Tinus lived and died King Charles II. He was the greatest instance in history of the various revolutions of which any one man seemed capable. He was bred up the first twelve years of his life with the splendour that became the heir of so great a crown. After that he passed through eighteen years of great inequalities: unhappy in the war, in the loss of his father, and of the crown of England. Scotland did not only receive himthough upon terms hard of digestion-but made an attempt upon England for him, though a feeble one.

Ile lost the battle of Worcester1 with too much indifference; and then he showed more care of his person than became one who had so much at stake. He wandered about England for ten weeks after that, hiding from place to place. But under all the apprehensions he had then upon him he showed a temper so careless, and so much turned to levity, that he was then diverting himself with little household sports, in as unconcerned a manner as if he had made no loss, and had been in no danger at all. He got at last out of England.

But he had been obliged to so many who had been faithful to him, and careful of him, that he seemed afterwards to resolve to make an equal return to them all; and finding it not easy to reward them all as they deserved, he forgot them all alike. Most princes seem to have this pretty deep in them, and to think that they ought never to remember past services, but that their acceptance of them is a full reward. He, of all in our age, exerted this piece of prerogative in the amplest manner; for he never seemed to charge his memory or to trouble his thoughts with the sense of any of the services that had been done him. While he was abroad at Paris, Cologne, or Brussels, he never seemed to lay anything to heart. He pursued all his diversions and irregular pleasures in a free career, and seemed to be as serene under the loss of a crown as the greatest philosopher could have been. Nor did he willingly hearken to any of those projects with which he often complained that his chancellor presented him. That in which he seemed most concerned was to find money for supporting his expense.

And it was often said that if Cromwell would have compounded the matter, and have given him a good round pension, that he might have been induced to resign his title to him. During his exile he delivered himself so entirely to his plea

sures that he became incapable of application. He spent little of his time in reading or study, and yet less in thinking. And, in the state his affairs were then in, he accustomed himself to say to every person, and upon all occasions, that which he thought would please most; so that words or promises went very easily from him. And he had so ill an opinion of mankind, that he thought the great art of living and governing was, to manage all things and all persons with a depth of craft and dissimulation. And in that few men in the world could put on the appearances of sincerity better than he could; under which so much artifice was usually hid, that in conclusion he could deceive none, for all were become distrustful of him. He had great vices, but scarce any virtues to correct them. He had in him some vices that were less hurtful, which corrected his more hurtful ones.

He was, during the active part of his life, given up to sloth and lewdness, to such a degree that he hated business, and could not bear the engaging in anything that gave him much trouble, or put him under any constraint. And though he desired to become absolute, and to overturn both our religion and our laws, yet he would neither run the risk, nor give himself the trouble, which so great a design required. He had an appearance of gentleness in his outward deportment; but he seemed to have no bowels nor tenderness in his nature, and in the end of his life he became cruel. He was apt to forgive all crimes-even blood itself yet he never forgave anything that was done against himself, after his first and general act of indemnity, which was to be reckoned as done rather upon maxims of state than upon inclinations of mercy. He delivered himself up to a most enormous course of vice, without any sort of restraint, even from the consideration of the nearest relations. The most studied extravagances that way seemed to the very last to be much delighted in and pursued by him. He had the art of making all people grow fond of him at first by a softness in his whole way of conversation, as he was certainly the best-bred man of the age. But when it appeared how little could be built on his promise, they were cured of the fondness that he was apt to raise in them. When he saw young men of quality who had something more than ordinary in them, he drew them about him, and set himself to corrupt them, both in religion and morality; in which he proved so unhappily successful, that he left England much changed at his death from what he had found it at his restoration.

He loved to talk over all the stories of his life to every new man that came about him. His stay in Scotland, and the share

he had in the war of Paris, in carrying messages from the one side to the other, were his common topics. He went over these in a very graceful manner, but so often and so copiously that all those who had been long accustomed to them grew weary of them; and when he entered on these stories they usually withdrew, so that he often began them in a full audience, and before he had done there were not above four or five persons left about him, which drew a severe jest from Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He said he wondered to see a man have so good a memory as to repeat the same story without losing one circumstance of it, and yet not remember that he had told it to the very same persons the day before. This made him fond of strangers, for they hearkened to all his often-repeated stories, and went away as in rapture at such an uncommon condescension in a king.

2

His person and temper, his vices as well as his fortune, resemble the character that we have given us of Tiberius, so much that it were easy to draw the parallel between them. Tiberius's banishment, and his coming afterwards to reign, makes the comparison in that respect come pretty near. His hating of business, and his love of pleasure; his raising of favourites, and trusting them entirely, and his pulling them down, and hating them excessively; his art of covering deep designs, particularly of revenge, with an appearance of softness, brings them so near a likeness that I did not wonder much to observe the resemblance of their faces and persons. At Rome, I saw one of the last statues made for Tiberius, after he had lost his teeth. But, bating the alteration which that made, it was so like King Charles that Prince Borghese and Signior Dominico, to whom it belonged, did agree with me in thinking that it looked like a statue made for him.-BURNET.

SAMUEL JOHNSON was born and educated in Lichfield, where his father was a country bookseller of some eminence, since he belonged to its magistracy. He was born on the 18th September 1709. His school-days were spent in his native city, and his education completed at Pembroke College, Oxford. Of gigantic strength of body and mighty powers of mind, he was afflicted

with that nameless disease on the spirits, which often rendered the latter useless; and externally deformed by a scrofulous complaint, the scars of which disfigured his otherwise strong and sensible countenance.

Of all the men distinguished in this or any other age, Dr. Johnson has left upon posterity the strongest and most vivid impression, so far as person, manners, disposition, and conversation are concerned.

We do but name him, or open a book which he has written, and the sound and action recal to the imagination at once, his form, his merits, his peculiarities,―nay, the very uncouthness of his gestures, and the deep impressive tone of his voice. We learn not only what he said, but form an idea how he said it; and have, at the same time, a shrewd guess of the secret motive why he did so, and whether he spoke in sport or in anger, in the desire of conviction, or for the love of debate.

It was said of a noted wag, that his bon-mots' did not give full satisfaction when published, because he could not print his face. But with respect to Dr. Johnson, this has been in some degree accomplished; and, although the greater part of the present generation never saw him, yet he is, in our mind's eye, a personification as lively as that of Siddons in Lady Macbeth, or Kemble in Cardinal Wolsey.

Johnson's laborious and distinguished career terminated in 1783, when virtue was deprived of a steady supporter, society of a brilliant ornament, and literature of a successful cultivator. The latter part of his life was honoured with general applause, for none was more fortunate in obtaining and preserving the friendship of the wise and the worthy. Thus loved and venerated, Johnson might have been pronounced happy. But Heaven, in whose eyes strength is weakness, permitted his faculties to be clouded occasionally with that morbid affection of the spirits, which disgraced his talents by prejudices, and his manners by rudeness.

When we consider the rank which Dr. Johnson held, not only in literature but in society, we cannot help figuring him to ourselves, as the benevolent giant of some fairy tale, whose kindnesses and courtesies are still mingled with a part of the rugged ferocity imputed to the fabulous sons of Anak2 or rather, perhaps, like a Roman dictator, fetched from his farm, whose wisdom and heroism still relished of his rustic occupation. And there were times when, with all Johnson's wisdom and all his wit, this rudeness of disposition, and the sacrifices and submissions which he unsparingly exacted, were so great, that even his kind and devoted admirer, Mrs. Thrale, seems at length to have thought

that the honour of being Johnson's hostess was almost counterbalanced by the tax which he exacted on her time and patience.

The cause of those deficiencies in temper and manners was not ignorance of what was fit to be done in society, or how far each individual ought to suppress his own wishes in favour of those with whom he associates; for, theoretically, no man understood the rules of good breeding better than Dr. Johnson, or could act more exactly in conformity with them, when the high rank of those with whom he was in company, for the time, required that he should put the necessary constraint upon himself. But during the greater part of his life, he had been, in a great measure, a stranger to the higher society in which such restraint is necessary.

It must be also remarked, that in Johnson's time, the literary society of London was much more confined than at present, and that he sat the Jupiter of a little circle, sometimes, indeed, nodding approbation, but always prompt, on the slightest contradiction, to launch the thunders of rebuke and sarcasm. He was, in a word, despotic, and despotism will occasionally lead the best dispositions into unbecoming abuse of power. It is not likely that any one will again enjoy, or have an opportunity of abusing, the singular degree of submission which was rendered to Johnson by all around him. The unreserved communications of friends, rather than the spleen of enemies, have occasioned his character being exposed in all its shadows, as well as its lights. But those, when summed and counted, amount only to a few narrowminded prejudices concerning country and party, from which few ardent tempers remain entirely free; an over zeal in politics, which is an ordinary attribute of the British character; and some violences and solecisms in manners, which left his talents, morals, and benevolence, alike unimpeachable.-SIR WALTER SCOTT.

1. Literally "good words," equivalent 2. See Num. ix. 2. to witticisms.

THE causes which have led to the present localization of the human species will be found chiefly in the configuration of land in elevation and extent, directing migration into certain natural channels, of which the primary water-sheds afford general indications; those of the Old World, separating the north from the south, and concentrating the energies of various races round the