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 sunrise, 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 door.' '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

* 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.

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, 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 na

*

As the descendants of an illustrious people have lately done. Can it be believed that there are many among us, who, from a desire to be thought superior to common-place sentiments and vulgar feelings, affect an indifference to their cause? If the Greeks,' they say, had the probity of other nations-but they are false to a proverb! And is not falsehood the characteristic of slaves? Man is the creature of circumstances. Free, he has the qualities of a freeman; enslaved, those of a slave.

turally 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 ours had not burst their bondage, braving imprisonment and death, might not we at this very moment have 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? Fortunately 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.

* Candour, generosity, 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!

HAVE none appeared as tillers of the ground,
None since They went-as tho' 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

* See Note.

↑ Eneid, xii. 134.

dall