empire out of all authority and subjection, those of the ancient laws excepted, and might enjoy all liberty that was not prejudicial to them, as impatient of commanding as of being commanded. The most painful and difficult employment in the world, in my opinion, is worthily to discharge the office of a king. I excuse more of their mistakes than men commonly do, in consideration of the intolerable weight of their function, which does astonish me. 'Tis hard to keep measure in so immeasurable a power. Yet so it is, that it is, to those who are not the best-natured men, a singular incitement to virtue to be seated in a place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put upon record; and where the least benefit redounds to so many men; and where your talent of administration, like that of preachers, does principally address itself to the people, no very exact judge, easy to deceive, and easily content. There are few things wherein we can give a sincere judgment, by reason that there are few wherein we have not in some sort a particular interest. Superiority and inferiority, dominion and subjection, are bound to a natural envy and contest, and must necessarily perpetually intrench upon one another. I neither believe the one nor the other touching the rights of the adverse party: let reason, therefore, which is inflexible and without passion, determine. Tis not a month ago that I read over two Scotch authors contending upon this subject; of which he who stands for the people makes kings to be in a worse condition than a carter; and he who writes for monarchy places him some degrees above God Almighty in power and sovereignty. Now the inconveniency of greatness, that I have made choice of to consider in this place, upon some occasions that has lately put it into my head, is this: there is not peradventure anything more pleasant in the commerce of men than the trials that we make against one another, out of emulation of honour and valour, whether in the exercises of the body or in those of the mind; wherein the sovereign greatness can have no true part. And in earnest I have often thought, that out of force of respect men have used princes disdainfully and injuriously in that particular. For the thing I was infinitely offended at in my childhood, that they who exercised with me forbore to do their best because they found me unworthy of their utmost endeavour, is what we see happen to them every day, every one finding himself unworthy to contend with them. If we discover that they have the least passion to have the better, there is no one who will not make it his business to give it them, and who will not rather betray his own glory than offend theirs; and will therein employ so much force only as is necessary to advance their honour. What share have they, then, in the engagement wherein every one is on their side? Methinks I see those paladins of ancient times presenting themselves to jousts, with enchanted arms and bodies. Crisson, running against Alexander, purposely missed his blow, and made a fault in his career; Alexander chid him for it, but he ought to have had him whipped. Upon this consideration, Carneades said that the sons of princes learned nothing right but to ride the great horse; by reason that in all their exercises every one bends and yields to them; but a horse that is neither a flatterer nor a courtier, throws the son of a king with no more remorse than he would do that of a porter. Homer was compelled to consent that Venus, so sweet and delicate as she was, should be wounded at the battle of Troy, thereby to ascribe courage and boldness to her; qualities that cannot possibly be in those who are exempt from danger. The gods are made to be angry, to fear, to run away, to be jealous, to grieve, and to be transported with passions, to honour them with the virtues that amongst us are built upon these imperfections. Who does not participate in the hazard and difficulty can pretend no interest in the honour and pleasure that are the consequents of hazardous actions. 'Tis a pity a man should be so potent that all things must give way to him. Fortune therein sets you too remote from society, and places you in too great a solitude. The easiness and mean facility of making all things bow under you is an enemy to all sorts of pleasure. This is to slide, not to go: this is to sleep, and not to live. Conceive man accompanied with omnipotency, you throw him into an abyss: he must beg disturbance and opposition as an alms. His being and his good is indigence. Their good qualities are dead and lost; for they are not to be perceived but by comparison, and we put them out of it; they have little knowledge of the true praise, having their ears deafed with so continued and uniform an approbation. Have they to do with the meanest of all their subjects? They have no means to take any advantage of him, if he say, 'Tis because he is my king, he thinks he has said enough to express that he therefore suffered himself to be overcome. quality stifles and consumes the other true and essential qualities. They are involved in the royalty, and leave them nothing to recommend themselves withal, but actions that directly concern themselves, and that merely respect the function of their place. This "Both Don Quixote and Sancho are thus brought before us like such living realities that, at this moment, the figures of the crazed, gaunt, dignified 'Tis so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so; the strange lustre that environs him conceals him and shrouds him from us; our sight is there repelled and dis-knight and of his round, selfish, and most amusing esquire dwell bodied forth in the imaginations of sipated, being stopped and filled by this premore, among all conditions of men throughout vailing light. The senate awarded the prize Christendom, than any other of the creations of of eloquence to Tiberius; he refused it, sup- human talent. The greatest of the great poetsposing that, though it had been just, he could Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton-have no derive no advantage from a judgment so par-selves in more imposing relations with the noblest doubt risen to loftier heights, and placed themtial, and that was so little free to judge. As attributes of our nature; but Cervantes-always we give them all advantages of honour, so do writing under the unchecked impulse of his own we soothe and authorize all their vices and genius, and instinctively concentrating in his ficdefects, not only by approbation, but by imi- tion whatever was peculiar to the character of his tation also. Every one of Alexander's fol- nation-has shown himself of kindred to all times lowers carried their heads on one side, as and all lands; to the humblest degrees of cultivahe did; and the flatterers of Dionysius ran tion as well as to the highest; and has thus, beyond all other writers, received in return a tribute of against one another in his presence, stum- sympathy and admiration from the universal spirit of humanity."-TICKNOR: Hist. of Spanish Lit., 3d Amer. edit., Boston, 1863, ii. 146: Second Part of The Don Quixote. bled at and overturned whatever was underfoot, to show that they were as purblind as he. Natural imperfections have sometimes also served to recommend a man to favour. I have seen deafness affected; and because the master hated his wife, Plutarch has seen his courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved; and which is yet more, uncleanness and all manner of dissoluteness has been in fashion; as also disloyalty, blasphemies, cruelty, heresy, superstition, irreligion, effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be. And by an example yet more dangerous than that of Mithridates' flatterers, who, by how much their master pretended to the honour of a good physician, came to him to have incision and cauteries made in their limbs; for these others suffered the soul, a more delicate and noble thing, to be cauterized. But to end where I begun the Emperor Adrian disputing with the philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus soon yielded him the victory, for which his friends rebuking him," You talk simply," said he; "would you not have him wiser than I, who commands thirty legions?" Augustus wrote verses against Asinius Pollio, and I, said Pollio, say nothing, for it is not prudence to write in contest with him who has power to proscribe; and he had reason for Dionysius because he could not equal Philoxenus in poesy, and Plato in discourse, condemned one to the quarries, and sent the other to be sold for a slave into the island of Egina. MIGUEL DE CERVANTES author of Don Quixote, was born at Alcata DESCRIPTION OF DON QUIXOTE. Down in a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to recollect, there lived, not long ago, one of those gentlemen who usually keep a lance upon a rack, an old buckler, a lean horse, and a coursing greyhound. Soup, composed of somewhat more mutton than beef, the fragments served up cold on most nights, lentils on Fridays, pains and breakings on Saturdays, and a pigeon, by way of addition, on Sundays, consumed three-fourths of his income; the remainder of it supplied him with a cloak of fine cloth, velvet breeches, with slippers of the same for holidays, and a suit of the best homespun, in which he adorned himself on week-days. His family consisted of a housekeeper above forty, a niece not quite twenty, and a lad who served him both in the field and at home, who could saddle the horse or handle the pruning-hook. The age of our gentleman bordered upon fifty years; he was of a strong constitution, spare-bodied, of a meagre visage, a very early riser, and a lover of the chase. Some pretend to say that his surname was Quixada, or Quesada, for on this point his historians differ; though, from very probable conjectures, we may conclude that his name was Quixana. This is, however, of little importance to our history: let it suffice that, in relating it, we do not swerve a jot from the truth. Be it known, then, that the afore-mentioned gentleman, in his leisure moments, which composed the greater part of the year, gave himself up with so much ardor to the perusal of books of chivalry, that he almost wholly neglected the exercise of the chase, and even the regulation of his domestic affairs; indeed, so extravagant was his zeal in this pursuit, that he sold many acres of arable land to purchase books of knight-errantry; collecting as many as he could possibly obtain. Among them all none pleased him so much as those written by the famous Feliciano de Silva, whose brilliant prose and intricate style were, in his opinion, infinitely precious; especially those amorous speeches and challenges in which they so much abound, such as: "The reason of the unreasonable treatment of my reason so enfeebles my reason, that with reason I complain of your beauty." And again: "The high heavens that, with your divinity, divinely fortify you with the stars, rendering you meritorious of the merit merited by your greatness." These and similar rhapsodies distracted the poor gentleman, for he laboured to comprehend and unravel their meaning, which was more than Aristotle himself could do, were he to rise from the dead expressly for that purpose. He was not quite satisfied as to the wounds which Don Belianis gave and received; for he could not help thinking that, however skilful the surgeons were who healed them, his face and whole body must have been covered with seams and scars. Nevertheless, he commended his author for concluding his book with the promise of that interminable adventure; and he often felt an inclination to seize the pen himself and conclude it, literally as it is there promised: this he would doubtless have done, and with success, had he not been diverted from it by meditations of greater moment, on which his mind was incessantly employed. He often debated with the curate of the village, a man of learning, and a graduate of Siguenza, which of the two was the best knight, Palmerin of England or Amadis de Gaul; but Master Nicholas, barber of the same place, declared that none ever came up to the knight of the sun; if, indeed, any one could be compared to him, it was Don Galaor, brother of Amadis de Gaul, for he had a genius suited to everything: he was no effeminate knight, no whimperer, like his brother; and in point of courage he was by no means his inferior. In short, he became so infatuated with this kind of study that he passed whole days and nights over these books; and thus, with little sleeping, and much reading, his brains were dried up and his intellects deranged. His imagination was full of all that he had read:-of enchantments, contests, battles, challenges, wounds, courtships, amours, tortures, and impossible absurdities; and so firmly was he persuaded of the truth of the whole tissue of visionary fiction, that, in his mind, no history in the world was more authentic. The Cid Ruy Diaz, he asserted, was a very good knight, but not to be compared with the knight of the flaming sword, who, with a single back-stroke, cleft asunder two fierce and monstrous giants. He was better pleased with Bernardo del Carpio, because, at Roncesvalles, he slew Roland the enchanted, by availing himself of the stratagem employed by Hercules upon Anteus, whom he squeezed to death within his arms. He spoke very favourably of the giant Morganti, for although of that monstrous breed who are always proud and insolent, he alone was courteous and well bred. Above all he admired Rinaldo de Montalvan, particularly when he saw him sallying forth from his castle to plunder all he encountered; and when, moreover, he seized upon that image of Mohamet which, according to history, was of massive gold. But he would have given his housekeeper, and even his niece into the bargain, for a fair opportunity of kicking the traitor Galalon. Adventures of Don Quixote, Jarvis's Translation, Lond., 1742, 2 vols. 4to, Book I. Chapter I. CAPTURE OF MAMBRINO'S HELMET. About this time it begun to rain a little, and Sancho proposed entering the fullingmill; but Don Quixote had conceived such an abhorrence of them for the late jest, that he would by no means go in: turning, therefore, to the right hand they struck into another road, like that they had travelled through the day before. Soon after, Don Quixote discovered a man on horseback, who had on his head something which glit tered as if it had been of gold; and scarcely had he seen it when, turning to Sancho, he said, "I am of opinion there is no proverb but what is true, because they are all sentences drawing from experience itself, the mother of all the sciences; especially that which says, 'Where one door is shut another is opened.' I say this because, if fortune last night shut the door against what we sought, deceiving us with the fulling-mills, it now opens wide another, for a better and more certain adventure; in which, if I am deceived, the fault will be mine, without imputing it to my ignorance of fulling-mills or to the darkness of night. This I say because, if I mistake not, there comes one towards us who carries on his head Mambrino's helmet, concerning which thou mayest remember I swore the oath." "Take care, sir, what you say, and more what you do," said Sancho; "for I would not wish for other fulling-mills, to finish the milling and mashing our senses." "The devil take thee !" replied Don Quixote: "what has a helmet to do with fulling-mills?" "I know not," answered Sancho, "but in faith, if I might talk as much as I used to do, perhaps I could give such reasons that your worship would see you are mistaken in what you Bay." "How can I be mistaken in what I say, scrupulous traitor?" said Don Quixote. Tell me, seest thou not yon knight coming towards us on a dapple-gray steed, with a helmet of gold on his head?" "What I see and perceive," answered Sancho, "is only a man on a gray ass like mine, with something on his head that glitters." "Why, that is Mambrino's helmet," said Don Quixote; "retire, and leave me alone to deal with him, and thou shalt see how, in order to save time, I shall conclude this adventure without speaking a word, and the helmet I have so much desired remain my own." "I shall take care to get out of the way," replied Sancho; "but Heaven grant, I say again, it may not prove another fulling-mill adventure." "I have already told thee, Sancho, not to mention those fulling-mills, nor even think of them," said Don Quixote: "if thou dost, I say no more, but I vow to mill thy soul for thee!" Sancho held his peace, fearing lest his master should perform his vow, which had struck him all of a heap. Now the truth of the matter concerning the helmet, the steed, and the knight which Don Quixote saw, was this. There were two villages in that neighbourhood, one of them so small that it had neither shop nor barber, but the other adjoining to it had both; therefore the barber of the larger served also the less, wherein one customer now wanted to be let blood, and another to be shaved; to perform which the barber was now on his way, carrying with him his brass basin; and it so happened that while upon the road it began to rain, and to save his hat, which was a new one, he clapped the basin on his head, which being lately scoured was seen glittering at the distance of half a league; and he rode on a gray ass, as Sancho had affirmed. Thus Don Quixote took the barber for a knight, his ass for a dapplegray steed, and his basin for a golden helmet; for whatever he saw was quickly adapted to his knightly extravagances; and when the poor knight drew near, without staying to reason the case with him, he advanced at Rozinante's best speed, and couched his lance, intending to run him through and through but, when close upon him, without checking the fury of his career, he cried out, "Defend thyself, caitiff! or instantly surrender what is justly my due." barber, so unexpectedly seeing this phantom advancing upon him, had no other way to avoid the thrust of the lance than to slip down from the ass; and no sooner had he touched the ground than, leaping up nimbler than a roebuck, he scampered over the plain The with such speed that the wind could not overtake him. The basin he left on the ground: with which Don Quixote was satisfied, observing that the pagan had acted discreetly, and in imitation of the beaver, which, when closely pursued by the hunters, tears off with his teeth that which it knows by instinct to be the object of pursuit. He ordered Sancho to take up the helmet; who, holding it in his hand, said, "Before Heaven, the basin is a special one, and is well worth a piece of eight, if it is worth a farthing." He then gave it to his master, who immediately placed it upon his head, turning it round in search of the vizor; but not finding it, he said, "Doubtless the pagan for whom this famous helmet was originally forged must have had a prodigious head, the worst of it is that one half is wanting." When Sancho heard the basin called a helmet, he could not forbear laughing; which, however, he instantly checked on recollecting his master's late choler. "What dost thou laugh at, Sancho?" said Don Quixote. "I am laughing," answered he, "to think what a huge head the pagan had who owned that helmet, which is for all the world just like a barber's basin." "Knowest thou, Sancho, what I conceive to be the case? This famous piece, this enchanted helmet, by some strange accident must have fallen into the possession of one who, ignorant of its true value as a helmet, and seeing it to be of the purest gold. hath inconsiderately melted down the one half for lucre's sake, and of the other made this, which, as thou sayest, doth indeed look like a barber's basin; but to me, who know what it really is, its transformation is of no importance, for I will have it so repaired in the first town where there is a smith, that it shall not be surpassed nor even equalled by that which the god of smiths himself made and forged for the god of battles. In the mean time, I will wear it as I best can, for something is better than nothing; and it will be sufficient to defend me from stones." "It will so," said Sancho, "if they do not throw them with slings, as they did in the battle of the two armies." Adventures of Don Quixote, Jarvis's Translation, Book III. Chapter XXI. seek? What sense of the beautiful ever passed transiently over his spirit? His books and his pictures ever accompanied him in his voyages. Even in the short hour before his last morning is he not still before us, while his midnight pen traces his mortuary verse, perpetuating the emotions of the sage, and of the hero who could not fear death?"-DISRAELI: Amenities of Lit.: Paychological Hist. of Rawleigh. "Raleigh, the soldier, the sailor, the scholar, the courtier, the orator, the poet, the historian, the philosopher; whom we picture to ourselves sometimes reviewing the Queen's guards, sometimes giving chase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love-songs too near the ears of her Highness's maids of honour, and soon after poring over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with Livy."-LORD MACAULAY: Burleigh and His Times, Edin. Rev., April, 1832, and in his works, complete, 1866, 8 vols. 8vo, v. 611. agreeable to your noble nature. Exert yourself, O generous prince, against such sycophants, in the glorious cause of liberty; and assume such an ambition worthy of you, to secure your fellow-creatures from slavery; from a condition as much below that of brutes as to act without reason is less miserable than to act against it. Preserve to your future subjects the divine right of free agents; and to your own royal house the divine right of being their benefactors. Believe me, my prince, there is no other right can flow from God. While your highness is forming yourself for a throne, consider the laws as so many common-places in your study of the science of government; when you mean nothing but justice they are an ease and help to you. This way of thinking is what gave men the glorious appellation of deliverers and fathers of their SIR WALTER RALEIGH TO PRINCE HENRY, Country; this made the sight of them rouse SON OF JAMES I. May it please your highness, The following lines are addressed to your highness from a man who values his liberty, and a very small fortune in a remote part of this island, under the present constitution, above all the riches and honours that he could anywhere enjoy under any other establishment. Choose therefore to be the king or the conqueror of your people: it may be submission, but it cannot be obedience, that is passive. London, Aug. 12, 1611. their beholders into acclamations, and mankind incapable of bearing their very appearance without applauding it as a benefit. Consider the inexpressible advantages which will ever attend your highness while you make the power of rendering men happy the measure of your actions! While this is your impulse, how easily will that power be extended! The glance of your eye will give You see, sir, the doctrines that are lately gladness, and your very sentence have a come into the world, and how far the phrase force of beauty. Whatever some men would has obtained of calling your royal father insinuate, you have lost your subjects when God's vicegerent; which ill men have turned you have lost their inclinations. You are both to the dishonour of God and the im- to preside over the minds not the bodies of peachment of his majesty's goodness. They men; the soul is the essence of the man, and adjoin vicegerency to the idea of being all-you cannot have the true man against his powerful, and not to that of being all-good. inclinations. His majesty's wisdom. it is to be hoped, will save him from the snare that may lie under gross adulations: but your youth, and the thirst of praise which I have observed in you, may possibly mislead you to hearken to these charmers, who would conduct your noble nature into tyranny. Be careful, O my prince! Hear them not; fly from their deceit you are in the succession to a throne, from whence no evil can be imputed to you, but all good must be conveyed from you. Your father is called the vicegerent of Heaven while he is good, he is the vicegerent of Heaven. Shall man have authority from the fountain of good to do evil? No, my prince; let mean and degenerate spirits, which want benevolence, suppose your power impaired by a disability of doing injuries. If want of power to do ill be an incapacity in a prince, with reverence be it spoken, it is an incapacity he has in common with the Deity. Let me not doubt but all pleas which do not carry in them the mutual happiness of prince and people will appear as absurd to your great understanding as dis RALEIGH'S THREE RULES TO BE OBSERVED FOR THE PRESERVATION OF A MAN'S ESTATE. Amongst all other things of the world take care of thy estate, which thou shalt ever preserve if thou observe three things: first, that thou know what thou hast, what every thing is worth that thou hast, and to see that thou art not wasted by thy servants and officers. The second is, that thou never spend anything before thou have it; for borrowing is the canker and death of every man's estate. The third is, that thou suffer not thyself to be wounded for other men's faults, and scourged for other men's offences; which is the surety for another, for thereby millions of men have been beggared and destroyed, paying the reckoning of other men's riot and the charge of other men's folly and prodigality; if thou smart, smart for thine own sins; and, above all things, be |