lution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have any where. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is the commodity of price, of which you have the monopoly. [Trinity College, 1838.] 54. THE Saxons, Angles and other kindred tribes, to whom we are indebted for the basis and character of our fine language and of our invaluable civil institutions, were at the time of their establishment here a ferocious people, but not without noble qualities, apt for instruction and willing to be instructed. The heathenism which they introduced bears no affinity either to that of the Britons or of the Romans. It is less known than either, because while it subsisted as a living form of belief the few writers who arose in those illiterate ages were incurious concerning such things, but it has left familiar traces in our daily speech and in many of those popular customs which in various parts of the country still partially maintain their grounds. They had idols wrought in wood, stone, and metals of different kinds, even in gold-this fact implies considerable proficiency in art beyond that to which the ancient Britons had attained. [King's College, 1838.] 55. FORTUNE is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall; and again it is sometimes like Sibylla's offer, which at first offereth the commodity at full, then consumeth part and part, and still holdeth up the price; for occasion (as it is in the common verse) turneth a bald noddle after she hath presented her locks in front, and no hold taken; or, at least, turneth the handle of the bottle first to be received, and after the belly, which is hard to clasp. There is surely no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things:-and generally it is good to commit the beginnings of all great actions to Argus with his hundred eyes, and the ends to Briareus with his hundred hands; first to watch, and then to speed; for the helmet of Pluto, which maketh the politic man go invisible, is secrecy in the council, and celerity in the execution; for when things are once come to the execution, there is no secrecy comparable to celerity; like the motion of a bullet in the air, which flieth so swift as it outruns the eye. [Trinity College Fellowships, 1838.] 56. BUT they tell us, that those our fellow-citizens, whose chains we have a little relaxed, are enemies to liberty and our free constitution.-Not enemies, I presume, to their own liberty. And as to the constitution, until we give them some share in it, I do not know on what pretence we can examine into their opinions about a business in which they have no interest or concern. But after all, are we equally sure, that they are adverse to our constitution, as that our statutes are hostile and destructive to them? For my part, I have reason to believe, their opinions and inclinations in that respect are various, exactly like those of other men: and if they lean more to the crown than I, and than many of you think we ought, we must remember, that he who aims at another's life, is not to be surprised if he flies into any sanctuary that will receive him. The tenderness of the executive power is the natural asylum of those upon whom the laws have declared war: and to complain that men are inclined to favour the means of their own safety, is so absurd, that one forgets the injustice in the ridicule. [St John's College, 1838.] 57. To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice, is to destroy the distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than general opinion; and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation, that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope of honour, when other principles have lost their power; nor can any species of prostitution promote general depravity more than that which destroys the force of praise, by showing that it may be acquired without deserving it, and which, by setting free the active and ambitious from the dread of infamy, lets loose the rapacity of power, and weakens the only authority by which greatness is controlled. Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise expectation, or animate enterprise. It is therefore not only necessary, that wickedness, even when it is not safe to censure it, be denied applause, but that goodness be commended only in proportion to its degree; and that the garlands due to the great benefactors of mankind, be not suffered to fade upon the brow of him who can boast only petty services and easy virtues. Had these maxims been universally received, how much would have been added to the task of dedication, the work on which all the power of modern wit has been exhausted! How few of these initial panegyricks had appeared, if the author had been obliged first to find a man of virtue, then to distinguish the species and degree of his desert, and at last to pay him only the honours he might justly claim! [University Scholarships, 1839.] 58. THE mind of Plato rose above visible objects, and entered the higher regions, where exist the eternal first forms of things. To these his eye was undeviatingly directed, as the only regions where knowledge can be found, since there exists nothing beyond opinion in the world of the senses,-and where real beauty, goodness, and justice dwell eternal and unchangeable as the Divinity, and yet distinct from the Divinity. He who cannot follow Plato to those regions, and feel with him in the veil of mythological fables what he himself felt rather than knew, may make many valuable and correct remarks respecting that Philosopher, but is not capable of presenting a perfect and adequate image of him. The attempt to give a body to that which is ethereal is vain; for it then ceases to be ethereal. 59. [Chancellor's Medals, 1839.] INSTEAD of selfishness seducing man, which it often does, from the observations of truth and honestyit vastly oftener is on the side of these observations. Generally speaking, it is not more his interest that he should have men of integrity to deal with-than that he himself should, in his own dealings, be strictly observant of this virtue. To be abandoned by the confidence of his fellows, he would find to be not more mortifying to his pride, than ruinous to his prosperity in the world, We are aware that many an occasional harvest is made from deceit and injustice; but, in the vast majority of cases, men would cease to thrive when they ceased to be trusted. A man's actual truth is not more beneficial to others, than the reputation of it is gainful to himself. And therefore it is, that, throughout the mercantile world, men are as sensitive of an aspersion on their name, as they would be of an encroachment on their property. The one, in fact, is tantamount to the other. It is thus, that, under the constraints of selfishness alone, fidelity and justice may be in copious and current observation among men; and while, perhaps, the principle of these virtues is exceedingly frail and uncertain in all hearts-human society may still subsist by the literal and outward observation of them. 60. [Classical Tripos, 1839.] WE are not to forget, that a play is, or ought to be, a very short composition; that if one passion or disposition is to be wrought up with tolerable success, I believe it is as much as can in any reason be expected. If there be scenes of distress, and scenes of humour, they must either be in a double or single plot. If there be a double plot, there are in fact two. If they be in chequered scenes of serious and comic, you are obliged continually to break both the thread of the story and the continuity of the passion; if in the same scene, it is needless to observe how absurd the mixture must be, and how little adapted to answer the genuine end of any passion. It is odd to observe the progress of bad taste; for this mixed passion being universally proscribed in the regions of tragedy, it has taken refuge and shelter |