opposite parties, may perhaps return from corresponding tours, with as opposite impressions of the people of the countries they have visited, as the knights in the fable; of whom one had seen only the silver side of the shield, and the other only the golden. Both will perhaps record quite faithfully all they have seen and heard; and one will have reported a certain nation as full of misery and complaint, and ripe for revolt, when the other has found them prosperous, sanguine, and enthusiastically loyal. In the days when travelling by post-chaise was common, there were usually certain lines of inns on all the principal roads; a series of good, and a series of inferior ones, each in connexion all the way along; so that if you once got into the worse line, you could not easily get out of it to the journey's end. The White Hart' of one town would drive you-almost literally-to the 'White Lion' of the next; and so on, all the way; so that of two travellers by post from London to Exeter or York, the one would have had nothing but bad horses, bad dinners, and bad beds, and the other, very good. This is analogous to what befalls a traveller in any new country, with respect to the impressions he receives, if he falls into the hands of a party. They consign him, as it were, to those allied with them, and pass him on, from one to another, all in the same connexion, each showing him and telling him, just what suits the party, and concealing from him everything else.

This is nowhere more the case than in Ireland; from a tour in which two travellers will sometimes return, each faithfully reporting what he has seen and heard, and having been told perhaps nothing more than the truth on any point, but only one side of the truth; and the impressions received will be perhaps quite opposite. The Irish jaunting-car, in which the passengers sit back to back, is a sort of type of what befalls many tourists in Ireland. Each sees a great deal, and reports faithfully what he has seen, one on one side of the road, and the other on the other. One will have seen all that is green, and the other, all that is orange.

Some years ago I met with a gentleman of the army, who had been for two years quartered with his regiment in Ireland, and who had never heard of the Education Board, or of the National Schools, which were scattered through all parts of Ireland, and were educating above two hundred thousand children!

But the degree to which a stranger may be kept in a state of one-sided half-darkness, is truly wonderful. In the island of Malta there is a Protestant college, which is one of the most important—perhaps the most important—of all the institutions in our foreign dependencies. It gives a sound christian education to a number of youths of different nations; Turks, Persians, Armenians, Greeks, &c., and sends them forth to enlighten various regions of the East. A friend of mine, who is eminently intelligent, inquiring, and candid, spent a considerable time in Malta, and came home without having heard of the existence of the college! He had chanced, it seems, to fall in with persons who were either adverse or indifferent to any such institution.

It often, indeed, happens that men place themselves knowingly and wilfully in the hands of a party. But sometimes they are, from one cause or another, deluded into it, when they have no such thought. This sometimes takes place through the ambiguity of words. For instance, if the designation by which, in some parts of the Continent, Protestants are usually known, as distinguished from Romanists, happens to be with us the title denoting a certain party in a Protestant Church, a foreign Protestant, coming among us, or holding intercourse with us, is likely to throw himself into the arms of that party whom, from the name, he supposes to comprise all who agree with him in religion.

IT

ESSAY XIX. OF EMPIRE.

is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear; and yet that commonly is the case with kings; who being at the highest, want matter of desire, which makes their minds more languishing, and have many representations of perils and shadows, which make their minds the less clear. And this is one reason also of that effect which the Scripture speaketh of, 'That the king's heart is inscrutable;"1 for, multitudes of jealousies, and lack of some predominant desire, that should marshal and put in order all the rest, maketh any man's heart hard to find or sound. Hence it comes likewise, that princes many times make themselves desires, and set their hearts upon toys; sometimes upon a building; sometimes upon erecting of an Order; sometimes upon the advancing of a person; sometimes upon obtaining excellency in some art, or feat of the hand-as Nero for playing on the harp; Domitian for certainty of the hand with the arrow; Commodus for playing at fence; Caracalla for driving chariots; and the like. This seemeth incredible unto those that know not the principle, that the mind of Man is more cheered and refreshed by profiting in small things, than by standing at a stay in great. We see also that kings that have been fortunate conquerors in their first years, it being not possible for them to go forward infinitely, but that they must have some check or arrest in their fortunes, turn in their latter years to be superstitious and melancholy; as did Alexander the Great, Dioclesian, and in our memory Charles V.; and others; for he that is used to go forward, and findeth a stop, falleth out of his own favour, and is not the thing he was.

To speak now of the true temper3 of empire, it is a thing rare and hard to keep, for both temper and distemper consist of contraries; but it is one thing to mingle contraries, another

1 Prov. XXV. 3.

2 Stand at a stay. To stand still; not to advance. 'Affairs of state seemed rather to stand at a stay than to advance or decline.'—Hayward.

3 Temper. Due balance of qualities. Health itself is but a kind of temper, gotten and preserved by a convenient mixture of contrarieties.'—Arbuthnot.

6

Between two blades, which bears the better temper ?'-Shakespere.

to interchange them. The answer of Apollonius to Vespasian is full of excellent instruction. Vespasian asked him, 'What was Nero's overthrow?' He answered, Nero could touch and tune the harp well, but in government sometimes he used to wind the pins too high, sometimes to let them down too low;' and certain it is, that nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much.

1

This is true, that the wisdom of all these latter times in princes' affairs, is rather fine deliveries, and shiftings of dangers and mischiefs, when they are near, than solid and grounded courses to keep 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. The difficulties in princes' business are many and great, but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind; for it is common with princes (saith Tacitus) to will contradictories: 'Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariæ.' For it is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.3

Kings have to deal with their neighbours, their wives, their children, their prelates or clergy, their nobles, their second nobles or gentlemen, their merchants, their commons, and their men of war; and from all these arise dangers, if care and circumspection be not used.

First, for their neighbours, there can no general rule be given (the occasions are so variable), save one which ever holdeth-which is, that princes do keep due sentinel, that none of their neighbours do overgrow so (by increase of territory, by embracing of trade, by approaches, or the like), as they become more able to annoy them than they were; and this is generally the work of standing councils to foresee and to hinder it. During that triumvirate of kings, King Henry VIII. of England,

1 Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. v. 28.

5

2 The will of kings is, for the most part, vehement and inconsistent.'-Sallust, B J. 113. (Not Tacitus.)

3 Mean. Means. The virtuous conversation of Christians was a mean to work the conversion of the heathen to Christ.'-Hooker.

* Men of war (now only applied to ships). Warriors; soldiers. 'And Saul set him over the men of war.'-1 Sam. xviii. 5.

5 As. That. See page 27.

Francis I., king of France, and Charles V., emperor, there was such a watch kept that none of the three could win a palm1 of ground, but the other two would straightways 2 balance it, either by confederation, or, if need were, by a war, and would not in any wise take up peace at interest; and the like was done by that league (which Guicciardine saith was the security of Italy), made between Ferdinando, king of Naples, Lorenzius Medices, and Ludovicus Sforsa, potentates, the one of Florence, the other of Milan. Neither is the opinion of some of the schoolmen to be received, that a war cannot justly be made, but upon a precedent injury or provocation; for there is no question but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.

For their wives, there are cruel examples of them. Livia is infamed for the poisoning of her husband; Roxolana, Solyman's wife, was the destruction of that renowned prince, Sultan Mustapha, and otherwise troubled his house and succession; Edward II. of England's queen had the principal hand in the deposing and murder of her husband. This kind of danger is then to be feared chiefly when the wives have plots for the raising of their own children, or else that they be advoutresses.5

For their children, the tragedies likewise of dangers from them have been many; and generally the entering of the fathers into suspicion of their children hath been ever unfortunate. The destruction of Mustapha (that we named before) was so fatal to Solyman's line, as the succession of the Turks from Solyman until this day is suspected to be untrue, and of strange blood, for that Selymus II. was thought to be supposi

1 Palm. Hand's breadth. The palm, or hand's breadth, is a twenty-fourth part of the stature.'-Holder.

2 Staightways. Immediately.

'Like to a ship that having 'scap'd a tempest,

Is straightway claim'd and boarded with a pirate.'-Shakespere.

3 Precedent. Preceding.

'Do it at once,

Or thy precedent services are all

But accidents unpurposed.'-Shakespere.

* Infamed. Infamous. Whosoever for any offence be infamed, by their ears hang rings of gold.'-Sir T. More.

5 Advoutress. Adulteress. (So called from breach of the marriage-vow.)