Queen to the conquest of the universe. The firmness of Brutus, the good faith of Regulus, the moderation of Cincinnatus, the calm probity of Fabricius, the chastity of the Lucretias and Virginias, the disinterestedness of Paulus Æmilius, the patience of Fabius-these were the best laws of Rome. A virtuous man is a living law, he is more ;-precepts can only point to us what tract we should pursue, but examples hurry us along. What a difference there is between a law that speaks but once, and Cato ever acting! This Cato was to Rome its thirteenth table of laws; and without the thirteenth, how defective would the twelve other have been!"

The influence of moral feeling is, indeed, what this author considers it to be, the supplement of the deficiencies of law; the thirteenth table of the early laws of Rome, and many volumes of statutes, where laws are more voluminous ;-yet though the direct power of example, then, in those who surround us, and whose conduct is the first to rise to our conception, in all the similar circumstances, in which ourselves are placed, is a power which the unreflecting can scarcely fail to obey. But though chiefly to be traced to those, who mingle with us in the familiar scenes and occurrences of domestic life, the influence is yet referable in part also directly, and indirectly in a very high degree, to the smaller number, who do not so much surround us, as shine upon us from a distance, the eminent of every class, whose real dignity of merit, or even whose accidental dignity of station, has raised them to a height, which brings their image frequently before us; and presents it associated with all the respect which the heart readily pays to the one species of dignity, and which, for the peace and good order of states, it is necessary to pay in some degree to the other also at least when the dignity of mere rank, is not so dishonoured by the profligacy of its possessor, as to cover, in our detestation of the profligacy, the feebler titles of the rank itself.

It is this moral or immoral influence, in promoting or injuring the virtues of others-an influence of which it is impossible for them to divest themselves, that gives to those, who are in any way distinguished above the crowd, a fearful responsibility with which they are, unfortunately, not always sufficiently impressed. It is not their own conscience only, for which they are answerable; they are answerable also, in some measure, for the consciences of others.

Componitur orbis

Regis ad exemplum; nec sic inflectere sensus
Humanos edicta valent, ut vita regentis;

Mobile mutatur semper cum principe vulgus.

"Princeps optimus," says Paterculus, with a forcible brevity

of expression," faciendo docet ; et licet sit imperio maximus, exemplo major est."

In the life of a sovereign, then, there is nothing private. His friendships, his very amusements, are not friendships and amusements only:-they are public virtue and public guilt. If he think more of the trappings of his state than of its duties,-if the splendour of some courtly festival be more important to him, than that noblest of spectacles, which is to be found in the general happiness of a peaceful and virtuous land,-if the favourites of his private confidential hours, whom he thus offers to his people, as models of the conduct that is worthiest of being honoured, be those who are known to the world only by superior profligacy, and whom every virtuous father of a family would exclude from the dwelling of those, for whose innocence he would tremble, if the corrupters were admitted, there may be virtue still in that state; but it is only because there are in it principles of virtue too powerful to be overcome by the vicious authority even of the most powerful. The guilt of the sovereign, however, in such circumstances, is to be estimated, not by the vices which have spread among his people, but by the vices which his own conduct has authorized; and would not be increased in the amount of its moral delinquency, though all mankind had become, what he has said, by his example and his favour, that it is noble to be. If, however, a prince be, indeed, what a prince should be, he has the comfort of knowing, that he is not enjoying, only, the happiness of virtue, but diffusing it; that, since his ac tions must be lessons, they are lessons of good; and that, if, by his example, he exercise a sway more extensive, than that of his laws or his arms, it is a sway, which, like that of his laws and his arms, is exercised only for the happiness of the world.

An influence so extensive, indeed, belongs only to a few of mankind; but even the humble must not think, on this account, that they have no influence. It is indirectly, I have already said, as spreading through them, that the influence of the powerful is chiefly exercised. In their homes among their friends,-on all those who come within their little sphere, they exercise power over the vice or virtue of others, and thus indirectly an influence on the amount of moral good and evil in the world, in every future generation, an influence, which it is as little possible for them to shake off, as for the sovereign of many states to abdicate his moral sway, and to be a sovereign only with his sceptre or his sword.

From this inevitable influence of example, by which every moral or immoral action that is performed by us, may have consequences that never entered into our design or our wish, when we planned or performed it, arises one very important duty, the duty of attending to the appearances of our actions. It is not enough

for us to have willed what is virtuous, and to have executed it, by means that in themselves imply no immorality, if they have been such as might lead others to suspect the purity of what was truly pure. The loss which we might, ourselves, suffer in this way, in our character and authority, is not the only evil, nor, in many cases, the greatest evil, of such seeming improprieties. We may, without due care as to appearances, act virtuously, and yet give all the authority of our station and character to vice,-misleading those to whom our example may have the force of precept, and, perhaps, by some of the most generous sacrifices of which our nature is capable, inducing the inconsiderate, who suppose that they are imitating us, to quit that moral good which we truly sought, for the evil which we only seemed to them to pursue.

The only remaining species of injury to others, the duty of abstaining from which, we have still to consider, is that which relates to their mental tranquillity.

This, indeed, all the other species of injury already considered by us, tend indirectly to disturb. But the injury of which I speak at present, is the direct violation of the peace of others, by our immediate intentional influence on their feelings.

In treating of the emotions of pride, particularly in the form of that haughtiness which the proud are so apt to assume,-I have already treated of one of the most injurious influences of this sort, my remarks on which it would be unnecessary now to repeat. You must be sufficiently aware, that the aim of the haughty is to excite in others the mortifying feeling of their abject inferiority; and that, if they could always produce the feelings which they wish to excite, they would not merely have all the guilt of a cruel tyranny,-for that they have, even in their most powerless wishes,—but would truly, in their very effects, be the most severe of human tyrants.

It is not the insolence of the haughty, however, which is the only intentional disquieter of others. There is a power in every individual, over the tranquillity of almost every individual. There are emotions, latent in the mind of those whom we meet, which a few words of ours may at any time call forth; and the moral influence which keeps this power over the uneasy feelings of others, under due restraint, is not the least important of the moral influences, in its relation to general happiness.

There are minds which can delight in exercising this cruel sway,-which rejoice in suggesting thoughts that may poison the confidence of friends, and render the very virtues that were loved, objects of suspicion to him who loved them. In the daily and hourly intercourse of human life, there are human beings, who exert their malicious skill, in devising what subjects may be most likely to bring into the mind of him with whom they converse,

the most mortifying remembrances ;-who pay visits of condolence, that they may be sure of making grief a little more severely felt; who are faithful in conveying to every one the whispers of unmerited scandal, of which, otherwise, he never would have heard, as he never could have suspected them,-though, in exercising this friendly office, they are careful to express sufficient indignation against the slanderer, and to bring forward as many grounds of suspicion against different individuals, as their fancy can call up ;-who talk to some disappointed beauty, of all the splendid preparations for the marriage of her rival,-to the unfortunate dramatic poet, of the success of the last night's piece, and of the great improvement which has taken place in modern taste; and who, if they could have the peculiar good fortune of meeting with any one, whose father was hanged, would probably find no subject so attractive to their eloquence, as the number of executions that were speedily to take place.

Such power man may exercise over the feelings of man; and, as it is impossible to frame laws which can comprehend injuries of this sort, such power man may exercise over man with legal impunity. But it is a power, of which the virtuous man will as little think of availing himself, for purposes of cruelty, as if a thousand laws had made it as criminal as it is immoral ;-a power which he will as little think of exercising, because it would require only the utterance of a few easy words, as of inflicting a mortal blow, because it would require only a single motion of his hand.

The true preservative against this power, is that which is the protector of the virtuous from all other injury-their own purity of conscience. It is not easy to excite permanently, any unpleasant images in the mind of one who, in the retrospect of life, has only virtuous actions or virtuous desires to remember-who has wished to keep nothing secret from the world, but the benefactions that provided as carefully for the virtuous shame, as for the very wants of poverty; and who, therefore, if his whole mind could become visible, would be not less, but more beloved. The tranquillity of such a mind may, indeed, be disturbed, for a moment, by the petty malice that would strive to awake in it, disagreeable remembrances; but, even when it may be thus disturbed, there is no painful feeling so likely to arise in it, as regret for that malice itself which it disdains, indeed, but which it cannot disdain without some accompanying pity.

LECTURE LXXXVI.

ON OUR POSITIVE DUTIES; ON THE DUTIES OF BENEVOLENCE.

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I concluded my remarks on the order of our general duties, which are negative only-that is to say, which consist in abstinence from the different sorts of injury, which it is in our power, directly or indirectly, to occasion to others.

These we considered under seven heads-as our actions may be injurious to others, in their person—in their property—in the affection of those whom they love-in their general characterin their knowledge or belief, as affected by the confidence which they place in the truth of our declarations-in their virtue, as subject to the influence of our intentional seductions, or to the unintended influence of our mere example; and, lastly, in their peace of mind,-which, as liable to be disturbed by mortifying reflections, that are in most cases easy to be excited, is in some measure under our control,-from the power which the principle of suggestion gives us over the trains of thought of others, and consequently over the general emotions, pleasing or unpleasing, which result from those trains of thought, or form a part of them.

To abstain, however, from every species of injury, which it is in our power to occasion to others, though it is an important part of virtue, is but a part of it. Even in our most scrupulous forbearance from all the evil which we might produce, if this abstinence, however complete, were all, the world would still be only as if we had not been. There might be before our very eyes misery, which, though not produced by ourselves, was not the less an evil, and which a slight effort on our part-a word-a very look expressive of a wish-might have been sufficient to remove. There might, in like manner, be means of easy happiness to individuals or whole families, which required only the same simple wishes on our part, to convert them into happiness itself, but which would be wholly unproductive without us; and yet, if we had no feelings which led us to be more than passively and negatively good, the misery would remain unrelieved, and the happiness be unproduced or unpromoted.

Nature, then, when she conferred on us, in so many noble pow ers of mind and body, such abundant facilities of usefulness, did