them aloof: but this is but to try masteries with fortune. And let men beware how they neglect and suffer matter of trouble to be prepared; for no man can forbid the spark, nor tell whence it may come."

NEWTON.

Sir, it was on this very passage that my friend exclamed, The true philosophy is the only true prophet. From the death of this, the brightest in both capacities, a few years opened the intire scroll of his awful predictions. Yet age after age will the same truths be disregarded, even tho men of a voice as deep, and a heart less hollow, should repeat them. Base men must raise new families, if the venerable edifice of our constitution be taken down for the abutments; and broken fortunes must be soldered, in the flames of war blown up for the occasion.

On this subject he himself is too lax and easy. Among the reasons for legitimate war, he reckons the embracing of trade. He seems unwilling to speak plainly; yet he means to signify that we may declare war against a neighbour for his prosperity: a prosperity raised by his industry, by the honesty of his dealings, and by excelling us in exactness, in punctuality, and in credit.

BARROW.

Hell itself, with all its jealousy and malignity and falsehood, could not utter a sentence more

VOL. II

E

pernicious to the interests and improvement of mankind. It is the duty of every state, to provide and watch that not only no other in its neighbourhood, but that no other with which it has dealings, immediate or remoter, do lose an inch of territory or a farthing of wealth by aggression. Princes fear at their next door rather the example of good than of bad. Correct your own ill habits, and you need not dread your rival's. Let him have them, and wear them every day, if indeed a christian may propose it, and they will unfit him for competition with you.

NEWTON.

"The

I now come to the words, on Counsel. doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings' times, hath introduced cabinet councils; a remedy worse than the disease."

Cabinet ... council! It does indeed seem a strange apposition. One would sooner have expected cabinet cards and counters, cabinet miniature pictures.. or what not!

BARROW.

Isaac! if you had conversed, as I have, with some of those persons who constitute such councils, you would think the word cabinet quite as applicable to them, as to cards or counters, or miniature pictures, or essences or pots of pomatum, or pots of any other kind, or what not, within.

NEWTON.

How then, in the name of wonder, are the great matters of government carried on?

BARROW.

Great dinners are put upon the table, not by the entertainer but by the waiters. There are usually some dexterous hands accustomed to the business.. The same weights are moved by the same ropes and pullies. There is no vast address required in hooking them, and no mighty strength in the hawling.

NEWTON.

I have taken no notes of some admirable things in my way to the Essay on Cunning.

I find Bacon no despiser of books in men of business, as people mostly are.

BARROW.

Because they know little of them, and fancy they could manage the whole world by their genius. This is the commonest of delusions in the shallows of society. Well doth Bacon say, "There be that can pack the cards and yet cannot play well; so there are some that are good in canvasses and factions that are otherwise weak men."

Fortunate the country that is not the dupe of these intruders and bustlers, who often rise to the highest posts, by their readiness to lend an arm at every stepping-stone in the dirt, and are found as convenient in their way as the candle-snuffers in gaming-houses, who have usually their rouleau at the service of the half-ruined.

NEWTON.

I am sorry to find my Lord High Chancellor wearing as little the face of an honest man as doth one of these.

How so?

BARROW.

NEWTON.

He says, "If a man would cross a business, that he doubts some other would handsomely and effectually move, let him pretend to wish it well, and move it himself in such sort as may foil it." What must I think of such counsel ?

BARROW.

Bacon, as I observed before, often forgets his character. Sometimes he speaks the language of truth and honesty, with more freedom than a better man could do safely: again, he teaches a lesson of baseness and roguery to the public, such as he could intend only for the private ear of some young statesman, before his rehearsal on the stage of politics. The words from the prompter's book have crept into the text, and injure the piece.

Men are usually so fond of being thought shrewd and acute, that they will play for a small stake in their credit on account of honour. Bacon might not have liked to cancel the directions he had given so much to his mind: instead of which, he draws himself up and cries austerely," But these small wares and petty points of cunning are infinite; and it were a good deed to make a list of them for that nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise."

NEWTON.

He has other things about wisdom in another place: On the wisdom for a man's self.

BARROW.

I must repeat one noble sentence; for I fear, if you began to read it, I should interrupt you. I am not master of my mind when his comes over it. "Divide with reason between self-love and society; and be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others, especially to thy king and country. It is a poor center of a man's actions, himself: it is right earth; for that only stands fast upon his own center; whereas all things that have affinity with the heavens, move upon the center of another, which they benefit.”

What an imagination is Bacon's! what splendid and ardent language! in what prose-writer of our country, or of Rome or of Greece, is there any thing equal or similar to it!