the world; and that proverb is even as it were made of purpose for them, A little breaks no square; and especially if a thing consist of several parts, as first, second, and third, an Englishman will hardly forecast them so as to do them in order, but will easily mistake the place, even when he will not err in the matter.

"But as for the more substantial things, Englishmen are naturally very valiant, very honest, and apt to learning: but yet far more in the solid than in the elegant way; and generally they are of more piety than other men, whatsoever religion they profess. I take them also generally to have one natural virtue, or rather inclination of nature, in a very high degree; for which they well deserve both love and praise. For of all nations in this world, I think really they are the fullest of compassion. The stories, both of ancient and modern times, show us many demonstrations of this truth; and still we find daily proof that every English heart can speak this language. This is so very true, that the more we shall compare this nation of ours with that of others, the more evidently will that appear which I am saying. For if an Englishman should have command in the war, and should come to make an assault, and take a town from a governor who had defended it in a gallant way, that governor might perhaps so carry himself in that condition as to gain strange pity of the conqueror, and to be used by him like a brother, and to be made a friend, and to be freed from all sense of ill-fortune. This I confidently believe of my country, and I conceive myself to have great reason; and I dare not undertake it for any other.

"But yet still I am to seek about that quality of the natural humour in the conversative way of life which reigns ordinarily above other things in an Englishman. Though first methinks that in his first accesses he hath naturally a kind of inconfidence which becomes him not well; and if he chance to be less well received than he expected, methinks he runs instantly out of his wits, and falls to puff and swear, and scorns the whole world all at once. On the other side, if he be nobly used, he is already your friend, and will be your slave; and instantly grows sick till he may know that he can come out of your debt. But yet in that case it will not be amiss for you that the occasion may present itself quickly; for if the iron cool, I will not take my oath but that it perhaps grow hard again.

"But in a word, for aught I have observed (and it is a thing that I have thought upon much), I conceive, or rather guess, that the specifical difference of this nation from all those

others that I know is this-they are mightily subject to extremes. Wherein I mean not so much that which merely relates to direct virtue or vice, or to the passion of strong and lasting love or hate (for herein we are hugely exceeded by the Italians, yea, and by the Spaniards also), as to the present inclinations and humours which we carry to persons and actions and other things in the daily and even hourly occurrences of our life. For first, as to all strangers, we are apt to treat them in great extremities, and without any temper at all; for we use them either like gods or dogs. Besides, if some Englishman will follow the court, he thinks presently he were to be damned if even he should spend a month in the country. And if another should have set up a pack of dogs, or come once to keep a cast or two of hawks in the country; or else, if he be wont to meet weekly with his neighbours at some bowling-green near his next market-town, -he presently falls to pity the great men at court, instead of envying them; and he would not for the whole world even become a bedchamber-man to the king. In a word, nothing is either more liberal or more wretched, more ingenious or more stupid, more dogged or more gentle, more courteous or more proud, more curious, yea, and jealous, or yet more remiss or careless, than an Englishman. And though these contrary qualities have sometimes also their part as truly in men of other nations as ours, yet that I hold to be both very much more seldom, and in a far inferior degree.

"I hold him also particularly to be extreme in the inconstancy of his humour, as I began to insinuate before; and in the prodigality as of his mind so of his expense. He is also extraordinarily sudden both in the execution of his revenge (or at least of showing great sense) upon a conceived affront or wrong, and in the placing also of his acknowledgments upon a very slight courtesy received. His inconstancy is increased by his being so sudden in the acting of his desires, which way soever they chance to bend ; and his suddenness is the greater because his longanimity is so little; for he must either presently perform, or else perhaps he will have no mind to do it at all. Let him be disposed to resent a wrong, or to express a courtesy, or to place a benefit, and if he have opportunity to do it quickly, it will be well and lustily done; but if the blood have time to cool, the thing will peradventure be laid aside.

"Some nations, and many particular men even of all nations, have much magnanimity, for they can find in their hearts to do mighty things when they are called up by fit occasions. And certainly the English nation is very gallant

this way; and there is scarce any other which excels ours in despising danger or money, or any other thing which men are wont to hold dear. But so also is there no nation in the world less longanimous; neither, indeed, are there in the world very many men who excel at all in longanimity, if rather a man might not say that there are few who be at all acquainted with it. For longanimity implies a laying things up in the mind for a long time after the present, with as little relation to it in effect till that time come as if it had either never been thought of, or else as if it had been utterly forgotten. Now this virtue or faculty is excellently and eminently in Almighty God alone, who is the sole owner of all goodness: but men are not very capable of this great part, and Englishmen, I think, as little as any other; but generally you must let them do quickly what you intend they shall do at all.

"As for the point of their inconstancy, the country being an island (where the inhabitants are generally conceived to borrow that quality of the water which surrounds it, to be floating up and down) may well serve to excuse them from any other error that way than merely because they are born in such a place; but certainly they are very inconstant, though yet still I think withal that their inconstancy is not final in respect of any object. I mean, they do not usually pitch and fix irremovably upon a change; but if they go, they come again, and so have many turns and returns: wherein, indeed, they do but show themselves to be men a little more than perhaps some others do. For man is created in this life to consist, as St. Austin saith, of disagreements and reconciliations, that is, of varieties and vicissitudes, by the continual use of free-will, according to his own pleasure or humour; whereas the angels were all created with an intention in Almighty God to establish and fasten them for ever according to that election which they would make by 'that one first single act which their free-will should produce. But since men are made changeable by their very nature of being men, I hold it for a vain and false and foolish affectation of pride for any one to affirm that naturally he delights not in any change of some kind or other. For such persons would fain make us think that they are rather angels than men: whereas, indeed, herein they are not so much men as they are beasts; for they know not the first ground of their own creation. Without all doubt, it is best to change as little as we can when we are doing good things, and also when we are doing great ones; because such never ought to be undertaken but after great deliberation. But because we know well that men do so naturally delight in

change, and for that they are none but saints who entirely are wont to mortify this propension of theirs; it tells a very good tale for any man with me when I find him contented and delighted in making many changes in certain little easy and innocent things, without any offence to God, or wrong to his neighbour, or hurt to himself. For with me he grows to be the likelier thereby to maintain much constancy in greater things, as religion, moral honesty, friendship, and prudence in the ordering of his whole course of life.

66

Concerning the prodigality of the Englishman, I take it not to consist so much in a disposition to consume himself wholly upon any motive whatsoever (though yet many of them grow also into ruin by this means), but that it is rather by having his head intoxicated through some strong fancy for the time; and that so he acts more through want of consideration than for that originally he intends any such thing; and so we see how in the daily occasions of expense he empties his pocket carelessly to no purpose. For the kindness of his heart, which is killed when you do him a courtesy, and his contempt of money (in both which he excels), conspiring together, lay the plot to pick his purse; and so he drops and drivels his money away; and he hath a kind of looseness and ignorance in the ordering of his hand, not knowing how to moderate itself or to learn discretion till it be too late. He bath also another fault, which, though it be not the greatest sin in the world, yet it brings men to a great deal of penance, and it is very natural to the English; and this is, to be very easily and instantly turned both to and from solid things by very toys, beyond the custom of the wise men of any other nation that I know.

"But all these errors of the English are of the nobler way, and they are abundantly recompensed by many virtues wherein they excel their neighbours; and by one quality more in the nature of a cause (besides their compassion, which I mentioned before, which is an effect), and which in some sort is better than any one virtue, because it is the mother of many and I will declare it together with a little story. My Lord of Bristol was thus saying once to me, and it was in Flanders, You and I have spent many years in seeing many parts of the world, but yet there is one fruit that grows in your country and mine with which we never met any where else.' I asked him what that might be, and he bade me guess. I thought he had meant of some real fruit; and so I fell to speak first to him of damsons, and wardens, and afterwards of pearmains; for I had never seen any of these abroad. I will take you off from the rack,' said my lord,

'for it is none of these, nor any thing like them; but it is a certain fruit called good-nature, which grows nowhere but in England, or at least I never met with it but there.' I said so too, and I say so still. Others have great virtues, as well as we; but we have good-nature much more than they. And the professing of this truth shall be the end of this cha

racter.'

Short Notices.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

Select Specimens of the English Poets, with Biographical Notices, &c. Edited by Aubrey de Vere, Esq. (London, Burns and Lambert.) The editor, in a sensible introduction, extols poetry as one of the most influential powers in education: it is the art which "submits the shows of things" to the aspirations of the nobler mind of man; which exhibits things in a more perfect form than that in which they are found with

ús.

Thus poetic justice is more palpable, more swift, more unerringly just, than that which we see in actual events; poetic truth is essential and universal, defecated and free from accidents and altering circumstances-poetic beauty is a beauty not material, though manifesting itself in material things. Poetry is the soul's assertion of her superiority to matter; of her right to use matter simply as a symbol of a world where there is nothing material, and to forget utterly its utilitarian destination or the scientific calculations that have only use in view. To be altogether without the poetical element, is to be unable to recognise soul, force, wisdom or love behind natural objects. The same faculty which in one development is poetical, in another is the eye of religion, without which not even faith would be able to see God behind the veil of His creatures. Mr. De Vere intends his compilation especially for the young; and he gives them plenty to puzzle them, recognising the mistake of those who think that no poetry but that of inferior quality is fit for young people. The system of his selections and of his arrangement pleases us much; and we hope his work will have the success it deserves.

Montaigne the Essayist: a Biography. By Bayle St. John. 2 vols. (London, Chapman and Hall.) Mr. St. John has devoted fifteen years to the study of Montaigne; and it would be curious if a clever man had thrown no new light on his biography, which, after all, is only a few degrees clearer and better known than that of our Shakespeare. But Mr. St. John is quite unfit to reproduce the image of the great essayist. Montaigne was often a wicked writer, unscrupulous in revealing temptations both against purity and against faith; but he had faith; he was a Catholic, and died leaping forward in the act of adoration to the Blessed Sacrament. His writings contain impurities and scepticisms enough; but he was not a sceptic in Mr. St. John's sense, who wishes to paint his hero in terms of a socialist thinker of the nineteenth century. Mr. St. John is quite as wicked as Montaigne, without his faith; and the book before us is exactly that which Montaigne's is blamed for