shall, however, be as complete as my information enables, and as prudence and a proper respect for the feelings of the living permit me to render it. His fame (I adopt the words of our elder writers) is so great throughout the world that he stands in no need of an encomium and yet his worth is much greater than his fame. It is impossible not to speak great things of him, and yet it will be very difficult to speak what he deserves. But custom requires that something should be said: it is a duty and a debt which we owe to ourselves and to mankind, not less than to his memory: and I hope his great soul, if it hath any knowledge of what is done here below, will not be offended at the smallness even of my offering. Ah! how little, when among the subjects of THE FRIEND I promised "Characters met with in Real Life," did I anticipate the sad event, which compels me to weave on a cypress branch, those sprays of laurel, which I had destined for his bust, not his monument! He lived as we should all live; and, I doubt not, left the world as we should all wish to leave it. Such is the power of dispensing blessings, which Providence has attached to the truly great and good, that they cannot even die without advantage to their fellow-creatures: for death consecrates their example; and the wisdom, which might have been slighted at the council-table, becomes oracular from the shrine. Those rare excellencies, which make our grief poignant, make it likewise profitable; and the tears, which wise men shed for the departure of the wise, are among those that are preserved in heaven. It is the fervent aspiration of my spirit, that I may so perform the task which private gratitude, and public duty impose on me, that "as God hath cut this tree of paradise down, from its seat of earth, the dead trunk may yet support a part of the declining temple, or at least serve to kindle the fire on the altar."* Bp. Jer. Taylor. ESSAY II. Si partem tacuisse velim, quodcumque relinquam, CLAUDIAN DE LAUD. STIL. (Translation.)-If I desire to pass over a part in silence, whatever I omit, will seem the most worthy to have been recorded. Shall I pursue his old exploits and early youth? His recent merits recall the mind to themselves. Shall I dwell on his justice? The glory of the warrior rises before me resplendent. Shall I relate his strength in arms? He performed yet greater things unarmed. THERE is something (says Harrington in the Preliminaries of the Oceana) first in the making of a commonwealth, then in the governing of it, and last of all in the leading of its armies, which though there be great divines, great VOL. III. U lawyers, great men in all ranks of life, seems to be peculiar only to the genius of a gentleman. For so it is in the universal series of history, that if any man has founded a commonwealth, he was first a gentleman. Such also, he adds, as have got any fame as civil governors, have been gentlemen, or persons of known descents. Sir Alexander Ball was a gentleman by birth ; a younger brother of an old and respectable family in Gloucestershire. He went into the navy at an early age from his own choice, and as he himself told me, in consequence of the deep impression and vivid images left on his mind by the perusal of Robinson Crusoe. It is not my intention to detail the steps of his promotion, or the services in which he was engaged as a subaltern. I recollect many par ticulars indeed, but not the dates, with such distinctness as would enable me to state them (as it would be necessary to do if I stated them at all) in the order of time. These dates might perhaps have been procured from the metropolis: but incidents that are neither characteristic nor instructive, even such as would be expected with reason in a regular . 1 life, are no part of my plan; while those which are both interesting and illustrative I have been precluded from mentioning, some from motives which have been already explained, and others from still higher considerations. The most important of these may be deduced from a reflection with which he himself once concluded a long and affecting narration: namely, that no body of men can for any length of time be safely treated otherwise than as rational beings; and that, therefore, the education of the lower classes was of the utmost consequence to the permanent security of the empire, even for the sake of our navy. The dangers, apprehended from the education of the lower classes, arose (he said) entirely from its not being universal, and from the unusualness in the lowest classes of those accomplishments, which He, like Doctor Bell, regarded as one of the means of education, and not as education itself. If, he observed, the lower classes Which consists in educing, or to adopt Dr. Bell's own expression, eliciting the faculties of the human mind, and at the same time subordinating them to the reason and conscience; varying the means of this com |