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James the Second that Clarendon is writing when he says, comparing him with his elder brother Charles, that if the Duke, as he then was, seemed to be more firm and fixed in his resolutions, it was rather from an obstinacy in his will than from the constancy of his judgment, which was more subject to persons than to argument, and so as chaneagble at least as the King's; "And from this want of steadiness, and irresolution (whencesoever the infirmity proceeded), most of the misfortunes which attended either of them or their servants who served them honestly, had their rise and growth." On a later page Clarendon professes that what gave himself most trouble, and many times made him wish himself in any private condition separated from the Court, was "that unfixedness and irresolution of judgment" which was natural to all the royal family "of the male line," and which "often exposed them all to the importunities of bold, and to the snares of crafty men." His references to his own royal master in particular, the second Charles, are often couched in such terms as these: "The King seemed very much troubled and irresolute;"-" presenting to his Majesty his irresoluteness," his "receding from what he had so positively resolved to have done;"-he "promised them to be firmer to his next determination ;"-"The King gave no other answer than that he had proceeded too far to retire, and that he should be looked upon as a child if he receded from his purpose," etc. Receded he had, more than once or twice too often, and already looked upon as a child he was, accordingly; for of this sovereign lord the king it was written, by an antedated epitaph, "Whose word no man relies on." How expressive is the account given by the Cardinal de Retz of the faiblesse of Monsieur, Gaston, Duke of Orleans. We are

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William Ashton, in whose resolutions a stranger even, if at all observant, can scarcely fail to discover something vacillating and uncertain, though not until after long and intimate conversation with him on topics of pressing and personal interest: an infirmity of purpose, arising from a cautious and timid disposition, which, as he was conscious of its influence on his mind, he was, from pride as well as policy, most anxious to conceal from others." Too distinctively his daughter inherits this infirmity of purpose; for thereby hangs a tale-the tale of the Bride of Lammermoor.

shown the various degrees and stages of it, and are as it were told to tell them off one by one: "Il y avait très-loin chez lui de la velléité à la volonté, de la volonté à la résolution, de la résolution au choix des moyens, du choix des moyens à l'application. Mais ce qui était de plus extraordinaire, il arrivait même assez souvent qu'il demeurait tout court au milieu de l'application." The Regent Arran is another type of the utterly irresolute and therefore quite incompetent statesman. His infirm character rendered him a pliant instrument of the English policy; and he was described by English intriguers, episcopal and civilian, as "a soft God's man, that loved well to look on the Scripture." Coleridge somewhere asserts that indecisiveness of character, though the effect of timidity, is almost always associated with benevolence. Mr. Froude speaks of Arran as one "whose feeble understanding swayed under every transient impulse.” "The imbecile Arran," he says on another page, could play no part but that of the wind-vane marking the changes in the aircurrents. And elsewhere again: "Arran had the vice, so rare in a Scotchman, of weakness. The necessity for action paralysed in him the power to act." When urged to activity,* for instance, by Henry VIII., in 1543, he issued proclamations; he talked of raising twenty thousand men; he would bring the Queen into Blackness; he would meet the Cardinal (Beatoun) in the field; but, meanwhile, he did no one of these things: he sat still, and waited upon events, and laboured to inflict his own inaction on the English. The firm foot is that which finds firm footing, says Archæus; the weak falters, though it be standing upon rock. Necker, in whom, and to whom a characteristic fonds d'indécision was fatal, has himself retraced,

* Compare the account given by another historian, a Scotch one, of the vacillating and contradictory policy of our Edward II. with regard to Scotland, in 1308, which afforded every advantage to so able an adversary as Bruce. Orders for the muster of his army, which were not enforced; commissions to his generals, which were presently countermanded; promises to take the field in person, which were broken almost as soon as made; directions to his lieutenant in Scotland to prosecute the war with the greatest vigour, followed by instructions to purchase a truce;such is the picture of the imbecility of the English king, as presented by the public records of the time, and from them copied by Mr. Tytler.

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in one of his Pensées, the torments of irresolution, from which the irresolute man can only gain deliverance by submitting himself to haphazard or else to some whimsically devised rules which have at any rate the merit of being fixed. What he in the most pronounced way admired in the First Consul, to whom, on the road to Marengo, Necker was presented at Geneva, was that strength of will in which he was so deficient, and which he now declared to be the prime essential for the governor-in-chief of a great empire. Napoleon won his admiring, almost amazed, homage by his decision of character, and that superbe volonté which grasped all, governed all, subdued all, even itself.

Not many are ingenuous enough to confess with Montaigne, though with ampler cause for the confession than he had,—“ I will not omit this further blemish, however unfit to be published, namely, my irresolution; a defect highly incommodious in the transaction of the affairs of the world." He avows himself to be good for nothing but to follow, suffering himself to be easily carried away with the crowd: "I have not confidence enough in my own strength to take upon me to command and lead; I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others." A popular English essayist takes the most hopeless of confessedly undecided people to be those who appear totally unable to form any opinions of their own, and are therefore dependent upon those of others; and who are apt to refer each trifling difficulty, each doubtful question, to every fresh person with whom they come in contact, and are influenced in turn by each; so that no sooner have they heard and approved of one opinion, and, apparently, determine to act upon it, than they turn to the next person they chance to meet for his advice; and, as very naturally may happen, a different counsel being given, they are thrown on a precisely different track till a third adviser may again alter their course. Now, if "in the multitude of counsellors there is safety," it must certainly, we are to bear in mind, imply these counsellors in full conclave, not singly and in succession. "There is nothing more dangerous than this dependence on every fresh opinion, and receiving the impression of each, just as water reflects every

successive object which passes over its clear surface, and retains no lasting image from any." The natural results of this perilous practice are shown to be complete destruction of self-depend`ence and self-respect, and a fatal inconsistency and changeableness of purpose and conduct. Such a character is designed in the Prefect Pompeianus in Antonina,-a short, fat, undignified man, on whose aspect was legibly impressed the stamp of indolence and vacillation: "You saw, in a moment, that his mind, like a shuttlecock, might be urged in any direction by the efforts of others, but was utterly incapable of volition by itself." It may probably, however, be true, as alleged, that indecision comes in for a good deal of undeserved contempt merely because few people are at the pains to discriminate between the two very different sources from which it springs; for there is an indecision of the moral and an indecision of the intellectual nature, and though the two are in themselves as distinct as they well can be, they are in their results so similar that they are too commonly confounded, and each has to bear the praise or dispraise really due to the other. The indecision which is due to a defect in the moral nature, is illustrated in the case of persons (especially, but not exclusively, young persons) whose whole happiness in life seems to hang upon the approbation of others, even to the extent of their clothes. As an example, humorously exaggerated of course, we are referred to Mr. Toots and the overwhelming difficulty he experienced in deciding whether he ought or ought not to button the last button of his dress-waistcoat. "Having formed no fixed principles of art, or having at least no confidence in his ability to apply them to dress-clothes, Mr. Toots weakly took his tone from his fellowguests, and, as each arrival displayed a fresh arrangement of buttons, was kept wildly playing upon his waistcoat, as if it had been a musical instrument." The sartorial illustration recalls a passage in the diary of the late Mr. William Collins, where he seeks to impress upon himself how great a waste of time the habit of determining the course of action would prevent; how great, too, is the debility of mind consequent upon the worries of continuous hesitation,—all rendered the more vexing from

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the fact that, in general, the things about which the mind has the greatest doubt, are either above its powers or beneath its notice. For his instance of the latter: "A man orders a coat; he is in doubt about the colour; perhaps he says, 'I will wait a few days,'"-during which the execrable coat "so frequently interrupts his more useful cogitations, that he orders one at last of (most likely) a colour he hates, merely to get rid of the subject." Had he in the first instance, wistfully muses the moralizing painter, determined on it before he set about anything else, his mind would have been in a "more clear and proper state to receive other ideas." Indecision of this sort may well be rated as a poor sort of quality enough, deserving all the contemptuous pity which decided people heap upon it, and having its root in fear-the undue fear of what our neighbours may think or say of us. As from Dickens is quoted Mr. Toots, so from Macaulay is cited the vigorous sketch of another type of the character in Marshal Conway, who, "afraid of disobliging the King, afraid of being abused in the newspapers, afraid of being thought factious if he went out, afraid of being thought interested if he stayed in, afraid of everything, and afraid of being known to be afraid of anything," is presented as a laughable mixture of great physical courage with the weakest moral timidity. Another historian speaks of Conway as "at all times irresolute in his manner and tortuous in his phrases ;” and remarks upon one celebrated speech of his, that it was "significant of his mental confusion, and his almost infantine helplessness." There was a well-invented story spread about to satirize Conway's "irresolutions," as his fast friend Horace Walpole has it, in whose Last Journals the story is to be found: it is, that Conway went with Charles Fox and others to Breslau, the conjuror, who told visitors what card they had thought of. He told all the rest directly; but when Conway presented himself, Breslau said, “Oh! here is something very odd! Sir, you have not fixed upon a card: you first thought of the knave of clubs, then of the ace of hearts, and then of the nine of diamonds, but you have not determined on which." Clarendon's character-study of Colepepper

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