LORD MACAULAY

131. RESENTMENT is, for obvious and wise reasons, one of the strongest passions in the human mind. The natural demand of this passion is, that the person who feels the injury should himself inflict the vengeance due on that account. The permitting this, however, would have been destructive to society; and punishment would have known no bounds, either in severity or in duration. For this reason, in the very infancy of the social state, the sword was taken out of private hands, and committed to the magistrate. But at first, while laws aimed at restraining, they really strengthened the principle of revenge. The earliest and most simple punishment for crimes was retaliation; the offender forfeited limb for limb, and life for life. The payment of a compensation o the person injured, succeeded to the rigour of the former 6

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