Catholics, or well-wishers to them, which is brand enough to prevent elections of such men, and is alsoe a colour for theire other disobediences to theire Prince and his lawfull succession.

!!It is only too probable that James's bigotry alone baffled his despotism, and that he might have succeeded in suppressing the liberties of the country if he would, for a time at least, have kept aloof from its religion. It should be remembered, in excuse for the supporters of James II., that the practicability of conducting the affairs of the state with and by a Parliament, had not been yet demonstrated, nay, seemed incompatible with the theoretic division of the Legislative from the Executive; and indeed, only by blending the two in fact, and preserving the division in words and appearances, was this effected. And even now the practicability of governing the empire with and by a perfectly free and freely elected Parliament, remains to be demonstrated.

Ibid. p. 71.

MR. EVELYN TO MR. PEPYS.

Were it not possible to discover whither any of those citrine-trees are yet to be found, that of old grew about the foote of Mount Atlas, not far from Tingis; and were heretofore in deliciis for their politure and natural maculations, to that degree, as to be sold for their weight in gold? Cicero had a table that cost him ten thousand sesterces, and another which I have read of, that was valued at 14,000 H.S., which, at 3d. H.S. amounted to a pretty sum; and one of the Ptolemies had yet another of far greater price, insomuch as when they used to reproach their wives for their luxury and excesse in pearle and paint, they would retort, and turn the tables on their husbands.

That lady of masculine intellect, with all the woman's sense of beauty (Mrs. Emerson? was that

66

the name? but long a botanical correspondent and contributor to Nicholson's Phil. Magazine-O! Mrs. Ibbetson), believed herself to have discovered the principle of this precious citrine-wood, and the means of producing it;* and I see no reason for doubting it, though of her physiological anatomy, by help of the solar microscope, I am sceptical.

The engravings instantly call up in my mind the suspicion of some kaleidoscopic delusion, from the singular symmetry of all the forms. But she was an excellent and very remarkable woman, and her contributions in the "Phil. Magazine" worth studying even for the style.

Ibid. pp. 72, 73.

MR. EVELYN TO MR. PEPYS.

Sir, with your excellent book,+ I return you likewise my most humble thanks for your inducement of me to read it over again; finding in it, as you told me, several things omitted in the Latin (which I had formerly read with great delight), still new, still surprising, and the whole hypothesis so ingenious and so rational, that I both admire and believe it at once.

!-Strange!-Burnet's book is a grand Miltonic romance; but the contrast between the Tartarean fury and turbulence of the Burnetian and the almost supernatural tranquillity of the Mosaic Deluge is little less than comic.

Ibid. pp. 197, 198.

HENRY, SECOND EARL OF CLARENDON, TO MR. PEPYS. After dinner, as we were standing and talking together in the room, says my Lord Newborough to the other Scotch gentleman (who was looking very steadfastly upon my wife), "What is the matter that thou hast had thine eyes fixed

* I could not find this.-S. C.

Burnet's Theory of the Earth.

upon my Lady Cornbury ever since she came into the room? Is she not a fine woman? Why doest thou not speak?" "She's a handsome lady indeed," (said the gentleman,) "but I see her in blood." Whereupon my Lord Newborough laughed at him; and all the company going out of the room, we parted; and I believe none of us thought more of the matter; I am sure I did not. My wife was at that time perfectly well in health, and looked as well as ever she did in her life. In the beginning of the next month she fell ill of the small-pox: she was always very apprehensive of that disease, and used to say, if she ever had it she should dye of it. Upon the ninth day after the small-pox appeared, in the morning, she bled at the nose, which quickly stopt; but in the afternoon the blood burst out again with great violence at her nose and mouth; and about eleven of the clock that night she dyed, almost weltering in her blood.

It would have been necessary to cross-examine this Scotch Deuteroptes, whether he had not seen the duplicate or spectrum of other persons in blood. It might have been the result of an inflammatory condition of his own brains, or a slight pressure on the region of the optic nerves. I have repeatedly seen the phantasm of the page I was reading all spotted with blood, or with the letters all blood.

NOTES ON ALGERNON SYDNEY'S WORKS.*

Chap. ii. Sect. 5, p. 77.

Ten men may as justly resolve to live together, frame a civil society, and oblige themselves to laws, as the greatest number of men that ever met together in the world.

We must understand this with a pre-supposition

* The Works of Algernon Sydney. 4to. 1772.

that society has been dissolved, or that those ten men agree after a shipwreck to remain with such women as they can obtain, in a small island, rather than join a larger society in some other place, otherwise the arrangement would be hollow as to its ground, and pernicious as to its consequences; and would justify manifold and contradictory imperia in imperio. The great and fundamental axiom of ethics is:- -So act that thou mayest be able to will, that thy maxim should be the law of all rational beings. It may be A's maxim, that he will retain whatever has been entrusted to him without evidence, or legal power of being reclaimed; but he cannot will this to be the universal law of conduct; for this would be to annihilate the very condition of such a law, as then no man would so trust another. Consequently, it would be at once to will a thing and its opposite, the existence and non-existence of a thing at the same moment, which is impossible. So, to form a society, on the maxim that no duties are owing to society, is to will the conditions of connexion and dissolution by the same act.

The fault of Sydney's language (for it is more in expression than in meaning) is, that he dwells too exclusively on the rights supposed to result from belief of individual expedience, whereas he should have taken in the duties resulting from the greater good of a greater number; though I doubt not, that supposing mankind enlightened as to their true good, the best for the whole world would be the best for the individual. Both roads lead to the same goal, but the latter road is more neighboured by false roads, is a right road through a labyrinth. Still we must suppose them not born in a formed society capable of maintaining them, needing their services, and yielding them due protection, and their rightful share of the fruits of

society, such as education, and the other means and opportunities of developing their bodily, moral, and intellectual faculties, which is the final cause of human society; because human faculties cannot be fully developed but by society and a man per se is a contradiction; he is only potentially a man, not actually. Persecution in religion, and the absolute withholding of all withholdable knowledge, renders society to the injured persons not society, and does not so much dissolve their duties as preclude them; even as absolute frigidity does not give divorce, but prove the non-existence of the marriage.

Ibid. p. 84.

The same author says, that Edward the Confessor "electus est in Regem ab omni populo," and another, "omnium electione in Edwardum concordatur."

The very word

This is pushing the point too far. acclamatio, applied to a country like England, and not to a city, implies that the "ab omnibus" includes only the assembly or populace present; and in this way, even the wickedest tyrant has contrived to be "in magnâ exaltatione à clero et populo susceptus, et ab omnibus Rex acclamatus." The whole of William's laws and acts prove that he considered England as a conquest, and that he was King by the compelled acquiescence, not the free consent of the Saxon inhabitants. I think that A. Sydney lays too great a stress on these phrases of our old historians. Mock pillars to a Pantheon, when detected, throw a false suspicion on the noble. edifice to which they had been idly attached. Sydney himself gives the proper answer, sect. 55, p. 86.