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not in that unhappy counterfeit of religion, which benumbs the heart by encompassing it with dogmatic bitterness and narrow illiberality, or equally unjust and unholy fanatical excitement. His manners ought to be affable, yet never cringing; he ought at any moment to disregard his comfort, to revere justice, and love his country.

(1) It has been justly observed that publicity-the soul of liberty is like sun-shine. It always breeds numerous insects, but what lofty tree would on that account forego it, indeed could forego it?

(2) As a striking instance of self-knowledge, not indeed otherwise to be imitated, I copy the following passage of one of the letters of Erasmus: "I see now," says he, "that the Germans are resolved at all adventures, to engage me in the affair of Luther, whether I will or not. In this they have acted foolishly, and have taken the surest method to alienate me from them and their party. Wherein could I have assisted Luther, if I had declared myself for him (!), and shared the danger along with him? Only thus far, that, instead of one man, two would have perished. I cannot conceive what he means by writing with such a spirit: one thing I know too well, that he hath brought great odium upon the lovers of literature. It is true, that he hath given us many a wholesome doctrine, and many a good counsel; and I wish he had not defeated the effect of them by his intolerable faults. But if he had written every thing in the most unexceptionable manner, I had no inclination to die for the sake of truth. Every man hath not the courage requisite to make a martyr; and I am afraid that, if I were put to the trial, I should imitate St. Peter." Jortin's Life of Erasmus, Lond. 1808, vol. i, p. 250.

(3) Few things strengthen more the action of a man, whether in politics or any other sphere, than the being fairly and wholly compromised to some great principle. It gives a steady direction and consistency to all the single acts, promotes thereby self-esteem and character, and gives efficiency to life, while with the public it gives consistency of regard, and that important conviction, that the individual may be relied upon. By that fair compromise alone, which the public can judge of only by a series of actions, public opinion, which may leave him for a time, will return to him But a public man, as in truth any man who moves, in some way or other, in a very active life, cannot take sufficient care not to compromise himself too easily upon each single case; for this must produce fluctuation. This danger is best avoided, not by subtlety nor intrigue, but by silence-that silence, I mean, which is broken only when necessary. There are many garrulous men, who daily commit themselves, either upon points not sufficiently known or weighed, or farther than they desired to pledge themselves; they then must retract, modify all which weakens. There is a great power in silence; a great manliness in suffering the actual cases to arrive, as the judge on the bench does, and decide when fully heard. Still no man, of whatever genius in his respective sphere, can avoid committing errors. If such is the case there is again great power in candor, and positively and frankly acknowledging the mistake. Only we must take heed, in this case again, to be calm and considerate, and not to commit ourselves too far in pronouncing judgment upon our own error, as we did before in committing it.

XXV. A public man ought always to know well the elements of his respective society, be it small or large, its whole public and social economy. He must know how the things that are, the laws and customs operate, and how they become such as they are. The history of the institutions of his country is indispensable for him, or he will commit a thousand errors, or dangerous faults. He ought especially to study those periods in which the most important institutions rose to their highest action, or showed their vigor in struggling into life. In brief, he ought to know the constitutional history of his country well, and if a nation has branched out from another at a time when the latter had already many settled and important institutions, as our nation from the British, he must connect the study of these latter with it. To these he ought to add the study of Greece, especially of Athens, and Rome, because they were great nations, are past, afford an undisturbed study, and unite with the glory of their rise and high civilisation, the pointed lessons of their decay and ruin.

A public man, acting in a wide or elevated sphere, will derive great benefit from the minute and deep study of some great man, who with few means produced vast results, to whom he feels especial inclination. If he feels attracted by the peculiar character of such a citizen, and has the means of carefully tracing his character and actions, such as Washington, Chatham, De Witt, Sully, he will invigorate his soul and enlarge his mind by penetrating them and making them his own the more and more. Fortunate it is, if in addition to this the literature of his own country furnishes him with a truly great poet, who has exercised a vast influence upon his nation, and thereby shows, that the vigor of his mind knew how to seize upon the vital principles of man's life in general, and of his nation in particular. The English and Americans are peculiarly fortunate in their Shakspeare. A public man cannot read him too much. Not that he should learn particular lessons of public action in specific cases from this great poet, although even as to this point he furnishes golden passages, which in times of need, will suddenly rise up in the mind of him who is familiarized with his immortal works. But the reasons why I would recommend the ever-repeated perusal of his unrivaled poems, are of greater extent. There is so vast a stage of action in his works, such a quintessence of all human life, such a vigorous delineation of character, and a depth of observation; such an exuberance of thought, of subtle penetration and endless variety of sentiment; all the differently combined motives of the infinite multitude of human individualities are so impartially viewed and given from a point so high above them; vulgarity is drawn so truly, and human greatness, joy and misery are presented with such loftiness, that his works are like a concentration of all that is essential in the active life of men, of what ephemerally passes or historically lasts, and that no one can penetrate into his works, without having his mind invigorated, enlarged, and his vision made keener as well as loftier. (1)

(1) There is a remarkable passage in Las Cases, containing Napoleon's opinion of the poet Corneille, and the influence which so great a poet exercises on a nation: Napoleon was then emperor, and ended with the words, "Yes, gentlemen, were he living now I should make him prince." Though he probably would not have done so, it sufficiently shows, in what manner he viewed a great dramatic poet. Las Cases, vol. ii, p. 344, Paris ed. of 1824.

The passage of Mackintosh's pamphlet, A Discourse on the Study of Law, and Nature, and Nations, in which he defends Grotius, and speaks of his quoting poets and orators, deserves here to be mentioned. "He was not," says sir James Mackintosh, "of such a stupid and servile cast of mind as to quote the opinions of poets or orators, of historians and philosophers, as those of judges from whose decision there is no appeal. He quotes them, as he tells us himself, as witnesses, whose conspiring testimony, mightily strengthened by their discordance on almost every other subject, is a conclusive proof of the unanimity of the whole human race on the great rules of duty, and the fundamental principles of morals. On such matters poets and orators are the most unexceptionable of all witnesses; for they address themselves to the general feeling and sympathies of mankind; they are neither warped by system, nor perverted by sophistry; they can attain none of their objects; they can neither please nor persuade if they dwell on moral sentiments not in unison with those of their reader: no system of moral philosophy can surely disregard the general feelings of human nature, and the according judgments of all ages and nations. But where are those feelings and that judgment recorded and observed? In those very writings which Grotius is gravely blamed for having quoted. The usages and laws of nations, the events of history, the opinions of philosophers, the sentiments of orators and poets, as well as the observations of common life are, in truth, the materials out of which the science of morality is formed; and those who neglect them are justly chargeable with a vain attempt to philosophize without regard to fact and experience, the sole foundations of all true philosophy.

XXVI. Every one, therefore, before he embarks voluntarily in the rough and rolling vessel of politics, or suffers himself to be imperceptibly drawn into the currents of public life, ought to ask himself whether he be willing or able, according to his mental and bodily frame, to make all the sacrifices which he assuredly will be called upon to make, and whether public life might not become to him a continued chafing and disturbance of mind; whether other pursuits would not suit his particular temperament, constitution and taste far better, and afford him that superior repose which our soul always derives from continued useful action blessed with success, or from mental activity which is peculiarly its own, and in which we feel we are completely what we were intended to be. There are some men, framed in a manner that they are strong, original, acute, and bold, when in the stillness of retirement, from which many works of extensive and essential influence, affecting whole ages, have proceeded, or so organized that they are of substantial usefulness in all the varied social relations of their community, so long as unconnected with politics; but so soon as they are brought into contact with the wholesale dealings they involve, where things must needs be taken in masses, they shrink and lose their vigor.

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