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Yet I do neither repent nor alter me course; None
pertì lum diri sacramentum, Nothing shal", separate
me from a mistress which I have loved so '63, að.
have now at last married, though she neitar
brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quiet!!
with me as I hoped from her.

Nec ros, dulcissima mundi
Nomina, voe musa, libertus, otiu, libri,
Hortique, sylvaque, animá remanente relinquam.

Nor be me e'er shall von,

You of a'l names the sweetest and the best,
You muses, books, and Wherty, and rest :
You gardens, fields, and woods forsaken be,
As long as life itself forsakes not me.

[Poetry and Poets.]

You may see by it I was even then acquainted Thowever, by the fa: ing of the forces which I had erwith the poets for the conciusion is taken out of, pected. I did not quit the design which i nad rescores Horace); and perhaps it was the immature and im- on; 1 cast myself into it a respur mentitum, witzen moderate love of them which statɑped first, or rather mak ng capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune engraved, the characters in me. They were ke let-But food laughs at man, who says to his soul, Tak ters cut in the hark of a young tree, which, with the thy ease: I met present,y not only with many tree, still grow proportionally. But how this love I meumbrances and impediments, but with se came to be produced in me so early, is a hard ques- | sickness (a new misfortune to me), as would have tion: I believe I can tell the particular little chance | spojed the happiness of an emperor as well as none that fed my head first with such climes of verse, as have never since left ringing there: for I remember when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was wont to be m my mother's pariour (I know not by what accident, for she hers never in her life read any book but of devotion) but there was wont to lie Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was inhinetely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this; and by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over | before I was twe've years old. With these affections ¦ of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went i to the university; but was soon toru from thence by that public violent storm, which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every piant, even from the princely cedars, to me, the hyssop. Yet I had as good fortune as could have betallen me in such a tempest; for I was cast by it into the family of one of the best persons, and into the court of one of the best princesses in the world. Now, though I was here engaged in ways most contrary to the origina' design of my life; that is, into much company, and no small business, and into a daily sight of greatness, both me stant and triumphant (for that was the state then of the English and the French courts); yet all this was so far from altering my opinion, that it only added the confirmation of reason to that which was before but natural inclination. I saw plainly all the paint of that kind of life, the nearer I came to it; and that beauty which I did not fall in love with, when, for sught I knew, it was real, was not like to bewitch or entice me when I saw it was adulterate. I met with several great persons, whom I liked very well, but could not perceive that any part of their greatness was to be liked or desired, no more than I would be glad or content to be in a storm, though I saw many ships which rid safely and bravely in it. A storm would not agree with my stomach, if it did with my courage; though I was in a crowd of as good company as could be found anywhere, though I was in business of great and honourable trust, though I eat at the best table, and enjoyed the best conveniences for present sub-, sistence that ought to be desired by a man of my condition, in banishment and public distresses; yet I could not abstain from renewing my old schoolboy's, wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect:

Well, then, I now do plainly sec

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree, &c. And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country, which I thought in that case I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who, with no greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. But I had before written a shrewd prophesy against myself, and I think Apollo inspired me in the truth, though not in the elegance of it:

Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,

It is, I confess, but seldom seen that the poet såtes before the man; for when we once tali in love wiki that bewitching art, we do not use to court it as s mistress, but marry it as a wife, and take it for ette or worse as an inseparable companion of our WOH late. But as the marriages of infants de hat are prosper, so no man ought to wonder at the diminut or decay of my affection to poess, to which I has 12tracted myself so much under age, and so muci, tum own prejudice, in regard of those more rivital matches which I might have made among the re sciences, As for the portion which this brings t fame, it is an estate (if it be any, for men are the oftener deceived in their hopes of widows that ytte opinion of regi monumentum der perennias, that sh ever comes in whilst we are living to enjoy 16, a fantastical kind of reversion to our (91) *** Neither ought any man to envy poets this posthe same and imaginary happiness, since they find com so little in present, that it may be trui app them which St Paul speaks of the first Christies their reward be in this lite, they are of all mes de most miserable,'

And it in quiet and flourishing times the mat with so small encouragement, what are they to ev in rough and troubled ones! If wit be such a fa that it scarce receives heat enough to preserve it not even in the summer of our cold climate, how t choose but wither in a long and sharp winter! A warlike, various, and a tragical age is best to write, but

worst to write in.

The

There is nothing that requires so much serer såt and cheerfulness of spirit; it must not be either aven whelmed with the cares of life, or overest with the clouds of melancholy and sorrow, or shaken and a turbed with the storms of injurious fortune, it like the halcyon, have fair weather to breed in soul must be filled with bright and delight de when it undertakes to communicate delight to this which is the main end of poesy. One may see thera the style of Ovid de Trist, the humbled and deaths condition of spirit with which he wrote it scarce remains any footsteps of that genius (hoven Jovis ira, nec ignes, &c. The cold of the countr stricken through all his faculties, and henamber, tải

Nor at the Exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar; very feet of his verses.-Preface to his MRAČOVANOS.

Content thyself with the small barren praise
Which thy neglected verse does raise, &c.

- I have not falsely sworn.

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402

Of Obscurity.

What a brave privilege is it to be free from all enntentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving and from paying all kind of ceremonies! It is, in my mind, a very delightful pastime for two pod and agreeable friends to travel up and down together, in places where they are by nobody known, nor know anybody. It was the case of Æneas and his Achates, when they walked invisibly about the fields and streets of Carthage. Venus herself

A veil of thicken'd air around them east,

That none might know, or see them, as they pass'd. The common story of Demosthenes' confession, that he had taken great pleasure in hearing of a tankerwoman say, as he passed, This is that Demosthenes,' ja wonderfully ridiculous from so solid an orator. I myself have often met with that temptation to vanity (if it were any); but am so far from finding it any pleasure, that it only makes me run faster from the place, till I get, as it were, out of sight-shot. Demominus relates, and in such a manner as if he gloried in the good fortune and commodity of it, that, when he came to Athens, nobody there did so much as take notice of him; and Epicurus lived there very well, that is, lay hid many years in his gardens, so famous since that time, with his friend Metrodorus: after whose death, | making, in one of his letters, a kind commemoration of the happiness which they two had enjoyed together, be adds at last, that he thought it no disparagement to those great felicities of their life, that, in the midst of the most talked-of and talking country in the world, they had lived so long, not only without fame, but almost without being heard of; and yet, within a very few years afterward, there were no two names of men more known or more generally celebrated. If we engage into a large acquaintance and various familiarities, we set open our gates to the invaders of most of our time; we expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which would make a wise man tremble to think of. Now, as for being known much by sight, and pointed at, I cannot comprehend the honour that lies in that; whatsoever it be, every mountebank has it more than the best doctor, and the hangman more than the lord-chief-justice of a city. Every creature has it, both of nature and art, if it be any ways extraordinary. It was as often said, 'This is that Bucephalus,' or 'This is that Incitatus,' when they were led prancing through the streets, as, 'This is that Alexander, or, This is that Domitian; and truly, for the latter, I take Incitatus to have been a much more honourable beast than his master, and more deserving the consulship than he the empire.

I love and commend a true good fame, because it is the shadow of virtue: not that it doth any good to the bly which it accompanies, but it is an efficacious shadow, and like that of St Peter, cures the diseases of others. The best kind of glory, no doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides; but it was harmful to them Foth, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, with little commerce in the world besides, who is esteemed well enough by his few neighbours that know him, and is truly irreproachable by anybody; and so, after a healthful quiet life, before the great inconveniences of old age, goes more silently out of it than he came in (for I would not have him so much as cry in the exit): this innocent deceiver of the world, as Horace calls him,

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this muta persona, I take to have been more happy in his part, than the greatest actors that fill the stage with show and noise; nay, even than Augustus himself, who asked, with his last breath, whether he had not played his farce very well.

Of Procrastination.

I am glad that you approve and applaud my design of withdrawing myself from all tumult and business of the world, and consecrating the little rest of my time to those studies to which nature had so motherly inclined me, and from which fortune, like a stepmother, has so long detained me. But, nevertheless (you say, which but is rugo mera, a rust which spoils the good metal it grows upon. But you say) you would advise me not to precipitate that resolution, but to stay a while longer with patience and complaisance, till I had gotten such an estate as might afford me (according to the saying of that person, whom you and I love very much, and would believe as soon as another man) cum dignitate otium.? This were excellent advice to Joshua, who could bid the sun stay too. But there is no fooling with life, when it is once turned beyond forty: the seeking for a fortune then is but a desperate after-game; it is a hundred to one if a man fling two sixes, and recover all; especially if his hand be no luckier than mine.

There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter. Epicurus writes a letter to Idomeneus (who was then a very powerful, wealthy, and, it seems, bountiful person), to recommend to him, who had made so many men rich, one Pythocles, a friend of his, whom he desired might be made a rich man too; but I intreat you that you would not do it just the same way as you have done to many less deserving persons; but in the most gentlemanly manner of obliging him, which is, not to add anything to his estate, but to take something from his desires.'

The sum of this is, that for the uncertain hopes of some conveniences, we ought not to defer the execu tion of a work that is necessary; especially when the use of those things which we would stay for may otherwise be supplied, but the loss of time never recovered; nay, farther yet, though we were sure to obtain all that we had a mind to, though we were sure of getting never so much by continuing the game, yet, when the light of life is so near going out, and ought to be so precious, le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle'-[the play is not worth the expense of the candle]; after having been long tossed in a tempest, if our masts be standing, and we have still sail and tackling enough to carry us to our port, it is no matter for the want of streamers and top-gallants:

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figures, after the manner of the ancient Britons, painted upon it; and I perceived that most of them were the representation of the late battles in our civil wars, and (if I be not much mistaken) it was the battle of Naseby that was drawn upon his breast. His eyes were like burning brass; and there were three crowns of the same metal (as I guessed), and that looked as red-hot, too, upon his head. He held in his right hand a sword that was yet bloody, and nevertheless, the motto of it was Pax quæritur bello; and in his left hand a thick book, upon the back of which was written, in letters of gold, Acts, Ordinances, Protestations, Covenants, Engagements, Declarations, Remonstrances, &c.

body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them, too, as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things Though this sudden, unusual, and dreadful object that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress might have quelled a greater courage than mine, yet so all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards it pleased God (for there is nothing bolder than a man by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for awhile, in a vision) that I was not at all daunted, but asked and to command them victoriously at last; to overhim resolutely and briefly, 'What art thou? And he run each corner of the three nations, and overcome said, 'I am called the north-west principality, his high- with equal facility both the riches of the south and ness, the protector of the commonwealth of England, the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions belonging all foreign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods thereunto; for I am that Angel to whom the Almighty of the earth; to call together parliaments with a word has committed the government of those three king- of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of doms, which thou seest from this place.' And I an- his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned, that swered and said, 'If it be so, sir, it seems to me that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two milfor almost these twenty years past your highness has lions a-year, to be the master of those who had hired been absent from your charge: for not only if any him before to be their servant; to have the estates angel, but if any wise and honest man had since that and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal, time been our governor, we should not have wandered as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be thus long in these laborious and endless labyrinths as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and of confusion; but either not have entered at all into lastly (for there is no end of all the particulars of his them, or at least have returned back ere we had ab-glory), to bequeath all this with one word to his pos solutely lost our way; but, instead of your highness, terity; to die with peace at home, and triumph we have had since such a protector, as was his prede- abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more cessor Richard III. to the king, his nephew; for he than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind presently slew the commonwealth, which he pre-him not to be extinguished but with the whole world; tended to protect, and set up himself in the place of it: : a little less guilty, indeed, in one respect, because the other slew an innocent, and this man did but murder a murderer.2 Such a protector we have had as we would have been glad to have changed for an enemy, and rather received a constant Turk than this every month's apostate; such a protector, as man is to his flocks which he shears, and sells, or devours himself; and I would fain know what the wolf, which he protects him from, could do more? Such a protector' and, as I was proceeding, methought his highness began to put on a displeased and threatening countenance, as men use to do when their dearest friends happen to be traduced in their company; which gave me the first rise of jealousy against him; for I did not believe that Cromwell, among all his foreign correspondences, had ever held any with angels. However, I was not hardened enough yet to venture a quarrel with him then; and therefore (as if I had spoken to the protector himself in Whitehall) I desired him that his highness would please to pardon me, if I had unwittingly spoken anything to the disparagement of a person whose relations to his highness I had not the honour to know.' which he told me, that he had no other concernment for his late highness, than as he took him to be the greatest man that ever was of the English nation, if not (said he) of the whole world; which gives me a just title to the defence of his reputation, since I now account myself, as it were, -a naturalised English angel, by having had so long the management of the affairs of that country. And pray, countryman,' said he, very kindly, and very flatteringly, for I would not have you fall into the general error of the world, that detests and decries so extraordinary a virtue; what can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of

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which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been, too, for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs.”*

The civil war naturally directed the minds of many philosophical men to the subject of civil government, in which it seemed desirable that some fixed fundamental principles might be arrived at as a means of preventing future contests of the same kind. Neither at that time nor since, has it been found possible to lay down a theory of government to which all man- | kind would subscribe; but the period under our notice nevertheless produced some political works which considerably narrowed the debateable ground. The Leviathan' of Hobbes, which we have found it convenient to mention in a former page, was the most distinguished work on the monarchical side of the question; while Harrington's Oceana,' published during the protectorate of Cromwell, and some of the treatises of Milton, are the best works in favour of the republican doctrines.

JAMES HARRINGTON.

JAMES HARRINGTON was a native of Northamp tonshire, where he was born in 1611. He studied at Oxford, and for some time was a pupil of the cele brated Chillingworth. Afterwards, he went abroad for several years, which were mostly spent at the

altered, as he says, in some particulars, from the original, in his * Mr Hume has inserted this character of Cromwell, but history of Great Britain. I know not why he should think any alterations necessary. They are chiefly in the style which surely wanted no improvement; or, if it did, posterity would be more pleased to have this curious fragment transmitted to them in the author's own words, than in the choicest phrase of the historian.-Hurd.

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PROSE WRITERS.

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

courts of Holland and Denmark. While resident at the Hague, and subsequently at Venice, he imbibed many of those republican views which afterwards distinguished his writings. Visiting Rome, he attracted some attention by refusing on a public occasion to kiss the pope's toe; conduct which he afterwards adroitly defended to the king of England, by saying, that, 'having had the honour of kissing his majesty's hand, he thought it beneath him to kiss the toe of any other monarch.' During the civil war, he was appointed by the parliamentary commissioners to be one of the personal attendants of King Charles, who, in 1647, nominated him one of the grooms of his bedchamber. Except upon politics, the king was fond of Harrington's conversation; and the impression made on the latter by the royal condescension and familiarity was such, as to render him very desirous that a reconciliation between his majesty and the parliament might be effected, and to excite in him the most violent grief when the king was brought to the scaffold. He has, nevertheless, in his writings, placed Charles in an unfavourable light, and spoken of his execution as the consequence of a divine judgment. During the sway of Cromwell, Harrington occupied himself in composing the Oceana, which was published in 1656, and led to several controversies. This work is a political romance, illustrating the author's idea of a republic constituted so as to secure that general freedom of which he was so ardent an admirer. It is thus characterised by Hume:- Harrington's Oceana was well adapted to that age, when the plans of imaginary republics were the daily subjects of debate and conversation; and even in our time, it is justly admired as a work of genius and invention. The style of this author wants ease and fluency, but the good matter which his work contains makes compensation.' After the publication of the Oceana,' Harrington continued to exert himself in diffusing his republican opinions, by founding a debating club, called the Rota, and holding conversations with visitors at his This brought him under the suspicion own house. of government soon after the Restoration, and, on pretence of treasonable practices, he was put into confinement, which lasted until an attack of mental derangement made it necessary that he should be delivered to his friends. His death took place in After a careful search, we have been unable to find in the Oceana' a passage of moderate length, which, apart from the context, would probably be interesting to the reader.

1677.

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the vengeance of the royalists, he remained abroad for
seventeen years, at the end of which his father, who
was anxious to see him before leaving the world,
turn to England in 1677, he opposed the measures
procured his pardon from the king. After his re-

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Algernon Sidney.

of the court, and has thus subjected himself to the censure of Hume, who held that such conduct, after the royal pardon, was ungrateful. Probably Sidney A more serious charge himself regarded the pardon as rather a cessation of injustice than as an obligation to an implicit submission for the future. against the memory of this patriot was presented in Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain,' published nearly a century after his death. The English patriots, with Lord William Russell at their head, intrigued with Barillon, the French ambassador, to prevent the war between France and England, their purpose being to prevent Charles II. from having the command of the large funds which on such an occasion must be intrusted to him, lest he should use it against the liberties of the nation; while Louis was not less anxious to prevent the English from joining the list of his eneinies. The association was a strange one; but it never would have Sir John Dalrymple had not discovered amongst been held as a moral stain against the patriots, if Barillon's papers one containing a list of persons receiving bribes from the French monarch, amongst whom appears the name of Sidney, together with ALGERNON SIDNEY, the son of Robert, Earl of those of several other leading Whig members of parLeicester, is another celebrated republican writer of liament. It has been suggested that Barillon might He was born about 1621, and during his embezzle the money, and account for it by a fictithis age. father's lieutenancy in Ireland, served in the army tious list; but, as Dr Aiken has candidly remarked, against the rebels in that kingdom. In 1643, when'sacrificing the reputation of one who was never the civil war between the king and parliament broke out, he was permitted to return to England, where he immediately joined the parliamentary forces, and, as colonel of a regiment of horse, was present at several engagements. He was likewise successively the governor of Chichester, Dublin, and Dover. In 1648 he was named a member of the court for trying the king, which, however, he did not attend, though apparently not from any disapproval of the intentions of those who composed it. The usurpation of Cromwell gave much offence to Sidney, who declined to accept office under either him or his son Richard; but when the Long Parliament recovered its power, he readily consented to act as one of the council of At the time of the Restoration, he was enstate. gaged in a continental embassy; and, apprehensive of

ALGERNON SIDNEY.

suspected, in order to save that of another, is not a very equitable proceeding.' Yet, when we consider the consummate virtue shown by Sidney in other circumstances, and reflect that it is a charge to which the accused has not had an opportunity of replying, we may well allow much doubt to rest on the point. Sidney took a conspicuous part in the proceedings by which the Whigs endeavoured to exclude the Duke of York from the throne; and when an insurrection, to accomplish the same object. that attempt failed, he joined in the conspiracy for This, as is well known, was exposed in consequence of the detection of an inferior plot for the assassination of the king, in which the patriots Russell, Sidney, and others, were dexterously inculpated by the court. Sidney was tried for high

405

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treason before the infamous Chief-Justice Jeffries. Although the only witness against him was that abandoned character, Lord Howard, and nothing could be produced that even ostensibly strengthened the evidence, except some manuscripts in which the lawfulness of resisting tyrants was maintained, and a preference given to a free over an arbitrary government, the jury were servile enough to obey the directions of the judge, and pronounce him guilty. He was beheaded on the 7th of December 1683, glorying in his martyrdom for that 'old cause' in which he had been engaged from his youth. His character is thus described by Bishop Burnet: He was a man of most extraordinary courage; a steady man even to obstinacy; sincere, but of a rough and boisterous temper, that could not bear contradiction. He seemed to be a Christian, but in a particular form of his own. He thought it was to be like a divine philosophy in the mind; but he was against all public worship, and everything that looked like a church. He was stiff to all republican principles; and such an enemy to everything that looked like a monarchy, that he set himself in a high opposition against Cromwell, when he was made protector. He had studied the history of government in all its branches, beyond any man I ever knew. He had a particular way of insinuating himself into people that would hearken to his notions and not contradict him.'

hands, under the name of monarchy. But the wisest, best, and far the greatest part of mankind, rejecting these simple species, did form governments mixed or composed of the three, as shall be proved hereafter, which commonly received their respective denomination from the part that prevailed, and did deserve praise or blame as they were well or ill proportioned. It were a folly hereupon to say, that the liberty for which we contend is of no use to us, since we cannot endure the solitude, barbarity, weakness, want, misery, and dangers that accompany it whilst we live alone, nor can enter into a society without resigning it; for the choice of that society, and the liberty of framing it according to our own wills, for our own good, is all we seek. This remains to us whilst we form gorem-1 ments, that we ourselves are judges how far it is good for us to recede from our natural liberty; which is of so great importance, that from thence only we can know whether we are freemen or slaves; and the difference between the best government and the worst doth wholly depend on a right or wrong exercise of that power. If men are naturally free, such as have wisdom and understanding will always frame good governments: but if they are born under the necessity of a perpetual slavery, no wisdom can be of use to them; but all must for ever depend on the will of their lords, how cruel, mad, proud, or wicked soever they be. **

The Grecians, amongst others who followed the light of reason, knew no other original title to the govern ment of a nation, than that wisdom, valour, and jus tice, which was beneficial to the people. These quali ties gave beginning to those governments which we call Heroum Regna [the governments of the Heroes]; and the veneration paid to such as enjoyed them, proceeded from a grateful sense of the good received from them: they were thought to be descended from the

Except some of his letters, the only published work of Algernon Sidney is Discourses on Government, which first appeared in 1698. Of these discourses Lord Orrery observes, that they are admirably written, and contain great historical knowledge, and a remarkable propriety of diction; so that his name, in my opinion, ought to be much higher established in the temple of literature than I have hitherto found it placed. As a specimen, we give the follow-gods, who in virtue and beneficence surpassed other ing observations on

[Liberty and Government.]

Such as enter into society must, in some degree, diminish their liberty. Reason leads them to this. No one man or family is able to provide that which is requisite for their convenience or security, whilst every one has an equal right to everything, and none acknowledges a superior to determine the controversies that upon such occasions must continually arise, and will probably be so many and great, that mankind cannot bear them. Therefore, though I do not believe that Bellarmine said a commonwealth could not exercise its power; for he could not be ignorant, that Rome and Athens did exercise theirs, and that all the regular kingdoms in the world are commonwealths; yet there is nothing of absurdity in saying, that man cannot continue in the perpetual and entire fruition of the liberty that God hath given him. The liberty of one is thwarted by that of another; and whilst they are all equal, none will yield to any, otherwise than by a general consent. This is the ground of all just governments; for violence or fraud can create no right; and the same consent gives the form to them all, how much soever they differ from each other. Some small numbers of men, living within the precincts of one city, have, as it were, cast into a common stock the right which they had of governing themselves and children, and, by common consent joining in one body, exercised such power over every single person as seemed beneficial to the whole; and this men call perfect democracy. Others choose rather to be governed by a select number of such as most excelled in wisdom and virtue; and this, according to the signification of the word, was called aristocracy; or when one man excelled all others, the government was put into his

*Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift, p. 236.

men the same attended their descendants, till they came to abuse their power, and by their vices showed themselves like to, or worse than others, who could best perform their duty.

Upon the same grounds we may conclude, that no privilege is peculiarly annexed to any form of govern ment; but that all magistrates are equally the ministers of God, who perform the work for which they are instituted; and that the people which institutes them may proportion, regulate, and terminate their power as to time, measure, and number of persons, as seems most convenient to themselves, which can be no other than their own good. For it cannot be ima gined that a multitude of people should send for Numa, or any other person to whom they owed nothing, to reign over them, that he might live in glory and pleasure; or for any other reason, than that it might be good for them and their posterity. This shows the work of all magistrates to be always and everywhere the same, even the doing of justice, and procuring the welfare of those that create them. This we learn from common sense: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the best human authors, lay it as an immovable foundation, upon which they build their arguments relating to matters of that nature.

LADY RACHEL RUSSELL

in literature not much less elevated than that niche The letters of this lady have secured her a place in history which she has won by heroism and conjugal attachment. Rachel Wriothesley was the se cond daughter and co-heiress of the Earl of Southampton. In 1667, when widow of Lord Vaughan, she married Lord William Russell, a son of the first Duke of Bedford. She was the senior of her second husband by five years, and it is said that her amiable and prudent character was the means of reclaiming him from youthful follies into which he

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