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with Brutus. The hatred of an enemy is bad enough, but no earthly passion equals in its intensity the hatred of a friend.' (Page 72.)

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There are people who believe that the voice of censure should never be heard in an interview, and that you have no right to rebuke presumption, check interference, or make men conscious of their weakness. You are to affect a humility, by which you tacitly confess yourself destitute of moral judgment. But you must remember that, in interviews connected with your official station, you appear for the most part as an adjudicator; an appeal is made to you, as holding the balance of justice, and also as wielder of its sword. A righteous humility,' says the author of the Statesman, will teach a man never to pass a sentence in a spirit of exultation: a righteous courage will teach him never to withhold it from fear of being disliked. Popularity is commonly obtained by a dereliction of the duties of censure, under a pretext of humility.' (Page 256.)

'There is great danger of praise from men in high place being identified with promise; and compliment tortured into grounds of hope,-not always hope of promotion, but hope of influencing promotion. Your approbation warmly expressed will be deemed to have a value beyond the mere expression of your opinion; and though you expressly guard against raising expectations, you will nevertheless raise them. A late Chancellor, to whom more books were sent and dedicated than he could possibly have read if his life had been prolonged to antediluvian duration, by the complimentary answers he sent to the authors, gathered round him a host of expectants, and produced a mass of suffering which would scarcely be credited save by those who were personally acquainted with it. Kindness and cordiality of manner are scarcely less pleasing to the feelings than express compliment, and they are the more safe for both parties, since they afford no foundation for building up expectations; a species of architecture sufficiently notorious for the weakness of the foundations that support an enormous superstructure.' (Page 163.)

"Severity breedeth fear.'

It may be doubted whether it is politic, where a man has wholly lost your esteem, and has no chance of regaining it, to let him know that his doom is fixed irrevocably. The hope of

recovering his place in your estimation may be a serviceable check on his conduct; and if he supposes you to be merely angry with him (a mistake commonly made by vulgar minds), he may hope and try to pacify you by an altered course, trusting that in time you will forget all. In such a case you need not do or say anything deceitful; you have only to leave him in his On the other hand, if he finds that you have no resentment, but that your feeling is confirmed disesteem, and that the absence of all anger is the very consequence of such a feelingfor you cannot be angry where you do not mean to trust again -he may turn out a mischievous hater.

error.

On the whole, however, the frank, open-hearted course is the more politic in the long run. If you use towards all whom you really esteem, a language which in time will come to be fully understood by all, from its being never used except where you really esteem, then, and then only, you will deserve and obtain the full reliance of the worthy. They will feel certain that they possess your esteem, and that if they do anything by which it may be forfeited, it will be lost for ever. To establish such a belief is the best means of preserving the peace and purity of your circle; and it is worth while risking some enmity to effect so desirable an object.

It must, however, be observed that it is equally politic and christian-like to avoid breaking with anybody. While you purchase no man's forbearance by false hopes of his regaining your esteem, you must not drive him into hostility through fear of your doing him a mischief. The rule of Spartan warfare is not inapplicable to the conduct of a christian statesman; never give way to an assailing enemy,-never pursue a flying foe further than is necessary to secure the victory. Let it be always understood that it is safe to yield to you, and you will remove the worst element of resistance, despair of pardon.' (Pages 72-76.)

'Be not too remembering of thy place in conversation and private answers to suitors.'

There may, however, be an error on the opposite side.'Men are often called affable and no way proud,' (says Dr. Cooke Taylor in the work already quoted,) who really exhibit a vulgar sort of pride in taking liberties, and talking to their inferiors

with a kind of condescending familiarity which is gratifying to mean minds, but which to every person of delicacy, is the most odious form of insolence. If you wish to be familiar with an inferior, let him rather feel that you have raised him to your own level than that you have lowered yourself to his. You may see the propriety of this aphorism unfortunately manifested in books written by clever men for the use of the humble classes, and for children. Many of these are rejected as offensive, because the writers deem it necessary to show that they are going down to a low level of understanding; their familiarity becomes sheer vulgarity, and their affected simplicity is puzzleheaded obscurity. The condescension of some great people is like the 'letting down' in such authors: they render themselves more ridiculous than Hercules at the court of Omphale; for they assume the distaff without discarding the club and lion's skin. It is also very unfair; for those who go to admire the spinning, or to be amused at its incongruity, are exposed to the danger of getting an awkward knock from the club.' (Page 180.)

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Certainly, men in great fortunes are strangers to themselves; and while they are in the puzzle of business they have no time to tend their health either of body or mind.'

The following passage from The Bishop bears upon this engrossment in public business:-There are two opposite errors into which many public men have fallen: on the one hand, allowing family concerns to intermingle with public business; on the other, sacrificing to their station all the enjoyments of private life. The former interference is rare; it is so obviously a source of perplexity and annoyance, that it soon works its own cure; but the latter grows by what it feeds upon.' Unless you habitually court the privacy of the domestic circle, you will find that you are losing that intimate acquaintance with those who compose it which is its chief charm, and the source of all its advantage. In your family alone can there be that intercourse of heart with heart which falls like refreshing dew on the soul when it is withered and parched by the heats of business, and the intense selfishness which you must hourly meet in public life. Unless your affections are sheltered in that sanctuary, they cannot long resist the blighting influence of a constant

repression of their development, and a compulsory substitution of calculation in their stead. Domestic privacy is necessary, not only to your happiness, but even to your efficiency; it gives the rest necessary to your active powers of judgment and discrimination; it keeps unclosed those well-springs of the heart whose flow is necessary to float onwards the determination of the head. It is not enough that the indulgence of these affections should fill up the casual chinks of your time; they must have their allotted portion of it, with which nothing but urgent necessity should be allowed to interfere. These things are the aliments of his greatness; they preserve within him that image of moral beauty which constant intercourse with the public world—that is, the world with its worst side outwards-is too likely to efface. If our clergy had been permitted to marry,' said an intelligent Romanist, 'we never should have had inquisitors.' (Page 327.)

'A place showeth the man: and it showeth some to the better, and some to the worse.'

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Bacon here quotes a Greek proverb, and a very just one. Some persons of great promise, when raised to high office, either are puffed up with self-sufficiency, or daunted by the high winds that blow on high hills,' or in some way or other disappoint expectation. And others, again, show talents and courage, and other qualifications, when these are called forth by high office, beyond what any one gave them credit for before, and beyond what they suspected to be in themselves. It is unhappily very difficult to judge how a man will conduct himself in a high office, till the trial has been made.

It must not, however, be forgotten that censure and commendation will, as in other cases, be indiscriminate. By those whose nearness, or easiness of access, enables them to form an accurate judgment, many a public man will be found neither so detestable nor so admirable as perhaps he is thought by opposite parties. This truth is well expressed in the fable of 'The Clouds.'1

"Two children once, at eventide,

Thus prattled by their parents' side:—

1 See Fourth Book of the Lessons for the Use of National Schools, p. 49.

'See, mother, see that stormy cloud!
What can its inky bosom shroud?
It looks so black, I do declare
I shudder quite to see it there.'
'And father, father, now behold
Those others, all of pink and gold!
How beautiful and bright their hue!
I wish that I were up there too:
For, if they look so fine from here,
What must they be when one is near!'
'Children,' the smiling sire replied,
'I've climbed a mountain's lofty side,
Where, lifted 'mid the clouds awhile,
Distance no longer could beguile:
And closer seen, I needs must say
That all the clouds are merely grey;
Differing in shade from one another,
But each in colour like his brother.
Those clouds you see of gold and pink,
To others look as black as ink;
And that same cloud, so black to you,
To some may wear a golden hue.
E'en so, my children, they whom fate
Has planted in a low estate,
Viewing their rulers from afar,
Admire what prodigies they are.

O! what a tyrant! dreadful doom!

His crimes have wrapped our land in gloom!

A tyrant! nay, a hero this,

The glorious source of all our bliss!
But they who haunt the magic sphere,
Beholding then its inmates near,
Know that the men, by some adored,
By others flouted and abhorred,
Nor sink so low, nor rise so high,
As seems it to the vulgar eye.
The man his party deems a hero,
His foes, a Judas, or a Nero-
Patriot of superhuman worth,

Or vilest wretch that cumbers earth,

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