for our miraculous preservation, and, fully confident of his gracious support, I found my mind more at ease than for fome time past." They accordingly proceeded thro' that immenfe ocean, discovering some new islands, and landing for a short space upon the coast of N. Holland, without receiving any material addition to their stock of provifions, living on the 25th part of a pound of bread and an ounce of pork a-day, and sometimes a tea spoonful of rum each man, till on the 14th of July they landed at Coupang in the island of Timor. Brutus's Letter to H. R. H. the P. of W**** t. IN absolute monarchies, all communication of fentiment between the Sovereign and the people is cut off by the terrors of despotism. Perfonal familiarity, indeed, the Prince may allow to a few favoured individuals, more safely than in freer governments, because the distance of political fituation prevents all danger of that want of reverence and respect which is fatal to dignity. In monarchies more limited, the Sovereign and his family rely on the confidence and affection of the people; a fealty of a more generous and valuable kind, which the higher rank deferves by its virtues, and the lower yields from a reason able and independent conviction of them. Flattery it is in the power of slaves to bestow, but fame is the gift only of freemen. When I advance these truths to a Prince of the House of Brunswick, I cannot be in danger of his displeafure; and I know too well the pecu. liar condefcenfion of him whom I now take the liberty of addressing to doubt his acceptance of that honeft tribute which I offer him, of approbation mixed with counsel, of attachment to his person and his family, joined to a wish and a hope that his conduct may always deserve it. With a peculiar complacency of disposition, you have thrown afide the distance of rank and the reserve of loyalty; you have opened not only the actions of your public, but the habits of your private life, to the view of the people; and disdaining to impose on them by the weight of your name or the parade of your dignity, have conciliated their affections by the charms of your appearance and the graces of your manner. If there has been sometimes a small degree of error or excess in this affability and condescension, we are disposed rather to regret than to censure it: we regret the accident of its misapplication, but we are not inclined to blame the exercise of it in you. The funshine that gives to the breeze its health and to the fields their verdure, breeds at the fame time the useless weed and noxious exhalation: We complain of the weed and the exhalation, but he must be a peevish misanthrope indeed who quarrels with the funshine. Sober reafoners, however, may perhaps dispute the justice of my fimile; they will tell us of the difference be tween the seeming imperfections of the natural, and the real imperfections of the moral world, and point out the latter as subjects of correction and amendment, which it is the province of wisdom to discover and of goodness to remove. In the inftance alluded to, your talents are equal to the discovery, and your prudence as well as virtue, they trust, will prompt the correction. There are persons on whom your favour and friendship are bestowed, † From the Edinburgh Herald. bestowed, whom, even amidst the adulation with which it is the misfortune of princes to be deceived, you will easily discover to be unworthy of that favour and friendship. You have mixed enough with the world to be able to judge of men; and, in this country, the channel of public opinion is sufficiently open to the highest perfonages, even without the advantage of your accessibility to obtain it. The people have too much reverence for your name to apply their common raditionary adages to the effects of fociety upon character; but tho' the communication may not hurt you, it affects the public, doubly affects it, if the unworthy are brought forward in to place and diftinction, and the deserving excluded from stations which they ought to have filled. We know, Sir, at the same time, and make allowance for that fociety which naturally fastens itself on a young man's freer hours; and do not expect that, amidst amusement or feftivity, there should always be an unexceptionable felection of his companions or his guests. There is a diftinction which will readily be made between that circle with which men of high rank and important stations unbend their leisure, and that with which they trust their serious moments, "Nobody, faid the Frenchman, is a hero to his valet de chambre;" and he who should attempt it would be very little of a hero to any one else. But the valet de chambre who dresses, or the idle companion who amuses a great man, are mere appendages of his private dressing room or parlour, with whom, if they keep in their proper place, the public has nothing to do, and after whom it will never inquire. But if they counsel him in important affairs, if they lead him in momentous or delicate situations, he must be accountable for his misplaced and preposterous attach ment, and the public which it injures will be entitled to complain of its ef fects. Nothing has been more fatal to princes than this predilection for weak or unworthy men; and the history of mankind is one continued lesson of the danger to greatness in being made the dupe of its private attachments, when they are not restrained by prudence nor regulated by virtue. The annals of our own country are not filent on that subject. You, Sir, I believe, have heard them quoted in excuse, if not in compliment, of some youthful levities for which the goodhumour of Englishmen is glad to find an apology. Eaftcheap has been cited for the credit of Parliament-ftreet, and Gadshill drawn into precedent for the honour of Newmarket. But if there is any scholiaft on Shakespeare who has the entree to your library, let him not forget the expression of " unyoked idleness" which the youthful Henry indulged with his associates. There was an extravagance in the pranks of Falstaffe and Poins that might impeach the dignity, but did not taint the character of their illustrious companion. The excursive sallies of the Prince were made into the regions of absurdity, foreign to that place which his birth entitled him to hold, or those duties which it called on him to perform; his follies hung upon him like a mafquing dress which the mummery of the hour put on, and the serious oc cupations of his own person and character laid aside. Your companions, Sir, if not all of a higher rank than Harry Monmouth's, had in general deeper and more important designs. They did not, amid the jovialty of wine or the gaiety of pleasure, doff the cares of life, or mock the toils of ambition. Theirs was not always the honeft, joyous vacancy of thoughtless mirth; like the Athenian heroes, beneath the roses of the feast they hid the arms of their ambition; but they did not, like the Athenian heroes, use them against the enemies of their coun try. One particular juncture there was, which which might have afforded an apology for men of less forefight than them, to think of ufing the connection which youth and inexperience had formed to purposes of interest and advancement; when the diadem hovered over the head of their patron, and when indeed, but for some error in their political measures, its power and authority might have been his. That juncture was attended with circumstances of so extraordinary a kind as to form an æra in the political history of the kingdom. When disease and infirmity invaded the throne, the diftress of the Sovereign was felt as a private calamity, which interested the feelings of every individual, without relation to his political rights, or the political interests of the community, not only the loyalty of subjects, but the affection, the sympathy of men were excited by this calamity. In this calamity they looked to you, Sir, with feelings of a fimilar kind, ready to acknowledge the public merits of the Prince, or the private virtues of the fon. In distress, men's hearts are eafily won: if you failed to win them, it must have been owing to fome imprudence in that furrounding circle, through the medium of whose character the characters of princes are always feen. It could not be owing to any fault in your own disposition, gracious at all times, and then peculiarly called on to exercise the best qualities of your nature-kindness, compaffion, filial attention, and filial reverence. The thoughtless and unprincipled diffipation of some of that circle might have, at such a period, been supposed to watch the bed of fickness with malignant expectation, to fcoff at the distress of those around it, and to make matter for wretched and fcurril jests of the most severe of all human afflictions. In a public view, they might have been supposed to have catched, with a blind and rapacious eagerness, this opportunity of gratifying their avarice or ambition; VOL. XII. No. 67. G in the triumph of fudden elevation, to have forgot decency; and, in the insolence of anticipated power, to have despised moderation. Bankrupt alike in fortune and in character, fome of them might have been imagined capable of every extremity to which defperate circumstances and determined profligacy might excite; and having nothing to lofe, and nothing to feel with the country, to have been equally unrestrained by prudence and by sentiment. Your fentiments, Sir, and your deportment, we knew by our own. Struck with the folemn melancholy of the national distress, you felt it doubled in your own individual affliction. At the age when feeling is acute, when interest and ambition have hardly learned the value of their objects, you thought less of the public dignity to which this calamitous event might call you, than of the private forrow by which it was to be accompanied. Of political opinions, you adopted the most temperate; of political meafures, you proposed the leaft violent: you did not wish to add to the depression of the public by the fear of sudden change, or the dread of civil dissension. You knew that the influence and power which a different conduct might obtain were as unsafe to a prudent, as disagreeable to a good mind; that in the oppofite scale were placed every thing that wisdom or virtue in a Prince could defire; all the confidence, the love, the glory, which a generous people could offer to his acceptance. To the joy of the nation, as to your's, Sir, this calamity" overpassed us like a fummer cloud," and our fears were loft before we could well afcertain them. The country was freed from a situation of uncertainty and of danger that shook its credit and its quiet, and you were left, we hope, (and we know you hope) many years longer to the exercise of those engaging and amiable qualities that are 1 are hardly allowed to expand under the weight and preffure of state affairs. In your present situation, Sir, you have many opportunities, which we are perfuaded you will improve, of rendering effential fervice to your country. Your favour and example can encou fers, from the vermin that shelter at its root. In a private capacity, your humility will not probably allow you to suppose how much is in your power for the manners and the happiness of the community. With the advanta rage genuine patriotism, can promoteges you derive from nature, with the public honour and public virtue; without the responsibility of official power, your patronage can call merit into action, and prompt the reward of its exertions. Keep but the purity of your influence unfullied, preferve its dignity unimpaired, and you can, weave the civic crown for the statefman, and his laurel wreath for the foldier. In former times, of which some curious records are left us, the heir apparent of the Crown has been induced to lend himself to a factious cabal, to become a king of the " shreds and patches" of Oppofition, who prostituted his name to their own little purpofes, who abused his confidence, and made a vile stewardship of his weaknefs for their own private advantage. To fuch arts greatness must always be liable; and it is, perhaps, rather a compliment to your good-nature than an impeachment on your understanding, if we venture to caution you a gainst them. In your situation you cannot know their effects; you cannot fee them as we do, in distant provinces, and amidst the mass of the people. You know not what despicable associates the Cressy standard afsembles, over what impurities the plumage of your crest is made to wave; yet popular prejudice will often lay these abuses to your charge, though in that encouragement, to which the easiness of your nature allows them, you cannot foresee the mischiefs they produce. The noblest tree of the forest is not always fhaken by the winds, or scathed by the lightning of heaven; it suffers, ignobly fuf accomplishments you have received from education, you have for some time been acknowledged "The glass of fashion and the mold of form;" and there is a fort of dominion annexed to this idea, which, though of a lighter kind, is of greater extent and importance than fome others which men are more folicitous to pofsess. I am no Cynic preacher, and will not suppose that, at your time of life, and with your temperament, you are to regulate your, conduct and deportment by the rules of cold-blooded age and sober wisdom. But there is a decorum in pleasure, a temperance even in diffipation, which, amidst all the extravagance of the moment, marks the feeling of a man of sense and a gentleman; a something even about his idlest indulgences which speaks the folly to belong to him, and not him to the folly. The words, gentleman and man of fashion, will borrow their meaning, within a certain circle, from you; but there is an intrinfic sense of the terms which will still be the understanding of the people. Confider, Sir, that, with all the witchery of your manners and address, the sphere of your attraction is limited, the sphere of your fame extenfive. Sacrifice a little to the judg-. ment, or, if your gayer friends will call it so, the prejudice of those whose judgment is one day to be so important to you. Remember that no power, even in the most arbitrary governments, was ever equal to his who could wield at will the opinions of his subjects. BRUTUS. Brutus's Brutus's Letter to the Right Hon. E. B**** †. DARTY - WRITERS have so accuf P tomed us to expect abuse in addresses of this fort, that I am obliged to prefacethis letter with a declaration, that I am more an admirer of yourgood qualities than an observer of your failings. In the diftant retirement of private lite, political opinions are mellowed into spéculative mildness, and do not rife in our bosoms with that personal acrimony which fets down a man's character merely from his party. Tho' If eel with, Ibelieve, a very great majority of my fellow citizens, much reIpect and gratitude to men against whom you have been long in oppofition, yet I am neither blind to their imperfections nor to your merits. When their imperfections fhall appear to diminish their usefulness to the public, I will speak my opinion with the fame regret with which I have seen your merits rendered uselefs or hurtful to it. I feel for my country, Sir; and am grieved when, on either fide, virtues or talents are loft to its service, or misapplied to its prejudice. In my sense of your merits, Sir, I own I indulge a certain degree of vanity. It is not a vulgar mind they can affect or attach. You have been unfortunate in the exertion of your talents; poffeffing popular virtues and popular abilites, your public conduct and public appearances have but feldom won the fuffrages of the people. There was a refinement in your virtue, an abstraction in your eloquence, which it required fomething of a philosopher and a scholar to relish; plain men denied the one, and did not always understand the other. Hence, perhaps, arose the ridiculous fable of your education at St Omer's, and your being defigned for a member of a religious order some time ago abolished 1 a in the greatest part of Europe; story which had leis foundation than almost any other in the mythology of the vulgar. You had the genius and the learning, but you wanted the prudence and the address of the Society of Jesus. They contrived to work upon mankind by the dextrous management of ordinary powers: you loft men by the mifinanagement of great and uncommon endowments. From the time of Swift downwards, the remark of the superior fitness of coarfe and ordinary minds to the plain operations of business, has been often repeated. In the House of Commons, which you early chose for the field of your ambition, the famething takes place: there is often a point below eloquence at which men must stand who would wish to perfuade or to lead that affembly. That in this business-kind of speaking you should not greatly excel; that you thould not always conjoin accuracy of deduction with fertility of invention, nor be as cleat in a statement of figures as glowing in an appeal to the paflions, is what we naturally expect from the different formation of different minds. There are few, very few men, indeed, the variety of whose powers can accommodate itself to the sense of the plain, the calculations of the plodding, the vivacity of the fanciful; whose language has perfpicuity for the dulleft understanding, and brilliancy for the most lively imagination: whofespeeches have demonftration for the reafoner and logician, and flow for the ears of the vacant and the thoughtless. These are endowments which nature bestows but feldom, though the happens to have gifted with them each of the present leaders of the oppofite parties in parliament. G2 ↑ From the fame. But |