Home. Many of your writings have evidently such a tendency. Hume. Those of my writings to which you refer will be read by no nation: a few speculative men will take them; but none will be rendered more gloomy, more dissatisfied, or more unsocial by them. Rarely will you find one who, five minutes together, can fix his mind even on the surface: some new tune, some idle project, some light thought, some impracticable wish, will generally run, like the dazzling haze of summer on the dry heath, betwixt them and the reader. A bagpipe will swallow them up, a strathspey will dissipate them, or Romance with the death-rattle in her throat will drive them away into dark staircases and charnel-houses.

You and I, in the course of our conversation, have been at variance, as much as discreet and honest men ought to be: each knows that the other thinks differently from him, yet each esteems the other. I can not but smile when I reflect that a few paces, a glass of wine, a cup of tea, conciliate those whom Wisdom would keep asunder.

Home. No wonder you scoff emphatically, as you pronounce the word wisdom.

Hume. If men would permit their minds like their children to associate freely together, if they would agree to meet one another with smiles and frankness, instead of suspicion and defiance, the common stock of intelligence and of happiness would be centupled. Probably those two men who hate each other most, and whose best husbandry is to sow burs and thistles in each other's path, would, if they had ever met and conversed familiarly, have been ardent and inseparable friends. The minister who may order my book to be burnt to-morrow by the hangman, if I, by any accident, had been seated yesterday by his side at dinner, might perhaps in another fortnight recommend me to his master, for a man of such gravity and understanding as to be worthy of being a privy councillor, and might conduct me to the treasury-bench.

X. ALFIERI AND SALOMON THE FLORENTINE JEW

Alfieri. Let us walk to the window, signor Salomon. And now, instead of the silly simpering compliments repeated at introductions, let me assure you that you are the only man in Florence with whom I would willingly exchange a salutation.

Salomon. I must think myself highly flattered, signor Conte, having always heard that you are not only the greatest democrat, but also the greatest aristocrat, in Europe.

Alfieri. These two things, however opposite, which your smile would indicate, are not so irreconcilable as you imagine. Let us first understand the words, and then talk about them. The democrat is he who wishes the people to have a due share in the government, and this share, if you please, shall be the principal one. The aristocrat of our days is contented with no actual share in it: but if a man of family is conscious of his dignity, and resentful that another has invaded it, he may be, and is universally, called an aristocrat. The principal difference is, that the one carries outward what the other carries inward. I am thought an aristocrat by the Florentines for conversing with few people, and for changing my shirt and shaving my beard on other days than festivals; which the most aristocratical of them never do, considering it, no doubt, as an excess. however, from my soul a republican, if prudence and modesty will authorise any man to call himself so; and this, I trust, I have demonstrated in the most valuable of my works, the Treatise on tyranny and the Dialogue with my friend at Siena. The aristocratical part of me, if part of me it must be called, hangs loose and keeps off insects. I see no aristocracy in the children of sharpers from behind the counter,

I am,

nor, placing the matter in the most favourable point of view, in the descendants of free citizens who accepted from any vile enslaver, French, Spanish, German, or priest, or monk (represented with a piece of buffoonery like a bee-hive on his head and a picklock key at his girdle) the titles of counts and marquises. In Piedmont the matter is different we must either have been the rabble or their lords: we were military, and we retain over the populace the same rank and spirit as our ancestors held over the soldiery. But we are as prone to slavery as they were averse and reluctant.

Under the best of princes we are children all our lives. Under the worse we are infinitely more degraded than the wretches who are reduced to their servitude by war, or even by crimes; begging our master to take away from us the advantages of our education, and of our strength in mind and body. Is this picture overcharged? Salomon. Not with bright colours certainly.

Alfieri. What think you then if we are threatened with hell by those who take away earth from us, and scourge and imprison and torture us?

Salomon. Hell is a very indifferent hospital for those who are thrust into it with broken bones. It is hard indeed if they who lame you, will not let you limp. Indeed I do hear, signor Conte, that the churchmen call you an atheist and a leveller.

Alfieri. So, during the plague at Milan, if a man walked upright in the midst of it, and without a sore about him, he was a devil or an anointer; it was a crime and a curse not to be infected. But, signor Salomon, a poet never can be an atheist, nor can a gentleman be a leveller. For my part, I would rather walk alone in a rugged path than with the many in a smoother.

Salomon. Signor Conte, I have heard of levellers, but I have never seen one: all are disposed to level down, but nobody to level up. As for nobility, there is none in Europe beside the Venetian. Nobility must be self-constituted and independent: the free alone are noble: slavery, like death, levels all. The English comes nearest to the Venetian they are independent, but want the main characteristic, the self-constituted. You have been in England, signor Conte, and can judge of them better than I can.

Alfieri. England, as you know, is governed by Pitt, the most insidious of her demagogues, and the most hostile to Aristocracy. Jealous of power, and distrustful of the people that raised him to it, he

enriches and attaches to him the commercial part of the nation by the most wasteful prodigality both in finance and war, and he loosens from the landed the chief proprietors by raising them to the peerage. Nearly a third of the lords have been created by him, and prove themselves devotedly his creatures. This Empusa puts his ass's foot on the French, and his iron one on the English. He possesses not the advantage possessed by insects, which, if they see but one inch before them, see that inch distinctly. He knows not that the machine which runs on so briskly, will fall to pieces the moment it stops. He will indeed carry his point in debasing the Aristocracy; but he will equally debase the people. Undivided power he will continue to enjoy ; but after his death, none will be able to say from any visible proof or appearance, how glorious a people did he govern! He will have changed its character in all ranks and conditions. After this it is little to say that he will have exalted its rival, who, without his interposition, would have sunk under distress and crime. But interposition was necessary to his aggrandizement, enabling him to distribute in twenty years, if he should live so long, more wealth among his friends and partisans, than has been squandered by the uncontrolled profusion of French monarchs, from the first Louis to the last.

Salomon. How happens it that England, richer and more powerful than other states, should still contain fewer nobles?

Alfieri. The greater part of the English nobility has neither power nor title. Even those who are noble by right of possession, the hereditary lords of manors with large estates attached to them, claim no titles at home or abroad. Hence in all foreign countries the English gentleman is placed below his rank, which naturally and necessarily is far higher than that of your slipshod counts and lotteryoffice marquises, whose gamekeepers with their high plumes, cocked hats, and hilts of rapiers, have no other occupation than to stand behind the carriage, if the rotten plank will bear them: whose game is the wren and red-breast, and whose beat is across the market.

Menestrier, who both as a Frenchman and as a jesuit speaks contemptuously of English nobility, admits the gentlemen to this dignity. Their property, their information, their political influence, and their moral character, place them beyond measure above the titularies of our country, be the rank what it may; and it is a remarkable proof of moderation in some and of contemptuousness in others, that they do not openly claim from their king, or assume without such interven

tion, the titles arising from landed wealth, which conciliate the attention and civility of every class, and indeed of every individual abroad.

It is among those who stand between the peerage and the people that there exists a greater mass of virtue and of wisdom than in the rest of Europe. Much of their dignified symplicity may be attributed to the plainness of their religion, and, what will always be imitated, to the decorous life of their king: for whatever may be the defects of either, if we compare them with others round us, they are excellent.

Salomon. A young religion jumps upon the shoulders of an older one, and soon becomes like her, by mockery of her tricks, her cant, and her decrepitude. Meanwhile the old one shakes with indignation, and swears there is neither relationship nor likeness. Was there ever a religion in the world that was not the true religion, or was there ever a king that was not the best of kings?

Alfieri. In the latter case we must have arrived nigh perfection ; since it is evident from the authority of the gravest men, theologians, presidents, judges, corporations, universities, senates, that every prince is better than his father, "of blessed memory, now with God." If they continue to rise thus transcendently, earth in a little time will be incapable of holding them, and higher heavens must be raised upon the highest heavens for their reception. The lumber of our Italian courts, the most crazy part of which is that which rests upon a red cushion in a gilt chair, with stars and sheep and crosses dangling from it, must be approached as Artaxerxes and Domitian. These automatons, we are told nevertheless, are very condescending. Poor fools who tell us it! ignorant that where on one side is condescension, on the other side must be baseness. The rascals have ruined my physiognomy. I wear an habitual sneer upon my face; God confound them for it!

Salomon. This temper or constitution of mind I am afraid may do injury to your works.

Alfieri. Surely not to all: my satire at least must be the better for it.

Salomon. I think differently. No satire can be excellent where displeasure is expressed with acrimony and vehemence. When satire ceases to smile it should be momentarily, and for the purpose of inculcating a moral. Juvenal is hardly more a satirist than Lucan: he is indeed a vigorous and bold declaimer, but he stamps too often, aud splashes up too much filth. We Italians have no delicacy in wit; we