when he attempted to manage horses, he encoun tered more danger than in all his battles, and narrowly escaped with his life. Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose, 'a power to accomplish all that we undertake,' for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined, for Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory, yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men. As a man cannot be tairly termed a poor man, who has a large property in the funds, but nothing in land, so we cannot deny genius to those who have discovered a rich vein in one province of literature, but poverty of talent in another. This tendency, however, to ascribe a universality of genius to great men, left Dryden to affirm, on the strength of two smart satirical lines, that Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal. But with all due deference to Dryden, I conceive it much more manifest, that Juvenal could have written a better epic than Virgil, than that

* Nero made a similar mistake; but he proved himself as unequal to the task of governing horses as of men, and as unfit to hold the reins of a chariot, as of a kingdom: he made his appearance at the hippodrome of Olympia, in a chariot drawn by ten horses, although he himself had formerly censured Mithridates for the same temerity; he was thrown from his seat, but unfortunately the fall was not fatal, although it prevented him from finishing the race; nevertheless, the halladonics, or stewards of the course, proclaimed the emperor victor, and assigned him the Olympic crown, for which upright decision they were rewarded with a magnificent present. Galba, however, obliged them afterwards to refund it, and they themselves, partly from shame, and partly from pique, erased that Olympiad cu of the calendar.

Virgil could have written a satire equal to Juvenal, Juvenal has many passages of the moral sublime far superior to any that can be found in Vingil, whc indeed, seldom attempts a higher flight than the sublime of description. Had Lucan lived, he might have rivalled them both, as he has all the vigour of the one, and time might have furnished him with the taste and elegance of the other.

Horace makes an awkward figure in his vain attempt to unite his real character of sycophant, with the assumed one of the satirist; he sometimes attempts to preach down vice, without virtue, sometimes to laugh it down, without wit. His object was to be patronised by a court, without meanness, if possible, but at all events, to be patronised. He served the times more, perhaps, than the times served him, and instead of forming the manners of his superiors, he himself was in great measure formed by them. In fact, no two men who have handled the same subject, differ so completely, both in character and in style, as Horace and Juvenal; to the latter may be applied what Seneca said of Cato, that he gained as complete a triumph over the vices of his country, as Scipio did over the enemies of it. Had Juvenal lived in the days of Horace, he would have written much better, because much bolder; but had Horace lived in the time of Juvenal, he would not have dared to have written a satire at all; in attacking the false friends of his country, he would have manifested the same pusillanimity which he himself informs us he discovered, when he on one occasion, ventured to attack her real foes

Shrewd and crafty politicians, when they wish to bring about an unpopular measure, must not go straight forward to work, if they do they will certainly fail; and failures to men in power, are like defeats to a general, they shake their popularity. Therefore, since they cannot sail in the teeth of the wind, they must tack, and ultimately gain their object, by appearing at times to be departing from it. Mr. Pitt, at a moment when the greatest jealousy existed in the country, on the subject of the freedom of the press, inflicted a mortal blow on this guardian of our liberties, without seeming to touch, or even to aim at it; he doubled the tax upon all advertisements, and this single act immediately knocked up the host of pamphleteers, who formed the sharpshooters and tirailleurs of literature, and whose fire struck more terror into administration than the heaviest cannonade from bulky quartoes or folios could produce; the former were ready for the moment, but before the latter could be loaded and brought to bear, the object was either changed or removed, and had ceased to awaken the jealousies, or to excite the fears of the nation.

That extremes beget extremes, is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind; and its truth is in nothing more apparent than in those moral phenomena, perceivable, when a nation, inspired by one common sentiment, rushes at once from despotism to liberty. To suppose that a nation under such circumstances should confine herself precisely to that middle point, between the two extremes of licentiousness and slavery, in which true liberty consists, were as absurd as to suppose that a volcano, nearly suppressed and smothered by the superincumbent weight of a mountain, will neither consume itself nor destroy what is contiguous, when by an earthquake that pressure is suddenly removed; for it must be remembered that despotism degrades and demoralizes the human mind; and although she at length forces men on a just attempt to recover by violence, those rights that by violence, were taken away, yet that very depravation superinduced by despotism, renders men, for a season, unfit for the rational exercise of those civil rights they have with so much hazard regained. At such a crisis, to expect that a people should keep the strict unbending path of rectitude and reason, without deviating into private rapine or public wrong, were as wise as to expect that a horse would walk in a straight line immediately on being released from his trammels, after having been blinded by a long routine of drudgery in the circle of a mill.

When men in power profusely reward the intellectual efforts of individuals in their behalf, what are the public to presume from this? They may generally presume that the cause so remunerated was a bad one, in the opinions of those who are so grateful for its defence. In private life, a client will hardly set any bounds to his generosity, should his counsel be ingenious enough to gain him a victory, not only over his antagonist, but even over the laws themselves; and, in public affairs, we may usually infer the weakness of the cause, by the excessive price that ministers have freely paid to those whose eloquence, or whose sophistry, has enabled them to make that weakness triumph.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which nevertheless will make at the end of it, no small deduction from the life of man. Cicero has termed them intercisiva tempora, and the ancients were not ignorant of their value; nay, it was not unusual with them either to compose or to dictate, while under the operation of rubbing after the bath.

Arbitration has this advantage, there are some points of contest which it is better to lose by arbitration than to win by law. But as a good general offers his terms before the action, rather than in the midst of it, so a wise man will not easily be persuaded to have recourse to a reference, when once his opponent has dragged him into a court.

In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation; but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest; so various are the modes of going out of the world, that to be born, may have been a more painful thing than to die, and to live, may prove a more troublesome thing than either.

More have been ruined by their servants, than by their masters.

Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us, if once we