and whereby we may best hope toe give account toe God of our youth spent herein. And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it toe be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense), they present their young unmatriculated novices, at first coming, with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics; soe that they, having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably, toe learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate, toe be tosst and turmoil'd with their unballast'd wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, doe for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and delud'd all this while with ragged notions and battlements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge: till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several waies, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either toe an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity; some allur'd toe the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them to State affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding that flattery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear toe them the highest points of wisdom, instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery if, as I rather think, it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves (knowing no better) to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feast and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of misspending our prime youth at the schools and universities as we doe, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearn'd. I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration of what we should not doe, but straight conduct you to a hillside, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming. I doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles, which is commonly sett before them as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docible age. I call therefore a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war. And how all this may be done between twelve and one-and-twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at grammar and sophistry, is to be thus ordered. A BOOK NOT A DEAD THING. (From the “Areopagitica.”) Books are not absolutely dead things, but do not contain a progeny of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are. Nay, they do preserve, as in a vial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature - God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life whereof, perhaps, there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labors of public men, how we spill that sea. soned life of man preserved and stored up in books, since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed-sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to a whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal essence, the breath of reason itself-slays an immortality rather than a life. GABRIEL HONORÉ DE RIQUETTI, COUNT OF MIRABEAU, GABRIEL HONORÉ DE RIQUETTI, COUNT OF, a famous French orator and revolutionist; born at Bignon, March 9, 1749; died at Paris, April 2, 1791. He rose to the rank of captain in the army; in 1789 was delegate of the Third Estate to the convention of the States-General, where his eloquence made him a power. Then followed in quick succession his orations, unparalleled in French annals, rarely equalled and still more seldom surpassed in those of any other country. To Demosthenic eloquence, Mirabeau gave the full force of a masterful genius for practical politics. Because he was a practical statesman he stood alone, and was an enigma to his colleagues and to the people whom he loved and served. His reputation does not rest merely on a series of dazzling utterances, but on the sound ideas he scattered so lavishly before the Assembly. He was president of the Jacobin Club in 1790, of the National Assembly in 1791. Among his writings were "The Friend of Men" (1755); "Rural Philosophy" (1763); "The Prussian Monarchy" (1788), his chief work; "Secret History of the Court of Berlin" (1789); etc. He was the one great statesman of the French Revolution. The best biography of him is that by Alfred Stern, "Das Leben Mirabeaus" (1889), and the most recent life in English is that by Willert, in 1898. A LETTER TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA. You have reached the throne at a fortunate period. The age is becoming daily more enlightened. It has labored for your benefit, in collecting sound notions for you. It extends its influence over your nation, which so many circumstances have kept behind others. Everything is now tested by a severe logic. The men who see only a fellow-creature under the royal mantle, and require that he should possess some virtue, are more numerous than ever. Their suffrages cannot be dispensed with. In their opinion, one kind of glory alone remains; every other is exhausted. Military success, political talents, won ders in art, improvements in science, have all appeared in turn, and their light has blazed forth from one extremity of Europe to the other. That enlightened benevolence which gives form and life to empires has not yet appeared, pure and unmixed, upon a throne. To you it belongs to place it there; this sublime glory is reserved for you. Your predecessor gained battles enough, perhaps too many; he has too much fatigued Fame's hundred tongues, and exhausted military glory, for several reigns, nay, for several centuries. . . . With much greater facility you may create a glory more pure and not less brilliant, which shall be wholly your own. Frederick conquered the admiration of mankind, but he never won their love. This love you may entirely possess. . . . Do not, ah! do not neglect the treasure which Providence has spread in your path. Deserve the blessings of the poor, the love of your people, the respect of Europe, and the good wishes of wise men. Be just, be good, and you will be great and happy! You wish to obtain, dread sir, the title of Great; but you wish to receive it from the mouth of history, and from the suffrage of ages to come, you would despise it from the mouths of your courtiers. If you do that which the son of your slave could do, ten times a day, better than yourself, they will tell you that you have performed an extraordinary action! If you suffer your passions to mislead you, they will say that you are right! If you are as lavish of the blood of your subjects as of the waters of your rivers, again will they tell you that you are right! If you barter for gold the air that preserves life, they will say that you are right! If you revenge yourself you who are so powerful they will continue to tell you that you are right! . . . They said the same thing when Alexander, in a drunken fit, plunged his dagger into the bosom of his friend; they said the same thing when Nero murdered his mother. If you indefatigably perform your duties, without ever putting off till the following day the burthen of the present day; if by great and fruitful principles you can simplify these duties, and reduce them within the capacity of a single man; if you give your subjects all the freedom they can bear; if you can protect every kind of property, and facilitate useful labor; if you terrify petty oppressors who in your name would prevent men from doing, for their own advantage, that which injures VOL. XV.-11 not their fellows, — a unanimous shout will bless your authority, and render it more sacred and more powerful. Every thing will then be easy for you, because the will and the strength of all will be united to your own strength and your own will, and your labor will become every day less severe. Nature has made labor necessary to man. It gives him also this precious advantage, that change of labor is to him not only a relaxation but a source of pleasure. Who, more easily than a king, can live in strict accordance with this order of nature? A philosopher has said that "no man feels such lassitude of spirit as a king;" he should have said, "a slothful king. How could lassitude of mind fall upon a sovereign who did his duty? Could he ever keep up his vigor of intellect and preserve his health so well as by shielding himself, under the pursuit of labor, from the disgust which every man of sense must feel among those idle talkers, those inventors of fulsome praises, who study their prince for no other purpose than to corrupt, blind, and rob him? Their sole art is to render him indifferent and feeble, or else impatient, rude, and idle. . . . Your subjects will enjoy your virtues, which alone can preserve and improve their patrimony. Your courtiers will cultivate your defects, by which alone they can support their influence and their expectations. It is worthy of you not to govern too much. . [I recommend the immediate] abolition of military slavery; that is to say, the obligation imposed upon every Prussian to serve as a soldier, from the age of eighteen years to sixty and more that dreadful law arising from the necessities of an iron. age and a semi-barbarous country; that law dishonoring a nation without whom your ancestors would have been nothing but slaves, more or less decorated with empty honors. This law does not produce you a single soldier more than you would obtain by a wiser system, which may enable you to recruit the Prussian army in a manner that shall elevate men's hearts, add to the public spirit, and possess the forms of freedom, instead of those of brutishness and slavery. Throughout Europe, and more especially in your Majesty's dominions, one of the most useful instincts upon which patriotism could be founded is stupidly lost. Men are forced to go to the battle-field like cattle to the slaughter-house; whilst nothing is easier than to make the public service an object of emulation and glory. . . . Be also the first sovereign in whose dominions every man |