NATIONAL PREJUDICES.

'ANOTHER Assassination! This venerable City,' I exclaimed, 'what is it, but as it began, a nest of robbers and murderers? We must away at sun-rise, Luigi.'-But before sun-rise I had reflected a little, and in the soberest prose. My indignation was gone; and, when Luigi undrew my curtain, crying, 'Up, Signor, up! The horses are at the gate.' 'Luigi,' I replied, if thou lovest me, draw the curtain.'*

It would lessen very much the severity with which men judge of each other, if they would but trace effects to their causes, and observe the progress of things in the moral as accurately as in the physical world. When we condemn millions in the mass as vindictive and sanguinary, we should remember that wherever Justice is ill-administered, the injured will redress themselves. Robbery provokes to robbery; murder to assassination. Resentments become hereditary; and what began in disorder, ends as if all Hell had broke loose.

Laws create a habit of self-restraint, not only by the influence of fear, but by regulating in its exercise the passion of revenge. If they overawe the bad by the prospect of a punishment certain and well-defined,

* A dialogue, which is said to have passed many years ago at Lyons (Mem. de Grammont. i. 3.) and which may still be heard in almost every hôtellerie at day-break.

they console the injured by the infliction of that punishment; and, as the infliction is a public act, it excites and entails no enmity. The laws are offended; and the community for its own sake pursues and overtakes the offender; often without the concurrence of the sufferer, sometimes against his wishes.*

Now those who were not born, like ourselves, to such advantages, we should surely rather pity than hate; and, when at length they venture to turn against their rulers, we should lament, not wonder at their excesses; remembering that nations are naturally patient and long-suffering, and seldom rise in rebellion till they are so degraded by a bad government as to be almost incapable of a good one.

'Hate them, perhaps,' you may say, 'we should not; but despise them we must, if enslaved, like the people of ROME, in mind as well as body; if their religion be a gross and barbarous superstition.'-I respect knowledge; but I do not despise ignorance. They think only as their fathers thought, worship as they worshipped. They do no more; and, if oyrs had not burst their bondage, braving imprisonment and death, might not we at this very moment have

* How noble is that burst of eloquence in Hooker! "Of Law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power.

As the descendants of an illustrious people have lately done.

They know their strength and know that to be free,
They have but to deserve it.

been exhibiting, in our streets and our churches, the same processions, ceremonials, and mortifications?

Nor should we require from those who are in an earlier stage of society, what belongs to a later. They are only where we once were; and why hold them in derision? It is their business to cultivate the inferior arts before they think of the more refined; and in many of the last what are we as a nation, when compared to others that have passed away? Unfortunately it is too much the practice of governments to nurse and keep alive in the governed their national prejudices. It withdraws their attention from what is passing at home, and makes them better tools in the hands of Ambition. Hence next-door neighbours are held up to us from our childhood as natural enemies and we are urged on like curs to worry each

other.*

In like manner we should learn to be just to individuals. Who can say, 'In such circumstances I should have done otherwise?' Who, did he but reflect by what slow gradations, often by how many strange concurrences, we are led astray; with how much reluctance, how much agony, how many efforts to escape, how many self-accusations, how many sighs, how many tears-Who, did he but reflect for a moment, would have the heart to cast a stone?

* Candour, generosity and justice, how rare are they in the world; and how much is to be deplored the want of them! When a minister in our parliament consents at last to a measure, which, for many reasons perhaps existing no longer, he had before refused to adopt, there should be no exultation as over the fallen, no taunt, no jeer. How often may the resistance be continued lest an enemy should triumph, and the result of conviction be received as a symptom of fear.

Happily these things are known to Him, from whom no secrets are hidden; and let us rest in the assurance that His judgments are not as ours are."

*

THE CAMPAGNA OF ROME.

HAVE none appeared as tillers of the ground,
None since They went-as though it still were theirs,
And they might come and claim their own again?
Was the last plough a Roman's?

From this Seat,+

Sacred for ages, whence, as VIRGIL sings,

The Queen of Heaven, alighting from the sky,
Looked down and saw the armies in array,‡
Let us contemplate; and, where dreams from Jove
Descended on the sleeper, where perhaps

Some inspirations may be lingering still,
Some glimmerings of the future or the past,
Let us await their influence; silently

* Are we not also unjust to ourselves; and are not the best among us the most so? Many a good deed is done by us and forgotten. Our benevolent feelings are indulged, and we think no more of it. But is it so when we err? And when we wrong another and cannot redress the wrong, where are we then?-Yet so it is and so no doubt it should be, to urge us on without ceasing, in this place of trial and discipline,

From good to better and to better still.

Mons Albanus, now called Monte Cavo. On the summit stood for many centuries the temple of Jupiter Latiaris. "Tuque ex tuo edito monte Latiaris, sancte Jupiter," &c.CICERO.

Eneid, xii. 134.

Revolving, as we rest on the green turf,

The changes from that hour when He from TROY
Came up the TIBER; when refulgent shields,
No strangers to the iron-hail of war,

Streamed far and wide, and dashing oars were heard
Among those woods where Silvia's stag was lying,
His antlers gay with flowers; among those woods
Where by the Moon, that saw and yet withdrew not,
Two were so soon to wander and be slain,*
Two lovely in their lives, nor in their death
Divided.

Then, and hence to be discerned,

How many realms, pastoral and warlike, lay
Along this plain, each with its schemes of power,
Its little rivalships!+ What various turns
Of fortune there; what moving accidents
From ambuscade and open violence!

Mingling, the sounds came up; and hence how oft
We might have caught among the trees below,
Glittering with helm and shield, the men of TIBUR;†
Or in Greek vesture, Greek their origin,

Some embassy, ascending to PRÆNESTE; §
How oft descried, without thy gates, ARICIA,||
Entering the solemn grove for sacrifice,
Senate and people!-Each a busy hive,
Glowing with life!

But all ere long are lost

In one. We look, and where the river rolls

* Nisus and Euryalus. "La scène des six derniers livres de Virgile ne comprend qu'une lieue de terrain."-BONSTETTEN. Forty-seven, according to Dionys. Halicar. I. i.

Tivoli.

§ Palestrina.

La Riccia.