enable him to decide on the choice of ambassadors, and other foreign ministers, whom it is his prerogative to appoint.

As he is the fountain of honour, from which proceed titles, distinctions, and offices, he should be early accustomed to combine a due attention to character, with the examination of claims, and the appreciation of services; in order that the honours of the subject may reflect no dishonour on the prince. Those whose distinguished lot it is to bestow subordinate offices and inferior dignities, should evince, by the judgment with which they confer them, how fit they themselves are to discharge the highest.

Is he supreme head of the church? Hence arises a strong obligation to be acquainted with ecclesiastical history in general, as well as with the history of the church of England in particular. He should learn, not merely from habit and prescription, but from an attentive comparison of our national church with other ecclesiastical institutions, to discern both the distinguishing characters and appropriate advantages of our church establishment. He ought to inquire in what manner its interests are interwoven with those of the state, so far as to be inseparable from them. He should learn, that from the supreme power, with which the laws invest him over the church, arises a most awful responsibility, especially in the grand prerogative of bestowing the higher ecclesiastical appointments -a trust which involves consequences far too extensive for human minds to calculate; and which a sovereign, even amid all the dazzling splendour of royalty, while he preserves tenderness of conscience, and quickness of sensibility, will not reflect on without trepidation. While history offers numberless instances of the abuse of this power, it records numberless striking examples of its proper application. It even presents some, in which good sense has operated usefully in the absence of all principle. When a profligate ecclesiastic applied for preferment to the profligate duke of Orleans, while regent of France, urging as a motive, that he should be dishonoured if the duke did not make him a bishop ;—" And I,” replied the regent, "shall be dishonoured if I do.”

CHAPTER V.

On the Importance of Studying Ancient History.

THOSE pious persons do not seem to understand the true interests of Christianity, who forbid the study of pagan literature. That it is of little value, comparatively with Christian learning, does not prove it to be altogether without its usefulness. In the present period of critical investigation, heathen learning seems to be justly appreciated in the scale of letters; the wisdom and piety of some of our most eminent contemporaries having successfully applied it to its noblest office, by rendering it subservient to the purposes of revelation, in multiplying the evidences, and illustrating the proofs. Thus the Christian emperor, when he destroyed the heathen temples, consecrated the golden vessels to adorn the Christian churches.

In this enlightened period, religion, our religion at least, does not, as in her days of darkness, feel it necessary to degrade human learning, in

* Constantine the Great.

order to withdraw herself from scrutiny. The time is past, when it was produced as a serious charge against Saint Jerome, that he had read Homer; when a doctor of the Sorbonne penitently confessed, among his other sins, that the exquisite muse of Virgil had made him weep for the woes of Dido; and when the works of Tacitus were condemned to the flames, from the papal chair, because the author was not a Roman Catholic. It is also curious to observe a papist persecuting the memory of a pagan, on the ground of his superstition! Pope Gregory the Great expelled Livy from every Christian library on this account!

The most acute enemy of Christianity, the emperor Julian, who had himself been bred a Christian and a scholar, well understood what was most likely to hurt its cause. He knew the use which the Christians were making of ancient authors, and of rhetoric, in order to refute error and establish truth. "They fight us," said he, "by the knowledge of our own authors; shall we suffer ourselves to be stabbed with our own swords?" He actually made a law to interdict their reading Homer and Demosthenes; prohibited to their schools the study of antiquity, and ordered that they should confine themselves to the explanation of Matthew and Luke, in the churches of the Galileans.

It can never be too soon for the royal pupil to begin to collect materials for reflection, and for action. Her future character will much depend on the course of reading, the turn of temper, the habit of thought now acquired, and the standard of morals now fixed. The acquisition of present tastes will form the elements of her subsequent character. Her present acquirements, it is true, will need to be matured by her afterexperience; but experience will operate to comparatively little purpose, where only a slender stock has been laid in for it to work upon; and where these materials for forming the character have not been previously prepared. Things must be known before they are done. The part should be studied before it is acted, if we expect to have it acted well.

Where much is to be learned, time must be economised; and in the judicious selection of pagan literature, the discernment of the preceptor will be particularly exercised. All those writers, however justly celebrated, who have employed much learning, in elaborating points which add little to the practical wisdom or virtue of mankind; all such as are rather curious than useful, or ingenious than instructive, should be passed over; nor need she bestow much attention on points which, though they may have been accurately discussed, are not seriously important. Dry critical knowledge, though it may be correctly just, and mere chronicles of events, though they may be strictly true, teach not the things she wants. Such authors as Sallust, who in speaking of turbulent innovators, remarks, that they thought the very disturbance of things established a sufficient bribe to set them at work; those who, like this exquisite historian, unfold the internal principles of action, and dissect the hearts and minds of their personages, who develop complicated circumstances, furnish a clue to trace the labyrinth of causes and effects, and assign to every incident its proper motive, will be eminently useful. But, if she be taught to discern the merits of writers, it is that she may become, not a critic in books, but in human nature.

it.

History is the glass by which the royal mind should be dressed. If it

be delightful for a private individual to enter with the historian into every scene which he describes, and into every event which he relates; to be introduced into the interior of the Roman senate, or the Athenian Areopagus; to follow Pompey to Pharsalia, Miltiades to Marathon, or Marlborough to Blenheim; how much more interesting will this be to a sovereign? to him for whom senates debate, for whom armies engage, and who is himself to be a prime actor in the drama! Of how much more importance is it to him, to possess an accurate knowledge of all the successive governments of that world, in a principal government of which he is one day to take the lead! To possess himself of the experience of ancient states, of the wisdom of every antecedent age! To learn moderation from the ambition of one, caution from the rashness of another, and prudence perhaps from the indiscretion of both! To apply foregone examples to his own use; adopting what is excellent, shunning what is erroneous, and omitting what is irrelevant!

Reading and observation are the two grand sources of improvement; but they lie not equally open to all. From the latter, the sex and habits of a royal female, in a good measure, exclude her. She must then, in a greater degree, depend on the information which books afford, opened and illustrated by her preceptor. Though her personal observation must be limited, her advantages from historical sources may be large and

various.

If history for a time, especially during the reign of the prince whose actions are recorded, sometimes misrepresent characters, the dead, even the royal dead, are seldom flattered; unless, which indeed too frequently happens, the writer is deficient in that just conception of moral excellence which teaches to distinguish what is splendid from what is solid. But, sooner or later, history does justice. She snatches from oblivion, or reproach, the fame of those virtuous men, whom corrupt princes, not contented with having sacrificed them to their unjust jealousy, would rob also of their fair renown. When Arulenus Rusticus was condemned by Domitian, for having written, with its deserved eulogium, the life of that excellent citizen, Thrasea Poetus: when Senecio was put to death by the same emperor, for having rendered the like noble justice to Helvidius Priscus when the historians themselves, like the patriots whom they celebrated, were sentenced to death, their books also being condemned to the flames; when Fannia, the incomparable wife of Helvidius, was banished, having the courage to carry into exile that book which had been the cause of it; a book of which her conjugal piety had furnished the materials" In the fire which consumed these books," says the author of the life of Agricola, "the tyrants imagined that they had stifled the very utterance of the Roman people, abolished the lawful power of the senate, and forced mankind to doubt of the very evidence of their senses. Having expelled philosophy, and exiled science, they flattered themselves that nothing, which bore the stamp of virtue, would exist."*—But history has vindicated the noble sufferers. Poetus and Helvidius will ever be ranked among the most honourable patriots; while the emperor, who, in destroying their lives, could not injure their reputation, is consigned to eternal infamy.

* Beginning of Tacitus's Life of Agricola.

The examples which history records, furnish faithful admonitions to succeeding princes, respecting the means by which empires are erected and overturned. They show by what arts of wisdom, or by what neglect of those arts, little states become great, or great states fall into ruin; with what equity or injustice wars have been undertaken; with what ability or incapacity they have been conducted; with what sagacity or short-sightedness treaties have been formed. How national faith has been maintained, or forfeited. How confederacies have been made, or violated. History, which is the amusement of other men, is the school of princes. They are not to read it merely as the rational occupation of a vacant hour, but to consult it as a storehouse of materials for the art of government.

There is a splendour in heroic actions, which fires the imagination, and forcibly lays hold on the passions. Hence, the poets were the first, and, in the rude ages of antiquity, the only historians. They seized on whatever was dazzling in character, or shining in action; exaggerated heroic qualities, immortalised patriotism, and deified courage. But, instead of making their heroes patterns to men, they lessened the utility of their examples, by elevating them into gods.

Hence, however, arose the first idea of history; of snatching the deeds of illustrious men from the delusions of fable; of bringing down extravagant powers, and preternatural faculties, within the limits of human nature and possibility; and reducing overcharged characters to the size and shape of real life; giving proportion, order, and arrangement to the widest scheme of action, and to the most extended duration of time.

CHAPTER VI.
Laws-Egypt-Persia.

BUT however the fictions of poetry might have given being to history; it was sage political institutions, good governments, and wise laws, which formed both its solid basis, and its valuable superstructure. And it is from the labours of ancient legislators, the establishment of states, the foundation of governments, and the progress of civil society, that we are to look for more real greatness, and more useful instruction, than from all the extravagant exploits recorded in the fabulous ages of antiquity.

So deep is the reverential awe which mankind have uniformly blended with the idea of laws, that almost all civilised nations have affected to wrap up the origin of them in the obscurity of a devout mystery, and to intimate that they sprang from a divine source. This has arisen partly from a love of the marvellous, inherent in the human mind; partly from the vanity of a national fondness in each country, for losing their original in the trackless paths of impenetrable antiquity. Of the former of these tastes, a legislator, like Numa, who had deep views, and who knew how much the people reverence whatever is mysterious, would naturally avail himself. And his supposed divine communication was founded in his consummate knowledge of the human mind, a knowledge which a wise prince will always turn to good account.

But, however the mysteriousness of the origin of laws may excite the

reverence of the vulgar, it is the wise only who will duly venerate their sanctity, as they alone can appreciate their value. Laws are providentially designed, not only to be the best subsidiary aid of religion, where she is operative, but to be in some sort her substitute, in those instances where her own direct operations might be ineffectual. For, even where the immediate law of God is little regarded, the civil code may be externally efficient, from its sanctions being more visible, palpable, tangible. And human laws are directly fitted to restrain the outward acts of those whose hearts are not influenced by the divine injunctions. Laws, therefore, are the surest fences of the best blessings of civilised life. They bind society together, while they strengthen the separate interests of those whom they reciprocally unite. They tie the hands of depredation in the poor, and of oppression in the rich; protect the weak against the encroachments of the powerful, and draw their sacred shelter round all that is dear in domestic, or valuable in social life. They are the truest guardians of the dignity of the throne, and the only rampart of the liberty of the people.

On the law of nature, and the law of revelation (where revelation is known,) all human laws ought to depend. That a rule of civil conduct should be prescribed to man, by the state in which he lives, is made necessary by nature, as well as sanctioned by revelation. Were man an insulated being, the law of nature and of revelation would suffice for him ; but, for aggregate man, something more than even municipal laws becomes requisite. Divided as human beings are into separate states and societies, connected among themselves, but disconnected with other states, each requires, with relation to the other, certain general rules, called the law of nations, as much as each state needs, respecting itself, those distinct codes which are suited to their own particular exigencies. On the whole, then, as the natural sense of weakness and fear impels man to seek the protection and the blessing of laws, so, from the experience of that protection, and the sense of that blessing, his reason derives the most powerful argument to desire their perpetuation; and his providential destiny becomes his choice.

If, therefore, we would truly estimate the value of laws, let us figure to ourselves the misery of that state of nature in which there should be no law but that of the strongest; no judge to determine right, or to punish wrong; to redress suffering, or to repel injury; to protect the weak, or to control the powerful.

If, under the prevalence of a false and even absurd religion, several ancient states, that of Egypt in particular, subsisted in so much splendour* for so long a period, and afterwards sank into such abject depression, the causes of both are obvious. The LAWS of ancient Egypt were proverbial for their wisdom. It has not escaped several Christian historians, that it was the human praise of him who was ordained to be the legislator of

*It is to be observed, that this splendour alludes to the prosperity arising from wise political institutions merely; for the private morals of Egypt must have borne some proportion to her corrupt idolatry, which afterwards became of the most degrading and preposterous kind. Her wisdom, we must therefore infer, was chiefly political wisdom. Her morality seems to have been, in a good measure, cultivated with a view to aggrandize the state, and in violation of many natural feelings, as was the case in Sparta. Egypt was a well-compacted political society, and her virtue appears to have been the effect of political discipline. In enumerating her merits, our object is, to prove the great importance of LAWS.